KWIF(tanct)=Kent's Week in Film (that are not Christmas themed).
This Week:
Frankenstein (2025, d. Guillermo del Toro - netflix)
Good Fortune (2025, d. Aziz Ansari - rental)
One Of Them Days (2025, d. Lawrence Lamont - crave)
The Peanut Butter Solution (1985, d.Michael Rubbo - blu-ray)
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Frankenstein is a slap in the face, a wake up call from the drudgery of holiday movie consumption (much in the way that Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was this time last year). There is a scene early on in Frankenstein that lasts maybe 90 seconds, wherein Christoph Waltz's Heinrich Harlander approaches Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein at his home and appeals to him to allow him to be his benefactor in his research of resurrecting dead flesh. In this scene we see Frankenstein's apartment, rich with equipment and drawings and shelves and stacks of books and furniture that is well worn but also well crafted. It tells us of a man who comes from means but the means are wanting, but it also tells us of the erudite nature of the man, as well as his lack of care. The set is mind-blowing, impossible to take it all in within the short span of time it is on screen, but it's so evident that every damn detail has been thought through.
When you've gotten used to set decorated with all the care of Christmas vomiting on the walls and windows and everywhere else, this kind of thing is mind blowing. And pretty much every scene, every setting in this film is riddled with such consideration and exacting, precise detail. The assembly montage of Frankenstein's lab in a castle in the Scottish Highlands is riveting because of design and attention to nuance.
del Toro has always had this desire to enrich his worlds like he does here in Frankenstein, and generally accomplishes it but on a more restricted budget. This feels like del Toro let loose, all his pent-up creative energy exploding out of him, like a supernova. It's a brilliant flash to observe, but eventually it ends.
I will admit, I do not know Mary Shelly's story "The Modern Prometheus" very well (nor the story of Prometheus, frankly), so it's hard for me to say where del Toro's adaptation deviates.
Here it is structure with a framing sequence set in the arctic in the late 1800s as a ship of Danes (? It's captain is played by Lars Mikkelson) is trapped in the ice on their voyage to discover the North Pole. They spy an explosion in the distance and race to find a man on the ice, brutalized, and a monster of a man demanding his return.
One action sequences later, the men on the boat have a reprieve as the monster has apparently drowned. The rescued man is Victor, and he tells the captain his tale of hubris and ego, starting with his overbearing, coldly distant father, and how the death of his mother in childbirth had driven him to see a cure to mortality. The tale weaves through Frankenstein's early research and experimentation and and his relationships with Harlander and Harlander's neice Lady Elizabeth (Mia Goth) who is to wed Victor's younger brother William. The creation of his creature (Jacob Elordi in an exceptional physical performance) was supposed to be his triumph, but the creature's rebirth only led to disappointment. Victor is his father's son, and the creature is treated as such. All Victor sees is his failure in science, not a being in need of care and guidance. He sees a monster, a reflection of his overconfidence and desire to explore the unknown, and he decides to end it.
The creature interrupts Victor's story and begins to relay his own tale, the tale of what happened after Victor destroyed his lab and the castle with it, failing to eradicate the creature, instead leaving it to survive on its own it the wild. There it is just another animal moving through the trees, a target for the gun of hunters and men fearful of the unknown. The creature takes hostel in the barn of a family home, but remains hidden. He learns, as does his landlord's child, from the kindly, blind grandfather. When the family leave the old man on his own, the creature presents himself to the blind man and finds the friend, teacher, mentor and father figure Victor should have been.
Frankenstein is a tragedy, and in this telling, it's the tragedy of the perpetuating cycles of fathers and sons...mostly. The shame of del Toro's adaptation is his inability to fully escape the source material and fully embrace a specific narrative theme. As such, aspects of the tale seem extraneous or unnecessary or outside of the narrative context. The first half of the film- Victor's tale- is gorgeous, loaded with the richness of manufactured details, while the second is much more spare, using the natural landscape as much of its backdrop, showing the creature connecting with wildlife in a much more spiritual, grounded way. These are intentional decision, but the intensity of the eye-popping set and costume design becomes sorely missed in the creature's tale and has the unintentional effect of making it feel lesser than, even though it's not, really. Victor's tale provides the blood, but the creature's tale is the heart that pumps it.
Like Toasty, I was enraptured throughout the entire film. My cinematic taste buds were delighted by this well-crafted, robustly flavoured meal that's perhaps a little too familiar while also being a bold and challenging take in a comforting way. It's not perfection, by any means, but it's a film del Toro has been wanting to make for decades and in finally making it you can see all that refined artistry he's honed in the years since in this presentation, as well as feel his passion for the material. There is a sense of love and passion underpinning this Frankenstein I'm not sure I've seen in any other adaptation or iteration.
The only thing about doing an adaptation like this, or Dracula/Nosferatu or any other familiar tale (Shakespeare or Arthurian mythology) is there will never be a definitive version. There will always be another coming along with yet another take (Luc Besson's Dracula is impending as is Maggie Gyllenhaal's Bride of Frankenstein riff The Bride). So enjoy the meal, savour it, but you'll eventually need to eat again, each subsequent meal diluting the exceptional experience. You can always go back and have that fine dining experience again, but is it ever quite as good as the first time?
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The 1980s were rife with films like Good Fortune, comedies with fantastical elements but also a bit of social commentary. They ebbed in the 1990s and have all but faded away since. I was excited for this new foray into an old-style comedy, but life got in the way of getting to it in theatre.
The film starts with Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a low-status Los Angeles-centric angel with small wings whose sole responsibility is to stop people who are texting and driving from getting into accidents. Gabriel has dreams of bigger things (bigger wings), of really making a difference, of It's A Wonderful Life-ing someone.
He saves Arj (Aziz Ansari) from a texting and driving accident, and takes a particular interest in him. He watches Arj's life as an underemployed documentary editor who's barely scraping by in the gig economy doing food delivery, small tasks and working pickup shifts at a hardware chain. Arj sleeps in his car and can't seem to get out of the cycle he's in. After working a garage clean up gig for venture capitalist Jeff (Seth Rogen), he winds up being Jeff's assistant, and going on a date with Elena from the hardware store. But a small moment of desperation leads to Jeff firing him. Despair has crept in, and Gabriel presents himself to Arj in hopes of turning his spirits around, of making a difference.
It seems Gabriel understanding of how to change someone's outlook on life is based on oversimplified tales from movies. He thinks that if he switches Arj's life with Jeff's that he can show Arj that money won't change what's really important. Except it does, and Arj doesn't want to let go of the new life-without-struggles that he has. Gabriel accidentally raises Jeff's awareness to the switch, and suddenly Arj feels the pressure and guilt of taking someone else's life, so he asks for a week to enjoy it, and Jeff think's he can do fine with struggling like he has never had to in his life...for one week.
But Gabriel's actions are off book, and his superior, Martha (Sandra Oh) suspends him, taking his wings and making him mortal. Jeff's only means of regaining his heavenly status is to get Arj to actually desire return to his old life. In the meantime, both Jeff and Gabriel are forced to live a different class of existence than what they're used to.
Given the times we are in, I get it if some people don't find Good Fortune incisive enough or anti-capitalist enough or vicious enough, but I think the broader strokes are there if not always the finer ones (this is after all a film made by and starring millionaires, so there is bound to be some disconnect) and, for the intention - that of making a fantastical comedy - it largely succeeds.
Few comedians succeed without struggling first, without having to pay their dues getting crap gigs for a meagre payout that barely floats them to the next one. Despite his early success at a younger age, Ansari still had to do this too. Ansari's stage persona has always had an affable nature that remained even as he grew in comedic stature, and his comedy has often had a streak of both starfucking and self-awareness, which makes him well suited to the role he cast himself in, as a guy with struggles who suddenly finds himself rich. Arj's journey doesn't fully seem personal, but it does feel like a man trying to speak to something... and that something is class divides which may be something he's really struggling with (it's not fully evident in Arj's character, but is more evident in Rogen's Jeff).
Reeves is a twitchy delight in this playing a bit of a dimwit angel, and it's such a perfect lane for him. The same awkward wooden boy qualities that make him a pretty terrible dramatic actor work so well for him as a comedic one when the role is shaped for him, and Ansari uses him perfectly.
It's almost hard to remember when Rogen was just the stoner with the funny laugh, he's become such a titan of the industry at this point (I've lost track of how many movies and TV shows he's appeared in this year, not to mention how many he's directed and/or produced), but again, that side of him, that "him?" question that seems to come up needing him to prove himself in pretty much every role, makes him pretty much perfect to play a riches-to-rags story believably.
And, I mean, how does one not just get swoony over Kiki Palmer every time she's on screen. She's not used to her maximum potential here, not by a longshot (we'll get to that shortly), but when it comes to dream girl love interest casting it's seems obvious.
Ansari had a bold shift from stand-up and sitcom star to a heralded figure in the Golden Age of Television with Master of None. His arty shifts into pseudo-French new wave and other subgenre exercises throughout the series were certainly showing a creative taking advantage of his opportunities and taking risks. I'm not sure there's a lot of that visual acuity here, though the references to Wim Wenders Wings of Desire were certainly not lost on me.
This isn't a rebel yell, this isn't a riot starter, it isn't a call to action... it's entertainment (I don't think we should be really looking to one percenters to start these movements). It's not trivial entertainment, but it's also not tossing bricks either. It's a witty protest sign at a rally, and that's okay. It's just nice to see a film like this again.
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Kiki Palmer is in full command of the screen for the bulk of this film, grabbing you by the hair and dragging you along for her ride. The preternaturally charming, funny and endearing Palmer plays Dreux, an L.A. waitress struggling to make ends meet. She's just finished her early shift at the franchise diner and just wants to get some rest before her big interview at 4pm to hopefully become a franchise manager at her restaurant. She has the experience, the knowledge and the attitude needed, maybe just not the confidence.
Her best friend and roommate Alyssa (SZA) is her support, her crutch holding her up and pushing her forward. Alyssa is a bit of a free spirit with no committed profession, except being an artist but undervaluing her work. Alyssa also has a dirtbag boyfriend Keshawn who has been crashing rent free for months, but Alyssa is kind of powerless to resist him for...ahem...reasons. Dreux's rest is interrupted when her landlord informs her he never received the rent, and that she'll be out on the street by 6pm if he doesn't get it. Dreux gave it to Alyssa who gave it to Keshawn who suddenly disappeared (with all his sneakers).
And so the countdown is on. Dreux and Alyssa need to find Keshawn, and survive a crazy obstacle course of an afternoon in order to avoid being put out on the street. It seems at once both a trivial and Herculean task, but the tremendously sharp and witty script by Syreeta Singleton sets up the obstacles and set pieces and players all like dominoes and Keshawn's darting out the apartment is the first one to fall.
To talk about the events of the film is to spoil the process of discovery, but it's an effective script in highlighting just how the capitalistic systems set up in America are precisely there to keep the disadvantaged at a disadvantage and how these systems pits community against itself as people tried to crawl over each other to get whatever leg up they can get... all without ever being preachy about it. Even when it's shouted out by Katt Williams' Shameeka, a local character hanging outside of the payday loan place warning people about the evil and deceit inside, it's a comedic tour de force more than hitting you over the head with a message.
One Of Them Days is a superb example of the "one crazy day/night" movie, showing that strong characters with a specific point of view can take a well-worn genre and breathe new life into it. Palmer connects with everyone she meets on screen, even when it gets awkward, there's real chemistry there. She makes everything work to the point that it's hard to think of a single scene that doesn't. While this is Palmer's star vehicle, for sure (and she shines so vibrantly), this is SZA's coming out party as an actress and she makes it seem effortless. Palmer has chemistry with everyone, sure, but you need to believe that her and SZA have been best friends forever, and they sell it almost immediately and that sense of connection never wavers (their friendship is also the backbone of this film, so it needed to be rock solid, and it's diamond-strong).
Watching two people in such a desperate situation shouldn't be this much fun, but it is.
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As children, we often are attracted to what scares us, and that's kind of the crux of The Peanut Butter Solution. Just as I was drawn to watching this creepy, weird movie over and over again as a child, Michael (Matthew Mackay) is drawn to the smoldering remains of a burned down Montreal abandoned house where unhoused people used to hole up and may have died in the fire. Micheal and his best friend Connie (the delightful Siluck Saysanasy) go to investigate the house and in the process Michael sees something that scares him unconscious. Connie drags him home in a shopping cart. The next morning when Michael wakes up, his hair has fallen out as a result of the trauma of the scare, but he can't remember what scared him.
But having no hair is just as traumatic as the scare was, and he refuses to go to school. After his dad and sister acquire a wig for him, he tries it out and for a few days feels normal, until a soccer bully yanks it off his head (the shot of the glue going all stringy always upset me and grossed me out when I was little), and all the school kids chase him home, teasing him (where were the soccer coaches/ref/any adult at all?). The traumas never stop with this kid.
He's visited at night by the ghosts of the two unhoused individuals who died in the fire. Michael had paid a kindness to them once, and so they were paying him back, giving him the formulae for a hair-growth solution. Michael fudges the mixture with too much peanut butter and suddenly not only is his hair back but it's growing by meters throughout the day Connie sits behind him in class constantly trimming but it's so distracting Michael gets expelled. The next day, his hair dragging on the ground, he packs off and heads out to school in a wind storm screaming about how he just wants to learn and be normal. Its when he hides and tries to shelter from the wind storm that he's found by The Signor (Michel Maillot), his peculiar art teacher who got fired for being too severe.
The Signor kidnaps Michael, and then a dozen other kids. He sets up a sweatshop where Michael is chemically sedated with special yogurt and the other kids take trimmings of his hair and make magical paint brushes. When the Signor paints with them he creates paintings so realistic you can literally walk into them.
I don't know how long the Signor thought he could keep this whole operation going for it, but a couple of pre-teens (Connie and Michael's sister) sniff him out and bust his creepy operation.
I'm not sure how many of the "Tales for All" were shot in English, but I'm guessing there will be more in the series down the line and that Demers wasn't devoted to solely making French Canadian products. I don't mind the English production, and for the most part the child actors here are pretty good (Alison Podbrey as Suzie, Michael's sister is exceptional) but the little bit of distance that translated subtitles provides tends to smooth over any shakiness.
This movie is such wonderful nonsense, the dream logic of it all is what makes it so magical, and so unsettling. Any story that deals with mass kidnapping is inherently upsetting, but this is a film that dives in the deep end of the trauma pool and can't figure out how to get out. The film begins with Michael missing his mother who has gone to Australia to deal with her recently deceased father's estate. Just being of an age and needing one's parent (when his dad, played by Michael Hogan despite being full of love isn't up to the job of comforting him) and not having it is its own trauma.
The story does give Michael resolution to two of his many, many traumas, but they are most assuredly going to haunt him for some time. I would love a Doctor Sleep-like follow-up to this.
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