ReWatch: Deep Impact

1998, Mimi Leder (The Code) -- Netflix / The Shelf

What do they call it when two movies come out at the same time and are about the same topic? Oh yeah, Twin Films. In 1998, in May and July respectively, we got Deep Impact and Armageddon; both movies are about world ending astral bodies (one's a comet) heading towards the planet, and both are about sending teams of astronauts (and working men) up to destroy the rocks. That Guy instantly disliked the latter Michael Bay movie, for all the reasons everyone dislikes Michael Bay movies -- it was loud, crass, flag-waving and full of rock n roll. The former was more thoughtful, more about the human experience at the end of it all.

This Guy probably likes "Armageddon" more now because its just stupid fun.

Mimi Leder gives us a more human movie, a movie about the emotional impact it has on the world, instead of disaster porn. That I like it more is odd, considering my love of disaster porn, the bigger the scale, the better. But even now, I love the weights and measures of this movie. And like with every rewatch, I forget that there is almost no actual disaster until the very end of the movie. Ninety percent of the movie is about people. The rocks barely hit.

Speaking "the bigger, the better" disaster porn -- surprised I have not ever done a rewatch writeup of "2012", the ultimate in end of the world scenarios, by the master himself, Roland Emmerich. Maybe the next The Shelf post....

It starts with an observatory and a high school class. Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) notices something new in the sky. They send his findings to the scientist in the observatory who panics, loading his data onto a floppy drive (for you youngin's, its the physical representation of a Save icon) before dying in a firey crash on the road.

Cut to news people, Washington DC news people to be more precise. Some politician has unexpectedly retired and fledgling TV journalist Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni, Jurassic Park III) starts digging, and learns about "Elly", which immediately gets her detained by the secret service and interrogated by POTUS. Elly turns out to be ELE or "extinction level event" and her blundering forces the government to reveal the existence of comet Wolf-Biederman, which is on collision course with us.

Their plan? Two fold -- one, send a team in a big fancy space shuttle to blow it up, and two, to jam a million lottery winners into caves, to preserve "our way of life". Jenny has skyrocketed to the top of her news station, which is bittersweet, as the world falls apart around her. Meanwhile Leo and his family watch the ensuing chaos from afar. 

The timeline is long, in months, but as expected in these kind of movies, the mission is a failure. All the astronauts end up doing is breaking the big comet into two big chunks, one that will land in the Atlantic, flooding the eastern seaboard, and the other into Western Canada, which will effectively end life on Earth.

But the astronauts pull off a Hail Mary, igniting their own nuclear engine to destroy the bigger rock. The littler rock still hits, giving us a bit of actual disaster in this disaster movie. Jenny dies in the arms of her estranged father, a final touching moment of forgiveness and connection. Leo and his new bride, and her infant brother, escape high into the hills Appalachians, while everyone they knew is washed away. Leo could have gone into the caves, as his discovery afforded him and his family a place, but he loved his high school sweetheart too much. The world is saved by the sacrifices of the shuttle crew and a very ruined planet gets a chance to heal.

Now, all these years later, I am still surprised I (still) like this one more than the other one. It affords us a dozen lovely moments of pure emotional human element: Jenny giving up her seat on the helicopter out of DC to her boss & child, "Spurgeon" Tanner (Robert Duvall, Open Range) reading to the blinded shuttle mission leader, said leader Oren Monash's (Ron Eldard, Black Hawk Down) wife & child rushing into mission control to give last goodbyes to husband & father, the Hotchener's forcing their teenage daughter Sarah (Leelee Sobieski, Eyes Wide Shut) to take her infant brother and escape on Leo's motorcycle to higher ground as a wall of water washes up the grid-locked highway, President Beck (Morgan Freeman, Se7en) dispensing with the teleprompter to give his final "we failed" speech to the nation. There are so many moments that are not high-drama but sweet, tragic events that make the movie what it is.

Speaking of "a rock will smash the Earth, let's hide people in a bunker", the more recent disaster porn movie (which is more about the human element) "Greenland" is getting a sequel.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Minecraft Movie

2025, Jared Hess (Nacho Libre) -- download

One, yes I watched this movie, though not in the cinema.

Two, yes it was terrible, but in a sort of expected Jared Hess sort of way.

Three, no it is not just for kids. Technically, I was "into Minecraft before it was cool". But it would help with this movie if you were one of the generation that is actually still into the game.

So, background. Back in the late 00s, a co-worker knew I was into gaming and introduced me to this weird non-linear game he was playing. At first I was off-put by the low-end looking graphics, the blocky nature of it, but I gave it a try, especially intrigued by the open world, no goals nature. And soon after, entranced by the music, the open ended nature, the self guided play - I was hooked. This was the early days, the Java days. I actually bought it. Not long after, this coworker recognized this was a good game for kids, and built a server for his own boys, and their friends, to play on. All I can say about that is that kids are generally sociopathic when playing games.

The game evolved, expanded from being worked on solely by one developer (Notch; even mentioning his name is too good for what he devolved into) to a small company (Mojang) and then eventually was bought up by Microsoft. By the time it actually launched 1.0 it was a phenom game. It was known the world wide and it was a thing that parents were now peripherally aware that kids were into, not adults. But I still subscribed to its early versioning, the pre-multiplayer days, when it was about a single person, in a single world, exploring and surviving and building to their heart's content, wary of danger but with infinite possibility.

It is this last ideal that the script hinges off. The movie itself, as all Hollywood versions of "cool things" took over ten years to come to actual life, arguably long after it could have actually banked on that cool factor. I mean, many of the kids who were originally into the game have now graduated high school. Sure, its still a thing but not the phenomena it once was. Yet, the core story, the idea of a guy (Steve) who finds a weird blocky world which is open to his singular creativity, is there. And you get the sense the writers at least heard of this earlier ideal to the game.

But most of the movie is from the phenom era. All the in-jokes and monsters and items and world building are things that leave me wondering, having abandoned the game when it became ubiquitous, when it garnered a purpose, instead of just being entirely open ended. So, this movie was not for me. But who was it for, as I heard it got lambasted by even "the fans" ?

Anywayz, yes, Steve (Jack Black, King Kong) gives us a preamble wherein he explains his Hess-ian life of being denied a life as a child-miner, until he finds his way into a magic world. After establishing his perfect life in this world, a portal into yet another world is found (the Nether), one that is the opposite of his own blocky, bright world, one of pig men and monsters and dark magics. To protect his world, he sends the portal generating magic orb with his blocky wolf pet Dennis into the "real world" to hide it.

Enter the "real world", well as real as anything from Hess is. Its surreal more than real. Natalie (Emma Myers, Wednesday) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen, Lisey's Story) arrive in Chuglass, where they've been forced to move after their mother's passing. Natalie is a social media guru and will help increase interest in the town's potato chip factory, that is, until Henry accidentally destroys the mascot/statue stuck to the factory roof. Henry is a bit of an inventor, but in the Wallace & Grommit vein... weird, not quite working stuff. His rocket pack experiment doesn't go well. 

Henry ends up at the gaming store of hot pink garbed loser, and ex-arcade-gaming-champion, Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison (Jason Momoa, Aquaman). Hidden in his store is the orb (magic portal generating one) and through a conjunction of plot requirements, everyone, also including real estate agent / mobile petting zoo  entrepreneur (basically a llama in the backseat of her station wagon) Dawn, end up in the blocky world, called The Overworld.

As is expected of their first night in Minecraft, night comes far too quickly and with it, zombies. Henry has already discovered how to punch trees and build "a house" but zombies and skeletons riding spiders are still trying to defeat them. IYKYK. That's when Steve appears to then provide exposition and prowess for the rest of the movie, explaining all the elements of the game that appear, especially the in-jokes and wink wink nod nods. Oh, and they accidentally break the orb, but just before they do so, a "villager" (Minecraft's NPCs who speak a mumbly language) wanders through the portal into our world, where he is hit by a car driven by the school vice-principle (Jennifer Coolidge, 2 Broke Girls). Insert disturbing romance side plot.

After this, the movie is all quest quest quest. Steve knows where they have to go to get a new orb, but his nemesis, Malgosha (Rachel House, Thor: Ragnarok), queen of the pig men, who only has interest in mining for gold, and using the orb to allow her Nether world to enter the Overworld. She wants the orb, Steve doesn't want her to have it, but she has an army at her back.

Its fun, its silly and its bright and fanciful. I said the movie was terrible, but naming Hess as the reason makes the terrible the intent? His movies are all a wonky left-of-centre depictions of odd people doing odd things but with their heart. I just wish he had reined in Jack Black a bit more, who plays his Steve as an unhinged maniac constantly screaming his methods of madness to all around -- in other words, being full Jack Black. And while I am tempted to say I would have liked the movie more if not for the Hess-ian style to the characters, I have a deep seated belief the movie would have been much much more terrible if it took itself too seriously.  I strive to envision a better movie for this property, and I fail.

KWIF: Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning + Sinners

 KWIF = Kent's Week(ish) In Film. 

This Week:
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025, d. Christopher McQuarrie - in theatre)
Sinners (2025, d. Ryan Coogler - in theatre)

---

[Missions: Impossibles 1-6 and 7]

The TV series from the 1960s from which the Mission: Impossible film series takes its name was a team-based ensemble series revolving around a group called the IMF - the Impossible Mission Force. From the opening sequence of Brian DePalma's first entry in this series, in which Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is the sole survivor of a mission where his entire team was killed, it was laid pretty bare that this Mission: Impossible was all about just one man.

Oh, every film it tries to pretend like its interested in Ethan being part of a team, amassing Luthor (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) and a rotating cast of others as his support base, but the films have never been interested, not one iota, about who these other characters are. They are there for one reason, and one reason only: to heave up the corniest dialogue that reiterates just how singularly awesome and important and noble and unique and courageous and handsome and incredible Ethan Hunt (and thus the man portraying him) is. But it hasn't always been so unbearable as it is in the latest (and last?) bloated entry in Cruise's vainglorious celluloid espionage exploits.

When Christopher McQuarrie joined the franchise with its fifth feature, it picked up the threads from JJ Abrams' third feature and started really investing in Ethan as a character, and what the toll of his role as sole saviour of the world has on him. It gave him an equal in Rebecca Ferguson's superspy Ilsa Faust, and took away from some of that centrifugal force that Cruise generates. Ilsa had her own world she existed in and it just so happened to cross paths with Ethan Hunt. Rebecca Ferguson didn't play Ilsa as a love interest, she had her own shit going on and Ethan was either getting in her way, helping her out, or a nice distraction.

With the sixth Ilsa-heavy M:I entry, Cruise squared off against a scene-stealing moustache and the super-tall, super-jacked, super-man that is Henry Cavill behind it. Cavill is the physical ideal I think Cruise wishes he was. When Cruise played Jack Reacher, a character described as a brick shithouse of a man (which Cruise most definitely is not) I can only imagine he was thinking he was Henry Cavill the whole time. So Cavill's nefarious turn and death in Fallout, well, it's like in Fight Club, when Jack bashes Jared Leto's face in. He just felt like destroying something beautiful. Mission:Impossible - Dead Reckoning (formerly "Part 1") was Cruise's direct response to having any of the attention taken away from him, and despite some spectacular stunts, it was the worst film in the franchise since John Woo's much maligned second entry. Slated to be the first of a two-part swan song to Cruise's run on the action franchise, he made it all about him. No more Ilsa, no scene stealing villains, and everything... EVERYTHING revolves around Ethan Hunt and just how goddamn important he is.

All this preamble is to say Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (no longer Dead Reckoning - Part 2) is the apex of Tom Cruise's self-fellating on screen. It's a 170-minute, $300 million(or more) budget spectacle that commands you to revel in the majesty that is Tom Cruise.  Every goddamn character - even the ones who are trying to take Ethan Hunt down - can only every talk about just how wonderful and noble and just the best-person-ever Ethan is, often directly to his face while Cruise just stands there, looking off screen, doing the best acting of his career by pretending to not be revealing in such effusive admiration. Dead Reckoning at least still deigned to have some personal investment for Ethan (though it involved fridgeing Ilsa, so fuck that noise) while here there is no journey for Ethan to go on, except to prove that he is the one man, and one man alone who can save the world.  At a certain point I had to wonder if all this ego-fluffing was camp. My wife assured me it was not self aware enough to be so.

There is a nominal attempt at building a team around him. Pom Klementieff's assassin, Paris, from Dead Reconing joins the squad, as does Greg Tarzan Davis' CIA Agent Degas. They hook up with Benji, Luthor and Haley Atwell's master pickpocket Grace. Atwell has the unfortunate role of having to pretend her character is totally infatuated with Ethan ...but then ALL characters kind of have to as well, except she has to pretend to be romantically interested in him while Cruise's sexual energy seems to have gotten lost somewhere between putting on his Lev Grossman fat suit for Tropic Thunder and belting out "Wanted Dead or Alive" for Rock of Ages, and he give her nothing in return. Oh, Cruise is totally down for taking his shirt off but he just wants people to be impressed with the physique of his 60-year-old body and what he can do with it, and not all all with any sense of allure. (Ok, I am impressed, you got me there). The team is a team only to ensure that Ethan's mission, and thus his rightful place as Best Person Ever, is affirmed. 

There are no character arcs in this film. There is a small redemptive arc for one character calling back from the first Mission: Impossible but that's about as close to a character arc as we get. Ethan's sole motivation in this rather absurd endeavour, is to save the world because only he can.

Picking up from Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning finds "the Entity", an artificial intelligence let loose upon the world, taking over, one by one, each nuclear power's arsenal, getting set to destroy everything, while nations still strive to find some way to control the Entity for their own benefit. Ethan and team have figured out how to stop the entity, but the mission...it's practically impossible! 

I can accept the multitude of far-fetched coincidences and microscopic margins of error that Ethan and team need to successfully achieve in order to save the day. That has always been a part of the series. It's a lot harder to accept the James Bond-meets-MCU-level threat and globetrotting adventure that doesn't at all seem like the style of the series. There's is such heightened levels of absurdity in this that it makes Indiana Jones' surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator look realistic by comparison.

Despite Cruise's borderline insane commitment to practical physical spectacles in death-taunting-level action sequences, these last two films have stretched so far past reality that they're really not that enjoyable. The absence of any character development or journey means you're all too aware of "Tom Cruise" on screen, and "Ethan Hunt" is just the innocuous shadow he casts.

That all said, the middle act of this film, starting with a sequence on a submarine captained by Severance's Tramell Tillman and with Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian on board (let's spin off a film about that crew please), just sings like a proper impossible mission. This segment of the film sets up the stakes, reiterates the dangers, adds more complications and we watch as Ethan and crew execute the impossible. It involves a gorgeously filmed underwater sequence and even as it keeps adding layer upon layer of danger to admittedly absurd levels, it never stops looking great.  It helps that Ethan is underwater and unable to communicate with anyone so it is just pure spectacle, with no one reinforcing just how incredible or awesome or necessary he is. Of course, it ends with one, perhaps two dangers too many, and its conclusion, well, if it were a Stretch Armstrong doll it would be spilling its inner sand everywhere.

This did not need to be a three hour movie. Scaling back the flashbacks to past instalments, shaving back the layers upon layers of peril (sorry to say but President Angela Bassett -- as much as I wish that were a real thing instead of Tangerine Palpatine -- is utterly unnecessary here), and cutting a dozen or two of the speeches about how fucking incredible Ethan is could pare this back a good 40 minutes. 

I didn't hate The Final Reckoning but these big bloated multi-part finales to film franchises are getting out of hand and they generally don't earn the right to be so damn self-important. These final two entries of the Mission: Impossible series feel more on par with ludicrous-ness (Ludacris-ness?) of the Fast and Furious franchise (a series itself that's failed to maintain its own standards). Nothing will be worse in this series than Mission:Impossible II, but these Reckonings have kind of sunk to a new level of mediocrity.

---

There is a comic book series called Phonogram written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Jamie McKelvie that posits that music is magic, that the sounds we hear from bands, the creative energy that infuse them, unlocks the ethereal aspects of existence. In the comic, there are people who see the literal magic at play and can navigate it where as the rest of us just experience the surface impact of the magic, but the metaphor at play is a strong one. Music can unlock every type of feeling and elicit sensations that cannot be adequately described with even the most florid language. Music can transcend reality and take the listener into another plane of existence, at least for a moment.

There is a sequence in Sinners that is transcendent in this same fashion, a prolonged moment that marries music and moving pictures as well as human movement to create a powerful experience that conveys that idea of music being magic and lets the audience join the ride. In this moment in the film, music opens a metaphorical gateway between the past and the future, director Ryan Coogler's fluid, sweeping camera navigates the scene as barriers between reality break down. Ludwig Goransson and his talented ensemble of musicians, as well as the film's co-star Miles Canton providing deeply soulful blues vocals, bridge these worlds with a harmonious cacophony of sound. The scene captured is of the beautiful cast dancing, only to be joined by ancestors and descendants in the joyous movement.  I'm underselling its power. I let out an audible, uncontrollable "wooooooow" as the sequence evolved. The magic was real, and transformative. 

Often, when a film has a big idea moment like this, the entire story is built around it, it leads up to it, and then rides the high for the remainder of its runtime (or futilely tries to top it, risking undermining the whole endeavour), but not Sinners. This moment is an unexpected moment when it happens (oh...sorry, spoiler warning, I guess?) but it's really the pivot point of the movie. The sequences leading into this moment build up the characters and the scenario. Coogler deftly invests us in Michael B. Jordan's twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, as well as their blues-playing cousin Sammy, and the women they all love, and the town they all live in, the peopley they're all connected to, and the nefarious forces they face be it the Klan or the white devils with pointy teeth and glowing eyes.

I wrote about how Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass was a masterclass in character and setting introduction and set-up.  Sinners has much the same brilliance. Smoke and Stack departed their Clarksdale, Mississippi home to engage in World War I, and after they returned, they stole away to Chicago to work for Capone. They have returned to Clarksdale armed with knowledge and experience and no fear. The legend of the Moore twins lives large in Clarksdale, some of it rumour, most of it not.  

The twins are opening up a juke joint, and fast. They want to get operating immediately. The don't so much as see the need as impose the need upon the town. There are warnings they receive, but there's a fearlessness and ambition in their endeavour, and they're going to put their all into it.  Smoke reunites with his lover Annie (the radiant Wunmi Mosaku) while Stack tries unsuccessfully to hide from Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the daughter of the white woman who took the twins in when they were kids who Smoke had a fling with before leaving town.  They recruit their younger cousin to play, despite the protestations of Sammy's preacher father who wants his son's talents for the church, not for the sinner crowd. The twins also wrangle in alcoholic blues pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play, and local grocers Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Ji and Thomas "Yao" Pang, respectively) among other help.

Meanwhile they don't know the threat that is coming. An Irish immigrant, Remmick, is chased through the desert by Choctaw hunters, well aware he is a demon in human form. Remmick gets refuge in the home of a Klansman and his wife, and in short time he is not alone, but a fledgling horde.

Remmick senses the power of Sammy's music, and wants that power for his own. So he descends upon that lively event of Smoke and Stack's grand opening, and it's not long before vampiric chaos ensues.

Coogler ties together the joys of music, the strength of community, the power of solidarity and the terror of systemic racism and injustice, and can't resist as the fleeting satisfaction of revenge, and underlines it all with a deliciously entertaining action-horror genre picture. Sinners is one of the most entertaining movies of the 21st century.  It's hard not to acknowledge From Dusk 'Til Dawn but Coogler has little to none of Tarantino or Rodriguez's interest or deference to Grindhouse pictures, and so when the bloodbath begins, it's all still so very rooted in character rather than spectacle. The choices Coogler's script makes in this last act are never not surprising, up to, and including the coda to the film.

Everyone is great in this picture, everyone. But when Michael B. Jordan is on screen (sometimes on screen twice) everything just orbits around him, caught in his gravitational pull. He is magnetic, capitvating and so good looking. Smoke and Stack are so smooth, collected, menacing yet sympathetic, and stylish as hell. It's impossible not to wish for stories about the Moore twins in Chicago, or their World War I experience... if not movies, then comics or novels from Coogler.

But Sinners is a singularly awesome film that wants to exist on its own, just one story start to finish, with no franchise ambitions. It stands apart as not just a movie, but an experience.

What I Have Been Watching: A Catchup Post

I said many times recently that I am not currently writing about TV. As my brain is powered on whim, I decided to write "watching" post, but not in the adopted Kent Method (1-1-1) but just my old catchup kind of post where I write a paragraph or two on shows I recently watched, or I am currently watching. Its a blather-on kind of post. It will skip ones from way back when.

Dropping stubs; to be filled out.

9-1-1, Season 8, Disney+

We used to download this show as it came up, but eventually our dedication to the show waned, so we now just wait for it to appear on Disney+, where they are actually dropping weekly episodes. They just finished off Season 8. 

Given I am not using the 1-1-1 format, I will just blather on a bit. 

This was the season they killed off not just a main character, but the main character -- Captain Bobby Nash. In a two part episode about a crazy epidemiologist who releases a mutant virus, and infects some members of the team, Bobby sacrifices himself to save one -- Chimney. There's no fake out, no walk back with a miraculous cure. He dies, horribly, quickly. And it tears apart the people present. This show has always been good at trauma, less the people they are supposed to be saving, and more the members of the 118 Station House. I mean, this year, 911 Operator Maddie Han had her throat slashed by a serial killer who had kidnapped her. But she survived, unlike every other throat slashing on TV which is played out as insta-death. But the show is silly and melodramatic and over the top and near-deaths are the norm. Real Death is not and it was really really tragic. 

Also, on a less traumatic note, the hunky hunk Buck came out as Bi; oh wait, that was last season. Also, yes there was a season opening episode about bees.

Andor, Season 2, Disney+

Likely the best thing I watched in the past year. Definitely the opposite of the last show given it is smart, well written and deftly paced. Never has there been a show which successfully had me rooting for the Bad Guy, and not in an ironic way, but growing to actually like them. Begrudgingly, grumpily so. Not entirely, and not for the usual quippy Buffy-Spike reasons, but because they are played as such strong characters with strong motivations. But they remain the Bad Guy. And I commend the show for having them remain a Bad Guy until the very end, not shoe-horning in some redemption arc, despite giving us openings. Such. Good. Writing.

The tailoring of this season through 3 episode arcs that cover one year's period, counting down to Cassian Andor leaving the rebel base, to begin the movie Rogue One, was brilliant. Utterly brilliant. It allowed build up, in degrees, and also resolution, in degrees. It also allowed us to fill in some details, build out the characters, establish some utterly engrossing moral dilemmas and sum up some things that just had to be summed up. More precisely: the establishment of Yavin as the Rebel Base, the rise and fall of "necessary evil" Luthen Rael, the rise and fall of aforementioned Bad Guys Syril Karn & Edra Meero, 

Doctor Who, Season 2, Disney+

I am still kind of annoyed at the rebranding of this as a new series (i.e. the 'season 2' component) and also somewhat disappointed that Ruby Sunday only truly lasted one season as the main companion. While I really like Belinda Chandra as a companion, I just haven't really warmed to the season. Just nothing stands out, at all. I watch, I mildly enjoy and then I burp, and its gone. 

The show definitely continues the "piss off the anti-woke folks" being more gay, more brash statements than any other series, which is kind of gleeful unto itself. The episodes which were blatant send-up's on incel rhetoric were a hoot. And, they have been having some fun extending the pantheon related storyline from "first" season, but I am just ... not invested.

Doctor Odyssey, Season 1, Disney+

I wanted to watch this for two reasons: I have an odd fascination with alternative cruise ships, i.e. the more akin to classic, smaller ships than they mega-ships run by companies (ironically) like Disney -- see Death and Other Details. And because it seemed it would be in the vein of 9-1-1 with a "situation of the week" wherein the mains have to deal with something dramatic and tense. Alas, it more devolved into personal politics, which I am not adverse to in theory, but the whole love-triangle (full blown, let's have a threesome triangle stuff, between a "boss" and co-workers) between the mains just had me rolling my eyes.

I have just stopped watching.

Murderbot, Season 1, Apple TV / Download

Based on a scifi book series I just started reading ("just started" at my snail pace and attention span means I read the first book over a year ago) and enjoyed. But for some reason, they have positioned the TV show as a straight up comedy, something I did not attach to how the free-willed cyborg behaved in the books.

A Security Unit, a cyborg that is more weapon/tool than person, is assigned to a hippy-dippy group of scientists. Unbeknownst to them, this SecUnit has devised a way to break their "governor module", the device that keeps them from thinking for themselves. But it, and it most definitely identifies as "it", doesn't want to be found out, so it has to play the part. Exceeeept, its doing weird, more human things.

Two thoughts, as not much has happened two episodes (30 minute-r type episodes) in, but: since "it" is played by Alexander Skarsgård, it will soon, inadvertently become "he". And when reading the books, I somehow identified it as she. And I really like that they "let" David Dastmalchian display his vitiligo. Not overtly, but at least its not all covered up.

The Bondsman, Season 1, Amazon

Horror/Comedy show about a hillbilly bail-bondsman who is murdered by his ex-wife's new criminal boyfriend, and then is kicked out of Hell to act as a demon-related bounty hunter, for Hell. Its a long line in ?killing demons for Hell" shows we have watched, and weirdly enough, they are almost comedic in tone.

Kevin Bacon, who plays main Hub Halloran, is ten years older than me!! Jeezus the guy looks good for over 60. And he just moves well, considering its an action role and he's likely playing a guy in his 40s.

The show itself unfortunately dials down some of the stock elements of these shows. He has a handler, who helps him "identify" the types of demons he is hunting, but really, other than it presenting some flair for the demons, it doesn't play much into his interactions with them. Most of the drama of the show plays up his dysfunctional family situation, and the reasons he went to Hell in the first place. 

It was not bad, but I doubt it will get renewed.

MobLand, Season 1, download

This is another Guy Ritchie series, right? Its very dialogue heavy violence heavy in the Richie-an style. It covers an Irish mob family syndicate in London who get broiled in a war with another family syndicate after their shit grandson murders another shit grandson. Tom Hardy tags along as the unflappable fixer for the main family.

But alas, no, it's not direct Guy Ritchie, just has him in to direct an episode or two. 

It has just started and horrible people are doing horrible things to each other, but I am convinced that the matron of the Harrigan family, Maeve played by Helen Mirren, is plotting to bring down her own family just for the spite of it.

Poker Face, Season 2, download

Yay! Charlie's back! 

When season one ended, she had finally met up with her nemesis, mob boss Sterling Foster Sr, who had had his mook Cliff chasing her all season, pretty much a year's worth of bad hotels, bad food and near misses. But he finally caught her and sat her down in front of Foster. But the year had softened him to the ideal Charlie represented. What got her in trouble in the first place was the cluster-fucked deal Foster's son tried to strong-arm her into, using her lie-detecting ability to con high-roller gamblers. Foster Sr offers Charlie the same deal; except Cliff has turned on his boss, likely due to  the shit job he had been on for a year, and kills Foster. Cliff tries to frame Charlie for it, but fails.

Season Two starts with Charlie being offered the same deal by Beatrix Hasp, a boss of one of the "five families", but Charlie turns her down, and is on the run again. The first few episodes play out like a speedy version of season one, with Charlie solving a murder, and then running from mob goons with guns. BUT pulling an Andor out of their butt, they end that chase quickly having Hasp turn informant on the mob. Now Charlie, having become used to the idea of stopping in town to town on her windy-bendy trip around the US, solving murders, continues the ideal.

They have changed showrunner for this season, and the quick opener sum-up was a surprise. Time will tell whether we enjoy this season as much as the first.

The Last of Us, Season 2, download

The popular, critically acclaimed mushroom-zombie series based on a video game returns and actually does the shocking thing that the sequel game, that the season is based on, did -- killing its main character! Well, one of them. I was shocked that they took the second game, which pissed off the fan-base for the first game to the n-th degree, and are following it pretty much verbatim. Not having finished the second game, it will eventually diverge from my memory, but having played out the primary element, with heart-wrenching results, they seem just as invested in legitimacy.

Ellie has aged, Ellie has come out, Ellie is very very VERY angry. With the murder of Joel, the season quickly shifts from her being an annoying teenager with daddy issues to a Quest for Vengeance. It leads them west to a Seattle where a war is being waged, a war into which Ellie and Dina blunder.

This season is going to be all about the moral dilemma of violent response. Joel killed each and every Firefly because he couldn't sacrifice Ellie for the "greater good". After the death of his daughter he devolved into Not a Good Man, and during his travels with Ellie, he gained some of his pre-apocalypse viewpoint back. But the ruthless murders come with their own consequences. Not only does Ellie, when she eventually finds out, find it hard to forgive him, to believe he was that man, but also the children of those Firefly leaders he killed finally, many years later, put two and two together, and lay the blame squarely on his shoulders. And they track him down, and they most brutally kill him in front of Ellie. They leave Ellie and Dina alive with that memory.

Ellie understands what they have done, and why they have done it. But in a mirroring of Joel's choices, she sets out with Dina, against the wishes of all in their community, to find and murder Joel's killers. The same kind of vengeance for the same kind of reasons. The daughter becomes the father. 

Just like the game's release itself, the season is pissing off, or at least it is fueling the unhinged rage that anti-woke Internet has for.... well, pretty much anyone who is not a straight, white male. I know the Angry Internet has awoken significantly in the past decade or so, when they used to hide in the 4Chan holes to only share with each other, but part of me still wonders/hopes is the online rage is fabricated (to a degree) by foreign/local parties that just want to foment disruption. An unstable world is easier to control, and we do know how much this utter clusterfuck of a situation down south (of Canada) is about controlling the utterly stupid masses. I am just so fucking tired of it all. Can't we just enjoy something good because it is well done, instead of finding ways to bring it down? If anything, the review bombing will not stop the people who enjoy it from being the people who enjoy it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bullet Train Explosion

2025,  Shinji Higuchi (Shin Ultraman) -- Netflix

This is considered a direct sequel to the 1975 Japanese disaster movie The Bullet Train. 

Now, is it just me who calls these movies "disaster movies" even when the disastrous events are rather localized? I have always likened movies the The Towering Inferno, and The Poseidon Adventure as "classics" in the (disaster movie) genre and this would fit into the mould -- some background, lots of innocent people gathered together, something goes horribly wrong, people have to be rescued or saved. But there have been runaway train movies where I wouldn't claim them to be "disaster" movies. What about the structure of these makes them more "disaster" and less generic "thriller" ? I mean, purely, a "disaster movie" should be a big thing, a natural or man-made event, wherein there is mass death & destruction. Or maybe just the ... threat of such? 

Quit rabbit-holing. And no, this is probably not a disaster movie, as nobody actually dies.

Train 5060B is scheduled from the Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan to arrive in Tokyo, some 700 kilometers away, in likely less than 4 hours, at its normal rate of speed. That is, until a bomb threat is called in. The bomber wants ¥100 billion (just under a billion $ CAD) which they believe can easily be collected from everyone in Japan, or they will blow the train up in a populated area. Also, if the train slows to less than 100 KMh, it will explode. Yes, the premise for Speed, the bus movie with Keanu. To demonstrate their intent, they explode a cargo train sitting in a yard, and that forces the authorities to take it all seriously.

Like Shin Godzilla much of the movie focuses on the bureaucracy of response. The company that runs the train feels an obligation to save all the passengers and the reputation of their company, and the men leading these efforts are burdened by the immense weight of the responsibility. Yes, the fiction of a benevolent corporation that cares. They also have to deal with the conniving government representative who doesn't want the money to be collected because of the whole "don't negotiate with terrorists" ideal. Meanwhile onboard the train, the drama is led by conductor Kazuya Takaichi (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Seiten wo Tsuke), who in great Japanese tradition, takes his job Very Seriously and wants to defend each and every passenger from harm. He has so many conflicting and contradictory responsibilities as the passengers themselves are the typical mix of sympathetic and entirely dislikeable people, some who calmly follow the instructions given to them by Takaichi, and others just cause chaos.

I loved the little detail, when focus would shift to the actual train driver (Non, Amachan), who has to disengage all the automated procedures and lower the train speeds, but just enough to delay arrival in Tokyo, but not enough for them to go boom. She is very precise in all her actions, double and triple checking each action with little visual flairs and shouts of confirmation. She doesn't care what is going on out there, she has a job to do.

The corporation arranges a rescue of most of the passengers in a tense, exciting, intricately planned derailing of some of the train cars (which have bombs, so go boom) while having another train match speeds and collect terrified passengers. The ingenuity of the Japanese people is on display as even the handing-off of required equipment to facilitate the rescue operations is done in a very detailed, precise manner, and in very short time. Dispatch Manager Yuichi Kasagi (Takumi Saitoh, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl) arranges all these things unbelievably quickly, as dozens of co-workers, police and government officials stare him down. 

In the end, the actual bomber and her plan matters very little. The usual disaster movie / thriller details mattered very little. The fun was watching the background folks accomplish the nie impossible in short order, allowing destruction (that must amount to billions of yen) to ensue, as long as the passengers are saved. And they are, all of them, including the terrible people and the bomber herself.

We have a "train" tag?!?!

ReWatch: The Core

2003, Jon Amiel (Entrapment) -- Netflix

Wait, this movie isn't on The Shelf ? Really? Are you sure?

For some reason I assumed I had already written about this one during a previous ReWatch. Even within my fondness for silly disaster movies, this one stands out as silly for the sake of silly. Something has stopped the core of our planet from spinning, so our magnetosphere is dissipating, which will eventually destroy all life on the planet. It starts with birds going wacky and ends with them sending a team of scientists to the centre of the Earth in a special ship to blow up nuclear bombs, to restart the "engine of the planet". I was mildly disappointed they didn't discover a land of dinosaurs at the centre of the planet.

Now, most disaster movies hinge on silliness, asking us to believe outrageous things for the sake of the plot. This one jumps the shark. For one, there is the presence of Unobtanium, a fictional composite / alloy that not only can protect someone from heat in the thousands of degrees, but it can also transfer that heat energy into electrical energy. The term has been around since the 50s, but this was the first use in a movie. The metal is used to coat the shell of the train-worm-ship (named Virgil) the team uses to reach the core of the planet. There are more, but I will get to them.

So, as alluded, something is going awry with the core of our planet. Once people start noticing things going weird, they, being the US Govt, respond by kidnapping schlubby college professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, Battle: Los Angeles) and asking him if someone is using a weapon on the US. They, being proposed terrorists, aren't but it does have him do a bit more digging, and then in a fit of panic, confront a renowned celebrity scientist, Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci, Big Night), about his findings who then gets Keyes in front of the POTUS. I have seen this movie at least half a dozen times and I still don't recall what field Zimsky is actually an expert in -- not that it matters to the plot; he's a celebrity scientist. He's the opposite of schlubby and therefore more credible. 

Anywayz, The magnetic field around the Earth, that protects us from harmful cosmic radiation, is dissipating. If we don't get the planet's core spinning soon, we will all die, which he demonstrates by putting an orange on the end of a fork and flambéing it with an aerosol can + a light = FIRE BALL ! 

That leads them to Zimsky's one time scientist buddy, Dr. "Brazz" Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo, Get Shorty), a sort of mad scientist working in the desert on weird shit, like the Unobtanium and Virgil. He will build the vehicle that will take them to the core where they can blow up some nukes to kick start it again. Why exactly did the core stop spinning? Oh nobody knows, but we do get a few conspiratorial scenes between Zimsky and the US General (Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water) running the show. Add to the team a pair of space shuttle pilots, one who almost lost her job by landing a shuttle in those water run-off canals in LA, which was totally unfair cuz she landed after their navigation equipment failed, due to, you guessed it, the issue with the core and the magnetic field. And there is Serge (Tchéky Karyo, La Femme Nikita), the nuclear scientist, and best friend of Josh, who will help them set off the bombs properly. I mean, he will set timers, which totally requires a nuclear specialist. The final member is a hacker named Rat (DJ Qualls, The Man in the High Castle) who will hide them diverting the trillions of dollars required to build Virgil and train the team. He hacks, as all movie hackers do, via buzz words and hot pockets. He does not go into the train-worm-ship, but works in the control centre, with the General. I was never sure where the trillions were actually going, but again, doesn't matter.

Virgil is dropped into the Marianas Trench, and using some sort of sound-lazer ('z' is important) they will blast their way through the chocolate layers of the planet to the sugary centre. It basically is like flying, just more worm-like. Their guidance system shows a sub-par digital representation of .. stuff but also doesn't know what diamonds are, so they are black, and are very very big and best avoided. And empty space is static, which is scary, especially when they drop into the inside of a giant geode. They have to go outside to dislodge a piece of crystal, in soft style space suits that don't seem to be affected by pressure so I guess the Kevlar version of Unobtanium? That's where they lose their first crew members, astronaut Commander Bob Iverson (Bruce Greenwood, Exotica) and the other astronaut, Beck Childs (Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby) has to step up.

They eventually lose pretty much everyone. Serge is lost when the caboose of their train-worm-ship gets damaged and he jumps in to save the nuclear detonators. Josh loses it on Becks because he believes he could have saved Serge if an override was used. Based on how they drag the scene out, I think he could have as well. Serge is squashed in the quickly collapsing section of Virgil, which is then ejected. I wonder what else was supposed to be inside that section. Braz is lost when someone has to volunteer to disengage a safety switch, which is only accessible from outside which is really really hot, like melt his special space suits hot. Finally, Zimsky does not quite sacrifice himself but gets stuck in a section that has to be ejected so they can set off their nuclear payload in a timed succession. He dies narrating into his mini-recorder and smoking a cigarette. Classy. 

Though pretty much everyone is dead, and the nukes haven't been enough, they realize they have to use the nuclear engine that powers Virgil. But then how will they fly-worm-tunnel home? Remember the line about how Unobtanium can convert heat energy into electricity? Well, all it takes is attaching big cable wires from the hull to the system and buzz whir click, everything turns back on. But they still have to guide Virgil out of the area around the core and back to the surface, and since we remember how long it took them to get there it will... oh, don't bother... if they just ride the nuclear wave, it will push them faster towards some hereto unknown crevasse that leads to the ocean and bob's your uncle, saved!

Also, they have discovered that it was indeed a weapon that caused all this havoc, one devised by Zimsky and the General. Rat the Hacker uploads everything about this conspiracy to the Internet. And I guess the magnetosphere repairs itself like a living organism? 

Yah lots of silly, and yet, the movie still takes itself seriously, seriously enough that the emotional moments feel like real emotion. Zimsky is an ass, and Tucci plays him perfectly, terrible toupee and all. The deaths of likeable Braz and Serge are tragic. The "disaster" is rather minimal, with only the third act depiction of cosmic rays melting the Golden Gate Bridge -- the movie doesn't seek to overwhelm you with death -- as Serge says, they are not trying to save the entire world, just three people -- Serge's family. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): G20

2025, Patricia Riggen (Girl in Progress) -- Amazon

Speaking of using Die Hard as a template, I am not sure what the whole point of this movie was. No no, I get it, cheaper than usual, straight-to action flicks attract a certain audience (me, of course) but usually these movies have a "statement", a social or political commentary of some sort, either the main character's background or the motivations behind the bad guy. Oh, I am not saying that the depictions of the Bad Guy's Motivation is a reflection on the screen writer or director's own viewpoint, as more often or not, its just a "throw a dart at something on the current zeitgeist", but usually they say ... something? In The Cleaner the movie was saying "ecological disaster is bad", but in this movie I am not sure if the movie care about anything beyond "a black woman as president". Oh wait, there was a bit about (pun intended), Bitcoin being Good.

OK, preamble. Some guys with guns steal a harddrive from someone... oh, its a cryptowallet, but something much more glaringly obvious and big, big enough that if someone had, say, accidentally lost it in a landfill, it would be much easier to find. And, President Sutton's (Viola Davis, The Woman King) technologically capable and rebellious teenage daughter gets caught sneaking out of the White House, embarrassing her mother just before a big G20 Summit in South Africa. Kids, amiright?

The crux of this summit, for the US, is so Sutton can convince the rest of the 19 to adopt some sort of crypto based policy wherein countries without strong economies would have buying power independent of their wealth. Or something to that effect. I am not big on economics and less so on crypto, beyond believing its all a shell-game scam. The movie makes it both the Big Bad and the Big Saviour, which is kind of confusing for my lil ol brain.

So, the Bad Guys, led by Australian Special Forces soldier Edward Rutledge (Antony Starr, The Boys), infiltrate the summit's security team, kill off anyone who would oppose them, lock everyone in and begin their weird, nefarious scheme. Meanwhile Sutton, her Secret Service lead Agent, Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez, Will Trent), and a hand-full of other world leaders sneak away during the ensuing chaos. Sutton herself is an ex-soldier, so she tears her dress and changes into her sneakers to stay prepared. While they are doing their cat & mouse game, the aforementioned nefarious scheme gets underway -- get the world leaders to say some keywords which allows the Bad Guys to do some deepfake videos of them, broadcasting to the world how everyone at the summit was scheming to destabilize the rest of the world's economy for their own benefits. And its believed, so as the economies of various countries collapses, Rutledge's fancy crypto wallet.... increases in value? Like Die Hard they say they are there for one thing, but its all really only a way to make loads of cash.

There isn't much to say about the actual thriller-action part of the movie as its all pretty standard forgettable fare. And this is coming from a guy who enjoyed both of the "attack the White House" twin films, and their sequels. Basically she and her escapees run around this fortified hotel, while also trying to keep Sutton's family, who are doing their own survival-escape act, alive and somehow defeat the Bad Guys and save the rest of the summit attendees and foil the economy ruining plan. Sutton is more than capable of being the Bad Ass when the scenes needed it, and just seeing Viola Davis pull that off is a weird, fun energy unto itself. And the nefarious scheme? Once Rutledge is thrown off the top of Nakitomi Plaza, things just... heal themselves? For such a precise choice of nefarious schemes, the movie doesn't seem to care that half the big countries in the world had their economies ruined and their leaders deepfake trashed -- that kind of cat is not easily put back into a bag. But no matter, Bad Guys killed, world leaders freed, family saved. The End.

It wasn't entirely terrible and I recall, while watching, it had its moments (not a lot of these moments stuck), but it is not going to take its place on anyone's action-thriller shelf.  Still not sure what it was trying to say about crypto but it definitely thought that deepfake was very evil. Neither of those a "statement" do make.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Last Breath

2025, Alex Parkinson (a bunch of "documentary" style TV shows like River Monsters) -- download

Well that explains things, in that while watching the movie, it felt more like watching a dramatic version of a documentary, but with no commentary track. There was little to no characterization and the movie was swept along by the tides of the "action", and that action was barely a nod to traditional tense rescue thrillers. And yet I was carried along by what was going on, to the point of going, "Wow, that was 1.5 hours??"

The story is a real life one, where a "saturation diver" (they get stuck inside a compression tank which is saturated with gases, so they can deep dive for long periods of time) is lost due to a rough seas accident, and actually succumbs to lack of oxygen. But even after almost a half hour without air, he.... survived, with no ramifications. Parkinson previously did a documentary on the events, also called Last Breath, which lends some cause as to why it felt so... detailed and realistic. Anywayz, two deep divers, repairing oil pipes in the North Sea are separated during rough weather, and one, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole, Animal Kingdom) is lost when his power & air tether breaks away. The crew of the ship desperately tried to repair their issues, eventually allowing the remaining diver Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu, Kim's Convenience) to recover Chris, and was incredibly surprised when the man started breathing again.

The plot is small, the cast is small, the "action" is limited, and yet somehow, as already mentioned, I felt satisfied with the story telling. There is a great supporting cast all who seemed to be dedicated to giving a good performance without any of those big thriller moments. To me, it says something about Parkinson's directing in that we all, viewer and performers, felt present in the moments. We all have seen movies where it just felt like a camera pointed at someone reading lines. I hope to see him do some more dramatic pieces, though most audiences would not enjoy that this survivor thriller was low on the usual rollercoaster scale of thrills.

Alt-Media: Mickey7

2022, Edward Ashton -- audiobook

Lo and behold, I actually listened to a 9 hour audio book over the last few weeks, during commutes and while running errands. I have literally never listened to one before, not completely because of bias (admittedly, I do think proper "reading" and "listening" are two separate methods of absorbing the "written" word) but due an assumption of costs. Then I noticed that Spotify does more than audio-drama podcasts, and has a good number of books to listen to, I gave it a go. And, having enjoyed the movie and being curious about the original book, I thought, "Why not."

First thing up, and no it's not "the book is better" -- oh, it is, but the first thing I need to get off my chest is that the reader of an audiobook should not do the voices. For one, leave it to the reader to put his own voice on the characters speaking. And secondly, a man doing a "girl voice" just sounds terrible, unless you are going for comedic effect, and at worst it ends up telling us about your latent misogyny. If an author is not able to impart upon you an accent or vocal characterization from the actual words used, then a reader should assume everyone has the same flat accent.

Mickey 7 is not the movie, and nor should it have been -- sorry, that's an inverse statement; the movie was not the book. But, of course, it is the core from which the movie came. Mickey Barnes is an expendable, forced to join a colony ship after making the wrong bet on his best friend / greatest enemy's sports game. Berto is an athletic, capable, confident and extremely arrogant man who has Mickey always in his shadow. Berto comes out of sports retirement to play one last game before he joins the colony ship on its way to Niflheim. He wants to leave his name in legendary status on their colony of Midgard, but Mickey, who secretly despises his friend's good fortune, doesn't think Berto stands a chance at winning. He bets large. He loses, and the money he now owes means he only has one chance -- get off Midgard. Mickey knows there is no possibility of  finding a "real" job on the ship, because he doesn't really have any skills, so he signs up as Expendable, a crew member whose job it is to die on behalf of the colony. Each time he dies, he will be vat grown again, and his last memory backup downloaded into the new body. 

Its an expensive concept, and each new body requires a lot of resources. Its also a very very sociably unacceptable concept, and most people think the idea is insane. And there is a religious (not cult, accepted religion!) organization that is actually entirely against the idea. Its all because the creation of the technology started with a genius sociopath dropping himself, and his tech, on a planet where he began to kill off the local populace, to provide raw source material for duplicates of himself. When the rest of the colonial Union learned of what had happened, they responded by destroying the planet and banning the process except in the most controlled environments.

The crux of the rules is that "multiples" cannot exist -- only one iteration of a person at a time. They only create a new Mickey if the old one dies. But Berto is lazy and risk averse, so when he sees Mickey stumble into a deep crevasse on Niflheim, he assumes the man must be dead. Mickey's girlfriend Nasha knows he survives the fall, but Mickey assures her he cannot get out of the hole, so he will "pop his seals" and die. Except he doesn't. He is "rescued" by the local lifeform called "creepers", giant millipede like bugs. Well, until this one rescues Mickey, they were all assumed to be arm length and non-intelligent. Buuuut because that leaves "Mickey 7" alive when he shouldn't be, Mickey doesn't disclose this detail about the creepers until much later.

Much of the middle act of the book, if you can liken books to having acts, is Mickey7 and Mickey8 dealing with their situation. Unlike the movie, there is not a vast personality difference, but both of the men believe they deserve to exist and they know they have to hide their existence. There is a lot of focus on how hungry they both end up being, because food is rationed and the colony leader Commander Marshall, who is not the pompous ex-politician of the movie, just your usual gruff, angry military style man who is a member of the anti-Expendable religion, but also knows he requires one on the mission, has it in for Mickey and doesn't need much of an excuse to punish the man.

There is also a lot of world building / exposition, as Mickey fills in the details around colonization since "the Diaspora" had to abandon Earth. Most colonies fail. And all colonies are very very VERY far from each other; even with their close to unlimited engine reserves and extreme speed of space travel, it takes years, if not decades to reach other possibly habitable worlds. "Possibly" is a key point, as they only have the long range sensor data, and that doesn't always mean much. Many colonies arrive only to die off or be killed off by local life forms or the environment. Some die on the way or are lost. Colonization seemingly means death, but they keep on doing it. The book does not comment on the why.

The book does eventually reveal both Mickeys and the existence of the creepers being more than bugs, but it doesn't delve into them much. Mickey7 knows they are sentient, and when Marshall sends him/them out to destroy them he turns the tables. Not in any grand gesture like the movie, but simply telling him that Mickey8's bomb is in their possession and now the two sentient species on the planet have a stand-off relationship. Oh, and its the creepers who figure out the communication / translation bit, not Marshall's technologists. 

Overall, for my first audiobook, I enjoyed myself. I feel the experience is parallel to (proper) reading, and I doubt I will ever be able to pull the two closer together as the "same" experience. It took years for my brain to eliminate the bias between digital books and physical books, even though I embraced the simplicity and convenience of digital books, I just absolutely love the tangible nature of a nice hardcover. For me, the audiobook pulls me further from the author's words because it has someone else's voice attached dominantly to it. That makes it an entirely different experience, more akin to adaptations than the source. But time will tell whether my brain will also rewire for this.

Of note, I am using Spotify, and only fond out during my second audiobook that while the subscription provides the audiobooks for "free" its limited to 15 hours a billing period. Most audiobooks start at 10 hours. Yeah, fuck you spotify.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Working Man

2025, David Ayer (The Beekeeper) -- download

I normally enter something into the post stub as I create it, because the gawds know my brain will soon dribble out any memory of a middling movie very quickly. And it has; its going to take some effort and some reading of other reviews to remember what I saw here.

That's not a good thing, no? At least movies that annoy you are memorable in that way.

I am not going to repeat my "oh yeah, I actually like David Ayer" but I will say I am surprised that he didn't end up doing a sequel to The Beekeeper, a movie that was entirely a setup for a franchise, but did end up following it with another rote Statham actioner. It's based on a novel by comic book writer Chuck Dixon, and done as a co-writing effort between Ayer and Sylvester Stallone. I have no comment on that collaboration beyond, "...huh." The Dixon novels are those pulp paperback "adventure" type novels (though calling them that is a reach) that someone's uncle would read, folding the covers back, tucking them into the glovebox of their pickup truck. They are short, unfettered, violent books about men being (stereotypically macho) men, meting out justice as it is needed. I would liken them to modern westerns. I am not adverse to the idea of them, in principal, but they all too often come with toxic masculinity and toxic politics in tow.

Of note, Dixon also slid from manly-man comic fiction into trollish alt-right rhetoric, which while the mindset lends itself to violent men fiction, it probably means I won't ponder reading these works.

The movie starts with unspoken exposition over the credits, explaining that our lead character was in the military, first the British and then collaborative actions with the US -- a specialist involved in counter-terrorism. And he has retired to the construction business, where he works with Joe Garcia and his family as a foreman. He is Levon Cade, a Good Man, a restrained man of violence as shown by an opening sequence where he deals with loan sharks hassling one of his crew. He is also struggling to have a relationship with his daughter because her grandfather, and legal guardian, blames Cade for the suicide death of his daughter. But the Garcias love Cade and he them.

Then Jenny Garcia, the smart, sassy teen daughter who helps her father run the company, goes out with her friends, fake IDs in hand, and gets kidnapped. Cade, with his particular set of skills, is asked by Joe to get her back. At first he says No, not wanting to return to a life of violence, but his best bud, the  blind gunnery sergeant hiding in the woods, convinces him that only Cade can do what is needed for the Garcia family.

Speeding things up -- its the Russian Mafia. More precisely, one of its high ranking members has a douche bag of a son who traffics girls to... elite clientele. Jenny was just in the wrong club on the wrong night. 

I have to think about why I like to start with detailed setups and then trail into... summaries and commentary. Maybe its because I like the potential of setups but the rest often becomes kill rinse repeat.

Like any of these movies, there is a certain thrill seeing a capable violent man deal with the Bad Guys. As we are still chasing after the next John Wick, there are going to be a lot of these middling movies, and many many more of the Straight To ones, the trash on the bottom shelf of the video store. Ayer tried to do something with style, but the style was ... odd. The Russian Bad Guys were outrageous and flashy, something that worked in The Tax Collector but here, seem clownish. There is a character in the background of The Fifth Element named Baby Ray, looking like he just stepped out of French Revolution movie. Add a bit more club-vibe to that and you get the douche-bag Russian mobster's look n feel, and that of his sycophants. 

When they get as far as actually rescuing Jenny, in a bizarre abandoned country mansion that the douche-bag Russian uses for his uber-illegal parties (no level of debauchery is denied), things become almost surreal. The house is in ruins for the most part, but parts of the interior are incredibly decked out in almost goth design choices. And there are trees on its lawn that can only be described as the real life sized  versions of the ones in front of the haunted house on a model train set -- think Beetlejuice. Why? Style? Effect? Its just so distantly peripheral to what is happening on screen, it makes no sense.  But the bigger point is that Jenny is strong and willful and capable, having already freed herself (but recaptured) once, and you get the idea there was an entire act where Cade and her work together to... do something to the Russian mobsters. But no, once they are away, the last of the Russian mobsters aware of Cade is told by his bosses that its done, its over, its been too expensive already. Any repercussions can be left for the sequel which will never happen -- again, this is most definitely not the next John Wick.

KWIF: Thunderbolts* (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Some weeks are more fruitful than others. Some weeks are just a full kick in the fruits.

This Week:
Thunderbolts* (2025, d. Jake Schrier - in theatre)
Superman: The Movie (1978, d. Richard Donner - DVD)

---

We're all aware (every single last damn one of us) that the Marvel Studios' output post Avengers:Endgame has not felt nearly as exciting as the 10 years that led into it. It was a pretty monumental achievement up to that point, building up a shared universe and a roster of beloved characters leading into an epic two-part event that gave a pretty satisfying sense of closure to the whole thing, even as it teased that it would be carrying on.  In their hubris, the studio thought they could just do it all again, build up a new roster of favourite heroes and build towards something epic once again. But they weren't banking on a few things... the pandemic, the streaming wars, and superhero fatigue (as well as a certain someone being arrested for assaulting his girlfriend) all collided, contributing to softened (or obliterated ) box office attendance.

"Phase 4" of Marvel was overconfident in its plans and the audience's appetite for them. Seven films, eight Disney+ series, and two specials felt like a bombardment even to the avid fan, and to some, it seemed too much like homework, despite maintaining a generally high-level of quality. "Phase 5" has been Marvel's wobbliest because of late stage course corrections and casting shake-ups, but also because it's stories been so utterly reliant on what has come before.

Quantumania required you to have watched prior Ant-Man movies as well as Loki season one. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 was the third in a trilogy but also needed you to recall the events of Infinity War. The Marvels had the Captain Marvel movie as well as the Ms. Marvel, and Wandavision streaming series all as pre-requisites. Deadpool and Wolverine  assumed you were familiar with the majority of the Marvel output from Fox. The latest Captain America sequel asked its audience to recollect the events of the much ignored 2008 Incredible Hulk film as well as the Disney+ Falcon and the Winter Soldier show. Marvel effectively leaned in to whisper in its audience ear and dare them to keep up, not realizing that they seemed to be turning people off as much as they were turning them on.

Thunderbolts* is not immune. It stars characters previously introduced in Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the difference is it doesn't fully rely upon you having seen those pictures to understand the characters... well, most of them.  

At the center of the picture is Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). What you need to know about her is her sister died, and she's been depressed. She feels aimless and disengaged from the world, and is looking for meaning and connection. She reaches out to her estranged father Alexei Shostakov "The Red Guardian" (David Harbour), whose pep talks leave something to be desired. She's working black ops cleanup for a horrible woman,  Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the CIA Director who facing a senate impeachment trial (revolving around the illegal activities she has Yelena cleaning up). Yelena wants a change.

On her next assignment, Yelena is sent to take out a rogue operative, "The Ghost" Ava Starr (Hannah John Kamen), only to face off against one-time Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) who is there to kill her, and then the Taskmaster shows up to kill John while The Ghost is there to eliminate Taskmaster. As they melee they begin to realize they've been played and find themselves in Valentina's deathtrap, and must rely upon each other to escape...along with test subject Bob (Lewis Pullman) who is awakened from his containment chamber.

Rescued from their predicament by Sergei and Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) they form an unlikely alliance to take down Valentina, only to find out that the experiment done on Bob has turned him into an unbeatable "super-man", who Valentina wants to use as the ultimate weapon for ultimate control, only Bob has a darker side that comes out and it could threaten everything.

Yelena's not the only one unsatisfied with her life. The film nimbly uses Bob's psychic abilities and his darker half to provide insight into some of the other characters' dark states.  Bob's history as well is one of trauma, substance abuse and bipolar disorder. 

I was not expecting a Marvel film to center so specifically around depression like the Thunderbolts* does, addressing it from the first impactful moment. It's a story about a group of people looking for a way out of the darkness and looking for purpose and finding at least something to grab onto, which is, in part, each other.

This is Yelena's movie.  Even though it is a ensemble picture, Florence Pugh is clearly the star. Marvel chose wisely in putting her front-and-center. Pugh is one of the best actors under 30 working today. She is one of the most emotive people on screen, her expressive face can convey joy, pathos, fear, whatever better than almost any other performer. She's an absolute powerhouse in a tiny body.  I believe a Marvel movie has only ever once brought me to tears (Peter's dusting in Infinity War) but I teared up three times in Thunderbolts*, all of them triggered by Pugh's performance.

Harbour is big and brash and loud comic relief as the over-eager, self-aggrandizing Red Guardian, which can be a lot but thankfully is in mostly the right dosage in this ensemble. Louis-Dreyfus delivers both a funny and boo-hiss worthy performance, while Stan provides the stabilizing backing board to the whole piece, making it feel very integrated with the MCU just from his presence. Russell's John Walker was a pretty difficult pill to swallow in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but here navigates between light and dark much more nimbly, and showing real big screen presence without stepping outside of the character.  Hannah John Kamen's Ghost is perhaps the most underserved character in the film (next to Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster) but her presence in the ensemble is welcome.  Louis Pullman's Bob has probably the most difficult job, being the only first appearance character of the bunch, and he navigate Bob's multiple personality disorder tremendously well...from his nearly hapless civilian to the above-it-all Sentry to the scary-as-hell Void.  Seriously, the Void is probably the scariest villain Marvel has introduced yet.

There is a climactic sequence in the third act in which Yelena, Bob and the team have to confront a manifestation of trauma, and if the film let me down at all it was in not exploring the traumas of every Thunderbolt in the film... I don't think it would have eaten up much time but it certainly would have provided more insight into the secondary and tertiary characters.

Thunderbolts* has been well received because it's a Marvel movie that puts its characters at the centre and lets the situation build around them, rather than building a team only to have them stop a tangential enemy. It's confidently scripted to be self-contained and not aggressively easter-egging the audience or distracting them with set up that's going to pay off in some other film some other time.  Yes, there is a post-credits sequence teasing something more, but it does so in a way that deftly extends the film at hand and doesn't feel like a random aside. 

---

Richard Donner's 1978 production of Superman is a minor miracle in its own right. So many things could have gone wrong (and many things did go wrong) but a lot of things went very very right, starting with the casting of Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman. Reeve's very gifted physical performance distinguishing Clark from Superman is the best special effects in a film full of them. Reeve gives Clark a clumsiness that just borders on slapstick without teetering over into it. His tall, broad-shouldered, beefed-up frame, in Clark's drab suit, oversized glasses and greasy combover turn a beautiful specimen of a man into a slouching, slumping, oafish character that not only do you not want to make eye contact with, but you wish to actively forget about him.

Thus stems the conflict of Clark's love triangle with Lois and his superheroic alter-ego... he's too good at making himself invisible, whereas Superman's putting it all out there and Lois is completely ready and willing to take it all in. Superman's penthouse apartment rendezvous with Lois, leading to a heavily flirtatious interview, is the best scene in this movie, and it establishes a real connection between the two characters. Unfortunately the film does not pay off this connection, and actively separates the two characters for most of the third act.  It should also be noted that the two only meet in the second act of the film, as the first act is split in two parts, one on Krypton and one in Smallville, both dealing more with Kal-El/Clark/Superman's parents than with the character himself.

The first 40 minutes of this quite bloated movie is spent on establishing Superman's backstory, his lore, and it's all quite decently told (I like the Krypton piece quite a bit, Marlon Brando's Jor-El is a commanding screen presence, even if the actor was kind of checked out and reading his lines off screen). The second act establishing Metropolis, the Daily Planet, Superman's supporting characters and his nemesis Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is the meat of the movie.

It all slumps pretty direly in the third act as it sets off on the journey of enacting Luthor's land-grab plot, which involves a complex scheme to trigger the collapse of the San Andreas Fault. Surely in hatching his scheme a do-gooder such as Superman would get in the way, so Lex figures out how to stop him and hatches another elaborate scheme to eliminate his problem, with Kryptonite.

The third act is all shenanigans, as Luthor executes his schemes, and the result is Clark disappears, Lois is off on her own, and everything is set outside of Metropolis. It culminates in Superman saving the day, of course, but Lois is killed in the process...so Superman flies as fast as he can reversing the rotation of the Earth which turns back time so he can save Lois. No, I'm not sure how it works either.

Despite being a Superman fan as long as I can remember, I've not only never loved this movie but I've never even really liked it. The opening segments on Krypton and in Smallville could be truncated or even eliminated altogether. The film only really feels like it starts when Clark enters the Daily Planet building, and then screeches pretty much to a dead halt once it tries to establish a plot.  

I hate the spoken word poem Lois recites when she is flying with Superman, I don't much like Luthor's bumbling henchman Otis (Ned Beatty) and the logic of this film's turning back time has always drove me crazy.

There are parts of Superman: The Movie I like, but generally I find it pretty tedious and it's never been what I've been looking for in a Superman movie. I've yet to get a Superman movie that delivers what I want out of a Superman movie, which is for it to feel like a good story from the comics. It seems like directors and the studio are always too afraid to do that.