KWIF: The Devil Wears Prada 2 (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. It was a real toss up: final two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again's second season, or the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada. It was no toss up. Daredevil has been, to put it bluntly, repetitive and boring, while TDWP2 is an event! It wasn't even a competition.

This Week:
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026, d.  David Frankel - in theatre)
Mortal Kombat II (2026, d. Simon McQuoid - in theatre)
Keyhole (2011, d. Guy Maddin - tubi)
Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (2002, d. Takashi Miike - tubi)
Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988, d. Akio Jissoji - tubi)

I am not a journalist. Despite having been a writer and for many online resources for over 30 years, nothing I've done is what I would call journalism. The closest I came was a 3 year stint on editorial at my student newspaper in University (I thought this was an extraordinary and fundamental time in my life but in hindsight, turns out it was a somewhat juvenile and retroactively embarrassing era for both myself and the paper, full of (my own) sloppy work, ill-informed editorials, and errors in judgement. My desire to be more like the Harvard Lampoon or Mad Magazine than anything with journalistic integrity (which is not to diminish the work of my collaborators, but I was really not up to the task...but I digress). 

I got a degree in business, not journalism, and I cared about each equally (which is to say, minimally). It's probably for the best I never went into journalism professionally (though I tried on a few occasions). I don't have the stones for it. Much like being an artist, being a journalist requires sacrifice, and the rewards are not monetary, and you have to love it (which I don't...I respect it, don't love it so much). Plus, in the past 15 years or so, there's been a decided attack on journalism as an institution. Truth telling is now all a matter of perspective (or so the 1% overlords would have us believe). It's been a rough dozen-plus years for the media. Most of my favourite writers are now doing their own Substack or Substack-adjacent writing, and supplementing any written work with podcasting. The world is a lesser place for social media having supplanted traditional media as people's primary source of news (or, rather, "news"). There's no security to working in the world of journalism.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a sequel that doesn't need to exist. Nothing about the end of The Devil Wears Prada demands we know more. But now that it does exist, that it sets itself on top of the backdrop of the failing state of traditional media and the billionaire bros who snap up media outlets so they can control the narrative with their detached-from-the-layman world view...well, at least there's something for it say, something to explore in this moment, even if it doesn't quite have the firmest grasp on its message.

We find, when this film starts, Andy Sach (Anne Hathaway) has just won a journalism award but also, at almost the same moment, via text, finds out that she and her entire staff at the newspaper she was writing for have been laid off. Meanwhile Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) has just had an expose written about how Runway Magazine has promoted and supported a brand who runs a manufacturing sweatshop. This is a scandal, one which Miranda of 20 years ago would never have found herself in (it's telling in many ways that she has).  The owner of Runway's media parent, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) needs damage control, and thus returns Andy to Runway, the place where she interned 20 years ago, now as the new features editor.

She reunites with Nigel (Stanley Tucci) and Miranda (who doesn't remember her, or so she says), and is instantly swept into a meeting with their key advertiser, Dior, where Emily (Emily Blunt) now works as retail manager.

Andy finds Miranda in a subdued position relative to where she once was. Still a titan of the industry, print media is all but dead, and the online sphere for Runway has trouble competing with other scroll-and-like spaces. Andy's role is, at first, damage control, but also about trying to raise Runway's profile up.  It needs to be more than just about the pictures, people need to read it for the articles too.  Without saying it, it's attempting to "Teen Vogue" it (where in the mid-2010s Teen Vogue shifted its focus from fashion and entertainment and rapidly gained attention for it's provocative and insightful political articles.... Teen Vogue was collapsed into the parent Vogue in 2025 by its publishing overlords, according to many to stifle its anti-right wing messaging).

Andy's efforts to raise the status of the magazine is noticed in the media, but not represented in the site traffic. She needs a big gambit both to secure her place and to gain at least a modicum of respect from Miranda. She needs to land the white whale interview: Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu). The ex-wife of one of the world's richest men (a chuckling tech bro doofus played brilliantly under gobs of makeup by Justin Theroux) is now the world's richest woman, but Sasha hasn't given an interview in the three years since the divorce. Andy lands the interview (conducted by Miranda but the article written by Andy) and not only gets in Miranda's good graces once again but becomes a bit of a legend.  

The crux of the film, however, is that no matter what one good story brings for a day, a week, or a month, it's not enough. The cycles move on so fast that there's no time to rest, and media and journalism are still a dying form, unable to demand enough attention in the attention economy when there's injured baby foxes being fed milk from a bottle or video game live streams that run for two days straight to compete with. Runway is on the table to be sold...or on the chopping block to be axed.

While the first act is all about Andy getting reacquainted with a world she left behind 20 years earlier and noting both the similarities and shocking differences, the second act is about settling in, about establishing a new life in a roller-coaster world of uncertainty and insecurity. Miranda is the only one who seems like teflon-coated steel, nothing penetrates and nothing sticks...but even she is showing signs that that it's all actually getting to her too. The world is changing and she can only do so much to change with it.

The third act then becomes about Andy's perception of the situation, that the threat to Runway, one of the last bastions of traditional media, is the warning siren and that saving it means much more than just saving a magazine but providing hope for the entire industry of journalism.  It's idealist and optimistic, and it takes the audience on that ride of hope and scrappy-can-do attitude.

And then Miranda slaps her in the face with reality. It's only a matter of time. There's a boa wrapped tightly around every industry, squeezing tighter and tighter trying to milk them for everything they're worth, until they're worth nothing, at least monetarily. The solution to the troubles in this picture all rely on the good graces of an ultra-rich benefactor to whom minimal, or no returns (or even negative returns) are worth the investment for the art and integrity. You can't monetize artistry and integrity.

This, mercifully, isn't a naive film, although at times Andy is far too naive as a character, and Miranda is far too withholding to fully invest in the driving story forces at play. It does oversimplify its narrative so that it can have a satisfying ending while still being cognizant that there remains a dark cloud overhead and the struggle will continue after the last pan of the New York skyline.

The Devil Wears Prada was a really good movie that has become sort of legendary. The sequel doesn't tarnish the legend, though it fails to find its own legendary status in the process. It's a pretty picture, with tons of fabulous outfits, sets, and settings (and boy does Anne Hathaway look more amazing than she ever has), all of which are a must, and it mercifully doesn't wallow in the past. It does unfortunately seems obliged to put Andy kind of in the same place she was in during the first movie, even though she has two decades of prestigious experience, world travelling and her own life under her belt. It's natural for someone to find themselves repeating patterns of behaviour when with certain people, but I just felt like she should be much more assured than she is here. Similarly, Miranda shows next to no sign of growth, yet she feels muted compared to the ruthless ferocity which she had in the prior film. But she's also almost 70 now, and there does come something of a softening with age which we should find believable.

Already a massive box office success, the best we can say about The Devil Wears Prada 2 is that it does fine as a sequel. It doesn't at all diminish what came before, nor does it immediately discount its own existence. I find myself wishing that it were more interested in its setting, exploring the erosion of media and journalism, especially given the eyes it has on it, but that's not the audience its serving (this isn't The Paper 2 or Broadcast News 2). It serves its audience well...or well enough.

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I didn't see the 2021 iteration of Mortal Kombat (but Toasty did) and, to be honest, I didn't care to. From all reports it was attempting to be a character-driven narrative exploring the characters of Sub-Zero and Scorpion, and that there was not, in fact, any Mortal Kombat to be had. I mean, what's the point then?

I am by no means invested in Mortal Kombat as a property. The last version of the game I played was its original incarnation. But that said, I've long had a soft spot for the '95 cinematic treatment from Paul WS Anderson, a film that has aged surprisingly well in that it was always kind of hokey and wasn't taking the whole thing too seriously. The last thing we need to do is take Mortal Kombat too seriously.

It seemed like (at least from Toasty's report) MK2021 was taking things too seriously. Mortal Kombat II wants you to think it's not taking things too seriously... but it still is. What story there is within the film is wildly unfocussed and largely predictable, with absolutely no tension built along the way (for a number of reasons). The movie starts by introducing the concept of "Mortal Kombat", where two realms, instead of waging war, compete in a tournament of 10 fights. The first to win five of these fights is victor and the losing side's realm is theirs. Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) watches her father get brutally defeated by Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) and her mother and people immediately subjugated under him. He takes her as his daughter (I can't say for certain the scriptwriter was just aping Gamora's story from Guardians of the Galaxy/Infinity War but it's basically the same) which I'm sure will work out fine for everyone as a big happy new family.

Meanwhile Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) is a washed up Stephen Segal-type 90's action star who nobody cares about anymore. He's sad about his life but Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) recruit him for Mortal Kombat, Raiden promising him a greater, more fulfilling destiny. He declines, but, it turns out, he doesn't have a choice.

And so Kitana fights for her father, reluctantly, while Johnny Cage fights for Earth, reluctantly, only it turns out Kitana is a spy for Raiden and Johnny Cage has a warrior within, so the dramatic narrative arcs these characters can take are, well, straight lines rather than curves. Their stories go from A-to-C without even thinking about venturing towards B along the way.

So if there's no real character arcs in this film, surely it will have fun with team dynamics, right? Inner conflict and romances and whatnot? Notsomuch. Or at all. The "team" here, Raiden, Sonya, Johnny, Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Jax (Mechad Brooks), and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) spend their time together largely spitting exposition. There's no real sense of camaraderie or any sense of these characters becoming friends or connected to each other in any way (we're told that Sonya and Jax are old friends, but do we feel it? Notsomuch). 

The film spends a lot of time trying to circle back on characters from the prior movie, even though they are not central figures here. As such, unless you are really invested in MK2021 then these beats have little to no weight on their own (like, Hiroyuki Sanada returns as Scorpion, but in the underworld, where he resumes his fight against the revived Sub-Zero to no real effect of the story at hand). 

So, if it fails at developing anything meaningful with its characters, MKII must be all about the tournament and the fighting, right? Yes and no. It does feature heavily its match-ups, the one-on-one fights, but none of them carry with them the weight of what the stakes of the tournament, and the fate of the "Earth realm". The film brutally fails at finding any tension within the tournament itself. With one or two exceptions, nobody witnesses the fights, so there's no crowd reactions, no cut to team-mates or friends as they watch their friends succeed or fail brutally. There's just nothing exciting outside of maybe a few cool manoeuvres or a particularly gory fatality, and there's not enough of those to justify a feature length movie this uninteresting.

It wouldn't be so bad if the film at least had style, but it's so evident that it was filmed on the Volume or similar on-set digital backdrop technology, and that the crew were either inexperienced with it or didn't have the time to refine their shots. The actors are lit so horrendously that they have a soft glow outline around them much of the time, while the backdrops too often don't feel tangible at all (I will concede that it's entirely possible that watching this on an IMAX screen made this so much more evident than a standard movie screen, or any home viewing implement). The few sets actually constructed feel cheap, much cheaper than an $80million budget would presume.  That, visually, this film feels inferior to the 1995 adaptation of Mortal Kombat is very telling.  That film used mostly practical sets that were well lit and well shot. This film seemed hampered by its constraints and is pretty ugly as a result.  At the very least the 1995 film had a still-iconic techno soundtrack, and this film's score doesn't even seem to be trying. 

There is one sequence not shot on a set, where Johnny, Liu Kang, Sonya and Jax venture into the home terrain of the excessively-toothed character Barada. It's an exterior desert set that has scale and doesn't feel contained by walls or barriers. Since it's outdoors there's a lot of natural light, and it does everyone a world of favours that the rest of the film does not. The fight between Johnny and Barada is fun and silly and feels like the only real payoff for Johnny (or any character for that matter) in the film.

Fans of the franchise will probably get more out of this than I will, but a films at this budget really should be trying for something more than fan service.

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I'm a bad Canadian cinephile. I don't spend enough time exploring the films or filmmakers of my home country. This is in large part due to the fact that Canadian cinema, by and large, doesn't have the resources that the films of other countries do. And with the exception of Quebec, which has an industry all its own, most of our best talents get co-opted by our neighbours to the South, obfuscating a film's Canadian-ness, if anything remains at all.

There are a few notable filmmakers who have made a name on an international scale that still largely work within the Canadian system and tell stories set within the country.  Guy Maddin is definitely such an auteur, one who likes to combine his fascination with the earliest era of filmmaking with a love of his homeland. Or so I've been told. I've seen maybe one or two of his films in the distant past, and have long been meaning to catch up.

Keyhole, his 2011 effort, was maybe not the first place to start. A psychological noir set in a haunted house, the film follows Ulysses Pick (Jason Patrick) and his gang of thugs as they barricade themselves in Ulysses' home. 

Our key signal that things are askew finds Ulysses' second-in-command telling the dead to face the wall and the living to face forward. The dead, then, march out the back door to face a proper disposal.

Ulysses emerges from the rain with Denny (Brooke Pallson) slung over his shoulder. They're both drenched. Eventually Ulysses will get dry, Denny will always seem perpetually wet, despite a change of clothes.

Ulysses warns the gang the house is haunted and to beware of touching ghosts. Meanwhile he searches the house with Denny in tow, her ability to read into his thoughts aid him in his quest to find his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) within the twisted maze of hallways and stairs and doors. 

He is vexed by the ghost of Hyacinth's father (a very nude Louis Negin), who manipulates environments throughout the house, though does not seem to have any real control.

The journey is an abstract one, lacking decisive logic, living between metaphors. As a film, it is an exploration of Ulysses' life, his failures as a husband and father, and it questions whether these failures mean anything to him.

It's a puzzling film which it both its greatest and most detrimental asset. Bending your brain to understand what it is Maddin is trying to convey has its rewards when you can reach an understanding in what you see, but the dream logic that prevails often has no meaning, serving primarily to keep the audience off balance.

Maddin's first digitally-shot film, it's a black-and-white production but doesn't have the olde-timey feel (the heavy make-up of the silent or gangster film eras, for example) and it doesn't look particularly good. The sets, lighting and costume seem constructed on a shoestring budget (which they probably were) and lack the usual hand-crafted flair of the films of Maddin's I'm (not-so-)familiar with.

What probably lets the film down the most, however, is the character of Ulysses, who just isn't very compelling. Whether it's Patrick's performance or what he was given to work with, I was never certain why we should care about Ulysses or his journey.

Once I get into the swing of watching Maddin's pictures, acquainting myself anew with his sensibilities, I might soften on Keyhole, but as stands I found it a pretty rough watch.

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If I were to attempt to catch up on the works of Takasi Miike, it would have to be the only movies I watched in a year. The director has made around 120 films since his debut in the early 1990s and dozens upon dozens of television episodes. That prolific level of output seems unprecedented, and one has to wonder what gets sacrificed in the process of producing as such speed.

Like Guy Maddin above, I'm not particularly well-versed in Miike's repertoire, certainly not enough to speak to any overall style or sensibilities (a quick search of this blog finds no entries of Miike films...which surprises, me. I thought for sure Toasty would have one or two Miikes written up). 

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (aka "Noboru Ando's True Outlaw Tales: Raging Fire") opens with a primal scream over a heavy metal track. The camera tracks a young man running full tilt through the streets of Tokyo (intercut with flashes of...other things, a perplexing montage of images at this stage of a film to be sure). Finally the young man, guns drawn, leaps over a small barricading wall of an outdoor stairwell and begins firing on the group of men below (clearly mobsters, based on the way the one man is dressed compared to the other men around him). The gunman dispatches everyone, having hit the boss at least once at this point. The boss does not fall, he keeps lumbering forward, taking more and more bullets, until he has his hands around his assailant's throat. The only escape the gunman has is to cut the man's hand's off. Thankfully his partner has come by for clean-up.  The next shot of the young assassin, we see him naked on a couch, the severed hands still attached to his throat.

Yeah, this is kind of what I think of when I think of a Miike film. Extremes.

The story of the film finds Arata Kunisada (Riki Takeuchi ) freed from prison. The mob boss that was just assassinated was a father figure to him, and he is distraught and vengeful. 

But this isn't a one-man-assassin squad/John Wickian tale, at least not yet. The film cuts between different mob factions and Kunisada's journey, which for much of the film's run time finds him hiding out, rather than pursuing his revenge.  But eventually Kunisada gets back on track and, well, finds a missile launcher to help him on his quest.

Having just watched the excellent Italian mob-revenge actioner Big Guns, this very much feels like another take on the same story, right down to the police sort of standing by, or perhaps even aiding the protagonist in their mission of revenge. The difference is Big Guns felt quite calculated and detailed in its execution. Rekka on the other hand feels quite rushed and unrefined. That shagginess has a bit of an appeal, for sure, but it makes for some confusing story beats, or even whole acts. (There's a detour that Kunisada takes with a possible love interest that seems completely inconsequential to the overall story, and, for the amount of screentime it takes, contributes little to our understanding of this rather one note character).

The film dabbles with character drama and mafia intrigue but isn't particularly committed to either, and by the time the big rocket-launcher climax happens, it becomes a big old cartoon that betrays whatever it was trying to do emotionally before. 

The film closes with the ghost of a dead mob boss popping his head into frame, shouting "rock and roll!" It's not a vibes movie, per se, but perhaps Miike is a vibes director, and you're either on his wavelength or you're not. I dunno...Rekka wasn't boring, except when it was.

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One thing I'm always searching for is films from the 1980s with great special effects, including miniatures and big sets and puppets and stop-motion animation. I've exhausted most of the North American releases some time ago (though there is still the rare surprise) and have to look internationally for such pleasures. The main problem is I have no idea where to look, or what I'm looking for, and sacrificing a few hours hoping for something inspired to look at can be such a gamble.

The opening moments of Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (aka "Teito Monogatari") deliver instantly. A glorious barrage of manufactured clouds, impeccably lit with purple and red hues leads way to a massive set where a group of mages start mumbling incantations, causing the set to rumble and fracture and animated lighting to strike. There are rods sticking up from the ground that receive the lightning and are rotoscoped with a glowing red tinge. This is all glorious even if the dialogue of the scene is moving so fast that I had to rewind at least three times over to catch all the exposition.

The gist of The Last Megalopolis is that, centuries ago, Taira no Masakado led an uprising against the lords of Tokyo and failed. His spirit, though dormant, haunts the city. Should anyone dare to desecrate the site where he lay, he will awaken and destroy the city. And so, the demon Yasunori Kato (garbed in an Imperial Officer uniform, he is no doubt the inspiration for M. Bison in the Street Fighter video games) seeks to do just that, but in order to awaken the Masakado, he needs the blood of his descendant to do so. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

What follows is a convoluted but enthralling tale that takes place over three time periods from the early 1910s to the late 1920s. It's heavy on incantations, sorcery and witchcraft (of a type), and a bevvy of effects to go along with it. The best special effects in the film find paper being dispatched by both the good guys and bad, sailing on the wind before crumpling itself up and then transmogrifying into a bird or a wee little rat-like beastie. It's really, really cool.

The Last Magalopolis is based off the novel "Teito Monogatari" (adapted into Manga prior to the film's release and into an anime series in the early 1990s), and combines elements of real Tokyo history with epic fantasy and spirituality. A lot of the characters in this story are actual historical figures, and I guess the production team thought that it was enough of a shorthand to not really explore these characters at all.  It is completely a story-driven film, and figures wind their way in and out of the story in such a manner that if you're not used to Japanese names it can get confusing as to who is being referred to in a given situation and why. Also, this film is not waiting for you to catch up.

It's a propulsive narrative, even at two hour and fourteen minutes, and by the end while it has a resolution, barely feels resolved... because it isn't. This is effectively the first half of the story, condensed. A follow-up film, Tokyo: The Last War would be released the subsequent year. 

Part fantasy, part horror, part historical fanfic it's a wild and dense production that perplexes and delights in equal measure.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Road House

2024, Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) -- Amazon

I was not a huge fan of the first movie, but I have always liked the stoic man of skill & violence who wanders into town to make things right, ala your classic western. Good thing one of the supporting characters in this movie sees that connection, and also comments on it. So much of this remake of the 1989 Swayze movie is a nod & wink to the original. The original was not exactly Shakespeare so you cannot expect this to rise above its origins. But, it is a pretty good Friday night popcorn flick.

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal, Source Code) is an ex-UFC fighter who makes money on the underground fighting circuit by scaring his opponents to forfeit. That impresses Frankie (Jessica Williams, Booksmart) enough to offer him a job as bouncer at her roadhouse on the Florida Keys. The original called Swayze's character a cooler, basically a head-bouncer often tasked with de-escalating. I don't think de-escalation is the point of this movie. We want to see Dalton beat up Bad Guys in Reacher style "you guys don't want to do this" ways. Again, stoic western lone wanderer. 

I was actually looking forward to this movie; not sure why, but that the work-related funk I am currently in is not letting me focus on better movies. I have half a dozen of them in half-watched states. I am tempted to abandon my attempts at watching "better movies" and embracing the suck, i.e. watching a bunch of B and Z grade movies to sate the consumption part of my brain, maybe a short run of Nick Cage's massive catalog of late? Even watching terrible movies allows for the brain to view and dissect and capture some of the "magic" of movie making.

Not sure why you are repeating what you said already in the comments here. I know you think there is an "audience" but. for real, you know the audience is Kent and Kent already responded about stepping off the yellow brick road can only lead to ruin.

Anywayz, Dalton gets off a bus in the "town" of Glass Key. Towns in these movies are never more than a few businesses and focal points. Like small towns on older roads of the Trans-Canada highway, they don't have "downtowns", residential neighbourhoods or even a centre or industry. But obviously Glass Key has enough money and residents to fuel The Road House's income, as well as the Bad Guy's plan to knock it all down to build a resort.

Dalton is a haunted man, constantly reliving his last official UFC fight, which gets teased out over the entire movie. Yeah yeah, we know you killed someone, but sure, string us along about the how. But that's alright cuz he wins the respect of his coworkers pretty quickly, and the local night shift nurse/doctor (not really sure) Ellie (Daniela Melchior, Fast X). And he quickly runs afoul of said Bad Guy (Billy Magnussen, No Time to Die), after he sends great numbers of his henchmen to visit Ellie.

That is until Conor McGregor is sent in.

At this point, I find myself stumbling back into the lack of anything concrete to say.

This is not a terribly constructed movie, in fact, I rather like the way Liman puts the movie together. But it entirely lacks any substance, anything which would stick the movie in my memory. Besides how terrible Conor McGregor was -- I am pretty sure they just put him on the set and let him over/under act his way through every scene. At least they had the other Bad Guys react to him in the exact same manner as we did. I suppose with each of these violent movies, I am hoping to bump into the next John Wick which, in genre and purpose strove to create a similar beast.

KWIF: Haunter (+2)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (umm...) I have a spotlight movie (or two) which I write a longer, thinkier piece (or two) about, and then whatever else I watched that week (or three weeks ago) I do a quick little summary of my thoughts.

This Week:
Haunter (2013, d. Vincenzo Natali - Netflix)
Bottoms (2023, d. Emma Seligman - In Theatre)
Warlock (1989, d. Steve Miner - tubi)

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Toast and Kent love themselves a time loop, we do, to the point that we started a little series for us to explicitly comment on the time loop explosion in pop culture circa 2020 (a fad which has mercifully receded rather than burn itself out). 

When we were constructing our list of time loop movies and programs, there were more than a few surprises, things we'd never heard of...surprisingly. Like Haunter, a film by Canadian horror mainstay Vincenzo Natali (Cube, In The Tall Grass, Hannibal, Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities). The surprise was, really, how had Toasty not covered this on one of his annual 31 Days of Hallowe'en fests?

Haunter was definitely the "take note" film in the Loopty Loo list for me, largely because it was Natali. I'm not about to say that Natali is one of those directors worth doggedly following, because his repertoire is shaky, but he has a particular visual acuity that does make his work stand out. Even on his work for hire TV work, like Westworld or Locke & Key, he employs shadows and light in a different way that stands out just enough to differentiate himself.

Finally arriving on a streaming service after years of keeping an eye out (I've only recently discovered video rental stores still exist in Toronto), I prioritized watching Haunter the day after it arrived on Netflix. 

If I was disappointed it's only because I was expecting a time loop movie first, horror movie second, and the time loop is a nominal part of the film. It's actually a red herring.

The film begins in the 1980s with angsty teen Lisa (Abigail Breslin) waking up and already experiencing the day over again. There's a crippling fog keeping everyone indoors. Dad's working on the car, mom's fixing meals, brother's playing video games, and Lisa has chores to do. It's a pretty boring day for a time loop. But little flashes invade Lisa's mind's eye. Sounds emanate. Shadows move. Things are the same, day-to-day, but different. Dad has a smoke. Mom's reading a book instead of watching Murder She Wrote. Lisa's bedroom door creaks open at 1am.  The loop only really plays out about three times, enough to get the gist of what's the same so that the aberrations are tangible.

Then, Lisa realizes that she and her family are dead, and that the aberrations are maybe ghosts from the past...or possibly the future. 

It's a pretty abrupt realization, and there's no real sense of how Lisa came to this awareness.  There are a few points in this film where characters suddenly know things or know how to do things without really explaining how they came to know it. It doesn't cripple the film, but it does feel like scenes are missing that would fill in those blanks.

Ultimately Lisa finds herself in the center of a time-spanning murder mystery that only her particularly unique situation affords enough insight into solving it.  I imagine Last Night in Soho is an improved-upon version of this conceit (though I still need to watch it).  

My nerd senses tingled with this film, as it introduces a lot of fun concepts, such as summoning ghosts through totems, moving between worlds, and possessing other bodies, but the concepts remain conceptual, and never satisfactorily explored. This isn't some sort of hero origin story, it's just a ghost story.

I enjoyed the film to a point. It didn't deliver what I wanted, and while I was intrigued throughout, I don't think I was ever satisfied with how it pulled its story together. Often the film would pivot in a in a surprising way, but less of a "Ooh!" surprise and more of an "oh, that's what you're doing?" surprise. It's like the more alluring aspects of the premise were always just out of reach.

But is it horror? Yeah, it is. It's total ghost story horror.

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Bottoms is a comedy I watched in theatres. That's not something that's said much anymore. 

I've been resisting the critical commentary on the current state of cinema for a while, but the statement that studios don't really invest in comedies anymore is quite true. I think more than any genre, comedy in film has suffered because of the explosion of streaming and other media. There's so many more avenues to find one's chuckles, from improv podcasts to youtube sketch comedy to cat videos on instagram, not to mention the multitude of top notch comedy TV programming. Why would a studio gamble on theatrical anymore?  Comedies are no longer tentpole films, especially now that studios don't really promote movie stars but rather I.P., so the draw becomes less and less if you can't sell the comedy.  (The biggest comedy of the year [and maybe ever?]  is also a massive pink I.P.).  TV shows can at least build an audience over time. Films these days get about one week to make an impression or be lost to time.

The only way to break out is by breaking the mold, and/or building a brand. Bottoms does both, multiple times over. 

In breaking the mold, Bottoms reinterprets the tried-and-true "gotta get laid" high school sex romp for a modern era, by establishing two queer female lead characters who are outcasts not because they're gay, but because they're gay and untalented. Sticking to formulae, PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edibiri) each pine for the hottest cheerleaders in school, but the formulae falls completely to the wayside as they start a fight club for girls to get their attention.  Bottoms constantly flirts with filmmaking, storytelling, and genre tropes, and continually steps aside, refusing to play into them, occasionally sweeping the leg and dropping the tropes flat on their ass. It's constantly surprising, often charming, but also chaotic and a little difficult to fully embrace (at least on first viewing).  These types of high school comedies always have "the lesson" and it's almost like Bottoms refuses to adhere to that.  When you think it's about female empowerment, they punch it in the face. When you think it's about solidarity, it gets kicked in the crotch. When you think it's about any sort of message, you're tapped on the shoulder and it runs the other way.  It wants you to think that you're going to think, then it tells you to fuck off for thinking it would even dare try.

In building a brand, this is the second film from director Emma Seligman partnering with Sennott as co-writer and star.  The first was Shiva Baby, which was a real buzz film during the pandemic amidst the cinephiliae, and I flirted with watching a couple times but never fully pulled the trigger. I'm definitely going back to it though. This pairing of Seligman and Sennott is certainly building a brand after two critically successful outings. Sennott on her own is building a very specific niche of the likeably unlikeable comedic persona that recalls early Bill Murray.  

And then there Ayo Edibiri, who is just coming out on top in 2023.  Edibiri had put in time on stage and as a TV writer (Dickinson, What We Do In The Shadows) before getting her first high-profile break taking over, and emboldening, the role of Missy on Big Mouth a few seasons back. Shortly thereafter she exploded as Sydney on The Bear, and quickly proved herself a formidable co-lead.  This year, along with the impeccable season two of The Bear, and season seven of Big Mouth, she's just kind of popping up everywhere on TV from Clone High's revival to Black Mirror to Abbott Elementary, and in moviesas the voice of April O'Neal in the latest edition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, plus Theatre Camp and Bottoms. She is a literal force.  In bottoms, where it seems like Sennott is the lead and Edibiri is the sidekick, by the third act of the film, the roles seem decidedly reversed. It's no surprise then that Edibiri and Sennott also have a history of working together and their comedic chemistry is palpable on screen.

Bottoms plays fast and loose with reality. The teens (played by 20-somethings) of this film live in a world without any consequences except social ones. I don't know if the point is to say that, when you're a teenager, the only thing you care about is status and how people perceive you, but if I've learned anything it's to assume everything is intentional, especially when the filmmakers are so in control of their narrative. So, violence, arson, all of it is tolerated. Quite literally the only thing that matters in this weird town of Bottoms is some years-in-the-making homecoming football game against their bitter rivals, and the most grievous offence that can be committed is to in any way harm or foul star quarterback, human golden lab, Jeff. 

Sometimes it takes me writing about a film before I can truly admire it. With Bottoms, I enjoyed myself but I wasn't entirely certain about the story as a whole. But as I'm parsing through what's there, it's absurd internal logic and its defiance of any real sort of messaging, I really can't wait to watch it again. It's a comedy that's working on its own terms and not waiting for you to catch up. Its these kinds of comedies that last and grow over time, ones that do something so unique it's maybe even a little off-putting at first, but the more you invest the more it reveals its unique self. Breaking molds and building brands.

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I wrote in the last KWIF about David Twohy, who is a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine. I really dig the guy's work. Immediately after writing that last KWIF, I went on the hunt in my streaming subscriptions for another Twohy joint and landed on Warlock. 

Warlock, for people my age, was one of those infamous films that met in the middle of the venn diagram of interests shared by horror loving bangers and the comic book nerds.  Young high school kids would talk about specific scenes in Warlock like the time when the sorcerer gouges the guys' eyes out and uses them as a compass. It set up the film as this totally edgy, dark and upsetting work that all the cool kids must see.

I was a complete wuss going into my teen years, and avoided seeing anything gross, so that description of the eyeballs would have been a real no-go for me.  Yet, I'm certain I've seen Warlock before, but watching it recently, it felt both familiar and foreign. I know Warlock had sequels, so perhaps it was one of them that I had watched.

Warlock is a blast. It's the exact kind of classic 80's genre adventure I love, bad guy vs. good guy with love interest in tow, with some form of maguffin that requires going from one location to the next, encountering a few different eclectic people along the way.

In this case, it's the 1600s Massachusetts and the Warlock (Julian Sands) is being tried for his crimes, but a portal opens up providing his escape. Witch hunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant) dives in after him. The Warlock crashes into the rented L.A. house of Kassandra (Lori Singer), an uneducated but savvy, no-nonsense waitress. The Warlock murders her roommate and curses her with rapid aging. She's given hope for salvation from a premature death by Redferne who enlists her help in tracking the Warlock. Along the way they learn he is reassembling a lost tome that contains God's real name, which, when uttered, can undo creation. So the stakes are pretty high.

It's adventurous, comedic, and only the slightest bit horrific. It's really a fun, pulpy romp that plays like Highlander but without all the self-seriousness and brooding. Singer is a unique lead, in that she's not really asked to play the romantic leading lady, and she wavers between selfish and selfless with conviction. Grant plays the conservative moralistic very well, and through both scripting and performance Redferne avoids so many fish-out-of-water tropes. 

The titular character is the Warlock, but it's Singer and Grant who are decidedly the film's leads. If anything Sands doesn't get enough horrific things to do, or enough scenery chewing. He's clearly a menace but the threat isn't as high as it should be.  Much of Sands' scenes involve special effects or practical gags, all of varying quality. The Warlock levels up and starts flying, but it never really looks great. Budget limitations do creep through. 

Given where it ends, I'm not sure the necessity of the sequels, and my interest in them is surprisingly naught. This one, though, might have to hit the shelf with physical media.

But is it horror? No. There's an eye gouged out in Marvel's The Avengers. Just 'cause there's eyes gouged out doesn't a horror make. This is also fun-time comic-booky stuff.

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The Last Duel

 2021, d. Ridley Scott - rental

I'm not sure I ever got over three American actors performing as Frenchmen with vaguely British-ish accents. The occasional jeer from the crowd in French or the minstrel singing his campfire song in French only further exacerbated how weird it all was.

I'm also not sure octogenarian Ridley Scott was necessarily the right person to handle the delicateness of commenting on rape and gender politics in an oppressively patriarchal society. He kind of goes at it with a blunt hammer, seemingly more interested in the dick measuring contests more than the emotional gravity.  Presenting it basically as "Ridley Scott's Rashomon", and it's kind of in spite of his own impulses (and a credit to the script) that it actually succeeds at making any sort of commentary or allusions to regressive ideas about assault or women's issues still present in modern day.  

The first version told from the perspective of Jean de Carrouges (Damon) paints himself as the victim repeatedly, without ever finding fault in himself.  The second finds Jacques Le Gris (Driver) obliviously viewing himself as the consummate frat boy in the ultimate boys' club where the world bends around him, and that he doesn't just deserve what he takes, but that it's owed to him. The final segment comes from Margueite de Carrouges, who is married off to Jacques by her disgraced father and lives under the simmering cruelty of her somewhat inept husband and his mother, only to be raped by Le Gris and then having to go through a gauntlet of confession and cross-examination before justice is left up to two men in a fight to the death where the "winner" is a result of "God's will" and therefore must be the truth.

In the end, the winner of the brutal and fierce duel (very well constructed and shot, as opposed to Scott's shaky-cam, Gladiator-style, war battles earlier in the film) is victorious and heralded but it's not at all about justice or truth, just spectacle. Nobody watching, not the king nor the court nor the spectators nor even the victor himself really cares about the truth nor the crime itself (which is much more about the injury to another man's "property", not so much the assault upon another person).  The triumphant end feels so hollow. There's nothing to celebrate, but I can't tell whether Scott knows that or not, so caught up in the revelry this film is.

It's flawed, but still a tremendously engaging film.

(we agree-ish) Gunpowder Milkshake

 2021, d. Navot Papushado - netflix

This is a rare film that has a pretty weak first act but gets far better in its second and third acts.

I've had a wee li'l crush on Karen Gillen since her first scene in the first episode of the Matt Smith run on Doctor Who.  She's charming.  Toast, in his review, questions if she's a good actress, and I don't ever doubt that (and it's not crush goggle blindness, she's very talented.  I think her performance as Nebula is probably the best in the very stacked Avengers: Endgame).  But she has comfort zones and sometimes it takes time for her to find them.  

The first act here needs to establish her character, Sam, as a ruthlessly efficient hitman/hitwoman/hitperson, one who is completely able to disassociate herself from her violent actions and the pain they cause (including the injuries she sustains).  Sam suffers from abandonment issues after her mother, a top tier hitman (let's just say "hitman" is a gender agnostic term), killed the wrong person and went on the run without her when Sam was a teenager.  I'm not sure that I buy it, not at this stage, and certainly not in how the film sets her up with an off-screen fight and too, too many hyper-stylized shots that look like cut scenes from Sin City. 

But on a character level, Sam's abandonment completely informs her.  Perhaps in trying to understand her mother, Sam dove into the same profession, and worked to be even better than her mother was, and succeeded.  But tasked with recovering a bag of stolen money for "The Firm", she gets a little too trigger happy and kills a desperate man who is just trying to save his daughter after she had been kidnapped.  Sam takes it upon herself to rescue the kidnapped 8 1/2-year-old, in the process losing the Firm's money.  Also unknown to Sam is she's killed the son of a mob boss, an associate of the Firm, and they cut her loose.  Suddenly she's able to relate to her mother's predicament.  But it should be noted the "killing the wrong guy" is independent of her losing the money, and it's one layer too thick in the story.  These should be connected, like maybe one of The Firm's mooks is the mob boss' kid instead of being a part of an unrelated arc.

The first act doesn't really start working until Sam meets Emily (Chloe Coleman), the young girl.  Coleman is a very intuitive young actress, while not always note perfect, reads her scenes well.  Gillen has good interplay with her and Sam's connection to the girl she orphaned is palpable.  The connection between Gillen and her handler, Nathan (played by Paul Giamatti), isn't well met.  We're meant to understand that after she was abandoned, Nathan took Sam in and raised here, but their familiarity is very loose, and it would have worked more had they played into some form of emotional bond (especially when there's betrayal).  The film really gets clicking at the start of the second act when Sam meets her mother again for the first time, and the interplay between Lena Hedy, Gillen and Coleman is especially sweet.

The first major action set piece in the bowling alley (as immaculately lit in neon as it is) is really, really bad.  It was a dire portent of things to come, which, thankfully never manifested.  Visually the sequence is awful to watch.  There's speed ramping used to make it look like the fight is happening faster than it is, but even still the clunky choreography is all too exposed.  I'm not certain why it was allowed to be in this film in its current state, execpt for the fact that it fully informs the next fight sequence which is quite entertaining.

In this second sequence, Sam once again meets the goons she beat up in the bowling alley, only this time they're in the underworld hospital.  The doctor, working with the battered goons, numbs both of Sam's arms so she can't hold a weapon, and once she's semi-incapacitated the goons can set upon her.  Sam has Emily tape a gun in one hand, and scalpel in the other and she sets about fighting a guy on crutches, a guy in a wheelchair and a guy in an arm cast in a ludicrous hallway action sequence.  If this doesn't play to its fullest potential, it's because the performers playing the goons are...well, too much like human versions of the Mon-stars from Space Jam.  Just unbelievable even for this over-the-top reality.

The Library is a setting that is meant to be a world unto itself.  Each book on the shelf contains... something other than words.  Guns, gold, money.  It's impractical, an the film doesn't do the best job at defining what its role is in this world-at-large, but if it's awesome, it's because of who runs it... Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett... and, wow, are they styling highly, yes!

[Let me just pause and restate that this film has Karen Gillen, Lena Hedy, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett in it...together, and they all get to kick some ass.  Is it the best possible use of this quintet of Kent crushes from across the past 30 years?  Sadly, no, but I can't help but be enthused by what's here.] 

The big battle in the Library is completely perfunctory, but it's an absolutely highlight, if anything showing that Michelle Yeoh is still a phenomenal action star.  But the opening moment of the fight with Hedy leaping over the reception table, flinging two guns forward, is utterly badass.

The narrative weight  put into the estranged mother-daughter relationship, as well as the guilt Sam has over Emily's father's death, but unable to ignore the connection she has with both of them fuels the film in the second and third act.  I was very much invested in these connections, and could see how they were reshaping Sam (it is a good performance from Gillen).  The characters (and performances) really connect, and the themes of parenting and abandonment are unexpectedly resonant.  I wasn't expecting any emotional core of of this all-girl John Wick knock-off.

Now, that all said, I do want to like this more than I actually do.  I wish Gunpowder Milkshake were firing within me the desire to rewatch it over and over, but it doesn't inspire me much.  I wanted more out of this, particularly more out of Yeoh, Bassett and Gugino.  I mean, I think we got more out of them than just the glorified cameo I had expected, but even still I want more.  It's a little muddy but I think that Bassett and Hedy were in a relationship before Hedy disappeared, and that Yeoh and Gugino are partners as well.  It's there, but it's not there enough.  I want these characters and their relationships to be more developed.

 Perhaps one of the key elements it was missing was a score that I would want to listen to apart from the film.   What we have here for the score is a spaghetti western pastiche that really, really didn't work for me.  It felt like Dollar Store Morricone, and didn't fit the vibe.  As well, some of the music cues were too on the nose, although some are kind of inspired, like a surprise Stereolab insert.  

John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

Twenty-for-Seven #4 (Day 2):

2019, d. Chad Stahelski - AmazonPrime

Man, they do great poster designs for these films

When we left John Wick at the end of Chapter 2, he had just killed a dude inside the Continental.  One of the main rules of this universe is there is no "business" to be conducted on Continental grounds.  John has a preexisting relationship with the manager (Ian McShane) so he was given one hour to get his shit together before he was to be pronounced "excommunicated" and a $14million bounty is put on his head.  You can't kill a member of the High Table without repercussions.

Let's pause here:
Parabellum, as defined by the Free Dictionary, means :  

Latin for "prepare for war," from the phrase, Si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning "If you want peace, prepare for war"

It also has various intonations around firearm rounds or cartridges, which obviously tie into John Wick's motif.

Excommunicated, again as defined by the Free Dictionary, means:

To exclude by or as if by decree from membership or participation in a group.

Just so we're clear.

The opening of John Wick Chapter 3 is a bloody mess... in that it is both bloody, and messy.  John is running in the rain, still battered and wounded from all the fighting in Chapter 2.  His unnamed dog is running by his side.  He's being tracked by every hitmanperson and gang in town.  The administrative bureau of this whole underworld (consisting entirely of Hot Topic aficionados -- so many tattoos, piercings, angular haircuts and dye jobs) is counting down the hour before John is considered excommunicated, announcing it over their loudspeaker.  The first ten minutes or so jump between John on the run and these announcements of how much time is left, and it's really, really, really stupid, as if the film thinks we'd be unaware of the time pressure John is facing unless we're constantly reminded.  John is very wounded and needs some patching up.  He finds friendly support in his waning minutes before excommunication... but time runs out and he has to patch himself up.  The doc is worried he will be found out as helping someone excommunicado and forces John to shoot him, twice to infer he was pressured into service.

John retrieves some personal items from a library and then uses a family totum to call in a favour with the Belarus mafia in NY (led by Angelica Huston), since he is a child of their clan...or whatever the deal is there, it wasn't very clear.  He is reluctantly provided with passage to Casablanca where he uses he connections to get into the Continental there, and uses a blood oath coin to get Halle Berry to reluctantly put him in contact with the head of the underworld mint.  There John learns of the Elder of the High Table who can, possibly, absolve John of his sins, but he needs to wander the desert to do so.  Of course, a high body count is collected along this whole route.

Meanwhile, an Adjudicator for the High Table is running through New York with a gang of ninjas in tow advising that everyone who helped John in any way, including the Bowery King (Lawrence Fishbourne), Angelica Huston, and Ian McShane.  They broke the rules and must be punished.  But New Yorkers have an attitude and they don't take kindly to the High Table inflicting their unmediated judgement upon them.

John meets with the Elder, who asks why John wants to live so badly.  He states it's to remember his wife.  He's asked for a sacrifice, and John slices off his ring finger.  Then he asks John to kill the Manager of the New York Continental, since he's proving to be difficult in the Adjudication process.

John agree, but chooses to side with his friend, and he, the Manager and the Concierge stave off an attack from the Adjudicator's ninjas and the High Table's barrage of armored enforcers.  The film ends with the Manager seemingly turning on John and killing him (but his body being collected by the Bowery King's legion) and staving off being a target of the high council but also having his Continental being deconsecrated, and everyone in NYC preparing to war against the high table.

I know I'm just reiterating the plot above, but it's necessary to highlight the point I wanted to make... the team kind of shit the bed on this one.  The first two chapters of John Wick set up a world of organized rules and policies that everyone's to operate in or they face consequences.  But in this third chapter, the consequences, and enforcement thereof, seem entirely arbitrary.  The film acts as if John Wick were the first to ever break the rules and they have no precedent, which seems kind of silly, to think that this one man is just *that* special.

The point is, John calls in all sorts of favours, which people like Angelica Huston and Halle Berry seem honour-bound to obey (just as John was in Chapter 2 when his blood oath was called in).  But if you're forced to obey a blood oath, how can you be punished for obeying it? And yet people are punished severely for it (including John).  But if you're not supposed to fulfil your honour-bound oaths and whatnot for someone who is excommunicated then why on earth would Angelica or Halle actually help him.  This world, their rules, no longer makes sense.

I found some enjoyment in Chapter 3; it's a good-looking film with some amazing stunt choreography, yet, for the most part I found it frustrating to watch.  The inner logic of this world fell totally apart.  Plus it seems like half the population of the globe is part of this underworld, which seems insane to me.

I've noticed along the way John has not killed certain people outright, like Common in Chapter 2 or the Minter and a couple of the ninja goons who were fanboying out when fighting him.  It's a "professional courtesy" he seems to be extending to them, so my assumption is that he will be receiving some sort of reciprocation down the line... as was the case with the Bowery King in Chapter 2.  I'll still be in for Chapters 4 & 5 (and maybe that crossover with Atomic Blonde that was hinted at), but they need to work harder to solidify their world and how it operates.

(Toast's take on Parabellum)

John Wick 2

Twenty-for-Seven: #1(day1)

It's still the holiday season and I still have time off.  Not a lot of time off, but time off none the less.  There are things I *could* be doing, and likely things I *should* be doing, but dang it, when do I ever allow myself the time to just kick my heels up and watch a pile of movies?  Not that often.  So with a week left to go in vacation time (from December 26 until Jan 1), I plan to cram in 20 movies in seven days.  I'm not sure I'll be able to write about them all as I go, as that would certainly interfere in my movie watching/dog walking/puzzle building/game playing time, but, well, gotta give it the ol' angler fish try.

---
(2017, d. Chad Stahelski - AmazonPrime)

I liked John Wick enough, but what I liked most about it was the cool, unusual world we're introduced to via the Continental, a hotel that's intended to be a safe haven from all the gangland and hired assassin killing.  John Wick, is such a nothing as a character, that he's literally a killing machine still in deep mourning for the loss of his wife (and the dog she gave him).  Why does he keep killing people?  Because he has to in order to live?  Why does he even want to live? What does he have to live for?  Well, we don't find that out until Parabellum.

The opening of JWch2 is kind of ass.  Picking up almost directly where the last chapter left off (John avenged the death of his dog but there was still the dangling plot thread of retrieving  his car) we're thrust in the middle of a a dodgy car chase that's almost more demolition derby.  It's a sequence that has some rather silly (many of them entertainingly silly) edits, stunts and effects, but the energy of it seems off.  What are the stakes here?  I forget where JWch1 left off.  This sequence only takes off once Keanu exits the car (in kind of hilarious fashion) and starts into the hand to hand.  Even then, the sequence goes on too long, and the intercutting between Keanu and Peter Stormare delivering heaps of clunky exposition that catches the audience up on the meager plot of the first one, and closes up the last dangling thread, being the recovery of John Wick's car.

After more action, followed by John Wick finally getting to take a breath and return home with his rescued dog-with-no-name, the film starts diving back into world building, which is more of what I came to see than the action.  We're treated to the concept of blood oaths as a particularly nasty man from John's old life comes calling asking for his blood oath to be honored.  Things go bad before they get better.  He's tasked with a mission to kill the man's sister, as she took their father's place at the Table (the people who run the underworld), and now he wants it.

After consulting with Ian McShane over at the Continental he's off to Rome, to do his necessary deed. He is asked by the Roman Continental manager if he's there to kill the pope, which I thought was amusing.  His mission is successful, but now he has the dead donna's goons hunting him for revenge, and the brother has turned traitor and is "avenging his sister" sicking his forces on him, and after escaping Rome, he's placed with a 7 million dollar bounty which puts every merc on his trail.  How will the old Baba Yaga get out of this one.

Well, I'll tell you that he only does so by making things much, much worse for himself.  It's actually quite thrilling to see him find himself in a hole, climb out of that hole only to find it's a hole at the bottom of an even bigger hole.

The film crackles with energy, running at a frenetic pace, and knocking John Wick around to the point that he should either have internal injuries, concussions, or both.  But he's not exactly a superhero, the wear and tear on him are tangible, and for what Keanu lacks in emoting ability, he makes up for in physical performance (which is what the role demands most).

The film (and the series, I can say in hindsight) is at its best in Rome, when it slows down enough to explore the weird world of international organized crime, governed under one code.  John Wick's visit to the continental there, plus his evening-out preparations with the sommelier (Peter Serafinawicz), the tailor, and the blueprints office all really flesh out some of the merits of this over-arching world of crime.  I love John's bulletproof suit, and the explanation of the soft fibre that protects him... that it will stop any bullet, but he'll still feel the impact.

Oddly, there are a lot of foreign languages being spoken in this film but without translation (and sign language too), but when I turned on the closed captioning, I saw that AmazonPrime actually does the translations there.  Neat.

There's an amazing sequence towards the end taking place in a updated house of mirrors.  It's a modern art installation that spans room after room, level after level, with mirrors, monitors and glass.  I don't know if this museum setting was fully constructed or if it was tear down of an existing piece, but it was gorgeous.  I always love a good chase through a house of mirrors scenario and this one, with the addition of technology to the bit, tops them all.

The film ends with John Wick having gotten out of one pickle but fallen right into the pickle jar.  It's a rather exciting crucible he's seemingly putting himself through, and it really begs the question "how's he going to get himself out of this one"?

(Toast's take)

Rewatch: Resident Evil: Extinction & Resident Evil: Afterlife

Previous two here.

Resident Evil: Extinction, 2007, Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) -- download

Beyond the dungeon rompy fun of the first one, this is really the only entry in the franchise I truly enjoy. Truly, as in, not cringing at bad acting or shaking my head at the weird choices. Of course, it doesn't hurt that its a PoAp wasteland romp!

Apparently zombie virus plagues don't just ravage the human population but also lead to an ecological collapse. Through Alice's expositional introduction, we learn that the world has become mostly desert with bands of surviving humans gathering together for protection. Walking Dead meets Road Warrior meets just about every best bit from other PoAp movies, including Alice rooting the ruins of an already picked clean gas station. It also gives us here best getup for the entire series, including going up against the red dress.

Of course, the movie starts with an Alice Wakeup scene. After a disoriented, (again) dungeony walk through hallways and corridors, she is killed. Woot! Twist! Not Alice but clone Alice, taken by scientists and dumped into a pit of Alice clones all wearing the same red dress. Outside the world is all desert and a massive horde of zombies bangs against the incredibly durable chain link fence outside the entrance to yet another underground Umbrella facility.

This was probably the producers saying, "How can you do a zombie series if it doesn't have some passing resemblance to The Walking Dead. But it abandons that aspect a couple of movies later, so those producers were probably eaten. But the grimy, survivalist look and feel of this movie is the best esthetic they gave the series, IMO. Carlos and LJ are back, from the last movie, but Jill Valentine is missing. There is some comment of how Alice had to hide from Umbrella once she discovered that weird Big Brother umbrella overlay to her iris, once that identified her as being controlled by Umbrella. But she's back and ready to help out the survivors with her telekinetic powers. Those are new.

This movie separates itself from the others in the franchise in that even the bit part players seem to know how to act. You cannot discount good (OK, decent) directing, that I guess will do a scene until it looks and sounds right. Even a bad movie can have decent, believable acting. At least in comparison to later entries in the franchise.

Resident Evil: Afterlife, 2010, Paul WS Anderson (Pompeii) -- download

Original director, writer is back to helm the latest entry, and it is the sign of The End. Seriously, I wish the guy had just abandoned creative control and let the movies actually evolve. Unlike his wife Milla, the series does not age with grace.

Since the last movie ended with Alice allowing the remaining humans of her convoy to escape to Alaska, to find the source of Arcadia, the Last Safe Place on Earth, Alice dove into facility to confront Dr, Isaacs and discover her clones.  Her many many clones.  And this movie begins with that Clone Army (sans white Storm Trooper outfits [replaced by faux Trinity outfits of black pleather]) attacking the Umbrella facility in Tokyo. She is going to destroy the heads of the corp head-on.

If Extinction was Walking Dead and The Post Man, then this is WS Anderson's desire to put his wife in a Matrix ripoff. Seriously, the dude doesn't seem to have one original clue about him. From slow-mo bullet time shots, to dodging down a hallway full of automatic gunfire, craters being chewed out of the cement pillars as she jumps & dives her way through the hail. Dr. Isaacs was killed, albeit mutated Isaacs, in the last movie leaving us to hate Wesker, the Agent Smith ripoff who was played hologramatically by Jason O'Mara (most recently, Director Mace on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) in the last movie but is even more generic by Shawn Roberts (yes, I know you haven't heard of him). Wesker escapes from the facility, Alice Prime hides aboard his helicopter and after the ensuing fight, he injects her with Anti T-Virus formula. Alice Prime will be back to normal, tough chick Alice.

Opening Sequence Done.

The rest of the movie has Alice heading north to find the rest of the surviving humans in Safe Alaska. Alas, nobody is there, nothing is there but a bunch of empty planes and helicopters. Aaaand one leftover, wearing a weird red goo filled metallic silver bug. Ali Larter joins Alice and the fly south to LA, a ruined city overrun by the undead horde.

Really, this is the only good segment of the movie, as some surprisingly alive survivors (dressed like this all happened a few weeks ago, instead of years) hole up inside very very tall prison... in downtown LA?  Whatever. Remember, Walking Dead had a prison, so...

But the prison is not the place of interest, even if its the prime segment!

Scrrrriiiiiitch. The sound of a record player needle scratching across an anachronistic LP record.

If I am watching all of these, to enjoy them all over again, in order to watch them again for the latest, and possibly final entry in the franchise, then why are these words not .... fun ? Honestly, not having as much fun as I did the first time round. And if you see my words on the next entry, in its first viewing, by the time I got to that one, all the fun was drained out to be solely replaced by dumb.

WS Anderson can direct his wife, and that is about it. The rest is all pedestrian, repetitive, derivative drivel that I am having a hard time swallowing this time round. I think I now know why they are not on The Shelf.

This one ends on a boat, Arcadia was a crock and Wexler has coaxed everyone into the really clean interior to be subjects of even more experiments. Seriously, what is the end game of this corporation? If 90% of the planet is already a brain eating horde outside, with some small percentage mutating into even nastier things, then ... what? What is the point? What do you do when the rest are dead? Why experiment on the as bio weapons? Who is going to be the recipient of said bio weapon???

It ends on the boat with Alice freeing the survivors only to see a horde of whirly birds (Osprey helicopters) on the horizon. Key Next Movie.

Zombie^5

I watch a lot of zombie movies. I didn't realize how many till five queued up in my To Be Written list. Some are good, most are bad. Very very few are great. The genre is mostly played out but it will always linger in the back of the horror genre, at least until The Walking Dead finishes its run. Until then, media will continue to milk its inky black blood.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2016, Burr Steers (17 Again) -- download

P&P&Z tackles something most zombie fiction doesn't even attempt to -- what were the creatures before they died / changed and how much of them is left over when they become such? Oddly enough, it is often the comedies that explore this aspect. The serious ones always stick to the unsettling aspects of the horde.

The movie, one that Marmy hates in concept but will never see, comes from the book which is a tongue in cheek retooling of the Jane Austen novel.  It was literally developed title down -- here's the title, write a book for it! Insert zombies & ninjas into the Austen milieux! While definitely full on rotting tongue in decaying cheek, it is a serious movie; not comedy.

Like in World War Z, the apocalypse begins in China. And spreads quickly, on trade ships, around the world. Post war, England has to be ever watchful of another rising and has trained its youth in the art of combat. Wealthy go to Japan, while the middle class only get Chinese training. The poor get eaten.

The movie intertwines the core Austen story with an uglier plot, one where someone wants the rise of the undead to succeed. As I mentioned, the zombies retain their memories and intelligence; they just are overwhelmed by a desire to eat your face and yes, they rot. Some worse than others. Some people believe the undead can be redeemed, through religion or reason. Others believe they are the next step in mankind, and are leading the dead to organize. Thus we get an OK action movie, to foil the evil plot, mixed up with a love story.

Pandemic, 2016, John Suits (The Scribbler) -- download

Meanwhile this gives us just another tired concept zombie flick. The concept at play? The video game motif -- we see everything through helmet cams, all the action at the end of a FPS gun. There's never been a good use of this. I will tell you how well Hardcore Henry does it when I finish watching that movie.

The sub-genre is infection with defined stages. Stage one is common cold-like symptoms; the final stage has a raving eating machine awakening from a death-like coma. There are no walking dead, just people with a disease. This is the most tragic of the zombie sub-genres, as so many have to die just so uninfected humans can stay alive.

This is a terrible movie that badly mixes personal drama (i just want to get back to my daughter!) with... wait, that's not this movie that is the last bad zombie flick I watched, Re-Kill, which also had a tired concept at the core of its plot.  So, this movie IS about personal drama and that's pretty much all. Dr. Lauren, who is really not a doctor at all but someone who stole the credentials of one to join a team, to hunt down her family, sacrifices all of said team (including Alfie Allen, redeemed villain is his schtick now) to reunite with her daughter. Considering she pretty much destroys the protective detail of the place she wants to get her daughter into, there is not very much hope in the end.

I was never sure why the movie spent so much time on the prologue scenes, setting up the stages of infection and some mystery around the final stage. Sure, we get some [REC] style night-vision camera shots of a monstrous final form that sniffs us out, but it's not really at the core of the movie. Other than the title, the pandemic is barely explored. This is the issue of low budget Straight To movies, in that there are ideas but nobody has the money nor the inclination to explore.

And gawds, I hate when the posters have nothing to do with the movie.

[REC] 3: Génesis, 2012, Paco Plaza ([REC]) -- Netflix

Speaking of [REC], I did [REC] 2 back during this blog's first run of 31 Days of Horror.  Paco, co-director along with Jaume Balagueró, did all three movies. The third is considered the "origin" movie, thus the tag Génesis. As in, the genesis of the infection, not biblical reference to Genesis, despite what the character in the movie says. Really, this is more a Revelations thing.

The last movie ended revealing demonic influence on the evil zombie virus thing. It's rather unique in current zombie fiction but was the primary source back in the 80s/90s proto-zombie movies.  At a wedding, inside a walled compound, the infection, or demonic influence, slowly takes over the uncle of bride Clara until the dancing is in full swing. Then he bites another and BOOM, raving, biting, killing monsters in bad wedding attire. There is a mix of the sub-genre -- are they dead or merely infected? Well they are getting their throats torn out, before they turn, so a little of column A and a little of column B ? The fun thing is when you look in the mirror and see demonic, cadaverous creatures!

Yeah, this movie is fun. It tosses the tense, paranoid aspects of the first two movies on its head for a butt-kicking zombie-killing romp, including gearing-up scenes. Clara only wants to be reunited with her new husband Koldo. And no bloody scary wedding attendee will stop her! Chainsaws, swords and guns are picked up and dropped as the two wedded ones, and their tag-along crew of survivors, attempt to reunite. Meanwhile, a priest has discovered if you read prayers over the loud speakers it disables the zombies. Not that it really helps people much, but it does move the plot along and expand on the core conceit of the sub-genre. And, alas, it does not help the two lovers after they find each other.

Cell, 2016, Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) -- download

This one was based on the only real zombie fiction that Stephen King did, but it approaches the genre in much the same way Guillermo del Toro did vampires -- through the use of a unique viral infection. The virus in question is passed through the cellular network and leaves behind only violent, mindless creatures. King wrote this over ten years ago, just before the era of touch-screen smartphones, but after the full assimilation of cell phones in general. It's not a comment of the overabundance of cellular communication, but a blatant exploitation of the paranoia around it.

The movie follows a handful of survivors, people who were not using their phones at the time the infection was transmitted. Clay Riddell, played by Straight To king John Cusack only wants to get back to his wife & son. We get a typical road story with not so typical infection background material. We also get a muddled ending without any closure.

It's a terrible terrible movie. Cusack and Samuel L Jackson *ahem* phone in their acting and the convoluted & mysterious conspiracy plot by Stephen King is inserted between incredibly boring scenes of people walking in silence or babbling on about stuff we are supposed to care about, but really don't -- character development!  The director almost seemed to think he was directing The Road, but without the great weight of the source material. But are we surprised? There is already a track record of terrible material being spawned from Stephen King books. For every five that are rotten, we get one that is OK and even rarely, a great one.

P.S. What is up with the movie posters? They are all uniformly terrible. And why attack choppers?

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) -- Netflix

Pulling a night of video store movie flipping on Netflix led us to this one, which is weirdly called Scouts vs Zombies on their titling. I guess the actual title is too much of a mouthful? Anywayz, this is mid-budget comedy hinged on the idea that if they are always prepared, are they prepared for the zombie apocalypse? Short answer -- no. They require a butt kicking cocktail waitress in a pushup bra to encourage them.

This is a movie meant for teenage boys. Along with the core idea of long term friendships, there are tons and tons of immature references -- some funny, some cringe worthy but most just *yawn* on the level of fart jokes. The cocktail waitress is supposed to be some sort of empowerment of women comment, but the actress can barely run in her boots and once her shotgun runs out, she depends again on the teen boys. Really, she was just an excuse to look at cleavage. And a pseudo older woman fantasy?

The zombies in question? Boring, run of the mill fast moving, eating machines. Like most of the low grade examples of the genre, they really don't matter, as the are only antagonist fodder around the jokes and action scenes. But the idea that a bunch of teenage boys would have no issues destroying the entire class of bullies gone zombies is worth a smirk or two. At least they do attempt to rescue some of their classmates.

It makes you wonder why I am watching these movies, when I am pretty assured most will be terrible. I guess, even at their worst, I am comfortable enough and familiar with the beats and tropes of the genre. I know the rise of the tension well, and even at their worst, they touch on it. At my core, I am terribly frightened by the horde but aside from The Walking Dead few examples of the genre touch on this horror for me.

Am I looking for jewels in the trough? Or do I just like what I like...