Double Dose...of Dornan

(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...pretty simple.  Today: two films co-starring Jamie Dornan)

Synchronic - 2019, d. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead - Netflix
Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar - 2021, d. Josh Greenbaum - Crave

Let's talk, very briefly, about Jamie Dornan.  Up until I put on Synchronic I didn't quite know who Jamie Dornan was.  Honestly, I thought he was an actor from Game of Thrones but I couldn't place which character he was.  My wife, the GoT expert had to set me straight that he was not in the show...and wasn't he the 50 Shades of Gray guy? 

Yeah, that's him.

Like an older Robert Pattinson, Dornan's big break was as the lead male love interest in the most egregious of housefrau book-to-film adaptations, the type of film that actively rebuffs any sort of hetero male or critical viewing.  The type of film we look down upon the stars of for nothing else but association with the property what deigns to have a rabid fanbase of female followers.  The type of film that said stars have to crawl out from under the weight of.  It took Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson years to get out from under the Twilight shadow.  Dornan's 50 Shades co-star Dakota Johnson has had a bit of an easier time escaping the series, but the perception of Dornan seemed to relegate him to second-string man-candy, and the generic black-haired handsomeness that likely gets him confused for Sebastian Stan, Kit Harrington or Richard Madden by the populace at large.

Synchronic was never going to be the breakout movie for him.  He, alongside Anthony Mackie, lend the film some low-wattage star-power that gives its two directors, indie genre darlings (and Toast&Kent favourites) Benson and Moorehead, a bit brighter of a spotlight.  

Mackie is the focal figure here, a New Orleans paramedic with a brain tumor who becomes very intent on figuring out the strange deaths he's encountering throughout town.  Dornan is his paramedic partner, his best friend.  Where Mackie is terminally single, Dornan feels bogged down in his marriage and being father to a once-suicidal teenage daughter.  He's envious of Mackie's freedoms, but doesn't see the loneliness that Mackie bravely smiles through, weary of the one night stands.  They both look at each other with the view that the grass is greener on the other side.

The strange deaths seemed to be linked to the drug "synchronic", but it doesn't explain the weird, anachronisms that surround the bodies, like sword wounds and venomous snake bites.  Mackie tracks down the source of the drug and buys out the supply, and has a weird encounter with its creator who explains how it allows the user to time travel for a short period of time, but only younger users whose pineal glands are less calcified than a normal adult (as a result of his tumor, so is Mackie's).

When Dornan's daughter goes missing after taking the drug, Mackie starts experimenting with Synchronic, to learn how it works, and how he can possibly return her home.

Like Toasty , I think a lot of Benson and Moorehead, and their thoughtful, creative and playful endeavors into sci-fi via left-field approaches. Their prior features The Endless and Resolution are part of the same reality and play with time in complimentary ways while remaining independent films.  They have greater plans to explore that universe, and I had hoped, knowing that time travel was part of Synchronic that this film would further expand that world. 

Such is not the case, which is not to say that's what disappoints me about the film.  To be clear, I liked it, I enjoyed viewing it, I was happy I watched it, but I was disappointed, mainly in how the story broke down.

With the mystery of the weird deaths as a result of the drug, I was expecting an atypical detective procedural where Mackie, and maybe Dornan along with him, would start piecing together the mystery and discover the bigger scale time travel reveal.  But when Dornan's daughter goes missing towards the end of the second act, the film fractures, and Mackie is on his own in his experiments, while Dornan (and Katie Astleton [Legion, The League] playing his wife) sees his marriage disintegrating before his eyes.  

The story doesn't know exactly what it wants to do with these disparate elements.  Benson and Moorehead really like the grounding of characters and placing their woes and relationships at the forefront while the weirdness of their reality creeps further and further in until it can't be ignored.  It's a good formula, but in severing Mackie and Dornan it creates multiple streams, one kind of awe-inspiring, the other uncomfortably mundane, that don't compliment each other well.  It's to the point that you almost don't need Dornan in the film at all, that Mackie, facing death anyway, could have gone on a solo detective adventure through the whole film, then help rescue just a random girl who disappeared.

It's a film that keeps Mackie in the spotlight and tries to give Dornan something beefy for his character, but Dornan still seems shunted to the background, and he doesn't pop much at all beyond a supporting player.

It would take something very bold, very bizarre to make this handsome, raven-haired Irishman to really pop off the screen (besides his handsomeness and Marvel-esque physique).

I didn't even know he was in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar when I put the film on.  Honestly, I didn't even know what Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar was when I put it on, except the latest Kristen Wiig-starring vehicle which she co-wrote with co-star Annie Mumolo (her real life BFF and co-writer on Bridesmaids).  In the wake of The Pause, a LOT of films were shunted on to Video-On-Demand or streaming services with little advertising or fanfare.  Barb and Star was one of those.

The most I knew of Barb and Star... was the promotional poster images, the bright Floridian inspired pastels that seem...I dunno, like Postcards from the Edge: Redux.  It wasn't inspiring me to watch, or even seek out more information.  It just said "comedy...for your parents."

The thing I forget is, I'm now a parent, and the comedy that's made for me is, well, often made for me.  But all too often comedy features are just bland, for-the-masses-but-for-noone comedy (like 75% of Melissa McCarthy's or Jason Bateman's individual outputs [and 100% of their together-output]).  I was lumping Barb and Star... into that tired "for the masses" group.  Even loving Bridesmaids and knowing that Wiig's sensibilities of comedy aren't really that mainstream, I couldn't even bother to watch a trailer.

It was a podcast recommendation that got me to put the film on... and all the person said was that they were watching Barb and Star... again and their cohosts seconded how great an idea it was.  I still knew nothing about the film, except that one group of reviewers seemed to think that this was a film worth watching repeatedly.

Well, I've watched it twice now in the span of a week, and I may watch it again very soon.  Wiig is great, playing dual roles (we'll get to that), Mumolo who I don't know if I've ever seen (or at least noticed her) on screen is fabulous, and, oh, Jamie Dornan steals the whole goddamn thing out from under them.  Yes, that Jamie Dornan.  He's the goddamn highlight of the movie and the most central part of what will bring me back to the film.

But what is this film?

Let me explain the opening sequence.  A young Asian-American boy rides his bicycle delivering newspapers, headphones on, singing emphatically along to the Barbara Streisand/Barry Gibb duet Guilty.  The production of this opening sequence is phenomenal, with Greenbaum creating a grandiose sense of scope providing overhead shots of the bike riding down the center of the street, and the boy's very casual distribution of the newspapers until he stops dead in front of one house, his last paper to deliver, the music cutting out, and an ominous moment of score subbing in.  From the POV of the house the newspaper hits the porch with a thud.  We cut back to the boy, who gives a menacing look, and without changing expression, busts back into "Guilty" and the music kicks back in over him and his emphatic expressions return.  

It's a brilliantly crafted opening that upends every expectation I had going into this film (and I honestly had no expectations).  But what was that all about?  Why the sinister moment?  What the actual eff....?

Moments later the boy is biking out of civilization, stops in front of a tree, is scanned by a robotic owl perched on a branch, and the tree opens to reveal an elevator.  It descends into the secret lair of Sharon Fisherman, a strikingly pale albino woman, with a severe jet black wig and a gap in her front teeth. Is that... Tilda Swinton?  Nope, it's Kristen Wiig basically made up to look Swinton-esque.  She's basically a Bond villain who is crafting a plan of revenge involving killer mosquitos.  The boy, Yoyo (Reyn Doi), is adopted/abducted child/protege while the doe-eyed, doting handsome Edgar (Dornan) is her loyal lackey whom she has wrapped around her finger.  She is sending him to Vista Del Mar to enact a revenge plot against the town that abused her as a teen.

Yeah, this is where the movie starts.

It's a good 10 minutes before we meet the titular Barb and Star, sitting on the couch having an old fashioned mid-western gab session, speaking a mile a minute, occasionally pausing to enjoy the rhythms of Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" and drink their tea.  We catch a glimpse into their lives, their history, their personalities in this introduction, it's everything we need to know. These women are best friends, with shared losses (one is widowed, the other divorced).  They work and live together, and are basically inseparable.  They're so of the same mind that they continue each others run-on sentences.  But that means that when their lives are uprooted suddenly that they dare to do something wild, like go visit the middle-age paradise of Vista Del Mar ("View of the mar"/"View of the swordfish" they say in tandem).

Arriving in Florida and their hotel, they are greeted by a grandiose musical song-and-dance number.  It's that kind of movie.  They are like kids in a candy store, just awed by everything without any sense of where to start.  They want to do it all.  In the evening at the bar (with arch piano accompaniment from famed comedic lounge act Richard Cheese) they meet a lovelorn Edgar and they hit it off, and the night.gets.weird.

The next day, Edgar makes his walk of shame only to discover he's accidentally botched his mission, while the two once-inseparable women start talking deceit so they can go see Edgar independently.  From there Star learns that she can be loved even as a divorcee, Barb learns to embrace her independence, and Edgar learns that relationships don't need to be toxic.  Even Sharon Fisherman learns that, if she lets go of her bitterness, she can find acceptance.  But it's a radically goofy ride along the way.

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar is just utter bananas.  Every scene is completely unexpected and the laughs are so unique, most of which is derived from this veritable swarm of delightful characters crafted in this film.  Barb and Star are indeed so alike and yet Wiig and Mumalo still manage to give them distinguishing characteristics and personalities.  

Dornan's boy-in-puppy-love routine is endlessly hilarious, even if it hits its goofiest heights in his adorably literal rock-ballad musical-number "Edgar's Prayer" early in the film.  It's the shot in the face that the dull but handsome rich man of 50 Shades... needed.  It takes that image and twists and twists and twists until its unrecognizeable, and Dornan is so earnestly game, but also completely capable comedically. 

This is a big, friendly cartoon of a movie.  There's nothing threatening here (except the hilarious Vanessa Bayer as the sole perpetrator of the famous midwestern passive-aggresive pleasantness in the role of grand diva of Talking Club), and it doesn't punch down on anyone which is why it works so well.  It could easily be taking a chunk out of midwestern women, or Floridians, or that guy who is always walking around in his yellow speedo, but it embraces them all for their own quirky weirdness.  It's a film that accepts everyone.  Everyone except Gail, who arrived just after 6:00 and is therefore not welcome to Talking Club - nor a bowl of hot dog soup - this day.

10 for 10: all coughed up

[10 for 10... that's 10 consumables which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]




In this edition:

1. Creed II - 2018, d. Steven Caple Jr. - Crave
2. Under the Silver Lake - 2019, d. David Robert Mitchell - Amazon Prime
3. The Perfect Date - 2019, d. Chris Nelson - netflix
4. Christopher Robin - 2018, d. Marc Forster  - Crave
5. Tell Me Who I Am - 2019, d. Ed Perkins - netflix
6. Hellboy - 2019, d. Neil Marshall - Amazon Prime
7. Jojo Rabbit - 2019, d. Taika Waititi - In Theatre
8. Frozen II - 2019, d. Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck - In Theatre
9. Happy Death Day 2 U - 2019, d. Christopher Landon - Crave
10. Let It Snow - 2019, d. Luke Snellin - netflix

Maybe if I didn't spend 2 1/2 hours writing about the Mandalorian I would have had more time to go into deeper thoughts about some of these...alas here I am...and here we go....
 ---

I just expressed (finally) how much I love Creed, and while Creed II is definitely missing some of what Ryan Coogler brought to it, namely the intense and incredibly accomplished tracking shots of the fight in the ring it's still a radically fun and engaging time.  Knowing that Stallone had his hand in the script, and that it was dealing with the villain from Rocky IV (that being Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago), I was a little worried this would be overly-Rocky focussed but, turns out those mild fears were unfounded, mainly because I forgot that Drago killed Adonis Creed's dad.  The history doesn't end there, Drago's loss wound up being detrimental to his status in Russia, and he's been in low, impoverished status since.  Meanwhile Donny is the top boxer in his class without any real challenge, so taking on the oversized, junior Drago is an exercise in humility.  Plus Donny has his first kid on the way and he and Bianca are worried her hereditary hearing loss will affect their child.  Mainly it's super fun to catch up with everyone.  Donny, like in the last movie, lets his ego get the best of him, but he learns from it.  There's a bullshit moment of tension between Rocky and Donny, but other than that it's a solid sequel.  It feels like the Creed series is going the same trajectory as the Rocky run, however, getting a little bigger, and a little more absurd with each outing.  I'm hoping the next film lets Donny's story be his own, and not so tied to Apollo or Rocky's past.

[10:19]

---

I also recently expressed my love for It Follows, David Robert Mitchell's expertly crafted modern horror.  I was curious about what his follow-up was, as it had been a few years, and was pleased to find Under the Silver Lake on Amazon Prime.  I had heard a few mixed reviews of this, sleepy, weird neo-noir, but still thought Mitchell had earned my interest with his previous effort.  Andrew Garfield stars as a bit of a shiftless layabout living in LA, his writing career having gone nowhere, and eviction always looming overhead.  He sparks up a mutual attraction with a neighbor, only for her to disappear soon after.  His understimulated thought processes go into overdrive and he goes on the hunt for the truth behind her disappearance.  Curious mysteries, hidden messages, coded songs, all these buried meanings lead him to an even bigger, weirder mystery at the heart of LA.  Mitchell is channeling David Lynch and the Coen Brothers with whimsey, weirdness, and absurd noir melodrama, peppering in heavy violence among curious slapstick.  It's certainly not an uninteresting movie, but it is a challenge if you're one who needs to know where exactly something is going, especially if that something needs to be grounded in anything approximating reality.  If I were 20 years younger, I would absolutely love this movie.  As it is, it's not derivative, but it's not cogent enough for my current tastes. There'd be a cult film here if we weren't so bombarded with content these days.  I fear it's likely to be more forgotten than found.

[21:32]

---

I've missed out on a few of Noah Centineo's Netflix teen rom coms to date, but having watched The Perfect Date, I'm kind of seeing what the fuss is about.  Centineo seems unassuming at first, but he quickly reveals himself to be a Ruffalo-esque charm machine in this film.  He sports the appearance of an insufferable douchecanoe, but he has soft eyes, a kind smile and a gentle spirit in his performance here of a guy trying to make money for college (since his writer dad has been relatively unemployed since his mom walked out on them).  His method for making money?  Hiring himself out as a stand-in (the film was originally titled "The Stand-In", and much more appropriate title) for other teens who need a fake boyfriend or +1 for whatever reason.  It's kind of a modernization of the 80's teen classic Can't Buy Me Love in a way, but mostly in premise.  Centineo's first date is with the stand-offish, sarcastic Laura Marano (playing a character that can only be called a Lizzie Caplan-type), and they spark up a no-nonsense friendship.  We can see where this is going already, and it follows the sort of rhythms you would expect, and yet it's no less sweet or enjoyable a journey.  There's not a lot of meat on these bones but a charming cast pretty much makes it worth the time.  Centineo should actually make a fine Prince Adam/He-Man should that film actually get made (I hear it's a netflix project now... turn it into an Eternia romcom and maybe they have something).

[29:42]

---

Who is Christopher Robin for?  I mean, I'm all for any film starring Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell, but this is supposed to be a kids film, and it's really, really maudlin.  I think we're supposed to understand that McGregor has PTSD from his time in WWII, but it's never explicit, and the funk he's in is cured by revisiting his childhood friends, which are actualized beings and not just a part of his imagination.  This movie is weird.  It's desperately trying to be Paddington but in doing so it does that thing that 80's superhero, animation, and toy movies did when they went live action, which was not believing enough in the power of the fantasy world, and having to ground things in the boring old real world.  This film did get a few laughs and more than a few tears out of me, but I'm soft like a Pooh-bear like that.  It just takes a swelling score and the eyes start watering up.  It's hard to dislike Christopher Robin, it's a sweet movie, truly, but it offers little to rave about.  Where the Paddington films are a fun roller-coaster ride, this one's more like a country drive on a gravel road.  It's just nice. It's not quite a nostalgia trip meant for parents, and it's not exuberant kiddie fare.  It falls closer to Where The Wild Things Are  than Despicable Me, that's for sure.  I suppose it's a film for the kids in SNL's "Wells For Boys" commercial.



[39:18]

---

It seems like half the documentary films out there are of the "true crime" persuasion, and even films that aren't necessarily conventional "true crime" (ie. murder/kidnapping mysteries) seem to play out in the same sort of narrative fashion and with the same kind of editing and production.  Tell Me Who I Am does fall into this same documentary narrative trap, but its story is so compelling and its resolution so emotional one can't really find fault with the style of storytelling it chose.  This is a tale told by the main players in its story, Marcus and Alex Lewis, identical twin brothers, leading parallel lives until around the age of 18 when Alex has a bad accident and loses his memory.  The only thing he knows for sure is Marcus is his brother (he doesn't even know his own name).  Alex depends on Marcus for everything, rapidly guiding him through infancy, childhood, and his teenage years as Alex has to relearn pretty much everything.  It's 15 years before Alex learns that Marcus has been editing his history lesson of their lives, things he only discovers following the death of their mother and cleaning up their parents estate.  What Marcus learns drives a wedge between the brothers, and in spite of working together and maintaining their family, there's been a wedge between them for some time.  The first act of the film presents us with Alex's view of the events, the second Marcus' view also furthers the narrative, while the third act is a very potent confrontation on screen, in front of the cameras, wherein Marcus finally reveals the extent of the abuse they suffered as children.  It's through this resolution that they both finally understand eachother's sides of the story.  Alex's life feels incomplete, dishonest, knowing that he doesn't have the memories that his brother does, and what his brother gave him is a redacted version of their past he feels keeps them distant.  Marcus, meanwhile, carries the burden of trying to give his brother a better life than they actually had by keeping the knowledge of what they went through to himself.  It was, he thought, the most precious gift he could give him, but living with that wedge between them and burying the truth was causing them both to suffer.  Marcus' on camera confession is painful, powerful and beyond brave.  In addressing the camera, he's addressing not only his brother but the audience he knows is looking on, and to reveal something so painful, not to just one person, but millions upon millions is a dramatic leap on his part.  It's a tale that's both fascinating and upsetting but it's also inspiring, with Marcus and Alex showing that trauma doesn't need to define someone, and that speaking out against abuse is meaningful and powerful.

[54:37]

---

This poster is far better than anything
in the film

I don't remember the last time I turned off a film and didn't return to it.  I was warned about Hellboy, warned that it wasn't worth my time, and it turns out all those people who warned me were absolutely right.  I liked Guillermo Del Toro's first Hellboy entry, the second one left me wanting.  This one feels like a direct-to-youtube cosplay abomination.  I can't think of a better replacement for Ron Perlman as Hellboy than David Harbor, and yet the make-up and wardrobe they give Harbor is ghastly.  It looks ill-fitting, with a disgusting-looking weave of hair on his head and arms and back.  He's wickedly unappealing to look at, something you want to see only in flashes and quickly dead, not the lead of a 2 hour movie.  The tone of the film feels off entirely.  It's meant to be pithy and light, but it moves far too quickly from moment one to ever settle into it.  The first 20 minutes bombard the audience with back story for both the villain and Hellboy, and neither are given time to breathe or rest to gain any weight within the film.  It's a constant sprint to the next thing, then the next thing, then the next thing.  It's exhausting.  It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't shot so poorly, or if the effect didn't look like video game cut scenes.  It's not a film of bad ideas, just bad execution.  One misstep after another after another.  It shouldn't be unwatchable, but it kind of is.  I really didn't like the 45 minutes I spent in Neil Marshall's vision of Hellboy, not one bit.  And I tried, I tried to look for something I liked, and I couldn't.  There was a sliver of salvation in Harbor, but under all that grotesque latex and paint it was too much to wade through to stay with it.  I'm not going back.

[1:03:31]

---

Jojo Rabbit is the kind of movie I should have more thoughts on, but I don't really.  I've listened to quite a few podcasts and read quite a few reviews and, for the most part, I don't really have any contention with anything anyone is saying about this film.  Sweet and charming? Sure?  Ill-advised and manipulative? Maybe.  Sloppy and redundant? Fine.  Heartwarming and heartbreaking?  Yeah.  It's those things.  Any film that deigns to make comedy out of Nazis has its work cut out for them, but Waititi seemingly laughs in the face of challenges such as these.  Waititi doesn't generally delve into wistfulness and whimsy like he does here, it's pretty cute by a mile, and it's very cheeky at times.  It's not trying to be clever about anything, it seems like he's mostly having a good time with a youthful story of love, loss and making Nazis look foolish.  Those foolish Nazis include Sam Rockwell, Alfie Allen, Rebel Wilson and Stephen Merchant.  Rockwell is in some of his best form here, playing a mid-ranking apathetic Nazi clearly in a romantic relationship with Allen.  His barely-there belief in the cause doesn't make him sympathetic or any less complicit, it does make him funny.  Of course, Waititi also plays Adolph Hitler in this film... or, rather what a 10-year-old boy drenched in propaganda thinks he is.  And in that portrayal he's a total buffoon.  If there's a point to the film, beyond just it's touching drama, it's that Nazis suck, and they're pretty dumb too.  It's not the most profound message, but it does bear repeating.

[1:13:22]

---

What did I think of the original Frozen?  Enh, it's fine.  I think I cooled on it after being repeatedly subjected to the film and its soundtrack by my daughter who thankfully moved on from it into Star Wars and superheroes long before other girls her age did.  I count myself lucky that I've not really had to watch the film in about 5 years.  So going to Frozen 2, I kind of knew how I would feel about it, which was a kind of apathy mixed with mild curiosity.  The earliest trailer kind of poised Elsa as a superhero in this Nordic land that's fantastical in very restrained ways.  I was into it.  But subsequent trailers put the focus back on goofy hi-jinks of Olaf and songs that sound like typical songs from these things, and I was left only with fleeting optimism that something awesome would be happening.  Hot Take: nothing all that awesome really happens.  Frozen 2 has its moments of beautiful animation, but compared to the tranquility and beauty of How To Train Your Dragon 3 this is the dog's breakfast regurgitated.  The songs are forgettable, but there's one that sounds suspiciously like it's trying to be a Peter Cetera song, and I was into it.  They even animated it like an early 80's music video with odd split screens and cheesy effects.  But it didn't fit the movie very well, and even at this point I'm wondering who that's for?  It's an aged out reference for most parents of today.  Beyond that, the story really features no antagonist, other than the unknown.  If there is a villain, its the sins of ancestry.  There's elemental forces at play that Elsa has unlocked and she needs to discover the mystery behind it, in order to save their home, the forest and stuff.  But it's a weird adventure that keeps splitting people apart.  There's a lot of sort-of funny missed opportunities as Kristoff keeps missing his opportunity to propose, that leads to an absolutely novice screenwriting misunderstanding.  The film threatens to permanently eliminate Elsa, Olaf and their town of Arendell, but it chickens out of any of them for a feel-good ending.  It introduces a whole new cast of supporting characters but does next to nothing with them.  Its grand adventure is wildly anticlimactic.  This just isn't great.  It's not terrible...a film doesn't *have* to have an antagonist, but it generally helps. Here they're fighting against unknown future and make right their ancestral past, and while maybe they're important steps in Ana and Elsa's history and character growth, it does not make for a very exciting movie.  This should have been a direct to Disney+ thing.

[1:28:21]

---

Oh man, I loved Happy Death Day, and I was sooooper excited for Happy Death Day 2U to finally make it to whatever streaming or subscription service it would first wind up on (I only got to HDD this summer so the sequel was already out of theatres by that point).  With anticipation high, and excitement a bit feverish, I tore into it the first opportunity I could, and ... it's ok.  Jessica Rothe is still amazing as Tree in the film, but it lost a lot of its internal logic in this second outing.  Here, we find out the source of what caused Tree to reboot her day over and over again, when side character Ryan (Phi Vu) from the first film starts living a time loop at the beginning of this one, because he and some friends are working on a comic-book-science experiment attempting to slow time (but causing time to loop instead).  A malfunction of this machine kicks Tree into an alternate dimension where she's time looping again and things are just a little bit different.  The good: the film takes its time to invest in Tree's emotional state, further developing her character.  The bad: so many gaps in logic, like how Tree wastes so much time killing herself over an over again to accelerate the reboot and hopefully get closer to a solution, even though the kills, and method of kills, seems to be doing her some real harm.  I get it's supposed to be slapstick, but slapstick doesn't play well when backed by real consequences.  I think the film missed an opportunity to stick with Ryan rebooting his day over and over and needing Tree as mentor to take him through it.  Where the first film was a winking dark comedy with slasher elements, this one is almost a straight up comedy with doses of sci-fi, and only the minutest aspect of the slasher horror film Blumhouse keeps trying to sell them as.  It's enjoyable but messy, and not up to the quality of its predecessor.
[Toast's take: we almost agree!]
[1:37:30]

---

Over the past couple years, other networks and streamers have noticed the popularity of the Hallmark Channel's "Countdown to Christmas" festivities where they dole out dozens of brand new, cheaply and quickly made romance/romantic comedy movies centered around Christmas, and in response there are new alternative Hallmark-style movies in the offing.  Netflix entered the game timidly last year with a couple entries, but this year they seemed to have stepped it up even more.  Let It Snow was released in between a couple of these Netflix-ified holiday rom coms, but it's not at all like that.  This is a legit high-school rom com starring a high-calibre cast of young, good looking actors in an ensemble film that is more a younger, updated Love Actually than your average cheesy, corny Hallmark fare.  The other thing about it is, it's a damn good movie.  It's not a good movie stacked up against other Hallmark types, it's a straight up damn good movie, sitting easily on the best of genre list other landmark high school romantic comedies like Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful, Easy A and even the non romcom fun high school flicks like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mean Girls, or Superbad (and recent entrants Ladybird and Booksmart).  I enjoyed this immensely.  Every storyline was fantastic, I was fully invested, in each of them.  I think maybe Jacob Batalon (Ned from the recent Spider-Man franchise) had the lowest stakes (throwing a good party, getting noticed as a DJ) but in the end even he gets something valuable out of it all.  This is a good-spirited film, with real, honest-to-God comedy, and charming leads with actual chemistry like Shameik Moore (Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse), Kiernan Shipka (Sabrina The Teenage Witch) and Isabela Moner (Dora The Explorer).  Joan Cusak is sort of the spirit guide of the film and, having just seen her relegated to a tedious side character in Hallmark's not-great-but-not-the-worst 2015 The Christmas Train, a performance both reigned in and phoned in, it's nice to see her giving a crap and in a good movie, one with real snow and production values.  I'll be watching this one over and over again.

(Confessional time... I love watching Hallmark movies, and only in a semi-ironic way.  They're insipidly terrible by-and-large, and yet they're captivating in their chaste formulae.  The fun is in seeing the little differences between them, and finding ones which are almost legitimately entertaining.  They're like most Saturday Night Live sketches, if they had time to refine them some of them would be a lot but most of them are just disposable dross you can forget about immediately afterward.  I don't review Hallmark movies here (or anywhere), but maybe I should start?)

[1:54:46]
---FIN---

I Saw This!! (2015 Unreviewed) - the one-paragraph-rundown challenge

Blerg!
As I've mentioned pretty much every time I've written in the past year, I've been absolutely terrible about writing about movies or TV in anything resembling a timely manner.  It's gotten pretty ridiculous. Four of the movies below I'm almost at the 1 year anniversary of having watched them.  Do you really think I can pull together a viable review of a film I've seen only once almost a year ago...?
Of course I can.  
But the point is I don't have time to.
So the challenge here is can I summarize my feelings on a particular movie in just one paragraph and still have any resembling a meaningful contribution to the discussion of the film?
Let's see shall we...

---
Neighbors - 2014, d. Nicholas Stoller --superchannel

Don Jon - 2013, d. Joseph Gordon-Levitt --superchannel

Space Station '76 - 2014, d. Jack Plotnick --superchannel

Mission Impossible III - 2006, d. JJ Abrams --superchannel

The Maze Runner - 2014, d. Wes Ball -- netflix
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau - 2014, David Gregory -- netflix
Hardware - 1990, d. Richard Stanley -- dvd

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Zak and Dave have a DeNiro party

After seeing Neighbors I became a Zak Efron convert.  He's handsome, beefy and honestly a surprisingly capable comedic performer.  He was quite able to nail the role in a film like this where he's tasked with being a bit of a dope, somewhat of a tool andan unrepentant frat boy party prince, all while hiding a wounded little puppy of a soul underneath.  (If you know Marvel Comics, based on this he would have been perfect for the role of Starfox, Star Lord's dad, in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  I think Kurt Russell's doing it instead, which is okay too... YOU'RE WASTING WORDS, KENT!!!) Anyway, this movie was funny as shit.  Tremendous casting all around.  Seth Rogen has stepped into his pre-mid-life crisis phase of playing 30-ish men transitioning into responsibility, and he does it better than any of his contemporaries.  Rose Byrne, for her part, is right there with him, playing a comrade-in-arm, a willing participant, rather than a nagging wife or some form of 'TskTsk'-er.  Supporting characters in the likes of Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Carla Gallo, Lisa Kudrow and Jerrod Carmichael were all bang on, but even beyond that, cameos from the Lonely Island, the Workaholics crew, Randall Park, Hannibal Buress, Jason Mantzoukas and Natasha Leggero all rounded out the film as a power-house comedy.  It seemed too simplistic and too cliche a premise to be this entertaining but, dammit if it didn't succeed.  And the trailers for the sequel look pretty damn funny.

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Don Jon is director-writer-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt's pondering of one man's internet porn addiction and how it affects his love life.  Sort of.  In the end it's more about how you shouldn't make all the compromises in a relationship (you need to make some but it has to cut both ways).  But there's a few other things going on too, dealing with various aspects of relationships, sex, sexual dynamics, power struggles, happiness, and personal betterment.  Don Jon isn't a bad movie.  It's not even an unfocussed movie.  The ideas and even their general execution are sound.  Everyone acts well and the message(s) come through.  It's unfortunate then that Levitt chose set his first major directorial effort in the thick of the New Jersey shore, making his character a wife-beater-wearing lug and his object of affection an all-too-game gum-chewing Scarlett Johansson.  I mean, Tony Danza plays Jon's dad.  TONY effing DANZA!  The problem is these characters don't feel like real people, but broad stereotypes one would normally find in a Saturday Night Live sketch.  Or on MTV's Jersey Shore, but I couldn't stand to watch two minutes of Jersey Shore without wanting to gouge out my eyes and stab myself in the ears with uncooked spaghetti, so Levitt's decision to center the film around these broad stereotypes made the journey of watching them unattractive and somewhat painful.  I would have much rathered it be set in Philly or Boston.  Long Island probably would have been just as problematic.

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By purposefully going retro-futuristic, 1970's-style, director Jack Plotnick sets up expectations for a whimsical Naked Gun or Black Dynamite-style farce, only to deliver a surprisingly effective close-quarters drama instead.  It's a bait-and-switch that's difficult to accept at first, but eventually the films rhythms, and excellent cast (including Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Matt Bomer, Marisa Coughlan and Jerry O'Connell) suck you into the lives of these people, leaving the anticipation of self-aware comedy gags a distant memory.  About as funny as the film gets is with Dr. Bot, the station's therapist who is only capable of spouting cliched platitudes in response to anyone's emotional unloading, but otherwise it steers away from its corny surroundings, avoids too much wink/wince inducing space-jargon and actually tries (and succeeds) at establishing real characters and real moments between them.  The most unfortunate thing about the film isn't the expectations vs. reality, but rather the fact that most of the effect are digital rather than practical... and pretty crappy at that.  It's sad that Plotnick and company didn't splurge for the extra effort of miniatures.  It's of nominal difference to the actual story at hand, but visually it would have been even more wondrous.  The practical sets and wardrobe, looking like remnants from Space: 1999 were both hokey and sumptuous, note perfect, making those CGI elements stand out awkward and atrociously.

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As past reviews on this site have mentioned, I've got a yen for espionage films...one I don't satiate quite enough.  The Bond movies feel like high points (even the bad ones) because the satisfy not just the spy element, but action, sci-fi, adventure, globetrotting, car chasing, and all sort of other elements, even if it's at the expense of being true espionage.  The Mission Impossible movies were meant to be Americanized Bond, in many respects, creating a high-octane action-adventure superspy sans accent, and I never bought into it.  With the first film, despite some excellent direction from Brian DePalma, the fact that the IMF team is immediately killed off leaving only Tom Cruise:Action Hero as our focus was quite the turnoff.  The less said about John Woo's second entry, the better (except to say that because of it we got Hugh Jackman as Wolverine instead of Dougray Scott, so thanks!).  I skipped the third entry, because I just didn't care, but the fourth entry drew me back in, since it was director Brad Bird's first live action.  Even still I only came back to MI:III not because of Ghost Protocol, but rather in anticipation of JJ Abram's Star Wars coming down the pike.  I've discovered, however, that in the end it doesn't really matter who's directing the damn thing, ever Mission Impossible movie is forgettable.  I remember next to nothing about any of them, except for the big action moments we see in the trailers all the time.  Tom Cruise's jumping away from an exploding helicopter in the second film is just as sharp in my mind as his jumping into the big swirling vortex in Rogue Nation... a film I haven't even seen... and I can't even remember a major action sequence for M:I:III.  The this third film has Michelle Monaghan as Ethan Hunt's wife (or wife to be, who can remember) being kidnapped (and apparently killed in a fake-out opening flash forward) by Philip Seymore Hoffman (RIP).  Then some stuff happens.  Keri Russell is there for some reason. Everything works out and Ethan Hunt goes off with his not-dead wife into retirement, only to return in two more films where I don't think his wife is even mentioned.  These are the epitome of "whatever" summer blockbusters.  They certainly pass the time, but as a series of films they don't connect well at all, just like it's an impossible mission to connect with or care about Ethan Hunt as a character (see what I did there?).  And those posters...woof, can they get any more dull?


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I tend not to watch most of these sci-fi-light-teen-dramas-based-off-a-young-adult-novel-series movies.  There have always been a copious amount of teen-focused novel series, but since the Harry Potter explosion they're being adapted to screen in ridiculous numbers in the hope of having the next Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Hunger Games (the cream of the crop).  The b-list has the ongoing Divergent series, the odd entry into the Percey Jackson mythology, the randomness of Narnia, and now The Maze Runner.  Of the b-list, The Maze Runner is by far the best of them, even if its plot, purpose, and eventual twist conceit is utterly ludicrous, it manages to sell it pretty well.  This first entry in the series manages to introduce its setting, add complications to it, explore the mysteries within it, and create a lot of meaningful (if cliche) dramatic friction to such positive effect that by the time it gets to revealing what the hell the maze is all about it's only stupid in hindsight.  There's a Lord of the Flies aspect that likely stems from James Dashner's source material, but the divisiveness amongst the young men never really reaches the same dire head (the threat is almost always without, rather than equally being within).  Mercifully, the introduction of a female into the all-teen-male setting doesn't send everyone on a primal hormonal rampage, and to its credit Teresa never faces a threat that the other boys don't also face.  In fact, there seems to be an intentional bucking of these sorts of in-fighting and stupid-machismo bullshit trends that stories like this usually take on, which is perhaps why I liked it so much.  Instead of things resolving with the expected drama there's often an air of civility to it, like these kids have figured things out a little better than we have.  Obviously the story ends with a sequel in mind, which David has conveniently already written up.
(and here's David's take of the first)

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In this, the Twenty-Teens entertain-you-glut where Television and Movies and web programming and video games and board games and comics and novels can be created and distributed by anyone, there's a whole subgenre of documentaries emerging: movies about movies.  In the past these were a rare beast, Hearts of Darkness (the making of Apocalypse Now) being the first major entry in the subgenre back in 1991.  But with DVDs presenting a viable medium for distributing behind-the-scenes documentaries as special features, it became commonplace to create a documentary alongside a film.  Retrospective documentaries of popular phenomenon like Star Wars were also frequently in the offing, but it's only in the past few years, especially with Netflix catering to the documentary crowd and Kickstarter providing a vehicle for funding niche passion projects (spurring on the rise of docs about films that were never made).  It's almost too much.  But something like Lost Soul, detailing how a passion project became a major flop straddles the middle ground, presenting you with a vision for a film that never got made because it was so corrupted by the people who eventually made it.  In Richard Stanley's efforts to bring H.G. Wells' novel to life, he found himself out of his depth wrestling the demands of a big studio, big stars, and the elements of a remote location wholly not designed for major motion picture production.  Summarily he was booted off the film which went from being one unfortunate train wreck to just a flat out miserable experience under the guidance of a completely detached John Frankenheimer.  It's a fascinating talking heads picture detailing the personal and emotional turmoil the film had from a broad swath of people involved, including Stanley (the oddest of odd ducks, bless him), some of his cast (Kilmer didn't participate and Brando was obviously unable to, but they loom as large of natural disasters as the typhoon that struck the set), makeup and effects teams, producers, script writers and others.  It's very thorough and very weird, plus it's a thousand times more interesting and entertaining than the actual film that wound up getting released.  (For the record, Frankenheimer jumped on the project because he had no other opportunities at that time, and did so only with the caveat of having a 3-picture deal with the studio.  Ronin was on of those pictures, so it was totally worth it to him to dispassionately crank out this shitty, already troubled adaptation).

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Having watched the above mentioned Lost Soul documentary that worked on the thesis of Richard Stanley being an unheralded and misunderstood visionary of then-modern horror, I made a concerted effort to find a copy of Hardware on DVD (I didn't need blu-ray...in fact, Hardware seems made for the grainy, warbly, crisplessness of the VHS home video market).  It's one of those films that seemed exclusively advertised in mature readers comics and (I'm guessing) horror magazines like Fangoria.  I don't recall ever watching a trailer, but the comic book ads lingered in my mind for decades.  I don't know that I ever saw a copy of the film on a video store shelf back when there were video store shelves.  I certainly can believe I would have ever passed up the opportunity to watch it should it have presented itself.  Suffice it to say I'd waited a long time to watch it.  And yep, it's a post-apocalyptic piece of garbage.  Literally and figuratively.  Like Rey in Star Wars Episode 7, Dermot Mul...ahem Dylan McDermott ventures out into the wastelands to find useful remains amidst the detritus of a great war.  Some he sells and some he gives to his girlfriend, a welding artist who makes sculptures from trash.  One piece is an old Terminator skull (it's not an actual Terminator, but it's a military war robot of similar ilk) which reboots and starts rebuilding itself from the scrap.  Some stuff happens, people get killed, scream queen style screaming, gloopy red blood, good-for-their-time-but-pretty-crappy-by-today's-standards gore effects.... Hardware is a rash of cliched and derivative moments cobbled together for a wholly unsatisfying viewing experience.  It's like if this were the disappointing, somehow smaller sequel to Terminator the way Predator II is so much the lesser of Predator.  It's not even bad in the let's-entertain-ourselves-by-making-fun-of-it way, it's just kind of there.  It certainly did little to cement Stanley as some sort of auteur or neglected filmmaking genius as posited by Lost Soul.  Had he not lost the Dr. Moreau opportunity he may have had the opportunity to develop a unique voice, but Hardware shows only slight promise of anything fantastic to come.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. 5)

Britishisims!

OK, let's cover the one I completely forgot to cover, and should have.

There is very little of the TV I watch that I would qualify as "good". Some I enjoy immensely and constantly marvel at exactly how much, such as iZombie. Some I just enjoy despite being very aware it's not very good, such as Marvels: Agents of Shield.  Most is just OK but that is never very much the ringing endorsement. So, I should commend great shows when I see them!

Humans is an AI story done originally in Sweden. This is the British remake. I should have reviewed this during my spate of AI movies, but I watched it not long after. Not sure why I didn't review but likely because I was just not ... writing.  At least digitally.

The setting is a "20 minutes into the future" world where the latest, hottest home appliance is a human replica. These are not clunky machines, but perfect renditions of a human. Every home that can afford one has one, as maid, as caregiver, as sex toy. They look perfect if but for flawless skin and just a bit too blue eyes. The usual robot laws apply and despite pretty decent programming, they are easily identified as not-human.

But our story is about the next-steps, the ones the inventor of this technology created before he died -- his pseudo children, his perfectly sentient and independent replicas. Of course humans would be fearful if their appliances became self-aware, or at the very least, were capable of it. So, a squad of shadowy government figures is hunting down these rogue bots, and their older human brother Leo. But one of them is missing, and Leo is desperate to find his sister. She has been mind-wiped and ended up in the household of Joe & Laura, a couple with marital issues around her secrets.

The series introduces synths through Anita, the new addition to Joe & Laura's household. Through this we are introduced to how some people feel about them, how some people are creeped out by them, what they are capable of, what their roles are and their 18+ protocols. Yes, you can use your housemaid bot as a sex toy, should you want to, as long as you accept the proper User Agreement. All of the uncomfortable viewpoints of AIs, robots as people, robots as creepy surrogate humans, etc. are covered in this series and surprisingly with some forethought and weight. There isn't a lot of judgement but the show is very clear on one thing -- that synths are capable of becoming people, though the code is complicated. The opinions on the ramifications are left to us.

Speaking of great, you have seen Luther right? It started in 2010 and when I  heard Idris Elba was doing a crime show in his native UK, I was on board. Immediately. And it didn't disappoint. I briefly covered the first three series here and Kent not long after; Netflix encourages such.

This is Series 4, if you can call two extra-long episodes a season. I hate to say it but this all felt like a cash in. There didn't seem to be a point of revisiting John Luther after they tossed his overcoat into the Thames. Ruther (Did i just type that or is Kent messing with my drafts?) Wilson is busy doing The Affair with Elba's The Wire alumna Dominic West so didn't show up for the investigation of her own murder. Rose Leslie joins with a very very tossaway role. The funny thing, is that even with all the disappointments, it is still so very compelling to watch Elba do Luther. I would watch that hunched over massiveness order a curry.

The crime they investigate in the two episodes, is rather creepy. A hi tech killer, who has left trojan horses on the computers he repairs, allowing him to observes and become obsessed with his victims, has gone off the rails. John is impressive as before he left the force, maybe even more so.  And yet, it was over when it only seemed to be starting. Poo.

From heavy & grim to downright endearing. In a fit of "what do you wanna watch" I clicked on The Detectorists. Oh, am I glad I did. Detectorists are the people who claim detecting for metal as a hobby. You know, wand waving over the ground beep beep beep. Mackenzie Crook (you know, the wooden eyeball guy in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) and Toby Jones (the Hydra scientist from the Captain America movies) are best friends and detectorists, members of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club. This is small town England, rural countryside with not much going on but endearing, quaint streets and lovely open farmland surrounding. So, lots of land to detect on. Not much else to do.

This show was brilliant! Endearing! Charming! Sweet! Laugh out loud droll! Andy (Crook) and Lance (Jones) spend as much time as they can detecting, interrupted only by work (as to which Andy is a day-worker type and Lance drives a forklift), DMDC meetings (7 members?) and friends at the pub (trivia night!). They have never found anything (valuable) but have dreams of finding a Saxon ship. Apparently there was a historical trend of burying Saxon kings, in their boats, inland. But is the act of always seeking that seems to drive them on, despite finding mostly nails & pull tabs from 80s pop cans.

Shows like this always take some time to establish, for us, the basic tenets of life of the mains. The most defining quality for these guys, is sitting under a tree, talking about the quiz show from the night before, eating their lunch while on break. "What did you find?" or "Did you find anything?" is the inevitable question and the answer is always disappointing. These scenes were done so perfectly, so mundane, so boring and yet I was immediately attached to these two guys. The antics of the rest of the season were just plot points around which these two guys orbited. Andy is over 40, never a real job, meek & mild and dominated by his girlfriend. Lance is over 40, louder and a bit of an ass, but obsessed with his ex-wife, who takes advantage of it at any turn. And yet I found both these guys charmed and smiling whenever they interacted. Good friendships are like that. I appreciate good friendships.

Mackenzie Crook is writing and directing the series, which is going to require me to find whatever other creations he may have. I like this guy's mind.

I Saw This !! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. 2)

Doctor Who. Season 9.  Well, season 9 of the resurrected series.

I so much wanted to like Peter Capaldi, the post-War Doctor, the older, more sobre doctor with some of the weight of who he has become on his face. Unfortunately I never warmed to him. Capaldi is great, don't get me wrong, but I don't like his Doctor. I don't like the grumpy old man, the haunted man, the angry man. But that's alright, I still have Clara.

And then episode 10.  Fuck.

There is no Big Bad this season, more a loose exploration of The Doctor and his consequences. We have been touching on that the last few seasons but this one wants to take us where his anger, his revenge, his selfishness has taken him and all the worlds he has touched. Sure, the Time Wars and the destruction of the Daleks and Galifrey -- genocide and all that unsavoury stuff, but really it's about his impact in the grand scheme of things.

Kind of. The season really just felt disjointed and confused. We deal with the deal he made with the Zygons back in "The Day of the Doctor". We introduce a new immortal when The Doctor breaks his own rule and saves a dying / dead girl in "The Girl Who Died", which then comes back to bite him in the ass. It seems no matter which side of the coin he chooses, there are always consequences. Point taken.

And for Clara as well. I also have to admit, I loved her in her intro season and while I will always get lost in those big brown eyes, she was not a very interesting companion of late. They have her bouncing between the happy go lucky companion and the one who wants to constantly guilt him. I tired of her as I thought she may have been tiring of him. The closure of her story was satisfactory if shocking.

The season ends on a big note, bringing back Galifrey from the dead (as well as some others) and introducing what I think could be the best side launch of a new series, but one that will never happen. Teasers.

Speaking of big brown eyes whom I completely crush on, I am probably only watching Quantico for Priyanka Chopra. Oh my oh my, those eyes, that mouth. Oh that deep husky voice.

*ahem*

Sorry.

It's a decent premise for lighter side American crime fighting TV. We are simultaneously dealing with a new terrorist bombing in New York while jumping back in time to visit a widely varied cast of FBI recruits in Quantico. Someone in the class committed the bombing, and they are trying to pin the act on Alex Parrish, played my Chopra. She is trying to prove herself innocent while on the run.

And we, the viewers, get constant flashbacks so we will always have a new possible suspect and never ever get enough details to guess who it might be.

It could have been played interestingly enough, but no, we have to visit each and every single fucking classmate and have a reason to suspect them and a reason to clear them. Every. Single. Fucking. One. Well, except for the guy who blows his own head off in episode one. Maybe they will completely plot fuck us and bring him back as the Bad Guy.  I wouldn't put it past them.

The thing that annoys me most about this show, and it's not the poor man's Lost-ian attempt at never ending secrets, but the fact they are all such terrible FBI agents. I know it's a trope these days in episode scripting, to constantly introduce suspects only to immediately disprove their guilt, but for each and every single one, Alex is so utterly convinced they are the suspect, until she isn't. Doesn't she see the parallel of what is happening to her, where everyone is so convinced she is the Bad Guy that they never look anywhere else? Alex never considers anyone an ally until the end of the episode and then she moves onto the next suspect. Plot formulas aside, the only way she could be that dumb is that the kids never really had a chance to go through the entire training course -- is Quantico training really only 8 months long?

We will ignore the fact she also spends every episode in some crying jag or another. I hate the trope where female main characters have to be tough but also prove they are still feminine, by crying. Le sigh.

Why can't they all be like Jessica Jones? She doesn't cry over her broken past and how life is getting her down -- she just drinks heavily and throws people through glass doors. Much less healthy but much less annoying.

I loved Jessica Jones, though I knew I would. I only slightly worried it would not have the same production values as Daredevil and even less worries the story would be lacking. But as Kent said, like Daredevil, you can see that they had a story X episodes long, but were forced to make Y episodes. Leaving that to the side, this was an incredible run. Again I broke my binge rule and watched it all over a weekend.

Jessica is a private dick, not that she does much detecting in the series, but for a show opener which reveals her tragic past. You see, she used to be the plaything of a very evil super-villain. Kilgrave, the not-purple man in a purple suit, has the ability to make people do whatever he tells them. And that is how he lives his life, playing the debonaire, dashing rich man with beautiful women hanging off his arm. Everyone is forced to give it to him. Jessica was one of his playthings until he pushed her too far, and she walked away. And he got hit by a bus.

But he's back?

The series focuses on the PTSD Jessica has to deal with because of him, and then the remorse and guilt she feels at his return. And Kilgrave has become obsessed with her, the one person who was able to walk away from him. So, does Jessica run away or does she confront him?

Sounds more Law & Order than Marvel, but there is one more thing --- Jessica was a superhero, briefly. She has super strength, fast healing and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Well, no, not actually but she can jump pretty high. The who powered being stuff is behind her, but that doesn't stop her from tossing bad guys around when she needs to. The show takes place not far from where Daredevil is beating up bad guys and a local pub is owned and run by Luke Cage, an invulnerable and also super strong guy whom Jessica has an unsavoury connection to. She makes it more unsavoury by sleeping with him.

The crux of this story is Jessica vs Kilgrave. If she gets too close, he might control her again. If she does nothing, he will run rampant around the city, ruining lives again. The story is really really well told, touching even on the ideas of Kilgrave being sociopathic and a touch delusional, not really understanding that his affections are basically rape, if the parties are unwilling. Consent is not in his vocabulary. He's creepy as fuck. Kristen Ritter as Jessica is spectacular, covering broken & vulnerable as well as strong & valiant incredibly well. The supporting cast, like her drugged out neighbour and her adoptive sister / best-friend are wonderful.

Please include this in your next Netflix binge session!

3 Short Paragraphs: Stretch

2014, Joe Carnahan (The Grey) -- download

Stretch is a movie about failed lives. Dashed dreams. And hope. That niggling, annoying voice in the back of your head, hope. Our main character, Stretch, starts the movie fairytale like, crashing headlong into the woman he falls in love with, dumping his addictions to drugs & gambling, only to be dumped by her one year later. He had done it, abandoned his failings, was working to be a better man. But life even likes to kick you when you are going up. So now Stretch drives a stretch limo, badly and without the respect of his boss, like all Hollywood limo drivers. His idol, the perfect limo driver who always knew what the customer wanted, put a bullet in his head not so long ago, so now Stretch gets to drive around with the hallucination come ghost of his fallen idol. Also, Stretch is already a failed actor. He's a stereotype who's aware he is a stereotype.

Stretch still wants to do better, despite the teeth kicking. He owes a bit more money, and has to get it soon, because the last little bit of his debt is now owned by a strong arm who will probably hurt him. Y'know, new owners need to make their name. So he takes on the white whale -- a crazy eXtreme business mogul named Karos -- bearded, crazy and unexpectedly actual height Chris Pine. And there are cops and crooks and car chases and gang banger wannabes, and the crazy limo competition, wrestlers-driving-rolls royces.

The movie harkens back to that spate of indie movies that emerged back in the late 90s and 2000s, in response to, well, better done indie movies. They may have not been as good as their predecessors, but they had heart. I often compare movies to said period, because it was that point in my movie watching eras where I started noticing differences in tones and expectation. Movies didn't have to be grand scale blockbusters to be good. This one is not as good as something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is the perfect indie, LA based, violence & comedy romp, but it is a damn fine example.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Hector and the Search for Happiness

2014, Peter Chelsom (Serendipity) -- download

I always want to call this movie Hector and the Pursuit of Happiness but that might just be a documentary on a guy following the late-80s Canadian pop band. Or it might get mixed up with a misspelled Will Smith movie. Alas, this one is the adaptation of a French novel, starring Simon Pegg. If the title doesn't give it away, it is about a man looking for the meaning of happiness. Pegg is a psychiatrist who realizes he is not making his patients happy just dealing with their individual neuroses and issues, and not seeking for overall health. Its because he doesn't understand overall happiness. But he gets the hint he might just not be, even with the perfectly attentive girlfriend, a rather wealthy lifestyle and being respected in his field.

That's the thing about these 'I cannot be happy' stories that always gets my goat. These people who drop everything to pursue a true centre of life, a source of happiness, always have a golden parachute. I am sure they have savings, supportive friends and family and are settled enough in the career of their choice to pick up again. Pegg definitely does. All you have to see is his flat in London at the beginning of the movie, to understand him jaunting off to China and Africa and America is not really going to hurt his lifestyle. The movie reinforces the statement that only the wealthy have the chance to seek out happiness.

Despite not being able to read the platitudes, as they were written in German on my downloaded copy, it was clearly understood these were what Pegg was collecting from people he met -- not statements on how to be happy. He goes from place to place, situation to situation collecting other people's views on the subject. Stellan Skarsgård is extremely wealthy and believes work & money makes him happy. But he doesn't convince anyone. Sex with a lovely young woman may be the key, if it didn't come with so many strings. Tibetan monks find it internally. White Doctors Without Borders, in Africa, find it in helping the needy.  Pegg finds it, and gets it, but it doesn't answer his questions. These stories always end by saying it was in front of you all along.

I will watch Simon Pegg in almost anything. He's roughly my age and as big a man-child as I am. He carries an affable, vulnerable charm that appeals to me. That is his character in this movie, someone who has not allowed himself to mature, to understand you cannot just expect happiness to come to you. If the movie says anything of value, its that, that happiness MUST be sought out and hung onto with teeth and nail. But no, even understanding that doesn't mean I get it. Get happiness, that is.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Delivery Man

2013, Ken Scott (Starbuck) -- download

Ken Scott directed the original, which I previously blogged about, which is the only reason I watched a Vince Vaughn movie. In general, I don't like the man. Well, at least the cookie cutter way in which he plays all his characters. I have to admit, that a certain part of that character applies to the character of Starbuck, or David Wozniak. David is a bit of a dick or manchild lacking in personal responsibility and personal ambition. Vaughn's characters are always attempting to be outgoing and charming, convinced of their own greatness, but I cannot stand them. Maybe its the loveable big galoot that makes him popular, maybe its his pitch, but I cannot stand his standard delivery. But, again I admit, it works here and he actually is able to pull off the sincerity of the original Starbuck character.

To recap, Starbuck was the nom de plume of a man making many many many visits to the sperm bank. And in his hundreds of donations, he ended up fathering hundreds of children. Of those he fathered, 142 are suing the sperm bank to find out who their father is. David takes this opportunity to clean up his life and find out about the kids he is feels responsible for. Along with his best friend and lawyer (Chris Pratt, soon to be Starlord in Guardians of the Galaxy, and just as brilliant as this character as the original was) he investigates a number of the kids, providing fatherly advice and acts of support. But he never tells anyone who he is until he is pushed in that direction and when it becomes apparent, he has to in order to show himself he has changed.

Vaughn's David Wozniak is almost on the mark to me. He does a great concerned father, but I never really bought the underlying sweetness that was apparent in the original. "Everybody loves you, " says David's immigrant father (its funny, a NYC immigrant has to be very obviously immigrant, with accent and European look, while the original was just a Montrealer) and we believe him.  Well, at least in the original. I cannot think how we would like this guy, but that may be my bias. But he does carry off the sincerity of changing his life, which is the underlying point of the movie. Both sidestep the bigger questions of father's responsibility vs the rights of the mother (how many of the 142 kids have their mother's support in finding Starbuck?) but I still think a message of unwed fathers being part of their kids lives is a good one.

One additional paragraph. In the original, I loved how Montreal was a secondary character in the movie. Here we are in NYC, and really, its just another movie in New York. Any character we could have garnered has probably been done a thousand times before, so setting and location are less than secondary here.  I wonder if we had transported it to another American city, like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, we could have played with that was well.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

2013, Ben Stiller (Reality Bites, Tropic Thunder) -- download

The young boy stares out the car window watching the world blur by. The seemingly endless landscape of passing trees is broken as a man on a flying surfboard matches speed with the car. Up and down, over and around the obstacles, the not so silver surfer travels his own road. This was the kind of thing I was prone to as a child, and whenever I am rarely on a long car ride these days, I might slip back into it. The surfer may be replaced by a piloted giant robot or a man running faster than the speed of a bullet. I never will stop getting lost in staring in space day dreams.

Walter Mitty is a meek man prone to fantasy. It is not so much to escape his life, as his life is pretty good, being the film asset manager for a fictionalized version of Life Magazine. But his life is very stable, very unexciting. So he lapses into fantastical daydreams inspired by something in the background, say a travel poster into a mountain climbing alter ego or the fact the girl he likes having a dog gives way to a burning building dog rescue. If you take the trailers at face value, these segments dominate the plot of the movie, but truly, they just give a couple of characters a chance to notice Walter when he zones out. One uses the moments to bully him and one to actually acknowledge him. It is these noticings that have him decide to step outside his comfort zone and pursue real life.

The driving plot for this movie is the pursuit of a single negative. It is to be the last photo for the last cover of Life (which actually died in 2007), now converting to online only. The adventurer photographer delivered it cryptically, but it is misplaced, inspiring Walter to find him for an explanation. Thus boats, planes, cars and skateboards. Thus Greenland, Iceland and the Himalayas. We the viewer know exactly where the negative is, but Walter doesn't. He also doesn't realize he is now living that daydream fantasy. A little heavy handed, but yeah, I loved it. Its my age, my life my legacy to be lost in fantasy while real life passes me by. But what does it say to anyone that one of my fantasies is to have a job like he did, one he was so wrapped up in that he spent his whole life doing the same thing and being full of passion for it until its very last day. It wasn't too late for him to find adventure; is it too late for me to find passion?

3 Short Paragraphs: Larry Crowne

2011, Tom Hanks -- Netflix

Tom Hanks is an affable kind of guy, not the kind you would think of being a lead in a romantic comedy. And yes, I am ignoring the fact that he starred in two of the most popular romantic comedies of the 90s (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail). He's almost 60, kind of pudgy and still carries himself in the awkward kind of way that betrays his comedian roots. And yes, here he is opposite Julia Roberts in a meek-shall-inherit-the-earth role. I still have a thing for Julia because we share a fondness for a stack of buttered toast so I think Tom Hanks should be out of her league. That may be kind of the point of the movie.

I felt a compulsion to watch this movie as it struck a note with me, and not just to share some toast with Julia. As a middle aged guy who seems perpetually doing ... new jobs, I was drawn to a story where a guy working the same job for most of his adult life is laid off. Yep, that connects directly to my experience this summer past. Well, not the "in the same job for a long time" but the laid off part. But, if I want to be completely honest, that was the longest tenure I've had in one job, in my entire adult life. So, yes, that concept of "what now" is always in my brain. How will I handle this 5 years from now or ten? How does a guy almost 60 start over? That is what this movie is about, at least from one of its plot points.

You see, really, its more generally about how this job loss forces him into re-starting his life. He is a guy who has been doing the same thing for ages -- same job, same schlub life, no GF, no close friends. By losing his job at the local big box store, he goes back to college, meets a wide array of interesting people filled with life and he finds love in the last expected place -- from his teacher. Roberts, as the teacher, is going through her own change of life, in that she is finally realizing she can leave the dillweed of a husband and find charm & romance with someone else. The movie is charming, funny where it needs to be, touching as it should be and all around, a likeable easily smiled at movie directed by Tom Hanks. It's not Sleepless... but its a good little Netflix romp.