KWIF: The End of Oak Street (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. 

This Week:
The End of Oak Street (2026, d. David Robert Mitchell - in theatre)
Your Name. (2016, d. Makoto Shinaki - in theatre)

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Youtube essayist Patrick H. Willems, in a recent video asked "why aren't there more dinosaur movies?" If the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World films can continually make upwards of a billion dollars with each release, despite being of questionable quality, why are there not more films with dinos in them?

While David Robert Mitchell, director of It Follows and Under The Silver Lake, hasn't exactly decided to address Willems directly with The End of Oak Street (this film would have been in post-production by the time Willems released his video), it will for certain be an answer to that question.  In its first weekend, the film was still surpassed by summer juggernauts The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It's looking like it will at least break even, but it's not even coming close to Jurassic Park numbers.

Mitchell's film finds the Platt family struggling to survive when their neighbourhood is mysteriously transported form 1982 to an age of dinosaurs. Up until this moment, mom Denise (Anne Hathaway in her fourth film role) has been plugging away at a novel which hints at her dissatisfaction with her home life. Dad Greg (Ewan McGregor) is struggling with alcohol consumption and employment, and works delivering pizza. Their eldest, Audrey (Maisy Stella) faces graduation and the realization that her interest in astronomy will likely go unfulfilled as community college seems the only post-secondary in reach. While the youngest, Brian (Christian Convey), worries about getting beaten up by his bully's older brother, and crushes on the new neighbour girl. 

Once teleported to an entirely different time, it seems a time for the family to come together. Will they bond as a unit or will Greg's perpetual optimism and Denise's pragmatism in the situation only serve to pull them further apart?

The most unfortunate part of The End of Oak Street is that the premise was given away in the marketing. The first teaser didn't give away much, and it was tremendously intriguing. The second trailer kind of gave it all away. So, if you know, you come into The End of Oak Street without the mystery. And so when the Platt's grumpy neighbour complains about the "prank" the kids pulled on him which turns out to be a massive pile of dino-poop, we already know exactly what it is. And when Denise is visiting her elderly friend who is helping edit her book, she's shown a prehistoric plant in her back yard, but they're utterly confounded by what it is. And then there's the lights at night, which may have a mysterious origin, but we know what the effect is the lights are going to have long before the characters do.

These sequences are all handled in quite the Spielberg-ian fashion, but the film spends time pondering these mysteries when we, the audience, are already a few steps ahead. It's not painful to sit through, but it doesn't feel like a satisfying tee-up for what's to come. It might as well have been a single flash with no lead in for pretty much the same effect. It's not like these mysteries weigh on the characters for any significant amount of time or impact their life all that much.

Once the Platts are sent back in time, though, the film kicks off into high gear immediately. Mitchell, for the next 15-20 minutes keeps the creatures hidden, barely glimpses of shadows or tails or spinal plates in the distance or behind buildings or fences. It's cheeky and fun toying with the audience until the reveal of the first full creature, a feathered dinosaur with a sharp beak that is beautiful and terrifying. These feathered creatures seem freshly untethered, like the big open space of suburbia is the ideal hunting grounds they've just been waiting for, and...it gets grisly. They're fast and vicious.

The family have their reasons for coming and going from their home, including searching for their lost dog Starbuck (someone's a Battlestar Galactica fan in the house). The world outside is oppressive and violent, and survival seems impossible. Mitchell's film gives us quiet moments to contemplate how utterly fucked we would be if we were suddenly cast down a few rungs on the food chain. Human weapons, our capacity for violence, aren't at all up to the challenge of what nature had in store millions of years past.

This isn't the Jurassic franchise, for which my own enjoyment ran out a long time ago (but I'm clearly in the minority). It's better. There was the capability to build a franchise out of this but Mitchell chooses to keep it self-contained, to provide an ending that is mostly satisfying if, perhaps, everything works out a little too nicely for this slightly troubled family. The effects work here, for a modestly budgeted picture, is pretty incredible. Even ignoring the creatures (and can you really ignore the brontos having sex or pooping...no, no you cannot) the setting of 1982 homesteads surrounding by vibrant prehistoric flora is incredible. 

Hathaway is having a banner year, and while this is a film that casts equal weight to all the members of the family, Denise is the richest character in the picture, and that's in large part thanks to what Hathaway brings to her performance. She is a woman torn by love for her family, disappointment in her partner, and a desire for something more, something of her own. The move in time demolishes the pathway to being someone else, and instead keeps her at home with her family, and she has to grapple both with resentment and with her instinctual desire to protect her family. So little of what is going on within Denise is said explicitly on screen, and instead resides in the movement of Hathaway's eyes and the lines on her face. She's always been a really tremendous actor, but it seems she's leveled up.

Somehow the Jurassic movies have been deemed "family" movies (this perception is part of their success), despite having a nasty streak within them. The End of Oak Street, in dipping its toe into an Amblin-esque production, has this same bent to it. It is ostensibly a family picture (in that it is a movie about a family) but it's got a bit of menace to it, a severity which will disarm and upset and surprise and thrill. I know I let out more than a few uncontrollable chortles as the events on screen. 

The End of Oak Street doesn't look like it will be setting any new trends. The next big dinosaur movie will be a Jurassic one and we won't be likely to see others in the meantime. But its good we have this, it's good we have options.

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In my younger years, I used to be virulently anti-anime. I lumped a whole culture of films into one simplified basked because, basically, I hated Akira. Loud, flashy, somewhat impenetrable, somewhat nonsensical. Style over substance. This seemed to be anime to me. It took me a long time and many Studio Ghibli films to get over that perception. And, to tell the truth, I'm still not over it. Not fully.

My youngest, now almost of voting age, is big into anime and manga. Given the physical media I have -- thousands of comics and graphic novels and hundreds of movies and tv shows -- yeah it's kind of disappointing that they turned to basically the one area of entertainment I had basically written off and had virtually nothing of in my collections. But we all find our own paths and interests and rebel against our parents in our own ways.

They were really psyched that Your Name. was getting a limited theatrical run, and they asked if I wanted to go see it with them. Since I have shifted my opinions on anime (somewhat) yeah, I was game. They had seen it before, and obviously it meant something to them to go see it on the big screen (unfortunately we had to see it in the local closet cinema, since the bigger venue showings were in the 19+ VIP theatres). I had asked them what the film was, genre wise (besides "anime"), and they couldn't tell me. Was it romance? Drama? Comedy? Sci-fi? Sort of yes-ish to all. They just couldn't pin it down. Having seen it, I get it now.

Your Name. is a body switch comedy, at least to start. Mitsuha wakes up and is somewhat astonished to find she's in her own body. She feels like she's been living in a dream world, and as she goes about her day in her small village - going to school, hanging with friends, nothing much to do - she's told over and over again that she was behaving differently the day before.  And then she goes to sleep and wakes up in the body of Taki, fumbling her way through his life in Tokyo, going to school, hanging with friends, going to his job waiting tables. It's a delirious dream that Mitsuha enjoys at first, the big city life she's always dreamed of, but working so hard is unfamiliar to her.

And then we see the flipside as Taki lives a day in his life after having acting very different the day before when Mitsuha was in charge, followed by a day in his life in Mitsuha's body (and naturally he just can't stop fondling her breasts, which Mitsuha's younger sister catches him doing... every. time. Funny!)

My initial thought, upon watching the plot play out in this first act was how fantastic a premise this is for a complex exploration of gender and sexual identity. Immediately the finale was playing out in my head where Mitsuha and Taki either are trapped in each other's bodies, willingly, and return to their proper homes living as the other gender...or they return to their own bodies but decide to transition.... And then I remembered that Japan isn't the most progressive of nations about these things, certainly not in 2016, and that it would never happen, even if that's the most exciting and impactful this story could possibly get. There is hints though that Mitsuha is a bit gender questioning (before she's even aware of body switching, she does wish she was a boy living in Tokyo, and she also seems pretty into the fetching Ms. Okudera from Taki's work...but neither of these thoughts are explored in any depth).

There's also perfect romantic comedy in this set-up, one which I was not expecting and was excited to see play out. But that's not the film director Shinaki was making, and he lets you know by montaging (montage-ing?) the hell out of what seems like weeks of instances of Mitsuha and Taki switching bodies and living each others' lives. We get voice over from Mitsuha telling us the rules they set up for each other and how they communicate with each other. But it robs us of all the comedic set ups, and building out the supporting cast, as well as inhibits the growth of romantic tension. At the end of a montage, we learn Mitsuha has set Taki up on a date with Ms. Okudera - a woman in her mid-20s to Taki's 17(!) and then both Mitsuha and Taki have conflicted feelings about said date. This is how we learn the body-switchers like each other, but there's only been like 5 minutes of communication between them as presented through montage. It's not satisfying in the slightest (plus "voice-over over a montage of scenes" always gives the perception of a troubled production and extensive reshoots).

The reason Taki and Mitsuha are body switching is as a result of a passing comet. And when the comet passes, neither Taki nor Mitsuha are switching bodies anymore...but they both have fallen for each other. Taki tries to call Mitsuha but cannot seem to locate her. And, like a dream, their memories of each other start fading. This is the "romance" part of a rom com. The "meet-cute" of Taki and Mitsuha was basically looking in a mirror and seeing each other's lives from inside. Now they need to find each other but so many complications get in the way (far too many).

Taki becomes obsessed with finding Mitsuha, sketching everything he can remember of her town. His friend Tsukasa  joins him on a trip to try and find the town where Mitsuha lives (he never learned that while he was pretending to be her?!? Or is it just the fading dreamlike memories...this movie is very inconsistent with how their memories work). Ms. Okudera joins them (which, given that they're teens and she's a full fledged adult, seems wildly inappropriate. There's like an Y Tu Mama Tambien set-up here that doesn't happen at all). 

And now ***SPOILERS***

Taki does find the village...but it was decimated by a meteorite that fell off the comet 3 years ago! Not only were Mitsuha and Taki body switching, but they were time traveling and never realized it. I guess they don't have calendars or write down dates in school? This film asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief, which is fine for the higher-concept stuff, but then they push you to believe that neither one would have, I dunno, put their details into each other's phone or notebook. Or learn where their exact address is. And then, when the comet passes all the little notes Mitsuha had been leaving in Taki's diary on his phone just spontaneously delete themselves? I have to call bullshit on that one. It's like the film is saying that all evidence of Mitsuha didn't exist, except the fact that Mitsuha went to visit Taki 3 years earlier (he hadn't body switched with her yet, so their meeting meant nothing to him) and she gave him a woven ribbon that he's been wearing as a bracelet every day since. Director Shinaki cheats, and he really didn't have to.

Through drinking some spit-sake (is this a real tradition? Yup... kuchikamizake) Mitsuha made and some mystical shenanigans, Taki transcends time and space and reconnects with Mitsuha, and the third act then becomes Taki-as-Mitsuha trying to save her and her town from the looming disaster.

There is some beautiful animation in these sequences, particularly in the wild trip Taki takes upon drinking the saki, and all the visuals of the comet.  Also director Shinaki manages to effectively cross cut between the Taki-as-Mitsuha and oblivious-Taki-from-three-years earlier to create a grand sense of time and scale and the weight that rests on the shoulders of Taki-as-Mitsuha. But in spite of its scale and beauty, it is a complete distraction from what is central to the story, which is the connection between the characters and the romance that has erupted between them. When the climax of the story should be effort to bring these two characters together, it's overly focused on one huge obstacle in their way.

In a grand moment of cosmic collision, Taki and Mitsuha have a moment where space and time allow them to physically connect and it's proposed they write their names on each others hands so that when the dream state starts to rob them of their memories, they never forget each other's names. Taki writes first, and in a cosmic joke, Mitsuha barely gets to draw a line.  And stupid-ass Taki writes "I love you" instead of his name. The town is saved but they both forget each other.

In an exceptionally effective coda, five years later (from Taki's time, 8 years for Mitsuha) Taki has been searching for something that he can't explain. He knows he was obsessed by this town that got struck by a comet but he can't remember why, and in more cheats from the storyteller, neither can Ms. Okuder or Tsukasa.  The reunion of Taki and Mitsuha is quite satisfying with a sweeping era-appropriate rock ballad (which is in stark contrast to the horrible early 2000's alt-rock stylings of the songs and score earlier in the film, which undermine the film and make it feel like we're watching a sub-par CW teen soap opera).

***End Spoilers***

As I was discussing these critiques of the story my kid was explaining to me various tropes of anime, and how this falls in line with them.  This is not a badly made movie, but it's also not a well-told story. The director manipulates the characters and manipulates the edit thus manipulating the audience, hoping you won't notice. Just like with Hallmark movies where I can grade them on a curve because I've seen so many of them, I'm sure if I were more well versed in anime I might hold this in higher regard (or maybe not, I dunno) but as just a stand-alone movie going experience, it had its moments, but mostly left me wishing it were something other than what it is.

Paranoia Agent

2004, d. Satoshi Kon - Crunchyroll (13 episodes)

I've been having a very difficult time processing Paranoia Agent, anime director Satoshi Kon's epic examining ...well, what, exactly? 

Let's start with the premise [spoilers ahoy]: An animation character designer - the meek, demure Tsukiko Sagi -- is under immense pressure to come up with a new hit character as her current creation -- the floopy, sleepy-eyed dog named Maromi -- is increasing in popularity at a rapid clip. On her way home after yet another unsuccessful day she is attacked by a teen wielding a baseball cap and golden rollerblades.  She illustrates her attacker and a pair of detectives, Ikari and Maniwa have differing takes on the incident. Ikari is suspicious of Tsukiko while Maniwa believes her.  Word of this attack by Shonen Bat (aka Li'l Slugger) hits the news and becomes a sensation.

This initial set-up is actually quite fascinating from a current day lens, especially the ACAB view where Ikari looks at Tsukiko more as a suspect than a victim. Tsukiko is our guide through the first episode, and we do get a strong sense of the world she lives in, one in which she is judged harshly by others for her shy mannerisms, and she constantly falls victim to passive aggressive abuse. But at the same time, the way the animation is directed, it does call into question the truth of the events Tsukiko recalls. Plus, Kon draws upon the fact that Tsukiko is a character designer and her formation of the description of Shonen Bat is almost a procedural how-to on character creation.

The next episode follows Yuuichi, the most popular kid in school, a kid who happens to wear a baseball cap and wear golden rollerblades. Yuuichi is an ambitious kid, running for class president, but he's facing the new kid in school, a super-congenial, friendly outsider whose niceness is genuine in a way that's not performative like Yuuichi's is. When Yuuichi's popularity nosedives because a rumour starts spreading he's Li'l Slugger, he gets angry, paranoid and suspicious that it's the new kid who's sabotaging his popularity. He begins wishing the new kid would get attacked by Li'l Slugger, which is exactly what happens, only it further points the finger to Yuuichi being Li'l Slugger...until he himself is attacked.

The third episode follows a woman with dissociative identity disorder as she negotiates one life as a sex worker and another as a bride-to-be, before one personality is attacked. The fourth episode finds a low-level police officer who has taken bribes to elevate his family, only to be pulled further down into the world of crime.  Just as we think we're getting a sense of how these stories will go...people dealing with extreme stress get attacked by Li'l Slugger, this episode upends it with this corrupt cop capturing Shonen Bat. 

The next episode finds Ikari and Maniwa interrogating the kid, Makoto, who is lost in a video game world where he believes he is a holy warrior fighting monsters. Ikari gets increasingly more irate with Makoto and his gobbledygook, where the younger Maniwa seems to follow along with the kids allegory. This episode takes the detectives inside the young man's delirium using a lot of traditional anime tropes, but constantly broken by Ikari's refusal to go along for the ride.

While Makoto is in custody another young woman is attacked, a runaway teen, proving that either there's a copycat, or Makoto is the copycat. The detectives begin their hunt for suspects based on certain connective threads between the various victims, but when Makoto winds up dead in his cell and Li'l Slugger just disappears into the shadows, both detectives are relieved of their duties. Ikari later struggles to make ends meet for his ailing wife's fare, while Maniwa is lost in Makoto's holy warrior fantasy.

A couple diversionary episodes, one is a dark satire in which three people from a suicide chat forum meet up to kill themselves together, only for one of them to be an excitable perky pre-teen girl. The two older men make it their mission to ensure this child doesn't meet such an unfortunate fate, and without ever conceding their mission, manage to find a new lease on life. It's an absurd and uncomfortable and funny episode that stands on its own, utterly disconnected from the rest of the series (I don't even remember where the Shonen Bat connection comes in) that is absolutely my favourite episode, containing much the same energy as Tokyo Godfathers.

Another episode find the gossip circle of an apartment complex drowning on and on about stories of Shonen Bat that they've heard (or, just as likely, are making up in their attempts at one-upsmanship). A new younger resident of the complex, tries to join in, and despite her stories being no less absurd than the others, is constantly mocked for her stories. The ending twist is very dark... funny, but dark.

Very early in the series what is discussed as the connective threads between victims is everyone who is attacked by Li'l Slugger is under a great deal of undo stress or experiencing high levels of anxiety.  The question becomes is this bat boy real or a subject of mass delusion?

While there are a lot of characters introduced throughout the series, as nearly each episode has some stand-alone facet, there are also a lot of connective tissues. In many ways these connections feel forced (in no small part because most of these ideas came out as independent thoughts in Kon's notebooks, that he then strung together into a mostly cohesive narrative) but in both the way they do and don't connect speaks to the larger idea of social anxiety, of groupthink.

I was exposed to the concept of a tulpa after reviewing the film The Empty Man, basically a thought being come to life. That is exactly what Li'l Slugger is in this series. Where there are many misdirects (especially with Makoto), in thinking that there's a real Shonen Bat or that maybe it's Tsukiko all along, it's never that simple. It starts with Tsukiko, we learn, but ideas have a tendency of spreading, some that capture people's imaginations in positive ways, like Maromi the dog, but some that capture peoples worst impulse. And when someone is in a dark space, wishing for escape, even in the form of a malicious assault, that thought can manifest. And when so many people are in a place of despair, that tulpa can become enormous and dangerous.

Kon was clearly an ideas guy, and I think with Paranoia Agent being a dumping ground, in a way, for his own disparate ideas, it's almost a logical leap into the conceit of an idea taking on life of its own. Tokyo's population's fascination with Li'l Slugger is mirrored by their obsession with Maromi, who becomes an equally outsized phenomenon that starts to impact society in really insidious ways. In this Kon examines consumerism as a villain, and throughout he's very critical of the animation industry he works in and the pressures it puts upon everyone in the business (so many of the victims in this series are connected to animation).  There's definitely an art vs. mass appeal theme unpinned here to.

But both the origin and culminating point of the series in in repressed emotions, be they guilt, grief, resentment, or any other strong feeling that is pushed deep down only for it to spill out of you in other ways. It's a cautionary tale about avoiding or denying one's feelings and not adequatly processing big events in our lives, both as individuals and as a collective.

It is a lot to take in, and it many times triggered my repulsive reflex towards anime, but I persevered and am still unsure of the exact reward. Is this something I enjoyed, or was it just a part of my Kon-watching exercise? Will this be something I go back to, to try and understand better? Will I think about it any further once I finish writing this sentence? 

KWIF: Furiosa (+4)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he just does a "quick" (ha! ahahaha! ha!) little summary of his thoughts. 

This week:
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, d. George Miller - in theatre)
Point Blank (1967, d. John Boorman - Criterion Channel)
Purple Noon (or Plein Soleil, 1960, d. René Clément - Criterion Channel)
The American Friend (or Der amerikanische Freund, 1977, d. Wim Wenders - Criterion Channel)
Paprika (2006, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)

and, go!

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Following Mad Max: Fury Road, about as beautifully artistic and mentally and viscerally stimulating a post-apocalyptic action movie as we're ever to get, I was keen to say that Warner Bros. should just cut George Miller a blank check and make another one, whatever way he wants.  I believe it was during the press junket for Fury Road that Miller intoned he had written a full backstory script for Furiosa, the character played by Charlize Theron in the film.  I was more than ready for that.

As time passed, the realization dawned on me that Furiosa's back story would have to be a pretty bleak one, given how in Fury Road she was headed to The Green Place from which she was abducted as a child. Was that something we really wanted to see? The abuses set upon a young girl in a very toxic and masculine society?  We're aware of Immortan Joe and his harem of "wives" (barely more than breeding livestock as far as he's concerned) so it could get real, real dark. Did we want that?

What we really wanted was more Fury Road.

And you know what? That's almost exactly what Miller delivers with his new entry in the "Mad Max Saga".

In this nearly two-and-a-half hour extravaganza, told in five parts, we first meet Furiosa (Alyla Browne) in the fabled Green Place, a beautiful crevasse in the dead center of Australia (for the first time in the "Saga" were given an actual birds eye view, confirming, yes, this is Australia). A couple of marauders from the wastelands have found the place, and Furiosa, along with a younger sibling or friend raises the alarm. She attempts to sabotage the marauder while help comes but finds that, more than anything else in this lush refuge, she is the most valuable prize.  Our first chase begins as Furiosa's fierce mother (Charlee Fraser) pursues the kidnappers through the desert, and yeah, it's relatively bare bones, but also completely intense. Furiosa is no hapless victim and finds her own ways of sabotaging the marauders.  

Furiosa's story is one of tragedy, so things don't go so well against the vast forces of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call). Furiosa is charged with protecting the location of the Green Place, while she is lobbed between Dementus and Immortan Joe.  Realizing what fate has in store for her in Immortan Joe and his creepy family's care, Furiosa (now Anya Taylor Joy, The New Mutants) hides herself, disguised as a mute boy and a mechanic, she listens and learns. She observes the creation of Immortan Joe's first war rig, and sees the glory of its driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, The Lazarus Project [@Toasty...where's that review?]).  Through a series of events, Jack becomes her new mentor. He's a hard, but kind man who wants nothing more than to help Furiosa be fully capable of surviving their horrid reality.  As the two plot their long-term plan for escape from Immortan Joe, the two get swept into an increasingly urgent and brutal war between Immortan Joe and Dementus, which leads to more and more loss for Furiosa, but gaining an all-consuming thirst for vengeance.

If we look at the prior films in the overall Mad Max "saga" they are all structured differently. The original film is pretty much a series of vignettes, while the second film attempts a more conventional three-act structure (that I can recall). Beyond Thunderdome is more two distinct stories, and Fury Road is basically one long act. I like how Miller keeps you guessing with this series and the only thing you can really expect is to have an epic time with some crazy stunts.

While there was some themes to Thunderdome and Fury Road, Furiosa is pretty much a straightforward action movie. It maybe juxtaposes how different people deal with tragedy differently, but it's certainly not the driving force of the movie. Each of its five acts captures a day or so in Furiosa's life that shows her resolve and willpower in the face of intense combat and overwhelming odds against.

The acting is all exactly what it needs to be. Browne playing young Furiosa for the first hour of the film was unexpected but she was incredible. By the time we meet Joy's Furiosa she's been keeping herself hidden for years so her toughness is very quiet and reserved, until it shows itself in a very raw, emotional form. Praetorian Jack teaches her to control her rage and enhances her skill set, with Burke making Jack a very welcome reprieve from all the letcherous, vainglorious, egocentric and ugly men of the various worlds she's forced to inhabit. 

Furiosa has about as much dialogue in this as Max did in Fury Road, which isn't much at all, so both Bowne and Joy's performance of the character is all in the physicality and the eyes. Conversely, Hemsworth is all words. While Dementus is a dangerous man, he's also a charismatic fool. He leads his people to ruin, but he has the distinct capability to always sucker in more people under him. Hemsworth's charm factor is so high, even when playing this despicable man. He has more dialogue than I think every other character combined, including a riveting monologue in the final act that is the flailing desperation of a thoroughly defeated egomaniac.

I liked how Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris side-stepped a lot of the world building. Rather than shift its lens off Furiosa, it held tight with her throughout the film. It didn't spend more time with the society of the war boys, and didn't provide an origin story for "Witness Me" or even recycle any of the catchphrases from the prior film. Certainly they are a part of the story, but there is no character there to explore their culture through like Nux from the last film. Been there, done that. We really don't spend time with Dementus' crew as well because, as we learn, Dementus' crew is mercurial.

I found Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to be a highly invigorating experience. I wanted to throw my arms up and cheers so many times, and I clapped with glee to see the war rig manufacturing process. It's a worthy prequel to Fury Road even if it is not quite its equal. I doubt anything can be.

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One of my ongoing viewing projects is to watch all the various adaptations of Donald E. Westlake's Parker novels (written under the "Richard Stark" pseudonym). Though I've never read any of the novels, I became a rather immediate fan upon reading Darwyn Cooke's loving graphic novel adaptations.  To date I've only managed to catch the awful Jason Statham-starring Parker and the director's cut of 1999's Payback, starring Mel Gibson.  Of the eight adaptations of various Parker stories, arguably the most famous is the 1967 crime thriller, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin.

Based off the first Parker novel The Hunter, it finds Marvin's "Walker" (as Westlake notoriously refused anyone using the name without committing to multiple pictures) trying to come to grips with how he wound up in a prison cell with two bullet holes in his abdomen. The answer: betrayal. He got pulled into a job by Reese, a man in desperate need of money to pay off his debts, but the job wasn't a big enough score to pay Walker the split he was promised. Reese, having seduced Walker's wife, Lynn, sets him up for the fall. His only mistake was in making sure Walker was dead. Walker pulls through his injuries and sets out to not so much get revenge as collect what he is owed by any means necessary.

"The Hunter" is the same story Payback was based off of, and the rhythms of the story are almost exactly the same. Some of the characters shift in their personality and story, but inconsequentially. The real difference is in style. Payback is a very 1990's production, Cooke's comic adaptation is very firmly in the 1950's, while here it's so very 1960's Los Angeles, and it's glorious. I have to think everything Quentin Tarantino was trying to achieve visually in Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood stems from this film. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but the aesthetic of this film, from the streets of Hollywood, to every hotel room, office and mansion homestead are so exquisitely of the era, and it all just sings beautifully.

If I had to place the aesthetic it's that in the 1960's technology was just starting it's advancement into commercial sales, hi-fi stereos and phone intercoms, and doors that open and close with the press of a button. The ostentatiousness of the 1960's resulted in such heavy investment in electronics and mechanized devices that there wasn't the same sense of investment in making everything gold or highly ornate. Environments were very much wood framed with the brushed chrome of technology as an accent. Colours were pastel bases, muted, yet still vibrant.  The buttoned down suits of the 1950s gave way to more mod suits in the 60's and the women adopted patterns and colours galore.  There are times when I watch the film and wish I could tour around the setting more. This is a film where I wish I could just dive right in and live there.  

I was about to say Lee Marvin as Walker was maybe a decade too old to play the character, but I just looked it up and he was 43! Five years younger than I am now. And he looks like he's cresting 60 in the film.  Man that era of sunbathing, heavy drinking and smoking was hard on one's looks.  That said, he's almost perfect for the vision of Walker, a big, broad man who can stop you dead in your tracks with just a look.  There's a weird flashback where Lynn talks about when she met Walker, and it shows Marvin being playful and smiling with her, and oh, it threatens to undermine the entire image of the character. It's early enough on in the picture that Marvin has time to rebuild his image, but it takes a bit.  The most immediate thing about Marvin's Walker that seems to deviate from Parker is his code of ethics. It seems at first like Walker is really trying to get revenge, it's not for a while where he really starts hammering it in that he's actually just after his money.

Angie Dickinson (Police Woman) is in the film as Lynn's sister, Chris, and she is everything to this film. She is a love interest for Walker, but definitely not the conventional "love interest" role. She is versed in working hard and doing what must be done, and as much as she wants to resent Walker for asking her to do so, she can't help but see a guy who very much does the same...only he's kind of an emotionless automaton. He frustrates her so much (as witnessed by the incredible scene where Dickinson goes full ham on Marvin until she's utterly exhausted and collapse to the floor) and yet it's clear she's got an incurable thing for him in spite of herself. She plays it so well. Her roles seems beefed up from other versions of this story, but maybe it's just that Dickinson does more with it. She has presence, and her character feels lived in, in a way maybe no other character does.

Boorman and his editor (Henry Berman) do weird collages throughout the film, mostly as flashbacks, which are not unwelcome but seem so ...primitive as a storytelling vehicle. Sometimes they work very well, acting as Walker's inner conscience or a dreamscape, but sometimes they feel like too much.  There's a magnificent scene of Walker walking down a hallway, his ADRed footsteps "clop-clopping" away, setting the rhythm for Johnny Mandel's score to kick in, paired with some of that collage editing and it's just an masterful senses-grabbing scene that has been cribbed so much since, but probably never bettered.

---

Another kick I've been on is watching any adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley series. I just did an obscenely long look at the 1999 version of The Talented Mr. Ripley in comparison with the new Netflix series, and this drew me to re-subscribing to the Criterion Channel so that I could catch up on two earlier adaptations of Ripley stories.

1960's Purple Noon (not Purple Moon as I keep wanting to say) is a very French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring notoriously handsome actor Alain Delon (Le Samourai) in the title role of Thomas Ripley. I could go into a very detailed list of "differences" between this and the other adaptations of the novel, but I'll spare that in favour of just the broadest strokes.

The first big shift is how the film begins in media res, with Tom and Philippe Greenleaf (changed from Dickie) already best buds and hanging out in Rome. Philippe  is already aware that Tom was sent by his father and Tom seemingly doesn't hide the fact from Philippe his criminal ways. The two are very boys' boys as they horse and pal around and fuck with other people for their fun. They pick up a woman and both make out with her (well it's more Philippe making out and Tom trying to get in on the action). Did I mention this film is so French. Marge likes Tom just fine but her relationship with Philippe seems strained by his cladding about with Tom. Tom covets everything about Philippe, his wardrobe, his carefree lifestyle, and his women.

Obviously this is the second big change. Tom's intoned homosexuality is completely absent from Delon's performance (and the script). When he kills Philippe, takes over his life, kills Freddie and returns to being Tom, he heads back to Marge and they start a relationship, and Tom seems genuinely happy. He has Dickie's life and he doesn't have to pretend to be him.

But as much as the story and performance are absent of any gay undertones, the lens in which we view the film is very queer indeed. The camera isn't in love with Delon, it is obsessed with him. Where in other productions the camera provides us largely Tom's point of view of events, lets us understand the story through his very warped eyes, here the camera is very disengaged from Tom's point of view and instead just ogles him. Though Tom is clearly covetous of Philippe's life, through the lens we see Tom as the ideal. He's much more attractive than anyone else on screen (and Maurice Ronet is not a bad looking guy, but pales compared to Delon) and we can never forget it.

Remember that old Late Night with Conan O'Brien bit "If they mated" where they would take two celebrities and show us what an adult offspring would look like if they shared their DNA? In Delon's case, he would be the "If They Mated" of Zach Efron and Jared Leto in their primes. Just the most piercing blue eyes and carefree floppy hair and fit-but-not-buff body. Just total ah-ooh-gah.  I don't know what makes the lens gay male gaze as opposed to female gaze, but it's definitely feels like one and not the other.

The final big distinction of the various versions is the ending, in which Tom doesn't get away with it. And it's kind of clever and unexpected how they did it. Innocuous, sudden, and yet logical. I understand why in such an era they needed crime to be punished on films, but it does lessen the story, but so does the removal of the homosexual undertones.  It's a very good production overall, but of course it is. As I stated before, the source material is one of the greatest, sure to be adapted over and over.  Yet, it's the lesser of the three productions for not even daring to challenge the norms of the time.

---

I like the story behind The American Friend (not My American Friend, as I keep wanting to say) - the late 70's German-French production from noted auteur director Wim Wenders - almost as much as I like the film. As Wenders tells it, after his first few films were road stories largely improvised from loose scripts, he was looking for a fully scripted story for his next film. He became obsessed with Patricia Highsmith's novels and attempted to option every one of them, only to find they were all unavailable. This caught Highsmith's attention and she met with Wenders and clearly, as he says it, he "passed the test", and she offered him her new manuscript for her third Ripley novel before she had even sent it to the publishers. This was Ripley's Game.

A coup for Wenders, in a way, but also a consolation prize of sorts. Wenders had approached actor-director John Cassavetes for playing the role of Tom Ripley, but he was busy. Cassavetes suggested Dennis Hopper (Super Mario Bros.) to Wenders, and Wenders came to like the idea. But when the time came to shoot the picture Hopper was still sidelined shooting Apocalypse Now. Hopper came off the set of that feature a practical zombie, drinked and drugged out of his mind, barely able to engage with the material and his co-stars.  Bruno Ganz (The Boys From Brazil) was a popular stage actor who had only one screen credit, but Wenders convinced him to take the role. Ganz prepped endlessly and was very invested in the part. A few days into working with Hopper, who was very laissez-faire and freewheeled his lines, the men came to blows. Wenders let them fight it out, which led to an evening of drinking and a mutual understanding with Ganz softening his over-prepared stance and Hopper committing to starting each day prepping with the director.  

It's a wonderful story in a way, I just wish it paid off on screen. Hopper's Ripley, wearing a stetson and cowboy boots most of the time, is certainly not the mind's eye view of Thomas Ripley, not akin to any other interpretation we've seen on screen. But aesthetics aren't everything.  My chief complaint is that Hopper's performance just feels like he's in a completely different movie every time he's on screen. 

Thankfully (I guess) in the first hour of the film, Ripley only has two or three short scenes which seem quite outside the main plot. Ganz plays Jonathan Zimmerman, a framemaker whose wife works at an auction house where Ripley peddles his illicit art wares. When the two are introduces Jon slights Ripley which causes him to spread a rumour that Zimmerman's rare blood disorder is terminal and that he's having money problems. 

This catches the attention of some criminal types who are in a feud with other criminal types. They start to gaslight Jon into believing his disorder is terminal, and convincing him that he should be doing what he can to ensure the stability of his wife and son after his passing.  All he needs to do is kill someone.  It's very Highsmith in a Strangers on a Train but in a fun house mirror sort of way.

The job is done, and it's an intense set pieces that is wonderfully shot (no pun intended). There's a dangling thread of Jon having been caught fleeing the scene on camera but it's never picked up (and I'm not sure why). Ripley later encounters Jon at his frame shop, perhaps to taunt him, but Jon apologizes for his behaviour in their initial meeting and is very friendly. Ripley feels guilty. When he finds out the goons are trying to force Jon into another hit, Ripley tries to stop it before it starts, but ultimately can only intervene and help out. It's a very clumsy, blackly comedic, and similarly intense sequence on a high speed train.

Jon's secrecy with his wife and the weight of his deeds starts fracturing his marriage, but Jon thinks it's all too late. Ripley notes that the bad guys will try to clean up any loose ends, and they're going to have to go on the offensive. The film's final big piece once again plays out unexpectedly, with some irreverent turns that carry just as many nerves.

If not for Hopper, this is otherwise an really great film.  It's not a terrific Ripley story, as the character is largely absent from the first half, but at the same time, given what we see of Ripley in the various adaptations of the first of Highsmith's novels, the character profile of an art dealer with criminal connections seems absolutely fitting. I just wish almost anyone else was playing him, but I think a 15-years-later Delon would have been perfect, as the film ventured between Hamburg and Paris.

---

Paprika is the final film made by Satoshi Kon, and what many regard to be his masterpiece. Having just seen all four in the past month, it's hard to not say they are all his masterpieces.  He was such a thoughtful, incredibly curious and inventive storyteller, and as very much a latecomer to his career, it's still resonates as a huge tragedy that he died still quite evidently in his storytelling prime.

That all said, at least in first watch, Paprika is my least favourite of the quartet. It is so primarily because of my typical reaction to typical anime, which is a flinching revulsion.  Where Kon's prior films seemed to defiantly break from typical anime styles and forms, Paprika seemed to be a sudden dive right into them, as if Kon just caught up on the prior ten years of anime that he had missed.

It's probably an unfair assessment.

And yet I kept wincing as I watched this. It started very simply with the character Paprika's haircut. Something about it screamed so loudly in my face, the way the curl of the hair covers over the cheekbones to both accentuate the jaw and highlight the eyes...almost more helmet than hair. It was the visual equivalent of chewing tinfoil or fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Just set me on edge.

A lot of anime (not a genre, I know, but...) has this thing where its action scenes or often entire stories operate in a stream-of-consciousness manner, because you can do anything in animation. But should you? The stream-of-consciousness side of this entertainment shouldn't bother me (I like Twin Peaks after all) but it's often just nonsense.  Of course, I have limited exposure and so limited experience, but that is my experience and it does not appeal to me.

So when Kon's movie opens with a very intentional stream of consciousness-style dream sequence I was getting itchy, despite being obviously wowed by the director's continued masterful control over transitions, here rapidly transitioning between different dream realms.  I basically bought into the film by the end of the incredible opening credit sequence, but my seatbelt wasn't securely fastened the entire journey.

Paprika doesn't really hold your hand. It may grab you by the shirt sleeve and give you a little tug from time to time, but it's not laying it all out for you, and it never establishes any sort of rules to what you are seeing. It's all very mercurial, dream logic.

Yet the story is nearly quite straightforward. In a near-future world, a company has invented a technology that can record people's dreams, but there's an exploit where people can actually enter those dreams using the technology.  Paprika is Dr. Atsuko Chiba's alias when she enters the dreamscape, her very superheroic alter ego. Except someone else has stolen the technology, entered the dreamscape and is doing some real harm.

As Atsuko and the other heads of the project work with a police detective to try to suss out who is poisoning people's dreams, people start losing their minds in the real worlds and killing themselves.  The news is bad, and the chairman wants to shut the project down, which would leave anyone using the dream recorder exposed to the psychopath.

This is a generalized summary and definitely not 100% accurate...as I said, it's a film that doesn't hold your hand.  I found it difficult to embrace this world without understanding it first. The film talks about the newly developed "DC Mini" but doesn't really set us up for understanding the world as changed by the dream therapy technology that seems more widespread. Maybe they're both the same thing but it doesn't make sense that they are. I dunno, I probably need to watch it again.

The film toys with dreamscape logic, which means that often characters seem to wake up but are still in a dream, and then wake up from that dream to still be in a dream etc. It is a trick dream-based movies have been using for decades before and since. It's as effective as it is annoying.

There's this whole angle to Paprika that's about filmmaking and storytelling and camera perspective and collaboration and regret that seems very personal and personally appealing to Kon, but also is verrrry inside baseball for animators and cinematic storytellers. It's a side trip that ultimately has some leanings into one of the character's back stories but it also feels like an unnecessary tangent that stalls the mid-point of the film.

The character designs in this film in general feel more animated archetypes than in Kon's previous films (as Griffin Newman pointed out, it seems like three of the main doctors were visually designed after Professor X, Toad and the Blob from X-Men, something I picked up on as well, but was likely in mind after a binge of over 100 issues of X-Men comics and the 13 episodes of X-Men '97).  I don't feel like I understood our main protagonist, Atsuko and her altar ego Paprika all that well. I don't really understand why Atsuko was doing call girl-style illicit meetings with patients where Paprika invaded their dreams. It somehow made more sense when the dream world was invading the real world and Paprika became an independent being from Atsuko, but I'm not sure why that made sense.

This wasn't a mind-twist, so much as a mind hurt. Again, maybe upon rewatch it will reveal itself more, and repulse less. I mean, there's an abundance of fat jokes and denigrating of an obese character in this so, cultural biases, along with my own anime biases, all got in the way.

KWIF: Next Goal Wins (+4)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he just does a quick little summary of his thoughts instead of calling his mother. He must have been an evil bebe. 

This week:
Next Goal Wins (2023, d. Taika Waititi - Disney+)
Delicatessen (1992, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet et Marc Caro - AmazonPrime/the binder)
Nemesis (1992, d. Albert Pyun - Tubi)
Requiem for a Dream (2000, d. Darren Aronofski - the binder)
Tokyo Godfathers (2003, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)

---

There is a consistent rhythm to the dialogue of Taika Waititi's residents of American Samoa which is not to dissimilar to the rhythm of the Maori denizens of most of his New Zealand films... full of charm, good nature, and prepetual sense of positive optimism. That type of dialogue, and general nature, is something that Michael Fassbender's reluctant, angry, drunken, heartbroken, belligerant coach just is incapable of joining in on. In part because that is what the role calls for, and partly because this type of comedy is definitely not Fassbender's baileywick.

It results in the character of Thomas Rongen, a real life man who was basically left no other options than to coach the worst national team in international soccer/fütböl, taking a very expected white man's journey of learning and growing by embracing a culture other than his own. It's a true-ish story but that doesn't make it any more played out as a story. 

The thing is, knowing exactly what the journey would be deflated almost all expectations of true drama, and so the film  left with promoting the charms of the various actors playing the denizens of American Samoa, and every single one of them seems like someone you would just delight in being in their presence. It speaks to the dark place Coach Rongen had to be in to take so long to embrace it.

Waititi's film isn't a triumphant return to form by any stretch. It's a pretty wobbly narrative, a skeleton of story upon which hangs mere ribbons of characters, most of whom are teased with inner lives, but really none of which are not explored to any satisfaction. Yet it's not the nearly unwatchable mess of Thor:Love and Thunder, which was about as big a narrative and tonal misfire as we've gotten in the past 5 years.

I laughed a lot, and even cried a couple times. When a character explains to Coach the third gender of the island -- fa’afafine -- as a flower that makes our lives more beautiful, that got me real good. It takes Coach a little longer to come around, and given the increasingly crass and dangerously incendiary attacks by political and religious leaders on the trans community as a mode of riling up and distracting their followers from real issues affecting them, it makes for the film's most direly uncomfortable moments. The film takes place in 2011, which in the course of trans awareness was an eon ago, so Rongen at first is dismissive or insensitive or even aggressive about it, before befriending and mentoring Jaiyah (played by the stunning and charming Kaimana in what should have been a breakout role) as team captain, embracing her as its clear her community does.

I can see the editing lines of the film, the truncated drama, the expurgated character arcs, and half-remaining narrative framework in the remnants of Next Goal Wins. What is left is a mostly breezy picture about a group of people aiming for a low-stakes victory and probably being quite fine whether accomplishing it or not. I'm not sure I want to see the no doubt 30-minutes-longer version whose island breeze levity gets dragged down by too much emotional weight.

It's fine! Really!

---

Delicatessen is a film I've been meaning to watch for 30 years, and, in fact, have had a DVD of it in the binder for 20 (but, sadly, in another region format).

In an amber-drenched, wet and smoggy post-apocalyptic France, we find amidst the ruin an isolated square where, beneath a tenement house, a butcher shop sells human meat. The meat is sourced primarily by drawing in unsuspecting victims with an ad that promises room and board in exchange for building upkeep labour. The meat's consumers, primarily, are the building's odd motley of tenents.

Enter Dominique Pinon's Luison, an out-of-work clown who starts charming many of the locals (though others don't sway from their meat cravings and keep their distance). Luison makes a connection with the butcher's mousy daughter who wants to save him from his fate. She enlists the rebel Troglodites who live in the sewer to kidnap Luison, and all hell breaks loose in the building.

Until the third act, the film is largely comprised of a series of vignettes that form a picture of the people of the building and a sense of this should-be-horrible world they exist in. Yet Jeunet and Caro inject this bleak landscape with a sense of whimsy and playfulness (accompanied by a winkingly jovial Parisienne score) that undercuts any and all darkness.

It does feel like the film is biding time though to get to its rollicking third act which takes its multi-level set piece and absolutely wrecks it in gloriously practical fashion. It's wondrous to behold and elevates this film from pleasant curiousity to sheer joy.

Jeunet and Caro cast, dress and style their band of actors like human cartoons. You would think given their various exaggerated features they were shot with a fish-eye lens to further accentuate their unique traits, mais non, they are just that fascinating to look at...or at least feel that way given the directors' lovingly curious way of capturing them on film.

This would program well as a triple feature with Kung Fu Hustle and The Shape of Water.

---

I was listening to a podcast in which a trio of cult cinema fans (and professional screenwriters all) were nerding out over their love of Albert Pyun movies. Pyun has nearly 50 film directing credits (and a few uncredited efforts), of which the vast majority were released direct-to-video. The most "famous" of his features would be the Jean-Claude Van Damme feature Cyborg, and the not-even-laughably bad Captain America from 1990.

The funny thing was, as big a fan as these commentators were, they still could acknowledge that the majority of Pyun's work was, bluntly, pretty bad, but that the director has a penchant for getting putting a little more into some of his films, and getting a little more out of them, that his DTV contemporaries.

Nemesis was touted as the spotlight film for Pyun's filmmaking zeal, and, to be blunt, it's a pretty bad story about a largely nonsense war between humanity and cyborgs that is definitely riffing on both Terminator and Blade Runner, but having a fraction-of-a-fraction of the not just budget of either, but attention to detail in world building.

For starters, they get the definition of cyborg completely wrong. They call what are essentially sentient robots, "cyborgs" when the lead character, Alex Rain (the charmless Olivier Gruner), a "cyborg" hunter is himself a true cyborg, comprised largely of cybernetic parts. It's a maddening that a DTV genre movie that relies upon exploiting nerds for profit could get this one concept so wrong.

I won't go into the specifics of the story because the filmmakers didn't really seem to care, so why should I?  But within the first 30 minutes, Alex has been nearly killed and rebuilt twice, retired from his job and pulled back into it, and sent on a mission to do assassinate a "cyborg" rebel leader only to switch sides when he learns the truth. It's storytelling whiplash that would be infuriating if there was any sense of a character in Alex Rain at all.  Gruner seems to wrestle with any dialogue (it's clear English is not his first language) and cannot conjure up any sense of emotion. He does look good with his shirt off though, and it's off a lot.  

It's also insane how the film keeps pairing Alex up with characters and then killing the sidekick or companion off. It robs the film of any meaningful relationships for Alex, and pretty quickly you stop even trying to care about anyone that may pop up on screen, even plucky Max... Max Impact.

For as inane as the story is, and as checked out as I was, by the third act I was finding myself charmed by the film's action gusto. As noted, Pyun gets a lot out of his minuscule budget, and manages a pretty relentless stream of action sequences. They are not exceptionally well shot, but there are some clever flourishes amidst them, including one atop a collapsed building, one while two characters slide down a very long and wavy industrial (and very muddy) slide while shooting at each other, and a sequence in which Alex repeatedly shoots the floor out from under himself to descend four stories and escape a trap.

Then there's the big finale which results in Alex fighting a stop-motion robot skeleton which is not something you see anymore and for as silly as it looked, it was twice as charming.

Beyond Gruner, the acting is bad, but due to the script being so awful and the majority of the movie's dialogue being captured in post.  But we get small appearances from Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the ever reliable Tim Thomerson, a blink-and-you-miss-it Jackie Earle Haley appearance (I didn't even notice), and even a very nude, very young Thomas Jane.

I see the appeal of Pyun's work, but if this is the best of it (as per the podcasters' claims) I don't know that I could stomach anything much further down the quality scale.

---

(filed under: horror,not horror)

I was 24 when Requiem for a Dream came out, and it was one of the scariest, most intense, viscerally upsetting films I had ever seen.

I felt scarred, yet I listened to the soundtrack (Clint Mansell with the Kronos Quartet) I don't know how many times. I couldn't brave watching it again however.

So why now? Same thing that triggers most of my movie watching these days: a podcast. The Blank Check crew were stating that Satashi Kon's Perfect Blue had an noted influence on director Aronofski, specifying that Requiem was a benefactor of Aronofski's fandom. I wanted to see if I could pick up on that now, having just watched Perfect Blue a few weeks ago.

But I don't really see it at all. Perhaps I just havn't studied either film enough to really plot the parallels.

Aronofski does have a playful lens and a feathery touch with the editing throughout the film but the playfulness lessens and the editing becomes more intense as the severity of the story escalates. I liked the splitscreening, and doubtlessly the quick cut montage of the heroin process is going to be Aronofski's most lasting contribution to pop culture.

I was sucked in by the showiness early on, thinking that it would allow me to sail unscathed through to the finale but damn that third act, as cartoony as it gets, remains scarring enough to want to wait another 24 years for another rewatch.

Ellen Burstyn is still incredible, Jared Leto is just this side of trying too hard, Marlon Wayans is great but the character gets short shrifted in the story department, and Connelly's performance breaks me. 

Oh, and how had I completely forgotten about Christopher McDonald's TV pitchman? The DVD menu screen only comes up after being forced to watch a minute of McDonald's infomercial, and then it lands on the active "order now" screen where the menu is slyly buried. One of the all-time great DVD menu screens for sure.

But is it horror? Not traditionally, but yes.

---

I can't exactly recall when it was that Toast and Marmy screened Tokyo Godfathers for me, but I would hazard a guess that it was circa November 2005, where I needed to crash on their futon for a week.

I imagine I made it clear that anime wasn't my thing, and they must have made it clear that Tokyo Godfathers wasn't your typical anime.

My recollection of the events and characters of the film was naught, but the impression it had lasted these past two decades. I tried to coax my anime-loving kid to go see the film in the theatre this past holiday season, and they passed. Mainly because I didn't sell it very well. But I was disappointed we didn't go.

I had forgotten that the godfathers were not, in fact, three older, unhoused men but only one middle-aged unhoused man, a slightly younger trans woman, and a sixteen-year-old runaway. I had also forgotten it was, in fact, a Christmas movie, with elements of Buddhism and Shintoism that occur during the same week.

In the film, this rag-tag trio discover a baby abandoned amidst the trash (there is so much trash in this film). Hana, who had just been wishing to have a baby for Christmas, is overjoyed by the miracle. Both Gin and Miyuki think they should take the baby to the police, but Hana, herself having grown up a foster child, implores them to care for the baby, at least for Christmas so as not to forever ruin the holiday for the child. Hana names her Kiyoko.

Left with a bag full of clues, the film follows the trio for a week as they do their own search for Kiyoko's family. Throughout the search, there are numerous incidences of coincidence and happenstance that would feel far-fetched if not for the fact that the film is treading heavily in "the magic of Christmas".  I think many of the coincidences would usually annoy me, but director Kon is so adept at finding themes and meaning that most of the coincidences have deeper meaning for the story or a character, or both.

It is a remarkably compassionate and considerate movie. It humanizes its unhoused characters with great empathy without hiding any of their flaws or blemishes. Gin is a drunk, Hana is an impulsive loudmouth, and Miyuki may have some undiagnosed mental health issues. These traits, along with stubborn pride, seems to be keeping these characters on the streets. Gin, for all his flaws, is riddled with regret over his lost daughter, and definitely sees Miyuki and even Kiyoko (and perhaps even Hana) with that lens. Hana is full of love and affection, and shovels it out to all three of her found family in heavy doses in her own unique way. Miyuki is a scared, lost child, and needs her surrogate parents more than she cares to admit.

On Hana, Kon sort of conflates trans and drag as being the same thing, which obviously they are not. And while Hana is called a drag queen and has a community of drag performers she is a part of, she is very, very clearly a trans woman whom Kon has a tremendous affection for. Hana confidently and unwaveringly identifies as a woman, and her drag home seems to be more a safe place of acceptance.

The "one-crazy-night"-like scenarios they find themselves in are indeed maybe a little wild and crazy, yet still feel grounded. The impulse would be to ask why this is animated, as opposed to live action?  Animation allows the audience just enough distance reality that it demands one accepts and invests more into the characters. Animation makes it easier to live in the discarded world that the Godfathers find themselves in. In live action, we would be too confronted with the unpleasantness of all we throw away, that we discard and don't want to think about anymore. 

The colour tones Kon and his team of animators use for the characters is not vibrant, a lot of autumn tones, but the lights of the city are dazzling, so there's both a dinginess and a shimmer that play off each other. It is a beautiful movie visually and in its soul. I love it, and it's long overdue as part of my holiday viewing regimen.

I have loved each of director Kon's movies so far, but this is the clear frontrunner for me, definitely the sentimental choice. Paprika is going to have to do something pretty exceptional to unseed it (and while I hear Paprika is a mind-blowing exceptional movie, I wonder if the hype is maybe too much...we'll see next weekend).

 [hey, Toasty has a review! Of course we agree!]

KWIF: The Fall Guy (+5)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (uh huh) Kent has a spotlight movie in which Kent writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else Kent watched that week (or maybe a month ago and forgot about) Kent does a quick little summary of my thoughts. Just not in third person.

This Week:
The Fall Guy (2024, d.  David Leitch - in theatre)
Millennium Actress (2001, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)
Witness (1985, d. Peter Wier - the binder)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023, d. Guy Ritchie - AmazonPrime)
Clear and Present Danger (1994, d. Phillip Noyce - the binder)
Blackhat (2015, d. Michael Mann - the binder)

---

I don't know if I can really write a longer, thinker piece about The Fall Guy because it doesn't seem like much thought was put into the film itself. 

I'm being rude. 

The Fall Guy was a film I actually had a good time with, largely based on the explosive and almost effortless chemistry between Emily Blunt (Gnomeo and Juliet) and Ryan Gosling (Young Hercules) -- two extremely attractive people that look even more attractive together. Do Eva Mendes and John Krasinski need to be worried? Or at least extremely jealous?

This film is director, and former stuntman, David Leitch's love letter to stuntmen and stunt crews, wrapped in an action rom-com. Leitch over the years has proven his action-directing chops with Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, and Bullet Train. Each of those films may not have the greatest of stories, but the action tends to be really fun. 

And the action is fun here. There's a great "tripping balls" fight in a nightclub, and a swing arm garbage truck chase/fight sequence through the streets of Sydney that strive to stand out. I think the problem with post-John Wick action-heavy films is the action is too heavy and so nothing really stands out, and the same goes here.

What's more, I found the fact that we were watching a lot of stunts from the perspective of a film crew, seeing all the cameras and cables and tracks required, which was necessary as part of the film's narrative, but it ruins the illusion and lessens the impact of the stunts (most stunts, really, should inspire at least a bit of awe, but we've seen and know too much now, and they've become a little commonplace, undervalued).  I do appreciate that Leitch lets everyone in on the action, with the welcomed, if under-utilized Stephanie Hsu and Winston Duke each getting a sequence of their own, and Blunt reminding us she's more than capable of throwing fists when needed.

As a crime/mystery story, the more it reveals itself, the dumber it gets. It's a real nonsense plot which requires an acceptable amount of suspension of disbelief to start with (the star is missing, Colt is asked to discreetly track him down only to find a dead body and have things go even more wrong for him from there. But there's no real world logic to how wrong it gets, and the more you pick at it, the more it bleeds. There's only so much belief I could suspend and this stretched it to its breaking point.

What eventually made my suspension of disbeleif snap, though, was the film-within-a-film. A sci-fi epic called "Metalstorm" that looked, at best, like a sequel to Battlefield Earth. It looked like a mid-budget remake of the Barry Bostwick 80's b-movie Megaforce. This film would have you believe it was the next Dune or Star Wars, and it just looks like trash. The Fall Guy is a pretty good looking film. It really needed "Metalstorm" to look incredible, or play into it being B-movie action trash, not say it was an A-tier movie, but look like B-tier trash.

As a romcom, this is aces. I was in for every sleepy and/or doe-eyed stare that Colt and Judy give each other. Their dialogue was charming, funny and seemingly effortless in its delivery, and that split-screen sequence was terribly cute. Gosling and Blunt, all day, every day.

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Watching Perfect Blue last week felt like a revelation, like there was a piece of cinematic language missing from my vocabulary all these years which I now understood. Millennium Actress couldn't compete with that type of lifting of the veil.

It also didn't help that I just wanted to sleep the entire time it was on. 

I didn't fall asleep, though, which is a testament to how engaged I was with it (I did fall asleep while writing this post).

Once again director Kon proves his mastery at the transition and edit. Where Perfect Blue was a Giallo-tinged suspense thriller, Millennium Actress is a romantic drama that, all at once, tells us a character's life story and steps us through seventy years of Japan's cinematic history through which we get a staggering sense of Japanese history.  Let me tell you that as a viewer having a very limited amount of knowledge of Japanese history -cinematic or otherwise- it does this film a disservice.

The story is of a studio executive and a young cameraman visiting a famous, but long-retired, reclusive actress to interview her after the demolition of the studio of which she was a big part of building. The exec, who you would expect to be forceful and entitled, is instead a gushing fanboy with nothing but the utmost respect and reverence for the actress.  He presents her with a key which the actress thought lost years ago, and the totem unlocks a lifetime of memories.

The actress recounts her birth, how she was discovered by a producer, her first film, but also her encounter as a teen in the 1930s with a young artistic rebel whom she helps escape by shielding from the law. She is instantly smitten by him, a soulful artist, and the key was a gift from him which she was made to promise to return to him, what became her life's mission.

Her real life blurs into her acting roles as she describes them. Like Perfect Blue the transitions between real life and her acting are seamless and, at times, difficult to discern.  Her roles, or at least the ones that matter to her in retelling her life, are the ones of a young romantic longing for an unseen man who she desperately wants to find. The roles step through the eras and genres of film, from samurai to geisha to Kaiju to sci-fi.  All the while as she recounts her blurred story of life and work, the producer and cameraman are present in the story, the producer injecting himself into roles in the films he clearly knows so well. It turns out, he was a young production assistant during her later films at the studio and was, once or twice, a part of her story.

It's a surprising film in how down to earth it is. It is a film that deceptively seems like it should have been live action, but to have the actress span the ages she does is almost impossible for a single performer, and to have the scale of adventurous productions in her repertoire would make for an expensive film.  Plus, I don't know that any live action director alive has a handle on seamless transitions like Kon.

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For four years I had an art teacher in high school who loved Peter Weir films, and would play them in class while we were toiling away on our sketches. I've seen Dead Poets Society, Green Card, and Fearless numerous times. Of the three, only the latter did I actually like.  If you look at the release dates of those films, you can tell which years I went to high school (accounting for the delay between theatrical and home video release). I don't know why, if he was such a fan, we never saw The Cars that Ate Paris, Gallipoli, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Mosquito Coast, or Witness.

I have just assumed all this time that I'm not a Peter Weir fan. And I'm not. But I've spent some time thinking I'm opposed to Peter Weir, and, after watching Witness for the first time, it turns out I'm not. 

Witness is a surprisingly patient movie from an era of filmmaking where its action movies were increasingly bombastic and its thrillers were full of sex, violence and cliches. This lacks almost any bombastic action, and there's no sex, an anti-violence message, and its cliches are tossed out the side of the horse-drawn buggy. 

It's got plenty of Amish. And I thought this story of a police man protecting a young Amish boy (Lucas Haas, Mars Attacks) who witnessed a murder would be full of crude, reductive stereotyping of the community instead places Harrison Ford (Working Girl) as Captain John Book within the community where he is largely respectful of its traditions, keen to help out, and even finds a bit of peace while he's there. 

He also starts falling for Rachael (Kelly McGillis, Stake Land) the boy's mother, but also keeps his hands to himself, respectfully remembering they are people of two very different worlds.  There is an intense attraction between the two of them that just builds until, following the climactic conflict between Book and the bad guys, deflates like a balloon. The scene of Rachael looking out her window to see Book chatting up his police pals by their cop cars, smoking a cigarette, it is just an incredible moment that reinforces the gulf that separates the two of them. The thread of attraction that seemed to grow inot a bridge made out of stone turns out to just be a wispy thin thread.

Along with the film's climax -- where Weir, instead of delivering that oh-so-American release of catharsis and shooting up the bad guy instead ends with an appeal to his humanity -- proves the director isn't interested in the most satisfying ending for the audience, but the one that feels most real.

This is a pretty great movie, held down by a drone of a score that might as well not have been there at all, and one of the most awkward impassioned kissing scenes I've seen.

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One of the dumbest titles in recent cinematic history, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre finds Guy Ritchie delivering a script with plenty of charming flourishes, and leading a cast where everyone seems game (even Jason Statham (The Beekeeper), well, at least for the first 20 minutes where he flirts with the idea of adopting a character before he falls back into default Statham mode). 

Josh Hartnett (Halloween H20) does that "proof I can be funny" supporting role mid-life crisis thing that modern actors have done since Tom Cruise appeared in Tropic Thunder. He's good, and handsome, and, yes, funny playing a pompous, pampered superstar actor (if we're comparing, he does a better job than Aaron Taylor Johnson in the same role in The Fall Guy).  Aubrey Plaza (Ingrid Goes West) sometimes feels like she's in the wrong movie, but I would watch that movie. Cary Elwes (Robin Hood: Men In Tights) gets some good cracks, and Hugh Grant (Wonka) genuinely seems to be enjoying himself. 

There is that odd take in the elevator with Hartnett where Grant breaks after barely delivering his line... which speaks to one of the larger problems of this film: it feels unrefined. There's a lack of care, and certainly a lack of flair to the overall production. It doesn't look great, it looks barely a cut above, say, Burn Notice or some other action TV series. This obviously wasn't a cheap movie, so why then does Ritchie's work on Netflix's The Gentlemen TV series look so much better? The editing here proves serviceable but we've been so locked into the idea that Ritchie movies are highly stylized, that this largely doesn't feel like a Ritchie movie. 

Ritchie already did his take on Bond with Man from U.N.C.L.E., while this feels like his riff on Mission Impossible if it were done by Asylum. It's certainly inessential to his repertoire.  I think the director just likes to work, he's found a mid-range groove and he's maybe going to coast there for the rest of his career.

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The third entry in the Jack Ryan "series" (and the second with Harrison Ford [Cowboys & Aliens] in the role) finds Ryan becoming embroiled in the "War on Drugs". The PotUS's friend is found murdered alongside his whole family, the culprits being the Cali Cartel. The President wants swift retribution, under the guise of the War on Drugs, and discreetly has his national security advisor run an off-the-books operation to take out the head of the cartel.

When Ryan's friend and mentor Admiral Greer (James Earle Jones, Conan The Barbarian) falls ill, Ryan takes his place as Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA. He is dispensed to Columbia to try and find other means to cutting off the supply chains to the US.  He petitions Congress for more funds, and Congress agrees so long as no military engagement is enacted. Little does he know he is set up to be the fall guy for it.  

The film is a pretty taut political thriller that falls apart only with a jingoistic third act that finds Ryan single handedly going to Columbia to bring back the soldiers left behind by the NSA.  It turns into a ridiculously out-of-place rescue-the-POWs action sequence that neuters the political intrigue that had been the film's raison d'etre up til that point. 

The finale of the film finds Ford's Ryan dressing down the President ("How dare you, sir!") by holding the most powerful position in the land to a standards of decency and responsibility that have absolutely been abandoned in the past decade. It's perhaps the most upsetting (and unintentional) note of the film.

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In the past dozen years of massive disastrous box office performances, Blackhat still stands out as one of the biggest bombs, recouping under 20 million of its 70 million dollar budget.  

It's not just that the film tanked at the box office, but it was both critically and socially derided at the time. That beautiful brick wall of a man, Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself, playing a nerdy master computer hacker. It was laughable in its very conception.

But a funny thing happened in the years since, the Michael Mann fans have managed to drown out the knee-jerk reactionaries and get the film into a "reclaimed" status. Certainly the podcasts and socials I feed into have been saying as such for a couple years now.

Having seen the film (then forgetting to log it) I have to say, bluntly, not bad. In fact, good. Not great, certainly flawed, but good.

My biggest gripe with the film is how Mann shot it.  It's a film that puts Mann in Steven Soderbergh mode, using a lot of different types of digital cameras and lenses and I found jumping between them quite distracting.

The film begins with a nuclear power station melting down. It was hacked and the cyberwarfare arm of the People's Liberation Army want to find the culprit. Captain Chen (Leehom Wang) of the division aligns with the FBI in the US, needing genius-level hacker (and his college roommate) Nick Hathaway freed from prison in order to sniff out whomever was capable of such an attack.  A subsequent attack on the stock market only exacerbates the need to find the culprit.  

It's a pretty taut globetrotting cyber-thriller all told. It takes some tense and scary turns as it leans into just how reliant we are upon technology, and just how vulnerable that technology is to malicious interference.

I can ignore the sketchy accent, and I can even buy into Hemsworth as a hacker, but how did Hathaway get so adept at knife fighting and shooting guns? There was a lot of nonsense in the film, questions raised and never answer, but I still just rolled with it and enjoyed the ride.

I had just watched Decision to Leave the night before watching this, so I was pumped for more Tang Wei and this did not disappoint in that regard. Loved the cast which also features Holt McCallany and Viola Davis.