3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): High Life

2018, Claire Denis (Un beau soleil intérieur) -- Amazon

I didn't get it. I didn't get the point. I didn't get the point of the movie, of their journey, of the choices on what human interactions were depicted in the movie. I feel dumb, I feel disconnected from an older intellect that, if not tangibly, would have felt a gut reaction to what I had watched, an inherent understanding of what the director had been trying to do here, even if I was not able to coherently say it out loud. 

I think that a lot these days -- what is the point, what was the point. I look back at my choices, my interactions, what I chose to do with my time and I wonder... why? I look at it right at this exact moment, where I watched a movie, and persevered to the end, only mildly entertained, and I wonder why. Why am I watching movies that don't excite me, why am I writing about movies without the enthusiastic desire to do so, why do I fill my queues with movies that stagnate until I wonder why I added them. So many why's that only have one banal answer -- because. Just because. I rage at the dying light, seeing fewer days ahead of me than behind, wondering if I will be filling those days with more value. I don't really have to wonder -- value will be overwhelmed by just because, because that is life. My life. What I choose.

In some ways, dude, that is exactly what the characters in the movie are going through. Some ways. Not much of it.

Kent's point in watching this movie was that he was filling his holidays off with a bunch of movies over seven days. That was the point, enjoying the sheer ability to cram the experiences into the short time period. I get that, that is one of the reasons we (Marmy and me, not Kent and I) do out "31 Days of ...", for the enjoyment of consumption for consumption's sake, for over-exposure, for over-saturation. Because some things are fun, just for fun's sake. He liked this movie much more than I did.

High Life is a space movie in three acts, about a crew of criminals sent into deep space, a journey from which they will not return, to a black hole, to do... experiments, for some reason. Act one is the introduction to Monte (Robert Pattinson, The Batman), a lone survivor with a baby. Act two revisits the journey, the crew of misfits, the experiments onboard and how the baby Willow comes about. Act three, which is very brief, have Monte and Willow, now a teenager, coming to the climax of their journey. Act two dominates the movie, and to be entirely honest, I did not like it, at all.

Even just writing this, I recall why watched this movie. In my head there is an unwritten story about a lone astronaut. It is a tale of space and purpose and technology, but for the most part it is about loneliness and isolation. So, any opportunity to see someone else explore this idea, I am onboard with. And, I like seeing how other creators explore space ships and technology, through practical effects, high & low budgets. This one was very much in the low budget.

The ship's depiction is interesting -- its just a big box with engines and the number 7 on the side. That implies six failed missions before. There is just one crew member, the captain, who has to punch his biometric driven code into the computer system once a day or... well, everything will power down. So, no thoughts of mutiny here, well, until he has a stroke and one of the prisoners, who is also the lead scientist experimenting on the criminals, realizes she can cut out that biometric code trigger and others can pretend to be him. The ship's hallways are not the usual octagonal or metal lattice work dominated conduits, just hallways, with doors, a few air locks and only a bit of greebles to make it scifi. The best part of the depiction is the garden, a massive wild structure just utterly overgrown with green -- they obviously have that science perfected and it feeds them well. It seems everyone has a purpose on the ship, but that doesn't stop them from eventually allowing their little society to break down, killing each other, until only Monte is left. Because, humans are the worst.

This middle act is dominated by the experiments the scientist Dibs (Juliette Binoche, Ghost in the Shell) is performing on them. She is obsessed with reproduction, despite being a child killer herself, and collects semen whenever the men masturbate. And then forces the women to become impregnated. But all the children are dying. The whole segment is uncomfortably intimate and visual, replacing alluring (which typical Hollywood would attempt to seduce us via) with disturbing. Only Monte seems distanced from it all, as he chooses abstinence over interaction. Until he is drugged and raped by Dibs, and she uses it, along with Boyse (Mia Goth, Pearl) the angriest of the women, to create Willow. All of it leading to her birth is so ... unsavoury.

If there was any relief to this act, it was in recollection of act one. Monte's caring for Willow is true and obvious. They still have a long number of years until they arrive at their destination so he is going to keep her alive and happy as well as he can. And he does. The final act has her as a teenager, but once again, I wonder what the point of this final, and very final, act was. I can postulate and come up with all kinds of story telling formulaic ideals, but I am still left wondering why and what was the whole value to the story that is told.

KWIF: Pee-Pee Peeping

 KWIF= Kent's Week in Film. Three "films" that start with "P" completely on accident.

This Week:
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025, d. Dan Trachtenberg - Disney+)
Pee-Wee As Himself (2025, d. Matt Wolf - HBO)
Presence (2025, d. Steven Soderbergh - AmazonPrime)

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The classic Arnold Schwartzenegger-starring Predator from 1987 was quite a successful film, as a group of mercenaries square off against a high-tech alien Predator in the jungle. It's Danny Glover-starring 1990 sequel, taking place in a sweaty, crime-addled futuristic L.A. was less successful but even more popular among the sci-fi nerds for teasing the culture of the Predators. But it was the various Dark Horse Comics mini-series in the 1990s that showed what could really be done with the Predator....

Put him at a disadvantage in a cold-weather climate. Have the Predator hunting during the first World War.  Let the Predators square off against Aliens. Or Batman. Or Tarzan. Or another Predator!

The core idea behind the Predator (their species is the Yautja...first used in the novel Aliens vs. Predator: Prey from 1994) is that they hunt those most deserving of being hunted; other hunters. Earth is so rife with skilled hunters and killers that it's a favourite hunting ground of the Yautja, but not their only one (as witnessed in 2010's Predators). The key to a good Predator story is to not focus on the Yautja much at all, and offer little to no explanation. Shane Black's 2018 travesty The Predator and the awful Aliens vs. Predator movies explained too much, tried to probe the creatures too much. So Dan Trachtenberg's back-to-basics Predator film Prey (pitting a Yautja against a Comanche warrior) came out in 2022, it paved the laneway for what future Predator stories should be... the Predator in other cultures, in other times.

The most obvious go-to would be Predator vs. Vikings, Predator vs. Samurai, Predator vs Kung Fu warrior, Predator vs Zulu warrior, etc.  So it came as a slight disappointment when the trailer Predator:Badlands dropped and it most definitely wasn't the back-to-basics follow-up to Prey I was anticipating from Trachtenberg.  What I didn't know was that the true follow-up to Prey would be Predator:Killer of Killers, stealth dropped on Hulu (in the US, Disney+ globally) last week.

At first blush, it appears to be an animated anthology film consisting of three stories: Predator vs. Vikings, Predator vs a ninja, Predator vs. WWII aerial ace, you know, the type of stories I was actually hoping would each get the full-feature, live-action treatment, not burned off in an animated tie-in. It's a movie that simultaneously offers a little more than what the typical anthology film does, but at the same time offers each conceit less than what it could have.

Set in 841 AD, "The Shield" finds a viking warrior, Ursa, leading her clan - and her son - on an assault against a foe she has been hunting for a long time.  The enemy was responsible for the death of her father a lifetime ago, but it seems revenge has been fuelling her the whole time. As she confronts the man she has hated her whole life, her son makes the killing blow, and makes him the target of the Yautja that has been observing them in action. The Predator here is a hulking beast, literally Hulk-sized, with a unique pulse emanating weapon on his right arm where his hand should be. Ursa, the Viking queen, meanwhile, fights using two shields with razor-sharp edges.  There is some wild violence and some impressive action beats in all this that allowed me to get over my disappointment of there not being more to it than there is. I feel like the emotional resonance that the story wants wasn't allowed enough time to build, both for the big confrontation the Ursa wants, and for the people she loses along the way.  I like that, like Prey, the Predator is still a more technologically advanced creature, but that technology is more primitive, clunkier than what we would see in the 20th century.

"The Sword" is set in Japan in 1609, but starts further back with two brothers, thick as thieves, who learn and train and grow up together, are forced to face each other by their disciplinarian father to see who is strongest and fiercest enough to be his heir. Kenji refuses to fight his brother, while Kiyoshi is reluctant but the disappointment of his father is too much to bear. He attacks Kenji and Kenji flees. Year later, Kiyoshi holds his father's title, and Kenji, now a ninja, sneaks into his city to get his revenge...except Kenji, for as stealthy as he is, cannot elude the Yautja observing him from behind his invisible cloak. This story, largely wordless, was everything I was wanting, except for not being live-action and feature length. It actually manages to hit the emotional resonance that "The Shield" could not, with the silence putting more emphasis of the visuals and direction, and the music providing so much of the emotional cues. As a short, it's absolutely lovely and poetic, but I still can't help want more out of it.

The end of each of "The Shield" and "The Sword" find our protagonists victorious against their alien opponent, and there's the briefest of glimpses of them in the same confined space that looks like the hold of a spacecraft. The film is teasing that there's more to Ursa and Kenji's stories than what we just saw. And then we're introduced to John Torres.

"The Bullet" is set in 1942, and finds Torres as a second-stringer aboard an aircraft carrier during World War II. Torres wants to fly, but hasn't been given the chance. When his squadron leaves to engage the enemy, Torres and his mechanic buddy discover something incredibly foreign, alien even, that's an even greater threat in the skies. He takes off in a junker plane to alert his crew to return to ship, only to have the Pred Baron start picking them off. Clearly we know Torres is successful in defeating this alien ace, but of the three stories, it's the most implausible. Torres is not, like Ursa or Kenji, so skilled, and his equipment is so outclassed it should barely be flying. Voiced by Rick Gonzalez (Arrow) Torres is a motormouth to the point of being too much, especially coming off of the quiet of "The Sword". Torres winds up verbalizing his inner monologue, which makes it feel much more cartoony than the previous for-adult-audiences entries felt.

It all culminates with a fourth act in a Yautja gladiatorial Colosseum, which I was not expecting at all. If anything I was anticipating that our three victors would wind up in the hunting forest planet from Predators. I very much enjoyed that it was something new, and there was no explaining it. We know what a gladiator arena looks like, and we know how they work, just not Predator-style, so it was full of discovery as new elements are introduced. 

All the fighting throughout the film is brutal and bloody and quite impressively choreographed. It's clean and clear what is happening in the action, although sometimes it's moving so quickly (Tractenberg using a lot of follow-from-behind or follow-in-front of the action oners) that taking in all the violent mayhem is sometimes a bit too much to process. I like how the Predator designs were all quite well thought through and how even though our protagonists were technologically outmatched, they still were smart enough to figure out how to use the Predators' technologies against themselves.

I had an absolute blast with this movie. In the end, the three opening acts come together with purpose for a rousing fourth act that, despite some pretty hand-waivy improbabilities, makes it all comes together, not just within but also outside of this film. The victories Dutch, Harrigan, and Naru all had...well, those probably weren't the end of their stories either.  Also, it should be said that at no point did Killer of Killers ever feel like it existed solely as an introduction to the forthcoming Badlands. It will be interesting to see if they do connect in any way, but even still, this feels as stand-alone as every other Predator story, which is amazing.

[Series Minded: Predator edition]

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When I was a young lad, I thought Pee-Wee Herman was real. Like, maybe he didn't always look like that, in that suit, with the hair slicked back, but to me I had no awareness there was anyone underneath. Pee-Wee was a character actor like, say Ernest or Hulk Hogan or Mr. T, who only seemed to star as himself in movies and TV shows about himself as the character.  I didn't know Paul Ruebens from a hole in the ground until he was arrested at a porn theatre in 1991, and suddenly the magic was dispelled.  I mean, I was 15 at the time, and I knew Santa wasn't real, but this was the first true realization that Pee-Wee was a character played by someone not named Pee-Wee Herman.

We lost Paul Ruebens to cancer in the summer of 2023. He was 70 years old. In the year prior to his death, he agreed to participate in a documentary about himself, shedding off the layers upon layers of privacy he'd long, long held and opening himself up to examination and scrutiny in a way that seemed to frighten him previously.

We learn about Ruebens' early days, his family, his dalliances with theatre and art school in his teens, and we learn about his coming out story, which led to his re-closeting story once he started achieving success. He had a true love-at-first-sight relationship post-College, and he had formed a true bond with this man, as they shacked up and got a cat, Ruebens found himself content.  But that contentedness presented a crossroads: either live the life of love, or live the life of ambition. He chose the latter, broke his lover's heart and his own, and set out for L.A. where he joined up with the Groundlings comedy troupe. From there characters, including Pee-Wee were built, but there was something about Pee-Wee that demanded more attention, both from Ruebens and the audience.

Ruebens was committed as a performer. He invested himself in whatever it was he was doing. He knew how to steal scenes with looks and physicality more than words (but as we see in the documentary, he does have a razor-sharp comedy mind to accompany the sly-little-devil twinkle in his eye). As Pee-Wee became a bigger and bigger thing from stage to screen to Saturday morning subversive idol to children and college kids, Ruebens sheltered himself to the point that he barely existed outside of the character he played. His ambitions got the better of him, relationships with friends and colleagues fractured, and then the arrest.

A children's show host being arrested for something indecent coming out of America's puritanical 80's (where sex was evil, but violence and greed were good for all) was the death knell for Pee-Wee and Ruebens spiralled. 

The first half of this two-part documentary (each part 100 minutes long) follows Rueben's life through all these elements, with friends and ex-colleagues all talking about how amazing it was to be part of it all but also speaking truth to who Ruebens was at the time, as Ruebens himself struggles on camera to fully lay it out and cede control of his narrative to his director.

The second half is all about the fall of Pee-Wee Herman, and then his revival, and his third act, and all the messiness in between. The first half is a real rise-to-fame story, but without revealing in the triumph, since there were sacrifices along the way that have manifested as, if not regrets, then at least remorse. The second half is very much a rollercoaster, as Ruebens tries to find his footing as Paul Ruebens and it's full of ebbs and flows that must have been really tumultuous and stressful to live through, particularly the very public reaction and hurtful things said about him. Rueben's relationship with his sexuality is an integral part to the story, and probably a lot of what Ruebens wanted to get off his chest about in the documentary. 

There's a lot of great things about this documentary, first and foremost is Ruebens himself. Even at 68/69 years old, secretly dealing with cancer, he looked fantastic and vital with a precociousness about him that was so alluring to watch. His combative nature with director Matt Wolf is the B-story to the documentary, where clearly Wolf was constantly having to fend off Rueben's stabs at taking control of the project.  Rueben's jabs at the director start out quite playful and take on a bit more menace the closer they get to the more troublesome years. 

The talking heads are all fascinating, most coming from such a place of love, but a few coming from a point of pain, of regret or remorse around their falling out with Reubens (and there were a few). The sheer volume of personal films and tapes that Ruebens had around his life makes this documentary sing with not just the narrative but visual proof of that narrative, and transporting the audience into the past.  

There have been a slew of documentaries about celebrities of the 70's, 80's and 90's of late, most of them produced by the celebrities (or their family/estate) leading to pretty whitewashed looks at their lives, celebrating more their glories than their humanity. This is very much the opposite, really getting in touch with the person who hid behind a character for so long that he had a hard time finding his way out again. It should be a compelling watch if you ever had any affinity for Ruebens at all. 

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I wrote a bit about Steven Soderbergh's prolific output in my Black Bag review (Toasty just published his, we agree!), so I won't rehash it here, except to say that the man put out two films in the first quarter of this year. That's insane. Even more insane is that Black Bag was a critical hit but fared poorly at the box office while Presence was pretty much ignored by everyone, but its low budget meant that it would up being a modest success.

Where Black Bag was a real adult sexy thriller starring big stars, Presence is an experiment in filmmaking with a story.  While the story's unfolding nature of discovery does lead the audience through the proceedings rather well, it's unable to escape the techniques Soderbergh employs that are simultaneously distracting and effective.

The whole film takes place inside a gorgeously refurbished 19th century home which had Lady Kent and I both salivating. It's a dream home, to be sure. The film opens with the Payne family looking at the property, and then moving in. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is the driving force of the family, clearly successful, but there are hints that her success hasn't always been above board. She is obsessed with the wellbeing of her superstar swimmer son,  Tyler (Eddie Maday) while all but ignoring the well-being of her daughter, Chloe (Callina Lang), much to husband Chris's (Chris Sullivan) constant displeasure. Chloe has recently lost two friends two overdoses, and she's spinning out. Chris does what he can to engage, but it seems like Rebekah and Tyler just ride her and push her too hard. Tyler introduces her to his new friend Ryan, and soon Ryan and Chloe are hooking up. He seems like a good guy, and lets Chloe take the lead in their relationship, but there's also an air of menace about him. He's up to something, and it's not what you think, but the film wants you to think it.

The entire production is told from a sort of floating first-person perspective, which, it's slowly revealed, is the "Presence" of the title. Yes, it is a ghost story. It's not a horror movie, but just a drama in which a ghost is our eyes into the play. At times the spirit, who Chloe believes is her dead friend, seems to be  trying to interfere in what's happening, mostly unsuccessfully, but events that elicit a particularly strong emotion from the spirit allow it to interact with its environment.

It's a bit of a trifle of a film. It exists solely for Soderbergh to play with this first-person perspective storytelling, which doesn't have a lot of true success stories in the film world outside of Nickel Boys which earned an Oscar nomination at this year's Academy Award.  But presence is more in the "just trying something here" vein of Hardcore Henry or Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void and is about as successful as either of them. When the whole story is in service of a stylistic experiment, there's a layer that gets in the way of the audience engaging with the story fully.  

As well, the third act climax felt...very Hollywood. This took a family drama with a hint of supernatural intensity and turned it into a studio movie with a legit villain. I didn't really expect too much from Presence and it doesn't ask much either. It's fine for what it is. 

Double Dose: Soderbergh

(New Feature: Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...pretty simple.  Today, a couple of non-theatrical releases from Steven Soderbergh).

Behind the Candelabra (2013, HBO)
High Flying Bird (2019, Netflix)


BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

It's hard to believe in the 2010s that an elaborate production about the life of a very famous person starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon would have trouble finding theatrical distribution and be relegated to "TV movie" status by debuting as a prestige picture on HBO.  It did remarkably well in that relegation, though, gaining an audience of 3.5 million in its first night of airings and it won 14 Emmys (including outstanding mini-series or movie, best actor in mini-series or movie and best director), and counted 2 Golden Globes among its many other accolades. 

Liberace was indeed a very famous human being up until his death in 1987.  He was a larger than life character who lived his life as opulently as the richest of Middle Eastern royalty.  He was a piano virtuoso, a phenom that impressed with his skills and wowed with his showmanship for over five decades.  But as a celebrity in his time, homosexuality was just not an option, it was a career ender, and though living a very gay private life, he fought the image very publicly.  It's only been in recent years, perhaps since 2013 that out performers aren't being singularly pigeonholed or outright ostracized, and not to say that Behind the Candelabra had anything to do with that, but it certainly explored the topic of sexuality and celebrity like few other productions of this scale had.

The narrative thrust of the film is the relationship between Liberace (Michael Douglas, absolutely inhabiting the role) and Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) for six years starting in 1977.  It never dances around their sexuality, and Lee (as Liberace was known to his friends and lovers) was a hungry predator, welcoming the young, taut Scott into his fold after but a glance when introduced by mutual friend Bob Black (Scott Backula).

Scott was about 40 years Lee's junior, and shortly after their introduction there was an obvious moment where Lee's current concubine/protege knew he was on his way out, sending daggers Scott's way knowing he was about to be replaced with a younger model.  Lee wore his sexuality like heavy baggage.  In public he disavowed any inference that he was anything but the straightest of strait, dining with other prime female showpersons like Charo for aesthetics, but in private he voraciously romanced younger men and consumed porn.  He didn't care to venture into public except for his performances, instead keeping a sheltered life within his various ornate homesteads.  He had a whole support network to keep his dalliances secret, and to feed him a new supply of conquests.

Scott did not mind being a kept man, at first, having been overwhelmingly wowed and dazzled by Liberace as any member of the public would be, but also taken into his confidence and learning to love the man under all the glitz and glamor.  Lee's egocentricity and vanity was far from subtle and certainly problematic.  He even had Scott undergo plastic surgery to look like a younger version of himself (his prior protege whom we fleetingly see in the opening of the film too bore somewhat of a similiarity).  Scott's love had him willingly go along with such a bizarre plan, but in the process he becomes addicted to prescription and illicit drugs prescribed by the plastic surgeon (played by scene stealing Rob Lowe in an outrageously ghoulish performance).

But Lee's avoidance of the public life meant Scott was too kept, and too stir crazy.  He had few friends beyond his drug dealers, and had no identity of his own.  As tensions raised in the house (Lee was very disapproving of Scott's drug habits), Lee's eyes started to wander, and soon Scott was in the position of the dagger-throwing boyfriend on the outs, seeing Lee flirting heavily with a new stage dancer opening for his show.   The circular nature was incredibly well handled.

Soderbergh's attention to detail, his reverence and affection for the subjects, while also maintaining a critical eye are all at play.  This is a tragic love story as well as a love letter.  The closing moments at Lee's funeral, and Scott's vision of Liberace's departing performance is a genuinely beautiful tribute to a marvelous performer and flawed man, and also acts as the final bow for famed composer Marvin Hamlisch.  Douglas commits to the role like no other I've seen him in.  He's always been a solid actor, but this was another level (had this film had a theatrical release he no doubt would have won best actor, but he'll settle for the Emmy and Golden Globes he received).  Damon was quite good, however he's easily 20 years too old for the role, and the miscasting is its own problem.  The lack of gay voices in the actual telling of the film is another.  In spite of that lack of representation, the film was still given a GLAAD media award and Soderbergh seemed to take other pains in ensuring that he was not working in cliches or exploitation.

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HIGH FLYING BIRD

This is the type of sports movie I get into, one that deals with the money and politics of it, the game beyond the game. It's set in the world of sports agents, where Andre Holland plays a man with his back against the wall trying to rep his clients during an NBA lockout. Nobody is getting paid and the shortsighted, monetary-focussed agency he works for is utterly disinterested in spending any more on their clients until the lockout has resolved. Likewise they look at Holland and don't see his value, what he brings to the table that's any different from anyone else. What they don't realize -- but his disgruntled friend and agency lawyer Sonja Sohn keenly observes -- is he's 20 steps ahead of everyone. Even though the film puts that right out there, the masterstroke here is it still gives you plenty of opportunity to doubt Holland and his plan.  But in seeing it come to fruition -- with some devious manipulation and a hip-to-his-playbook accomplice in Zazie Beetz (who is NOT his assistant anymore) -- is a work of beauty.

The film is, in a way, a heist movie, with Soderbergh flexing his Oceans series muscles to present a much different type of scam. The script is ludicrously sharp, the actors are all so game for what's in play (the dynamics of this cast are so good), and the deftness of putting a spotlight on systemic racial exploitation in sports sparks a necessary conversation we don't hear enough of.  Like Behind the Candelabra, Soderbergh has an empathy and astuteness towards situations that may not be of his own experience, but he has no problem conveying with authenticity.

If the film sags a little, it's in Soderbergh's experimentation with shooting the film only with iPhones, which is in stark contrast to the stylishness of his Liberace biopic.  At times he captures some gorgeous shots (acting as his own cinematographer in pseudonym) but there's a samey-ness to them, particularly the wide angles largely employed that seem more like restrictions of the filming medium than deliberate choices.  Soderbergh has always been an experimenter, and this, his second feature shooting exclusively with iPhones suffers slightly for it.

Soderbergh's name will bring people to the film, but buried in a glut of Netflix releases with little promotion, this is going to unjustly fly under the radar of most people.  Hopefully word of mouth will propel this to more people's recommended lists.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

2018, d. David Slade -- netflix

For the better part of the last 25 years we've been hearing that movies can't compete with video games. As they advance in graphics and maturity, and continue to outearn most cinematic offerings, the perception is that video games offer an interactive experience that is superior to the passive experience of watching a film.

Enter creator Charlie Booker's latest entry in his Black Mirror anthology, Banderstanch. This is an interactive film, based on the conceit of the popular Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novellas of the 1980s, which allows the viewer to direct the flow of the film. It's the type of project we've been anticipating for quite some time, but has never been feasible for the cinematic group experience. Even for DVD this type of idea would be a hard sell. It's only because of the ubiquitousness of Netflix, and the power of video streaming that such an endeavor is even possible.

The "film", if we can even properly call it that, present a metatextual story set in the early 1980's, about Stefan, a young man who is developing a video game based on a pick-a-path adventure novel. As the film progresses we are frequently presented with options to guide Stefan...choosing breakfast, saying yes or no to an offer, deciding to react violently or calmly, those sorts of things. When the choices are presented (for a limited time before it chooses for you) the scene on screen continues to play out with almost unnoticeable stalling tactics, and after you make your choice the story progresses, in most cases seamlessly.

If you make the "wrong" choice, as would happen with a CYOA novel, your journey ends, but where with a book you would simply flip back to the last fork in the path and change options, Bandersnatch will send you back to a certain starting point or sometimes present options of forking points to return to. As you return, deftly edited sequences reiterate the path you've taken to this point.

Where Bandersnatch really comes alive is in the awareness that the "wrong" choices weren't without an impact, as the characters on screen experience deja vu or become confused about reality. Stefan is a troubled young man as is, taking medication and seeing a therapist are aspects of his life introduced early. As things progress, Stefan's grip on "reality" become strained, and he will, I guess depending on the paths you take, start breaking the fourth wall, his mind bending with notions of being controlled, but uncertain of whom his controller is.

Invariably, one's grip on the reality of Stefan's world gets strained, as you begin to backtrack on choices over and over again. Bandersnatch is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book in the movie, it's also a game in the movie, and it's also the name of the story you are watching. It is many things, and it's aware that it is these many things. The metatextual nature is partly the point, that reality and control of reality are somewhat delusional. And in this case the idea that you actually have control over the narrative is what's in question, as many times the story leads you to where it wants to go.

It's not unlike a video game. Regardless of what video game you play or how advanced they get, you can only do so much with what the creators have programmed into it. Your perception of choice and control in a video game is still only limited to what has been given to you. As a storytelling vehicle, a video game only allows you to do what will progress the story they want to tell. Until you do what they want, the story doesn't progress. The illusion of control.

There's a certain amount of sophomoric philosophy at play in Bandersnatch, but it does provide a foundation for further contemplation once one completes their viewing of the "movie". That completion point is completely up to the viewer, as the way it's set up seems to allow the viewer unending opportunity to "flip" back in the story. It can get tedious if you've passed your second hour of what's otherwised posed as a 90-minute story, and there's likely a saturation point for most viewers. Even still, after spending about 130 minutes with Bandersnatch, I'm keen to revisit from scratch at least once more.

To criticise this experiment based on the story it tells is to overlook the experience, which is absolutely unique to the medium. The story, for what its worth, is a far cry better and more thoughtful than every Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story I've ever read, so there's that. It's pioneering, but time will tell if anyone decides to pick up the ball on this challenge and make it into an art.