3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Disclosure Day

2026 Steven Spielberg (War of the Worlds) -- download

Spielberg's career was not built on aliens -- he actually has an incredibly varied catalog -- but a number of his movies do focus on aliens coming to Earth, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, of which this one may be seen as a spiritual successor.

Google has a 'Disclosure Day' search result animation - a cardinal. Huh.

Not sure I am going to do a play by play recap of this movie. We know its about "disclosing" the existence of what has to be alien life, even if the trailers don't say it out loud. I mean, I spoiled that in the first sentence. But what is the movie really about ??

"You can't HANDLE the truth!!!" yells Colonel Jessep (Jack Nicholson).

We can't handle the truth. In February of this year, President Donald "Cheeto Benito" Trump signed an executive order to release all the files they had on UFO phenomena, or as they are calling them now - UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena).

Do doo de doo doo.

We handled the truth. There was nothing to be "handled". Even if the fucking US Dept of War official website looks like part of an AR game, this news came and went without even a whisper. The "truth" was just as ambiguous as it always had been. But what if something tangible had been revealed? What if the documents had shown incontrovertible proof that there were alien bodies stored in Area 51 and they had, at the very least, parts of downed alien craft? How would the world have reacted?

In the movie, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth, Young Sherlock) of Wardex (Waived Reporting, Development, and Extraction) vehemently states that if said incontrovertible truth about alien existence, in the form of terabytes of footage & files, was released to the world, they would panic, utterly lose their shit. For the movie's world, which is already teetering on the brink of war, it would mean the End of Things. The movie even postulates that religion would collapse, when we learn we are not alone in the universe.

Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor, The Crown), a genius level data scientist in Wardex, believes, and was influenced into believing by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo, The Electric State), an ex-Wardex employee, that the world deserves to know. Needs to know. He believes vehemently that we can handle it, that it is exactly what the world needs now, as it is about to wipe itself out. He has escaped with a backpack full of said data. And Wardex is after him.

Meanwhile, unconnected to Daniel's whistleblower activities, weather person Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, The Fall Guy) is having a really weird day. After a Disney Princess encounter with a bright red cardinal, things have been... odd. She's guessing what her boyfriend (Wyatt Russell, Overlord) is going to say, before he opens his mouth, and speaking Russian. In the studio she is unphased by her new ability to understand Korean, but collapses after speaking an alien language on-air, for everyone to hear. Something is very wrong.

But Daniel understands what she is saying, when no one else does. So, the two are connected, and are being influenced by Something Bigger Than Them. So much of the movie hinges on the idea that Something Bigger is Happening. Its the driving factor of the movie. Its what propels us towards a climax of the actual release of the files and videos to the entire world, via the news broadcasting framework.

So much of this movie displays as the product of a Very Good Filmmaker. The production budget allows for so much, so many things and Spielberg is able to masterfully engage us. The train scene, for one, is an exciting spin on a classic -- a classic he really subscribes to, as you can easily see this whole thing happening in an Indiana Jones movie. But its also just the lighting and the way he frames a shot. You can easily envision the mock-buster of this movie; I wouldn't be surprised if the idea "an alien conspiracy whistleblower running from a shadowy government agency" is already the plot of one, or many, Straight To movies in the VHS days. I rather enjoyed watching skilled people do their thing.

But in the end, I was, surprisingly to myself, not satisfied with the actual "disclosure". So, they release all this footage to the news, masterfully convincing a bunch of news TV shows to all connect together and show the footage. So what? Most people will think its fake, even if they accept the idea of world covering "breaking news" doesn't happen for AI Deepfakes. And once the governments, including the US Govt which was unaware of what Wardex was doing, get their shit together, it will just quietly become yesterday's news. 

And, what was the alien agenda here? We are meant to believe they a benevolent alien species that lives by empathy instead of tyranny. But what have they been doing for 50 years? Abducting children and subjecting them to terrifying experimentation we know. And I understand that if human interaction like Wardex showed them to be fearful of humans, I get the hiding, but they are still massively technologically advanced compared to us. Do they have to hide? And now, once revealed, what's next? The movie would rather just have us postulate this on our own, as it literally is only about the "disclosure", but since I did not buy into the almost-religious-experience level of awe this was supposed to inspire, I am again left with "so what?" I need to know the answer of that question. 

Kent.

KWIF: a grab bag of film across decades

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. I suppose the big watch of this week is the long-awaited release of Kill Bill as a single feature, but, well, we'll get into it. The best watch this week was certainly The Outfit, but I think I may have been one of very few who were eager to get the new Arrow blu-ray in my grubby little hands.

This Week:

In the Blink of an Eye (2026, d. Andrew Stanton - disney+)
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2004, d. Quentin Tarantino - blu-ray)

Mars Attacks! (1996, d. Tim Burton - tubi)
Def-Con 4 (1985, d. Paul Donovan, Digby Cook - tubi)

The Outfit (1973, d. John Flynn - blu-ray)

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Director Andrew Stanton's In the Blink of an Eye went direct to streaming on Hulu/Disney+ earlier this with absolutely no fanfare, unlike his other film Toy Story 5 whose marketing campaign was inescapable and has made over a billion dollars at the international box office (it's not quite pulling Spider-Man: Brand New Day numbers, but hey, second place and a billion-plus dollars ain't too shabby). There's no real point in comparing Stanton's two 2026 releases, as they are vastly different films with vastly different styles and intentions.

This film takes place in three different time periods. The first is in 47,000 BC, which follows the life of neanderthal Thorn (Jorge Vargas), his pregnant mate Hera (Tanaya Beatty), and his children Lark (Skywalker Hughes, real name) and Ebb. The second tracks the life of anthropology grad student Claire Robertson (Rashida Jones) and her relationship with stats major Greg (Daveed Diggs) in modern times. The third takes place aboard a space ship in the 2400s with Coakley (Kate McKinnon) making a centuries-long trip to a new planet with the fate of humanity at stake, her only companion the onboard AI Rosco (also Rashida Jones...I think?).

There's not a specific storyline being told across these three eras, but more exploring all the elements of what it means to live, to be human. There family bonds, and romantic bonds, and friendship. There's fear and anxiety, there's pain, physical and emotional.  There's sex and pleasure and awkwarness. There's birth, and death, there's disease and healing, there's community and evolution, support and trade, and so much more.

The film presents this journey through these moments of existence without any specific linear narrative to them as a whole, thought there are arcs for the characters, each whose stories span decades. Stanton and screenwriter Colby Day present parallels across the three different eras such that what one character is going through in one era, another is dealing with something similar in a different era. The point obviously being that these human conditions are eternal and not unique to any specific time or reality.

These jumps across time aren't always the cleanest or clearest (for instance, I didn't pick up on the fact that Claire and Greg were supposed to be students, not professors or researchers or whatever, basically playing about 20 years younger when we first meet them), but even if some of the nuance is lost, it's not hard to track the emotional storytelling Stanton is working towards. 

It's all underpinned by a Thomas Newmann score which is ever present and would be just as suitable for a relaxing massage or a yoga session. It's truly a vibes based movie, there's no heighted drama nor any specific action to raise the blood pressure. It's rapid journey through time across eras is meant to be reflective, not impactful, and at times I was genuinely moved by what I was feeling. That said, I was also bored at times. Both can be true.

It's so specifically constructed that it seems that Stanton achieved exactly what he wanted with this, but it's no WALL-E or Finding Nemo.

In the Blink of an Eye has not been a warmly received movie critically and it's already been buried in the Disney+ streaming catalogue to the point that it seems the only way to find it is to search for it directly. I don't know that it deserves to be so quickly dismissed, but it's also such a specific mood piece that I find it hard to recommend.

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I've been waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair pretty much since Tarantino first mentioned it when Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out in 2004. I understood that the intention of splitting Kill Bill into two volumes was a Weinstein money move, but I always thought Kill Bill would be presented as the whole it was intended to be once it got to home video. I really didn't think it would take over two decades for that to happen. I've never owned Kill Bill on physical media solely because I was waiting, even though, at a certain point, I assumed it was just never going to happen.

And now, after a brief theatrical run (which I missed due to life's poor timing), The Whole Bloody Affair is here on 4k/Blu-ray and...it really doesn't feel that different than watching Kill Bill as two separate movies.

This home video release still breaks the film up across two discs, but instead of there being closing credits after the Bride's wintery duel with O-ren Ishii, it cuts to an intermission title card and song. Unlike back in the laserdisc days where a screen caption would instruct you to flip the disc or insert the next one, here, after the intermission ends the disc cuts back to the menu screen. Sub-optimal. Disc two then autoplays on its own jumping right into the longer portion of the film.

I've always enjoyed the first "volume" of Kill Bill more than the second. The first 110 minutes are so propulsive, energetic and dazzling, with incredible choreographed fight sequences and a flashy anime sequence exploring O-Ren's backstory (what became readily apparent in the recompiling of the two volumes is that this whole bloody affair winds up being a 4-hour-plus movie. None of the other characters get such a detailed back story as O-Ren, not even Beatrix Kiddo, so the whole anime backstory feels utterly extraneous when presented as a single unit).  

The next 140 minutes (credits are 20 minutes of that, including both end credit sequences from Volumes 1 & 2) are much, much slower paced, all leading the the final hour where The Bride finally finds Bill, spends time with the child she didn't know survived, and then, fulfills the title contract.  There are some excellent moments in this. The Bride's flashback to her 1-inch-punch training and her escape from her buried coffin, her fight with Elle Driver in that trailer home, and Thurman's excellent performance upon seeing her child for the first time. But when there's a four-hour run-time Budd's sorry life at the strip club or Bill's extended speechifying (especially his whole "Superman" speech) feels like unnecessary indulgence from the director.

I still really like Kill Bill generally, but somehow, for me, it worked better as two films than one. Two films feels like it has the appropriate room to breathe. As one, I start checking the clock and contemplating what seems unnecessary. 

I have covered Tarantino a fair amount on this blog, including a full rewatch and ranking back in 2019 (just after Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood premiered) where I ranked Vol 1&2 as a whole in second place of Tarantino's works. I'm not sure I would put it in that same position now (probably bumped down to 4th).  

I don't think I've watched a Tarantino movie since I wrote that rewatch and ranking post (though I read his books, and I did listen to his podcast until it went up behind a paywall). Part of it is I've been more focused on new experiences with my film watching this decade, and the other part is, I think, maybe my fandom has tempered in my middle age.  Perhaps Tarantino's shift from filmmaker to film critic/podcaster (aka the Kevin Smith track) lessens the allure. Perhaps his lack of new features lessens my interest to revisit the old ones. Perhaps I was sated with 25 years of fandom and I've moved on.  Perhaps I've seen roughly a thousand movies since I did that rewatch and ranking and I'm more versed in Tarantino's influences and I'm starting to see the seams. We'll see how I feel about the Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood pseudo-sequel Cliff Booth Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed this fall.

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary (!), Mars Attacks! was seen as both a bomb and a blunder upon release, but has become a cult classic in the intervening years. 

There was only so much story to tell in adapting a series of trading cards into a movie, but Burton's enthusiasm for this production seems to rival his earliest efforts like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.  

I only have a passing familiarity with the trading cards, but it seems evident by the film's lack of direct narrative coherence that Burton was using the imagery from the cards as his guide in constructing the project.

While it flirts with the idea of being a Dr. Strangelove-esque political/social satire, it doesn't commit that hard to the bit. It wants to have too much fun with the "Ack-ack"-ing aliens (watching with the subtitles on and reading along is great!) and their giddy bloodlust for the destruction of the human race, alongside their many institutions and totems.

The digital effects, still pretty new at rapidly evolving the time, have a clumsiness to them that, I'm sure in 1996 and 2006 and probably 2016 seemed kind of atrocious compared to the advances in the technology that would follow, but in 2026 the clumsiness of the digital effects is part of the charm. Just as the film itself was throwing back to the 1950's, now it feels like the effects are a part of the intentional throwback charm.

There's a rich celebrity roster here, with Jack Nicholson taking the forefront in two roles, one as the president of America, the other as a rich Texan looking to get into the casino game in Vegas. Glenn Close plays the wife of the former, while Annette Benning is the partner of the latter. Natalie Portman is the First Daughter, while Michael J Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker play a couple who are also competing news reporters. Lucas Haas is a sweet rural kid who loves his grandma with dementia, while his 'Murica-loving trailer-park parents played by Joe Don Baker and O-Lan Jones disapprove of his sweetness and wish he was more like his jarhead brother, played by very young Jack Black (Christina Applegate plays Jack Black's girlfriend in pretty much an unspeaking role). Legends Jim Brown and Pam Grier play an estranged couple, Rod Steiger is a pro-war military general, Pierce Brosnan is a peace-loving scientist, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones, Martin Short, Salma Hayak and more also appear.  It's just a ridiculously stacked cast playing characters who have no real ark, almost all serving the purpose as being laser-fire fodder for the aliens (voiced by Frank Welker).

The joy of Mars Attacks! is the unfettered glee of the ultra silly aliens joyously destroying humanity (they're proto-Minions in their comically violent antics), and then conversely the icky fun of seeing these nuisance creatures heads get squishe or splattered into a spray of green goo.

It's pure ridiculousness, right up until the notorious finale when it's discovered that Slim Whitman's warble is the alien's surprise weakness (it's a delightful play on War of the Worlds mundane fix for the invasion, and a far better turn than, say, Signs).  Don't think too hard about anything, in fact don't think at all.

This thing should be in the Criterion Collection and I should have it in the binders.

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Back in the days of video stores, many, many movies -  most of them in the sci-fi or horror genre - were sold completely by the cover art of the box on the shelf. So many incredible - usually painted - images that just struck the eye, got stuck in the mind and inspired the brain to go to wild, wild places that, inevitably, the film in the case never actually takes you to.

The box art for Def-Con 4 was a staple in every video store I can remember going to (were Canadian video shops mandated to have this as part of their Canadian Content?) That image of the downed satellite looming large in the background and a space suit with a skeleton inside in the foreground I'm sure was responsible for thousands of thousands of rentals. I never did get to it though. Perhaps the reputation that the movie didn't live up to the box art spread across playground and high school hallways?

Def-Con 4 was brought up recently in an interview with Blackberry/Nirvanna The Band The etc... director Matt Johnson and that image immediately flooded my mind. In my (unfortunately only) recent interest in Canadian film I put it on the to-watch list.

It's a garbage nonsense movie about the end of civilization as we know it. It starts in space as a crew aboard a defence satellite catch word that Libya has hijacked a US ship armed with nuke and are setting them off. Or something. They eventually respond unleashing their payload. Humanity is decaying rapidly under the fallout, or, at least, TV has gone off the air (same thing).

This opening sequence which simultaneously moves too quickly and drags on far too long, seems like its setting up the film's trio of astronaut protagonists, and trying to give us something akin to insight into their motivations for being on this mission in space and hints as to their life back home, but it's so awkwardly written, we're not ever sure what we're supposed to take from all this jumbled info. One of the crew, Commander Cecil Howe, wants to return back to his wife (even though she's been quarantined for some illness and the baby is dead and the radiation is going to kill everyone anyway). But after re-entry they crash land off-course and on a beach. One of them is taken immediately by cannibals, J.J. is left inside unconscious and concussed while Howe looks for help.

Howe is immediately captured by Vinny McKinnon (Maury Chaykin) who threatens to kill him, but he decides to make a trade for supplies on his capsule. Vinny has also kidnapped Alice (Donna King) , and now we have our trio of protagonists who... oh, nevermind. They get kidnapped by a military regime led by a petty, preppy high school student (Kevin King) who is mostly just upset his girlfiend (Alice) left him.  

This post-apocalyptic wasteland is so, so pathetic as to be far more banal than scary.  The rhythms of this are so familiar (it's somehow not all that different than, like, 28 Days Later) and yet it's so underbaked as to basically be raw elements with little to no investment in the characters. The only real drama is the tension between  teenagers Gideon Hayes and Alice and they're like the fourth and fifth leads of this film.

Its Canadianness shines through in, mostly, the worst ways possible, mostly in production value, but also scripting and performance and editing where it feels like multiple takes were just not possible within the budget so they had to deal with what one or two takes got them (I don't know this for sure, but that's sure what it seems like).

The only redeeming quality of this is one absolutely out of place scene where Howe catches some bad guys by surprise and tells them at gunpoint to get off the boat, and then the guys keep reaching for their guns and Howe keeps telling them to stop reaching for the guns. It's a silly farce that seems straight out of The Naked Gun, and I can only imagine how entertaining this would have been had they leaned into this type of humour throughout.  Alas.

That poster, though, remains incredible.

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One of my slow-burn projects on this blog of late has been to watch all the adaptations that have been made of the Parker novels.  The character, written under Donald E. Westlake's pen-name, was a relative unknown commodity to me until I read the incredible comic book adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke. Reading those lit a Parker fire under me (though, not even close to being enough to actually read the novels.... Reading?  Bleh. Who even reads anymore. Given the stats on this blog, like, a dozen people?).

There are a few adaptations that are just out there, readily available, from the two versions of Payback,  the awful Jason Statham film, to the stone cold classic Lee Marvin joint Point Blank ,to the most recent attempt I can't bring myself to watch (yet). Then there's the ones you have to deep dive for, like Slayground, Made in the USA, Pillaged, The Split and this one, The Outfit.

Robert Duvall isn't exactly the mind's eye perfect Parker (or Parker analog). The character is described as a big, broad beast of a man, shaggy and expressionless. The only actor who has portrayed him that really fits the description is Lee Marvin, but even then, he's maybe not as dangerous looking as Westlake described him. I'm not exceptionally experienced with Duvall's filmography, but everything I have seen him in, he's been incredible. I don't think he could take a wrong step if he tried. He's a true character actor, disappearing into a role. There's no specific type for Duvall, as such, despite lacking height or width or the big block fists described on the page, Duvall's Eddie Macklin kind of makes for the most screen accurate Parker in every other context.

Macklin is so, so cold in this film, but for the briefest moments of fleeting humanity, where an errant emotion flashes on his face but then disappears.  We meet Macklin coming out of jail, being picked up by a former lover, Bett (Karen Black), who informs him that his brother's been murdered. She was responsible for giving him up after being tortured. The Outfit, it turns out, was not happy with the fact that Macklin, his brother and their accomplice Cody (Joe Don Baker) hit one of their crooked banks. They're sending a message to everyone.

But Macklin has his own sense of propriety and justice. After getting the jump on some outfit goons he sends a message back. Either they pay up 250K for murdering his brother, or else he keeps hitting them, and hitting them hard, doing what no right-minded thief would do. A joint is a joint, and they all can be hit up. All's fair as far as Macklin's concerned. The heat bears down on him, Cody and Bett, but if he feels it he doesn't let on, and while Bett wants to get out, Cody is ride-or-die. It's not that he's a tactical genius or that shrewd in his calculating. He's just determined to get what he wants, his drive and motivation trump anything else.

While not the most elegantly directed movie, nor the prettiest, Duvall leads a pretty exceptional cast on a an uncommon journey. Knowing that Macklin doesn't have a plan gives the story an anything-can-happen vibe and you're never quite sure what's next on the agenda, or at times, exactly how Macklin is going to get out of a situation.  Whatever the code is that he operates by has an internal logic in the film, and it creates ample surprises and unique moments.

I've been searching for The Outfit for some time, and the new Arrow Video release, full of special features diving into Westlake's history as well as the film's history makes for a very welcome release. It's maybe not a "classic" in the strictest sense but it's certainly a forgotten gem worthy of rediscovery.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Supergirl

2026, Craig Gillespie (Fright Night) -- download

I can immediately say that I came out of this movie thinking, "I liked it." No exclamation mark. I liked it, it was alright, which is just this side of "meh" unfortunately. But, I am also the guy who liked Kraven the Hunter so, so what do I know. 

Now that I had said this so many times, I am recalling a time when "it was OK" was more than OK. I enjoyed the whole "experience" of film watching, small and big screens, and that experience was mine that I was happy, as long as it wasn't a total piece of frustrating crap. Am I now more discerning? Or am I just older and less satisfied with Just OK.

I immediately bump over to Kent's post, and then I am suddenly hand-waving, "This! THIS !" I suddenly have my exclamation marks.

"It's moderately successful, but it's absolutely clear from the first two fight sequences that Gillespie is not comfortable or confident with such sequences and they are neither clean nor easy to follow, and both are quite poorly lit (it's also quite possible that the theatre I was in was dimming their projector, the whole film seemed overly dark)."

I am only familiar with the source comic material in passing. I started reading a digital copy when this movie was announced, but ... never finished? But I recall it being a popular alt take on the Supergirl character, a romp in space, which I assumed was supposed to be in the tone of "Superman Man of Tomorrow" but I was actually thinking of "All-Star Superman". But, I know that the Supergirl comic was a stand-alone series, which I am not sure would allow for a good introduction to the character. I should let Kent comment on comics, as I don't really read them anymore.

And the editor says you should delete that paragraph....

But, as a good introduction to the character cinematically? If we are being setup for there being a "strongly into irreverence & binge drinking" Supergirl (Milly Alcock, House of the Dragon) in the Gunn DC-verse, then we got that. Its not  like the world at large would be widely aware of how Supergirl should be depicted, and really, that's beside the point. We do get that she is historically Kal-El's cousin, and she came from a city that escaped the destruction of Krypton and due to temporal mechanics, she arrived not much older than when she left Krypton / Argo City. Her city may have escaped the planet exploding, but it did not escape its fate. Kara also escapes the dying city, and is probably left pretty emotionally scarred; thus the binge drinking. Also, all this happens in a mid-story recollection.

Meanwhile, in the actual story, she's drinking on a planet with a Red Sun, which allows her to actually get drunk, when Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley, The Witcher), whose family was killed by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, The Old Guard) and his space brigands called The Brigands. Comics can elicit a lot from names and depictions in just a few short panels, setting tone and style. Strangely enough, it takes more in movies, and so the bar, the aliens/villains within, all end up feeling pretty generic, and most viewers will not be able to escape comparisons to Guardians of the Galaxy. Anywayz, Roothy comes in demanding someone help her avenge her family, is grabbed by a thug who wants to sell her, but Supergirl, despite being "powerless", intercedes. Apparently she's got mad fighting skills, super powered or not.

What proceeds is a series of "nope, not gonna help. nope, not gonna help" until "FINE, I'm helping!" inspired mostly by the fact that Krem poisons Krypto, who turns out to be Kara's dog, not Superman's -- explains the lack of discipline shown by the pup. Supergirl has only a few days to find The Brigands and steal back their antidote. And allow Ruthye to avenge her dead family. And... maybe free some captives?

As Kent said, the Superman movie had "spirit and humour", this one just seems to be trying to tailor itself for the doom-scrolling generations. There is a "human (girl) trafficking" sub-plot and its implied that Space is a lawless and dangerous, yet it has "bus" routes. And where are the Green Lanterns in all of this? Aren't they supposed to be Space Cops? At the very least, shouldn't there be some down-on-their-luck task force members trying to take down these slave traders and failing miserably? 

And yet, I began this write-up with a "I Liked It". I did, I guess I just don't like where it sits in Gunn's new DC-verse. I am blatant about my love for how the man makes a movie, and I shouldn't expect all the movies coming out of his stable to replicate that skill, but at the very least, I would hope he would take a Kevin Feige approach to making sure the movies are polished before they are released?

In the very end, I mostly liked Milly's depiction of the character; at the very least, I applaud the sincerity with which she played the role. The character of Ruthye is just pure supporting cast, with no definition and nothing memorable uttered. And the movie shoe-horning in Lobo (Jason Momoa, Aquaman) was superfluous and just an extended cameo. 

Maybe you need a rewatch and rewrite just so you can say something you actually liked?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Landscape with Invisible Hand

2023, Cory Finley (Bad Education) -- Amazon 

Amazon has this weird pattern, where they will add movies to their roster, then after an undetermined amount of time, shunt it off to one of their subscription-services, or more accurately, remove access from Prime Video subscribers in favour of the consumer paying more for the additional subscription. Eventually they come back. I get the model with blockbusters -- convince people to join with "free" access to the recently released movie, such as Project Hail Mary, and then drop it for the other licensors to take over. But I don't understand how it works with long-released movies but I am sure there is an algorithm at play, a terribly designed, badly implemented algorithm. This one came and went, came and went, came again and I watched it.

Speaking of Project Hail Mary I cannot help but compare the aliens in that movie to the aliens in this movie. In Landscape with Invisible Hand the Vuvv have come to Earth from another galaxy and while the pretense is that the governments welcomed them due to the technological and economical advancements they offered. And yet its definitely an occupation ... or, maybe more accurately, a Colonization. In the Ryan Gosling movie, the aliens are not really any more advanced than Earthlings, but are entirely alien -- they would not do well in Earth cultures. When the Vuvv come to Earth, they don't give a hoot about the impact they have on the planet and its cultures; they just implement their changes, reap whatever benefits they can and ignore the negative effects. They do not have any empathy for the "lesser species". My comparison between Rocky's species and the Vuvv is more about descriptors (small weirdly shaped, live in dark rocky abodes), as we well know Rocky was very empathetic with his friend Grace but I cannot help but wonder whether a species with more technological advancements might lose that empathy... you know, like we do.

Our humans are Adam (Asante Blackk, This Is Us), a highschooler with a talent for outsider art, and his crush, Chloe (Kylie Rogers, Home Before Dark), whose family has just moved to town. Moved is too strong a term as they, being herself, her brother and her dad, are living out of the family car: homeless, jobless. Adam's own mother, a lawyer, is also without work and seeking a job, any job, but they still have the family home... for now. Adam tries to win favour with Chloe by offering her family the family basement, which does not go over well.

This opening has quickly established that while the Vuvv have offered Earth some offscreen benefits, the average person is not benefiting... at all. Unemployment and homelessness are the norm now. Vuvv efficiency comes with the cost of having to do things their way. But the Vuvv are partial to human melodrama and as Chloe and Adam begin to get close, she suggests they broadcast their "courting ritual". The Vuvv have provided a technology that allows a human mind to connect to a network, visually experience what is transmitted to them, but also return the transmission. Yes, Vuvv TV is just watching humans do human stuff and they really like "love".

At first it goes well. Adam is falling in love and the two are getting to know each other. They make money, a LOT of money, enough to keep the house payments going and eat real food, as opposed to the cheaply extruded blocks of essential proteins that the Vuvv provide to all humans. Except Chloe begins "producing" their relationship, and it begins feeling less real to Adam. And, it becomes pretty obvious to the Vuvv viewers. The two are dragged before a Vuvv executive and sued for faking their relationship. By then, it mostly was. Pay back all the money, or lose everything.

Shit gets weirder. Adam's mom Beth (Tiffany Haddish, Boosters LA), uses her lawyer powers to propose an alternative arrangement to the Vuvv executive. While they are asexual beings that bud instead of give birth, they still have an attachment to their .. offspring. Beth proposes a marriage between her and the offspring, who ends up taking the name Father. They get to experience the human family structure instead of just viewing it. Of course, they are oblivious to the hypocrisy about being upset at humans faking it while having no issue pretending this is all real; it just confirms their lack of understanding of everything human. But, why should they care? They are at the top of the food chain, societally speaking.

Adam doesn't do well with this, angry with his mother, with Chloe, with the state of the world. Chloe's dad, utterly emasculated by his homelessness and joblessness, still tortured by his own toxic masculinity, offers to become the "housewife" to Father's family unit, allowing Beth to keep the job she got at a local fast food joint. Adam and Chloe aren't on speaking terms, when the school is closed down. Everyone will now just "learn" (Vuvv indoctrination) via the mind-view technology. Adam is at wit's end and paints a massive mural of life since the Vuvv came to Earth, on the side of the school.

Our final act has Adam recognized by a Vuvv art critic as a power voice in outsider art, and is offered a residency and a galactic tour worth millions. Except, they need him to alter the art so as to depict the Vuvv as benevolent overseers, come to Earth to make everything better. Whereas everyone else has been making hard choices either to just get by, or to have a better life, Adam just says No. He abandons the money, the recognition, and in turn, the Vuvv just rip the side off the school and take it away.

The End.

This isn't a movie of grand changes, world altering realizations, or anything else so grand, usually found in alien movies. Adam doesn't "save the Earth", he doesn't even do much to help his family. There isn't a resistance against the alien dominators, just people who are impotently angry. This movie is a vignette into lives of some people under Vuvv rule. Exploration of the Human Condition is a phrase bandied about with broad gestures, but like Adam's art which is often primitive and would challenge many people on the idea of what "real art" is, or is not, this movie does have the things it needs to say, but also, in many ways, its just a weird alien movie.

KWIF: Disclosure Day (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. A mid-week KWIF as this weekend brings us Supergirl and maybe other distractions.

This Week:
Disclosure Day (2026, d. Steven Spielberg - in theatre)
Toy Story 5 (2026, d. Andrew Stanton - in theatre)
Hoppers (2026, d. Daniel Chong - Disney+)

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I've always considered Steven Spielberg an "aliens" guy (as I think most people do?), even though it'd been a minute since Spielberg last did aliens. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was 2008 and only featured the aliens reveal in the end. He remade War of the Worlds in 2005 and it was over 20 years before that when he did E.T. The Extra-terrestrial. Prior to that it was Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  In a career with 35 movies 1/7th of his output was aliens related. That track record alone wouldn't make him an "aliens" guy, but it's still hard not to think of him that way because, in his presentation of aliens on film, particularly in Close Encounters, E.T. and now Disclosure Day, they seem not the works of a fantasist, but of a believer.

Disclosure Day isn't a preachy movie, and yet it's really trying to sell the audience on the idea that aliens exist and that we should be okay with it (I mean, I get where Spielberg's coming from, as we are a species that is notoriously xenophobic, that destroys what it doesn't understand, and generally rebuffs the unfamiliar in favour of the samey same).  It's a chase movie that posits that a shadowy organization, Wardex, in collusion with the U.S. Department of Defense, has been covering up alien encounters, commoditizing alien technology, communicating with alien beings, and torturing alien prisoners.  At a certain point the "need to know" on all this became tighter and tighter to the point that even the POTUS was eventually denied access (given who sits there now, probably for the best).

As the film starts, Wardex employees have turned up missing, as have Wardex assets retrieved from alien encounters. They're on the hunt for Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor, The Crown), a mathematics and programming prodigy who has escaped with thumb drives of their entire video archives as well as a particular piece of space magic technology. Daniel is on the run with his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson, The Knick), who he learns, in the process of hiding out, used to be a nun. As he discloses to her why he is on the run, that "disclosure day" is coming and all this material will be made public, Jane's faith (and lack of faith in humanity) has her bristling against this course of action.

Meanwhile local Kansas City news station weather person, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, The English) has aspirations for becoming a news anchor. She has an encounter with a cardinal (the bird, not the Catholic) immediately after which she begins having weird episodes of speaking foreign dialects, and empathically reading peoples minds and finding the perfect path to delivering them comfort, sometimes with words and other times with telepathic images. After trying to give a weather report, only to wind up speaking in an alien language of clicks, she passes out. An MRI shows no anomalies, but the Wardex goons are waiting for her outside her hospital room. With the concerned help of her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) they get out. Margaret knows something is happening to her, but she also knows it's not a bad thing. 

She gets a phone call from ex-Wardex employee Hugo Wakefield (Coleman Domingo, The Four Seasons), the man orchestrating the whole "disclosure day" event, and he advises her to find Daniel, using her instincts to guide her. 

Daniel gets captured, Jane's on the run, Margaret ditches Jackson, Margaret rescues Daniel and they keep running afoul of the Wardex goons, as their leader, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth, The Staircase) uses alien technology to invade peoples minds and take over their bodies.

This is all happening as U.S.-Russian tensions escalate and the threat of nuclear war and/or World War III looms large. Jane and Scanlon both worry that any disclosure of the existence of extraterrestrial beings will plunge an already volatile world even further asunder.

This is very much Spielberg (with frequent collaborator, screenwriter David Koepp, and, oh yes, John Williams' latest [maybe last] film score) in Spielberg mode. When you think of a Spielbergian adventure, this slots right into that. Spielberg has long been an incredible populist filmmaker, he wants his films to be (for the most part) enjoyable to the broadest demographics. But that Spielbergian populism, at its peakiest peak, was always very American-centric. For as avid an enthusiast of World War II and aliens as he is, he seems incapable of really expanding his mindset out of the ol' U.S. of A.

So despite having three Brits as the leads of this film, only Firth plays in his natural accent (because the British accent can still accentuate the "villain" motif). Blunt is working in an American dialect I can't quite place, but there's a hint of a twang, while O'Connor's American accent comes off as somewhat flat. 

In dealing with its backdrop of international tensions, we don't get a sense that there's any extension of Wardex outside of America. There's no conceit that they have satellites all over the globe where other alien encounters *must* have happened. Not even a mention. It's like the John Smith idea that America is special and that a resurrected Jesus went there to deliver a whole second set of commandments, just for Americans, because they're special. This is a movie that doesn't tout American Exceptionalism, but it's most definitely the product of creators educated in that sort of groupthink.

Disclosure Day, in its sensibilities feels very of the 1980s, and I can't help but feel had it been a period piece (Spielberg loves a period piece) set in the '80's that it might have played better for me. I get the sense that Spielberg wanted to explore his anxiety around our lack of empathy, our fractioning, our tribalism, and all the unease in the world, and that, in his mind there's one unifying answer, that we're not alone and we should be thinking of something more than ourselves.  It's not hard to extract that message, but it all teeters on the edge of cloying.

The man is a masterful, thoughtful storyteller, but he has a mode he finds himself in regularly, and, while it's been a while, this is that mode. One where his sense of hope and optimism means that conflict is pretty neutered and there's a sever disconnect with reality (how many times should Margaret have been shot dead and wasn't? How terribly sloppy is Wardex as an organization?).  

This is a movie that does not lack for interest, intrigue or excitement, nor does it lack for some really good performances, and intriguing ideas, but for the most part Disclosure Day didn't hold together for me. It did feel like the "aliens guy" was trying too hard to convince me of something rather than let me get there on my own.

---

No, I don't know what "HDR"
or "Barco" are...

As an adult person really interested in the collecting of toys (I'm an APRICOT, a term I just made up and is definitely not going to get adopted voluntarily by the collecting community) the idea has been percolating for some time about the potential for a Toy Story feature that takes place in the world of adult collectibles. I love going to toy shows and the idea of putting Woody and pals in the feeding frenzy of toy conventions, with nerdy adults haggling over pricing and condition of figures, or squatting and rifling through a dig bin, well it gives me tingles and has me smiling. But the basics of the idea of Woody confronting "collectibles" was already covered in Toy Story 2, and I'm not sure such an idea offers much more thematically than that (except to say we don't have to grow up and stop playing with toys, and I don't know that it would cover much different ground than The Lego Movie did). Watching Toy Story 5 served to remind me that it is a series about the importance of play for children, and that the toys in these movies have a singular desire to make children happy. Not the inner children of adults but, like, legit kids.

The prior Toy Story movies have centered around primarily Woody or Buzz, with characters like Jesse or Lotso Huggins driving home a particular emotional thread, but Toy Story 5 puts Jesse (Joan Cusack) front and center, pushing Buzz and Woody to the periphery, as Jesse, for as tough a cowgirl as she is, still has a particular traumatic trigger around being abandoned.  She has been basking in the glow of being Bonnie's #1 toy for a couple years now, but Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) needs more than just toys as friends, and as much as Jesse wants to help Bonnie connect with other kids, they're just not interested in much other than screens.

Enter Lilypad (Greta Lee), a web-enabled tablet device for kids that immediately takes the dominant spot in Bonnie's room and pushes all other concerns aside. Lily takes it upon herself to connect Bonnie to other kids from dance class, and for a moment, it seems like Lily is doing what Jesse couldn't. But in order to fit in Bonnie has to be her inauthentic self, and it's kind of a disaster for her. A late night chat with Woody (Tom Hanks) via walky-talky with a shaky connection brings Woody back to Bonnie's room, only to find when Lily returns  Jesse and Bullseye have gone missing, and a lovelorn Buzz (Tim Allen) desperate to find her. 

The human kids in the Toy Story franchise have largely been like deities, gods worshipped by these toys, and thus a bit more abstract. We are typically invested in the world of the toys, less so the world the kids inhabit. But this film places Bonnie as just as central a figure as Jesse, yes inhabiting two different worlds, but symbiotically. One needs the other whether they know it or not.  We get so invested in Bonnie's well being that it's soul crushing when she's rejected by others.  Yes, the toys love her more than existence itself, but Bonnie doesn't know this, they're not the real world to her, just a part of her very vivid imagination.

Picking up the threads of Jesse's trauma from Toy Story 2, she has her own anxiety spirals that as often elicit rage as desperation. She lashes out at Lily, at technology in general, and it's up to a trio of long dormant devices she finds in another home (led by Smarty Pants, a toilet training device voiced by Conan O'Brien) to teach her that technology has its place in a child's development as well, and can just be as important to them as old fashioned role-playing toys.

The undercurrent of the film is casting a critical - but not damning - eye at technology. It's a film that acknowledges the draw of technology and how it can entertain and how it can help a child develop in certain ways, but it is also keen to point out its limitations and even its drawbacks. Writer-director Andrew Stanton sharply observes that while technology may satisfy most kids attention, it won't satisfy all, and some kids (and adults) will prefer playtime to pixels, and wouldn't it be great if technology could connect them.

There is a secondary thread which finds a crate of next gen Buzz Lightyear toys washed ashore on a deserted island, and it slowly starts to arc its way in front of the path of the main story. Rather than being a distraction it's entertaining, exciting and curious, both in the actions on screen and the question of how it could possibly fit in the overall narrative of the story, which it does so pretty nicely.

Did we need another Toy Story movie? While it's doubtful anything will ever hit the resonant high and tumultuous events of Toy Story 3, each entry in the series has validated its existence with a narrative purpose that expands on the themes of the series, builds up its characters even more, and has a remarkable amount of fun in doing so. Five films in 30 years is hardly a flooded market. I'm not sure I want the series to continue if it outlives its cast, but if everyone's game in 2031, I'll be just as happy to see where it goes next.

---

In prep for Toy Story 5, I decided to dive into Hoppers, the previous entry in Pixar's dynasty of (mostly) quality product.... I mean, it has been a while since Pixar felt like "Pixar!" where every release was an event worth taking note and going to the theatre, even if you didn't have kids and time to kill.  The breaking point seemed to be in 2015, when The Good Dinosaur not only failed to delight critics, but kids as well. It was Pixar's first real disappointment and the sequel-heavy future looked a bit bleak from there. Not that people weren't excited for Finding Dory or a new Incredibles or Toy Story 4 but with so little new in the tank it felt like Pixar wasn't the place of innovation it once was (I mean, Into the Spider-Verse came out the same year as Incredibles 2 and, as good Brad Bird's sequel was, the Spider-Man movie made it look somewhat antequated.)

While Soul, Luca and Turning Red are all quite good films that sparkle with some of the latent Pixar magic, films like Onward, Lightyear, Elemental and Elio have all felt underbaked or formulae-gone-wrong, just gas-less films that failed to excite critics or audiences (to the point that these four, plus the Cars sequels, are the only Pixar films I haven't seen).

Hoppers' wasn't a return to form for Pixar, but it wasn't a critical or commercial failure either. In one week Toy Story 5 has already outperformed Hoppers' entire theatrical run. But then, Toy Story 5 has history, name recognition, and the might of Disney behind it. Hoppers got a trailer that didn't really tell the audience what it was about and a title which is kind of perplexing. It looked more like a Disney knock-off movie than the next great Pixar film.  

It is definitely better than a Disney knock-off, but it has some hills to climb and it doesn't fully accomplish reaching the apex. 

The title, Hoppers when paired with its protagonist images on the poster and in the trailer, is a head scratcher. Beavers aren't exactly known for their hopping ability.

"Hopping" in the movie, however, is the term for putting one's consciousness into the body of a robot animal... something the trailer sort of forgets to talk about. In the film, Mabel Tanaka is a ADHD-coded child with too much energy to burn, and a lot of festering rage. Her grandmother takes her to the glade and teaches her the tranquility of being at one with nature, of listening to its rhythms and just enjoying the peace of the Earth. A dozen years later, grandma has passed and Beaverton's Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) wants to build a beltway through the glade to make circumnavigating the city a possibility. Mabel (Piper Curda) will do anything to stop him but feels helpless, unable to get anyone else to care about nature.

She discovers her college professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has invented robot animals that can traverse nature undetected and undisturbed, not only that but the operator is technically inside the robot, acting as the animal. Mabel hijacks the beaver robot and enters the wilderness where she discovers where all the animals that abandoned the glade are now in a concentrated space that's incapable of keeping them all. She tries to rally to animals to fight back for their land, and once again finds apathy...at first. And then...violence.

The thrust of the story is that Mabel is connected to nature and loves it wholeheartedly, and she will do anything to protect it. But her energy is off-putting and tends to deter people from her cause rather than to embrace it or see what she sees. It's a film about how utterly defeating it can be to care, how soul-crushing it seems when it feels like you're the only one who cares about a problem, and how sometimes one's efforts can not only fail, but backfire.

The problem is, as a story it doesn't offer good alternatives. It's a film that acknowledges that we need fighters in the world, and we perhaps need to have more empathy for the fighters than we do, but it doesn't tell the fighters, or the wanna-be fighters how to fight. In fact, it kind of low key shames them, puts them down, and pushes the fighters towards working with the systems that don't really work rather than trying to remake the systems so they do.  The film digs a hole for itself that it's not really equipped to get out of once it jumps in.

The standard Pixar formulae finds its stories taking place in a world that we're unfamiliar with, one which posits that it's existed the whole time only we're just being exposed to it now (the ocean life in Finding Nemo/Dory, the world of toys in Toy Story, the world of bugs in A Bugs Life, the monster dimension in Monsters Inc., the world of emotions in Inside Out etc). In presenting such a world, everything to the last detail needs to be thought through and considered. If a joke is made, the logic of the joke still needs to fit this world or world-within-a-world. In Hoppers it's the animal kingdom, or at least a regional representation. And it's kind of where Hoppers falls short in its Pixarness.  My buy-in into this world fell apart almost immediately as Mabel witnesses the mammal King George (Bobby Moynihan) leading the wilds in a rousing routine of jazzercise.

There's a clear divide that there's civilization in a city, and the place where wild animals live outside of it. But where the human dwellers may feel divorced from the bushes outside its streets, the animal kingdom considers humanity to be a part of it. There are royalty in these realms - mammal, lizards, amphibians, fish, birds and insects each have a king or queen (and yet no human king, until beaver-Mabel presents Mayor Jerry as "king" to the humans). There's just an internal lack of consistency to how this whole civilization works and while it's not fatal to the film, it does raise too many questions whilst watching to just fully relax into the story.

Similarly, I could buy into the idea of the hoppers, and even the idea that once your consciousness is placed in the animal robot you can understand other animals (but not humans) but then to have earpieces and communication with humans that cross the divide is a step too far. It's basically an invention that lets humans and animals communicate, which is a much bigger deal than the hoppers technology, quite frankly.

Toy Story 5 has a couple of animals in it and their renderings feel lightyears (pun intended) beyond the animals we see in Hoppers. The animation of Hoppers is fine but doesn't escape the conventional soft-edged trappings that CGI animated movies has largely been stuck in for over 20 years (but thanks to Spider-Verse and K-Pop Demon Hunters we seem to be finding a pathway out of) so in a way, despite being generally entertaining and with a welcome ecological message, it has a generic feel. 

[Toasty's take - we agree, I think]

KWIF: The Sheep Detectives (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I originally had a snarky comment closing out last week's review of Mortal Kombat II where I was lamenting having seen the video game adaptation instead of seeing the one about investigative ewes. I deleted the comment because I had already heard that The Sheep Detectives was actually, surprisingly, a pretty decent film, and that neuters the joke a little bit. Plus, I was going to see The Sheep Detectives anyway, so there never really was an either/or decision in the first place.

This Week:
The Sheep Detectives (2026, d. Kyle Balda - in theatre)
Mile End Kicks (2025, d. Chandler Levack - in theatre)
Dark City (1998, d. Alexander Proyas - DVD)

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I must have seen the trailer for The Sheep Detectives about a dozen times, most of them in the form of a preview before the screening of one film or another. Every time the trailer would start, I would balk at the very concept of a live-action movie about cgi sheep attempting to solve the murder of their shepherd. And yet, by the end of the trailer, every time, I was completely sold. Well, I guess not completely since the very same cycle would start anew the next time I would see the trailer.

It is, without a doubt, an absurd concept, but absurdity doesn't innately make for a film bad, and often the very absurd nature of a story's conceit is what makes it stand out, what makes it good, different and exciting.

I've been hearing a lot of comparisons to Paddington bandied about, but The Sheep Detectives really takes a greater nod from Babe, in that it's set in the real world, but when the humans aren't around the animals are speaking to each other. Yes, there are plenty of jokes where we watch the sheep talk in English and then cut to a human POV just to see them bleating at each other...and it's never. not. funny! (Director Balda is kind of restrained in his use of this gag to be honest, maximizing it's efficacy.)

Based on a 2005 German novel, this is "cozy mystery" at its coziest... I mean, we're talking wool coats for days, right? But the real surprise is that the mystery is not the most captivating part of the film. The reason The Sheep Detectives works so well is it establishes characters and it establishes a community (mainly with the sheep, but also with the humans) and it establishes a tangible world for them to inhabit. In this world, sheep are intelligent creatures. They sit and listen to farmer George (Hugh Jackman, X-Men: Origins: Wolverine) read mystery novels in the evening, and Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jack the Bear), George's favourite sheep, always solves the mystery before the end. George has a reputation about town of being a prickly bastard, but he's a kind and gentle loner who adores his sheep above all. He opens our story by narrating the letter he's writing to, it turns out, his daughter whom he gave up for adoption three decades ago (Molly Gordon, The Bear).

The sheep, we quickly learn, have the ability to force themselves to forget, which they do as a collective. Only Mopple (Chris O'Dowd, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) can remember the past. The sheep believe that they don't die but turn into clouds. Mopple knows the truth, but lets them have their comforts. Otherwise their understanding of death is restricted only to the stories George tells them, so when George turns up dead, the sheep community is rocked.

So too is the human community of the English town of Denbrook. The kind of hapless town constable Officer Derry (Nicholas Braun, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) is completely incapable of handling any sort of death, nevermind a murder. A wayward aspiring reporter (Nicholas Galitzine, Handsome Devil) seems intent on helping him break the case for his own reasons. The suspects are all in George's will, including the town butcher, a rival shepherd, the lovelorn innkeeper, and George's estranged daughter who just happened into town the day of his death.

In a conventional story, there would be much mileage about the sheep working through each of the suspects and eliminating them as the possible murderer. Instead, The Sheep Detectives is far more interested in the sheep community, and expanding their horizons. There is the whole concept in this community of a "winter sheep". Most sheep, they say, are born in the spring, but the occasional sheep is born in the winter, and they are shunned by the herd. And so a tiny, unnamed lamb George loves dearly, but is rejected by all. Part of the story is the herd confronting their prejudices, but in a roundabout way.  Even upon learning that their greatest ram, Sebastian (Bryan Cranston, Kung Fu Panda 3), is a winter sheep, it takes a lot before the herd truly understands the harm of their prejudice.

But that's just one facet of what these sheep need to learn. They have to leave the familiar safety of their farm and venture out into the world, where they are exposed to the realities they've otherwise chosen to forget. It's a potent moment when Lily realizes that Mopple has had to live with everything they've forgotten, but Mopple presents it as something beautiful, not horrible.

I'm not doing the best job of selling The Sheep Detectives but, to be blunt, I absolutely adored it. Funny, charming, sweet, sincere with a, yes, cozy mystery at its core to keep things moving, but just a delightful cast of characters and some of the most rewarding emotional stringpulls in some time... I cried at least three times and it earned every one of those tears. I never resented the film for them.

There is no reason The Sheep Detectives should be as good as it is, but we're so lucky that it is. A large contingent of my early-evening Wednesday screening applauded at the end of the film. I joined in. There was no one there to receive the applause, but it felt like the right way of mutually socially acknowledging that we all had a genuine emotional reaction to this film, and that we appreciated it. I do not recall the last time that happened.

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Love the pseudo-American Apparel-
style poster for this film. Perfection

Mile End Kicks first shot is inside Toronto's legendary Horseshoe tavern. The band Islands is playing a gig. I am transported back in time.

Despite the caption "2011", I am transported to 2005, to seeing Islands in their earliest incarnation, possibly at the Horseshoe, but maybe at the Rivoli or Lee's Palace or some other joint and perhaps during the North By Northeast festival. Anyway, I'm there. I'm in. It has me. It took the film all of 9 seconds to completely reel me in.

By 2011 I was out of regular "gigging", going to shows around town, and certainly out of the pretense that my photographing and reviewing of such shows (sometimes for online media outlets, most often just for personal blogging) was a career path. Grace (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria) is 22 years old and already has a foothold in journalism.  She has four hundred articles in the local newspaper she's been writing for, including investigative journalism, interviews, and writing a sex column, as well as music reviews. She ponders the idea of writing a "33 1/3" volume on Alanis Morissette's album "Jagged Little Pill". Her boss at the paper (Jay Baruchel) thinks it's a great idea, and hooks her up with the "33 1/3" publisher who likes her take and gives her a small advance to write the book, but it needs to be done quickly.

The next we see of Grace, she's on a bus to Montreal for the summer, giving the middle finger to T.dot on her way out. Her mom doesn't understand why she has this sudden impulse to move elsewhere, and her dad...well, just seems depressed. Grace has a top 5 list of what she wants her summer in Montreal to be: write her book on Alanis, have real sex, climb Mount Royal, learn French and fall in love, probably not in that order.

She's renting a room in Montreal's Mile End from Madeline (Juliette Gariépy, Red Rooms) a hot DJ whose boyfriend Hugo (Robert Naylor) plays in a rock band called Bone Patrol. Madeline is super friendly and wants to be pals, while Grace is a bit reserved and really wants to focus on her writing. But Madeline insists she come to a loft party where she is DJing and Bone Patrol is playing. At the party, unfamiliar with the Montreal scene, Grace retreats to an outdoor space where she meets Archie (Devon Bostick, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) the bassist for Bone Patrol, and they form an immediate kinship... but when the band finally plays, Grace has a rather visceral reaction to Chevy (Stanley Simons, The Iron Claw), Bone Patrol's frontman. She chats him up and he's the most up-his-own-ass pretentious, faux-ambivalent, self-involved shitheel, but Grace can't see past his stage mystique.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace's epic summer in Montreal, becoming part of it's 2010's hipster scene and getting waaay too invested in a guy who can only ever think about himself (and even then not that deeply). There's an obvious love triangle happening between Grace, Archie and Chevy, but the will-they/won't-they isn't really the thrust of the movie. It's more of a "what the fuck, Grace?" as her logic just cannot find a way to overrule her libido when it comes to Chevy, and Archie pre-emptively takes himself out of the equation.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace building up her life, but also feeling completely helpless as it starts to crash down around her. A lesser film would have spent more time and energy on making more direct connections between Grace's life and the songs of "Jagged Little Pill", but the film doesn't need to link them firmly at all. Grace's fall from grace happens for many, many reasons, (almost all her own) and her only way out of the pit she's fallen into is to find self respect and confidence, to engage the world on her own terms rather than feel like she has to be deferential to the men she finds in the circles she's in.

There's an excellent, fundamental moment early in the movie where some of the men of the paper she's working at are having a debate over a couple of bands. It's clear she's not invited to this conversation and when she interjects her own input, she is dismissed immediately and, to put a finer point on it, laughed at. Late it the film (when she's back on her upswing) she reads an insightful and incisive text at a poetry slam about not just this explicit experience but all the general outside-the-circle-of-men experiences women have everywhere. It's a terrific 1-2-3 execution (especially when Grace returns to the bullpen late in the film).  I have witnessed these types of situations so many time (even well into adulthood) and have probably been a party to them more often than I've been cognizant of or care to admit. It's institutionalized sexism that often we (meaning men) are not even aware of. I mean I was aware of it before this film, but praise it for actually making it a part of the conversation.

The film contains three (or perhaps even four) of the most awkward make-out scenes I think I've ever seen on film. Given that Grace is our POV character, she's mostly not the one being awkward so our cringe isn't a sympathetic one but more of an "oh gods, what the eff" type of cringe. It's almost all Chevy and that boy, wow, is a fucking mess.  Either Levack dated a guy just like this or knew someone who had. The hyper-specificity here is too crazy to be made up.

The film effectively uses its setting as a real "Montreal is a main character" film, and it definitely captures what the Canadian hipster "scene" was like at the time (Toronto, a few years earlier, wasn't that much different, nor likely was Vancouver a few years before that, or Halifax a few years before that...the "it" scene sort of cycles through the major Canadian centers in five-ish-year spans). It effectively seeds in the tension in Montreal's art scene that's so distinct to it (the outsiders that come in and the French-English divide between them, as well as the Toronto resentment)

Mile End Kicks is a film about being in your 20's and fucking up, but also about learning from your mistakes and growing as a person, and understanding that you'll continue to make mistakes (just hopefully new ones, and not repeating them). It's also about empowerment, and while not being so aggressively Alanis about it, it's still a pretty bold awakening.

 ---

I had not watched Dark City for a very, very long time, though I had carried the DVD of it with me to at least a dozen different residences over the years. It would have been one of the first DVDs I bought, but I have no recollection if I ever actually put it in a DVD player and watched the film it contained.

A friend recently brought up the film, noting that clips of it had been popping up in one of his feeds ... somewhere. I recall that I liked the film way back when, and it has maintained a decent if not stellar reputation in the meantime... but would it hold up? Would I still even like it? Does the disc even work or has it succumbed to disc rot?

Turns out, mostly, mostly and yes, the disc still works wonderfully.

The most unfortunate thing about Dark City is that it opens with a narration from Kiefer Sutherland's Dr. Daniel Schreiber. Schreiber exposits about an advanced alien civilization late in its decline looking for some hope of salvation, and that hope is human. Schreiber is helping them in their experiments on humanity, and this film, then, in theory, unpacks just what that experiment is.

The second most unfortunate thing about Dark City is the affectation that Sutherland imbues Schreiber with. He gives the character an out-of-breath speech pattern, speaking in short bursts (not unlike Malcolm's asthmatic friend Stevie on Malcolm in the Middle). It's really a hat-on-a-hat as Schreiber also has a scarred lazy eye and a severe limp as well. Sutherland was making choices.

A few minutes in the proper film starts as Rufus Sewell's John Murdock awakens in the bathtub of a grimy hotel, completely unaware of where or who he is. He receives a phone call from Schreiber warning him some men will be after him, and he needs to leave immediately...it's then that he notices the dead sex worker on the ground with spirals and other sigils carved into her skin.  He moves with haste, just as a quartet of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers show up and check out his freshly abandoned place.

The streets of Dark City are just that, dark, dimly lit. Every light seems like a spotlight only illuminating in a cone shape exactly what it's pointing at. Also at midnight, the society of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers use their psionic abilities (called "tuning") to cause the entire city to grind to a halt, and it's denizens to go inert and unconscious. They also reconfigure the entire city, buildings twist up out of the ground forcing other buildings to shrink or retreat without causing any true damage to speak of. Reality bends to their whims...almost.  But these creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers need Dr. Schreiber to concoct new memories for the citizens of this dark city which most citizens have had done a few times over.

But it's John Murdock who has somehow repelled the new personality application and also developed the same tuning powers as the creepy overlords. He poses a genuine threat to the order of things.

As we learn all this, there's also a mystery... is John a murderer. His estranged wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) can't conceive of it, and even John himself has to test whether indeed the impulses are there or if he's truly capable of being a psychopathic killer. The detective on the case, Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) can't see any other options, because to do so would be to admit that reality is not all that it seems.  While Sewell's efforts as Murdock are genuinely quite good, there's a case to be made that this works better if Bumstead is it's main figure trying to solve a murder and unraveling the case of John Murdock, which then leads to the revelation of where they actually are and who is actually in charge and why.

Dark City is a really decent sci-fi neo-noir that doesn't always tease its mystery in an efficient or effective manner (especially since the opening voice over gives up so much of the surprise), but the exceptional special effects (for the most part) and shadow-laden atmosphere of the picture do so much of the heavy lifting to keep things engaging when the story may falter. Even 28 years later, on one of the oldest DVD pressings in my collection, the film still looks really good, the copious practical effects, sets and miniatures and the well-masked digital effects standing up very very well.

The third most unfortunate thing about Dark City then is the climax is such utter nonsense. Murdock goes tete-a-tete with "tuning" powers against the...leader? (of a hive mind?) I guess of the creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers... and there's nothing more boring that two characters trapped in a mental battle just leering at each other while crazy cgi bullshit swirls all around them.  It's such a let down given some of the film's strengths prior to that point.

The fourth most unfortunate thing is how sleepy Jennifer Connelly is in the role of Emma Murdoch. I can hazard a guess that she's been told to play the character as if she's just had a lifetime of memories slammed into her brain only the night before, so she's effectively a new, but confused person...but for some reason that gets relayed as sedate, with most every line delivered in an unaffected monotone. She's a much better actress than this performance.

But a few unfortunates aside, Dark City holds up as a solid watch. Perhaps it's not the monumental sci-fi story of it's generation (hard to be when The Matrix comes along 13 months later) but it's got very little to be embarassed about, and despite not hiding what could have been some great surprises, still has a surprise or two under its belt.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Avatar: Fire and Ash

2025, James Cameron (True Lies) -- download

James Cameron hasn't really been in the director's chair all that much considering the lauded place he has in Hollywood. I mean, Titanic was 1997 and the Avatar movies (insert joke from the Peanut Gallery about the Fire Nation) have been his only fiction-based films since. Obviously he has money to throw around and I guess I am glad he does, because these movies would not be made without his bank. I am a fan of the franchise, but even I see the diminishing returns in the spectacle. Except that doesn't show on the books -- let's say it cost $500 million to make, it has already made $1.4 billion... billion. And the digital release just came out. The story isn't over, not even close.

Well, kind of close -- two more?

Also, you opened the last movie's post with pretty much the same thought.... I guess we will never get over the idea that Cameron still exists.

This movie is just so so so pretty. I waited until a decent 4K copy came out [to pirate], as there was no way I was sitting for 3+ hours in a cinema chair. Sure, I would likely be enraptured the entire way through, but my butt would not be; I would end up a fidgeting, twisting mess at the two hour mark. Thus, I generally watch these movies at home, in 4K and even then, pace them over a few days. But to repeat, so very pretty !! The colours are lush, the melding of CG and human is almost seamless and the scale is epic.

I am not going to uber-recap a 3+ hour movie. 

It picks up almost immediately after the last one, where The Family Sully had fought off the evil RDF Corporation's whaling ships, but at the cost of one of their sons. They are still in the same quandary -- they had supposedly hidden away from the humans with the green-skinned, seafaring Metkayina. The Sullys are a danger to their people, so they decide to join with some floating traders, to get even further away. That idea is quickly dashed in an attack by Mangkwan Raiders, fire-using Na'vi that have no compunction against killing others for their own gain. The Sullys are separated from each other, Spider (Jack Champion, Scream VI) almost dies, but is miraculously saved by Kiri (Sigourney Weaver, Alien) who calls upon "nature" to alter his lungs, allowing him to breathe Pandora air. Quaritch (Stephen Lang, VFW) is still trying to catch the Sullys, RDF still wants whale-gunk but now they also want Spider and his ability to breathe air. The Mangkwan graduate from scary ashen skinned raiders to an entire clan of "evil" Na'vi who abandoned the ways of Eywa after she "allowed" a volcano to erupt and destroy their forest homes. Lots of conflict, back n forth, rescues, hatred and grief is explored and we are back to a climax with another whaling convoy with even bigger boats, but now supported by attacks from the Mangkwan. But the Sullys convinced the whales to break their sacred oaths and fight alongside the Na'vi and eventually Kiri convinces Eywa's nature to help... which IIRC was also a component of the first movie, which makes it confusing as to why its a Big Thing here.

And no, a long drawn out paragraph is not an uber-recap as there would be much much much more from a three hour movie.

In a lot of ways, this movie was just a re-hash of the last movie. Given its only been three years since the last, and not fifteen, there was no great need to devote time to vast amounts of exposition. Oh, its there alright, but just enough to fill in "new viewers" as all franchises are wont to do. But it doesn't dominate.

The dramatic weight at the centre of this movie is their son's death, and the change it makes in them all. Sure, he died heroically, but in the end, it wasn't for much. And it destroys Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña, Amsterdam), more than the destruction of her homeland and most of her people did not. Through her mourning period, Jake (Sam Worthington, Terminator Salvation) deals with his own grief in the only way he knows how -- be angry. She takes her own anger out on their adopted son Spider, Quaritch's actual son, rejecting him from what has been his family for sixteen years. The problem is that the weight is not as heavy as Cameron would hope. 

There are just too many characters in this movie, and he tries to give them each some emotional journey, which ends up making all of them feel rushed. Quaritch is torn between "being a Marine", his connection to his son and his connection to his own body; the movie flip-flops constantly between "oh, he's gonna help" to "such a bastard!". Kiri is still dealing with her own origins, given that was born of an avatar body and has no definable "father", and yet Eywa keeps on rejecting her. Neytiri is viciously angry at the pink skins, even Jake. The remaining kids have their own side story with the whales. Spider is torn between the Sullys and Quaritch, his human origins and his new closer connection to the Na'vi, and Kiri. And Jake is just Jake-ing along, still spouting Marine nonsense, still convinced he's the centre of everything, and ... well, in this movie, he isn't. He's a tertiary character at best. As a person he's not floundering anymore than he ever was, but as a character, I just didn't see any of his points of being. There are just far too many damn characters in this franchise now, and Cameron is desperate to give them all something to do.

Cameron wants his Lord of the Rings, an ensemble cast, an epic story with Big Ideas, but he doesn't have a tight destination in mind. Or at least it doesn't feel that way. The Sullys cannot just keep running away from the humans, as they have already learned the greedy colonizers will keep coming back, keep destroying Pandora culture and ecology and never stop hunting Jake down. What's the end goal? Utter destruction of all human life seems pointless (there are always more corporate colonizers), and at least the humans aren't bent on full planet-wide genocide -- its just not cost effective; yet. So, either Cameron skips right past the Epic and finds smaller stories to tell, or he does the most realistic thing -- find a way for Everyone to Just Get Along. And the latter will have my eyes rolling back until they hurt, given how unrealistic it is.

Afterthought. Despite having top billing in the movie title and poster, the Mangkwan (raiders) are such a non-entity in the overall arch of the story. They are just more flavouring for the cultures of Pandora, a not so creative attempt to say that not all Na'vi are indigenous, one-with-nature flower children of different colours. Their leader Varang (Oona Chaplin, Game of Thrones) is given so much promotional material screen time, but... yawn.

3 Short Paragraphs (Probably Not): Project Hail Mary

2026, Lord & Miller (21 Jump Street) -- cinema

Yeah, ok wow -- actually in the cinema. It was worth the inevitable fidgeting I ended up doing.

So many thoughts about the movie, but unformed, chaotic thoughts. Such as, are all Andy Weir adapted movies going to be Feel Good epics where a really smart (mostly) solo astronaut has to "science the shit" out of things to accomplish his goals, and uses video recordings as a method of exposition? Or perhaps, how is Gosling able to so effectively depict a socially awkward loner who is so charming and handsome? Also, I wonder why I am so attracted to the Lone Astronaut trope. Also, why was Pacific islander music so effective in a movie set In Space? And like I said to Kent, as he was kind enough to re-watch the movie with me, I am not at all surprised at how charming the puppetry-based anthropomorphism of Rocky could so easily be accepted, considering it was our generations that fell for Muppets.

Project Hail Mary is the Lord & Miller adaptation of Andy Weir's third (published) novel of the same name. They are about an astronaut who wakes up on a spaceship that has been sent out to deal with the phenomena that is literally eating suns. The spaceship, Hail Mary, has been sent 11 light years away to a sun that ISN'T dimming despite the presence of the lifeform eating our sun. His crew has died enroute, in their sleep, and he is alone, until an alien spacecraft appears, and Ryland Grace meets Rocky the alien. The two become fast friends, working together to solve the problem. 

I often opine the state of film, in that most of what I (chose to) watch is, "Just OK." And as I am forgiving of much, I imagine a lot of what I am OK with is actually, objectively, terrible -- not including the, subjectively, terrible stuff I watch. And while I repeatedly hold admiration for hard working film makers, even those who may not be making "art", I often tire of just OK. This movie was not OK; it was great. It is what Hollywood subjectively was about. It is blockbuster, it is grand, it is funny, it is tear-inducingly touching, its is so clearly well-structured, and it benefits from a large budget handled by very skilled story tellers & makers. And yet, the story is so very thin -- man wakes up on spaceship, man meets alien, together they save the world, while the plot keeps us watching. And it stars, not including significant flashbacks, a single human, and a puppet alien.

Project Hail Mary is about saving the world, something we are not doing IRL. Where The Martian is about how the world came together to Save One Man, this is a tad more realistic, in that the world comes together to save itself; kind of. But it slides right past the world coming together as, once again, its about One Man. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, The Fall Guy) doesn't want to be a hero, even at the expense of the world. He doesn't want to join a suicide mission to another star system. But he does, just not in the way you think. 

Why is the world coming together to save itself, more realistic? I guess incrementally more realistic than it wasting millions of dollars to save one man. My dark thought on that is that he would have just been abandoned, not even mentioned, swept under the rug and just become a Top Secret Confidential note that would come up in people's therapy sessions for the rest of their lives.

The flashbacks allow you to see not only the fun, revealing science he leads, but also the weight of it all. If they do not see this through, then the sun will dim incrementally, over time, and the planet will cool, crops will die, life will become unsustainable. Its like what we are currently doing, but much more clearly defined -- and with a clear villain. Its a dark future for humanity that requires sacrifice.

There is one scene that has stuck with me -- the logistics leader of this whole endeavour is the cold, almost emotionless Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall), and she stands apart from the teams she is sending to die in space. Until she sees Grace is lost in the mission, unable to connect with others, get out of his own head. Despair is the mind killer. So, at a karaoke party, she does the unexpected -- she sings the Harry Styles song "Sign of the Times" in a startingly clear and loud voice, with all the anguish and emotion all these people must be feeling. Then she walks away.  Its not like we see Grace suddenly change because of this one event, but it feels pivotal. Good story telling lets us become one with all the messy, confusing emotions, to feel part of it, in this instance all due to a powerful song and voice.

And I don't even like the song, but its been emerging in my earworms non-stop since....

And then there is Rocky (James Ortiz, primarily a puppet designer; World's End). The alien who is shaped like rocks, not the movie. And yes, that's a comical line from the movie. When Grace recovers from the amnesia induced by the long sleep that kept him alive during the journey, there is no tenable way for him to complete his mission -- his crew is dead, and he was the secondary choice; all the other better trained scientists died in an accident before they left Earth. But Rocky is a brilliant engineer. The movie covers it in a toss away line, but the book had Grace marvel at exactly how utterly brilliant Rocky is. So, for every scientific theory that Grace can come up with to study the sun eating astrophage, Rocky can build what they need. Grace is no pushover, a brilliant man himself, but without Rocky, none of it would happen.

This First Contact is only briefly scary, and then it all becomes two people who are the only survivors of their crews, both trying to save their worlds. I love how this story abandons 75 years of first alien encounter mythology for comedy, heartfelt connection and mutual support. Basically, fuck the differences, and whoah are there differences, let's do this! The movie depicts it all so well, so light heartedly but with such conviction. And we all fall in love with that lumpy, rocky puppet. Ortiz, the voice of Rocky, is also one of the puppeteers. Actually he's the lead puppeteer, and it sounds like their plan all along was to have the lead also voice the character, which is a brilliant decision, as instead of choosing a famous voice actor, they go with ... an average guy? The choice is even played up in the movie.

Lord & Miller have done something special with this movie. I think back to how marvellous Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was, and especially, how it handled its visuals. Sure, its animated, so you can be impressive with anything depicted, but most don't. While this movie doesn't spend all its time in the grand majesty of Outer Space, when it does, its beautiful. Juxtaposing grand scenes with buddy comedy; brilliant. 

We Agree.