Toast & Kent's XMas (2025) Advent Calendar: Day 6 - Jingle Bell Heist

2025, Michael Fimognari (The Fall of the House of Usher) -- Netflix

Two not-Hallmarkies in a row? Yeah yeah, boo on me.

This one was actually unexpected. Sorry, its not like I turned it on by accident, but I assumed I was just watching another British movie with an American lead (see previous movie) which was to be a "Christmas Caper". That's a thing, right? I mean, technically, you might call Die Hard, a "Christmas Caper" movie? Anyway, I like me a good caper (as I am a Caper) and since our household is still firmly footed in British Land (watching a lot of panel shows) I suggested this. But yes, as I was saying, it wasn't just another Christmas Caper movie. So, be warned, to tell you how it wasn't, I will spoil the jingle bells out of it.

And yes, we will get back to proper Hallmarkies.

Sophia (Olvia Holt, Cloak & Dagger) is an American working at Sterlings, one of those mega-department stores you see in British movies, apparently only catering to high end clientele and pretending its the 1950s, the height of pretty young things catering to the whims of rich assholes. She's also a pick pocket with a heart of gold, as the "angry man yelling at buskers" establishing scene exhibits. And she uses any opportunity to pocket cash at the store, one time which gets her caught on security camera, which Nick (Connor Swindells, Rogue Heroes) happens to be spying in on. Nick's also a thief?

But doubling-down on the "heart of gold" thing, we find Sophia is just stealing money to pay for her mother's extended needs during cancer treatment. They did move to the UK for free health care, after they exhausted all their funds in the US, but every little bit counts. Especially when a doctor offers her entry in a trial study that could see her mom improving drastically, but its part of the two-tier system where people with money can jump queues. They don't barely have enough money.

Nick tries to blackmail Sophia into stealing stuff from the store's special vault, and while she initially refuses, the trial costs convinces her otherwise. Enter caper one, and the first time my expectations were tossed aside. I kind of thought the movie was moving along rather quickly, and when she goes to do the actual stealing, its... all gone. Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz, Shaun of the Dead) himself, the family named boss of the store, has reported it all stolen.

So, Sophia suggests robbing Sterling directly. He always keeps tons of cash in his personal safe. She knows this from eavesdropping. She scouts out the office, finds a hidden walk-in safe behind a bookshelf and brings the knowledge to Nick, who as we saw in the "spying on her" bit, works in security but we also learn, is down on his luck after spending two years in jail for theft. He has an ex, a daughter and a roommate who spends all day playing video games and wants in on whatever caper Nick has coming up. Nick denies everything. But he does need cash to further his relationship with his daughter, as currently repairing laptops barely covers his expenses let alone child payments. Nick knows how those safes work, key fobs with security codes. Caper two! Get the fob!

Yeah, this was the hijinx caper, one where they know they have to get into his house and the only way they come up with is "seduce his wife". How is it in these movies, when they dress the shabby young man up in a tux, they never consider him actually shaving off his perpetual three-day-scrub? No matter, if goes miserably but... the wife (Lucy Punch, Motherland) is onto them anyway. Buuuut she's into it, the stealing from her husband, whom she loathes but also wants his fortune, not into Nick seducing her. Caper three! Armed with the fob, rob his store safe!

Oh, I should mention that by this point, we have found out Nick isn't even a thief. He was actually framed by Sterling himself who had Nick build some security for him, only to use it as a manner for Sterling to steal his own goods and get the insurance money. This was turnaround for a main character, and the other... well, I should have seen it coming, but I barely put it together before it was revealed. You see, Sterling is her dad. She is his illegitimate daughter. Sterling denied her existence and it drove her mother to the US. When DNA is required to get into the safe, its hers they use. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL ! They aren't even stealing from Sterling, but putting back a ton of the shit he stole in previous events, including the goods from two years prior when he framed Nick. This caper, as designed by the wife, is to put all the goods back into the safe, call in a robbery (in cute winter themed balaclavas at that) and get the evil man arrested, after which the wife will set them up for life.

So yeah, a fun little caper-ish movie that plays with expectations, still squarely runs in romcom land and is all set during the Xmas season, so while it doesn't adhere to any really strong holiday tropes, the coming Xmas days and packed department stores play important parts in the story. Nick and Sophia seem like an unlikely pair, but that works out better for Hallmarkie style romcom-y land.

Yeah, I liked it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Fountain of Youth

2025, Guy Ritchie (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre) -- download

Guy Ritchie is trying to setup a franchise. The aforementioned Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre was most definitely a setup for one, but it hasn't happened... yet. This is almost certainly also trying to do so, and even had some closing dialogue to cement the idea of more treasures, more forbidden knowledge, more chases.

Funny, despite opening with the statement you thought "the aforementioned movie" was going to be a setup for a franchise, you never actually say that in the write-up of the aforementioned movie.

This movie is right down my alley, an alley I am always surprised is mine -- treasure hunting movies. I would guess it started with Richard Chamberlain's King Solomon's Mines but I imagine there were formative movies and TV shows before that. If I was to settle on the epitome of this type of movie, for me, it would be (and again, surprising me) Nicolas Cage's National Treasure (I should do a rewatch post for both) because they are silly, light, comedic and full of puzzles to solve and treasure to ultimately lose. Its still my greatest annoyance with all treasure hunting movies --- that much if not all of the treasure has to be lost at the end of the movie.

Luke Purdue (John Krasinski, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) probably identifies as an archaeologist, but he presents as an art thief. The movie opens with him stealing a painting from some Bad Guys in Thailand, leading to a very fun car-scooter chase, and then a classic fight on a train. On the train, Luke meets foil Esme (Eiza González, Baby Driver) who also wants the painting but is not with the Bad Guys that Luke eventually escapes from.

The hot opening was fun, light and caper-ific. Krasinski embodies a 20s serial adventurer, ala Indiana Jones, but with a more lighter, comedic approach, and the suits he wears smack of anachronism. When I saw the trailer the first time, for a moment I thought the movie might be period.

Anywayz, Luke makes it to London, steals another painting out from under the nose of his museum curator sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman, Vox Lux). There is lots of contentious banter and references to their father's legacy. It gets Charlotte fired, of course, but Luke introduces her to his team of Mission Impossible style misfits and their backer, a dying billionaire (Domhnall Gleason, Frank of Ireland) who wants Luke's help in finding the fabled Fountain of Youth, something that Luke and Charlotte's father had spent his life searching for.

It is at this point, he finds himself stalled and bored of his usual abridged "recaps". But even if there isn't a proper recap, there will be spoilers hereafter.

Treasure Hunt Capers have formulas to follow. There have to be a handful of clues that must be deciphered, and that usually involves finding some hidden pieces upon which the clues are placed. In period treasure hunts, those hidden pieces are just waiting to be found in tombs, but in current period movies, the treasures are usually already found, but in the hands of someone who won't give them up easily. Purdue and his crew end up being more thieves than treasure hunters. His sister isn't fond of that. They "recover" a painting from the sunken Lusitania, they "recover" some information from a heretical bible in Austria. There are casualties, there is destruction. I can see why she isn't fond of her brother's tactics.

Oh, and chase scenes. Lots of chase scenes. Fun chase scenes, and a whole lot more fun than a tuk tuk race.

Being a Ritchie movie, there needs to be a multitude of players. Interpol is chasing Luke, the Bad Guys from the Hot Open are chasing Luke, anti-treasure hunters (an organization of mysterious protectors of the Fountain of Youth) are chasing the entire group and, eventually, after reveals and betrayals, the billionaire backer has his mercenary goons. Much conflict, so many players.

To be fair, I had the fun I expected. It is not a good movie by any objective standards but Krasinski is charming, as expected, and I loved his suits. Portman is one note (frustrated), Gleeson is gleeful, until he is menacing, and González is sexy, intimidating and mysterious, and did I mention sexy? I expect her to be playing henchmen roles for a good long time, but at least in this one, her role had good intentions. The rest of the characters are cardboard stand-ins without enough good lines to be remembered. 

Like Raiders of the Lost Ark the treasure here is not a tangible thing, but the promise of immortality and ... other stuff. The Fountain of Youth is expanded from a pool of water that gives you, well, youth, into The Power of God (!!!) Of course, they are vague about what this power is but that's alright, they drop the pyramids on his head. The End. And no, no gold in their pockets. Not that this movie was about collecting actual "treasure", but it still always annoys me that treasure hunters always come away sans treasure.

...

I have been thinking about the way I watch movies, of late, a lot. The comparison of "popcorn movie" is often used, usually in connection with burping at the end, and its gone. But there is the "enjoy it while I am doing it" aspect, as in I really like eating buttered cinema popcorn while I am up to half way thru the bag, but afterwards, not so much. I can recall enjoying this movie, a lot, while I watched it, but I can not elucidate on that enjoyment. Is it timing? Is it too long ago in my brain? Do I need a rewatch? Maybe I need to start doing what I have been tempted to do with my viewing of Anora, which I am about half way thru, after about 5 sittings, getting in bits & bobs in mornings and during WFH Lunch. Should I start the post with my growing impressions? I have a lot going in my head as I watch that movie, but I also really enjoy the "movie done, put in a stub" aspect for this blog. Objectives Accomplished, I guess. But should I start writing BEFORE the end, because helz knows I am not going to write it, right after, when things are more or less fresh.

Anywayz, enjoyed the movie, but not a lot of nice things to say about it, which annoys me.

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)

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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.

KWIF: Civil War (+3)

 KWIF = "Kent's Week In Film", so...stuff he watched this week, or the week before and forgot to write about.

This Week:
Civil War (2024, d. Alex Garland - in theatre)
Perfect Blue (1997, d. Satoshi Kon - bluray)
The Great Muppet Caper (1981, d. Jim Henson - Disney+)
Patriot Games (1992, d. Phillip Noyce - DVD) 

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Despite being saddled with conceits mined from the modern shitstorm that people politely call "political discourse" this felt like a very 1970's-styled dystopian future road movie where the fears and anxieties of the current era are projected onto some skewed alt-reality or alt-future where they've completely gone haywire. It works for me like Soylent Green or the Omega Man or even a lot of Grindhouse B-movies.

We've seen so many dystopian/post-apocalyptic films (and TV) where the imagery of everyday America is a desolate or abandoned wasteland but we don't often see everyday America as battleground, and certainly not to this effect. Where some may shrug it off or alternately find it sensationalist or distasteful in it's gratuitously violent imagery, I found it potently discomforting to see battles waged in terrains that should otherwise feel so safe. Cities and towns, high rises and parking lots. There's a very blunt statement, delivered early (and in the trailer) by Kirsten Dunst's photojounalist, that can be interpreted as "I thought we were better than this" or maybe "I thought we were immune to this". But we'll get back to why America is not.

This film skirts around the specifics of the factions at war and what led them there very pointedly. I get why that angers some but I think it's meant more to extract it from any specific dividing lines, to not put the audience on one side of this fictional civil war or the other. It's really not about investing in whether one side or the other wins and I like it that way. That Texas and California form a coalition is just the start of the film's blend-of-both-sides-isms ... on both sides that proves perplexing to our current bisected left-right political reality. Yet there are little clues as to the breaking point....

Our protagonists clearly don't like the three-term president, the one who still claims to be winning in the face of defeat, the one who has reporters shot on sight, the one who inspires Americans to suicide bomb protesters running into the crowd with a massive flag of stars and stripes (did she yell "For America?" Or did I do a Mandela Effect). There's a clear extrapolation here, that a Trump-like figure has taken the office, loyalty-oathed a whole army of people, and sought to destroy all that was not bent to his vision. And people, under the banner of the two most secessionist states, have banded against it. 

Is it that the journalists don't seem to have any real leanings towards one side of the war or the other or that the Civil War is being fought, on both sides, by military and civilian alike that it's never clear, just by uniform, which side they're tagging along with? The character narrative is that they are compelled to do this, they're there to capture the story (and the photo) not purely out of a need to do news, but because there's a level of addiction to it, despite the associated trauma.

What many seem to be struggling with is "what is the point?" Or "what is the message?" Or "what should we do about this?"

I'm still processing it. I really don't know there's any singular point or message of the film. Is it a simple warning that America is not better than this or immune to it? There is a fairly basic character study of wartime journalists and their trauma, with no real surprises in terms of characterization. There's a study of an America viewed through smoked glass, where you can make out a recognizable but vague shape, but it's not exactly a clean image. Is it a warning? Sure. But is it entertainment? Yeah it's freaking scary, I was a bundle of nerves throughout. Nearly every encounter is a total step into the unknown, into engaging personalities who you have no idea what their ideals or motivations are. As wartime journalists they had gone to far flung places where they are outside observers, here they are members of that ecosystem at war and cannot maintain the distance or impartiality they're used to.

Garland also makes death a very hard thing to look at here. He doesn't shy away from the agony and brutality of war (or the outside elements that will capitalize upon chaos for their own purposes) even as it ratchets up in its final act. Throughout he kind of dares you to feel dispassionate, to step outside yourself like the characters try to, to just be the unaffected observer.

But back to America being immune to this sort of thing.... What hit me the most about the movie had nothing to do with political ideologies (or perceived lack thereof), rather the sheer amount of guns, mostly big, automatic weapons. There's an all too frequent sense that the people our protagonists encounter had the weapons at hand pre-war and have just been waiting to use them, for whatever reason. This is my takeaway of the film. Our scariest neighbours to the south have been arming themselves up for decades in what's supposed to be the safest, most prosperous country on the planet. Why? Because they expect something is going to happen, whether it's invasion, or rising up against a government, or to stave off some form of reckoning for a long history of abuses. Whatever. But nobody amasses that amount of weaponry without some desire to actually use it. And that's the backdrop of this film to me, that desire actualized, on both sides. And i think the final shot of the film, a single photo of militarized big game hunters proudly and triumphantly crouching around their kill that slowly develops in the frame beneath the credits, it hits that nail right on the head.

Too blunt? Not blunt enough? I get why people are divided about this film, but it worked for me.

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I have had a thorn in my paw about anime as long as I can remember. I've treated it like it's a genre, but it's just a category of moving picture that means "Japanese Animation".  It's not "all the same" as I have dismissively claimed in the past. Within that category can be all different types of styles, stories, characters, and genres. As well, within the category can be found all different types of artists.  Just because I saw Akira in my teens and loathed it, I shouldn't paint all anime with the same brush, should I?  

For some time, my only exception to my self-imposed "no-Anime" rule was the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.  I think it was a concession to the "That Guy" within me to say that I wasn't totally closed-minded.  But I still am. How many anime films have I written about in my share of the 2000 posts on this blog?  I've only used the "anime" tag 5 or 6 times (shockingly more Toasty).

My favourite "must listen" podcast, Blank Check, is covering the films of Satoshi Kon starting this weekend and my impulse was to just take a break from the show for a month as they cover the director's four films, but then, I thought, why not challenge myself. After all, Kon directed Tokyo Godfathers, a film I recall fondly from a screening at Toast and Marmy's flat, like, two decades ago (I tried to coax my anime-loving kid into going to a theatrical screening a couple months ago and was denied...they later regretted it and said "I sold it wrong").

So yeah, Perfect Blue. A filmed I knew literally nothing about going into it beyond the quote on the back of the package that called it a psychological thriller. I mean, I was intrigued. If I had to guess, I would have thought it was a neo-futuristic world with rain-drenched neon-lit cities...basically anime blade runner with someone questioning their humanity. But that's me being reductive in my view of what anime can be.

Instead what Perfect Blue delivers is truly an intense, Giallo-inspired, yup, psychological thriller about an aspiring pop idol whose management pivots her into being an actress, but the move upsets the most fanatical of her small-but-loyal fan base, leading to stalking and murder.

But it's not that straightforward. Mima is a young woman who doesn't have much agency in her life... her agents do. So the move from aspiring pop icon to actress betrays her innermost desire, but a need to please and a legit talent for acting propel her on this new career path. Following the path means shedding her flirty, not-so-innocent, bubble-gum image, and shooting a rape scene becomes a pivot point for her career, her psyche, and her obsessed fan who writes an online journal about Mima's life, except from the vantage point as if she never left her pop music girl group.

Mima herself becomes obsessed with both the identity of her stalker, and the alternate life that has been envisioned for her. The more she deviates from her good-girl image, be it in acting roles or nude magazine spreads, the more she obsesses over her alternate reality, seeing visions of pop-Mima everywhere.

Kon's direction, for his first feature, is masterful. It's an odd thing to say about an animated film, but it's all in the edit. The way Kon blurs the lines of reality, and time, with absolutely stunning and seamless scene and sequence transitions is the greatest marvel of the film. The first such "edit" (it's animation, where everything is storyboarded and purposefully drawn, so it's not like a live action film edit) I thought "how clever", and then they kept coming, and I was kept pretty rapt by the whole thing. It's largely an incredible production.

Story wise, things are a little more complicated. It takes place in the world of Japanese media (in the 1990's no less) and I don't really know much about how film and television get made over there, but have heard that it's not the same as the Hollywood system. But the concept of men controlling the movements of a woman through such an industry, using and abusing their talent and their image, it's not a regional problem.

That it deals with being a female celebrity in Japan is intriguing, and it's very pointed with the leering looks of men. The opening scene at one of Mima's pop concerts with half-full stands is populated, notably, entirely by men.  There's a total "ick" factor to the whole proceedings. The on-set film-within-a-film rape scene is almost perfectly handled in playing with the blurred lines of fantasy and reality.  The fact that Mima agreed to do the scene but internally was reluctant, does that make it just as traumatic even if it's only simulated. In between takes I kept waiting for the intimacy coordinator to step in and ensure it was safe and ok for Mima, but this was the 1990s and there weren't such people on set.

The after-effects Mima shooting the scene is basically the crux of the film in a way. It's a dividing line in Mima's public image, and the sense is that there's a taint to Mima having done such a scene, akin to victim-blaming.  I wasn't sure if this was a critique of something specific in Japanese culture, but one only needs to look at the heavy scrutiny America female teen pop stars undergo when they try to shed their youthful image for "I'm a sexy adult now" to see what Kon is mirroring. Mima's psyche seemingly fractures between her desires to press forward in her new career (which she is getting praise for) and deep regret for abandoning her puerile past.

I would give Kon more credit for tactfully handling all of this image and identity and sexual politics if he didn't fall into the anime trope of gratuitousness with his assault scenes. I'm not a puritan, but when you have full control over every image on screen, to purposefully orchestrate the scenes he did, in the way that he did, is, bluntly, gratuitous in a 70's and 80's exploitation cinematic way.  It's of its time but I always find putting titillation in scenes of violence disturbing and problematic.

These moments mar what is close to otherwise being among the best of classic psychological thrillers.

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I loved the Muppets as a kid, and have continued to love the Muppets as an adult. But I realize that I'm not a fan, I'm a tourist. The Muppets is just a pop culture space I like to visit, have a look around, buy a memento or two, and be on my way. I'm not one of those people who have tremendously strong opinions about the early films vs the 90's films vs the Disney films.  Some people have really powerful feelings around how the Muppets should be used in movies and television, I haven't taken the time to have such feelings.  I haven't studied the Muppets, and I don't know all the nuances of their trajectory.  While both The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies were an immense part of my youth, I haven't engaged with them much in my adult life.  My favourite Muppet film are 2011's The Muppets, 1999's Muppets From Space, and 1987's A Muppet Family Christmas, but according to Muppet fandom, there's something wrong with this opinion.

I know I've seen The Great Muppet Caper before, but I would hazard a guess that it's been about 40 years since I last watched it (Jesus I'm old).  The only thing trapped in my mind about this film was the bike riding scene (because it's constantly being shown as a clip for a multitude of purposes) and the vague recollection of John Cleese (Fawlty Towers).

The film opens with a very meta title sequence and song about starting the movie and getting into character. It's not the only time they break the fourth wall this film, but we'll get to that. Kermit (Sesame Street News) and Fozzie (Muppets Tonight) play reporters and twins. The gag of the frog and the bear being twins is an excellent one, but one not employed nearly enough.  It is a running joke, but there are so many missed opportunities to keep bringing it up and it pained me that it's employed maybe five times in the film.

So the reporters are on the scene when a fashion designer (Diana Rigg, The Avengers) has her jewellery stolen right before them. They travel to London, staying at a Muppet-infested dive hotel, where they follow up on the story. Kermit meets Piggy (Pigs in Space), who was just hired as an assistant to the fashion designer, but doesn't correct Kermit when he assumes she is the fashion designer. Keeping up the ruse is such a Muppet  thing for a bit. Of course, Kermit isn't the only one enchanted by Piggy (he isn't really), so too is the designer's bored gold-digging courtesan, played by Charles Grodin (Beethoven's 2nd). It is he, along with his trio of lithe, long leg, leggy lithe legged model cat burglar associates, who is planning the heist of the ultimate "baseball diamond".

It's a total farce, not without its charms or its laughs, but it's not nearly as charming or as funny as it could and should have been.  The pieces were all there, they just weren't played up, nor played out enough.  The running gags should have been ran into the ground, not held in precious reserve, and the meta comedy will be done better in the future.

But there's one scene that sticks out above all others that takes the Muppets to another level. Some might say it's the stunning technical accomplishment of Muppets riding bicycles, but no, I'm talking about a scene where Kermit confronts Piggy about lying to him, but then the scene starts blurring the line between the in-story Kermit and Piggy and the "real world" Kermit and Piggy, wildly leaping back and forth over the fourth wall until both character and "performer" are confused. It's a meta comedy perfection, performed brilliantly by felt figures.

Otherwise, not my favourite, but decently entertaining.

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Patriot Games came out when I was in my mid-teens. I had no interest in it even though it starred Han Solo AND Indiana Jones. To me, it was a total dad film, a movie for dads who enjoy those kind of dad movies.

I'm now in my late 40's and I'm a total dad, and I'm sure my teen+ kids look at the things I watch and consider them to be dad things. So why not lean into it and finally get around to watching the various Jack Ryan productions from the 90's? I just watched The Hunt for Red October, and Lady Kent's DVDs of the two Harrison Ford Ryan movies live in the binders, so they're readily at-hand.

And yeah, having seen it, total dad movie. 

Ex CIA agent Jack Ryan, in London on vacation I suppose, just happens to be on scene when IRA terrorists make an attempt on the Royal Prince's life. Ryan intervenes, getting shot in the process, but kills one of would be assassins. It's just a young man who turns out to be the brother of Sean Bean, a big time IRA guy.

Bean is also captured but is freed from prison, and vows bloody revenge on Jack Ryan, and the film is basically his campaign of terror against Jack, but also putting him at odds with his IRA colleagues.  Jack rejoins the CIA, at least temporarily in trying to hunt down the man who is hunting him.

While The Hunt for Red October is also a dad movie, it's transcendently so. It's a film that conveys an understanding of how everything works, from submarines to chain of command to diplomatic relations. Even if it just makes it up, it gives the appearance of understanding these things. Patriot Games is base level dad movie where it plays fast and loose with any sense of how things work in the real world, and puts characters in places they need to be because they need to be there. It's not terribly interested in its characters, except to have Jack Ryan get the bloody bad guy in the end because bad guys need to get got. The film toys with the idea of insight into Sean Bean's terrorist but any sense of empathy is all in performance an not the script. He's just the bad guy who needs to die a horrible Sean Bean-style death

This is a film the has Samuel L. Jackson in the pocket as Jack Ryan's navy buddy, but gives him only a couple lines and a gun to shoot. He's not a character and Jackson is a captivating presence (as always) but utterly wasted. James Earle Jones reprises his role as Jack's CIA boss Admiral Greer, but if he's in the film for more than 5 minutes I'll be surprised. Anne Archer and her magnificent mane of hair plays Mrs. Jack Ryan, and is relegated to something just marginally better than the nagging wife. She's so close to having agency in this film but never quite gets there. Thora Birch plays the Ryan daughter and is incredible. I dare say it might be a better performance than anything Birch has given as an adult, but that would be hyperbolic and rude because there's always Ghost World. Harrison Ford plays action-hero-Harrison Ford, and I wish that Alec Baldwin had kept the role. Ford's cinematic person can't help but dominate the character and so Jack Ryan doesn't feel like the same character as Red October, he might as well be Regarding Henry, or guy who is Presumed Innocent for all we care.

Patriot Games. It was a movie.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

2023, Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man) -- download

In my current state of Finally Having Proper Internet (1.5GB FTTH), I am starting to download 4K copies of movies. The problem is that the PC that powers our piratical media sharing is aging, and therefore only certain formats will transcode to the TV properly. Watching this movie required 4 attempts at finding the Right Copy before actually sitting, and watching the movie. And as it ended, we noticed it sitting, legally and free, on Amazon.

Sigh.

That said, I always commented that I would continue to Pirate until the days it became easier to buy/rent than to find the pirate sources. I don't pirate games anymore, not for more than a decade, because just waiting for them to drop in price is easier. I have lessened my movie & TV piracy because I have subscribed to a bunch of services that provide me more than enough content to watch legally. The only thing that was stopping me from Renting first-run movies via one of the many services was speed -- who wants to wait an hour for a Rented Movie to actually download. Now they can just zip along happily. We shall have to see if I make the transition.

Movie? Oh yeah, the movie. 

If you thought it was strange that Guy Ritchie has two movies coming out consecutively (Jake Gyllenhaal's actioner The Covenant is right around the corner) you are not wrong. This movie was done in 2021, and the distributers considered it rather crass to release a movie (in 2022) featuring Ukrainian Bad Guys, so they shelved it until now. But the movie seemed to have suffered other issues in its delays, in that it feels like editing & interference had it abandoning some plots and glossing over other aspects, giving it an unfinished, unpolished feel.

That said, a Guy Ritchie spy caper is still kind of fun, and fun was to be had.

Orson Fortune (Jason Statham playing Jason Statham, Spy) is an adventurer for hire, brought into the game by his handler Nathan (Cary Elwes, Stranger Things) at the behest of the British government, to get a MacGuffin called "the handle", an AI thingy-ma-jiggy that we have seen before (usually stored on a thumb drive or small SSD in a brief case), but this one takes down financial markets. Other such devices, in other movies, have shut down power grids (The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard) or had the ability to launch nuclear missiles anywhere, everywhere (Citadel). It doesn't matter what they do, only that it is Bad, and that they can be easily transported, usually in a secure brief-case.

The movie begins with a focus on Fortune building his team, not being able to get John, because John is currently working for Fortune's rival Mike, so Orson ends up with American Sarah (Aubrey Plaza, Legion). John is the best, so Fortune has to be convinced she is a good substitute.

"Save my wife," intones the courier of The Handle, just before he dies, at the hands of Mike's team. They don't. In fact, the movie forgets there was a wife at all. Is Orson really all that good-er than Mike, if he just lets her die? I think the editor was probably the real villain here.

Anywayz, The Handle is on its way to Cannes, to a charity auction hosted by Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, D&D: Honor Among Thieves) playing pretty much the same character he did in Ritchie's The Gentleman, albeit with more money. Its not that Grant is being type-cast, more that he enjoys playing up to his aging status, being these leathery, pompous, arrogant villains. Anywayz, to get into Cannes, they recruit Simmonds fav movie star, Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett, Wrath of Man).

What happens after becomes a blur of all caper, espionage and spy flicks: fancy places, fancy clothes, fancy parties, fancy cars, Bad Guys fancying femme fatales. Its surprising it took this long for Ritchie to do one of these flicks, as he is the master of ensemble casts and colourful characters, and this genre meshes well with that ideal. Alas, it struck me as a victim of production foibles, for as it is fun to behold, there really isn't much behind it. Oh, you could say that for a lot of Ritchie flicks, but most of his stories are full of twists & turns, secrets and masks that eventually reveal themselves. Being a spy flick, there is not much Reveal to be had, so the fun to be had is in the ... fun. It felt like it needed to be amped up a bit, Sarah being even more Aubrey Plaza, and Fortune being even more Jason Statham.

Alas those production foibles just felt too ever present, leaving gaps. For example, at the beginning of the movie, it was all John John John. Once Sarah is onboard, we forget about John until, "Oh, hey! That's John! Ooops, John is dead." It felt like the movie wanted to be quippy about how essential John was and then... forgot. 

T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar: Day 16 - The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star

2021, Mike Rohl (Royal Matchmaker) -- Netflix

It's hard to remember that this whole HallmarKent thing, at least for me, started with royalty driven Hallmarkie style movies. We watched A Christmas Prince when it came out, a defacto ironic viewing because it was getting all kinds of astonished-at-how-terrible-it-was reviews on the interwebs. There was also my thinly veiled fascination/fondness for these movies and their unabashed positive nature. It was that which led to Kent and I actually admitting to each other that we like them, and beginning this whole torturous affair. But, to be honest, it ain't so torturous... except maybe in these feeble attempts by Netflix?

Tangent: Maybe more torturous for Kent, as you may have noticed him doing fewer actual Hallmarkies during this run. Maybe because he started so early this year and already sated his True Hallmark capacity? What say you Ken't of Planet Earth?

Sorry, I digressed. I was trying to comment on the royal nature of these movies. I didn't really know how prevalent the royal bit was until this year, when I grabbed a new "channel" on my Amazon streaming service, and it suggested at least 5 related, royal-based, legit Hallmark movies. And those are just Xmas ones. I cannot imagine how many outside-the-season Hallmarkies must be about some commoner hooking up with a Prince or Princess.

Anywayz.

Here we are in the third of the other royalty driven Netflix holiday movie franchise, that we caught up on and even began before "the xmas event" (sans red dress) even began. This is the finisher. To catch the uninitiated up, Stacy (Vanessa Hudgens, High School Musical) was a baker from Chicago who was coerced into attending baking competition in a fictional European country the week before Xmas. She bumped into a Duchess who was going to marry a Prince, and they looked remarkably alike, so much so that Duchess Margaret (Vanessa Hudgens, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody), Who Wants a Day as a Commoner switched places with Stacy and STACY got to experience full on Prince-ness. Naturally Stacy and Prince Edward fell in love, and she became the Princess instead of the Duchess, who in the second movie, became a Queen of her homeland. In that movie we met a third doppelganger, Fiona Pembroke (Vanessa Hudgens, Sucker Punch), a Cruella ripoff chav with blonde hair and a perma-duckface, who tried to steal the throne from her cousin. The movie ended up with her heading to jail/community service.

We begin the third again in the week before Xmas. Montenaro, the Queendom of Margaret, is doing a big foofaraw (TIL it wasn't foo-for-all) which will culminate in their town tree being topped with an extra special star tree topper delivered all the way from The Vatican by Cardinal Aked Amoah. Aaaand its immediately stolen. But rather than involving the Swiss Guard or the police or someone qualified, they decide to spring Fiona from the nunnery where she is doing her community service, and doing it in pure Fiona Fashion -- badly, impeccably dressed and with a great deal of 'tude.

Fiona is grateful, and willing to help, so she enlists an ex of hers, Peter Maxwell (Remy Hii, Harrow), a once agent of Interpol but now a manchild living in a gaudily decorated castle working as a security consultant. He immediately points Fiona at another another of her ex's, gaudy manchild illegal art collector Hunter Cunard (Will Kemp, Reign).  And they all decide that they have to plan a heist to get the fancy tree topper back from Cunard. 

At this point, I thought I might be watching another Ryan Reynolds Netflix franchise piece, but without the wit, skill and charm of Reynolds. But nah, the Disney-style Princess Hallmarkie-lite movies just decided to add "caper" to their style attempts. And to be quite honest, they have a ball doing it. Not an Xmas Ball; that's later.

There are some fun comparison to Entrapment and all the other caper movies involving laser beams, and lots of sexual tension between Maxwell and Fiona, and even more fun to be had between Fiona's henchmen and Prince Edward's man Frank, as the henchfolk bond over their support roles in the escapade.

Switching is to be had, of course, this time focused around Fiona being the best choice for caper activities, BUT having to be present at the Cunard Ball (that sounds dirtier than it is) to distract our Bad Guy. So, Margaret be-wigs up and does a rather steamy tango (red dress!! rawwwwr!!) while Fiona dons the catsuit and Tom Cruise's into the secret treasure vault.

MEANWHILE the authorities have pushed up the date of Fiona's parole hearing (?) so Stacy also has to become Fiona and convince the authorities she has reformed. Well no, not really, as Fiona doesn't believe that, while Prince Edward actually does say some nice things about her. In another movie, there might be something going on in Edward's mind regarding his ... affection for Fiona. Maybe a, "No, leave the wig on, Stacy...." No, NO definitely not here in the chaste Disney-ness that are Netflix Princess franchises!

After a bit of misdirection and possible complications, but not really, the tree topper tops the tree and Xmas is saved! And Fiona is released early from her not very punishing community service to finally admit she has real feelings for Peter. And they all live Happily Ever After.

Rewind: I know I said I wasn't using the template for this one, BUT this was too noticeable to miss. In many scenes, Prince Edward (Sam Palladio, Nashville) never sits or we just see his arm & shoulders, and if the scene widens out he is missing entirely. And the lighting/colour is just slightly off. Someone seems to have Prince Switched Edward out of most of the movie, and they CGI inserted him back in later. There are some legit Sam Palladio scenes, and he makes a proper appearance for key scenes, but for the most part he seemed to have been absent during the bulk of shooting. Digging around on the interwebs only revealed others with the same suspicion, so likely it was just a COVID thing. But it was weeeeird.

How does it movie? It definitely attempts to be a more legit move than others of this ilk, going so far to have real music. I even Shazam'd the techno music chosen for the caper/ball scenes, as all good heists benefit from some electronic music. Gimme Some by Weval, in case you were wondering. 

Also. entirely out of character, they run the credits with the entire cast and crew dancing to the closing number. And they all look like they are truly, really having fun.

3 Short Paragraphs: Baby Driver

2017, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) -- download

This is the movie Edgar Wright got to make when he walked away from Ant Man. And damn, good on him! This is the kind of movie where the director / writer got to do what he wanted to do, exactly what he wanted to do. And again, DAMN. In case you haven't guessed, I loved this movie. It is in no way perfect, a bit lop-sided and unfocused, but so what, every disconnected bit was just wonderful on its own, adding up to a fun experience that I may just go see again in the theatre, just because, owing to the world we live in, where a proper download exists even before the movie disappears from the theatres. And because, of all the movies from this summer, this one is just sticking around, which means its making constant money. Good on Wright!

Baby is a driver (duh!), a driver for thuggish bank robbers, bank rolled (pun intended) by mastermind Kevin Spacey. Spacey hires a different gang every time, but keeps Baby on the payroll to drive, and to pay off his own debt to Spacey. Baby has a condition, rather benign (tinnitus) but because he keeps earbuds in his ears all the time, and is constantly being drawn along by the music, people think he is .... odd. He is, but not in a bad way. Baby distracts himself with music, not just from the ring, but from the harsh reality of it all. The world seems to play along, building musical montages that seem made for him and the song on his iPod. Either that, or he choreographs every element of his life to the songs playing, like he does his driving plans. This movie loves music as much as Baby does.

Like all caper and/or driver movies, Baby wants to redeem and all because of a girl. But Spacey needs him to continue working, despite having paid off his debt in the first job starring Jon Bernthal, John Hamm and Eiza González. But his obsession with the girl, and getting out, ruins the Next Job which you could say begins ruined by having psychopath Batts along, and re-using Hamm and González. But damn, are we glad they are back. Jamie Fox may be annoying as the kill happy Batts, but Hamm and González (From Dusk Til Dawn [TV]) are just so grand to watch on screen, we knew they HAD to be back; too bad about the jinx it causes.