KWIF: Obsession (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. This week's batch of films is actually last week's batch of films. At least two days of this week were spent laid up on the couch with post-Gamma Knife-related side effects (migraines, earaches, discombobulation and fatigue). They've largely tapered off, but my ability to focus has still slipped, so I need to practice getting back at this review blog writing thing. This week's theme...toxic relationships apparently.

This Week:
Obsession (2026, d. Curry Barker - in theatre)
Over Your Dead Body (2026, d. Jorma Taccone - amazonprime)
Dead Again (1991, d. Kenneth Branagh - netflix)
Roommates (2026, d. Chandler Levack)

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When films are unexpectedly successful well beyond any executive or critical projections, it's usually because they're meeting a moment in the culture. They are films for their times. This is even more true of horror films, where often the film is a metaphor or moral fable disguised under more visceral gore and/or frights. Curry Barker's theatrical debut, Obsession, has now grossed over 200 million dollars domestically, and 300 million worldwide (and was made for a paltry 750,000) with no franchise or name recognition behind it, and it's done so by meeting a moment.

If you, like most people, are inundated with headlines every time you open your browser or social media, you've heard about the loneliness epidemic, or that young men are in crisis, or that young women would rather just not date these days.  Perhaps you've heard of the manosphere, or trad wives, or the various right wing movements trying (and succeeding far too much) in stripping away the rights of women, and trying to resurrect old ideas of gender roles where women are dutiful and subservient to men.  Obsessession is borne out of these trappings without explicitly addressing any of them head-on.

Bear (Michael Johnson) is not shown as being a message-board obsessed incel, but he is hopelessly pining over his friend and coworker Nikki (Inde Navarette). They are pals, doing trivia night after work, and going to parties, but Bear wants it to be more than what it is. Desperately. But he's too shy to make a move. Even when Nikki confronts him as he drops her off at her place, asking him bluntly if he likes her, he still can't admit it.

The thing men -- especially young men -- fear the most, is being emotionally vulnerable. There's the old Seinfeld joke about people being more scared of giving the eulogy than being in the casket, but I think men are more scared of admitting their romantic feelings to someone than they are of public speaking or dying. Cowards. We're pretty much all cowards. (More times than I can recall [mainly because I'm old and don't recollect well anymore], I have been told by someone they were interested in me, and I cannot recall there ever being a situation where, over the many crushes I've had in my life, having actually admitted that to said crush without them first having opened up to me. Not even to my wife [though she said it was pretty obvious, but that's besides the point]. That's pretty shameful, if I'm being honest. Shameful, and embarassing to realize that I was basically a romantic coward, afraid of opening up and afraid I couldn't handle the rejection.)

So, sitting in his car in shame over the missed opportunity, Bear tears open the novelty gift he bought for Nikki, the "One Wish Willow", a small twig that the colourful packaging says will grant the bearer one wish after snapping it. And so he wishes Nikki would love him more than anyone. *Snap* Seconds later she's tapping at his window and coming onto him. He can't believe it, but he's going to take it. Cue the montage to perky music of their new, happy life together... although moments within the sequence show Nikki helplessly unable to resist just staring at Josh.

In perhaps Barker's best directorial moment, Bear's buddy (and coworker at Andy Richter's music shop) Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) pulls Bear aside and just has to ask...how? How is this happening? How did this happen? He knows that Nikki told their friend Sarah that she only liked Bear as a friend just days before they started going out. Bear, you can tell, has a modicum of guilt, genuinely suspecting that the One Wish Willow was legit, but at the same time still can't get over his biggest want having come true. The whole time this conversation is going on, Nikki is in the background, quite out of focus, just staring at Bear, an intense, haunting, almost spectral presence.

Nikki's obsession with Bear, continues to ratchet up, getting more and more overbearing (no pun intended...or maybe it is?) and Bear's happiness starts to dwindle under Nikki's oppressive, destructive and harmful behaviour.

If we were to step back, maybe not even 10 years ago, this would be the story of a toxic relationship, about women who control their men through emotional manipulation and illnesses (feigned or real). The hallmarks of emotional abuse are there -- violent outbursts followed by extreme moments of contrition and tenderness and sexual advances. I've definitely heard about such stories, and to a lesser degree, been there myself. Yet, despite Bear being our point-of-view character, he's not the protagonist. He's the antagonist. Nikki is the victim of this story, having been stripped of her agency, and everything her body is doing is beyond her control, serving only Bear's whims with nearly no ability to advocate for herself.

In the film's funniest scene Bear calls the service line for the One Wish Willow, only for an apathetic voice on the other end to tell him the only way to reverse the wish is for someone else to wish it so...that, or Bear dies.  And in the most haunting scenes of the film, more than once, Bear hears Nikki's real voice while the "other her" is asleep, or distracted, and he knows, he's fully aware that the Nikki who is his girlfriend is not really the woman he though he was in love with. And yet, to even attempt to undo his wish, to free this woman he said he loves, takes him weeks to come to that decision, and begrudgingly so. Only when it's at its most extreme does he even truly try.

He may not be a Jordan Peterson-watching douche, but under the nice guy persona still lies a man who thinks that, maybe, it's best if a woman is his possession.

Barker's film is not scary so much as upsetting and disturbing. Barker's "monkey's paw" tale is not in any way original (I believe I saw a Twilight Zone episode recently with much the same plot), and Barker's direction is solid even if lacking much standout style. But it's the way in which the story is told, where the camera's sympathies lay that makes this different, and that is what meets this moment. This is Nikki's tale, moreso than Bear's, and Navarette is an immediate superstar in the role, having to switch moods at the snap of a finger, and go from extreme perkiness to extreme rage while still retaining that sense of helplessness in her eyes. It's an astonishing performance, frankly.

Much like when Zach Cregger's Barbarian became a phenomenon (though still paling in comparison to what this film has earned), all eyes will be on what Barker does next. Is he a one-hit wonder, or does he have the juice to make more films that audiences and critics will respond to. The insane success of this film almost suggests that whatever he does will have a lot of expectations and pressures put upon it, hopefully he can meet the moment with his sanity intact. 

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Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip, Over Your Dead Body is a nasty dark comedy about a married couple who have such severe communication issues that they'd rather just plan each other's murder than talk it through.

Unlike Obsession, there's no moral fable here, it's really a War of the Roses(/The Ref)-type story where the unhappy couple in question need to find themselves in the most extreme circumstances in order to open up and connect with each other again.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a failed film director stuck working in commercials. Lisa (Samara Weaving) is a wanna-be actress who has been unemployed for too long for Dan's liking (and is possibly cheating on Dan with her scene partner in acting class). They take a heated road trip out to Dan's father's lakeside cottage "upstate" (this was shot in Finland, and I had an impossible time ignoring that fact...the setting here doesn't look like anywhere in North America I've seen), where they've planned for each other's murder (having ham-handedly established with colleagues and neighbours the possibility of hiking or hunting excursions going wrong over this weekend).

While they had prepped for murdering each other, which is a pretty raw taste to accept as comedy, it is humorous the reactions they both have once they discover the other's plans. There is some comedic mileage to be had in the scenario.

What they hadn't planned on was a pair of escaped murderers Pete and Todd (Timothy Olyphant and Keith Jardine) and the prison guard, Allegra (Juliette Lewis) who helped them get free (according to Allegra, her and Pete are in love... Pete's less convinced). And so it becomes a fight for survival for Dan and Lisa against hardened criminals, and their only path forward is together.

This is not a gentle movie. The violence hits hard, real hard. It's not cartoonish, it's traumatic. This isn't Looney Tunes comedy, it's serious damage, bruising, cuts and far, far worse all shown in pretty graphic detail. It's far too extreme, and far too nasty to be funny, so it's all the more impressive when the funny can creep through it all.

Segel has become a master at emotive comedy, his malleable face can represent such despair, depression, resolve, joy, whatever the case may be, while his eyes can convey something completely different. He makes Dan into an impotent man who can't seem to stand up for himself or follow-through on his decisions, but you also start to buy into his stepping up. Segel can sell that every time, and he can undercut it just as easily. Weaving has become a top notch take-no-shit lead, while also having a wryness that lends itself quite well to comedy. She does sarcasm and snark as well as she can take a hit and project her rage (which she got a lot of experience with in the Ready or Not movies). The age gap between them is addressed, but they are a pretty evenly matched pairing.  It's just then so disappointing that I really didn't like either Dan or Lisa all that much... I was sort of rooting for them, but where they wind up in the end is more scary than heartwarming or delightful. 

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The opening credits to Kenneth Branagh's 1991 neo-noir Dead Again features a montage of old timey newspaper headlines that tells the story of German composer Roman Strauss' arrival in America, his whirlwind romance with Margaret, their marriage, her death, Roman being accused of murder, his conviction, and his death sentence. You'll be forgiven if it seems like you missed a predecessor story (called Dead maybe), and it is pretty crucial setup.

The film proper then starts, in black and white, where we meet Roman Strauss (Branagh) on death row. He's getting trimmed, given his last rights and last supper, and being interviewed by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia) who wrote some (all?) of the articles we saw in the intro. Roman's cell is lined with Baker's articles as well. Baker asks Strauss if he really killed Margaret. He smiles, whispers something in his ear, then pulls out a knife from his last supper and charges forward. Quick cut to present day,in full colour. A woman (Emma Thompson) wakes up screaming. There's a chair propped under the doorknob of her room. Eventually nuns and others find their way in. 

Apparently this woman arrived at this orphanage with amnesia and was given care and a room, but the cold hearted priest who rules the place seems to have little compassion for her situation (the nuns, on the other hand, worry for her safety...women taking care of women). The priest calls in a favour from former tenant of the orphanage, now a private investigator, Mike Church (Branagh again), to help figure out this woman's origins. When they meet, there's an immediate attraction, both ways.  She winds up staying at his place because the sanitarium is just chaos.

With the help of Pete, a colleague in the media (Wayne Night, as an affable creep), they get the woman's story out, and eventually Mike and "Grace" (he gives her the name just to call her something) meet Franklyn Madison (Derek Jacobi), an antiques dealer with a hypnosis side hustle. In unrestrained sessions with Grace, Franklyn starts to reveal that her nightmares are actually past-life traumas, which we experience in brilliant black and white, seeing more to the story of Roman and Margaret Strauss' life together, and possible motivations for her murder at, presumably, Roman's hands.

Twists and turns, drama and intrigue. It's all very pulpy and, if I'm honest, a little cheesy, but at the same time so aware of what it's trying to do and having fun doing it. It's a throwback story with a throwback style set in two different time periods that's trying to marry both Hitchcock's earlier style with his later period one, strapping in an additional layer of the fantastical, and mostly succeeding.

Branagh's American accent is pretty dicey but surprisingly his Mike Church is a decent and respectful guy, very careful not to take advantage of this traumatized woman (in contrast to Pete, who, while relatively harmless, seems unable to contain his many lascivious thoughts from coming out of his mouth). Branagh and Thompson were newly married at the time, so there was a palpable chemistry between them that comes across on screen, the innate attraction being essential to the past lives plot (for the record, they divorced in '97). But Thompson is the dominant player in the movie. Yes, everything revolves around her, but she's not a passive character... well, eventually.

When the story starts, "Grace" is mute, unable to speak, barely able to communicate, and seems bewildered by everything. I was truly worried she was just going to be in neophyte mote, a spin on the "born sexy yesterday" trope where her mental state and lack of communication skills are irresistibly attractive to the men around her. But once she does start speaking, she's a total Emma Thompson character, smart, sophisticated, and challenging. As discombobulated as her life has become, once she's able to display her personality she's exactly who you want Thompson to be playing. And in playing Margaret in the flashbacks, she has to be a character of the 1940's, where there was more deference from women to the men in her life, and yet she still has such agency. I can't help but feel that Thompson did a pass on the script (credited to Scott Frank, Out of Sight) to make these two characters more...her. And yeah, it really works. I know exactly what this film would look like with Grace and Margaret in less confident hands.

Dead Again doesn't get brought up much. It's not a lost classic, and it's not totally forgotten, but it's just a tiny little blip in both Branagh and Thompson's incredible careers. It's a bit of a wisp of a film, fun but not fun enough to obsess over. Rewatching it won't reveal hidden depths, it's all on the surface, but it's really not trying to be anything else other than what it is.

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Canadian music journalist-turned-writer/director Chandler Levack has become a must-see filmmaker for me, although I can't seem to put my finger on why.  Her first film, I Like Movies, I found compelling and anxiety-inducing, and her sophomore effort, Mile End Kicks, was a level-up, doling out a big bale of Canadiana that felt incredibly cool, and both modern and retro all at once.  The alluring Canadian-ness, I guess is the pull of Levack, but there's definitely a vibe to her first two films (despite being tonally different) that seems unique.

So with Levack being called up by Adam Sandler himself, requesting that she direct this script about warring roommates in a college dorm, a script written not by Levack but by SNL staff writers, and starring Sandler's daughter as well as going straight to Netflix...well, I worried that Levack would get swallowed up by this big American machine and there would be nothing visible of her in this film.

If I'm being totally honest, there mostly wasn't, and yet, in tiny little ways there was.

The film's framing device finds the Dean of Student Life (Sarah Sherman) relaying to two warring roommates (Storm Reid and Ivy Wolk) the tale of the most epic roommate war of all.  It starts with high school outcast Devon (Sadie Sandler) making her first real friend at college bootcamp in gives-no-shits Celeste (Chloe East). She asks Devon to be her roommate and Celeste agrees, but warns Sadie that she's not looking for a fairweather friend, but a ride-or-die bestie. She's been burned before, or so she says.

But spending a few afternoons with someone who is utterly carefree can be exhilarating, living with someone like that can be exhausting, and typically a one-way exchange. As much as Celeste is wildly inconsiderate, messy, taking up space, borrowing Devon's stuff and low-key manipulating her, Celeste also pulls Devon out of her shell by dragging her out place, pushing her out of her comfort zone and cheerleading her on to do more. So while Devon rather rapidly becomes tired of Celeste's behaviour (and for good reasons), she also finds moments to appreciate what Celeste brings into her life. 

Levack's prior films have centered around selfish characters who the director has had overwhelming empathy for. When we watch Lawrence be his worst self in I Love Movies or Grace do her own thing to the detriment of everyone else in Mile End Kicks we're still on board with their journies. Roommates is Devon's story, and Celeste is the antagonist, but Levack can't help but have empathy for Celeste, and that conflicts with her purpose as chaos agent in the story.

At a certain point it seems like Devon is the one who is being selfish... she only knows about Celeste what Celeste has told her and never probes deeper, basically too worried that asking more intimate questions will push Celeste away rather than bring them closer, but also getting too self-involved in her new college life (and too used to being in solitary mode) to know how to relate to being with someone so different from her.  And the advice given to her to, you know, talk to Celeste is just ignored. (This is all not too dissimilar to the confrontation between Grace and her Montreal roommate in Mile End Kicks, which may or may not explain why certain things do or don't happen the way they do in this film....Is Levack avoiding repeating herself?)

And so things fall apart, to extremes. And in the end Celeste is truly painted as the villain, the nightmare, the bad guy, and when she gets her comeuppance, the script wants us to laugh at her, but Levack can't seem to let go of her empathy.  

The cast, outside of its young leads, is low-key stacked with comedic talent, including Nick Kroll and Natasha Lyonne as Devon's parents, Carol Kane as her grandmother, Jeanine Garofolo as her architecture professor, as well as other nepo-babies like Please Don't Destroy's Martin Herlihy and Francesca Scorsese. It's easy to be dismissive, but everyone delivers in this film, a testament to Levack's direction.  It's amusing enough and entertaining enough, but it doesn't find its core, it doesn't know where its heart is. There a pull between a script that needs to be a big dumb broad comedy and a director who just wants to be grounded in what's real about the characters and the situation. 

This was good for Levack to cut her teeth on the Hollywood machine, to try something different, prove that she can handle bigger budgets and scale, but hopefully she can continue to do things her way on a larger scale from now on.

Chiplog: San Carlo's la Vita e Buona Tomato flavour AND Muji Garlic Sauce Flavour / French Jura Cheese Flavour

Toasty and I were to meet up, but I thought I was early and had to bide my time (I didn't, I actually just didn't see that he replied almost instantly, and my notifications were turned off...moops) so I "killed time" by exploring the local Eataly where I came across some Italian chips with (marginally) different chip flavours... this is one of those flavours (the only onion-free one)

Pre-chip: I recall coming across tomato flavoured chips before, I think Lays brand at one international grocer or another, but they must have had onion powder in them otherwise I would have tried them before. These are onion free. I wish I could say I was excited, but I never really liked ketchup flavoured chips (not that "ketchup" and all its vinegariness is the same as tomato flavour), and I'm not the hugest fan of tomato. I kinda wish that the Italians had like a tomato sauce flavoured chip.

Ingredients: vegetable oils, "tomato taste seasoning" (celery, sugar, corn flour, lactose, tomato powder, citric acit, salt, spices, msg, onion powder [...heeyyyyyy what? Fuck!] and paprika). I think I need to have my glasses on when I'm reading labels now.

First smell: Oh, you know they smell good because I can't eat (too many of) them. Weirdly they smell like baked potato chips, with a hint of sweetness and yeah, of course that onion powder is coming through a tad too. 

First taste: Um. Yeah, tomato, with a hint of onion...and celery, and yeah, the sugar is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I think I like it.

Aftertaste: The starchiness of the potato is the lingering flavour, which is always nice when a potato chip reminds you it's a potato chip. And it's a different type of potato that I'm used to in a chip, which is always a nice surprise, and what makes it worth trying international chips from time to time.

Mass consumption: This isn't an American potato chip, so it's rather lightly flavoured. It's not an assault on the taste buds, but there's just enough pleasant flavouring to keep you coming back. But I *shouldn't* eat too many of these because the onion powder will make me regret eating them... and while the flavour is good, it's not worth barfing at 3 am.

Final thoughts: I really like the potato San Carlo is using for their chip, so much so that next time I'm going by an Eataly I'll pick up a bag of just the plain salted chip. As for this tomato flavour, yeah, it's really decent. If I could actually eat these in larger doses I would actually probably put this on the *occasional* roster for when I just want a little something different.

Rating: 7.3

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Since the last chip flavour was a bust, I decided to bust out another package of chips I just so happened to come across today. Toasty needed to do a little pickup at Muji, the Japanese mini-department store (clothes, kitchen goods, stationary, travel gear, cleaning supplies, toiletries, snacks and more). Despite their drab exterior, I couldn't help but eye up the potato chip flavours on hand (and on sale!). And, well, there was a surprise in store....

Pre-chip: Looking at the back of the package of Garlic Sauce flavoured potato chips, I noted one very interesting factoid: "Made in France". I cocked and eye, noticed the minimal ingredients and wondered... are these just repackaged Brets? I'm so curious to find out.

Ingredients: Potatoes, sunflower oil, salt, garlic powder, natural flavouring (contains milk), butter.

First smell: Whoof. Garlic powder smacks you right in the face.

First taste: oh...oh no. It's like a smoky or fried garlic and... I'm only a mild garlic fan. This is not Brets. I was so wrong.The flavouring is too strong, and the chip is not as solid as a Brets rippled chip. Not what I was expecting. It hits you as much in the nostrils as it does in the taste buds.

Aftertaste: Garlic is a lingering smell and taste, but the scent lives longer than the taste.

Mass consumption: No. This one's not for me. Real garlic fans may like this but totally not for me.

Final thoughts: I had hoped they would be like Brets' Aioli or Chip Sauce flavour, but no. No no no no no. Woof. I went from being really excited to kinda repulsed in one chip.

Rating: 4.4

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Ok, one last bag...

Pre-chip: I had tried a Jura Cheese flavoured chip in the past, and, surprise surprise, it was a Brets. I have a draft post for those chips from 1 year ago (plus a day) that I never did finish writing up. I didn't even record my thoughts on the flavour...I'm assuming I liked it because I ate it all up without pausing to write about it. Or maybe I had too many thoughts and couldn't get them all down. So, I can't really compare...or maybe memories will come flooding back instantly.  I dunno...

Ingredients: Potatoes, sunflower oil, French Jura cheese powder, salt, whey powder, natural flavouring, dextrose, white pepper, and tumeric (for colouring)

First smell: there's more than a hint of ripe, sharp cheese. My dog perked up and took some deep sniffs with great excitement. 

First taste: Cheddar cheese is the typical chip cheese, but the jura powder gives a familiar smack of cheesiness with a nuttier flavour. It's also just a bit bolder and more fragrant than cheddar so the is a lot going on on the taste buds.

Aftertaste: The jura cheese powder flavour continues to feed back your taste buds as your saliva hydrates the powder, it's not quite as appealing as the slightly salty smack when you pop a chip into your mouth, so...

Mass consumption: yeah, you just want to keep eating, especially to explore the flavour at their maximum potency.

Final thoughts: I like these. They're interesting. Jura is not the most familiar cheese flavour for me so I don't quite have the palate for it yet. I know I ate the bag of Brets Jura flavour in one sitting, but I just can't do it with this one. It does seem more potent than my vague recollection of my time with the Brets' flavour last year (but my memory isn't really trustworthy at this point) so it's just a little more difficult to plow through a bag.

Rating: 7.3 

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I actually started my evening with another Eataly snack, the Favolosi Fava bean snack, lemon pepper flavour. I loved the flavouring, the bean... really dries your mouth out and is kind of unpleasant to eat.

Not the best night of snack adventuring, I must say.

Ah-Ah-Argento #5: The Five Days

aka Le Cinque Giornate
1973, d. Dario Argento - blu-ray

Dario Argento's filmography is pretty consistent genre-wise. He works is the realm of horror, mystery and paranormal fantasy, usually a blend of any two, or all three. In that regard, The Five Days, is not just an outlier, but it is the outlier in his film canon.

The Five Days is a historical comedy, taking place at the onset of the Italian war for independence. Argento isn't exactly known for his period pieces, or his comedies, considering he had never attempted one or the other before, and, in part due to this film's commercial failure, he would never try again. It would be considered his "lost" work since it never really got much international distribution until Severin Films remastered it and released it on 4K and blu-ray in 2022. Casual fans of Argento didn't really know of its existence (or if they did, since it was such a tonal outlier, didn't care so much).

The Five Days opens in a prison in Milan, circa 1848. It a rotty, rat-infested dungeon of a place, with shaggy dirty men wiling their time away sleeping on hay-covered floors. If you look closely, there's a guy pooping in a bucket. Two men, patriots, talk of their impending escape, how the revolutionaries will break down the walls and provide them freedom...but they must be careful to ensure only their fellow patriots are let loose, for these other hardened criminals escaping to the streets would sew chaos, which is not their objectives. The Austrians must go! Milan for the Milanese!

But when a cannonball rocks a hole in the wall, the only man to escape is petty thief Cainazzo (Adriano Celentano), and from there it's a series of farcical events he finds himself thrust into as he searches the streets of Milan in the midst of a revolution for the criminal who owes him money (who just so happens to have become a leader of the liberation).

Until this point, Argento's films have all been murder-mysteries, Giallis that find someone thrust into the unintentional position of playing detective to solve a murder (or murders). That style of film, for Argento, is a patient one, one in which Argento can plan long tracking shots, or stage precise set-ups of his camera creating artistic compositions. The patience of his crime, and later, horror films is for the purpose of mood, of impending dread, and, on occasion, subversion or relief from the dread.  Here, there is no time for patience.

The Five Days moves at lightning speed. Title cards represent the many chapters of the film, but within each chapter is so much forward momentum. Cainazzo finds himself swept up in the revolution even though he's definitely no patriot... but, it turns out, he's not not a patriot as well.

Much of the film winds its way into a buddy comedy, as Cainazzo, fairly early on in his exploits, comes across the Roman baker Romolo (Enzo Cerusico, Il Tram). While Cainazzo is no thinker, he looks like Plato next to the simplistic Romolo, who follows him around like a lost puppy. There's real big-dog, little dog energy to their dynamic.  

The hapless duo at one point find themselves helping a pregnant woman deliver a baby, helping to build a barricade for a countess (far too enthused by all the conflict going on), and getting swept up with a vainglorious baron who is leading his own rebellion against the Austrians. They find themselves, more then once, caught up in the center of a massacre, sometimes on the side of the aggressors and sometimes on the receiving end. Cainazzo is none-too-enthused by either scenario. Along the way they get entwined with the elites of Milan who, if they're not boastfully leading the way, are otherwise pretending like nothing impactful is really happening. Argento, more then once, lays heavy criticism on the conflict, heavily indicating that the rich used the poor to drive the Austrians out of the city so the rich could benefit more from their absence.  

The Five Days borrows liberally from Buster Keaton's The General, by Argento's own admission (in the bonus features on the blu-ray, Luigi Cozzi, who co-wrote the film's treatment, further stressed how much they were trying to make an Italian version of that film). The screenplay was co-written by Argento with political socialist writer and poet Nanni Balestrini, as well as consulted heavily with professors of Milan's history for detailed accuracy.  These outside influences find a film at odds with itself. It wants to be a retro-styled slapstick comedy, it wants to be a historical drama, and it wants to be a political commentary, but the tonal shifts it needs to be all three create such whiplash as to make the film an highly uneven viewing experience.

The attention to detail is pretty phenomenal, it is an appropriately big production with fantastic wardrobes and redecorated streets to make everything feel as it would have 130 years earlier. Argento staged his first-ever battle scenes and mob scenes and worked on a scale that, by his own admission, made him uncomfortable (and he would never truly attempt again). He had a steady hand in legendary Italian cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, so the film looks amazing, especially in its restored form.

Celentano was a massive celebrity in the 1970's, both an actor and a pop star (I've been familiar with him for over 20 years, every since friend and reader GAK introduced me to Celentano's proto-hip-hop gibberish track Prisencolinensinainciusol, having dozens upon dozens of times watch him perform this song in a few different settings, as archived on youtube), and here makes for a pretty winning and game lead. It helps that Celentano is handsome, incredibly fit, and those pantaloons hug him juuust right. Not to be overshadowed, Cerusico is every bit as endearing as he was in Argento's entry in the Door Into Darkness anthology, while playing a wildly different role. Here, a loveable doofus, as opposed to Il Tram's savvy police detective.

These two scruffy, handsome leads are a pleasure to watch, and each vignette, on its own, pretty much works, but they all don't work together. The speed-ramped slapstick shenanigans contrast against the messages about the abuses of the poor by the wealthy, how liberation would only be for the few, not the many. The brutal realities of war, the cycles of violence, revenge and rage are presented here, quite intentionally, as not exciting or glorious, and the men who proclaim themselves as liberators have darker cores to them.  There's also an undercurrent to this film where the only women featured are either made horny by the heroism and/or bloodshed around them, or they are victims of assault by the supposed "good guys" (not our main characters). The pregnant woman is the only exception. I found the segment of the countess (Marilù Tolo) getting all hot and bothered by the tumult pretty funny (to a point), but the widow (Carla Tato) who just witnessed her husband hanged as a traitor and escaped death as a result of Cainazzo and Romolo's intervention working through a flurry of emotions before taking Romolo to bed was pretty confounding. The assault on a Milanese woman by the baron was both egregious and direct to the point Argento is trying to make about "heroes" of war, the elites and their entitlement. For a director who generally shies away from gratuitous sex or nudity, these scenes, especially when taken as a whole, are pretty unfortunate.

At first it seems like Cainazzo's sympathetic criminal is going to get swept up into the fervour of the moment, to become an unexpected leader and hero of the rebellion, but that is not Argento's story. There's no heroes in war, no glory, it's all a con job. "We've been conned" are Cainazzo's final words, as the city celebrates their victory over the fleeing Austirans. "They've conned us" he says, pointing to the men in the formal wear and high-hats, the elites who did not fight, now basking in the glory of the war that just passed. Cainazzo cannot sit with it. He also doesn't make the big speech at the end...he is not a big speech maker. All he can speak is the truth he sees, that many, many, many people died and he truly doesn't see what for.

By no means a bad film, but also by no means a great one, there's plenty to be both impressed and disappointed with in The Five Days. It is probably the most maintstream effort Argento ever attempted, so it's pretty ironic that it was the least successful of his films during this period of his career.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Kraken

2026, Pål Øie (The Tunnel) -- download

Blah blah, insert some repetitive commentary about Norwegians being the only one doing disaster movies these days. But this isn't a disaster movie, is it? No, but kaiju are a type of Natural Disaster, wouldn't you say? And it matters not, as I am always there for a giant monster story, except maybe the Russian movie of the same name that came out the year prior, which struck me more as a mockbuster of this one.

This is where I admit I was entirely suckered by "Clash of the Titans" and their subbing of Cetus (Greek tentacle monster) for The Kraken, which is actually of Norwegian origin.

Johanne (Sara Khorami, Troll 2) is a marine biologist sent to a fish farm in Sogneford, a Norwegian fjord know for having the deepest waters. Something has been causing strange fish behaviour and die-off's which everyone assumes is linked to the revolutionary technology being used at the fish farm, a device that utilizes sonic waves to shake off "fish lice". Think of this as the same ecological impact as fracking, but water-based -- locals are upset with it but its allowing the fish farmer company of bring in Japanese investors, hoping to expand to other fjords.

It starts with disappearances and unexplained deaths -- tourist kids on their jet ski, local kayakers. Meanwhile something is hinky as Johanne investigates the fish farm itself; we immediately do not trust technician Georg (Jon Erik Myer, Furia), while Johanne clashes with the lead technologist Erik (Mikkel Bratt Silset, The Tunnel) who happens to be her ex and has utilized technology they developed together, but eventually abandoned. Meanwhile the daughter of the owner of the fish farm is playing junior eco-terrorist and poking her nose where it shouldn't be.

The movie breezes past any real suspense, doing a cookie-cutter approach to monster movies: unexplained deaths, grim body discoveries, shady corporate antics, old men with monster history, well-meaning scientist, even a Jaws-like "no, we can't close down the water". It all culminates in a silly battle with the kaiju itself when it attacks the fish farm -- the fish-lice tech was going way beyond its self-imposed safety specs and had awakened the beast from its slumber in the deepest parts of the fjord. Stealing cues from Deep Rising, the tentacles "chase" people through duct work and our heroine whispers, "We need to stay quiet !" Why? Tentacles are not ears, unless this movie is postulating that kaiju octopuses listen with their entire body? No matter, they run and hide, bad people are pulled under and Johanne destroys the tech just in time. BUT her and Erik rig up the remaining tech to turn it into a ... bomb? What? How? Whatever, she escapes on her own to trigger the device before being dragged down herself, a heroic sacrifice to save the people of the fjord. Does she kill it? Send it back to its slumber? Who knows; whatever "logic" is at play, it would be tossed aside for any planned sequel.

It was a silly movie that took itself way too seriously, and while it had earnest well-done performances, the characters were all paper thin and the dialogue was common place. The CGI was decent enough but the destruction was far too reserved for a kaiju movie. And yet... I liked it?

Poster commentary. IMP Awards only had the Russian movie. I was amused that Google offered me many versions of the "Kraven" movie poster... only one letter difference, right? The tag-line "only 5% of the ocean has been explored..." has very little to do with this movie.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Train Dreams

2025, Clint Bentley (Jockey) -- Netflix

Stubbing this out, even though I have not yet finished the movie, as the voice of it has sent me down a rabbit hole for the adapted novella's author, one Denis Johnson. I read mostly pulp fiction: scifi and fantasy and horror and crime. Rarely do these works have a "voice" but I just absorbed Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" and its nothing but voice, as strong and clear as Will Patton's narration of the Bentley film. I imagine the film director felt it was necessary to capture the author's voice, as while I imagine the soul & plot has been captured in the movie, all too often the author themself is absent from the medium.

This was a sad movie, but not in a bad way. To misquote Kent, the movie is "contemplative & meditative." It chronicles the life of an average man, not a simple man, but also one not complicated by intricacies. He was a loner, often lonely, but not an unfriendly man, dismissive of company. He was a logger, but much of the life portrayed he is apart from that. His life has poignant tragedies, but what life doesn't. Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton, It Comes At Night) was just a man who lived through better part of the 20th century, observing civilization grow up around to him, connected by train tracks and technology, but despite his contributions, never really became a part of it.

I am going to have to let the movie settle into my brain pan for a while, before I complete this. Later. Unfortunately, doing that let all the storied thoughts in my brain seep out. I have to say, it had a great impact on my while watching, and in the days not long after, but... now, its mostly gone. I won't let that judge my fondness for the movie. I suspect that in watching the movie, and in reading a bit of Johnson afterwards, I found another place in my mind, one I don't often travel to anymore. And I left the memory of that movie there, when I returned to the anxiety & stress of my real world.

I came at this movie thinking it was going to be about trains and about trees, and about a great tragedy. But while it is about these, they are not its core. The train trips are linkages, the trees are ever present, as Robert only leaves the forest once, late in life. The tragedy is great, very great, perhaps the greatest impact on his life, but its not the only impact the movie portrays. In fact it begins with an injustice, a short scene where European railway workers murder a Chinese worker, and Robert does not stop it; the scene leaving us to wonder, was he about to help the killers? This act haunts him, literally, forever. 

Its hard to relate this movie by its plot, by its story, because that is not what it is about. Already adapted from condensed source material, the novella, it is not seeking narrative arcs. More, its giving us a mood through translation of words to screen, sometimes helped along by Will Patton's voice-overs, an actor already know for reading Johnson's voice. In some ways, I drawn to this by it being akin to the vignettes I write, small condensed images in hand-written word, nary a plot to be found. Being formed around Johnson's beautiful prose, Bentley creates his own beautiful imagery in sunlight, in shadows among trees, in steam & smoke, in people's faces. 

One of the strongest things from the movie that stayed with me, are the images of Robert's musings. He is often lost in thought, staring out at the world, not really part of it. He is re-playing times, voices, images from his past constantly. Robert is a man of many thoughts, but few words. I think that is where the train dreams come from, because like myself, when he is forced to a time period when all he can do is think, sitting in his seat, watching the world pass by outside the window, he slips into a dream like state, of ponderances. 

Next time I watch a movie like this, I will set myself aside, stare out a window and keep this laptop handy...

More Backrooms

the original backroom image

I eat this stuff right up. My brain, during its formative years, was trained by comic books and Star Wars, the X-Files and Twin Peaks, Unsolved Mysteries and In Search Of... to consume lore and be enthused by the unknown, the weird, and the askew.  Watching Backrooms in theatres, cold, having no experience with the horror sub-subgenre or Kane Parsons work as Kane Pixels on youtube didn't matter in the slightest. Backrooms provides very little in the way of answers, and any answers it does provide are pretty much formed with question marks at the end. Speculation, not answers. 

What was clear about the cinematic Backrooms was that we, as an audience, may not have gotten satisfying answers as to what was going on, nor do any of the characters truly understand what's happening, but it's absolutely clear that Parsons himself knows precisely what is happening. And he's not telling, he's showing, but in pieces.

What I wasn't clear on while sitting in the movie theatre, thoroughly absorbed in Parson's uncomfortable alt-reality, was whether Backrooms was its own thing, a soft reboot of the work he did online, or if it was just a part of it. It the days since, consuming Parsons' Backrooms youtube videos, a few other videos from avid fans who obsess over the details of Parsons' Backrooms, and interview videos and podcasts with Parsons himself, it's clear it's definitely just one part of the whole. You don't need to have seen the web series, but if you want to know more, it will definitely tell you more.

Parsons' youtube series, which he started working on at 16, opens with a group of kids in 1990 making a horror movie with a camcorder, when the kid with the camera falls through a soft spot in reality and finds himself in the backrooms. It is then 9 minutes this "character" exploring digitally created spaces (using Blender, open source 3-D modelling software) through the camcorder lens, digital tracking fuzz laid over top of it all to really give that grainy and retro vibe.  It's effectiveness is at least 50% sound design, just the ominous buzz of fleurescent lighting, a pervasive humm (very Lynchian), the characters' shuffling footsteps, the haunting howls of *something* in the distance.  It's intense and captivating, and then the thing from the distance is right in front of you. It's completely channelling first-person shooter vibes, sans the action. If you turn the corner and something unreal is in front of you, there's no shooting, the only choice is to run away. It's something that will happen again and again in this series.

That might sound repetitive, but it's not the only trick up Parsons' sleeve.

While that first video was just a thing Parsons made adapting the ideations on backrooms on message boards into a video, the second video Parsons release is a sub-3-minute montage of images of all sorts of retro imagery of odd spaces and pre-90's technology and people using such technology (with their eyes or faces blacked out) and out of context bits of text...all once again seeming like it's being played on a grainy video, its haunting soundtrack warbling in and out.  The next video, once again playing like a worn-out video cassette tape features more imagery of blueprints as a creepy-as-hell digitized voice starts to explain about magnetic distortion experiments that revealed the backrooms and the plan was to use such spaces as ...storage. We then see the video from 1988 of the third test showing the opening of a portal.

Currently, there are 22 videos in the series and many of them are just short moody atmospheric pieces, showing imagery that is meant to expand and connect the lore of Parsons' Backrooms together, others are more FPS exploration videos, and still others are communications from Async, the in-world corporation that is trying to figure out how to monetize the backrooms while also studying them.

There is a multi-video narrative arc around the hazmat-suited teams that explore the spaces, and how one of them, Peter Tench, disappeared one day while exploring the backrooms. Given what the Async team already knew about the dangers of the backrooms, they presumed Tench dead, when in reality he had been pushed forward two months ahead in time. Tench found his way into an Async control room and triggered an alarm. But his reappearance led to other, more dramatic problems. And more questions.

The distortion of reality in the backrooms, it's reinforced in both the web series and the movies, has pretty disastrous effects on the mental state of people who find themselves alone in the space for any extended period of time. As we see multiple times through the web series, there are multiple (increasing) soft spots in reality that people (and birds) fall through, some of them with video cameras.

As a physical exploratory space, there isn't much logic to the backrooms, why they twist and wind and connect the way they do, but as you dive into the series you can begin to intuitively grasp what it is even if it's not easy to describe with any surety. The repetition of certain areas, or certain types of areas, intones that there's a reason for them. A sequence in the film finds the camera panning down from a room in reality to that same room layers and layers deep into the backrooms, the distortion of the reality of each room more and more evident the further down you go, almost like echoes, growing fainter the more it reverberates.  This is what makes the backrooms so compelling...that you can almost grasp what's going on, but just not quite.

There are multiple types of creatures in the backrooms, including weird mould/fungal monsters, distorted remnants of half-remembered people, and haunting creatures that are dark Ids made real.  Some of them wail, some of them mimic human speech, some of them do both.  While the backrooms are seemingly endless, it doesn't seem like you can exist within the space long without encountering one of these beings, and they're not docile, even if some of them are ...edible? The very first creature in Parsons' first video is pretty doofy, but each monster after that has been effectively creepy.

Parsons works not just in Blender, but multimedia. There are videos that feature real people in real environments, and real people in digital environments. Real images are manipulated into surreal images, and Parsons' use of electronic music, typically slow, eerie, haunting chords, contributes deeply to the atmosphere (at times the music will drown out the words spoken in the video, implying that mood is more important than what's being said, or, perhaps, toying with the audience by further burying information behind the sounds). Parsons uses voice actors throughout his productions to varying degrees of effectiveness, but he always nails the tone, so even mediocre vocal performances get a pass.

Especially with the first-person-shooter (in this case the "shooter" is the video camera) videos that track through the backrooms, it's often too evident that it's a digital reality. This is no shade on Parsons who is very effectively working with the tools afforded to a teenager, but wow, is it ever a level-up to see these environments cast into reality on the big screen. And the realization of the backrooms from digital into actual sets is phenomenal. 

The film adds the next layer to the Backrooms mythos. While the youtube videos explores the mythology behind it all, the film explores characters and how they are affected by - and affecting - the backrooms. This idea, barely hinted at in the youtube videos, is the sole thrust of the movie. But, again, answers are actually shadows of answers. Satisfaction not guaranteed.

In interviews Parsons has said he would like Backrooms to continue as an anthology TV series, and that seems like the obvious direction for this to go. But given its thunderous success at the box office, it's more likely a second feature will happen before a TV series (let's get real, a streaming series) does. 

I am all-in on this ride. While I worry that maybe Parsons doesn't yet have the life experience or awareness to handle much outside this sphere of creepy, moody, atmospheric pieces, it's clear he's very assured and purposeful in his direction and that he has many talents when it comes to putting vibes and aesthetics together. He's cultivated a pretty substantial audience for a reason, so talent is not lacking. With this property, at least, he seems to know exactly where it's going, if maybe not entirely what it's saying.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Worldbreaker

2025, Brad Anderson (The Machinist) -- download

I recall that when The Machinist came out, Anderson was being lauded as The Next Big Thing. He had just come off the moderately successful, but cult favourite (and on our horror fav list as well) Session 9, but had actually done a few lesser known flicks before that. Nothing really notable grew out of that acclaim, which is really not that very kind of me, as he went on to be one of those hard working, constantly producing directors that I usually sing about. He even did a handful of episodes of one of my favourite shows of all time, Fringe.

This is all a preamble to say that this post-apocalypse movie is well done, actually has vision but ... it will not be remembered, by anyone for anything.

Harsh. Also, "well done" may be too strong as well. Competent.

There is the familiar world building -- people have Gone Too Far and the world has responded by opening The Stitch, basically big cracks in the earth that release creepy-crawly monsters, the Breakers. The monsters are hard to kill, decapitation being the only quick way -- bullets just slow them down, barely. Not only are they killing machines, but their wounds create other monsters, the Hybrids, hive-mind creatures that need to have their brains "smushed" to stop them -- a decapitated Hybrid can still attack. Men turn quicker than women and the movie has some sloppily done commentary that will have some sectors of our society just frothing at the mouth -- the movie literally uses the term not all men.

The plot centers around Willa (Billie Boullet, The Worst Witch), her Dad (Luke Evans, Dracula Untold) and her Mom (Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil). After an opening sequence where they are forced to abandon a fortified settlement, Willa and Dad are separated from other survivors and they escape to an isolated island where Dad begins to train Willa on survival, combat and sword play. And through it all, Willa is fed on stories -- stories of the old world, how Mom and Dad met, and tales of legendary figure Kodiak, a giant of a man, who "slew 100 breakers with one swipe of his axe." It should also be noted that Mom is the leader of these people, a warrior and tactician, a "real" warrior against the mythical male figure of Kodiak -- but she's barely in the movie.

Movies like this, and I know I watch a lot of them, are generally theme-lite, monster & action focused with trauma as characterization. This is no different, but Anderson is trying for something a little different. His use of story telling, myths & legends, is poignant and better put to use than other PoAp stories generally use it (most only use the "shadowy grey-moral-ed warrior comes out of the badlands") but it should have gone all in, instead of muddying the waters with all the usual trappings of these movies. There are passing hints of how Mom is the real mythical figure, and that Dad might have been Kodiak, but the latter couldn't hold any water, but for ego, and while that might have been a more interesting element (that men create male centered myths to inflate their own egos) Dad is never played as that kind of character; he is just a wounded man who played a support role while his wife did the real dirty work. Again, the movie is competent in what it does, but it always felt like it wanted to say more but ... didn't.

KWIF: Masters of the Universe (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. The "birthday week" now comes to a close, ending with my most anticipated movie of the year, but also accompanied by so much apprehension. I came here to review movies and eat cake, and I'm all out of cake.

This Week:
Masters of the Universe (2026, d. Travis Knight - in theatre)
Backrooms (2026, d. Kane Parsons - in theatre)    

---

Masters of the Universe, the toy line, debuted in 1982. I was 6 years old. My introduction to He-Man and company was probably the TV commercials, but my obsession most likely started with issue 47 of DC Comics Presents in which Superman and He-Man teamed up against Skeletor on Eternia, the homeworld of the Masters of the Universe. I was immediately obsessed. I was as obsessed with "MOTU" (as it's known in the fan community) as I was with Star Wars and DC superheroes.

The toy line would receive more comics series from both DC and Marvel in the next few years, there would also be a fan magazine, and yes, billions of dollars in toy sales of ridiculously over-muscled broad-and-squat characters with ridiculous names like Stinkor (he stinks of patchouli), Extendar (his limbs extend), and Buzz-off (he's a wasp-man). There was an immensely popular cartoon that had two seasons with over 60 episodes each, as well as a holiday special and a spin-off series with He-Man's sister, She-Ra. 

In 1987, infamous schlock purveyors Cannon Films produced a Masters of the Universe live action movie, which, it's absolutely fair to say, was a disappointment to everyone at the time. Cannon sunk over $20 million into the film -- a sizable budget for them, but not nearly big enough to do the property justice -- and so most of the film takes place on Earth with a paltry few characters form MOTU's vast lore appearing, and the majority of the film focusing on Courtney Cox's teenage orphan and her boyfriend. It was a huge slap in every child's face that we had a He-Man movie that did not center on He-Man and felt nothing like what we knew about the property.  As well, the cartoon had ceased making new episodes almost two years prior, and public attention to the property was flagging something fierce. Toys were not selling like they used to. By 1988 the line was basically dead.

MOTU has been rebooted a bunch of times since, and the fan community is immensely supportive of the property, it's just not a huge community.  Likely in the tens of thousands, rather than millions like, say, Transformers or Star Wars.  Even the 1987 film has since become kind of a camp classic, and I personally enjoy it far more as an adult than I ever did as a kid. Still, I've always wished for a proper He-Man movie, and for the past 20 years (at least) there have been teases, over and over again, with false starts at nearly every major studio. It felt like it was never going to happen...and now it has... and... for the most part, it seemed to be what I had been waiting for, a big-budget ($200 million dollar) production that understands both how ridiculous the property is while also understanding why it's so beloved to the die hards.

Director Travis Knight came from the world of animation (as head of Laika and director of Kubo and the Two-Strings) and directed the best Transformers movie of the lot in Bumblebee, an impeccable 1980's-styled adventure in an Amblin pastiche. I had the utmost confidence that he could make a good He-Man movie. The ideal was that it would be as good as Bumblebee, or share the tone of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and that it would be a good introduction to MOTU to a whole new generation, and not just a movie for 50 year olds who can't let go of their childhood.

It genuinely pains me to say that Masters of the Universe is a highly flawed movie. It delivers on being a live-action He-Man movie in ways my inner man-child cannot deny... I had warm fuzzies in my belly often, and squealed in glee more than a few times throughout, but it's still not he MOTU movie of my dreams, and that makes me sad.

The film opens with operatic voices in harmony, "AH-AH"-ing to pulsating synths that made me think a vintage ABBA song was about to play... and the guitars kick in, and I got goosebumps. Composer Daniel Pemberton mixes in his score these elements of 70's Euro-disco with 80's guitar-rock and enlisted Queen's Brian May to provide the guitar riffs. It is most suitably epic and triumphant. If you reach back to the epic rock soundtracks of the 1980s - Queen's Highlander, Toto's Dune, Tangerine Dream's Legend - this is reaching, achieving, and in some cases surpassing those grandiose scores, while also paying homage to them (it borrows at least one track from Highlander - "Princes of the Universe"). It has a few needledrops, which are kind of on the nose in-the-moment, and yet also tone-perfect for the type of film this is, and The Darkness provides the title song "Masters of the Universe".  I was not expecting this acoustic assault, but it was so incredibly welcome, and helped elevate the film where it otherwise would fall a little further down.

The film has an extended prologue, where we meet Adam, Prince of Eternia, as a child. He's forced by his father to partake in battle training, but he's not much of a fighter. The other children in training pick on him, and Duncan (Idris Elba, Luther), the king's Man-At-Arms, is a heavy-handed trainer, though he does find ways to encourage and inspire the hapless young prince. The King, however, wants toughness, strength and determination out of his son, and is willing to traumatically embarrass him to do so. It's a tough prologue when so much of it talks about "being a man" and what that entails, and all of it has to do with strength and being a fighter. This had me perplexed as to what the messaging of the film was to be...(Pemberton plays a piano riff of "Boys Don't Cry" over one scene). It almost seemed to be promoting toxic masculinity.  

The palace is attacked by the forces of Skeletor (Jared Leto, The Little Things) and Adam is sent through a portal off to Earth, his mother's homeworld, alone, with only the fabled "Sword of Power" (there's an even earlier prologue attempting to explain just what power this sword has) to accompany him, which he promptly loses. We smash cut to 15 years later and Adam (Nicholas Galatzine, The Sheep Detectives) is an awkward, soft-spoken dork who works in HR, and has been obsessed with his past life on Eternia. He knows the Sword is his way back, and has been searching for it for a long time. When he finally finds it, it alerts his home world and a literal Beast-Man comes after him, but so too does his old friend Teela (Camila Mendes, Riverdale)

These two stretches of film account for about 40 minutes at the top of the film, and while both are called back to and play a part later in the film, they are each waaay too long. The stretch on Earth feels particularly tedious, especially as there's a nonsensical gym sequence where Adam has a nonsensical conversation with another guy working out who just happens to be Dolph Lundgren, the portrayer of He-Man in 1987. I'm not against fan-service. I'm a fan, I like to be serviced, but subtly. This scene stops the movie dead in its tracks for about 2 minutes, as Lundgren gives the young man advice, which ONLY makes sense in a Meta context, and then what little weight was had in the delivery is undercut by a dumb joke.

And that's a major flaw of this film, it's incessant need to undercut itself with dumb jokes. It's the "Marvel-model" of filmmaking that had played itself out by the time the pandemic hit, so there's no excuse as to why the script is resurrecting it here. Cut out half of these moments where the script undercuts itself with humour and you have a much better, tighter film.

This is, of course, the product of multiple screenwriters contributing to many, many drafts over the years. Four screenwriters are credited here, and it's hard not to blame all the film's weaknesses on the script.  Because, Knight's direction is pretty rock solid. The action sequences all play out quite well, with the super-powers of these characters, or the fighting skills of others all being utilized in really fun ways and not feeling super generic, or, in that sometimes Marvel way of it just being CGI characters blasting each other with laser beams. 

The film really starts moving when Beast-Man and Teela show up. The energy just starts to crackle and these characters are really well translated from toy/animation/comics-to-screen. Mendes' reveal on screen is particularly captivating, as she exudes strength, confidence and charm that I never would have expected from her CW background. She looks and feels like a movie star, and I hadn't expected that from her or this film. 

Teela brings Adam back to Eternia, but not one he remembers. It's been under Skeletor's thrall for 15 years and things have not gone well. Adam's return with the Sword has exposed the Eternian resistance and Skeletor's forces attack, but in the process, Adam turns into He-Man and a new hope for the people of the land raises... except that even with all that power, Adam is still Adam, and his first avenue is hope and optimism and looking for the best in people... but the lesson he needs is that sometimes fighting is necessary to protect the people you care for. Diplomacy is always Adam's first choice (he was always pretty good at human resources) but now he has the power (and, honestly, "the power" basically represents confidence here) to stand up and fight, and to get back up when knocked down.

Knight's path to becoming an accomplished director was not a hard one. His dad is Phil Knight, the billionaire founder of Nike. The animation studio Travis heads was bought for him by his father. But to his credit, Knight worked at his craft, and clearly has both an aptitude and a talent for directing and storytelling. One can look at him as being perfect for telling the story of Adam, of a young man (of privilege) who doesn't necessarily live up to his father's (or anyone's) expectations, and feels lost, only to find his true calling and, while not without its hurdles, excel at it.  It's not fully the story we need, but Knight found a way to make this story personal to him, and it does elevate it slightly.

It keeps coming back to the script, though. It fumbles its exploration of masculinity pretty badly. It takes a shot at it, but it doesn't just miss the target, it doesn't even know where the target is. With all the writers involved, it's like nobody thought to consult an expert, to get it right.  

But what it does get right... and it's so weird to say this... is Skeletor. Jared Leto, buried under a blue-skinned body suit, and a CGI skull with beady-red lazer-pointer eyes, is mercifully unrecognizable, and nails the assignment. Leto as a performer is sometimes insufferable, and allegations made about his off-screen behaviour makes one like him even less, but this... he got this. Skeletor is an evil, cackling villain of no redeeming virtue, and unapologetic about it. He's also freaking funny, as funny as he is intimidating, which serves to simultaneously make him more and less intimidating if that makes any sense. It's a camp performance, but one that works perfectly for both the character and the film. Alison Brie (Freelance), who plays Evil-Lyn, Skeletor's mistress and aide, and shares the most screentime with him, is a gifted comedic actress, but even she has a difficult time keeping up with Leto. It's clear she's attempting to match his tone, but only is able to get there half the time.

There are many characters from the toys and cartoons and lore that pop up in this film, and it's a bevvy of delights. It tickles me to see Fisto, Ram-Man, Mekanek, Spikor, Tri-Clops, Trap-Jaw. Roboto, Battle Cat, and so many more, alongside vehicles like the Sky-Sled, Roton, Talon Fighter and more in this picture, not to mention playsets like Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain. What a damn treat. I was giddy in seeing it all and only wanted more. 

As there were delights, there were also let-downs, but Nicholas Galatzine was not one of them. His squeaky-voiced Adam, with posture seemingly learned from studying Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent, does exactly the job it needs to do, and when he transforms into He-Man, he still effectively conveys being Adam inside a muscle-bound barbarian's body, but also shows the character levelling up emotionally. Really, really solid job.

I could go on about the ups and downs of this movie and the wild roller-coaster of emotions I went on watching it. In the end, it's fine, but sadly, fine isn't what the property needed if it were going to be resuscitated for a new generation.  That was my greatest hope for it, that this would a super strong movie enjoyable by kids and adults alike and so exciting and entertaining and undeniable that there would be millions of children clamouring for action figures instead of phone screens. I guess we'll have to wait for Toy Story 5 to do that.

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Kane Parsons' 9-minute Backrooms (sometimes The Backrooms) short film from 2022 currently sits with an astonishing 83 million views on Youtube. Backrooms is not just a single short, but a series of shorts made in the past few years , but none of the follow-up twenty or so videos come close to hitting that number of views (most of them have between 3 and 18 million views, which is still quite impressive). What's not so astonishing is that a studio was willing to gamble on a modestly-budgeted feature derived from the Backrooms series given the impressive numbers it's pulled...no, the astonishing thing is that the studio, in this case A24, was willing to take a chance on the feature with Parsons at the helm.

The video series itself was not the original invention of Parsons, but a product of message board groupthink in the creepypasta horror subgenre, and the idea of "backrooms" itself became its own sub-subgenre.

I wasn't familiar with any of this until very recently. But, to watch Parsons' original short, which is somewhat recreated in the prologue to the film, it owes as much to first-person shooter video games as it does to whatever developed out of message board forum. It's visceralness comes from being in an unfamiliar, relatively barren indoor space that is just an expanse of seemingly limitless corridors. There are objects in the corridors that could best be described as "random", while the hallways themselves lack any sense of logic, as the attaching corridors might be through a crevice or a hole in the floor, or a tunnel in the wall accessible only by ladder, or a doorway in the ceiling.  And the lighting is spotty, with most corridors being difficult to see fully... you never know what awaits you as you pass through a doorway, or turn a corner, or step into the shadows. (The fantastic TV series Severance was partially inspired by the conceit of "backrooms", and the spinoff sub-subgenre of "liminal spaces" inspired the video game and subsequent film Exit 8 which I reviewed last week.)

The Blair Witch style shaky cam intro to the film is as effective as it is discombobulating.  I never have a good physiological reaction to this kind of footage, so mercifully it was an in-universe video cassette of camcorder footage being watched by someone, and didn't last past the first 10 minutes.

Following this sequence we meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Serentity). He is a failed architect who now runs a failing furniture store and is seeing a therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World) following his separation from his wife. What is clear from their sessions is that Clark is full of entitlement and rage, and isn't very interested in truly exploring the source of his emotional discontent.

Clark has been living in his sparsely-stocked furniture store since the separation and experiencing eerie and strange issues with the electricity in the store. The lights will flicker and blink, turning off or on all on their own, while the television will shut off or randomly show video from inside the backrooms that we saw in the opening sequence.  When checking the breaker panel one night, Clark discovers a soft spot in fabric of reality... he touches the wall and his hand passes through. He steps into the wall and comes out in a dingy yellow carpeted and wallpapered environment that seemingly doesn't end. He later describes to Mary this reality as being like a drawing of a dog, but as if someone who had never seen a dog were told what a dog looks like, and then drew their conceptualization of a dog. Everything is off.

Clark spends days exploring the space, even though there seem to be dangers present. Perhaps because he's a (failed) architect, or perhaps because there are things familiar to him in this space, he is quite obsessed with this topsy turvy alt-reality that defies any logic.  He recruits his young assistant manager (Lukita Maxwell, Shrinking) and her videographer boyfriend (Finn Bennett, True Detective: Night Country) to help him with research, and, naturally things go awry.

Outside of it all, Clark has triggered a video camera within the space, and it's being monitored by Phil (Mark Duplass, Safety Not Guaranteed) who wonders who the hell this guy is. Clark's description of this space triggers memories, traumas and nightmares in Mary of her childhood. Are they connected?

Backrooms is a horror movie, but it's also a science fiction and pscyhological thriller. It's not always scary, but it is tonally pretty intense. What is most effective about the film, and baked into the "backrooms" and "liminal spaces" sub-subgenre, is the surreal perversion of reality. Things that look almost familiar, almost like something we should recognize, but aren't quite accurate. Exploring a space like this is like venturing through a nightmare, there's nothing grounding this experience and it could take you literally anywhere one's mind can conceive.

Eventually the film reaches a point where it starts offering some answers, and the worst thing you can do in horror is demystify the threat, to explain it all away. It's frustrating not having answers, but it's less scary when you do.  Backrooms' answers, well, they aren't truly answers. There's more going one than what we know at first, but as one veil is pulled back, there are only more questions.

The audience is left to find their own answers in the information provided to them, and the information is as much there to confound as it is to illuminate. My take is that this endless reality is subconscious memory made manifest, but not of any individual. The more time you spend within, the more the realm taps into your subconscious memory, particularly the darkness you trap away, your fears, anxieties, regrets and repressed impulses. It's a theory, anyway.

I liked this movie a whole damn lot, and it's part of this year's horror explosion of fresh talent that is redefining the box office and what audiences want, what excites them, what they're looking to escape to. Twisted reflections of reality, apparently. Parsons, a teenager when he created Backrooms, is now 20 and has directed one of the biggest movies of the year, and capably so. He'd been refining this idea for four years, so it's no wonder he was so capable and assured in shooting this, but time will tell if he has the capacity for telling any stories beyond Backrooms.  I'm keen to find out.

KWIF: I Love Boosters (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Ol' Kent here celebrated the end of his 50th year with some epic boardgaming, epic toy and collectibles hunting, epic medical diagnostic imaging, and not so much epic movie watching (or reviewing)...just a little.

This Week:
I Love Boosters (2026, d. Boots Riley - in theatre)
Tuner (2025, d. Daniel Roher - in theatre)
Exit 8 (2025, d. Genki Kawamura - rental)
Made of Honor (2008, d. Paul Welland - hollywoodsuite)

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I think this will wind up being my
 favourite movie poster of the year.
I want this as a puzzle.

As the credits were rolling on our sparsely attended early Saturday matinee of I Love Boosters, one white male millennial audience member stood up and stretched, turned around and engaged the other millenial couple behind him. The part my wife overheard him say was "I mean, I liked it, but can you tell me why you thought it was funny?"

Humour is subjective. I get that. But I Love Boosters is undoubtedly a comedy. It's part farce, part Looney Tunes (by way of Stephen Chow), part social satire, part absurdism, and so many other little parts of things that congeal to make a wildly appealing, chaotic, inventive whole.

Kiki Palmer (Nope) - one of the most charismatic performers of her generation - leads this film as Corvette, a wanna-be fashion designer who just can't seem to find her way into the industry. She lives in an abandoned fried chicken restaurant and steals clothes for a living to resell at steep discounts on the black market to the less rich. She's aided in the "Velvet Gang" by her best friend Sade (Naomi Ackie, Mickey 17) who is obsessed with a multi-level marketing scheme, and Mariah (Taylour Paige, Zola) who thinks her boosting is a revolutionary act.

They don't steal from just anywhere, or just anyone, but instead focus on the chain of Metro Designers stores which are owned by fashion mogul and certified genius Christie Smith (Demi Moore, The Substance). Corvette is obsessed with Smith, idolizes her, and in her own way sees her boosting of Smith's clothes as a form of flattery, but Smith, who calls the Velvet Gang "low class, urban bitches" is increasingly perturbed by them.  Corvette learns of a delivery of $100,000 suits and sets her sights on that being the ultimate target (especially after discovering that Smith has stolen a design Corvette submitted to a fashion contest earlier in the year, it becomes about revenge). To make a boost this big, they need to work on the inside.

So they get a job working at Metro Designers under Grayson (Will Poulter, Warfare), who has totally drunk the Christie Smith corporate kool-aid, and meet Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez, Bloodshot) who is trying to organize a union within Metro Designers.  And then they are robbed..the entire store gone in seconds.  

I could go on for paragraphs breaking down the larger strokes of this film. It is very busy, but earns its busyness.  Boots Riley cut his teeth with the incredible satire Sorry To Bother You, and takes the social satire and ambition of that film to a whole other level here. The picture is vibrant, with bold monochromes at each of the Metro Designers sets, while the wardrobe is off the charts with all the leads looking ridiculous or stylish or ridiculously stylish. It'd be the most fashionable movie of the year, if not for The Devil Wears Prada 2. There are extended sequences involving stop motion animation (that recall John Carpenter's They Live) an extended chase sequence done in minature (some shades of Wes Anderson there), a building on a canted angle leaving a set sloped at 20 degrees which all but Christie Smith seem to have difficulty navigating, and a gigantic ball of stress made up of bills and all the other things haunting Corvette, stalking her at random times.

I Love Boosters is unfettered creativity from a director who doesn't see limits on what can be done in storytelling. It's the first mass-released film since Everything Everywhere All At Once that feels like there are no restrictions in how a story can be told. Even if I Love Boosters is only nominally less successful at coherently conveying its central message than that Oscar-winner, it's still an exceptionally entertaining and provocative ride.  [I haven't even mentioned the soul-eating demon/love interest played by Lakieth Stanfield (Atlanta), but he's an intriguing distraction for both the picture and Corvette that pops up at both the most opportune and inopportune times. He's a total aside, but a deliciously amusing one.]

While its employment of magical realism and surrealist fantasy is wickedly enjoyable and compliments its anti-capitalism message in unusual but agreeable ways, I Love Boosters' use of a science fiction technology alongside abstract concepts of "situational acceleration and deconstructionism", as well as teleportation is a tad less concrete. There is a device introduced in the second act which then becomes the inciting agent for the rest of the film, and the employment of these speculative conceits become the hardest part of the film to wrap one's head around, particularly at the accelerated pace the film moves at.  It leads to a lot of fun and clever sequences in the film, and effectively incites the film's ultimate, pro-union, power-in-numbers message, but it does so with an asterisk.

What I Love Boosters ultimate goal is to promote a character who realizes that sometimes there's a greater goal, a greater purpose to one's actions than fulfilling their own desires. That perhaps too many of us are concerned more with individual achievement than collective growth is the realization Corvette needs to have on her journey, even if it isn't the most personally satisfying, it does seem the most rewarding. 

[As an aside, as a person who is basically deaf in one ear, I had a very difficult time with the sound mix on this film. As a musician himself, Riley loves music, and there's always music playing in the background of any scene, whether it's diegetic or the fantastic score from TuneYards, along with layers of ambient noise or sometimes background dialogue and/or TV footage.  In person, I have a hard time in cacophonous situations picking out what people are saying, and turns out it's the same with on screen situations. I can't wait for Blu-Ray, which I will absolutely be getting, so I can watch this with the closed captioning on and pick up on so much of what I missed].

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Speaking of my hearing disorder, it was fascinating for me to watch a film about someone on the other end of the aural spectrum than I am. In Tuner, Niki (Leo Woodall, Cherry) has hyperacusis, an affliction in which he is exceptionally hypersensitive to sound to a debilitating degree. For the majority of the picture he is wearing custom ear plugs, and often with noise cancelling headset over that. Even then particularly sharp or loud noises can send him into disarray, even proving so painful as to render him unconscious.

Niki also has perfect pitch and starts the film working as protege piano tuner to family friend Harry Horowicz (Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie), a beloved figure in the music community. Harry is losing his hearing and starting to be a bit forgetful, but he's a delight to be around (I'm normally not a big Hoffman fan, but he is very likeable in the role). Niki is sweetly devoted to Harry and his wife Marla, like family. When Harry falls ill, Niki agrees to help out with the medical bills by buying Harry's truck and taking over his business. While on a job he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu, AfrAId), and over a few encounters their attraction becomes undeniable, but while on a different job, Niki meets Uri (Lior Raz, Gladiator II) and his boys as they attempt to drill into the safe of the house they are both working at. Niki learned his hearing disorder actually was a boon for safecracking and gets into the safe for the boys. Uri, who works in private security for elite individuals, offers Niki a job if he wants to make "real money". To pay Harry's bills, Niki has no choice, and he helps them steal from Uri's client's safes "things they wouldn't notice are missing".  Of course, getting involved with criminals is never going to end well for Niki and it threatens to destroy what comfort he has in life and maybe take everyone else he loves down with him.

Woodall is very unassuming as Niki, at first, with Hoffman dominating each scene they're in together early on. But eventually Woodall is handed control and Niki becomes quite captivating in his quiet temperament, and the reality of his affliction (handled with superb sound design) is clearly conveyed to the audience at all times. Canadian director Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for his documentary on Alexei Navalni in 2022, proves he has an incredibly steady hand for directing a modestly budgeted dramatic thriller like this. In his debut narrative feature, Roher utilizes montages to perfect effect (time will tell if this is a signature move or just something stylistic for this feature, metering up with the film's soft jazzy piano score, and symphonic bits).

Tuner works very well as a character study but its crime element is unfortunately quite predictable, lacking a lot of real surprises. Thankfully Roher is more interested in the character than he is in the jobs Niki is assisting on, and so the segments of safecracking, for the most part, are pretty brisk and don't employ the tension of the risk of getting caught too heavily. There is one particular Chechov-ian item that presents itself early on, and the manner in which it goes off is such a deus ex machina that it borders on unforgivable...but just sits on that border.

Otherwise, this is an agreeable throwback to the kind of thriller we saw plenty of through the 70's, 80's and 90's, but have largely disappeared in the past two decades. We could do with more.

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I knew nothing about Exit 8 except the concept: a man gets lost in a maze of subway hallways searching for Exit 8, finding horrors along the way. I was in. I love subway tiles, and hallways and escape rooms, so this movie was beckoning me like a siren of the sea. 

In the film, our "lost man" is played by Kazunari Ninomiya, a seemingly hapless and perhaps depressed young man who doesn't seem ready for the world. We first meet him on a subway train during rush hour as he witnesses a man in a suit berate a young mother for bringing her crying baby on the train. Everyone's looking at their phones, and, after he puts his earbuds back in, so does he. When he gets off the train he receives a phone call from his ex. She's at the hospital and tells him she's pregnant. She doesn't know whether she wants to keep it or terminate the pregnancy, and is asking for his input. He doesn't know either. Not paying attention, he finds himself in an Z-shaped hallway that seems to repeat without end...the same man walking past him, the same adverts on the wall, the same lockers and photobooth....

And then he spies a sign, telling him that he needs to leave through Exit 8. If he spies an anomaly, turn back, and if there are no anomalies, keep going.

I didn't know Exit 8 was based off an indie video game sensation, but really it didn't take me long to discern such a thing, especially when the "rules" were introduced. What could have just been cheap horror, though, is so much more from director/writer Genki Kawamura (co-written with Kentaro Hirase). It's not just an endless maze of repeating tunnels, but a metaphor for repetitive cycles in life, of fearing change and indecision., alerting us to look for the differences, and that we need to embrace those differences to make it out the other end.

If it were just our "lost man" encountering terrifying anomalies, it would have been a fine movie, but it's not just that. There is a delicious surprise (SPOILER) in act 2, where the film completely pivots away from our "lost man" and instead follows the man he's passed dozens of times at this point, and we learn the "walking man's" story. Both men, however, encounter a young boy who they each think is a facet of this purgatory they're in, but come to learn (if not embrace) that the child is as trapped as they are and, maybe, has better instincts for getting out.

Though slight on story, and maybe light on horrors, I absolutely loved this movie. It was completely my thing.  The repetition encourages audience engagement, looking at the same hallway walls and wondering what's different...if anything, and knowing it could come down to something so easily overlooked as the fine text on one of the posters, or a tile placed askew (although, mercifully it's never that).

The sound design is as crucial as the visual design, and as integral to the repetition. It's obviously largely borrowed from the video game, but it's brought into "reality" so effectively. Ninomiya has such a soulful face that your empathy is immediately with him, and he conveys his emotions so blatantly and effectively. The "walking man" played by Yamato Kochi is intensely terrifying in his early scenes where the lost man turns around the find the walking man immediately in his face with a grin that'll make your skin crawl, but then it only takes Kochi seconds with the second act pivot to bring you over to sympathizing with his plight in the corridors.

The film creates a text that the video game never had, a reason for why our protagonist(s) are in this purgatory, and letting the audience know that they need to have a reason to get out. I feel like we can apply this to life somehow....

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I've made no secret out of enjoying cheesy romance movies and romantic comedies, but that's not universal approval of all of them. In fact, there are scant few romcoms I would consider good or worth watching again, and even fewer I actually want to watch in the first place. To some extent most romcoms I just tend to avoid because, in execution (if not conceptually), they're so cloying as to be repulsive.

In concept, Made of Honor should not be such a film. The story of a tomcat of a man who is best friends with a woman whom he learns after years and years that he's actually in love with her, only for her to turn up engaged before he can say anything...well, that sounds like a serviceable, if predictable romcom format, and not egregiously offensive. But show me that trailer, or even just the poster, and I'm steering clear like it's plague-bearing.

I never needed to see Made of Honor, there was nothing compelling me to watch it, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and after I finished watching a film on dvd, it turned up on cable when the player shut off. I spied Patrick Dempsey and his basketball-playing bro-pals (including Kadeem Hardison and Chris Messina) attempting to help the man navigate his emotions over his best friend Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) being away on a work trip and missing her so much he couldn't enjoy his many many dates with hot women in her absence.  It's a particular turning point in pop culture when men were allowed to support other men emotionally but only if it was in a really really butch situation, with like sports and/or alcohol, but points for letting them get there. But it treats these scenes as if they were comedy, not as if there's real emotional stakes at play which gets to what's so wrong with this film.... 

Made of Honor makes the biggest cardinal sin of the romantic comedy genre: it's not funny. It tries to be funny and fails pretty much every time. There's two possible reasons, and it's an and/or situation: casting and/or the director. 

Dempsey is cute, handsome and charming, but he's not innately funny. Ditto for Monaghan. Hardison and Messina both have comedic acting experience, and Monaghan's coterie of bridesmaids includes Busy Philipps and Whitney Cummings, but none of them squeeze out any real guffaws despite trying. 

Monaghan returns from her trip engaged to rugged Scotsman Kevin McKidd, who threatens Dempsey's masculinity in every way. Any attempt to one-up him ends in failure. Just as any attempt for either to be funny falls entirely flat.

There is a scene where Dempsey is going to meet Monaghan for the first time since her return home, only to be surprised by her new beau, and he smashes into a waiter and they topple to the floor, his bouquet of flowers everywhere (which he lies were never his). It's close to being a good pratfall. Later in the scene, after an awkward dinner, Dempsey gets up from his chair at an awkward moment and tumbles into the same waiter again. The whole sequence should be full of humour around the discomfort, complete with the pratfall starter and capper, but it doesn't take, like, at all. And that's direction. Director Welland seems to be too lost in finding an emotional center to really let the humour of the scene play, and its stars aren't gifted enough comedically to innately play up the humour and the emotion. 

But boy do they look good not being funny. Dempsey is real fit, and kinda dashing, while Monaghan is just so effortlessly pretty (with a team of make-up and wardrobe people putting great effort into that effortlessness).

Without the humour, this movie feels tedious, rehashing the same points over and over again. I don't know that Dempsey and Monaghan ever found the "friendship" dynamic this film needed to sell that part of it. They're just too good looking together and they play into the attraction even when it's not fully supposed to be there yet. This needed two decent-to-good looking comedic performers to pull this off. (Like Jason Segel and Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall...a far superior film, and one which I would definitely not sacrifice to put those leads into Made of Honor. What's a pairing that didn't happen... maybe like, Paul Rudd and Isla Fisher?)

There's both a good romance and good comedy waiting to happen in this script. It's been 20 years, maybe a remake is in order with a director and starring pair that can get it right.