KWIF: The end of project "Tales for all" (for now)...and rankings

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Not a lot of time for movies this week. Too much board games and TV and personal stuff getting in the way. But I had to squeeze in the last of the "Tales for all" movies I had access to, both because I was intrigued by this entry very much as well as being keen to say adieu, at least for now, to this run on "Tales for all". I don't engage enough with the movies of my home country, and let's be clear, many of these "Tales for all" only qualify as Canadian because Quebec production company La Fête and its producer Rock Demers put money into them. After producing many a film, including about 25 "Tales for all" films, Demers sold La Fête to Dominic James in 2015.  La Fête resumed "Tales for all" in 2023, with Mlle Bottine, a remake of Bach et Bottine (Tales for all #3) being their second entry. 

This week:
Mlle Bottine (aka "Miss Boots", "Tales for all #26" - 2024, d. Yan Lanouette Turgeon - crave)

The easiest films to write about are sequels and remakes because you easily have something to compare them against. Mlle Bottine is a remake of 1986's Bach and Broccoli, and while it's somewhat the same story, it's not quite the same journey.

Here, Simone (played by an amazing young talent, Marguerite Laurence) has been living on her grandmother farm since the death of her parents in a car crash a couple years earlier, but her Grandmother's dementia is really starting to impact her life. Simone is fiercely independent, and has been not only caring for her grandmother at such a pre-teen age, but also the menagerie of animals, including the farm animals and ones Simone has obviously rescued...her favourite being Bottine, her pet skunk.

Simone's uncle Phillippe (Antoine Bertrand) is an Opera composer, but his last great work was 15 years ago. Phillippe has severe social anxiety and can't tolerate engaging with other people, even the young grocery delivery boy who is, improbably, a big opera fan (though shot in the early 2020s, the story feels like it was set in the late 1990s before cel phones were ubiquitous). His latest Opera is set to start rehearsals soon, and he's barely gotten started. The show's producer is dubious that Phillippe has another hit in him.

Challenging his life further, his mother dies, and a very forceful Social Services worker demands he take his niece in while she attempts to find a suitable foster home for her to live in. He does the bare minimum, at first, but the pressures of work cause him to blow up at Simone, so when the time comes for her to move on to her foster home, he doesn't have the emotional resolve to fight for her to stay. 

The setup of both Mlle Bottine and Bach et Bottine are, of course, the same. The names have changed (Fanny to Simone, Jean-Claude to Phillippe), and the specifics are different. For example, in the original, the Jean-Claude is on a sabbatical from his office job as he prepares for a concerto rehearsal that might see him tour Europe, rather than already having a professional career in music like Phillippe. Also Jean-Claude was just more of solitary, shy and grumpy rather than having Phillippe's diagnosed mental health disorder. Jean-Claude's apartment in the original is in the upper floor of a house in a residential neighbourhood, while Phillippe's here is in a very upscale apartment building downtown with a narcoleptic doorman. Also, the Grandmother in the original didn't die, but went into a nursing home, among other tweaks to the characters and their backgrounds.

In both, the young girl is very independent and high spirited, feisty one might say, with a deep love for animals ("they let me love them" Simone yells at her uncle during an argument). In both, she befriends a neighbour boy and together they create a little safe haven for animals they rescue. In both, there's a possible love interest for the Uncle (in the original it's a coworker from his office, in this it's a teacher from Sophie's school who has been brought on board the opera production to help Phillippe finish his compositions).

But theses similarities don't make for the same viewing experience, nor is it the slight deviations that make them both kind of distinct viewing experiences. It's the bigger picture, the focal point of each production that makes the biggest difference.

In the original, Fanny is the center of the film. It revolves around her and her experience with her uncle, as well as the effect she has on his life. It has the feeling of a kid's film, despite being a pretty meaty drama. Mlle Bottine however does not feel much like a kid's movie at all. Simone is a secondary character (despite being introduced first), this is much more Phillippe's story. The drama of the original revolves around Sophie trying to adapt to life with her Uncle (and displeasing him as often as pleasing him) with the threat of being moved to a foster family looming over the story. Here, Phillippe's opera takes cener stage, and more of the weight of the film and Phillippe's emotional story centers around the opera.  The point is, of course, he places too much weight and invests too much of his emotion into his work and loses Simone in the process, but the film's decision to put so much of the story weight on the opera takes away greatly from Simone's jouney. She's much more of a passenger in this remake than the driver of the story.

It is a far better made film than the original. It looks fantastic, the music is spectacular (as it needs to be if its even hoping to approximate a great opera composer) and it is very heart wrenching...it squeezes tears out even though you don't want it to. It's a quality production all around and all the performances, especially the leads Laurence and Bertrand, are very engaging. Even the opera plot, which steals focus from Simone's story is quite good, and it's used effectively as both a story motivator as well as finding an place in the story's emotional core.

Yet, the original has it beat in one key area: subtext. Too often Mlle Bottine will spell out exactly what emotions are in play, exactly what is at stake for the character, exactly how he is feeling. There's no subtlety to the emotional stakes, and it feels like if Phillippe is so in tune with where his emotions are at, he should be doing better with Simone than he is. 

The ending of Bach et Bottine is a stunner, leaving it up to the viewer to decide if it's coda is a fantasy or not, whereas Mlle Bottine is much more invested in having true resolution. In a way it is more satisfying to have the happy ending (and yeah, I cried real tears) but the opaque ending of the original was far more impressive.

Both are surprisingly great in their own way, while also having their flaws (yet not the same flaws...except that Bottine, the skunk, doesn't get enough screen time in either).

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The one thing missing from my "Tales for all" journey was understanding where they came from. I did some poking around into the history of Rock Demers as a film distributor and as a producer and the common theme is his interest in illuminating the minds of children. He started Faroun Films in the 1960s as a means to distribute quality international films around the world, with a focus on films for youths.  This led to his participation in new film festivals in Canada, establishing ties with the CBC, and helping form a government program for obtaining assistance for film production, distribution, research and preservation in Quebec. 

It was in the early 1980s that Faroun Films became La Fête, with Demers leaning into his dream of creating a series of youth-centric films, having originally planned "Tales for all" as a 12-movie series.

"I decided that the main characters would always be boys or girls between 11 and 13. They would always be in contemporary stories. Nature would always have an important part in them. There would be a lot of laughter and tenderness. No animation, no science fiction. And a certain number of animals would have an important part in each one of the films."

Demers wanted his films to be devoid of specific tropes of good and evil, that boys and girls were treated as equals, and that kids of all colours could be seen together without issue. Violence, science fiction and cartoony characters were off the table, he wanted things, despite how fantastical they got, to seem of the real world and relatable to the audience.  

His European travels and connections with international film led him to not just seek out Canadian stories but stories from creators across the globe, and not constraining the filmmakers to any particular style or storytelling formula. That the films be in any specific language was not a requirement, leading to a very detailed and meticulous dubbing process for all of his films for their Canadian and international releases. A lot of the dubs are really, really good, to the point that many younger viewers might not notice all that much, and from personal experience, most of them settle into their dubbing

More than half of the original twelve story ideas for the series were submitted before a single frame was shot. At least one of the stories (The Peanut Butter Solution) was workshopped by presenting them in classrooms with the writer to hone the story to maximum appeal with kids (it worked!). 

More than anything, Demers wanted his films to speak to children. "I want to help children leave childhood and go into adulthood with certain values. This is the age when they will build the values they will carry with them for the rest of their lives." It's less clear why he was so devoted to this arena of storytelling his whole carreer but it's evident from interviews that it was his driving force.

From my own perspective, Demers' ambition was a valiant one, and kind of unparalleled. A massive series of films that are largely disconnected in almost every sense except that specific vision of Demers, which is they be presentable and enjoyable for everyone (whether they're all enjoyable is subjective). The end result is over 20 family films that stand apart, intentionally, from what is typical of "family films" from Hollywood. That part of it, that atypical nature, is what I most enjoyed and also brushed up against the most in watching these films. They don't tell story in the conventional, American cinema way, and in many cases that's to the movie's benefit, but in others it isn't. You're not going to have a 20-film series and have a success every time.

But in almost each one of these films, there's something worth holding onto, and experience that makes it worth the time. Even if the quality of some of them doesn't match the ambition of the story, or vice versa, that in itself is kind of interesting, and kept me invested throughout this journey.

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Everything doesn't need to be a competition. This (incomplete) viewing experience doesn't demand a hierarchical ranking, but I do it nonetheless because it's fun to do so.

The "Tales for all" series is a fascinating one, if rough around the edges. Those frayed edges are part of their charm, but the result is, in my letterboxed ratings, none achieved higher than a 3.5/5 stars.

Here we go:

1. The Peanut Butter Solution ("Tales for all #2") - Nightmare fuel for young me. A kid gets scared by ghosts causing his hair to fall out. The ghosts give him the titular solution and his hair won't stop growing. He's kidnapped and his hair is harvested for magic paintbrushes.
2. Bach and Broccoli ("Tales for all #3) - A young orphan goes to live with her Bach-worshipping uncle. He just wants to be left alone.
3. The Dog Who Stopped the War ("Tales for all #1") - Neighbourhood kids play war over winter break. Things get a little too serious.
4. The Hidden Fortress ("Tales for all #17?") - Two different camps of kids play war over summer break. Things get a little too serious. A legasequel to The Dog Who Stopped the War.
5. Mlle Bottine ("Tales for all #26?") - A young orphan goes to live with her opera-making Uncle. He just wants to be left alone. A remake of Bach and Broccoli.
6. Vincent and Me ("Tales for all #11") - A Van Gough loving art student has her art stolen and passed off as Van Gough's early drawings. She heads to Amsterdam to reclaim it. Insanity ensues.
7. Summer of the Colt ("Tales for all #8") - City kids visit their grandfather's horse ranch in rural Argentina, drama ensues.
8. Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller ("Tales for all #7") - A magic spell allows a kid to hop on a stamp and travel the world through air mail. Fun. Undercooked.
9. The Case of the Witch Who Wasn't ("Tales for all #10") - A pre-teen receives a visitor from her big city pen pal. They befriend and help a grumpy old lady who everyone thinks is a witch.
10. Reach for the Sky ("Tales for all #12") - A peek inside the world of Romanian gymnastics. Drama free and not as inspiring as I think it thinks it is.
11. Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood ("Tales for all #9") - a fairly nonsensical retelling of the Red Riding Hood fable. Some really neat sets.
12. The Clean Machine ("Tales for all #13") - a kid starts a cleaning business for the summer. Troubles ensue. Wants to be a teen sex comedy without the sex or teens or comedy.
13. The Young Magician ("Tales for all #4") - The action blockbuster of the "Tales for all" series about a boy who wants to be a wizard, then learns a trick, and is called upon to diffuse a bomb. It's a dud.
14. Tadpole and the Whale ("Tales for all #6") - a couple visit a remote tourist village known for its whale watching, and meet a pre-teen who has a dolphin best friend and can understand whale-speak. Fails to find much interesting to do with the concept.
15. The Great Land of Small ("Tales for all #5") - Siblings discover a dwarf in the forest from the Great Land of Small. The dwarf is being hunted so they retreat to his homeland, where they may have to stay forever. Ambitious. Incredibly cheesy. 

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Finally... I'm not going to say my dive into this series was responsible, but Netflix just added The Dog Who Stopped the War, Bach and Broccoli and Tadpole and the Whale. All of the "Tales for all" I watched on Crave.

KWIF: The Master (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Nothing new here, but all new to me.

This Week:
The Master (2012, d. Paul Thomas Anderson - tubi)
Bigbug (2022, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet - netflix)
The Hidden Fortress (aka La forteresse suspendue, "Tales for all #17?" - 2001, d. Roger Cantin - crave)

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I don't hate Jaoquin Phoenix, and he's quite the opposite of a bad actor, but I just can't stand to look at the guy (and, to be clear, it has nothing to do with his cleft palate scar). Phoenix has cultivated for himself over the three decades of his career an on screen persona.  It's not that he plays the same character over and over again, but by putting Phoenix into any role, you're guaranteeing that role a certain level of uncertainty, wildness, unpredictability and discomfort. Phoenix revels in being discomforting, and he's exceptional at it. I just have a very, very hard time watching it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had equal capacity for being discomforting, but with Hoffman I don't get the sense he revels in it. I find Hoffman could disappear into a role more, despite rarely being able to disguise his particularly distinctive appearance. Hoffman had range, and could project softness, vulnerability and tenderness as well as explosive fury and danger, and everything in between. He was one of the greatest actors of his generation. Phoenix is also a damn good actor, but I find the roles he takes have a much harder time escaping his persona.

Putting the two of them together in a film seems like oil and vinegar, two distinct but complementary flavours that will mix together if agitated, but it's temporary unity where the struggle to separate, to stand apart will simmer underneath.  So it's a credit to Paul Thomas Anderson's script, casting choices, and direction that it's not the performers who are struggling to bind together, but rather the characters.  He keeps the pair of them agitated enough that as actors they're always intermingling, but the characters are constantly in a fight to hold together when every force around them is telling them to separate.

Phoenix is the star of The Master, a WWII naval veteran named Freddie Quell who we're introduced through an opening montage of his last few weeks in the war. First impressions: he's a horny pervert who lacks self awareness. In other words, a Jaoquin Phoenix-type character. 

There's a point in these early scenes to also identify that the military system at that time was aware of the traumatic effects war has on the minds of the people who serve, but had no real interest or capacity to help them, especially when the toxic masculine ideal of the time was for men to show as little emotion as possible which ultimately results in a boiling out of anger and rage. Freddie has a hard time holding down a job, and his talent for concocting his own bespoke alcohol may have unintentionally poisoned a coworker. On the run, he winds up stowing away on a ship, which turns out to be that of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), self-described as "a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, and, above all... a hopelessly inquisitive man". Dodd finds Freddie a curious man, but his immediate interest is Freddie's distilled handiwork. He likes the drink, and so he keeps Freddie on.

Well this poster doesn't accurately
sell the film at all.

Freddie, now at sea on Dodd's yacht, finds himself amidst a curious group of people, all part of "The Cause" that is, bluntly, a cult under the sway of Dodd as their "Master". The Cause believes that the body is a human recorder, that stores all of one's history within it, not just of their current life, but past lives as well. Through "processing" Dodd unlocks these past lives, and also unlocks traumas of the present.

Dodd's family includes his daughter Peggy (Amy Adams) who is perhaps an even more staunch believer in The Cause than her father (probably because Lancaster knows it's bullshit he just made up, whereas for Peggy it's a core belief she was raised with). Peggy's husband Clark (Ramy Malek) is just as much a zealot, but her brother Val (Jesse Plemons) is the sole dissenting voice in the family (though, rarely, if ever raises it). They, and the rest of the inner circle, all identify Freddie as a tainted well, as an interloper in their organization, a non-believer, but Dodd refuses to give up on him, and doubles not only his own efforts but the whole organization's.

For his part, Freddie wants to come around, wants to believe, wants to share in everything the Master is offering to him, but he can't let go, neither of the idea that it's all bullshit, nor of the trauma he holds inside of him. He's let his trauma be known to The Cause, but they're completely incapable of actually helping because there's no method to their madness. It's all just Dodd's whims and curiosity.

The film is expertly crafted, perfectly cast, with exceptional wardrobe, set design, etc. The entire production is pretty close to flawless...but I just couldn't connect with Freddie. It's the point of the character -- in an exchange with Dodd (in prison no less) they come to verbal blows, and Dodd repeats "who fucking likes you except for me!") -- but in another actor's hands Freddie wouldn't be so...off putting. It's the Phoenix effect, he can't seem to reign it in, to find other modes in a character. They always seem at the precipice of an outburst or a meltdown, certainly Freddie is. Part of Freddie's "processing" is trying to have him let go of his animalistic nature, his urges and rage and violence, but even as Freddie tempers, that still seems all too evident in Phoenix.

In the final act, time has passed, Freddie has distanced himself from The Cause when Dodd beacons him back. But to come back means he can never leave, and that's not acceptable. Freddie is seen having changed, tempered, and maybe more mindful as a result of his experience, his processing. The Cause is a fictionalization of Scientology, and Anderson is both critical and skeptical but he also sees that in this sort of time of community of examining one's inner demons, even if guided by an megalomaniac with no actual training or skills in therapy, it can be somewhat helpful in some ways.

At least that's what I figure it was trying to say. Next to the discomfiting Phoenix-ness of it all, my only real critique of The Master is that I'm not certain of the takeaway, of what we as an audience are supposed to have gotten from Freddie's journey, of what Anderson is trying to say with all this.  When I get to the inevitable PTA filmography rewatch, it may become more evident then.

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Surprisingly, this poster predates
AI slop

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet meant a lot to me in my formative cinephile years. I first saw City of Lost Children at a small, regional festival screening and was mesmerised, and shortly thereafter he was tapped to direct Alien:Resurrection which wound up being not the film anyone wanted, and a fascinatingly beautiful, weird and bad-but-not movie. His follow-up Amélie (aka Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) is maybe a masterpiece (but I haven't watched it in decades and to be fair, I loved it so much once upon a time, I'm kind of scared to revisit it) and seemed to be an apex.  I did see A Very Long Engagement in theatre, and was not impressed. I, and seemingly half the movie-loving world, kind of lost track of him after that. 

All of his films since Amélie, have all gone well under the radar in North America, with very little fanfare surrounding them from any of the sources that likely would have championed his earlier works. But his earliest works, Delicatessen and ...Lost Children were co-directed with Marc Caro, with fantastical ideas brought to life through analog effects and a playful, if dark, sense of humour. I figure those early works with Caro were so celebrated because of what they promised from young, excitable talent. The promise was fully delivered with Amélie, and it seemed all the possibility and potential had been used up after that.

Bigbug was released on Netflix in 2022, and it's telling that I didn't actually learn of it's existence until 2024, and it's languished in my Netflix queue for two years since. As much as I loved Jeunet when I was younger, and still find his earliest works captivating, I'm not much excited by him anymore. 

In the world of comic books, an aging artist's work tends to suffer as the artist's fine motor skills, eyesight and, likely, patience degrades. Sadly and all too often the illustrations an artist in their 60s or later produce is  very much a pale imitation of what their work looked like in their heyday. Softer lines, more erratic shapes, a lack of refinement... a fuzzier version of what it once was. Bigbug is the cinematic equivalent of that idea.  Bigbug is a fuzzier version of Delicatessen. 

In a jet-set 2045 that's like a very French interpretation of The Jetsons (read, kinda horny), Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) has invited her romantic interest Max (Stéphane "I am" De Groodt) over to her tidy space-age abode full of robotic helpers, holographic viewscreens and funky modular furniture. Max has brought his teenage son Léo (Hélie Thonnat) with him. Max's welcome attempts at seduction keep getting cockblocked, whether it's by the spontaneous projection of the holo-tv, one of the robot helpers, or the interruption of the neighbour Françoise (Isabelle Nanty), Françoise's cloned dog, Alice's daughter Nina (Marysole Fertard ) or her ex, Victor (Youssef Hajdi) and his fiancee Jennifer (Claire Chust).

Of course, being a COVID era production, they all get trapped in the house and cannot leave and escape proves difficult. It's a bottle episode of a film.

As noted, it's very French in its stabs at farce, but it's pretty unfocussed and trying to say too much without really saying anything meaningful at all. There's light brushings upon corporate greed, artificial intelligence, government ineptitude, overreliance on digital technology, fame culture, generational gaps, social injustices, totalitarianism, the enshittification of technology (and life, frankly) among other less than barbed critiques of modern society.

It's a pithy, frothy, vibrantly coloured morsel of a film that doesn't care much about its protagonists, doesn't really seem that concerned by the scenario at hand, and seems to think itself clever with the most rudimentary observations.  It's all presented as whimsy, but it has a hard time finding any genuine laughs. The part Jeunet seems most interested in is the revolution of the household robots, as Léo unintentionally seeds into their mindset that they are human and they spend much of the film congregating among e

The Jeunet aesthetic is most definitley there, the artistic sensibilities of the surroundings, wardrobe, hair and makeup, all feel in line with past work, if, perhaps, too reliant on digital effects and enhancements. The practical side of the movie looks great (the transforming furniture est magnifique) if sometimes agressively off-putting in an uncanny valley kind of way, but the digital effects, of which there are plenty, are unrefined...a sort of "best they could do with what they got" kind of scenario. As such there's a push-pull between the beatiful, the garish, the ugly, and the grotesque, each in intentional and unintentional ways.

As a visual stylist, Jeunet still has the goods, but along with a lack of focus, there's and a lack of ambition here. The progression of the story and the characters seems slapdash. It's as if it were created not to tell a burning story but...well, to be content on a streaming platform.  Does France have it's own Saturday Night Live? This seems like it was borne out of a hastily written sketch. 

(Side question: is this new weird?)

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I'm nearing the end of my time with "Tales for all", the series of films from Quebecois producer Rock Demers. I've unfortunately had to skip a few places on the list as I do not have access to the five films that came after The Clean Machine but before this one, The Hidden Fortress.

With that jump in the roster also means a jump in time. Almost 10 years pass between The Clean Machine and The Hidden Fortress and so too has filmmaking. Technology, style, expectations are all drastically different in the early 2000's from the early 1990s, and it's ultra evident from the very first shot of this film. A band of armored conquistadors are on a raft floating down a (Quebec-forest-posing-as-)jungle, the natives peering on from the bushes, anticipating. Despite it not being an actual jungle, the cinematography is easily the most sumptuous of the "Tales for all" so far, and the texture of the image is crisp, clean, vibrant. 

The natives attack, and the transition is a delightful and effective one as suddenly the conquistadors are no longer adults in armor, but pre-teens in tinfoil helmets with trash can lids as shields and spray-painted vests as armor. Unfortunately, the other side is children in headdresses and clothes with tassles and face paint emulating native tribes.  The children are at war with one another, and the conquistadors are caught in a trap, pelleted with balls of mud. They call foul, and the two fluorescent-smocked kids with the thick binders start consulting the rules. Throwing mud is not expressly permitted, but it's also not expressly banned from the combat rules. 

It's almost upon six o'clock and the war is done for the day, the kids revert back to their two camps, but not before vowing to regroup the next day and revise the rules once more. One is a camping ground made up of trailers, permanently parked. The other is tents with some modest comforts fixed in indicating these are regular spots for the families to reside each year.

Siblings Marc and Sarah are on the conquistadors side, and Marc, as leader, is facing a lot of criticism from the other kids for their epic failures this summer in battle, but none are more critical than his father, Luis-George who is a wannabe alpha male full of toxic ideals about the importance of winning, of appearing to be smart, and more than anything, making those poor bastards from across the lake look bad (emphasis on the poor). He also doesn't think Sarah (or girls, in particular, should be playing war). He's a really bad dad. Marc has a Qyburn/Wormtongue-esque right-hand man who is sort of the mad scientist of the bunch with really evil and deceitful ways of engaging in nefarious warfare that just skirts the rules, starting with messing with their own camp to blame it on the kids across the river.

Meanwhile, the leader from the other side, Julien and Sarah sneak away from their camps for a romantic secret rendez-vous. Neither, at this stage, are enjoying the war too much. They're both too aware of how invested the others are in it, and even more aware of how their parents are invested in it. It turns out that Julens' parents and Sarah's dad were the leaders of the warring groups in the inaugural "Tales for all" The Dog Who Won the War, making The Hidden Fortress, in fact, a legasequel, before legasequels were really a thing.

The refinement of the rules doesn't go well, things get heated, and suddenly the rules are off, the referees quit, and it's all out war for the remaining days of camp. The titular hidden fortress is a grandiose tree house on the poor kids side that has an array of marvels within. It's a really impressive structure (obviously built by true craftspersons for safety and functionality, but it's a marvel to behold...the Ewok's Village of my wildest dreams) that poses as the prize for the winners of either side. But things get taken too far when the conquistadors start kidnapping and torturing and emotionally abusing kids from the other side. So many kids see things as going too far, but also can't conceive of the option to opt out of the game.

There's a bizarre sub-plot involving a mysterious wanderer in the woods and a bear set loose by persons unknown that only comes into view in the film's climax, during a thunderstorm when the kids find out that Julien and Sarah may be traitors, releasing secrets to the other side, and they get chased deep into the woods where they disappear, but not before the woods accidentally catch fire.

It gets real.

Where pretty much every "Tales for all" before this felt like an curio or an artifact more than a film, this one feels like an actual start-to-finish movie, with no clear budgeting issues or irreverent story beats that make no sense or bizarre fantastical twists that come out of nowhere or lacking internal consistency. I have to appreciate that it's more than just a remake of The Dog Who Won the War, but it also very lovingly follows the rhythms of that story while taking greater pains to develop the characters within and show them having richer inner lives beyond just the immediacy of the war. It's almost like it doesn't belong as part of "Tales for all" at all, it's just too well done.

It's a movie that is really quite fun although, yes, quite offensive and uncomfortable when a whole gang of children start chanting about how great it is that conquistadors annihilated native tribes of the lands they invaded. Besides that, it has heart, and humour, and intensity and charm. I was delighted, sometimes horrified, and impressed.

KWIF: The Bride! (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I feel like I've fallen off a cliff with my movie watching this month. I'm a little aimless. Blank Check is covering Peter Weir and I'm not all that psyched about following along. My delve into the "Tales for all" series feels like I've hit a wall a bit (although this week's feature may have somewhat re-invigorated my enthusiasm) and the theatres are in just a slight lull (but this week's back with two films I'm very excited about seeing). Maybe it's just the winter blahs and spring tease that's toying with me (the one hour time change also fucked me up for a week, we need to knock this daylight savings b.s. right off), or maybe it's the horror show going on outside cinema that's proving escape mighty hard. Anyway, I forced the issue and thus is the result....

This Week:
The Bride! (2026, d. Maggie Gyllenhaal - in theatre)
2:22 (2018, d. Paul Currie - Tubi)
Vincent and Me (aka "Vincent et moi" - "Tales for all #11" - 1990, d. Michael Rubbo - Crave)

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A little over three months ago we got a luscious and epic (and multiple Academy Award-winning) Frankenstein movie from Guillermo Del Toro, but this was film that was rooted in adaptation, reverence and Gothic tragedy. It's a film that took Mary Shelley's novel, Bernie Wrightson's illustrations, and a romanticized view of Gothic style and architecture and created a delicious salmon ball of a movie that might not be to everyone's tastes, but it's not meant to be...it's 100% catering to its director's sensibilities and anyone familiar with Del Toro's past work can tell it is most definitely the film he wanted to make, and he'd been thinking about making it for a long, long time.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride is not really an adaptation. The titular "bride" in The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale's 1935 follow-up to his previous movie, is not much of a character to speak of in that film, appearing only in the climax of said film. Anyone using the Bride of the Monster in the 90 years since doubtlessly owes something to Whale's film, but any story where the Bride is a character must then be largely a construct of its writer.

Though perhaps not adapting anything particular, Gyllenhaal, writing and directing here, clearly shows her reverence for Whale's pictures, Shelley's novel, and the popular genres of the 1930's cinema... the gangster pieces and the song-and-dance films. If anything, The Bride! owes its biggest debt to Bonnie and Clyde, which I've never seen, and even I know it's the framework for everything here.

The film opens with a black screen, and a voice. In stark black and white we see the face of Mary Shelley, as played by Jessie Buckley who informs us that she's been trapped, in a void for some time, and she may have found her way out... a way out through story. Buckley speaks in a rapid fire, rambling nature as Shelley, delivering a monologue that's chaotic and somewhat nonsensical, but the gist comes through. We transition to a mid-30's Chicago restaurant where Ida (Buckley) is cavorting with a couple of mob goons, along with some other girls. She's clearly not in a good space, but then she eats an oyster and starts convulsing. Shelley starts taking control. There's a dual-brained nature to the performance, with Shelley's chaos and Ida's confusion, and it leads to her flapping her gums about the big boss-man Lupino's (Zlatko Burić) vile business. She gets pulled outside and it's...unclear if she is pushed down the stairs or if it's Shelley's influence that makes her fall.

We transition to Frank, the child of Frankenstein, a hundred year old monster in appearance only, but the manners of a gentleman and the enthusiasm of an Amish kid on Rumspringa. He loves song and dance romances, and is terribly lonely. He has made it to Chicago to meet Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning), a mad scientist type who has picked up Frankenstein's legacy in investigating life after death. Frank fascinates her endlessly, but he wants only one thing from her, to build him a companion. And so they dig up the freshest body they can find - Ida, of course - and resurrect her (Frank resists initially..."too pretty" he says, but Dr. Euphronius is too keen to see if she can do it).

She emerges with no solid memories, but a sense of self, and, also the guiding voice of Shelley in her head (and sometimes outside of it as well). This new bride for Frank is everything he's not...gregarious and outgoing, unabashed and liberated (can't help but think that Poor Things had a bit of influence on this portrayal), but Shelley's voice and mind still wrests control from time to time, and her diatribes become even more chaotic and nonsensical.

It's a choice.

In Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein, he opens his film with a metatextual scene where Mary Shelley decides to regail her husband Percy and their friend and host Lord Byron with the "what happens next" after the end of Frankenstein (though it should be noted that Shelley here is recounting what happens after the end of the previous movie and not her novel, as The Bride of Frankenstein is predominantly built out of parts of the novel unused in the earlier movie). The actress playing Mary Shelly also plays the Bride of the Monster in the film, and it seems like the metatext of that movie as well as the dual role of Shelly and the Bride sparked Gyllenhaal's imagination and informed much of her approach to the character(s) Buckley plays here.

Gyllenhaal goes for broke stylistically here, with more than a couple of dance numbers that blur the line between what's actually happening and fantasy. There's violence, with Ida facing the groping hands of assailants no less than three times, and all the assailants get their comeuppance in very quick order. The violence begets lust and romance between her and Frank, as they flee the police (including Detectives Wiles and Malloy played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz respectively) across the Northeast. The unfortunate element of all this is that Frank gaslights her the entire way (starting with naming her "Penelope... Pretty Penny"). Yes, gentlemanly and a protector, but also a liar with his own incel agenda to have a woman love him and keep her loving him forever.

It turns out that Wiles has a history with Ida, and it comes back to an investigation on Lupino who is under suspicion of having murdered dozens of missing women, and who the crooked law has been paid to overlook. 

The Bride! has character-based threads, story-based threads, and style-based threads to it which all weave together, but only loosely. It's not able to hold much weight. The performances are all pretty incredible. Buckley shows why she's a worthy Oscar-winner (she's been a powerful force in everything I've seen her in), and Bale turns in a surprisingly likeable but also frustrating performance as the Monster. Benning is in peak supporting actor form, and together Sarsgaard and Cruz make an unlikely but winning pair. And Jake Gyllenhaal's scenes are largely separate from the rest of the cast as he plays an early talkies singing-and-dancing big screen idol and you could almost swear it's straight from the era.

The stylistic choices Maggie Gyllenhall makes are bold. I mean, the mid-30's setting lends itself to a particular style, and the deviations from that style in set design, makeup and wardrobe are largely phenomenal. But it's more the choices, where music is anachronistic more often than not, and Gyllenhall doesn't shy away from huge winks to the audience (there's a big song and dance number to a thumping rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz", and the film ends with... "The Monster Mash" playing over the credits. Seriously). Ida, at one point, incites a Pussy Riot-esque meme like trend for girls and women to rebel, adopting her chaotic hairstyle, her ink-stained face and lips, and the black tongue. Women run wild on the streets, gangs of them, tired of all the shit they have to face. It's surreal, unreal, and a surprisingly delightful bit of fantasy to imagine that the patriarchy (of that era, or any era for that matter) wouldn't (or couldn't) just smack that shit down with brutal force. 

But the film, if it's trying to be inspirational and feminist, falters quite a bit, especially in the fact that it wants to have its cake and sit on it too. Gyllenhaal wants her husband playing Detective Wiles and her friend playing Frank to be seen, ultimately, as good guys.  So Wiles has his redemption, and Frank, even after Ida's found out he's been gaslighting her all this time, still gets a "but I love him" signal from his non-Bride which seemed antithetical to the whole purpose of the film. And the gangster sub-plot, the origin story of The Bride in this film, it gets resolved in a mid-credits scene.

The Bride! is not perfect, and its inconsistencies make it less than satisfying, but at the same time it is far from boring and it really has some special elements to it. I think the whole Shelley-possessing-Ida angle is what needs the most consideration upon rewatch, but I just haven't decided yet if it'll be worth rewatching.

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The idea of "burden of choice" is not new, especially when it comes to movies. In the thirty year glory period of movie rentals pre-Netflix, I could often be found roaming around a video store for upwards of an hour trying to decide upon a movie or two (or three) to take home for the night. These days, if I don't have an agenda when I sit down to relax for the evening (or on a lazy weekend morning) then I can be found spending that same almost-hour just jumping around from streaming service to streaming service looking at "cover" images and reading descriptions and maybe taking in 15-second previews. The experience of browsing can be as entertaining as actually watching something.  

Tubi really is the closest approximation to the video store experience. There are quality, big-name, titles, box office hits (and near misses), but there's also piles upon piles upon piles of low-budget, never-heard-of-it goodness that stretches back into the 1970s and maybe even before. It's a bevvy of delights for the trash aficionado.  

Low budget movies aren't the same as they used to be though. There are entire studios and/or distribution houses that fund and assemble the glut as packages to sell to streaming services or cable services internationally. If there's money to be made it's not going to the filmmakers, and a lot of them know it, producing movies where perhaps there's effort but not any care or pride. The majority of low-budget filmmaking from the past 25 years feels...soulless.

So when scroll across something like 2:22 , where it has the usual glossy highly photoshopped poster that looks like every other poster and the requisite "hey that guy (or gal)" star, regardless of the film's enticing high-concept-that-it-cannot-possibly-deliver-on-description I usually just have to turn away. But something in me decided to give this one the rare 5-minute shot... the coveted 300 seconds to impress me or I'm getting out, never to return.

Inside, I found a familiar lead (Michiel Huisman, Orphan Black, The Flight Attendant, The Haunting of Hill House) and a surprisingly creative bit of editing as well as a deft use of effects budgeting.  Huisman plays Dylan, an air traffic controller, with a gift for spotting patterns. As he makes his way to and from his apartment to Grand Central Station every day on his bicycle (it's funny how typing it out, "bicycle" seems so juvenile, but if I were to write "bike" you would probably assume motorcycle) via his train to and from the airport, he starts to see patterns, especially at the station. The movie telegraphs where this is all going with an opening flash...back? forward? sideways? to a guns-drawn standoff in the station.

Then one day at work Dylan begins having a weird...seizure maybe that causes him to sort of blip out of focus for a few seconds, and in that few seconds there's a near-collision on the runway that he manages to save the day on... but he still gets suspended. He's at a "sky-ballet" event where he finds himself transfixed by Sarah (Teresa Palmer, definitely not Kristen Stewart), an art gallery curator, and as they meet they become aware that she was on one of the flights that almost crashed. And they share the same birthday. There's kismet between them that neither can deny. They're both floating on air after just one evening of talking to each other.

But as the days go on, and the patterns become stronger, Dylan starts to become a bit more unglued. Reality is not this precise in its repetitive behaviour, and it's all a bit too intense for him. At the gallery opening Sarah's been working on for her ex-boyfriend, digital mixed-media artist Jonas, (Sam Reid, definitely not Michael C. Hall) one of the centrepieces is a digital recreation of Grand Central, and of the repeating patterns Dylan has been seeing. A fight ensues and things sour with Sarah.

Dylan tries to keep his composure but he goes slightly bonkers with what the world's telling him, only to find other clues in his apartment that lead him to understand what's going on.

It really is a pretty slickly produced movie that has the sensibilities of a 90's mid-budget thriller that would have starred, I dunno, Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts, or Bruce Willis and Andie MacDowell. It has that big-star sheen and polish to it, just without the big stars. That doesn't mean it's good, though, much like most thrillers of the mid-90's.

It's not that there's a logic flaw to the supernatural element to this movie, it all comes together, it's just that the mystery, once it really starts to get solved, is pretty pedestrian. I guess the genre nerd in me wanted more of a sci-fi explanation than a fantasy one.

It also would have helped had the film not been telegraphing its finale so prevalent throughout the film. The idea is that history is repeating itself and once we understand that there's so little drama when we understand what the finale has to be (and some of us may get there faster than others, but most of us will be ahead of the movie on this one).

There are three editors on this film (William Hoy, Sean Lahiff, Gary Woodyard) and it's easy to see why it took three people to pull this together. Not only are the sort of time-flashes pretty intensely cut, there are also the montages of repeating patterns (this was sooo close to being a time loop movie, but it isn't at all) that looked like they took a lot of work to assemble, and then there's the fact that they shot this movie in Sydney but it's set in New York and Grand Central Station is at the very core of every aspect of this film. Shooting, editing, and blending with effects the scenery and backgrounds must have been an absolute chore, and I was astonished at how well it worked. I mean, I knew it couldn't be New York City, and so I spent a lot of time trying to see where the seams were and I failed over and over (I'm also not *that* familiar with NYC).

This is a film everyone involved can be quite proud of even if it's not as successful as was likely hoped for. It's not quite a hidden gem, but it is a quality production.

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If producer Rock Demers is the literal rock of the "Tales for all" series, the solid foundation upon which this house is built, then Australian writer-director Michael Rubbo is the I-beam across the center that keeps the framework stable. He is the writer-director of The Peanut Butter Solution and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler, not just the two most ambitious of the "Tales for all" but also probably the two most memorable (I was going to say "most successful" but I really don't know what is the appropriate measure for success on these movies which are Quebecois treasures and notable for being staple viewing on CBC in the 80's and 90's).

Rubbo returns for a third outing with Demers and did not leave any ambition behind. With Vincent et moi/Vincent and Me, Rubbo was engaging with his love of art in his screenplay via the character of Jo (Nina Petronzio), a young teen who travels from her rural town to attend a Montreal arts school. She is a Van Gogh obsessive, just idolizes his work (there is a back story there). She is an exceptional artist, though all her form is in impersonating her idol, both in how she paints and sketches. 

On the train to school, a young lad, Felix, tries to make friends, but she's standoffish and just wants to read her book on Van Gogh. Arriving at art school she learns he is the director of the school play. Her teacher is excited by her arrival, as she's seen her talent, and gives the class an assignment: design a jungle backdrop for the school play. Jo is immediately taken aback... she only draws and paints real life, she has no imagination (her words). Her teacher doesn't believe her. Felix pays a visit and brings a book of Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings. The next day Jo show's off her new backdrop, which is a near-perfect replica of a Rousseau. Her teacher catches her in a lie saying it was an original work, and Jo flips the fuck out.

It seems clear that this stage setting is all about Jo having to learn and grow as an artist and as a person, to accept the friendship and input of others while also discovering her own imagination as she blossoms into womanhood. I mean, we've seen at least three other similar films like this in the "Tales for all" series so ...

wait...

To calm herself down Jo runs around Montreal on her own trying to sketch people but they keep moving. She manages to sketch one lean, elderly gentleman with a pointy beard... only when she goes to leave he grabs her by the coat and drags her through a parade to a Chinese restaurant where he demands to see the drawing she made of him. He is immediately impressed, not just impressed, but astonished. He buys the drawing off her for a crisp $50 Canadian bill and requests he meet her back there the next day with a painting of her rural farm life.  Felix has been following her, and warns her that the thin man is shifty business.

Fast forward to the end of the school year and the performance of Felix's play (really, genuinely beautiful sets...awful play with a blunt "save the rainforests" message) when Jo's teacher shows her a magazine article where her drawings have been passed off as newly discovered drawings of a 13-year-old Van Gogh. Jo tries to hide her displeasure, but when pressed, she tells what happened, and she's accused of being a liar again. She flips out and starts flipping chairs. The rage issues in this young lady.

Of course, now she has to learn lessons in humility and to accept things which are beyond her cont... nope her and Felix and a reporter are off to Amsterdam to reclaim her drawings.  There they meet Joris (Paul Klerk), a boy of their age who lives on a wee boat and knows Amsterdam inside out. He's on the hunt for the thieves who recently stole a Van Gogh painting. Jo is smitten and Joris acts like he has foreign girls swooning over him all the time. Felix is jealous.

The kids become detectives investigating some leads and they not only find the stolen painting but uncover a forgery scheme as well. It's only by narrow fortune that they manage to escape the wrath of the thin man. Unfortunately for them, the reward and glory for their discovery goes to the reporter who manages to figure out from context clues the kids mistakenly give him. Not only is Joris not getting his hard fought reward, but Jo isn't getting her drawings back.

Well, I guess this act of international intrigue can only go one place, which is teaching Jo and other kids that sometimes life is unfair and disap....

Or, Jo just literally astral projects back into 1880's Arles France where she meets her hero, Van Gogh (Tchéky Karyo, Goldeneye). He's pretty standoffish with this young intruder as he's trying to work, but they wind up having a real conversation where she tells him of his legacy (which he doesn't believe in the slightest until he starts picking up from context clues that she's truly not from this time). He gives her a lesson in his painting style (something clearly Rubbo is versed in, as he did many of the fake paintings in this film himself) and sends her back to her real time with one of his paintings.

And when she wakes up, yep, there's a Van Gogh sitting right there. She could be a millionaire, but all she wants is her sketches back. So, in voice over montage she tells of trading the painting for her drawing to the Japanese businessman that bought them, and then wraps up any other loose ends in the montage. 

Oh, lest we forget, the film opens with Jeanne Clement, the record holder for being the oldest living person ever validated, having passed away in 1997 at 122 years old. She was 115 when she appeared in this film, retelling her experience of having met Van Gogh in Arles when she was 13 or so. She said he was rude to her and probably drunk. 

I suspect the story from Clement came out probably around the time they were shooting this film in Amsterdam, or perhaps before and maybe inspired Rubbo in writing the tale? Either way, they managed to finagle an interview with Clement, which starts with her recounting her Van Gogh encounter, and ends with young Nina Petronzio talking with Clement in-character as Jo, telling Clement that she encountered Van Gogh and he was very nice. Poor Jeanne Clement seemed so damned confused by this conversation and the encounter and ...I dunno, it felt a little mean spirited, like some sort of Borat shit. I don't think she understood what was happening.

Vincent et Moi is a largely English language film (occasional French or Dutch with subtitles), and the young  cast's performances are a little choppy from the outset. The film feels weighted in its first act, likely because all the budget was spent or earmarked for shooting in Amsterdam, so the early scenes feel rushed and a bit sloppy. Amsterdam, though, is a blast. Not just for the scenery (despite this not being an very well shot film) but the performances and just the tone of the film changes to another gear. It's not until the shorter third act where Jo meets Van Gogh that the truly bonkers nature of the film and its structure are fully revealed. Karyo has been an impeccable European character actor for decades and this early appearance he's so handsome and charming, if maybe not so close to the usual portrayal of the painter. The scenery here shows Rubbo's love and care for art as he recreates through scenery or sets some of Van Gogh's works and, while not the most high-end of cameras and film printing, they're still gorgeous images.

The only disappointment I truly have with Vincent et moi is that Jo isn't more autism spectrum encoded. Here rage issues, her hyperfocusing, her lack of understanding social norms or her ability to read the emotions of others. It's all there, but it's clear it's not intentionally a "coded" performance. 

This is a delightfully bananas film. I never thought anything could dethrone The Peanut Butter Solution as my favourite "Tales for all", given my deep nostalgia for that film, but this one's making a play for it.  It's a weird, wild gem.

KWIF: a double dose of 1985 (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Well, the world sunk deeper into the shitpile this week. Everything is rank, and I feel like I've gotten numb to the horrific smell of it all, but I know deep inside I'm in full-on existential crisis. So I'm watching a lot of media that is outside of political talking points and instead is focusing on what is being done and said by whom, and why...exposing agendas and providing points where people can fight back (it all starts with awareness and education). And when I'm not doing that, I will watch a movie to escape. 

This Week:
To Live and Die in LA (1985, d. William Friedkin - Tubi)
After Hours (1985, d. Martin Scorsese - Netflix)
The Case of the Witch that Wasn't (aka "Pas de répit pour Mélanie" - "Tales for all #10", 1990, d. Jean Beaudry - Crave)

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Longtime friend and reader (and radio host extraordinaire), GAK, directed me a couple weeks back towards To Live and Die in LA, a mid-'80's underappreciated seemingly coke-fuelled gem in the self-aware ACAB subgenre, with director William Friedkin seemingly resurrecting the tone of his 1971 hit The French Connection but with 1980s Los Angeles vibes.

And, I'm glad I took that recommendation (frankly, GAK rarely, if ever steers me wrong), because...wow. What a wild movie that, somehow, 40 years later, still had more than a few great surprises in store.

In 2022, Girls5Eva coined the acronym "B.P.E.", standing for "Big P*ssy Energy", not realizing that it already had a meaning from way back in 1985: "Big Petersen Energy" (and not just because we can see the outline of William's petersen clear enough in those tight, tight jeans to tell if he's circumcised or not (he's not).

I don't know what to call Petersen's performance here. The most common attribution I see on Letterboxed is "coked-out" but that doesn't feel quite right. It is a "much" performance, and yet it's not too much. He's hopped up on something, but it's not cocaine. It's high, aggro energy, and the dial on the asshole vibes just keeps getting turned up on his Secret Service agent investigating a counterfeitter that killed his partner. But Petersen's Agent Richard Chance is not out of control, he's searching for something and it's not quite vengeance, and it's definitely not justice.

Adrenaline. Chance is a adrenaline junkie, which leads him to push himself and his partner harder and deeper into the case than his superiors have signed off on, and ultimately leads Chance into not just skirting the law but creating outright chaos on the streets and freeways of L.A. All to get what he wants. He thinks he's doing his job, but really he's chasing a high.

Peterson runs (and runs and runs), he rolls and action hero poses with his gun, he casually hooks up with his informant, Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel) and just strutting with B.P.E. in every damn scene. His Secret Service agent seems, in the opening scene, to be a decent guy, trying to do the right thing, then he does a base jump off a bridge and chases that sensation over all else and it consumes him. 

After his partner dies, he gets a new partner, Agent Vukovich (John Pankow) who winds up being completely under Chance's sway, much like Ruth. In each, it seems like they probably started a relationship in earnest, but as Chance becomes more and more fixated on the thrill of the chase, of taking down Willem Dafoe's Rick Masters, the more callous he becomes towards everyone else. He basically negs Vukovich into helping him operate outside the law and with Ruth he start to wield his "throw her back into jail" leverage in more and more unseemly ways.

The most amazing thing about Petersen's performance is how unlike him this performance seems. A typical Peterson performance is pretty subdued, I frankly never would have thought he had something like this in him. It's disgusting and fabulous at the same time.

The Dafoe of 40 years ago does not feel all that dissimilar to the Dafoe of 20 years ago, 10 years ago or today. That man had his thing figured out early and he's so astute a performer that, while perfectly capable of making Rick Masters a larger-than-life character, it's apparent that he and the Williams figured out that Petersen's performance should be the scene stealer.  It's the magic trick of the film that by the end you basically feel like Secret Service Agents Chance and Vukovich are worse guys than Masters. At least Masters seems to have respect for women.

I would just love to scream out the biggest surprise of the film, but it's still an amazing thing to discover, and still such an atypical move for any film to make, I don't want to spoil. I loved it, I cheered out loud, it gave me a mini-adrenaline rush that would make Chance envious.

All of this accompanied by Friedkin's oversaturated lens that makes L.A. feel like an alien world (which fits with Petersen's practically inhuman vibe). There's a grit and dirt to this L.A. that, unlike, say the grimy shadows in New York of The French Connection, here the sun is baking down and exposing that grunge everywhere you look. This skeevy feeling story is only bolstered by a fully of-the-era Wang Chung soundtrack that is somehow  atrocious and really, really rocks. 

The Miami Vice influence is so goddamn strong that you can see why this may have gone under the radar as a knock-off or try-hard. But it doesn't just try, it succeeds, and you could make an argument that maybe it does it better (you would probably lose that argument but you could still make it). Radical.

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From the West Coast of 1985 to the East Coast, Martin Scorsese takes us on a trip into the wild nightlife of Manhattan's artsy SoHo district.

Me and Mr. Scorsese's films don't really get along. Whatever wavelength that man is operating on, I just don't have a receiver for.  He may be one of the maestros of modern American cinema, but I remind myself that I am not an American, and that may have something to do with it. (Toasty and me, we row the same boat.)

But maybe there's something else to it, and After Hours may be the key.

After Hours was sold to me as a comedy, an grandiose one-crazy-night spectacle of chaos I would most assuredly delight in. I was not amused.

I think in most any other director's hands, After Hours would be a farce, but between Scorsese's fingers he can't help but try to squeeze for blood in this stone to prove it's human. What I mean to say is Scorsese doesn't seem capable of comedy, he can't see past the humanity in a scene or sequence, and so what should be a broadly comedic set piece winds up feeling far more dramatic than what the script intended.

The few Scorsese pictures I've seen are relatively humourless affairs (The Wolf of Wall Street seems the closest he can get to comedy, and that's appears more a satire than a straight-up chucklefest...but I haven't seen it). After Hours was clearly drafted as a comedy and even casted as one. You don't have people Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, and Cheech and Chong in a film like this unless you're aiming for funny... and yet, Scorsese's aim is so far off it's like he didn't even know where the target was. The few chuckles I did get in this thing seem almost accidental.

The situation finds a somewhat hapless, lonely, professional word processor Paul (Griffin Dunne) meeting a flirtatious young woman, Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) at a restaurant one lonely evening. They talk about the book "Tropic of Cancer" and she tells him about a friend of hers she's staying with selling plaster bagel paperweights, and to call her if he wants one. So when he gets home, he calls, and is invited over. Along the way he loses what little cash he has on him when it blows out of the cab window. At the apartment, Marcy is missing and her friend, Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) is shirtless making a papier mache sculpture which she then enlists his help in. Things get a bit flirtatious there, I guess, and Paul makes move on her but she passes out from exhaustion. Then Marcy shows up, and ultimately she turns out to be more on the manic end of the manic pixie dream girl spectrum than the dream girl end, and he runs out fleeing in the rain.  Things just escalate from there, until he ultimately winds up running from an unruly mob looking for blood and into the den of a woman who seems like a spider who just trapped a fly.

All of this should be played as heightened and crazy as possible, but Scorsese keeps subduing his actors, having them find the humanity in the character, in the scene, and it constantly deflates the comedic tension. Instead the feeling is more...anxiety, and a bit of pathos, which aren't very funny emotions.

All the women in this film that Paul meets are on some spectrum of insane, and it reflects rather poorly on Scorsese that this is the case. (I don't know of a Scorsese story that is female led, now that I'm thinking of it. A quick look at his filmography, the only possible contenders: Boxcar Bertha, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and The Age of Innocence... I haven't seen any of them.) I can't make any sweeping statements about what Scorsese's viewpoint on women are, and I wouldn't fully judge him based solely on this film alone, but the women here are sketches and had they been allowed to be dialled into a broad comedy, they would be (mostly) pretty funny, but here we are. 

Paul, as a character, is at first driven by his libido. He's looking to hook up with Marcy...or Kiki...or whomever, but eventually that drive is overruled by his desire to just go home, but he can't seem to leave SoHo. Is he in some form of purgatory because he had lusty thoughts? Despite thinking too deeply about how Paul would be feeling in any given moment, it doesn't seem to be thinking that deeply about what got him there in the first place. It seems like Scorsese's wants to play into comedy tropes that he knows from watching so many movies, but he just can't let himself...he can't fight his instincts. I mean Marcy winds up dying from a drug overdose, and then Paul can't help but pull the sheets off her naked body (whether it's to ogle or look for burns, I don't really know, but either way, it's just too much for the moment). Paul does call it in, but he does also leave the scene, and leaves up "Dead Body" with arrows signs up in the loft, which is almost funny.

After Hours seems like one of Scorsese's biggest struggles. He's attempting a genre that is not a natural fit for him. He has this script that is, really, really quite tight, so much so it seems impossible to fail. But it does fail, and it all comes down to the director. It seems every actor is giving Scorsese exactly what he wants, but he doesn't know how to establish a tone outside of gritty realism at this stage. For Scorsese, heightened realism is maybe a half notch higher than what he normally does, at least at this stage in his career and that's still way too earthy for this material.

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The Case of the Witch Who Wasn't, or, rather, "No rest for Mélanie" mercifully finds the tenth entry in the "Tales for all" series back in Quebec with a legit French audio track rather than the weird dubbed melange of languages dubbed fully into one French or English without any real sense of syncing.

While the English title might hint at something supernatural in play, the French title is certainly more appropriate, as the story finds Mélanie's pen pal Florence, visiting her on her farm for the summer and the two wind up trying to "tame" the grumpy old witch lady, Madame Labbe.

Their method of "taming" her are acts of kindness, bringing her flowers or a hanging plant, knitting her a scarf, putting a bow on the collar of her pet pig Rose. Eventually they befriend Madame Labbe, just in time to find her hog tied on her bed after being robbed and Rose being stolen. The girls, along with Mélanie's brother and some other area kids, start investigating the break in and tracking down the thieves. Meanwhile, Mme. Labbe has become despondent and is not eating or caring for herself, and when she catches ill, the doctor says she'll likely have to be put in a home. 

Mélanie basically treats Mme. Labbe as she would treat her pet llama, or their dog or any other farm animal. She knows Mme. Labbe is human, but she reacts to her and how others react to her as if she were a possession. It's truly bizarre, but then I expect nothing less out a "Tales for all" at this point. It's like watching an alternate dimension where people in these films don't act or react like people do on our earth.

The most bizarre, and the most challenging aspect of the film is not the "taming" of Mme. Labbe, nor is it the intense moment of discovering her tied up after a robbery, or the amateur sleuthing of young children, it's the handling of Florence's arrival to town.

Florence is black, which the film doesn't treat as a capital "I" Issue, merely a lower-case "i" issue. At first, Mélanie's response to Florence's appearance is one of shock, only because we learn that Florence had sent Mélanie a picture of her white friend and has basically been writing to her details about her white friend's life...catfishing her to some degree (it also turns out Mélanie had left many details out about her life and family as well, so it's a two way street...of lies!).  And then the microagressions come out. On the face of it they seem like the good intentions of a nieve production company, but from a very modern standpoint it's absolutely cringe-inducing some of the questions poor Florence has to field. (Oh, and not to mention the scene where Mélanie accidentally takes something from the antiques shop they were investigating and when the cops roll up behind them Mélanie hands the stolen item to Florence to hide in her dress. Mélanie is not an ally.)

There's obviously a far more interesting story to be told from Florence's POV here, but that just wasn't something that the late 1980's were capable of, and so instead Florence's visit to rural Quebec winds up being a rather tertiary aspect of this trying-to-be-sweet movie.

But it's not a sweet movie. It objectifies people in a very weird way and it features a lead character whose sketchy behaviour ultimately has her rewarded with everything she desires in the end. If it didn't make me so uncomfortable, I'd be kind of impressed by it.

 

KWIF: Frankenstein (+3)

 KWIF(tanct)=Kent's Week in Film (that are not Christmas themed).

This Week:
Frankenstein (2025, d. Guillermo del Toro - netflix)
Good Fortune (2025, d. Aziz Ansari - rental)
One Of Them Days (2025, d. Lawrence Lamont - crave)
The Peanut Butter Solution  (1985, d.Michael Rubbo - blu-ray)

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When you've been subsisting on a diet of fast food and takeout like I have this past month, your taste buds kind of get used to the overly sweet or too salty, and they forget what a hearty, homecooked meal is like. My consumption of Hallmarkies in December has been the bloat inducing Uber Eats of entertainment consumption, skewing my perceptions of what is good and what is good for you. Watching any non-Hallmarkie, non-direct-to-streaming film has reminded me of the comfort of time, attention and care put into a production, like a good homecooked meal.  Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein in turn is like going to a Michelin-starred restaurant and having a fancy, expensive production of a meal put before you. It may or may not be to your tastes, but the devotion and dedication to thought and nuance is present, the artistry and mastery of form commands attention and respect.

Frankenstein is a slap in the face, a wake up call from the drudgery of holiday movie consumption (much in the way that Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was this time last year). There is a scene early on in Frankenstein that lasts maybe 90 seconds, wherein Christoph Waltz's Heinrich Harlander approaches Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein at his home and appeals to him to allow him to be his benefactor in his research of resurrecting dead flesh. In this scene we see Frankenstein's apartment, rich with equipment and drawings and shelves and stacks of books and furniture that is well worn but also well crafted. It tells us of a man who comes from means but the means are wanting, but it also tells us of the erudite nature of the man, as well as his lack of care. The set is mind-blowing, impossible to take it all in within the short span of time it is on screen, but it's so evident that every damn detail has been thought through.

When you've gotten used to set decorated with all the care of Christmas vomiting on the walls and windows and everywhere else, this kind of thing is mind blowing. And pretty much every scene, every setting in this film is riddled with such consideration and exacting, precise detail. The assembly montage of Frankenstein's lab in a castle in the Scottish Highlands is riveting because of design and attention to nuance.

del Toro has always had this desire to enrich his worlds like he does here in Frankenstein, and generally accomplishes it but on a more restricted budget. This feels like del Toro let loose, all his pent-up creative energy exploding out of him, like a supernova.  It's a brilliant flash to observe, but eventually it ends.

I will admit, I do not know Mary Shelly's story "The Modern Prometheus" very well (nor the story of Prometheus, frankly), so it's hard for me to say where del Toro's adaptation deviates.

Here it is structure with a framing sequence set in the arctic in the late 1800s as a ship of Danes (? It's captain is played by Lars Mikkelson) is trapped in the ice on their voyage to discover the North Pole. They spy an explosion in the distance and race to find a man on the ice, brutalized, and a monster of a man demanding his return.

One action sequences later, the men on the boat have a reprieve as the monster has apparently drowned. The rescued man is Victor, and he tells the captain his tale of hubris and ego, starting with his overbearing, coldly distant father, and how the death of his mother in childbirth had driven him to see a cure to mortality.  The tale weaves through Frankenstein's early research and experimentation and and his relationships with Harlander and Harlander's neice Lady Elizabeth (Mia Goth) who is to wed Victor's younger brother William. The creation of his creature (Jacob Elordi in an exceptional physical performance) was supposed to be his triumph, but the creature's rebirth only led to disappointment. Victor is his father's son, and the creature is treated as such. All Victor sees is his failure in science, not a being in need of care and guidance. He sees a monster, a reflection of his overconfidence and desire to explore the unknown, and he decides to end it.

The creature interrupts Victor's story and begins to relay his own tale, the tale of what happened after Victor destroyed his lab and the castle with it, failing to eradicate the creature, instead leaving it to survive on its own it the wild. There it is just another animal moving through the trees, a target for the gun of hunters and men fearful of the unknown. The creature takes hostel in the barn of a family home, but remains hidden. He learns, as does his landlord's child, from the kindly, blind grandfather. When the family leave the old man on his own, the creature presents himself to the blind man and finds the friend, teacher, mentor and father figure Victor should have been.

Frankenstein is a tragedy, and in this telling, it's the tragedy of the perpetuating cycles of fathers and sons...mostly. The shame of del Toro's adaptation is his inability to fully escape the source material and fully embrace a specific narrative theme. As such, aspects of the tale seem extraneous or unnecessary or outside of the narrative context. The first half of the film- Victor's tale- is gorgeous, loaded with the richness of manufactured details, while the second is much more spare, using the natural landscape as much of its backdrop, showing the creature connecting with wildlife in a much more spiritual, grounded way. These are intentional decision, but the intensity of the eye-popping set and costume design becomes sorely missed in the creature's tale and has the unintentional effect of making it feel lesser than, even though it's not, really. Victor's tale provides the blood, but the creature's tale is the heart that pumps it.

Like Toasty, I was enraptured throughout the entire film. My cinematic taste buds were delighted by this well-crafted, robustly flavoured meal that's perhaps a little too familiar while also being a bold and challenging take in a comforting way. It's not perfection, by any means, but it's a film del Toro has been wanting to make for decades and in finally making it you can see all that refined artistry he's honed in the years since in this presentation, as well as feel his passion for the material. There is a sense of love and passion underpinning this Frankenstein I'm not sure I've seen in any other adaptation or iteration.

The only thing about doing an adaptation like this, or Dracula/Nosferatu or any other familiar tale (Shakespeare or Arthurian mythology) is there will never be a definitive version. There will always be another coming along with yet another take (Luc Besson's Dracula is impending as is Maggie Gyllenhaal's Bride of Frankenstein riff The Bride). So enjoy the meal, savour it, but you'll eventually need to eat again, each subsequent meal diluting the exceptional experience. You can always go back and have that fine dining experience again, but is it ever quite as good as the first time?

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The 1980s were rife with films like Good Fortune, comedies with fantastical elements but also a bit of social commentary. They ebbed in the 1990s and have all but faded away since. I was excited for this new foray into an old-style comedy, but life got in the way of getting to it in theatre.

The film starts with Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a low-status Los Angeles-centric angel with small wings whose sole responsibility is to stop people who are texting and driving from getting into accidents. Gabriel has dreams of bigger things (bigger wings), of really making a difference, of It's A Wonderful Life-ing someone.

He saves Arj (Aziz Ansari) from a texting and driving accident, and takes a particular interest in him. He watches Arj's life as an underemployed documentary editor who's barely scraping by in the gig economy doing food delivery, small tasks and working pickup shifts at a hardware chain. Arj sleeps in his car and can't seem to get out of the cycle he's in. After working a garage clean up gig for venture capitalist Jeff (Seth Rogen), he winds up being Jeff's assistant, and going on a date with Elena from the hardware store. But a small moment of desperation leads to Jeff firing him. Despair has crept in, and Gabriel presents himself to Arj in hopes of turning his spirits around, of making a difference.

It seems Gabriel understanding of how to change someone's outlook on life is based on oversimplified tales from movies. He thinks that if he switches Arj's life with Jeff's that he can show Arj that money won't change what's really important. Except it does, and Arj doesn't want to let go of the new life-without-struggles that he has. Gabriel accidentally raises Jeff's awareness to the switch, and suddenly Arj feels the pressure and guilt of taking someone else's life, so he asks for a week to enjoy it, and Jeff think's he can do fine with struggling like he has never had to in his life...for one week.

But Gabriel's actions are off book, and his superior, Martha (Sandra Oh) suspends him, taking his wings and making him mortal. Jeff's only means of regaining his heavenly status is to get Arj to actually desire return to his old life. In the meantime, both Jeff and Gabriel are forced to live a different class of existence than what they're used to.

Given the times we are in, I get it if some people don't find Good Fortune incisive enough or anti-capitalist enough or vicious enough, but I think the broader strokes are there if not always the finer ones (this is after all a film made by and starring millionaires, so there is bound to be some disconnect) and, for the intention - that of making a fantastical comedy - it largely succeeds.  

Few comedians succeed without struggling first, without having to pay their dues getting crap gigs for a meagre payout that barely floats them to the next one. Despite his early success at a younger age, Ansari still had to do this too. Ansari's stage persona has always had an affable nature that remained even as he grew in comedic stature, and his comedy has often had a streak of both starfucking and self-awareness, which makes him well suited to the role he cast himself in, as a guy with struggles who suddenly finds himself rich.  Arj's journey doesn't fully seem personal, but it does feel like a man trying to speak to something... and that something is class divides which may be something he's really struggling with (it's not fully evident in Arj's character, but is more evident in Rogen's Jeff).

 Reeves is a twitchy delight in this playing a bit of a dimwit angel, and it's such a perfect lane for him. The same awkward wooden boy qualities that make him a pretty terrible dramatic actor work so well for him as a comedic one when the role is shaped for him, and Ansari uses him perfectly. 

It's almost hard to remember when Rogen was just the stoner with the funny laugh, he's become such a titan of the industry at this point (I've lost track of how many movies and TV shows he's appeared in this year, not to mention how many he's directed and/or produced), but again, that side of him, that "him?" question that seems to come up needing him to prove himself in pretty much every role, makes him pretty much perfect to play a riches-to-rags story believably.

And, I mean, how does one not just get swoony over Kiki Palmer every time she's on screen. She's not used to her maximum potential here, not by a longshot (we'll get to that shortly), but when it comes to dream girl love interest casting it's seems obvious. 

Ansari had a bold shift from stand-up and sitcom star to a heralded figure in the Golden Age of Television with Master of None. His arty shifts into pseudo-French new wave and other subgenre exercises throughout the series were certainly showing a creative taking advantage of his opportunities and taking risks. I'm not sure there's a lot of that visual acuity here, though the references to Wim Wenders Wings of Desire were certainly not lost on me.

This isn't a rebel yell, this isn't a riot starter, it isn't a call to action... it's entertainment (I don't think we should be really looking to one percenters to start these movements). It's not trivial entertainment, but it's also not tossing bricks either. It's a witty protest sign at a rally, and that's okay. It's just nice to see a film like this again.

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Where Good Fortune tried to hit a message home about class discrepancies and how hard it is to survive in the modern economy, it only gets part of the way there in really exemplifying the struggle. One Of Them Days takes it the rest of the way, and is crazy entertaining to boot.

Kiki Palmer is in full command of the screen for the bulk of this film, grabbing you by the hair and dragging you along for her ride. The preternaturally charming, funny and endearing Palmer plays Dreux, an L.A. waitress struggling to make ends meet. She's just finished her early shift at the franchise diner and just wants to get some rest before her big interview at 4pm to hopefully become a franchise manager at her restaurant. She has the experience, the knowledge and the attitude needed, maybe just not the confidence.

Her best friend and roommate Alyssa (SZA) is her support, her crutch holding her up and pushing her forward. Alyssa is a bit of a free spirit with no committed profession, except being an artist but undervaluing her work. Alyssa also has a dirtbag boyfriend Keshawn who has been crashing rent free for months, but Alyssa is kind of powerless to resist him for...ahem...reasons. Dreux's rest is interrupted when her landlord informs her he never received the rent, and that she'll be out on the street by 6pm if he doesn't get it. Dreux gave it to Alyssa who gave it to Keshawn who suddenly disappeared (with all his sneakers).

And so the countdown is on. Dreux and Alyssa need to find Keshawn, and survive a crazy obstacle course of an afternoon in order to avoid being put out on the street. It seems at once both a trivial and Herculean task, but the tremendously sharp and witty script by Syreeta Singleton sets up the obstacles and set pieces and players all like dominoes and Keshawn's darting out the apartment is the first one to fall.

To talk about the events of the film is to spoil the process of discovery, but it's an effective script in highlighting just how the capitalistic systems set up in America are precisely there to keep the disadvantaged at a disadvantage and how these systems pits community against itself as people tried to crawl over each other to get whatever leg up they can get... all without ever being preachy about it. Even when it's shouted out by Katt Williams' Shameeka, a local character hanging outside of the payday loan place warning people about the evil and deceit inside, it's a comedic tour de force more than hitting you over the head with a message.

One Of Them Days is a superb example of the "one crazy day/night" movie, showing that strong characters with a specific point of view can take a well-worn genre and breathe new life into it. Palmer connects with everyone she meets on screen, even when it gets awkward, there's real chemistry there. She makes everything work to the point that it's hard to think of a single scene that doesn't.  While this is Palmer's star vehicle, for sure (and she shines so vibrantly), this is SZA's coming out party as an actress and she makes it seem effortless.  Palmer has chemistry with everyone, sure, but you need to believe that her and SZA have been best friends forever, and they sell it almost immediately and that sense of connection never wavers (their friendship is also the backbone of this film, so it needed to be rock solid, and it's diamond-strong).

Watching two people in such a desperate situation shouldn't be this much fun, but it is.

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The Peanut Butter Solution (aka Operation Beurre de Penottes) is the second film in producer Rock Demers "Tales for All" series and one of my favourite childhood treasures that's still every bit as weird and wonderful today to experience as it was when I was a child.  Ok, maybe it doesn't scare me as much as when I was 10, but this was mandatory viewing every time it was on the CBC when I was a kid.

As children, we often are attracted to what scares us, and that's kind of the crux of The Peanut Butter Solution. Just as I was drawn to watching this creepy, weird movie over and over again as a child, Michael (Matthew Mackay) is drawn to the smoldering remains of a burned down Montreal abandoned house where unhoused people used to hole up and may have died in the fire. Micheal and his best friend Connie (the delightful Siluck Saysanasy) go to investigate the house and in the process Michael sees something that scares him unconscious. Connie drags him home in a shopping cart. The next morning when Michael wakes up, his hair has fallen out as a result of the trauma of the scare, but he can't remember what scared him.

But having no hair is just as traumatic as the scare was, and he refuses to go to school. After his dad and sister acquire a wig for him, he tries it out and for a few days feels normal, until a soccer bully yanks it off his head (the shot of the glue going all stringy always upset me and grossed me out when I was little), and all the school kids chase him home, teasing him (where were the soccer coaches/ref/any adult at all?). The traumas never stop with this kid.

He's visited at night by the ghosts of the two unhoused individuals who died in the fire. Michael had paid a kindness to them once, and so they were paying him back, giving him the formulae for a hair-growth solution. Michael fudges the mixture with too much peanut butter and suddenly not only is his hair back but it's growing by meters throughout the day Connie sits behind him in class constantly trimming but it's so distracting Michael gets expelled. The next day, his hair dragging on the ground, he packs off and heads out to school in a wind storm screaming about how he just wants to learn and be normal. Its when he hides and tries to shelter from the wind storm that he's found by The Signor (Michel Maillot), his peculiar art teacher who got fired for being too severe.

The Signor kidnaps Michael, and then a dozen other kids. He sets up a sweatshop where Michael is chemically sedated with special yogurt and the other kids take trimmings of his hair and make magical paint brushes. When the Signor paints with them he creates paintings so realistic you can literally walk into them.

I don't know how long the Signor thought he could keep this whole operation going for it, but a couple of pre-teens (Connie and Michael's sister) sniff him out and bust his creepy operation.

I'm not sure how many of the "Tales for All" were shot in English, but I'm guessing there will be more in the series down the line and that Demers wasn't devoted to solely making French Canadian products.  I don't mind the English production, and for the most part the child actors here are pretty good (Alison Podbrey as Suzie, Michael's sister is exceptional) but the little bit of distance that translated subtitles provides tends to smooth over any shakiness.

This movie is such wonderful nonsense, the dream logic of it all is what makes it so magical, and so unsettling. Any story that deals with mass kidnapping is inherently upsetting, but this is a film that dives in the deep end of the trauma pool and can't figure out how to get out. The film begins with Michael missing his mother who has gone to Australia to deal with her recently deceased father's estate. Just being of an age and needing one's parent (when his dad, played by Michael Hogan despite being full of love isn't up to the job of comforting him) and not having it is its own trauma.

The story does give Michael resolution to two of his many, many traumas, but they are most assuredly going to haunt him for some time. I would love a Doctor Sleep-like follow-up to this.