1-1-1: Mosaic

 2018, d. Stephen Soderbergh - 6 episodes - crave

The What 100: A famous children's author and philanthropist takes in an aspiring artist as border and protege, but expects perhaps something more. Her friend and neighbour lets her know of the discovery of rare earth minerals on her property, but she's not interested in selling or developing the land. A new man enters her life with ill intentions. And then she winds up dead. 3 years later, the sister of the man convicted of the author's murder tries to unpack what actually happened.

(1 Great) Mosaic is, quite simply, an exceptionally compelling mystery, in large part due to the intricacy of the network of characters and their dynamics. The show over its six episodes paints a web of interconnected lives and/or interests in the small rural community over two different time periods. The characters are complex individuals, each with their own motivations, both before Olivia Lake (Sharon Stone, Total Recall) goes missing, and after her fiancee Eric (Fred Weller, In Plain Sight) takes a plea without admittance of guilt in her murder. The first two episodes focus on establishing Olivia's life (and her complicated personality) while also highlighting Eric's swindling of Olivia for outside interests, and Josh's confusion and disappointment in the life he's living on Olivia's estate (Garrett Hedlund, Tron: Legacy), and introducing the many other players invested in this story. The latter four episodes find Eric's sister, Petra (Jennifer Ferrin, The Knick) trying to solve Olivia's murder, and the time jump takes the players into new and very different places than they were three years earlier, with many willing to help, others reluctant, and some outright hostile, while still others seem to be helpful while in fact are not at all.

(1 Good): Soderbergh shoots the whole production with a natauralistic feel, as he's been partial to in this second phase of his career. Lighting is largely ambient, while the camera is very free moving and intimate in the proceedings.  The result of the style is one of immersion, or at the very least, fly-on-the-wall, where you feel like you are a watchful observer in the mix (we'll get to why that is in a minute). The intimacy makes you feel a part of the tangled narrative. The characters relate to each other in the complex and messy way that humans do. I wouldn't be surprised if there were stretches of the performances that were unscripted, and left to the actors to decide how the characters were feeling and how they would express themselves in the confines of the scene. I could not get over how many threads we're asked to track, and yet how easy it was to track them all. We're often ahead off Petra in her investigation, and yet the actual who and what and why of Olivia's murder still isn't completely made clear, as screenwriter Ed Solomon does a terrific job of pointing at numerous plausible suspects, and keeping them all relevant (and even adding a few red herrings along the way) straight through to the finale.

(1 Bad):The naturalist styling of the show means it can't exactly hit specific points harder than others, it can't have a dedicated message it's trying to send. There is a point it gets across about the rich, that things apply differently to high-society than it does to everyone else, it but can't really make more space to drive it home. It's not a class-warrior of a film  But maybe it didn't need to be. There's a discomfort, even a predatory nature to the upper-crust,  Olivia included, and it points to it, calls it out. There's also tiers to the upper-crust, and even there, Olivia is kind of seen as lower status, of less serious money. So it's a question of which side was after her, the rich who look down on her, or the poor who resent her? 

META: Mosiac actually started life as a "nu-media" project, an app where the viewer could observe the story through any character's perspective. The way that Soderbergh shot the footage makes a whole lot more sense when you realize you're supposed to be afforded the ability to watch from any character's point-of-view. Maybe the real "bad" is that the app seems to be long gone, as it sounded like an interesting experiment.  At the same time, what remains as an expertly edited production that just crackles like a lit fuse. We watched the whole thing in one sitting, because we had to see it through to the end.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

2025, Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) -- download

Wait. WTF. This guy has directed SIX movies, four of them were MI movies and all but one of them were Tom Cruise vehicles?!? 

Muse or captor?

I am sort of assuming this will be the last of the "M:I" movies given its been 30 years of movies, and despite McQuarrie's comments saying otherwise, its about time, no?

I was determined to watch this movie as I have watched all of them before -- with a sort of detached enjoyment for the sheer spectacle of it all. But given I have only previously written about three of the eight (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Dead Reckoning), I have not had the chance to ramble on about my initial dislike for the whole thing, until I aged and replaced heated opinions with "meh" and maybe even tempered ironic joy.

I wish the Search in Blogger was better; entering in "Mission:Impossible" just led to too much, and I ended up settling on "Cruise" to find the three.

You will note, your "tempered ironic joy" is more than a little peppered by annoyance. So, maybe that initial dislike lives through age.

When the first came out, I was deep in my That Guy stage of film watching. I recall not being all that interested in them, but I likely was also in my "see every single released movie" stage, so I did... see them. I was likely OK with them, dealt with my dislike for Cruise and spectacle (i.e. Bay-splosions) movies. Now in my "old age", they have become a sort of nostalgic action-espionage-lone-tough-guy series, akin to be the James Bond of the last thirty years, like classic Bond-movies were when I was younger.

Not sure I want to expand further. Maybe later, if I choose to do another rewatch and a "series minded" post like Kent's. Probably not.

When we last left our intrepid hero (and as Kent has pointed out, these movies have become entirely about one person -- Ethan), in this intentionally split movie, he had recovered the Cuneiform Key and.... and what, I am not sure. Even re-reading my post on the movie, I was not sure. We know the Key had something to do with a Russian sub that, despite its really advanced AI-powered defense system, had been tricked into launching a torpedo against itself, and sunk below the icey waters. But the key, in two pieces on chains on people's necks, floated up to be discovered by someone, so it could become a MacGuffin for the first half of the movie. What we do know is that the Key offers assistance in controlling an Evil AI that Ethan will not trust into any government's hands, not even his own. So, that means, you guessed it, he is disavowed again.

Uh dude, its "cruciform" not "cuneiform". The latter is writing system used in Mesopotamia while the former just means "the form of a cross". I honestly would prefer they wedge some weird pseudo-historical reason into the naming of the key instead of just saying "its cross shaped" but ... sure, cruciform does sound neat.

But in this new movie, the AI has been making vast strides to taking over the world. In an entirely unexpected superhero-movie level plot, shit has escalated so quickly and so dire-ly that it won't be long before all nuclear super-powers are controlled by the Evil AI which has been named The Entity, and will launch The Missiles, ending humanity.

Cue head-canon where The Entity is actually Skynet and Ethan Hunt will eventually spawn John Connor by going back in time to the 80s.

Ethan (Tom Cruise, Risky Business) really wants to find Gabriel (Esai Morales, La Bamba), his arch-nemesis (for reasons) who once worked directly for The Entity, but is now on the run, having been disavowed by The Entity. But he needs a few more people to pretend it isn't just him doing everything, so he breaks Paris (Gabriel's once hench-person; Pom Klementieff, Une pure affaire) out of jail, and simultaneously convinces one of her handlers, Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis, Woke), to come along for the fun -- I do not know why he is in the movie (because they wanted to have someone named Tarzan in the credits?). They do find Gabriel but in turn, Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell, The Prisoner) are captured, so we can get some very intense staring between the two, a natural progression of the googley eyes from the previous movie.

They escape, but they also learn about Gabriel's method for communicating with The Entity, a tech-coffin that was apparently developed from the same, but different, MacGuffin as The Entity itself -- the Rabbit's Foot, the thing they were chasing after in Mission: Impossible III which we all thought was supposed to be a bio-weapon because a) it had a biohazard sticker, and b) they called it the anti-God (i.e. anti creator). Whatever, CALL BACK !! Ethan goes into the tech-coffin and gets a glorious depiction on exactly how and why The Entity will end the world. i.e. a re-working of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The Entity also points out to him that Luther (Ving Rhames, Lilo & Stitch), who is apparently hacking together an anti-Entity virus will likely die, if not from the cancer he suddenly has, then from the (in)actions of Ethan, BUT if Ethan lets him to the digital equivalent of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, things might be different. Ethan's all nuh-uhhhhh.

Cue Ethan running away saying "shit shit shit shit shit shit". Also, cue the constant paradox of the movies stating Only Ethan Can Prevent Forest Fires while constantly accusing him of being willing to sacrifice the entire world to protect his team.

Ethan decides he has to find the Russian Sub from the last movie, because from it, he can find The Entity's source code which will help... defeat it? Things get a bit convoluted here. The anti-Entity virus, or Poison Pill that Luther made, needs to be combined with The Entity's source code, which can only be found in the sunken sub. I can only assume that because The Entity is already out there, in the Internet, that blowing up the sub would accomplish nothing. Either way, the prediction comes true, as Gabriel steals the Poison Pill, blows Luther up and runs away.

Cue Ethan screaming with a Kirk "Khaaaaaaan" face.

Ethan and crew are taken into custody and brought before the POTUS, who is Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, Strange Days) from previous movies. The US and a few other countries have a choice. They can preemptive strike before The Entity takes over all other countries and nukes them, or they can trust Ethan. Only Ethan. There is a bit of fun recollecting of all the other times he has saved the world, but with a good amount of collateral damage (e.g. The Kremlin go boom, fall down) doing the usual thing of ignoring the question of what would have happened if he hadn't been there at all. This again brings this movie back into superhero realms -- if The Avengers hadn't been around, things would have been much much worse, but they still get blamed for being the catalyst, not the protector.

Hmmmm, Ethan is the new Captain America?

They give Ethan an aircraft carrier with Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham, Coupling) as Admiral Neely, to help him find the sunken sub that nobody knows the location of, while the world is on the verge of nuclear Armageddon. Also, just so we don't forget that Ethan does have a team, they send the rest to a remote Canadian island with some sort of listening post that probably knows the actual location of the sub; maybe. To keep The Entity from knowing they are close to its source code, they will transmit the coordinates via analog morse code. Fun!

Also, they do a double-fun callback to the guy who lost his job because Ethan broke into his unbreak-in-able data vault all the way back in the FIRST MOVIE !! CALL BACK !!!

So, Ethan gets dumped by Rebecca into the frigid waters where he is picked by a US submarine run by a very nice man with a very nice voice, and provided with some equipment to go down to the Russian submarine, because they got the requested coordinates at the very very last second. This is the best sequence in the whole movie, as Ethan climbs into the mostly still sealed sub, to pry the source code of The Entity from its protected container shell, before the dislodging submarine slides off the continental shelf into oblivion. And just because the stakes aren't high enough, Ethan has to strip off his protective deep dive suit in order to escape the sub, but that means... the bends + freezing to death + running out of oxygen. No matter, Grace has appeared above to heal him with the power of her googley eyes, and the portable decompression chamber she brought along. He has what he came for, a funky MacGuffin doodad that...

To be honest, I am not sure how this whole Rube Goldberg Linkin' Logs idea actually works, or how it got formulated. The idea is that Luther's Poison Pill plugs into the Podkova (the doodad Ethan just recovered) as if Luther knew the interface, and they will do it in the Digital Seed Vault, which will attract The Entity (because it wants to hang out in the Seed Vault while it destroys the world) while they use a fabulous crystal storage drive to CAPTURE The Entity. 

Its all rather wonderful Star-Trekian technobabble which makes no sense, but leads to another daring chase scene after Gabriel steals the Poison Pill and flies off in a colourful plane, and Ethan follows in another colourful plane. Also, Benji's (Simon Pegg, Spaced) been shot so Paris has to operate on him (the whole pen as a breathing hole trick) while Grace performs some crash course networking. Ethan catches Gabriel, punches it out in a crashing plane, plugs Tab A into Slot B (these devices have some fantastic wireless connectivity distance) and Grace captures The Entity in its glittery crystal cage.

I think the Internet was supposed to have been destroyed by this action? Either way the world has not been nuked, and everyone is happy. Ethan is un-disavowed for the umpteenth time. Until the next movie.

Yah, I went into the movie more than a little gleeful and optimistic despite my annoyance with... well, all the last ones. I guess my rose-coloured glasses for silly spectacle were firmly on despite Kent's dire warning. I didn't hate it because it is silly fun, but.... c'mon folks, after thirty years, you think they could do some more tight instead of extreme loosey-goosey to the n-th degree.

Congratulations for not harping on Tom Cruise's desire to be shirtless (he's looking kind of Wolverine squat and square in his old age) and only a wafer-thin reference to Tom Cruise Running, though it was once again very very prevalent in the movie.

So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2024) - Hallmarkied Out

 Last Christmas (I gave you my heart), and even the 2022 holiday season, I barely watched any Hallmarkies... less than a half dozen each year.  I consciously uncoupled from Hallmark, but I just couldn't quit it entirely. I suspected at the time that I was missing the comfort of the formulaicness of Hallmark movies, and their stabs at stepping outside of those trappings was perhaps a painful transition and maybe Hallmark wasn't up for it, especially with their limited budgets and rapid production schedule.

This year (to save me from tears) it was almost all-Hallmark-all the time, with 10 Hallmark-produced movies, 4 non-Hallmark Hallmarkies, and 2(!) Hallmark-produced TV series.  And my impression is that the productions still suffer from lack of budget, but they've gotten much better at managing their ambitions within their budgets.  It's clear they still want to do the traditional holiday romance for 80% of their output but their stabs at "Holiday Magic" have really improved.  Hallmark has also is now actually letting comedy happen purposefully, rather than relying upon goofiness and irony (which, I get it... comedy requires timing which can mean more takes and run up the production costs), and while it's still a bit of a mixed bag storytelling wise, they're giving their writers, directors and stars a lot more freedom than it seems they ever have. As a result there are more films coming out of the Hallmark churn that are entertaining, and not just in the making-fun-of-the-tropes way.

It also seems like there's been a marked decrease in non-Hallmarkies. Lifetime and Netflix barely showed up this year, and the other outlets seemed to have gotten buried by the big "H".

All is not sunshine and rainbows with Hallmark though. Finding Mr. Christmas resulted in an absolute travesty of a movie with their "next Hallmark leading man" falling flat on his face. And their first holiday TV series, Holidazed, ended with a 40-minute wet fart of a finale... oh, but I forgot to write about those final 3 episodes...:

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Holidazed 

Episode 6: The Camarena Family: wherein Gaby is confronted with making nice with her high school bully Katie Manetti-Hanahan, who is now dating her brother, Kevin. Katie seems to be making nice with Gaby, and yet every turn seems to be an "accidental" assault or slight on Gaby by Katie. The family, though, loves Katie and poo-poos Gaby's concerns that Katie's true nature is not what they see.  Kevin asks Katie's dad Chuck for his blessing to marry her, and Chuck, who's been at odds with the Cabrera family for years, denies him. Gaby finds old footage of the moment where Katie came up with the nickname "Easy Bake" that Gaby couldn't shake for years. Turns out that happened because they used to be best friends, until Gaby got new high school friends and ditched Katie. The two reconcile, but not in time. Gaby's family finds the video and Kevin asks for time from Katie. There's a confrontation at the Christmas market stroll between Katie and Kevin, which then leads to a fight between Katie's dad. 

The "comedy" of someone reliving childhood trauma by having to confront their childhood bully is a difficult line to toe, and this episode does not handle it deftly. I think they were trying to go for cringe comedy, but it was just sad. I also wasn't sure whether the show wanted us to believe Gaby was misremembering Katie as a bully or if Katie was still actively Gaby's bully or not really either. I was dreading the expected scene where they have their confrontation and rather than owning the hurt she causes Katie has an excuse for being hurt first. Credit where due, they handle this quite well, actually, with Gaby first realizing that fighting fire with fire only leads to more fire and instead she works to douse the animosity and they come to an understanding as grown-ass adults, and maybe even rekindle a decades-lost friendship. The complication though has nothing to do with Gaby, and so the finale's going to need to get Katie and Kevin back together.

Episode 7: The Manetti-Hanahan Family: Of all the episodes of Holidazed, this is the one that focuses the most on the family of the episode title. When you have two mega-hitters in John C. McGinley and Virginia Madsen as the patriarch and matriarch of the family, Chuck and Connie, it should be something special. The family is of the teasing-and-sarcasm-is-our-love-language variety. Connie makes the family sign a pact that says no fighting, no swearing, no aggression. But with this family that's easier signed than done.

Chuck is that breed of person who always needs to be right, who always needs to have his voice heard loudest over everyone else, and uses his military background to intimidate everyone. One has to wonder if Connie has had enough, hence the pact, but no, turns out she just wants to have a nice family Christmas in case it is her last, as she's waiting on test results. It's a story beat that is aggressively manipulative, and it's not handled with any tact.

Chuck's not allowed to beef with his neighbours, so he starts beefing with his son Clark instead over Clark's "green energy". Turns out Chuck has an inferiority complex because of Clark's "university education". They settle their differences when Clark's green energy keeps the house lit up after the power goes out.

 Clark's wife Rebecca is at odds with Clark's sister Laurie because of their "clean living" and perceived pretentious superiority complex. But they settle their differences when Rebecca starts eating meat and Laurie discovers Rebecca is pregnant (after earlier in the episode exploding over not being able to have more kids, again more manipulative storytelling)

I actually liked this episode, the characters and the actors quite a bit but the key problem is it needs to set up character arcs for each character (or pairings of characters) which need to be resolved in 40 minutes (or quickly in the following episode) while also fitting into the over-arcing story structure of the series (which means heading to the holiday stroll and the eventual storm and power outage) and also sandwiching in Katie into the episode after the events of the previous episode.  It leads to oversimplification and predictable, telegraphed stories... something the entire series is guilty of... Connie at one point even says to Chuck something to the effect of "you never know when the neighbours might need our help" or something, clearly telegraphing the final episode...

Episode 8: The Finale:  In which the Manetti-Hanahan family is the only house on the block with power so they invite their neighbours over for a big Christmas day feast. Chuck agrees to a truce for the day with Manny Camarena, and then they start acting like real pals. Connie, with assistance from Grandma Lin, gets her test results which are negative. Chuck tells Clark he's proud of him. Ted confesses to Grandma Lin that he's gay, and she's heartbroken only because he lied to her, but Marcus smooths it over and Grandma then gets the whole neighborhood to plan an impromptu wedding. Gaby records her audition video with Katie's help, and then Gaby smooths over things between her brother and Katie and they're engaged again. Lucy and Sylvie reconcile, and Sylvie gets Cole back over for another date. Annie and Max talk, and they both like each other, so they play video games. Josh's girlfriend says it's obvious Josh wants something different than moving to Australia, and Josh and Nora kiss, and I guess Theo has a new father-figure. Most annoyingly, Evan steps aside and points Linda towards his new friend Robert, and they reunite, and head off on a Norwegian vacation together to see the Northern Lights.

It's aggressively annoying how obvious every single one of these story lines is, and so obviously telegraphed. While I liked some of the episodes and many of the performers, I legitimately hated this finale and I'm not feeling to positive about the series overall.  

It's a show with a massive cast of characters but only serves a third of them well. So many characters get shoved to the sidelines, to the point that any sub plots that there may have been in most of the families (the Lins, the Lewins, the Hills) are kind of forgotten about in the Finale. I'm certain that certain players aren't even in the episodes (and it's so hilarious that in most scenes in the Finale, in this crowded Minetti-Hanahan household, the background actors are not any of the characters from the series...seriously there's like another 40 people in that house on top of the 40 named characters we've already met.  That's one big cul-de-sac.

A show like this needs to be three times as long and juggle its storylines, let them breathe, and it needs to offer some real drama, not greeting card company happy endings to every story. Sometimes the happy ending is learning to live with a sad outcome. I wanted Robert to find a new life, not end up with his ex-wife. I wanted Laurie and Rebecca to become friends not because she finds out she's having another baby, but helps her to accept that she cannot.  And I wanted Grandma Lin to hold a grudge so much longer than basically 5 minutes.  I want there to be consequences in all this and there aren't really any. Even the fact that Katie took the Camarena family to a protected area to cut down their Christmas tree is resolved by having Josh step in and "I am Spartacus" it for...no real reason.  

A total waste of time, and quite frustrating when it teetered so close to being quite good.

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As noted the transition of Hallmark movies from bog standard formulaic romance to holiday fantasy and/or holiday romantic comedy (and even dabbling in adventure and mystery) has been a rocky transition in the early 2020's, but there have been definite signifiers of the promise of something more..."elevated Hallmark" if you will.

2023 was the banner year for this with Catch Me If You Claus delivering a "one crazy night" comedy adventure (with romance and fantasy) and coming out quite entertaining despite its budgetary limitations, and Hallmark's best-ever holiday movie, Round and Round which is a Hanukkah romcom that is also a time loop movie that absolutely knows what its doing.  There's a third massive entry in the 2023 elevated Hallmark stable that I neglected last year (although Toasty didn't) and that's A Biltmore Christmas (directed by John Putch).

The story is an ambitious time travel fantasy romance about a writer, Lucy (played by Hallmarkie regular Bethany Joy Lens) who is tasked with writing a remake of a classic Christmas movie (shot at the Biltmore Hotel) but struggles with the happy ending of the original and wants to make a more realistic, sober ending.  She is sent by the studio on a trip to the Biltmore to hopefully gain some inspiration and finalize the script. There she starts learning the behind-the-scenes history of "His Merry Wife" (the fabulously 40's-styled movie-within-the-movie) and getting access to authentic props and wardrobes.  But when she turns the infamous hourglass used in the movie she finds herself transported back in time to the set of "His Merry Wife", getting first hand experience on the behind-the-scenes...and meeting the suavely handsome co-star of the film, Jack Huston (played by Christopher Polaha), who is immediately taken by her. When the sands of the hourglass run out, Lucy returns to her time, but she's both freaked out and utterly intrigued by what happened.

Using the sprawling, gorgeous North Carolina estate of the Biltmore hotel (built by George Vanderbilt), A Biltmore Christmas has a built-in aesthetic that means the production crew didn't have to do much heavy lifting in making the production look good, which meant they could focus more budget on the costuming and make-up which made the 1940's set look more authentic than Hallmark could traditionally go for.

When she ventures into the past again, she accidentally breaks the hourglass, and becomes trapped on the set of "His Merry Wife". She and Jack start to grow closer, but the lies she's spun to remain on set start catching up with her, but she's made a few friends along the way who back her up.

Like the best Elevated Hallmarks it's surprisingly ambitious, calling its shot early on opening with black-and-white, cinematic-looking scenes from "His Merry Wife" which look and play so good you actually half wish you were watching that movie instead. But A Biltmore Christmas earns the viewer's attention.

Is it still stricken by budget limitations? Of course it is, it's Hallmark, so the cut corners are going to be evident. Here it's primarily in the present day scenes which feel less thought out, less refined than the events in the 1940s. The film builds to a series of cross cut as Lucy needs to escape the studio dogs in the 1940s, while in the present day a friend Lucy made is trying to stop the Biltmore concierge (Jonathan Frakes) from taking the hourglass away. The stakes feel so much higher in the 1940s, where it's clear Lucy has outstayed her welcome, than in the present day where the film hasn't established its time travel rules effectively enough (is it just the hourglass, or is it the combination of the hourglass plus the room it was in? What happens if you flip the hourglass before the sands run out, does time rewind, or do you go back even further in time? How are the two time periods connected?).

Polaha is absolutely incredible as Jack Huston. He nails the movie star charisma and charm, he has confidence and gumption, but also insecurities. There are a lot of Hallmark leading men who have charm and talent, but we're so used to seeing them in the same-old-same-old that we don't think too much about them as actors. This is absolutely a performance, and probably the best leading man performance ever in a Hallmark movie.  The 1940's cast is uniformly good, and Lens really carries the weight of the film with perfect energy (even if the stakes really aren't very high for her). The end of movie dress she gets to wear, a beautiful, layered, deco-styled silver black and gold number, is a work of art compared to the typical off-the-rack red/blue/green dress that a Hallmark leading lady would normally end their film in.

I really dug A Biltmore Christmas (we agree), so much so that I feel compelled at this time to do a tops list of elevated Hallmark :

TOP 5 ELEVATED HALLMARK MOVIES:

1. Round and Round
2. Three Wise Men and a Baby
3. Crashing Through the Snow (this is actually one of those in-transition Hallmarkies, but it's elevated based on scripting and performance)
4. A Biltmore Christmas
5. Sugarplummed 

These are all films I could see myself watching again (and in fact I've seen Three Wise Men... and Crashing... multiple times each).  If I were to make a list of more traditional Hallmarkies that I would watch multiple times it would be a list of 3:

TOP 3 SENTIMENTAL FAVOURITE TRADITIONAL HALLMARK MOVIES:
1. Nine Lives of Christmas
2. The Christmas Club
3. An Unexpected Christmas (this is another one of those in-transition Hallmark movies, part romcom, part traditional, but the traditional takes hold over the movie)

T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar - Day 16: Holidazed, episode 1.

 2024, created by Claudia Grazioso - Hallmark/W Network

A little something outside the Hallmark seasonal norm, and showing the channel's commitment to not sitting still and resting on formulae alone, Holidazed is an 8-episode TV series that is, effectively, 6 intersecting Hallmark Holiday Movie stories, but not movies.

This is perhaps the evolution of the ensemble movie Hallmark has been trying more and more each year (think Haul out the Holly  or The Christmas House).  It's also maybe in direct competition with the Cherry Lane series of movies to see which format performs better: a series of movies or a weekly limited series?

Holidazed is set on a cul-de-sac and follows the six families that live in the neighborhood. Their lives naturally cross paths but each has their own specific story.  The first episode introduces all the families, their dynamics with each other, and their neighbours, and the complications that will need to be overcome.  Each family will have a dedicated episode, and I presume the finale will tie it all together somehow.

I recently wrote about the Netflix series Midnight Mass and what a masterclass it is in establishing its large cast, their relationships to one another, its setting, the series' ominous tone and hinting at what's to come. Holidazed isn't quite as deftly handled, but it does a decent job of weaving through the myriad of characters and how they relate to one another while setting up the complications that will drive their individual narratives.  What holds it back is it's almost too ambitious, with too many characters intermingling to keep every connection perfectly straightforward. As well, almost every premise is pretty cliche, so from the set-up it's like we know where it's going to go, based on Hallmarks of the past.

They are:
The Hill Family. Son Josh (Ian Harding) has returned home for the holidays, where his big city pretentiousness presents itself quite frequently. He's not an asshole about it, he's just a bit of an ass.  He apparently kept buying his parents new household gadgets for fitness or healthy eating and they were just too technical and non-traditional for them, but he kind of doesn't get it. He only sees his way. While heading out to pick up some healthy bowls for dinner in his parents car, he gets pulled over for talking on the phone not hands-free (he was talking to his fiancee who, to put it bluntly, is pretty emotionally cold and didn't care at all about joining him for Christmas). The cop is an old high-school acquaintance, Nora, who he says was always very "by the book" and she says he always though the rules didn't apply to him. He thinks he's charming and Nora is not charmed. Later Josh forgets to put the car in park and it crashes into a fire hydrant. He convinces Nora to get his penance immediately reduced to community service because he's supposed to be moving to Australia with the ice queen after Christmas. He also learns from his parents that Nora is a single mom after her husband died. So, big city big shot returns home to meet single parent he knew from his younger years and they clash at first. We know how this story will go, like every beat of it (especially since we see Josh connect with Nora's son over Legos briefly).

The Lin Family. Ted (Osric Chou) has brought his fiancee Marcus (Shawn Ahmed) home for the holidays. His mom (Sharon Crandall) is ecstatic to spend the time together and plan their wedding. Sister Ella (Jasmine Chen) brings up the topic of Nai Nai comes up and Dad (Stanley Jung) says he booked her on a trip to Palm Springs. Ted is relieved because he hasn't come out to Grandma yet, which Marcus is not thrilled with. Of course, the trip has issues and Nai Nai (Lucille Soong) is home for the holidays and eager to spend time with Marcus whom she believes is Ella's fiancee. Uh oh. Hijinks are bound to ensue before the truth has to come out (literally). Lucille Soong is a legendary character actor, and she's going to kill it in this hopefully not-too-contrived story.

The Woods Family. Lucy (Lindy Booth) runs an restaurant and has the total hots for contractor/handyman Cole (Steven Allerick). It seems mutual. But Lucy's estranged hard-travelling sister Sylvie (Rachelle Lefevre) is home for Hanukkah and she's already starting to dig her charming, worldly claws into Cole.  Lucy's daughter Annie has been best friends with neighbour Max Lewin forever, but now that they're teens things are changing. When popular girls Stephanie drops in, Max is all over her, which makes gives Annie new feelings. Two juvenile relationships, one which makes sense because teens are involved, the other is of the eye rolling middle-agers-shouldn't-act-like-teenagers variety. Hopefully it's more about the sibling drama than misunderstood romance cues.

The Lewin Family. It's going to be a tense Christmas at the Lewin household. Jennifer (Robinne Fanfair) has both her mother and father coming for dinner, but they divorced earlier in the year. Jennifer has just made partner at work and is tired of being put in the middle... and yet, mom Linda (Loretta Devine) manages to skirt having to tell Jennifer's dad, Robert (Dennis Haysbert) that she's bringing her new boyfriend.  Before the episode is over, the truth comes out (and that's before Linda arrives) and Robert seems more than happy that Linda has some other man to torture in his old age...except... when Linda arrives, her boyfriend is a strapping, handsome younger man (and not the Uber driver). This one is far fetched but seems like a great comedic set-up with both Devine and Haysbert... that's high wattage acting talent that should raise even mediocre material.

The Camarena Family. Manny (Tim Perez) has been in a long term feud with neighbour  Chuck Manetti-Hanahan (John C. McGinley) over the volume of Chuck's Christmas decorating. But the two are attempting (not really) to bury the hatchet as Manny's son Kevin has been dating Chuck's daughter Katie (Holland Roden). Chef Gaby (Noemi Gonzalez) returns home for the holidays with big news about her career, which is undercut by Kevin's love life which Gaby didn't know about. Turns out Katie was her high school bully, a fact that not even Katie seems aware of (as she is constantly hugging Gaby and trying to recall "old times" they shared). And then Gaby finds an engagement ring.... The trauma is deep here and I hope the episode featuring this family gets into it, and doesn't just cop out with Katie expressing what she was going through and playing on Gaby's sympathy. Own the damage you caused, Katie! This has so much potential, but I don't believe enough in Hallmark to deliver it. 

The Manetti-Hanahan Family. Chuck, as we've seen, thinks he owns the world, and is oblivious to how he impacts others. Connie (Virginia Madsen) is trying to organize the holidays and keep the peace at home and with the neighbours, and finds it exhausting. Clark (Giles Panton) returns home with his family in tow and from the second they exit the car they are mocked and berated for their trendy lifestyle choices (they're vegan now, but Rebecca [Lucie Guest] has brought all the food so she's no burden but it doesn't matter).  The Manetti-Hanahan household is an utter shit show and Katie is branded a traitor by her father and, like all the kids, finds being at home very difficult. She storms out and winds up staying at the Camarena's for the night (kicking Gaby out of her bed, because Kevin's parents are not letting them sleep in the same bed under their roof).  They're a lot. This is the only story that I don't know exactly where it's going. If we get Chuck having some sort of change of heart and self awareness I'm going to call bullshit, because he's not that kind of guy, I can tell already. Madsen is killing it in what I've seen so far from her, and McGinley is always fun to watch.

Will report back when all is said and done on how each story fared.

Summer Chills: Abigail

2024, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not) -- download

We usually reserve horror-ish movies for the "31 Days of Halloween" but sometimes we are just in the mood for something Halloween-ish.

Two things. One, I am not all that bothered by spoilers any longer; after The Matrix was spoiled for me, I got over it. But Two, I really am annoyed by movies that set themselves up with a "you are not supposed to know _____" in the opening act, yet still base their entire marketing campaigns on telling your what _____ was. Like, are we still so stuck on particular formulas to screenplay writing that we have to write the "oooooo, you will never see this coming" but immediately toss it away as unnecessary? 

So, in case you are not me, and dislike being spoiled, skip reading the post now.

The little girl they kidnap is a vampire. I mean, its the fucking premise of the movie.

Again, that said, knowing didn't ruin anything to me, and waiting for the characters to get there was kind of fun. In fact, that they go quickly into the, "ok, so she's a fucking vampire, how do we deal with THAT?!?!?" is hilarious. That said, its not really a comedy, but a funny, action, horror-ish movie.

Six low-rent criminals follow the entourage of an obviously very rich little girl after her ballet practice,  back to her penthouse and kidnap her. They then drive her back to a mysterious mansion in the countryside. We have the thug Peter (Kevin Durand, Swamp Thing), the sleazebag wheelman Dean (Angus Cloud, Euphoria), punk hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton, Freaky), sniper Rickles (William Catlett, Black Lightning), boss Frank (Dan Stevens, Legion) and all-around support Joey (Melissa Barrera, Scream). Yes, those are the names of the Rat Pack; low-rent criminals use aliases.

FYI the two names you don't recognize are Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford; if you knew who they were, your Rat Pack game is bigger than mine. Congrats.

Once inside the mansion they are instructed to bide their time while the fixer who arranged this job gets the ransom money. Joey, the pretty criminal, is tasked with being the only face the little girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir, Wicked Little Letters), will see and is meant to keep the girl calm & safe. In turn Abigail fucks with Joey, telling her father doesn't care about her, and apologizes as to what is going to come next. Frank is not thrilled about this ominous comment, and violently confronts Abigail, after which she reveals her father is the notorious crimelord Kristoff Lazaar. Apparently he is scary enough to make them all shit their pants.

Then sleazebag Dean gets his head ripped off, and they all assume it has to be the notorious enforcer who works for crimeboss Lazaar. Technically they are right. They confront Abigail only to find her mouth full of fangs. Also, they cannot get out of the house -- its all locked down.

The antics of survival are fun, amidst the chaos of dealing with a monster that looks like a 10 year old girl in a ballerina outfit. They believe they only have to survive until dawn, when the fixer will arrive with the ransom money. It takes them a long time to understand this was the plan all along -- there was no kidnapping plot -- they were kidnapped and are food and the basement pool full of decaying bodies says Abigail has been doing this a long long time.

It was a romp, which is pretty much what I said for the last movie we saw from the directors (Ready or Not), which was also a step outside the "31 Days of Halloween" tradition and was also a survival horror trapped inside a house. Weird parallels.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

2022, David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) -- download

It doesn't say much for this series that I didn't even remember there was a previous movies, having muddled (muggled?) the first two all together. Let's assume the writeup of the second was swallowed up in the Great Hiatus of 2018, but really, I was probably just so apathetic I didn't bother writing about it. And three sittings later, as I finally finish this one, I feel the same. But write up, I will, for I am deep in the sunk cost fallacy.

I did see, and write, about the first one, and looking back, I wasn't all that impressed. So, why watch the next two? To see if they will get better? Because I am a Big HP Fan? No, not at all. I do like the world that is created, and do like seeing it expanded upon, but the story is ... well, its all muggled up (fully intentional). Reaching the third in the series, they have a new He Who Should Not Be Named named Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen, Polar) who is a Bad Guy and is Dumbledore's (Jude Law, AI) ex-BF. While I don't recall exactly what it was, in the last movie Grindelwald did something that jeopardized the veil between the wizarding world and that of the muggles, and he hurt a lot of people. Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, Jupiter Ascending)), his muggle/non-mag baker best friend Jacob (Dan Fogler, The Walking Dead) and a bevy of others, including Dumbledore, are focused entirely on revealing Grindelwald's agenda to the world, despite the world not really giving that much of a hoot -- they are muggles after all.

And there is a Beast, a Qilin (or Kirin), an utterly innocent creature that Grindelwald murders and takes one of its offspring. Unbeknownst, Newt secreted away the other. Grindelwald intends on using the creature as part of a conspiracy to have himself named Emperor of All Magic.. OK, its just Supreme Leader of the Confederation of Magic (Great Leader? Supreme Mugwump?). Of course, they foil his plan, have a wand battle (wouldn't it be cool if they held them like lightsabres and fought like Jedi?) and declare someone else Head Honcho.

Again, didn't do much for me. Not that I was a big HP Fan to begin with, but I like the elements. But again, I am here for Jacob and Queenie (Alison Sudol, Other People's Children). If there was a series just about him and his bakery and all kinds of magical escapades in Brooklyn, I would be all-in. Funny also, how the first movie started under the conceit of "HP in America!" which was quickly dispense so they could run back to Europe and all its Old Architecture. I guess they decided that being more worldly was better than just "add America". I did like the brief addition of Bhutan, a country which is always associated with the mystic arts, in pop culture.

Note: what terrible posters, all around.

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. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Amsterdam

2022, David O Russell (American Hustle) -- download

OMG, they are in it ?!?!

I said that about every ten minutes in this movie that I knew was done by a Well Known Hollywood Director, but didn't recall exactly who at the time. Part of me wants to say we are in a lull for "acclaimed directors", as in directors with enough popularity and critical overtures that everyone just rushes to see whatever their next release is. In this era of transition from Cinema Release to Life on Streaming, understanding what will click (pun unintended, this time), what will capture attention, what will hold attention must be the greatest of challenges, so where does that leave room for loud vision? I cannot say I know what Russell's "vision" is from the top of my head, but if anything, its breadth of scope. From the stable of actors, and guest actors, to the far ranging plot, to the setting, this movie moves around a lot and keeps a lot of plates spinning!

I am going to try to write the rest of this post without relying on cliches and sayings, as I ... tend to do. Yeah, I just deleted one.

I knew I wanted to see this movie from two scenes in a very well done trailer: Chris Rock's non sequitur about his grandfather, and Christian Bale's "uhhhhhh, no no no no...". They were such WTF deliveries to me that I expected a movie full of head scratching, gut holding weirdness. Instead, I got a much fuller movie of companionship & moral fortitude amidst political upheaval, full of lush performances. Those moments don't stand out as much in the movie, as they do in the trailer, but that's because so they are surrounded by so much else going on, so much else worth paying attention to, that they don't rely on WTF moments. But kudos to the trailer editors for catching those little bits.

Burt (Christian Bale, Reign of Fire) is commissioned as an officer by his wife's wealthy family, and sent off to die in France, during WWI. Instead he steps forward to support a forward thinking General Meekins (Ed Begley Jr, Future Man) and their "coloured regiment". He makes quick friends with Harold (John David Washington, Tenet), each vowing to protect the other's back, which ends them up together in the care of nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie, Love Actually), an oddball who honours their horrific wounds by making art from the shrapnel. They muster out together, moving to Amsterdam for a blissful bohemian lifestyle, until Burt is compelled to return to his wife, having failed to die in the war. 

Years later, Burt is a doctor, estranged from his wife, hooked on his own pain meds, and dedicated to vets with disfiguring wounds, and compelled to hide his own relatively mild scars whenever he is near his wife, which is rare. And then he is dragged into something by his old friend Harold, via General Meekins daughter Liz (Taylor Swift, Cats). The General has died, she does not believe it was natural causes, and to lend weight to her belief, she is almost immediately after contacting them, killed herself. And thus begins the rather convoluted ball of yarn that they have to unravel (but not really) plot.

There is no real point in recapping the entire movie, for its more the fun way Russell goes about revealing it all that makes the movie enjoyable. Unfortunately, while enjoyable, nothing is ever really a revelation. Sure, its a thin allegory to the right-wing politics currently shaping our world via events and behaviours no sane person ever thought was possible, but the plot itself would have been grand in a penny serial, but in this context its just ... news? But the performances, from the so so many familiar faces, are where its at, especially Bale and all his little quirks.

So, yeah not much more than one of my, "Movie OK... me like," and I would be OK with that usually, but I do feel a bit let down, based on all the names in this movie, and the money put into doing such a pristine period piece. I guess I would want even more memorable performances, or more importantly, a much much more memorable plot and execution of such. Weird that the trailer gave me most of that.

Of note, I feel the need to clean out all the Drafts in my list, so they will not clutter this December's Advent Calendar. I suppose I could just write them all up, and schedule them to post after the 25th. Yeah, I guess I will do that.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Death on the Nile

2022, Kenneth Branagh (Frankenstein) -- download

This is the second of a Branagh directed, Branagh starring Hercule Poirot adaptations (Agatha Christie character) of which the spectacular Murder on the Orient Express (where is my post?!?! ohhhh, we watching it in 2018, the year of [one of] the Great Hiatus, and wow, that was a while ago) was the first. We watched this one just as it dropped, and two things still stand out for me: my uncomfortable attraction to the opulence of colonizing wealth at the beginning of the 20th century, and, "Wow, this movie just looks good !!"

This time round Poirot gets wrapped up in the drama surrounding wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) and her engagement to Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name), who is not wealthy, after she "stole" him away from her close friend Jackie de Bellefort (Emma Mackey, Sex Education). Poirot is invited by his best bud Bouc to join them at the wedding party, which becomes murderous only after transferring to a Nile river boat. And then Linnet is murdered.

Part of me wonders whether the Poirot was the beginning of the "gather all the suspects together" motif so oft used in crime fiction. It definitely is a popular technique used in his stories, as he always gets to re-tell the events of the story, revealing how aware he is of each person's proclivities, before finally revealing the criminal themself. The movie itself also spends more time revealing the nature of Poirot, his distinct friendship with younger, more outrageous Bouc, some of his past (where the moustache originated) and doubles down on Poirot having a bit of OCD.

This movie was more grim than the last, if that is possible, or maybe it was just that Poirot was less enthusiastic about this case, especially during some rather tragic later turns in event. Again, we have quite the cast, a bit quixotic in using well known comic actors in reserved roles, but each performance is quite wonderful. I find myself pondering that this is a style of movie making I miss, more invested in style and performance and production, where a Branagh as director is not afraid to put his mark on it. In case you haven't guessed, I rather loved the whole thing.

3 Short Paragraphs: The 355

2022, Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) -- download

Are we surprised that the director of X-Men: Dark Phoenix directed had a movie flop at the box office? I am surprised that this very mediocre Women With Guns thriller actioner even made it to the theatre. But considering how utterly bland the X-Men movie was, I am not surprised that this one was very much by the books, which means, I was not all that put out by it. Again, just confused that it actually made it to the cinema when it felt more along the Straight To vibe of flicks like MI-5 which had being a spin-off of a TV series to blame.

Jessica Chastain (Ava) is a Mace, a CIA agent who loses her partner Nick (Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy) in an op gone wrong, right after she breaks her no-emotional-connection rule and and has smoochy smoochy with Nick.  The op was to recover a McGuffin, some sort of magical HDD that contains a program (with appropriately flash interface) that can interface with any network, any! Now its on the loose. Mace then travels around gathering a crew of other Women With Guns to hunt down the McGuffin and exact revenge for Nick's death. They include Diane Kruger (The Bridge), Penelope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express), Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther) and eventually Bing Bing Fan (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

So yeah, by the books. So that means we have some tense chase scenes in exotic European locales, at least one fancy dress party that needs to be infiltrated assisted by fancy tech (pretty much exactly like a recent episode of Picard) and eventually a twisty reveal (which wasn't much of a surprise) and confrontation in another exotic locale. The acting and production values are all pretty tight, if uneventful, but there was not enough of the stuff around the edges (as I mentioned when writing about Ava) to make it... interesting. A better version of this would be gathering women, with guns, from other existing movies and doing an Expendables style flick.

P.S. Are we wondering why it's called The 355 ? No, yeah and the incredibly boring reason is not worth explaining, in the worst (failed) attempt to create a franchise.

10 for 10: Migraine

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies 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:

The Mask of Zorro - 1998, d. Martin Campbell (Netflix) 

Jumanji: The Next Level - 2019, d. Jake Kasdan (AmazonPrime)

F9 - 2021, d. Justin Lin (rental)

Turbo Kid -  2015, d. François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell (AmazonPrime)

Dog Days - 2018, d. Ken Marino (on demand)

Unstoppable - 2010, d. Tony Scott (Disney+/Star)

Charade - 1963, d. Stanley Donen (Netflix)

Police Story - 1985, d. Jackie Chan (Crave)
Police Story2 - 1988, d. Jackie Chan (Crave)

Wing Chun - 1994, d.  Woo-Ping Yuen (dvd)

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I really wanted nothing to do with a Zorro movie when it came out 20+ years ago. The property was so old-world to me, that I questioned why, why revive a property that had been long in the tooth even 15 years earlier? I now realize that the franchises of any era are built on the childhood nostalgia of the producers who are in their 40's and 50's at the time, so with pulp heroes like The Phantom, The Shadow, Dick Tracy and Tarzan all getting a go in the 90's, of course Zorro was an option. 

Also no property is ever dead if there's the possibility of making money off it. 

Even at that time, 1998, I knew there was something off about casting British (Hopkins) and Spanish (Banderas) actors as a Mexican folk hero (especially when the Spanish are the enemy in the film).  Were this made today there would certainly be some noise about it (I think there was even at the time but calling out that kind of casting barely made a dent back then).

But, you know, that aside, (if you can put such things aside) it's a pretty fun romp about legacy and choosing to serve greater good over self, and of course both Hopkins (who I assumed was a mistake) and Banderas are just charismatic as fuck.  Zeta-Jones, though a big part of the film, is basically the cliched reactive female of these sorts of things.  I was hoping she would have a more to do.

It's perhaps a smidge overlong, but quite, quite watchable, a testament to Campbell's keen sense of adventure and a script that plays nicely with themes of legacy.

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Jumanji: The Next Level is a surprisingly entertaining return to the video-game reality established in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Spencer, having seemingly come out of his shell after the last Jumanji adventure finds that his newfound bravado was short lived, and he longs for the Rock-like strength and willpower he had in the game.  After he disappears into the game his confused romantic interest Martha joins him, but so do his grandpa Eddie (Danny Devito) and Eddie's antagonistic friend and former business partner Milo (Danny Glover).  And unfortunately for Spencer, it's Eddie in Rock's body and Milo get into Kevin Hart's compact frame.

Honestly, after many months, I can't really tell you too much about the events of the film, except to say that Dwayne Johnson's Devito impersonation is great fun, but it's Hart's Danny Glover impression made me laugh every single moment on screen.  The avatars of Jumanji are a suitable mask to explore the emotional subtext of the exterior world, the only problem being we don't really care so much about those characters in the exterior world.  While Spencer's feelings of disappointment and insecurity are pretty much expected, it was the emotional underpinning of Eddie and Milo's septuagenarian friendship that really lifted this movie out of its middle ground.  There's a whole body-swapping bit in the middle of the picture which gives all the main performers a chance to play as each other, with Karen Gillen getting to really show off her versatility.

There's a plenty of action, most of it fairly non-descript and excessively video-gamey (apt for a video-game movie but not altogether exiting).  Overall, enjoyable, but, like the first one, ultimately forgettable, or, at best, kind of indistinguishable from one another.

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F9, the Fast and Furious Saga, just as with each film in the series before it, takes things to another level.  Somehow the budgets get bigger, the action more unbelievably ridiculous, the mythology more intricately (though far from delicately) woven, and the family keeps expanding.

In F9, we get our first ever flash-back sequences, to a young Dom Teretto and his heretofore unheard of brother Jakob as they help their father as pit crew for his race car.  But when Dom learns that Jakob helped his dad rig his car to fail, thus throwing the race, but causing a fatal accident killing their dad, well, family apparently doesn't mean enough to young Dom.

Now, the world's in danger because Jakob (in the form of John Cena, supposedly Vin Diesel's older brother) has allied with some maniac and a returning Cypher (Charlize Theron in a veeery bad wig) and only Dom can stop him.  There's some other nonsense with the rest of the gang too, including bringing back supposedly dead Han and, independently of that, some of the other crew from Tokyo Drift who are now rocket scientists for the sole reason that they'll need to launch Roman and Tej into space.  Yeah, they go to space... in a car... what of it?

Helen Mirren gets a driving sequence (and wakes Vin Diesel out of his acting coma, seriously there's infinitely more heat between Mirren and Diesel that between Diesel and any of his other female co-stars in any of his other films...he kind of lights up when she's around...but I mean, who wouldn't?) and there's a whole wonderfully absurd sequence involving magnets that has to be seen to be believed (but even then you won't believe it).  Dom at one point even pulls a whole building down upon the dozens of bad guys rushing him because he performs herculean feats now.

I'll pull no punches, this movie is insanely dumb, but it knows it's dumb and doesn't care.  In fact it embraces it, and has fun...it's really only Diesel, for the most part, who is taking the whole thing seriously, bless him.  I can't believe they make these films. I can't believe I watch these films. I can't believe I like these films. I can't believe so many other people like these films too.

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Toasty really seemed quite taken with Turbo Kid in his review years ago, and it stuck with me.  But I couldn't get past the very Canadian appearance of it's poster...plus Michael Ironside is who Canadian low-budget filmmakers get to add gravitas (because they can't afford Bruce Willis or Nic Cage). As I've established many times in this blog, I have Canadian inadequacy issues, and it keeps me from even attempting to enjoy most Canadian film and television.  

But, sometimes all one really wants is something familiar, but also new.  You know, a simple order for a Sunday afternoon.

Turbo Kid is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction adventure film about a lone teenager who manages to survive the roving gangs and toxic lands with dreams and aspirations of being a hero like Turbo Man from his comic books.  He meets a quirky, perky, yet completely capable girl named Apple who follows him around like a lost puppy despite his protestations.  They get in trouble with the big mob boss of the wastelands (Michael Ironside) but team up with a rambling vigilante to fight him change the landscape of the wasteland.

The aesthetic of the film is intentionally retro 80's futuristic, as it's post-apocalyptic time period is 1997, which for a film made in 2015 is just so cheeky but they do a great job with it.  While being a pretty clean adventure film with a young protagonist, the storytelling aesthetic is paired with a ridiculously cartoonish level of gore.  It takes what would otherwise be a PG movie into a hard R rating.  It's quite absurd, the blood spray and kill gags which seem so out of step with this otherwise kind of innocent seeming po-ap-for-kids story.  I think it's ultimately what distinguishes it, but it's also quite a barrier to get over.

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Dog Days is yet another quasi-anthology/ensemble cast romcom in the vein of Love, Actually or New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day or any of those other holiday themed romcoms.  Here, it's centred around people with dogs (or people without dogs, as it were). 

Nina Dobrev (Love Hard) is a morning news show host who has a big time will they/won't they with her new cohost (Tone Bell) which becomes more "they will" when their  dogs take a shining to one another.  Meanwhile, Vanessa Hudgens (The Princess Switch) is a coffee shop employee crushing on the cute veterinarian (Michael Cassidy) who patronizes her establishment, but befriends the dorky Jon Bass (who has been crushing on her) and starts volunteering at his animal care shelter.   Eva Longoria and Rob Coddry are new parents to an adopted 9-year-old with whom they are having trouble connecting, but when a stray dog is brought home, the girls starts to open up.  But that stray dog is the beloved pet of lonely widower Ron Cephas Jones, who winds up befriending his nuisance teenager, Finn Wolfhard as he helps him look for the dog.  

These are the main threads, but the cast is stacked with others in LA's comedy scene (and from the sketch comedy troupe The State which director Ken Marino was a part).  These include Adam Pally, Jessica St. Clare, Thomas Lennon, Lauren Lapkus, Jon Gemberling, Ryan Hansen, David Wain and Tig Notaro.

Given the talent involved, this should be a far funnier film than it is, but it's not actually trying to lean into the rom or the com.  It's just trying to be like every one of these romcom anthologies, which means it's just the same mixed bag that they all are.  It's not an outright disaster but it leans too hard into the sentimentality and tries too hard to tug at the heart strings and you can see the results coming a mile off.  The main Dobrev story is weakend by the terrible attempt at recreating a morning talk show vibe (they're typically unscripted and this is so scripted).  Hudgen's arc is much better mostly because, well, it's Hudgens, but it suffers a bit with just how dorky Jon Bass plays his role...it's supposed to be charming, but always smacks a bit of desperation.  The adoptive parent story and the runoff into the Jones/Wolfhard story are both emotionally resonant, but don't fit well into the romcom mainline vibe. 

It's not the worst of this style of film.

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In 2010, Tony Scott made a movie about a runaway train with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine called Unstoppable.  Through a series of silly misfortunes, a train manages to take off, gaining speed, without a conductor.  It's carrying hazardous materials, and at a certain point it will hit a bend which will cause it to tip over and contaminate a whole Pennsylvanian town. The events of the film follow the various employees and the corporate train overlords, as well as a couple of hero conductors as they all independently plot on what to do about stopping that dang train.

It's not an outright silly movie concept, and were it made in the 70's there would be a very grounded feel to it, as well as a very modest amount of action.  In Tony Scott's hands, this thing just keeps ramping up, with the train crashing into things and helicopters and hopping from train to train and all sorts of blue collar heroics.

The film tries very very hard to feel like it's at the blue collar level, peppering the dialogue with "train speak" and union talk, and it looks to speak directly to the blue collar workers of America.  But how many of them look like Chris Pine, Denzel Washington or Rosario Dawson? There's got to be a few right, and of course if anything bad were to happen, the prettiest ones would step up to save the day.  But that's Hollywood.  Scott wants this to be both grounded in lower-middle class America and also have all the glamorous facade of Hollywood.  He achieves both but they really don't fit together well.

I don't know if this film birthed the term "peril fatigue" - describing how the increasing stakes and dangers of a story ultimately become tiresome and tedious - but it definitely fits the bill.  I found this film to be more exhausting than exciting.

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I'll be honest, I started writing this, the last 10-for-10 ever (or so he says), about 6 weeks ago.  I also stopped writing it about 6 weeks ago.  Why? Because I've kind of forgotten everything about Charade, which I watched over half a year ago now.

Looking to pilfer what I wrote in Letterboxd, all I came up with was:

Is it worth watching Audry Hepburn and Carey Grant be witty and playful with each other for almost two hours? Yes, it absolutely is.

Seriously, it's like a charm duel between these two, and everyone's a winner.

I mean, I kinda just want to watch it again.

I just took another 5 minutes to read the Wikipedia synopsis which did remind me that, yes, in spite of my failing memory, I had seen the film.  The plot is fairly fleet involving death and deception, but it's sort of a pithy comedy.  On the romantic side, Hepburn and Grant should seem like an ill-suited pair, given their age difference, and yet, they basically speak the same language the same way, so the attraction quickly becomes palpable. 

It's obviously not keenly memorable -- visually, nothing sticks out in memory -- but it remains quite enjoyable nearly 60 years later.                                                                                                                                                                                                 

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The other day I was thumbing through my "Diary" on letterboxd to see just how many movies I gave 5* to, and the results were...well, not many, but more than I thought.  Star rating is not something we do here on the blog, because I think Toasty and I agree that those kinds of ratings systems are problematic.  I mean how do you give a classic like The Third Man 4 stars, and also give a cheapy holiday romance like Under The Christmas Tree the same 4*.  Well...it's because it's not the same 4*.  Those two movies are ranked on completely different scales in relation to one another. 

Much in the same way a decent, if forgettable, holiday romance would get 2* but also Jackie Chan's classic stunt-fest Police Story also only gets 2*?  It's a Criterion selection, and the letterboxd average puts the film at a 4.0?  What's going on here?

Well, here's the deal.  Police Story isn't a very good movie.  It's not even a good movie.  It's a very bad movie with some amazing stunts.  

I was so very excited to watch Police Story and I was definitely not expecting what I got. I tried so hard not to view this with the detached western ironic gaze but I couldn't help but laugh and laugh at so much of the early scenes, but the police breakdown of the targets, the subsequent bungled surveillance mission and resulting clusterfuck of a shootout. I often couldn't tell the difference between what was intentional comedy and what wasn't. That made me feel bad.

It's an ugly looking movie with an atrocious soundtrack, but obviously everything to do with Jackie Chan's physicality  --and the life-endangering stunts by he and his team -- are always marvellous to watch .  They are absolutely the draw and Chan's comedic abilities should also never be undervalued, with all the skills of a silent film master. But the majority of this was just so painful to watch, and I don't mean in the "oof, that's gotta hurt" kinda way. That courtroom scene was so cringe inducing. 

If you were to just watch the compilation of stunts on youtube, you wouldn't be missing anything.  

I was told Police Story 2 is superior, and well, that's true, it is, as reflected by my letterboxd rating of 3 1/2 (which puts it squarely in league with the top tier cheapo holiday romances) but if you were to ask me what stood out, what I took away, it would mainly be that Chan's character Chan Ka-kui is such an awful boyfriend to Mai (a fully put-upon Maggie Cheung) and it makes him rather unlikable.  

The comedy in this second feature is certainly much more heightened (and perhaps more obvious) than in the first, as well the characters here are much better defined (even if we like them less as a result).  Even the storytelling is more cohesive and not *just* a framework for building towards stunts.  The production quality is better, but Chan is only marginally a better director than the last go around.

I really like Jackie Chan's on screen persona, he's got a million-dollar smile, and his energy is infectious.  His physical talents and comedic sensibilities are beyond reproach, and yet I really don't like either of these films.  I appreciated more attention to story on the second, but it seems to have come at the expense of stunts, and the first one's singular fixation on phyiscal gags makes the story a slog to get through.

The third police story co-stars Michelle Yeoh, and though I have yet to see it I can absolutely declare it the best of the franchise....

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I've had a little crush on Michelle Yeoh since first seeing her in Tomorrow Never Dies, but cemented when someone, not long after, invited me to a screening of Wing Chun.

If you're not absolutely steeped in wuxia films all the time, then I have a sneaking suspicion that your favourites are almost always going to be the first few you see.  Wing Chun, Iron Monkey, Legend of the Drunken Master, and Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain are going to be hard to ever top, because they are cemented in my mind as the best of the genre... maybe it's because they were presented to me as such.  I don't watch wuxia often (or often enough) and I find it tedious to wade through the melange of cgi messes in order to find the gems that still get made (I'm sure).  I don't even watch classic wuxia enough because I don't really have a guide to help me wade through the miasma of dreck that surround the stone cold classics.  And I don't even watch the ones that I have genuine affection for enough, because my precious screen time these days is so given over to watching new things.

That all said, I think Wing Chun is my favourite.  I dig it so hard.  And it's not just that Michelle Yeoh is so pretty, and graceful, and badass in this movie (ok, yeah, it's mostly that) but it's also really, sincerely funny.  It's basically a 1980's style sex comedy/rom com in wuxia form that dabbles in misguided, backwards gender politics but comes out the other side sort of ok.  I mean, it's patently absurd that Wing Chun's childhood best friend (I mean, Donnie Yen, c'mon!) would return some ten years later and both not recognize her but also mistake her for a man... I mean...Michelle Yeoh, one of the most beautiful women in the world...a man... right.  

Directed by master choreographer Yeun Woo-ping, this is just an astounding display of what he does best.  I like the wire work here better than The Matrix or Crouching Tiger...better than most movies.  The cast here does everything asked of them perfectly (no matter how regressive it may be),  and in the end the three female characters are decidedly the strongest of the feature, each in their own distinct way. 

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I started this post months ago with a migraine, and now I'm ending it with a headache, so...progress?
As noted (somewhere) this will be the last 10-for-10.  It's proving to be more inhibitive to posting than helpful in getting more reviews done. I'm sure I start some other similarly stupid means of trying to crank out more posts that won't hold water after the first few attempts....

-fin-