KWIF: stunts meet concrete

We interrupt the 31 days of halloween for a temporary respite into non-spooky, non-scary territory. 
KWIF=Kent's Week(ish) in Film. I tend to write these things on weekends, but I also watch most films on weekends and sometimes time doesn't allow for both. There was appointment viewings in theatres this past week, movies that I suspect would come and go rather briskly that I really wanted to see, so I made a point of getting to them before some of the bigger films of the fall (eg. Primetime, Digger), and also getting Lady Kent out to them as well (a rare but enjoyable treat). And then I did a bit of companion watching.

This Week:
The History of Concrete (2026, d. John Wilson - in theatres)
The Stunt Driver (2026, d. Michael Dowse - in theatres)
The Stunt Man (1980, d. Richard Rush - tubi)
Stunt Rock (1978, d. Brian Trenchard-Smith - tubi)

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I really, really enjoyed the HBO series How To With John Wilson (Season 1 | 2 | 3) and it's still so sad to me that we've been without more John Wilson for three years now.

If you didn't watch the show, well... how to describe? Wilson is an avid videographer, travelling with his camera running capturing unique details and keeping meticulous notes on what he's captured. In How To... Wilson would explore (sort of) a "how to" topic (kind of) through an array of edited-together images from his vast library of footage, to punctuate (or counter-punch) a point, while pontificating on the topic at hand in voice-over in his uniquely dry, humorous, stammering fashion (his episode on scaffolding has resulted in Mayor Mamdani taking action). He would also have interviews set-up to discuss the subject matter at hand, but would also talk to strangers he encountered on the streets and wind up deviating from the topic at hand into these curious and unique tangents, which he would then attempt to bring back around to the topic at hand. How To... was a wholly unique and neurodivergent lens (I'm not even certain Wilson is neurodivergent, but his storytelling style very much is) with which to view our world.

With only a few Wealthsimple ads to tide us over in the years since, Wilson finally returns with a full length feature (101 minutes) that isn't a How To... movie but, you know, basically is.  

The History of Concrete, technically, is a documentary, but what it's documenting isn't really what it says on the label, and how it's documenting it is pretty singular (unless taken in the context of Wilson's prior work, at which point, it's more of the same...and that's not a negative, far from it).

Every episode of How To... would open with Wilson's voice over welcoming us by way of images of the city he loves: "Hey New York" is bascially Wilson's catch phrase at this point. This film opens with Wilson delightfully playing with such. For the familiar and the fans, it's like a door being opened and welcomed into a friend's house. They may have redecorated and moved things around, added an extension on back and slapped on a coat of paint, but it's still familiar, and inviting.

Wilson's entry point into thinking about and exploring concrete comes from his pitiful attempt to self-patch some concrete outside his house in hopes of preventing so much basement flooding during heavy rains. His poor patch job, critiqued harshly by a neighbour, sparks the idea for a film project...and then he has to pitch to get funding. There's no tension here...it's clear that we're watching a film that's been made, but it does start the narrative that even Wilson's ambling camera is still answerable to someone.

Exploring the cement thread, both its strength and frailty, takes Wilson to Rome to look at ancient concrete structures and ask strangers who don't speak English as to the secret of how the structures have lasted so long to futile effect. Returning home, he encounters in Queens a "spiritual" 52-day, 3100 mile marathon run on the cement sidewalk around a high school and returns throughout the film to check in on its progress. He visits a concrete convention in Vegas, and ponders New York concrete structures that are coming apart. 

Wilson's approach to the topic is both humorous and informative, but also hardly being hard-hitting investigative journalism. His interest takes him deep into industry as well as onto the surface, including the only sidewalk-gum-removal business in the city, and then tangentially, like into tattoo preservation (unless you're already familiar with this practice, you're not ready for it when you see it).

The History of Concrete returns Wilson to the more personal nature of How To...'s first season. Wilson's gateway into the world of concrete, but he's also documenting his career successes and failures, like being at a celebrity dinner hosted by GQ as one of their "Men of the year" and also losing a Depends advertisement gig. The decision to make a documentary feature, in the current environment, finds purse strings clutched tight unless it's about murder or a musician... and so Wilson goes out in search of a musician to document, a tangent that gets simultaneously dark and hopeful, presented with both humour and empathy.

It doesn't matter if you've seen How To... to enjoy The History of Concrete. Sure there are a few nods in the early minutes to, well, Wilson's life as presented previously in How To... that will get knowing "ahhhhs" out of fans but really, just like any episode of How To... it stands as a singular document that works just fine on its own, but also better as part of the whole.

Does The History of Concrete truly elevate itself to "cinematic" status, does it truly differentiate itself from from what we've seen on HBO or Vimeo? No, not in any major way, but that's the sign of Wilson making his art authentically. While some AI may have stolen his voice, I don't think there's any way to truly emulate Wilson's collages, or his ability to connect (or disconnect) with people, and to go where the vibes take him and his camera. There will no doubt be emulators, weirdo kids who grew up on Wilson's style and try to replicate that, but I don't know if Wilson's work will ever not feel unique.

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The trailer for The Stunt Driver plays like it's a "Heritage Minute", which, if you're not Canadian you're probably not familiar with. "Heritage Minutes" are 60-second full-cast productions that present snapshots of Canadian history, like Jacques Cartier misunderstanding what the natives were saying and thinking the land was called Canada, or Joe Shuster handing off a drawing of a man in tights to his friend Lois as he boards a train.  

"Heritage Minutes" have never really gone away, but they hit sporadically, and they've been cropping up in theatres lately, both classics and newer ones. There were little tip-offs in The Stunt Driver trailer that this wasn't legit...mainly because there was so many scenes edited together. 

I thought The Stunt Driver, based on the trailer, would be a retro-styled mockumentary, following a very hoser-accented Canadian in the late-1970s as he dares to be daring, and aspires for a big jump over the St. Lawrence River. It seemed so heightened and silly and embracing the era with all the hair and polyester and wood panelling and stubby beer bottles... and, Jay Baruchel in the lead... like, this had to be a comedy right?

But it turns out The Stunt Driver is based on a very real person, stunt driver Ken Carter (Kenneth Gordon Poleschuk), and his big idea to jump the St. Lawrence was very, very real.

It also turns out I had some memory of Ken Carter sitting deep in the recesses of my brain. I don't remember much, but little pieces of trivia were sitting there that kept smacking me upside the head as I watched this dramatic-but-with-a-light-touch film about this specific period of time in his life.

Carter (Jay Baruchel), "The Mad Canadian", performed his stunts around the world, and like pro-wrestlers and football players, put his body and his life on the line for entertainment. In his late 30's, hobbled by injuries but undeterred, he scoffed at cross-border rival Evel Knievel's attempt to "jump" the Snake River Canyon in a rocket, and was determined to have his own, more inspirational (and successful) jump.

He gets rocket car designer Dick Keller (Ed Helms) to help him on his crazy quest, and enlists sports agent Bill Wilkins (Dan Bakkedahl) to sell the TV rights to ABC's Wide World of Sports. Carter's wife, Gloria, is fully supportive, though they both dream that the success of such a stunt will be enough for a comfortable retirement.

What follows is a string of setbacks that start to sink Carter into a hole, both financially and emotionally.  Time twists on and Carter can't seem to quite get off the ground. Literal years pass, but the dream never dies... that is until his first successful test of the rocket car shakes him to his core and he never quite recovers.

Presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio with, most likely digital cameras with a digital grain process added to make the film look like TV of the era (with actual footage of Carter's jumps, and crashes, judiciously cut in), the film feels incredibly Canadian, as it should. It's not a film that's mythmaking or putting an idol on a pedestal, it's a film about a very human man, and I found Carter's motivations and fears very touching.  

It's also a film about failure, and about having to live with the spectre of failure, something that Carter really couldn't shake. A couple of points in the movie, Carter states that he does what he does to be remembered... but he was forgotten anyway. Director Dowse and Baruchel -in his first really transformative role- do a really great job at resurrecting his memory, but, unfortunately, there were only 7 people at my screening. Hopefully its jump to streaming gets more eyes on it.

While Evel Knievel has cemented his place in American pop-culture history, Ken Carter didn't ever reach the same place of notoriety in Canada. In some respects films like The Stunt Driver, just pure Canadiana, are essential to our entertainment ecosystem. I have yet to watch the NFB documentary The Devil At Your Heels from which much of this film was derived, but I imagine that there were more than a few elements added or excised for dramatic and comedic effect.  This is a truly solid, stoic, entertaining piece of Canadian cinema that respects its subject when it could have pushed the comedy to real extremes, perhaps to bigger success, but less authenticity.

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The Stunt Man was given three Oscar nods at the 1981 Academy Awards. Richard Rush was tipped for best director, Peter O'Toole as best actor, and best writing (adapted) for Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus. I wasn't aware of this film until six or seven years ago. I had added it to my watchlist in letterboxd very early on in using that app, though I don't remember exactly when I did so or what triggered it.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paul Brodeur, it finds Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam veteran, on the run from the law. We don't really learn why until deep into the third act. He narrowly escapes arrest and, while running, finds himself on a bridge facing a car that's seemingly trying to run him down. He lobs a piece of scrap at the windshield and dives out of the way. The car disappears into the river below... but it's not long before people and vehicles and helicopters start appearing...Cameron's on a film set and he sort of just killed the stunt driver.

But not to worry, for auteur director Eli Cross (O'Toole), the show must go on. It cannot afford the shut-down time of a police investigation nor any other delay.  The only reasonable answer is for Cameron to pose as the now deceased stunt man, with promises of excellent pay and a ticket out of country when the shoot is all said and done.

But it's hard to hide something like a car going off a bridge, and the local police are already agitated about the film shoot's disruptions to the community. For Cameron, it feels like the walls are closing in. And Cross, well, his intentions start to seem more and more suspect. He seems to be intentionally torturing Cameron, dangling hope and security in front of him. It's been so long since Cameron has had good things in his life, he doesn't know how to relax.

And then there's Nina (Barbara Hershey), the starlet of the film, who for some reason takes a liking to Cameron, despite his outbursts and wild eyes. He's a bit of a wounded puppy, and a bit of a rabid dog. He's out of his depth with her, but she doesn't mind, at least for now.

The Stunt Man is a satire about filmmaking while also offering a commentary on the mistreatment of America's soldiers during and after the war, as well as examining the effects of PTSD (though, somewhat naively). It flirts with being a drama and a comedy, and the film-within-a-film is a war film and so there are elaborate WWII sequences requiring extensive stunts that are shot both from the view of the camera within the film and our external POV. There's a bit of a mystery to Cameron's backstory, and intrigue and suspense around Cross' true intentions (is he really intent on making snuff fillms?).

The Stunt Man tries to do it all and only succeeds at some. It seems to know intimately how films are made (as an experience filmmaker like Rush should) but also shorthands some things (like shooting full action sequences in one take), deceives the audience in many ways, and sometimes portrays a reality that is so obviously false that it's hard sometimes to buy into the reality of the film.

Railsback as Cameron is an uncomfortable fit. As the film shifts -- sometimes frantically -- through its genres, Cameron is meant to as well, and I'm just not sure if it's Railsback who isn't up to the task of navigating them, or if anyone really could. Hershey, likewise, has a hard time finding consistency in this picture. She doesn't have as much heavy lifting to do as Railsback, nor does Nina face as much whiplash, but for a 1980's woman, she seems decades behind.

It's O'Toole who steals the show (but definitely not the lead). As Cross he gets to be shifty and playful and confounding and melodramatic and mysterious and dangerous, and does so with easy consistency. It's a terrific performance, in an ambitious, but messy film.

It feels like The Stunt Man could not be remade today, not without being a period piece. It seems so impossible for someone to disappear if they wanted to. But also if The Stunt Man were to be remade, it would be the rare instance where it would be better suited as a TV show than a movie. The depths of the characters could be better explored, the themes of reality versus fiction could be given greater weight, as could the exploration of trauma and even a proper reckoning with post-Vietnam America. There's also an extensive cast on the periphery here that is given so little screentime, there's room for an ensemble to develop out of this.  But would I actually watch it...?

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As we conclude this impromptu "stunt week" (I had plans on rewatching The Fall Guy and Hot Rod but didn't get to them) the "Ozploitation" mock-doc Stunt Rock no doubt got added to my watchlist during a lazy Sunday afternoon scrolling through Tubi and watching its preview clips.  

Stunt Rock is not a documentary, nor is it a mockumentary, but somewhere in between. It's honestly not too dissimilar in tone to the prior year's Australia-set ABBA: The Movie, where it was sort of a concert film that was totally disinterested in being a concert film.  Stunt Rock is disinterested in really being a stunt film, and instead wants to be a concert film, but all these stunts just keep getting in the way.

It's a truly bizarre hybrid, where Australian stunt performer Grant Page makes his way to America to perform on a totally made up TV show starring Dutch actress Monique van de Ven. When he gets Stateside, he meets up with his cousin, Curtis Hyde who performs with the band Sorcery. Sorcery's schtick is mediocre hard rock whose stage show includes Hyde and Paul Haynes performing as duelling sides of darkness and light in a display of pyrotechnics and stage magic.  Honestly, it's not a bad sight, but is stage magic stunts?

The moments where we see Page stunt performing, there's some pretty big set-ups, but almost all the stunts he's performing are done so simply for the sake of being stunts. There's no narrative here, there's no plot objective, just a "can we do it?" attitude. And so, with stunts being performed with no direct intention, it's not that they're not impressive, but they're also kind of boring, and lacking theatricality. Perhaps that's why Page felt the need to cede half the movie to a rock band and a magic show... the devil-vs-wizard magic show is somehow far more enticing and entertaining.

There's no story to Stunt Rock. There's little threads about a reporter following Page and they hook up, or van de Ven nagging Page to let her do stunts, or Page trying to contribute to the Sorcery stage show... but that's not a plot, those are just events.

Stunt Rock is not unentertaining but it also feels somewhat quaint, which I hate typing because it really undermines the talent and professionalism of everyone involved. But it's not even close to the thrill of watching, say Jackie Chan outtakes, or parkour videos.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Juliet, Naked

2018, Jesse Peretza (LOTS of TV) -- Amazon

As I struggle with the Blockbuster "write about something you enjoyed but don't remember actually why" 'Masters of the Universe', I am just popping into the other drafts.

This one came to us by way of "the algorithm". It flowed along the Amazon "if you liked..." and, well, it did catch our attention. A British woman, Annie (Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You), is in an unhappy relationship with Duncan (Chris O'Dowd, Slumberland), and part of her unhappiness is his unsettling obsession with 90s American shoe gazer musician Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke, The Magnificent Seven). When Duncan gets a copy of the demo's for Crowe's seminal album Juliet, and Annie doesn't appreciate it like all the people on his message board do, they argue, annoying her to the level of writing her own review on the blog. Said post captures actual Crowe's attention and they begin a bit of a back-n-forth message chat, ending with him inviting himself over to meet Annie, on the pretense of seeing the birth of his grandchild from one of his many estranged children. Enter conflict.

This is an odd, atypical little British feel-good movie based on a Nick Hornby novel (something I didn't know until the credits rolled) which I loved because its Ethan Hawke pretty playing the aged up version of his character from Reality Bites, who is equal parts actual Ethan Hawke and one who is a bit of a pompous, self-centered ass, but desperately trying to rewrite that part of his code. Most of Hawke's other characters in his last decade have been characters but this one seems... more genuine? 

Its a romcom that dispenses with almost all of the tropes, filling in the story with weird choices. For example, upon arriving in the UK, Tucker feels a bit off from the overnight trip, and then immediately drops from a massive heart attack. Like typical fiction, the impact is washed away, so they can focus on the awkwardness of Annie and Tucker's first IRL meeting being in the hospital ward, him surrounded by members of his family who showed up, most of whom despise him. Tucker hasn't been the best person most of his life, but he's acknowledged that and is working on it; its just taken him a long time to come to that point in his life and many of his bridges are burned. But to Annie, he's a blank slate pretty much, not at all the iconic image from her (now ex; they breakup before Tucker even hits the tarmac) boyfriend's little shrine in the basement. He also spins life with homespun folky wisdom that is so unlike anyone in her life. The only "comedy" comes from our observations of awkward annoying Duncan.

What I liked the most about the movie is that they don't (immediately) fall into each other's arms. They attempt to, both being more than a bit of an emotional mess at the time, but it doesn't work out. And they separate, both returning to their lives separated by the pond. But there is an epilogue...

Edit: Kent!

KWIF(2): The Running Man (+3)

KWIF=Kent's "Week" in Film. I realized this past weekend that I had watched almost a film a day this August, so the goal has become to cram the last bunch of films in on the final couple of days. These are numbers 24 through 28.

This Week:
The Running Man (2025, d. Edgar Wright - crave)
Zodiac Killer Project (2024, d. Charlie Shackleton - hollywoodsuite)
City Hunter (1993, d. Wong Jing - tubi)
Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970, d. Mario Bava - tubi)

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The Running Man falls into my beloved "most dangerous game" subgenre. The man-hunts-man-for-sport (and/or entertainment) never gets tired for me, although its entries are frequently not very well done. The Running Man, like The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, is kind of a brand in the subgenre, or at least notorious enough to be a name big enough to check-point (as in "Oh, it's like The Running Man").

While I've read the Stephen King-as-Richard Bachman novella three and a half decades ago, I don't recall it very specifically, and likewise it's been quite some time since I watched the 1987 Arnold Schwartzenegger-starring adaptation. From memory, that film was definitely a product of Reagan-era economics, and was concerned about wealth disparity and social order, to a degree. It was concerned with crime, totalitarianism, and classism. 

We're now in an age where the wealth gaps are far more dramatically pronounced and we have government institutions that seem to only be serving to perpetuate that trend. We've given too much power to corporations, non-corporeal entities that have their own rights but seemingly no responsibilities. The people in charge of corporations seem to have free reign to influence government policy, and are not held liable for their actions and decisions made while running such organizations. Lands and waters are polluted and poised, people get sick or are killed, minds are manipulated and tainted by increasingly clever propaganda, and a token sum is only ever paid when they corporations are caught...and the execs still get paid.

Edgar Wright's new adaptation of The Running Man finds its protagonist, the angry and righteous Ben Richards (Glen Powell), blacklisted from the Network, which, in this dystopian future, pretty much controls all of America. They are the primary source of employment and entertainment in the country, and though they are not the government, their sheer economic power means they pretty much dictate policy. With a sick daughter at home and no income, Ben turns to his last-ditch option: Reality TV. Looking to get on any of the Network's many programmes except the brutal, life-threatening "The Running Man" program (the Network's most popular show), he, of course, is chosen for "The Running Man" because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

He's sweet-talked by the Network's head honcho into signing the deal to join the show. Surviving 30 days wins Ben and his family a cool 1 billion New Dollars, while he also receives a daily survival bonus, plus a bonus for killing any of the Network's security goons or the show's elite "hunters".  But from the jump, Ben sees that the Network doesn't play fair. They introduce him (and two other runners) with lies about being career criminals, disparaging their name, and denigrating their families, going so far as to have doctored clips (the use of deep fakes is central to this movie but it doesn't ever reckon with the general public's awareness of them).

Needless to say, Ben survives with the help of some activists and supporters, but it's never easy, and (once again) the Network cheats, tracking his location (duh) and manipulating the narrative of the show by coaching the hunters when, and when not to go in for the kill. The audience is also invited to participate, with the Network offering a hundreds/thousands of New Dollars for anyone who rats out a Runner and leads to a kill. It takes the audience out of being passive observers with, maybe, some moral responsibility for the perpetuation of this barbaric program, and turns them in to active participants in murder. And, of course, it's all propaganda, fuelling The Network's ideology of keeping the teeming masses stupid and hungry, and distracting them from the real cause of the problems in their lives.  It's up to Ben, who's really just doing this all for his family, to realize he's the catalyst for waking people up as to who the real enemy is.

The opening scenes of The Running Man are, to be blunt, really clumsy in how they set Ben Richards up. These scenes are meant to establish Ben as a rage-filled man, a man who fights injustice, and a man who desperately loves his family, but the writing and performances lack nuance, to the point that I was concerned that Powell was decisively the wrong guy for this part. He turns out to be fine, in the end, but Edgar Wright's script pushes and/or pulls Ben through the plot, without him doing much to instigate things on his own. He's a passenger in his own story, and through to the third act he's not consistently written. 

He's established as a man who does the right thing and then turns him into a murderer. He's established as a man who defies the order of things, but he denies being a revolutionary. He's a good person, and, for the most part, remains a good person...but Wright's script never quite finds the right balance for shifting between his anger and his kindness, and Powell seems to only be following direction. A likeable enough lead, but not clearly defined enough.

Similarly, the dystopia we find Ben running around in is fleshed out only so much. We don't get enough establishment between the different, disparate class hierarchies, but the film is very clear that the propaganda machine the Network employs is very effective across the class spectrum.

As a "most dangerous game" story, it's not unexciting or entertaining, and the film is asking people to hold the persons in charge of nefarious corporations accountable, but even still it's not the clearest message. It's still a retrograde story where T.V., and not the internet, or social media, is the primary form of audience engagement and how organizations manipulate the masses. As much as it's trying to represent modern concerns, the atmosphere of the story doesn't reflect our modern society enough.

I'm a fan of Wright's work, but couldn't exactly pin down the man's style (much of it is married to music or toying with genre tropes, neither of which is l'objet du jour here). In the piles of effects and craftsmanship needed to realize the dystopian future, I think maybe Wright's particular cinematic flair gets lost. As Toasty said in his toastypost "the movie is not over-the-top enough or biting enough to be a fun, corny romp. Neither is it dark & grim enough to reflect the Dark Urban Future it wants to rail against". We certainly agree.

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Zodiac Killer Project sounds like a cheapo Tubi-original slasher movie or possibly a Tubi-original pseudo-documentary with some weird right-wing bent (as befits the service's Fox Corp ownership). Turns out it's neither of these, though it's clear it's still a very modestly budgeted production.

Over a decade ago filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was prepping for a documentary based on the 2012 book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge" by Lyndon E. Lafferty, a former California highway patrol officer whose maybe-encounter with the Zodiac Killer sent him on a decades long crusade to bring the man he considered to be responsible to justice. It was unsuccessful and Lafferty, and his suspect, are little more than a footnote in the Zodiac Killer conversation. But as Shackleton was ramping up production on his doc, he lost the rights to the book, and all his investment in the documentary was for naught.

He couldn't escape it though. In the intervening years, true crime podcasts and documentaries have proliferated on every channel and streaming service, and with them a visual language all its own has developed. In Zodiac Killer Project, Shackleton relays what he would have done, how he would have shot the b-roll footage, the "backtors" (actors in true crime reenactments whose backs are all we see), the locations, and how it all would have been to serve an entertaining narrative far more than the truth.

Because Lafferty's accusations and investigations were not limited to his book, Shackleton has some clearance to discuss Lafferty's prime suspect and the situations that led him to believe his suspect was the killer as well as many of the details around his investigation in to the suspect (what he can only touch upon is why Lafferty suspects there was a cover-up to dismiss and not investigate his suspect, which leaves a big cloud over the whole proceedings here).

In detailing how he would have made what sounds like a pretty bog standard true-crime documentary, Shackleton drolly takes apart all the tropes we know from most other true crime docs... specific types of footage or editing style, the presentation of certain information, the cheats the productions do to condense the story or make it more entertaining that may be stretching or warping the truth.  What Shackleton doesn't really do is account for the ethics of it all, of making entertainment out of these real-life horrors, and his capacity for examining why the public is so enthralled by such media isn't very deep.

The Bay area location imagery that Shackleton and his team shot, mostly of empty or vast spaces takes on a slightly meditative nature, with Shackleton's voice over occasionally calling out whether the footage we're seeing is at all relevant to the point in the narrative he's discussing.

Dryly funny with a slight intensity and more than a little reserved playfulness, Zodiac Killer Project doesn't get us anywhere new with the whole Zodiac Killer thing, but it brushes back the fur on a genre and exposes its soft, and kind of ugly, underbelly.  

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City Hunter was a manga that ran from 1985 through 1991, while near-simultaneously an animate tv series ran parallel, between 1987 and 1991. I have a vague recollection of having watched some of this anime on Canadian TV, but I may be wrong.

Jackie Chan's starred in the 1993 Hong Kong adaptation, which I think is pulling more from the anime than the manga. Chan's City Hunter is a very, very broad comedy that's trying to be a live action cartoon, one of the most difficult cinematic challenges ever. 

"City Hunter" is the nickname of infamous private investigator Ryo Saeba (Chan) an affable, womanizing, and semi-capable man-of-action. He is assisted by his deceased former partner's little sister, Kaori, who he sort of had a hand in raising and now, as an adult, she's in love with him, and he has to resist his own libido and keep her at arms length. It's a gross dynamic that, for the most part Ryo is on the right side of, but not always.

Ryo and Kaori, through separate misadventures, wind up on the same maiden voyage of a cruise ship which gets taken hostage by a ruthless white American pirate, Col. "Big Mac" MacDonald (Richard Norton). The plan is to kill all the lower-deckers and hold the richest hostage for their money. Unfortunately for them, not only is City Hunter aboard, but so too is undercover officer Saeko Nogami (Chingmy Yau) and gentleman thief Kao Ta (Leon Lai) to aid in liberating the boat.

City Hunter is a goofy movie, one that is really leaning into comedy far more than action or adventure. This is no Speed, more of a Speed 2, if Patrick Muldoon stared at Sandra Bullock's boobs and imagined them as hamburgers.  Ryo is very charming but also a known cad, so women are as apt to bat him upside the head as to fawn over him or give him a kiss. Chan isn't really known for playing much of a romantic hero, and certainly not known for playing a sexual one, so here Ryo's horniness is tempered by the fact that the character spends much of the film starving and just hoping to eat something...anything.

The usual Chan flair for action and physical stunts seems to be scaled back pretty dramatically from his more infamous efforts, I think out of service to the situational comedy. There's less physical comedy overall for Chan to perform as well. He may be a bit of a goofball but we also have to believe he can turn on the charm as well and that ladies will not only fall for it, but actively pursue it (the who Kaori side-plot depends on it).

There are some very regressive (and, at one point, brutally offensive) jokes in this film, which shouldn't be surprising for any '90's comedy. The sexism or gay-bashing aren't persistent, but they are there. On the plus side, the women of the film are largely pretty strong, capable, independent and a diverse (personality-wise) group, and central to the film. I liked them all.

Trying to do animation-style gags in physical reality is very, very challenging and doesn't often work because, well, real world physics get in the way of having these things really happen, so special effects making them happen can look really awkward and corny.  As much as this type of gag in City Hunter doesn't work, through Chan's immense charms and a remarkably game cast of performers, it winds up being a fairly fun, if not fully successful production.  The extended set piece where Chan and his opponents become Street Fighter characters after getting electrocuted by an arcade machine is a highlight of the film though (lowlight, the painfully prolongued musical number at the midway point, made worse by the fact that it wasn't subtitled ... also, if I'm not mistaken, much of the film was performed in English then dubbed and subtitled...curious).

I had fun, but this isn't essential Chan by any means.

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Five Dolls for an August Moon is a last gasp of beatnik free-love-era filmmaking and sitting just outside of the Italian giallo wave. It's a murder mystery of sorts, but a film full of characters that seem pretty disinterested in the murders, and even more disinterested in the mystery.

Industrialist George Stark (Teodoro Corrà) has invited four associates and their partners to his remote island home for a weekend holiday, but really it was all a ruse to get the men facetime with Professor Garry Farrell (William Berger) and try to convince him to sell them a secret, revolutionary new formula for a resin that will redefine...something. Whatever.  

The next morning, the houseboy winds up dead, and you know what, nobody really seems to care. They wrap the man up in plastic and put him in the meat locker. They discover that Stark's boat has gone missing and the radio has been tampered with rendering it useless. Typically this would start sending people into a panic, a murderer loose on an isolated island, nowhere to go, no one to call. But, these upperclass twits keep on partying as if nothing is happening. Except, there's plenty happening, including each of the men propositioning Farrell to obtain the formulae alone, and two of the wives having a secret affair with each other, and another of the wives having affairs with, well, everyone else. And what's up with the island girl in the mini-skirt (Justine Gall) watching everything from afar?

The bodies start piling up in an almost comical fashion, new additions to the meat locker in pretty rapid fashion, along with a couple disappeared bodies that are even more puzzling. In a typical giallo, someone would be trying to figure things out. In a typical suspense thriller, everyone would be pointing fingers at each other and things would get tense.  Here, everyone's still just drinking and trying to figure out how to get that damn formula.

The ending reveals/twists are ... to be blunt... silly. But then the fact that no tension has built up around these reveals means there's little sense of stakes here. There's an organ-led jazzy soundtrack to the film from Piero Umiliani that is far too bouncy and upbeat for the events of the film.  And that the film is largely shot with gorgeous Italian seaside daylight and perhaps a slight overexposure, there's a vibrancy to the proceedings that leaves little hidden in shadows.  I'm really not sure what exact tone was trying to be set.

Bava's an incredible director, though, so his films, even the lesser ones, still have style and impact. Here he uses a lot of split fore and background shots with a character very close in the front of frame and other characters deep in back of frame all in focus. As well, he's exceptionally focussed on the eyes and letting the eyes tell the characters' stories of lust, love, suspicion, betrayal, intrigue, etc. And with such focus on eyes, also is point of view, most highlighted by the many whip-pans the camera does to shift our point of view... not in a first-person sense but a third-person. We will see a character staring off and the camera will whip across to see what they are looking at, and if someone else is looking back we'll whip back to see their perspective. It's a curious but effective technique, even if it's not perfectly deployed here.

Had maybe the island girl been investigating these murders from the outside, and her life put at risk for doing so, this would really feel like a true giallo. As is it's a mystery that barely lifts the eyebrow, and tepidly sexy. 

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.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Caught Stealing

2025, Darren Aronofsky (Pi) -- download

Tangential thoughts.

Was this the guy who did Pi? Yes, this is the guy who did Pi, but then why does it feel like he was known for so much else that wasn't Pi? Because he was, and it was/is so so much more. Black Swan, Mother!, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, The Whale, and more. All films that got a lot of buzz, both critically and audience-wise. And yes, my brain always goes, "The guy who did Pi."

But also, because of my current viewing habits, and late-to-writing habit, the mushed up "violence in film" has Hold the Dark and Normal ping-ponging around in my brain pan. I didn't consider Aronofsky in that company (Saulnier and Wheatley) but this movie feels at home with them.

And yet, I recall, as Kent did, the trailers depicting a violent, quirky romp of a movie involving crazy Russians, crazy Jews, a mohawk-ed punk and a baseball player with his bat. We got that, but with a darker, much darker mentality, adapted for the screen by Charlie Huston who wrote the original novel, a violent little page-turner. Huston authors his own mish-mash of work including Wolverine and Moon Knight comics, and a vampire noir.

OK.

Late 90s, Hank (Austin Butler, The Shannara Chronicles) is a bartender in a dive bar in NYC's Lower East Side, back when pop culture depictions were still grimy and not IG ready. He's a friendly popular sort with hot girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz, High Fidelity) and punk neighbour Russ (Matt Smith, Morbius). He's also haunted by a car accident from his past, and calls his mom at least once a day to talk about baseball, in particular the San Francisco Giants. Russ has to rush out of town and leaves Hank to take care of his cat, who likes to bite, but likes Hank.

That's the setup. How it starts is when two bald, but maybe not skinhead, Russian mobsters show up at Russ's door and end up beating Hank into the hospital, where he has lost a kidney. For a heavy drinker and bartender, that's devastating, as we skip right past the likelihood of Hank actually having health insurance that would have paid for that. He talks to the police, and is questioned extensively.

It only escalates in violence from that, and Hank just gets dragged from one horrible situation into the next, all connected to some money Russ stole from his employers. The movie is not a fun romp; its a gut-wrenching escapade, where Hank, charismatic and likeable, doesn't deserve what happens to him, and really doesn't want to be involved. EXCEPT after Yvonne gets killed (pissed off at that fridging, but Huston wrote that in heyday of fridging) Hank doesn't really have a way out, but to see it through... somehow. To say that things only get worse when Russ returns from England is... saying it lightly.

I am still not sure how I feel about the movie. After the killing of Yvonne I was just soured on the whole thing, but still engaged by the whole quirky Coens-not-Coens aspects of the movie. To be honest, I found the "fun and wacky" kind of jarring, but yet... it still worked? You can do fun and yet dark; Bad Monkey did it really well, and Huston and Carl Hiaasen are from the same paperback crime world, but really, none of this is fun. I guess the only "fun" I had was when I recognized the two Hasidic Jew criminal Drucker Brothers, Lipa (Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan) and Schmully (Vincent D'Onofrio, El Camino Christmas) but that was more a realization that the characters were played so well, so reserved, that I didn't see the faces behind the fake beards. 

Yes, like my mind, I flip-flop with my words on it.

This is the kind of movie I should probably watch again, to view the actual film making, but I probably won't. I have a feeling I would appreciate it more once the sour taste of the murder is out of my mouth; I probably won't be less pissed about it, but at least I know its coming. 

Kent's take - we agree. 

Credits rolling notes: glad Aronofsky gave some work to D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and I was amused by the stunt-casting of Griffin Dunne as the owner of the bar Hank works at, considering all the After Hours comparisons in this movie. Kent wrote about the movie here; I probably saw it on VHS but got bored.

KWIF: The Odyssey (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Well, two weeks. Time has been occupied. 

This Week:

The Odyssey (2026, d. Christopher Nolan - 70mm projection)
Gail Daughtry and the Hollywood Sex Pass (2026, d. David Wain - in theatre)
Operation Avalanche (2016, d. Matt Johnson - amazonprime)
The Truman Show (1998, d. Peter Wier - in theatre)
Irma Vep (1996, d. Olivier Assayas - hollywoodsuite)

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Look, I've been a geek my whole life. History and literature couldn't compete with superhero comic books and sci-fi movies. As such, I've never read Homer's epic poem Odyssey. But, as one of the first great works of literature, it's resonated for over two millennia, and influenced so much media. So even without having ever read it, I have at least a passing awareness of many of the Greek king Odysseus' trials and tribulations, including the siege of Troy and the Trojan horse, the encounters with mythical beings like the cyclops, Circe, and the sirens, and the temptation of the sacred cattle, among others misadventures. But I've never seen all these stories assembled as one full tale before. Some have said it was impossible to successfully adapt, but impossible is usually just not having the courage or confidence to try (and, when it comes to making movies, it's not the filmmakers, but the studios and money people behind them that chicken out).

After 20 years it seems like Christopher Nolan has earned the trust of his backers, and they have the confidence (if not courage) to feed him whatever he needs to make whatever he wants. $250-million dollar budgeted, R-rated adaptations of a 2000-year-old Greek poems aren't what's in vogue at the movie theatres these days, but Nolan is one of the very few, maybe even the only director who is given ostensibly free reign with each film, and it's paid off every time (the only asterisk is Tenet -- time-warping superspy adventure which is absolutely my favourite Nolan movie but a great many find utterly impenetrable -- which came out during covid and never got a proper test at the box office). I thought that, maybe, The Odyssey might break Nolan's incredible streak, that it might not click with today's audiences, but, just like with Oppenheimer and Dunkirk and pretty much every non-Batman related film he's made, it's a triumph and a spectacle and people want in.

My reservations were many, and a lot of it stemmed from my ignorance of Homer's poem. What relevance does something so old have for today? Will this just be spectacle without substance? And the cast speaking without affectation (you know, the usually British affectation actors tend put on for anything historical, foreign or needing gravitas) could prove disastrous.  Well before the ten-minute mark of the film, such concerns had left my mind completely. It's hard not to be mesmerized by the sheer scale of the production.

Nolan doesn't like to tell stories in a linear fashion, and The Odyssey is no exception, but rather than being an exercise in form or a stylistic choice, it seems a necessary mechanic in order to present the stories of Odysseus' journey without making the journey the narrative.  Instead, the tales of the lost king of Ithaca are told, either from the memories of others who were there, or from Odysseus (Matt Damon) himself as he tries to recapture memories from the void of his lotus-addled mind.  He tells his stories to Calypso (Charlize Theron), who may, or may not, be his captor. 

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus' long absence, and lack of word of his post-Troy adventures, have cast doubt upon his continued claim to the throne. His wife, the queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has spent years fending off a gaggle of suitors who gather in her hall, consuming the state's food and wine in lavish feasts, all in mind of claiming her and the throne. The Prince Telemachus (Tom Holland) is small and doesn't have his father's physical strength or cunning, but he has heart, still inviting beggars and travelers into the feast, as Zeus' will demands.  Telemachus lives in the shadow of his father, and while he doesn't desire the throne, he sees the suitors as boors and louts and not a one suitable to lead under the laws of the gods they worship.  Penelope, though, hasn't given up hope of Odysseus' return, and herself doesn't see any need for a man to claim the throne where she currently sits.  The suitors try to bait Telemachus into fights so that his claim to the throne can be "rightfully" disregarded if he's killed in an act of self defence.  Telemachus leaves Ithaca to seek answers, but that just puts him in even more danger.

We see the fateful climax to the Trojan War from at least three different perspectives throughout the film. The first is the legend, the tale of the glorious victors and Odysseus' strategic genius in the ploy of the Trojan horse. The second is the harrowing tale of the warriors' time inside of said horse, the unglamorous reality of it all. The third is from Odysseus' own recollections, using Zeus' law of providing hospitality, of welcoming offerings of peace as a gateway for their own violent ambitions.  Odysseus' men get the gates of Troy open, the waiting army of Agamemnon enter and slaughter the sleeping town with no discretion.

In leaving Troy, Odysseus opts to take the long route home, rather than follow Agamemnon, and this one ill decision leads to a series of misadventures which continue to cost him the lives of his men. The meeting of the cyclops is a horror show, but in managing their escape, Odysseus take a spiteful shot at the creature, a child of Poseidon. The men start to believe their journey is cursed as a result, the god of the seas taking his vengeance upon them.  They are assailed by giants, turned into pigs, eaten by sea creatures, and their only way to get back on track, to finding their way home is to visit the dead. There, Odysseus has to face the men he left behind, the men whose bodies he didn't honour, and the predictions of the future, the choices he will have to make. Odysseus has defied the gods over and over again, and is punished for it. 

The Odyssey is weirdly a pro-religion film, one that talks about obeying the laws of gods, and shows the punishments that happen if you don't. Odysseus' point for so long was that his will, his strength, and his intellect were all that mattered. In the belly of war for ten years, he lost his heart, his compassion, his humanity, and in doing so lost almost everything. If the film is telling us anything, it's not that religion is good or that obeying the gods is good, but respecting your fellow man is good. That charity is good. That contrition and compassion is good. At the center of pretty much every major religion is these ideas of being of service to gods is to be of service to your community and fellow man. But rather than look at this as a film telling you to go to church, or synagogue or mosque or whatever, it's telling you to respect and empathize, and look outside your own needs and ambitions, to use your status for something greater, not for self.

As well, the tale of Odysseus is about the traumas of war. History like to create heroes and epic tales out of battle, but such history ignores the humanity behind it.  By the time he returns home, Odysseus does not see himself as a great warrior, a hero or a legends, but a man with the burden of honouring those whose lives he cost. Accompanying him throughout the film is a spectre (Zendaya), a being that both haunts and guides him, setting him on a more righteous path, if slowly. In the end, when Odysseus says he needs to honour the dead, I don't think he's just talking about his men.  What we never actually see in the film are the gods themselves, but there's enough fantastical elements to makes us feel their presence.

The production of The Odyssey is incredible. The lighting feels so natural, in a Barry Lyndon  sort of way where all the indoor light seems to be coming from either torches, candles or windows, and the natural light outdoors is highlighting everything. I loved that there's minimal make-up in the film as well. The lines and freckles on Anne Hathaway's face weren't present in The Devil Wears Prada 2 but they make her stunning and captivating here. You want to study all the faces on screen, in a way glossier productions don't.

While most assuredly there's digital effects in the film, it seems largely a practical production. The ships look real, as does the beautiful wide shots and overhead views of them on the waters from ace cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. I don't really want the mystique of it all spoiled, but I also want to know how far asea  they took those boats.

Back once again with Nolan is composer Ludwig Göransson. I'm a big fan of Göransson, his compositions usually are a highlight, often attention grabbing in their uniqueness while complementing the visuals. Here, for the most part, Göransson steps back, letting his compositions rest in the shadows, rarely calling attention to themselves, but nonetheless being fantastic and exactly what the film needs.

It's the first feature length film to be completely shot on IMAX cameras, but getting into one of the few proper IMAX theatres to see it is a challenge all its own at the moment, and given how in-demand the format is, there may not be enough time and enough seats to satisfy demand before (I assume) the latest Spider-man film takes them over.

I was rapt for the entire two hours and fifty-two minute runtime of the film. While the spectacle is what would normally entice me, my favourite moments were all two-handers, scenes between two characters. These moments of intimacy or intrigue are the film's greatest strength and what will have me returning to the film many more times.  Try to tell my younger geek self that I'd be more drawn to people talking than fighting giants or men getting turned into pigs or massive battles, and he wouldn't believe you.

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I listen to more than a few movie and comedy podcasts, and one of the recurring conversations is the sorry state of comedy in cinema. There just aren't many comedies released in cinemas anymore, and when they are they're certainly not reaching the surprise blockbuster status that they were in Jim Carrey/Ben Stiller/Steve Carrell/Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart heyday of the 2000s. There's many reasons for this, not the least of which the business model shifted from being American box-office centric to international box-office centric, and comedy doesn't tend to translate well into other languages, and some comedic sensibilities don't cross borders well.  As well, Marvel's success in all ages and all regions brought humour to action franchises, which meant that "funny films" had to also be spectacles.

The "Marvel Age" of cinema is over. We're in a new transitional state right now where all different types of films are hitting big, from horrors to epics to chick flicks to video game adaptations, but there hasn't been a blockbuster comedy in a long, long time. I can't think of one from this decade that jumps out to me, in spite of there being at least a few great comedies that didn't get a lot of attention or explode the box office (maybe the relaunches of The Naked Gun last year and this year's Scary Movie come close to blockbuster status?).

For comedies to be big they tend to need either an authorial voice (like a Judd Apatow or Taika Waititi) behind the camera, or a commanding comedic presence in front of the camera. The industry hasn't let either of these truly build over the past 15 years. Most of our former big names have receded to TV or their stand-up careers, and the good comedy filmmakers have moved into making more serious productions.

David Wain is a comedy writer-director who emerged out of the expansive comedy troupe The State in the late 90's, and director of the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer. That film was released in 2001 but seemed to take a decade or longer to grow in popularity. His biggest hit, Role Models, was in 2006, but it didn't share the same sensibilities of Wain's State/Wet Hot/Stella/We Came Together work. It seemed more a work-for-hire film that succeeded on the back of Paul Rudd's plentiful charms. 

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, co-written with Wain's The State mate Ken Marino, feels very much like a Wain work, but the difference here is that Wain and Marino and their State colleagues have spread out among Hollywood in the intervening years, establishing connections and embedding themselves into the industry.  It doesn't mean their comedy style has been accepted and their films are any easier to get made though.

So many of my podcasts (both film and comedy podcasts) are celebrating the release of Wain's latest, and trumpeting its comedic delights. There's a real desire from the film nerds and comedy geeks to try and make original comedies successful in cinemas again, and it seems they want Wain's latest to be a part of that. The only trouble is, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn't good, and it's certainly not great. It's fine at at best.

The story of the film is narrated by Frank the mailman (Fred Melamed), a casual acquaintance of the titular Gail Daughtry, and sort of the outside observer of the events of this film (which makes no sense since he's in Gail's midwestern hometown and not in L.A. where the majority of the film takes place). He regails us with the brief history of Gail (Zoey Deutch), a super-upbeat, congenial, likeable, kind and slightly naive hairdresser who is keen to get married to her childhood sweetheart Tom Soursap McNoodleman (Michael Cassidy, putting in every effort to channel as much Paul Rudd-ness as he can). A salon conversation about "celebrity sex passes" spills out into Gail and Tom's evening out where Tom immediately answers "Tilda Swinton". But after attending a bookreading from Jennifer Aniston (who is doing a reading of her new cookbook, a solid joke), Tom muses that he might change his answer from Swinton to Aniston.  Next thing you know Gail's catching him boning Jennifer Aniston. 

A fortune teller tells her the only way to save her upcoming marriage is to balance things out. So Gail decides to join her salon-buddy Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley) on a trip to a hairdressing convention in Los Angeles, with the intention of find Jon Hamm, her celebrity sex pass, and getting dirty with him.

Upon landing in the airport, two mob-coded goons (Jo Lo Truglio and Matthew Jason Cwern) come across Henry Winkler and ask for a photograph (the joke here is they think he's John Travolta from Welcome Back Kotter). Gail offers to take the photo and puts down her suitcase, which is, of course, the exact same type that the goons just put down, and of course the cases get mixed up.

At this stage I thought the film was going to fully dovetail into Gail and Otto on the run from the mob to the point that we forget about the sex pass until a late third-act intervention of one Jon Hamm, leading to the reminder of the film's title, because that would be a good joke. But no, the majority of the film is about Gail and Otto collecting people on their quest to get Gail laid by the star of Mad Men while largely unbeknownst to them, the mob is after them.

They're joined by junior talent agent Caleb (Ben Wang) who gets fired for helping them, Hamm's down-on-his-luck Mad Men co-star John Slattery (John Slattery), and hard-up nice-guy paparazzo Vincent (Marino).  Their adventure starts with looking for Hamm, finding Hamm, getting turned away by security, but with the promise of a meeting if they pitch him a great movie. They find the mixed-up suitcase with all the nefarious mob plans and it spells out a big-time spy movie plot, only then the mafia get in their way, and the third-act becomes a silly, hyperviolent escape scenario before the inevitable climax (pun intended) and coda. 

Like I said, The State crew have proliferated in the industry, made some friends and contacts, and so there's a lot of resting on the mere appearance of a Jennifer Aniston or Jon Hamm or other celebrity cameos in this film to sell a joke. That would be fine if the film didn't transport the story into L.A. where so much of the humour rests upon inside Hollywood or L.A. jokes. Of course the movie podcasts I listen to love this, they're obsessed with Hollywood, and the comedy podcasts from L.A. types love jokes about their city. Put them together and this film has its head up its own ass for most of the production.

It seems like the product of people who don't have any other frame of reference to devise comedy from. It's not that there's not funny ideas, performances, or even good jokes, it's that the majority of them rest in this very narrow realm of interest, and rely so heavily on the audience to be invested in that very narrow realm of interest.  

It might just be that I was not in the mood for this movie when I watched it, but a good comedy -- a good movie -- should transport you out of whatever you're feeling and into the world of the film, and so much of what I was thinking about was how insular and annoying Hollywood and Hollywood types seem from the outside.  Perhaps in a few years this will unveil itself in a Wet Hot... secret success kind of way, but Wet Hot... had a pretty transcendent conceit (an 80's-style summer camp sex comedy where full grown adults are playing the teens). I don't see such a conceit here.

In a more robust comedy ecology, this would be just another satisfactory offering among many. Since there's not really any other comedies dropping, there's almost too much pressure for this little niche comedy to succeed. Also, not for nothing, the title is an unruly mess.

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Speaking of comedies, writer-director Matt Johnson's Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie has become the cult hit comedy of the year (not a blockbuster, but well reviewed and admired). I really enjoyed it, as well as Johnson's previous film Blackberry, enough that I've been extremely curious to watch Nirvanna The Band The Show (now available on Hulu in the U.S. and coming to Disney+ on August 7) and Johnson's first film Operation: Avalanche.

While Blackberry is a very different film than Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, Johnson's style is very specific. He has a preference for handheld cameras, he's seemingly disinterested in precise framing or  lighting and he likes things to feel in vérité style, as if it were a documentary.  In Blackberry Johnson didn't attempt the conceit of a documentary film crew, but in Nirvanna the yadda yadda, Johnson who acts and co-stars with Jay McCarroll, is keenly aware and often mugging directly to the camera. The cameraman is indeed a third-party in the film.  

I knew Operation Avalache had something to do about faking the moon landing, but I had no other expectations from the film. I was surprised to find that, much like Nirvanna the etcetera, Matt Johnson is playing Matt Johnson, and working with a documentary crew, only in this case this alt-reality Matt Johnson works for the CIA in the 1960's and is posing as a filmmaker in NASA trying to root out a Russian spy.  In the process Johnson and his crew discover that NASA can't actually land their lunar module on the moon, putting the U.S.'s success in the space race in jeopardy. 

So, Johnson decides to pivot, at first without the knowledge of his superiors, and then with the aide of, to fake the moon landing. The launch and orbit will be real, but the landing will be pre-recorded and transmitted from the spacecraft. The ploy is known as, naturally, Operation Avalanche.

It's a fun movie, but a bizarre one, especially in the metatext. The angle of Matt Johnson playing a character with the his own name, and Matt Johnson behaving in a not-too-dissimilar fashion to how the Matt Johnson character in Nirvanna the blah blah behaves, camera mugging included, it has a weird effect in confusing the audience about how they're supposed to feel about the tone at any given moment.

For the most part, the first two acts of this film are comedic, and so when it tries to frame a serious and/or meaningful conversation between Johnson and his CIA colleague Owen Williams (played by Owen Williams) it's hard to really settle into the drama of it. The third act takes a semi-logical pivot into conspiracy thriller, but it is a pretty wild tonal shift that doesn't fully hang together when Johnson can't stop mugging for the camera even when he's not really trying to. 

There's an immense amount of creativity and wonderful visual trickery in this film.  In the film itself the characters are trying to perform, ostensibly, a magic trick with their production, and the film we're watching is doing the same thing. It's never not entertaining even if it doesn't all hang together smoothly.  I do have to wonder what the fully comedic version of this would look like, just as I wonder what the fully conspiracy thriller version of this story would look like. The film itself doesn't satisfy either of these curiosities, but does largely satisfy on its own terms.

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Something I don't do enough is see old movies at the theatre, and by "old" I mean anything that isn't a current release. Beyond my favouritest movies, or older films I haven't seen that are kind of "event" movies when they're being screened, I don't see a reason for going out of my way when I can just watch it at home. I guess I love seeing new movies at the theatre, less enthused by anything else.

The Truman Show is not one of my favouritest movies... far from it. I watched it once in theatres back when it was released and I don't think ever again. It further cemented the fact that Peter Weir movies AND Jim Carrey movies just really weren't my thing. My favourite podcast, Blank Check, just finished going through the Wier filmography and they were pretty vocal about their admiration for their film. I mean, it was nearly 30 years ago, and I view films much a lot fairly a bit differently now than I did back then. I'm certainly a more experienced film-goer at the very least.  Perhaps, just maybe, there's some secret sauce to The Truman Show I didn't appreciate before.  Maybe the Blank Check crew taking me through Wier's films in such depth will have me appreciating his work in a way I certainly didn't before.

The answer to these hypothetical is "nope". Didn't happen. 

The lingering impression of The Truman Show was primarily how Carrey -- at the time attempting his first transition out of rubber-faced physical comedian persona -- was all wrong for the part.  With fresh eyes I know I was wrong on that assessment... he was mostly wrong for the part. If the Jim Carrey of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Man on the Moon were in the role, then I think it would have played for me much better. Instead, the Carrey of 1998 was still in extreme mugging and overly gesticulating mode. Yes, he reigned it it for The Truman Show, but it's also evident that he didn't know how to perform without it. He seems like he's fighting his true goofy nature every minute on screen and, much like watching Matt Johnson in Operation Avalanche above try to not mug for the camera while in conspiracy thriller mode, Carrey can't help himself even though the titular Truman is a really dramatic part.  Truman was a role he needed to break him out of the mold he put himself in, but I don't know that it served the film the best with him in the part.

Weir, I've probably mentioned before, is not a director whose work I have much affection for. I struggle to find the specific film of his that resonates with me, mainly because the ones I have seen (most of those multiple times and involuntarily) don't engender me to watch any others. Even the Blank Check recap didn't entice me to follow along, week-by-week, film-by-film. (I rewatched Picnic at Hanging Rock and that's it... I would like to reassess Fearless). Here, I find a solidly made, solidly executed film, but a real lack of style.  

If ever there was a film that needed style, it's The Truman Show.

Here we have a fantastical future reality where the TV and social landscape has been transformed by 24-hours-a-day coverage of Truman's life, all of it a manufactured reality around him, built inside the only other man-made structure to be seen from outer space other than the Great Wall of China (which you can't even, but nevermind... it's all flights of fancy anyway, so why fact check anything). The world Truman lives in is sort of a retro-50's/early-60's aesthetic which never evolved, but the production had the capacity to go really weird alt-history future in Truman's world and it's so sad they didn't.

Beyond just boring choices in costuming and sets, Weir doesn't effectively use the pov shot nor experiment enough with different aspect ratios or camera formats to most effectively tell the story. So very often in the movie it is absolutely unclear whether we're watching Truman as a viewer would watch from home in the world within the world (or perhaps the editing booth) or if it's the meta view from Weir's actual lens. There was such opportunity to do something really different there (I had just watched Backrooms again, and We're All Going To The World's Fair in the days before, both films which use different lenses to view the protagonist, as if we watching through different screens, and then, at times watching people watching screens... these films really get how to use media in a way Weir was only kind of thinking about, but didn't seem to put his full effort into it (unless the studio shut down the idea for being to "out there").

The Truman Show came out just when reality TV was taking off in North America. It certainly hadn't taken over most of the networks and account for the majority of TV programming like it does today, and the internet certainly wasn't a think for videos like it is today. The point is, there's a case to be made for rebooting The Truman Show and examining the attention and fame economy as a result.

The film is moderately enjoyable, but I found myself more frustrated than entertained. I'm sure others might find it charming or conceptually intriguing, and I can't deny that it has its charms and that the concept isn't strong. It's just not executed to my desired tastes.

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I remember hearing the title Irma Vep around the time it came out, possibly because it was playing at my local film fest, or maybe it was reviewed in my student newspaper at the time. However I heard about it, it's a name that's stuck fast in my brain for decades, even if nothing else about it was retained.

Smash cut to the pandemic times when director Olivier Assayas decided to remake Irma Vep into a TV miniseries starring Alicia Vikander. It was only at this time, over 25 years later, that I really knew what the plot was about. In the 1996 film, the great Maggie Cheung plays a fictional version of herself. She's come to France to appear in a remake of the classic silent film Les vampires, playing the lead role of Irma Vep.

Not really speaking or understanding French, Maggie is a bit lost amidst the conversations around her, and can only intone the chaos that's taking place around her on the set. The director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is having a meltdown, a crisis of confidence, and wants Maggie to be his muse for the project, which she just kind of rolls with. Meanwhile Zoé (Nathalie Richard) in makeup befriends Maggie and is really smitten. Things get a little awkward at a dinner party Zoé brings her to.  Maggie one night dons her character's cat suit and heads out into the night on her own adventure, sneaking around the rooftops and through hallways, thieving like Catwoman. And there's much fighting on set, the production seems troubled, and every reporter just wants to talk to Maggie about how awful and pretentious French films are compared to American films.

The film is Assayas trying to resolve where French cinema was in the 1990s. The new wave was far enough in the rear view mirror to not even be relevant anymore, and, at least in the film, nothing meaningful had taken place in the country since. There's a crisis afoot, about whether French film should be populist, or expand its appeal beyond its borders, or stay deeply and truly artistic and extremely French. It never really resolves these questions it asks.

It is in the cinema vérité stile, but really keeping with the single camera, and minimizing edits. It's not documentary style, it really gets intimate with its cast, getting right in their faces at times. It's a brief-ish movie at 99 minutes, but at times is a little naval gaze-y. It seems loosely plotted and perhaps unscripted (minimal research says it was loosely scripted and shot with only one take per shot) and it feels very run-and-gun. The performers are all charming, but the general idea of the film, to fall back on my critique of Gail Daughtry..., is up it own ass. It's a filmmaker making a film about how hard filmmaking is, and most of the film's commentary is about how hard it is to make a film. Hardly earth-shaking stuff...but maybe a little more unique in 1996? If this had been truly about viewing things from Maggie's perspective, then it would have been a pretty fascinating film, but she's only occasionally our central figure and the lens never really settles on her like it does for director Rene or Zoe.

My intent was to go straight from the film to the HBO miniseries, but the film was such a nothingburger of  a story that I couldn't be bothered. One's mileage may vary.

Rewatch: The Adjustment Bureau

2011, George Nolfi (Elevation) -- Amazon

I originally saw, and wrote about, this movie waaaay back in the early days of this blog, some 15 years ago. I am just going to "wow" that, and not psychoanalyse myself over "10,000 hours makes you an expert." 

Technically, based on how often you write, you are barely half-way there, so maybe in another 20 years, you should be objectively "good at writing". Or dead.

I have not rewatched this movie many times, if ever (memory escapes me), and it is not on The Shelf. But I have a nostalgic place for it in my mind's eye, as I do with many of the PK Dick adaptations. It is My Kind of Movie, or "Toasty coded" as Kent has said. Its romantic, plays with the idea of destiny, and it messes with religious paradigms without being offensive or dismissive. When I first saw it, and likely this was because it was a reveal, I wasn't fond of the whole Angels Messing with Us thing -- I was hoping for a more spec-fic explanation for the Bureau -- but I have definitely softened on that. I realize my original desire for it to be less-religious more-scifi was in connecting the hat & suited angels to the more nefarious figures from Dark City.

In case you don't recall, the writings in ReWatches are generally less than "reviews", unless that particular rewatch is the first post about the movie. So, they end up being just a general collection of thoughts I had during and after the movie.

In 2011, Anthony Mackie was probably just a face I recognized (from The Hurt Locker and maybe Million Dollar Baby) but he wasn't a household name. This role did put him forward more than the others in an already decade long career, and not long after this, he became Sam Wilson. Its nice he came back to a couple of Nolfi's later flicks including Elevation.

Also, we are rewatching Fringe (again) and I cannot help but do the comparison against the Angels against the similar attired Observers; I am surprised I never mentioned that in the original writing, considering it was about the same time Fringe was airing. 

My romantic notions have tempered, maybe gone so far as soured, with age. The original black-mark against David (Matt Damon, Oppenheimer) and Elise (Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer) was that their relationship was destined to derail both their lives. Instead of being utterly focused on their own lives, he as a politically ambitious senator destined for the White House, and she an emerging talent in the ballet & modern dance world, they would become subsumed with each other, with their relationship, which would degrade both paths. While I still do frown at the cultural requirements for everyone to have Peak Accomplishment, instead of just living satisfying lives, part of what the Angels were saying is that eventually at least Elise would sour on the idea that she had given up a life of greatness, for David. When the movie ends with The Director re-writing "the plan" I still wonder how much of Free Will will come into play, or was the movie just about abandoning all future potential for the jubilation of The Now. My soured romantic notions have me pondering the idea that even if their lives are not worsened for Choosing Each Other, romance eventually can simmer down, and would they both end up wondering What If in their old age.

I still rather like the way the movie is structured, the World Building and the idea that there are more people who went through this situation beyond David and Elise. They may be the Main Characters in this story, but there are many stories. It was still a satisfying movie to rewatch, but what had me stay away from it originally, stands.