Ah-Ah-Argento #5: The Five Days

aka Le Cinque Giornate
1973, d. Dario Argento - blu-ray

Dario Argento's filmography is pretty consistent genre-wise. He works is the realm of horror, mystery and paranormal fantasy, usually a blend of any two, or all three. In that regard, The Five Days, is not just an outlier, but it is the outlier in his film canon.

The Five Days is a historical comedy, taking place at the onset of the Italian war for independence. Argento isn't exactly known for his period pieces, or his comedies, considering he had never attempted one or the other before, and, in part due to this film's commercial failure, he would never try again. It would be considered his "lost" work since it never really got much international distribution until Severin Films remastered it and released it on 4K and blu-ray in 2022. Casual fans of Argento didn't really know of its existence (or if they did, since it was such a tonal outlier, didn't care so much).

The Five Days opens in a prison in Milan, circa 1848. It a rotty, rat-infested dungeon of a place, with shaggy dirty men wiling their time away sleeping on hay-covered floors. If you look closely, there's a guy pooping in a bucket. Two men, patriots, talk of their impending escape, how the revolutionaries will break down the walls and provide them freedom...but they must be careful to ensure only their fellow patriots are let loose, for these other hardened criminals escaping to the streets would sew chaos, which is not their objectives. The Austrians must go! Milan for the Milanese!

But when a cannonball rocks a hole in the wall, the only man to escape is petty thief Cainazzo (Adriano Celentano), and from there it's a series of farcical events he finds himself thrust into as he searches the streets of Milan in the midst of a revolution for the criminal who owes him money (who just so happens to have become a leader of the liberation).

Until this point, Argento's films have all been murder-mysteries, Giallis that find someone thrust into the unintentional position of playing detective to solve a murder (or murders). That style of film, for Argento, is a patient one, one in which Argento can plan long tracking shots, or stage precise set-ups of his camera creating artistic compositions. The patience of his crime, and later, horror films is for the purpose of mood, of impending dread, and, on occasion, subversion or relief from the dread.  Here, there is no time for patience.

The Five Days moves at lightning speed. Title cards represent the many chapters of the film, but within each chapter is so much forward momentum. Cainazzo finds himself swept up in the revolution even though he's definitely no patriot... but, it turns out, he's not not a patriot as well.

Much of the film winds its way into a buddy comedy, as Cainazzo, fairly early on in his exploits, comes across the Roman baker Romolo (Enzo Cerusico, Il Tram). While Cainazzo is no thinker, he looks like Plato next to the simplistic Romolo, who follows him around like a lost puppy. There's real big-dog, little dog energy to their dynamic.  

The hapless duo at one point find themselves helping a pregnant woman deliver a baby, helping to build a barricade for a countess (far too enthused by all the conflict going on), and getting swept up with a vainglorious baron who is leading his own rebellion against the Austrians. They find themselves, more then once, caught up in the center of a massacre, sometimes on the side of the aggressors and sometimes on the receiving end. Cainazzo is none-too-enthused by either scenario. Along the way they get entwined with the elites of Milan who, if they're not boastfully leading the way, are otherwise pretending like nothing impactful is really happening. Argento, more then once, lays heavy criticism on the conflict, heavily indicating that the rich used the poor to drive the Austrians out of the city so the rich could benefit more from their absence.  

The Five Days borrows liberally from Buster Keaton's The General, by Argento's own admission (in the bonus features on the blu-ray, Luigi Cozzi, who co-wrote the film's treatment, further stressed how much they were trying to make an Italian version of that film). The screenplay was co-written by Argento with political socialist writer and poet Nanni Balestrini, as well as consulted heavily with professors of Milan's history for detailed accuracy.  These outside influences find a film at odds with itself. It wants to be a retro-styled slapstick comedy, it wants to be a historical drama, and it wants to be a political commentary, but the tonal shifts it needs to be all three create such whiplash as to make the film an highly uneven viewing experience.

The attention to detail is pretty phenomenal, it is an appropriately big production with fantastic wardrobes and redecorated streets to make everything feel as it would have 130 years earlier. Argento staged his first-ever battle scenes and mob scenes and worked on a scale that, by his own admission, made him uncomfortable (and he would never truly attempt again). He had a steady hand in legendary Italian cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, so the film looks amazing, especially in its restored form.

Celentano was a massive celebrity in the 1970's, both an actor and a pop star (I've been familiar with him for over 20 years, every since friend and reader GAK introduced me to Celentano's proto-hip-hop gibberish track Prisencolinensinainciusol, having dozens upon dozens of times watch him perform this song in a few different settings, as archived on youtube), and here makes for a pretty winning and game lead. It helps that Celentano is handsome, incredibly fit, and those pantaloons hug him juuust right. Not to be overshadowed, Cerusico is every bit as endearing as he was in Argento's entry in the Door Into Darkness anthology, while playing a wildly different role. Here, a loveable doofus, as opposed to Il Tram's savvy police detective.

These two scruffy, handsome leads are a pleasure to watch, and each vignette, on its own, pretty much works, but they all don't work together. The speed-ramped slapstick shenanigans contrast against the messages about the abuses of the poor by the wealthy, how liberation would only be for the few, not the many. The brutal realities of war, the cycles of violence, revenge and rage are presented here, quite intentionally, as not exciting or glorious, and the men who proclaim themselves as liberators have darker cores to them.  There's also an undercurrent to this film where the only women featured are either made horny by the heroism and/or bloodshed around them, or they are victims of assault by the supposed "good guys" (not our main characters). The pregnant woman is the only exception. I found the segment of the countess (Marilù Tolo) getting all hot and bothered by the tumult pretty funny (to a point), but the widow (Carla Tato) who just witnessed her husband hanged as a traitor and escaped death as a result of Cainazzo and Romolo's intervention working through a flurry of emotions before taking Romolo to bed was pretty confounding. The assault on a Milanese woman by the baron was both egregious and direct to the point Argento is trying to make about "heroes" of war, the elites and their entitlement. For a director who generally shies away from gratuitous sex or nudity, these scenes, especially when taken as a whole, are pretty unfortunate.

At first it seems like Cainazzo's sympathetic criminal is going to get swept up into the fervour of the moment, to become an unexpected leader and hero of the rebellion, but that is not Argento's story. There's no heroes in war, no glory, it's all a con job. "We've been conned" are Cainazzo's final words, as the city celebrates their victory over the fleeing Austirans. "They've conned us" he says, pointing to the men in the formal wear and high-hats, the elites who did not fight, now basking in the glory of the war that just passed. Cainazzo cannot sit with it. He also doesn't make the big speech at the end...he is not a big speech maker. All he can speak is the truth he sees, that many, many, many people died and he truly doesn't see what for.

By no means a bad film, but also by no means a great one, there's plenty to be both impressed and disappointed with in The Five Days. It is probably the most maintstream effort Argento ever attempted, so it's pretty ironic that it was the least successful of his films during this period of his career.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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): The King

2019, David Michôd (The Rover) -- Netflix

So, in 2013-ish Joel Edgerton and director Michôd collaborated on the screenplay for The Rover. At the same time they revealed they had worked also together on a script for an adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Henry" plays, often called the Henriad, which cover the reign of King Henry IV and the rise to power of his son, Henry the V. I fully admit I know very little of the plays, only knowing Branagh's 1989 film. I also know very little of the historical period. But it fascinates me that this movie displays as a historical drama, yet retains the fictional character of Falstaff, from the plays, as played by Edgerton himself.

Enough of the meta. This movie just looks & sounds goooood !! Its grim and gritty, yet so very fucking precise in its use of language (close, but not quite Shakespeare-ian) and imagery. And very oddly curtailed in its "historical" depiction. Usually these kinds of movies cover a long range of time keying on points from the history blogs, the sound bites of a figure of notoriety. This movie focuses on Hal's coming to power, and his famous battle with the French at Agincourt. That's it. It helps that its based on plays and not history.

So, Hal (Timothée Chalamet, Dune) is a bit of a layabout. He doesn't care for his father at all and spends his time in Eastcheap drinking and whoring with John Falstaff (Joel Edgerton, Train Dreams), an ex-soldier given to fat and hanging out with the wrong sort, leaning on his royal friend to get him out of tough situations. Meanwhile after fighting the Scots, King Henry's vassals are less than happy with his paranoid responses, one named Hotspur going so far as to insult the King to his face. That leads to the King (Ben Mendelsohn, Captain Marvel) naming them outlaw and sending his son to deal with the "rebellion", his younger son who he has now named as heir, because of Hal's rejection of everything.

Hal is actually incensed, knowing his little brother to be weak, ineffectual and desperate to please their father. He interrupts the grand battle between armies by challenging Hotspur to singular combat. The two fully armoured knights clash, grunting and striking each other in the mud until Hal comes out victorious, stealing glory from his brother. You get the feeling that despite Hal being a drunken fool, he knows how to fight and is keenly aware of his father's failings. Not long after, his brother still dies, trying to prove himself in Wales. And soon after that, King Henry IV dies in bed, covered in sores and regretting everything. Hal is forced to accept the crown.

Hal bears his crown with a heavy heart but a stubborn desire to Be Better. He doesn't want to be his father, a man continually at war with everyone, but also doesn't want to be seen as ineffectual. When, during his coronation, the French send him a single tennis ball, he doesn't react with violence to the insult, as all expected of him. But it becomes clear to us, the viewer, if not Hal himself, that there is a lot going on he was never aware of and there are constant outside factors influencing every aspect of his reign. This is probably when Hal could have used the friendship and guidance of Falstaff, but he leaves the man to his drink and his debts. Until he needs him.

It doesn't take a keen mind to see Hal is being manipulated, primarily by his lead advisor, Sir William Gascoigne (Sean Harris, Mission: Impossible - Fallout), a man always quick with loaded advice, and a very very affected way of standing, as if posing for the camera. It is William who unmasks an assassination attempt leading to the execution of two nobles, one who was Hal's friend in childhood. And it points all swords at France, a challenge not even peace-seeking Hal can ignore. 

Dude, you are being played.

Hal apologizes to Falstaff and brings the drunken knight along as a chief advisor, and they all set sail for France. They are armed with the attempts on Hal's life and some complicated, probably fabricated explanation as to how the King of France is not legally entitled to be king. But in front of the king is his foppish and arrogant son, The Dauphin (Robert Pattinson, The Batman), a cruel man who taunts Hal. They "easily" take the first castle but when they meet the Dauphin's army proper, he has The Higher Ground.

The Battle of Agincourt, the definite point in history. This is where Falstaff's brilliance comes into play. He is a man who suffers from his experiences in wars past, but wants what is best for his friend, and king. He also wants as little death as he can allow to happen, devising a plan where the lightly armoured English will feint an attack on the outnumbering, but heavily armoured French, allowing everyone to go down in the mud. It goes as planned, but at the cost of many English including John. Peace is drawn up and Hal is to marry the French princess (Lily-Rose Depp, Yoga Hosers) to seal it. He asks one thing of her -- always speak truth, because if there is one thing Hal needs it is an advisor who isn't entirely self-serving. 

The movie ends with Hal realizing how everything, the insults by the French and the entire war, was put into play by Gascoigne, to better the man's holdings. Hal dispatches the man in a less than dramatic fashion.

Again, I say the movie just looks good. There is budget and intent in the depictions. The lighting and colouring remains grim even in the lighter scenes, of which there are few. Given the movie is less a recollecting of historical facts, it is not surprising it is more a collection of artfully built vignettes.... much like a play generally is. Dialogue is at the forefront and it also is very precise, but not entirely period nor Shakespeare. If anything, it does feel a bit muted, with the tale of a heavy crown obvious, but not really impactful.

1-1-1: For All Mankind S1

I haven't been writing about TV. The last time I wrote about TV was back in May of 2025. But I still watch a lot of TV, but most, but not all, of late, has been what I consider toss-away, mindless fluff or murder-adjacent shows that I spend as much time watching my phone, as I do what's on the screen. This is an attempt to watch something with more texture, and write about it, using Kent's useful TV format.

Kent wrote about this season back in... 2023.

The What 100. NASAPunk is a term coined for video game Starfield, promoting a love of the 60s and 70s NASA aesthetic -- the computers and buttons and fish bowl helmets, the daring & machismo. This alt-history NASAPunk series starts diverging with the Soviets landing on the moon first and goes from there, imagining a world where the US never stops trying to one-up Russia. We begin with Apollo 11, rush women into the space program and actually land a habitat on the moon, all the while focusing on the lives and troubles of the astronauts & their families, through triumph, failure and loss.

(1 Great) The alt in the history, of course. While adhering to the social challenges at the time, its not afraid to make great leaps forward. Sure, the whole Nixon's Women stunt is sexist and flagrant, but it does advance sexual equality in leaps & low-g bounds. The key story about beautiful, blonde Tracy Stevens surpassing everyone's expectations, including fellow female astronauts and her (also astronaut) husband is worth cheering about. That the show actually returns to the moon is incredible, because IRL, Americans have only walked on the moon six times, and we barely acknowledge it.

Also, of course, the NASAPunk -- I spent an inordinate amount of time looking away from the main characters, and the story, at all the practical designed "stuff".

(1 Good) The soap opera. Usually I tire quickly of the social drama in these shows, just looking at my phone until the next exciting launch into space, but I found myself very very wrapped up in the lives, which is the Ronald D Moore way. Astronaut Molly Cobb's (Sonya Walger, Lost) utterly supportive hippie husband Wayne (Lenny Jacobson, Nurse Jackie), the so very tormented alpha astro-wife Karen Baldwin (Shantel VanSanten, The Boyz) who is equally detestable as she is sympathetic.

(1 Bad) Not sure if I found anything in particular bad but for the reality that no matter how much the show wanted to diverge from the sexism, racism and homophobia, it was a part of the era and had to be depicted. This show so much wants to embrace the ideals that were on the TV at that time in the real world, in that NASA and its endeavours represented an embracing of a brighter future.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Lost City of Z

2016, James Gray (Ad Astra) -- Netflix

Kent wrote about it in his mega-super-duper-2017 post.

I have had this in The Hopper since it came available but never watched it. I made one brief attempt, but was distracted and never got back to it. More recently, I took Kent's advice as to the click-click-click and just chose something and stuck with it.

Nnnn-not sure I was rewarded for that Good Habit. And my immediate thought, after having just completed it, as well as being reminded that he directed Ad Astra is that maybe he cannot get over the hump of "boring" into the realm of contemplative. And yet, That Guy is frustratingly waving his hands over his head at me, like Kermit the Frog. There is something there, and not just the admirable production values, but a director doing a study, and if I was to compare the two movies, a study of fatherhood and your place in the world? Its like that shadow of a proper film critique can see what was going on, but, well, This Guy just didn't care. What frustrates me even more is my age-old (and entirely questionable) love and fascination for British Empire era exploration, which is the whole point of this movie. And yet, I wasn't captured.

Percy Fawcett was a British military man and explorer at the beginning of the 20th century. Fawcett was friends with Arthur Conan Doyle and it was his own reports of expeditions into the Amazon that inspired Doyle's novel The Lost World.

The movie begins with the military man (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim), an officer of rank but no privilege of family, his own having barely survived a scandal. In order to regain his family name, which will provide a life of stability to his beloved wife "Cheeky" (Sienna Miller, 21 Bridges), he must do something. He is asked by the Royal Geographic Society to help them fill in the blanks on the maps in Amazonia. He will be gone a long time, some years likely, but both know he has to do it. There is an undisputed statement about having a place in the social strata of the British Empire; the movie does little to comment on that requirement, beyond banal acceptance.

Fawcett's first expedition is a success, despite the hard conditions and the political situations involving the Portuguese and the borders between Brazil and Bolivia. He is supported by fellow British military men Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson, Mickey 17) and Arthur Manley (Edward Ashley, The Terror). On this first adventure Fawcett learns of a lost city, and discovers some unexpected pottery and statuettes in the jungle. Modern civilization is deep in the throes of the superiority of western culture and dismisses that any peoples of significance could have built cities in this savage land.

Back in England Fawcett is determined to return to Amazonia to find this Lost City of Z. Mostly derided for his beliefs in South American civilizations, he does make a connection with nobleman James Murray (Angus Macfadyen, Braveheart) who agrees to back Fawcett as long as he can come along. That is a mistake. He was expecting a challenging but straight forward journey, but didn't expect hostile natives, terrible heat, questionable food and becomes more and more a hindrance to them. After he is injured, they send him with their final horse, to a nearby mining camp, but Murray's bitterness has him ruin the expedition's remaining supplies. The journey is ended without any findings.

Back in England, Murray is embarrassed over his actions and accuses the men of abandoning him. He wants reparations in the form of a public apology which Fawcett refuses. Even as he sees any chance of standing in British society escape him, WWI breaks out and the three men are sent to war. Avery dies in battle, Fawcett grievously wounded by mustard gas. He retires to obscurity in the countryside.

A decade later, fueled by tales of his expeditions (while not mentioned in movie, remember Doyle?), Americans want to fund another expedition to be led by Fawcett. While still not in good standing with the British Geographical Society, they do not want to be shown up by the Americans so they also provide support and funding. Along with his now grown son Jack (Tom Holland, Cherry), Fawcett sets out with a well provisioned expedition. They never return. They are never found.

I guess what I enjoyed about these older movies of Imperial Exploration was the actual exploration. The scenes of the journeys in the jungle are not meant to romanticized in this movie, as they are harsh and dangerous. Death is expected. But what bugged me about this movie is how they are depicted pretty much as two men tromping around in the forests with only the packs on their back. Sure, men have done such, but these British expeditions were always previously shown as giant wagon trains, and dozens of men and animals, tents in the forest, brave souls hacking their way through wild lands. That is not this movie. While Fawcett is shown as a brave and capable man, it is more about personal pride than any true desire to find anthropological meaning. And once again, if the movie was trying to explore a man challenged by his place in society, its there but I was .... bored by it.

KWIF: Mickey 17 (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week(ish) in Film.

This Week:
Mickey 17 (2025, d. Bong Joon Ho - in theatre)
Bravestarr: The Legend (1988, d. Tom Tataranowicz - YouTube)
Red Rooms (2023, d. Pascal Plante - Crave)
Problemista (2023, d. Julio Torres - Crave)
Wicked Little Letters (2023, d. Thea Sharrock - Crave)

---

Mickey 17 is a satirical sci-fi romp from the fantastic Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. His vision for the film is one that is delightfully odd, replete with director Bong's usual nuanced touches and social commentary, but this is the first of his films that I've seen where he seems like he's wrestling with the construction of the narrative.   

The plot finds Robert Pattinson's Mickey on the run from particularly sadistic loan sharks after his macron business failed, and his only hope of outrunning his fate is to get on board one of the long-distant colonizing space ships (as is noted, the environment of Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable and so competition for spots on these ships is fierce). Mickey's got no particular special skills, knowledge, or influence so his only option is to take on the designation of "Expendable". As such, Mickey's physiology, personality and memories are downloaded and should Mickey die in the process of doing his jobs (all jobs which are all but guaranteed to kill him, such as being the guinea pig for catching the virii on their new planet, and for testing vaccines to inoculate against them).

There is a tremendous exposition dump in the first act of the film that would feel interminably long if it weren't so entertaining.  A lesson we've learned from, like, time loop movies, is dying over and over again can make good comedy fodder.  It also squares us up for the politics of the era (not too dissimilar from our own) and that the spaceship Mickey is aboard is led by failed presidential candidate, and definite center of a cult-of-personality, Kenneth Marshall.  As played by Mark Ruffalo, Marshall is like a mix of Trump, Musk and televangelist Jim Bakker (with Toni Collette being his sauce-obsessed, intellectually superior co-conspirator, ala Tammy Faye). Marshall is an absolute clown of a human being, an absurd egocentric who has failed upward with the support a gullible populace. He's uncomfortably comedic, and just as reprehensible. Ruffalo puts on a good show.  

When we first meet Mickey, he's the 17th version. He has fallen in an ice cave and left for dead. But the native potato bugs rescue him.  Being a man made of soup, he just thinks his meat is bad, and the potato bugs rejected him. Returning to the ship, he comes to find that his replacement, Eighteen, has already been made, and the woman who's always by his side, Nasha (Naomi Ackie) is already cozied up with him. Eighteen is a much brasher, no-nonsense version of Mickey, while Seventeen is much more timid and reserved. The two of them, through a series of increasingly odd events, spark a revolution aboard their ship, but first spark outrage being Multiples, an affront against God and all that's good apparently (as a soul can't be shared between two bodies, or so they say).

Following the massive international and award-winning success of Parasite in 2019, Bong Joon Ho got a budgetary upgrade for his follow-up, Mickey 17. The film's price tag at nearly $120 million is well over double his next most expensive film (Okja, for the record) and triple that of Snowpiercer which played like a blockbuster, but was made pretty modestly.  In Mickey 17, it's all up there on the screen, though. The sets are plentiful, and feel all of a whole, creating a world aboard a spaceship that is tangible and lived-in. The alien planet that is the destination is a desolate and frigid place populated by a race of gigantic potato bugs, and, yeah, it's all well-realized too.  Could Director Bong have made this on a slimmer budget? Absolutely, but it wouldn't look nearly as good.

Pattinson and Ackie are great together, and I loved how Pattinson seemingly channelled Joe Pesci from Home Alone for Seventeen but Joe Pesci from Casino for Eighteen.  I enjoyed watching the movie, quite a bit, it is so fun and weird, but I didn't come out loving it as I had hoped. Nothing sticks out as particularly bad, or egregious, but it doesn't quite all gel together smoothly. There's not really a clear message to the picture, as it seems to be working through a multitude of societal critiques.  I think were this a film from the 1980s and I'd just seen it for the first time, I would be just agog, absolutely blown away by it, so maybe I just need to give it a little time. In the end, even if it is more of a lark than another Oscars-worthy movie from Director Bong, it's still an entertaining picture that should be worth a revisit.

---

The 1980's were the golden age of action figures. G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers were the top tier "boys toys" lines of the era, bolstered by syndicated cartoon series or big franchise movies.  These major properties still live today not just out of nostalgia, but a rich sense of world building that keeps sparking the imagination of young and old alike.

The pervasiveness of these toy lines was in part due to the loosening of restrictions around advertising to children, and so the accompanying weekly (or daily, in some cases) cartoon became a necessity when launching any new toy line.  It was no guarantee to success, however, and each also-ran toyline has its own unique story to tell (see the excellent pop-culture histories on the Secret Galaxy youtube channel).

Filmation, makers of the fine He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoons wanted to find success with their own ideas, not just producing cartoons based another company's intellectual property. Long story short (again, watch Secret Galaxy's recent retrospective), Filmation brought Bravestarr, a mash up of nearly everything popular in the 80's -- sci-fi, westerns, magic, and superheroes (it only needed dinosaurs) -- to Mattel, and the toy company ran with it... but too fast for Filmation. The plan was for Bravestarr's origin story to debut in theatres in the summer of 1987 along with the toys, followed by the ongoing series in the fall to bolster continued sales of the toys, but Mattel jumped the gun, excited to get the toys on shelves for Christmas 1986...where they died on the vine.

The cartoon series debuted on time, in the fall of '87, but the movie was delayed, and released in 1988 with little to no fanfare, the toy line already languishing on shelves and Mattel having moved on. Filmation as a studio was sunk and Bravestarr: The Legend was all but forgotten (in fact it was only upon watching Secret Galaxy's recent video that I even learned there was a Bravestarr movie).

Did it deserve its fate? The toys have become a bit of a cult classic, certain toys reaching pretty astronomical prices in the nostalgia-laden aftermarket, but unlike the big names of the 80's, there's been no revival for Bravestarr (maybe in part because licensing is a bit of a clusterfudge). But having caught the feature (it's on youtube), I have to say...I would have freaking loved this as a kid, and I quite like it now.

There aren't a lot of toy lines or multimedia properties, even to this day, with a person of colour as the lead, and most lines feature no Indigenous characters at all. Bravestarr is a series built around a futuristic society where a Native American is the titular hero.  "The Legend" is Bravestarr's origin story, and it starts with the history of Bravestarr's people, a civilization of Native Americans with very advanced technology and magics, being assaulted by Stampede, a power-mad invading force that wants to take the civilization's power for its own. I don't know if the allegory of colonial genocide was the intention, or if they just kind of stumbled into it, but it's there. 

Bravestarr's people escape to the stars as the planet is literally destroyed by Stampede's greedy thirst for power (again with the allegory), and only settle again when a new colony on the planet "New Texas" is formed as a result of the "gold rush" like atmosphere for the precious fuel jewel Kerium. But the planet is already besieged by Stampede and his proxy, Tex Hex. So the mayor of New Texas sends for help, which comes in the form of Bravestarr, the newly recruited galactic marshall, joined by J.B. the tough woman judge (and love interest) appointed to the planetary county.  He's there to clean things up, but he fails...at first.

It takes Bravestarr reconnecting with his roots, granting him great powers (strength of the bear, speed of the puma, eyes of the hawk, and ears of the wolf, all very nicely visualized in the show), and joining forces with the indigenous Prairie People of the planet that he is properly able to take on the evil forces New Texas faces.

In total, "The Legend" is an unevenly told story, waffling in and out of exposition, at one point running through a montage of, I presume, all the action figures available to buy. It makes use of the same well-trod 80's mold of good-vs-evil toy cartoons, and of the equally well-trod origin story formulae (that would get a workout for a good long while to come). But at the same time, the combination of influences and genres does make for a unique scenario that is quite enticing, and the animation is, often, quite stellar. Filmation's cartoons of the 80s were always a cut above. They were know to reuse animation to cut costs, but their beautiful background paintings and live-model character references always made their work stand out. Here, it's animation meant for cinematic release, so it's at another level to what we're used to seeing out of the studio's TV output. Anime influences can be felt in the work, and the visualization of Stampede is an homage to the classic Disney moment in Fantasia, "The Night on Bald Mountain".  It's all really a cut above.

The story ebbs and flows, showing signs that the Filmation team isn't fully comfortable working in feature length storytelling, but for the most part it's a satisfying watch (in spite of a frequently grating synthesized orchestra score). What gives me pause is the general conceit of using non-descript Native American culture as backdrop for a sci-fi-superhero-western meant to sell toys, a literal commodification of the culture. It would feel less...icky... if there were more Native Americans directly involved with the whole production. Bravestarr is voiced by a white man (Pat Fraley) for cripes sake! Representation matters, not just for what we seen on screen, but who is telling the stories behind the scenes. From my limited caucasian perspective, it seems like none of Bravestarr is meant as offensive, but it's also not doing the good work either. I would love for a First Nations or Native American creative team to revive this property with authenticity. I can imagine a Sterlin Harjo production would be pretty phenomenal. Maybe it's possible if the Masters of the Universe movie does well next year, creating a surge of toy property movies. 

---

Red Rooms (or Les chambres rouge in its native Quebecois tongue) opens on the face of a attractive woman sleeping. Her surroundings are grey, and she is somewhat bundled up. The colour saturation is almost non-existent, intoning the chill of her surroundings. After waking she bundles up her blanket and makeshift pillow, and determinedly walks down the street. Her full-length wool coat is tailored perfectly, she looks far too beautiful and put together to be unhoused...but we don't know. We next see her entering a building, being scanned, having her possessions checked at security, and once through she finds her destination...a smallish courtroom where she sits in the back of three aisles. 

We learn that a case is just beginning in this courtroom, with the prosecution and defence delivering their opening arguements. The case involves the kidnapping, assault, mutilation of three teenage girls, and the prosecution alerts the jury to the fact that there is video footage of two of the three murders that were filmed and sold on the dark web. It's a grisly story, and as the lawyers deliver their speeches, the camera floats around the courtroom, sometimes fixating on the attorney speaking, or the one who is not, or the accused sitting in a plexiglass box looking bored, or on the woman we met in the opening frame of the film.

This is Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariepy), she is ostensibly the film's protagonist, but for much of the film she is basically unknowable. Kelly-Anne is, we learn, not homeless, she just camps out each evening nearby the courthouse in order to keep her seat in the small viewers galley.  She is a model, she is also an avid (and successful) online poker player, and she is very web/computer savvy (she hacked her off-the-shelf AI assistant and operates it off a private server). 

Kelly-Anne, we see, fixates on the mother of one of the victims in court, more than she even leers at the accused, and she seems slightly paranoid when the crown's cybersecurity expert looks at her too long. We just never understand why. She is caught by press coming out of the courtroom, but she doesn't seem interested in speaking to them, unlike the other young woman, Clementine (Laurie Babin) who ventured in from Northern Quebec to watch the trial with an unhealthy fixation on the man on trial.

Clementine thinks she's found a kindred spirit in Kelly-Anne, but the model/hacker gives nothing away. She never confirms which side she's on, just that it seems very important to her to be in attendance at the trial.

The score to Red Rooms is exceptionally minimal, to the point that the soundtrack of the film, anytime we're in Kelly-Anne's high-rise apartment, is simply the whistling of the wind as it scrapes the side of the building. The possibilities of what Kelly-Anne's interest in the film are plenty... like, was she an early survivor of the accused, or is she like Clem just obsessed with him, or is she a true crime junkie, or was she an accomplice or somehow involved, or even the murderer. Whenever Gariepy supremely reserved performance threatens to tell on her, she does something else -- sometimes overt, sometimes nuanced -- that completely undermines prior assumptions. Her behaviour gets pretty whackadoo late in the film, and it's not entirely certain if it's performance, and if so, for whom.

Red Rooms quietly made some 2024 top ten lists of critics I follow, and from the capsule reviews I was expecting something more... conventionally thrilling, and was so happy to find that it got my heart racing because this curiosity that is Kelly-Anne is such an unknown quantity.

This is, as I like to say, a deliberately paced film, and definitely not for the impatient. It makes you squirm because of subject matter, and the time it spends contemplating it, and the time spent with these people who are perhaps too interested in it.  It is an unsettling film despite having no overtly grotesque visuals, just the insinuation of them, of knowing they exist, and sometimes hearing vague audio and seeing peoples' reactions to them. If it is a film commenting on anything, it is our society's fascination with murders and murderers, and how often, in the process of examining this fascination, victims and their stories are forgotten.

---

Julio Torres as a comedian, performer, writer, and artist is a very distinct voice. It's not just that he was born and raised in El Salvador, nor that he is a queer performer, although both are very much a part of his presence, whether on stage or screen. No, what makes Torres so distinct is he is an unapologetic weirdo whose sense of humour can best be described as obliquely surreal. His comedy special, My Favourite Shapes, in which he sits in the center of a conveyor belt that enters and exits off stage behind him, and dispenses oddball toys and abstractly shaped objects which he then discusses as he presents them to the audience by way of a projector...well, it's one of the most unique comedy routines I've seen in a long time. It was bizarre, strangely frivolous and yet seemed deeply personal and spoke much to Torres' voice and how he sees the world.  He's also the creator of Los Espookys, the hilarious Spanish language HBO show about Mexican hipsters who put their homegrown special effects makeup to work via a haunting-for-hire enterprise, and as a writer on SNL he wrote one of my all-time favourite sketches, "Wells for boys".

Problemista is Torres' first directorial effort which at once seems both personal and yet distant from connecting to real emotions. It can be a challenge for creators who excel in the surreal to ground their work with the relatable. They are capable in inviting you into their unique point of view, but have a much harder time with helping you understand them.

In Problemista, Torres plays Alejandro, a sensitive young man who finds himself in New York with the desire to work as a toy designer for Hasbro, but instead winds up, through happenstance, being the personal assistant to an artist's widow, Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton. What a get for a debut feature.

Alejandro, facing deportation, is left dangling on the end of a thread as Elizabeth yo-yos him around. He's desperate enough to work for this woman who is, at best, unhinged, at worse severely mentally unwell. She is loud and irrational and seems to get her way primarily because people will do what she wants just to get away from her (or get her away from them). She seems to live in another reality and definitely not interested in being part of the polite society we'll talk about in our next film.

Swinton delivers a tour-de-force performance, sweeping into every scene as Elizabeth, sucking all the air out of the room, and then telling everyone around her it's not enough and that they need to give her more. I've worked for a woman like this some time ago.  She was a person who lived in a world that only rotated around them, and considered other people infrequently, if at all, unless they could serve her agenda in some way. Elizabeth is a tad more extreme than this ex-boss of mine, but not by much. People like Elizabeth exist, and I've seen them. They're awful.

Torres' demure performance as Alejandro, complete with an affected shuffle-step walk, and a shrinking inside himself physicality, is one meant to be dominated by Swinton, and pretty much anyone else he encounters.  But unlike The Devil Wears Prada, where an assistant discovers their absolutely horrible boss is human human afterall, there's no such discovery for Alejandro. In fact, he seems to see Elizabeth in a light nobody else does, he seems to understand her and her motivations and her objectives, somehow...and he actually learns from her how to be more confident and assertive. 

It's not a hard film to like, but it's a difficult film to love, because Alejandro's demureness is so easily overshadowed. It's a fine line between playing a shrinking violet character and disappearing as a screen presence. Torres keeps the film, and Alejandro's life just weird enough to remain interesting. I was expecting this to be a much weirder film. The opening moments, taking us through young Alejandro's toy obsessed childhood with his artist/designer mother, is visually very vibrant and odd, but it's fleeting. Torres' New York (probably for budgetary reasons) isn't nearly as surreal. There are only glimmers of Torres' inventiveness, like his toy pitches to Hasbro, his visualization of the rigged system of American immigration, and a decidedly uncomfortable personification of Craigslist. 

I was hoping Torres would explode out of the gate as our next Michel Gondry, but it looks like we're just going to have to be patient.

---

My grandmother - my mom's mom - was a woman of propriety. Things had to be a certain way, like the way a table was set, or a bed was made, or a home was kept. We had to behave and speak a certain way in being part of a polite society. Many subjects were not to be discussed, and most definitely certain words were not to be said. I recall having my filthy mouth washed out with soap once or twice (the lesson being "don't swear around Grandma").

I considered this propriety to be a generational thing, but upon contemplating the message of Wicked Little Letters, it is much more the product of sexism and abuse. It's not generational, it's cultural. The expectation of women as subservient, of taking care of cooking and cleaning and otherwise staying out of the way. In this type of culture, women are barely permitted freedom of thought or expression, they certainly aren't permitted education or agency. There are seemingly more of these cultures around the world today than aren't.

Set in the southern coastal English town of Littlehampton post-World War I, Wicked Little Letters, is the true-ish story of decorum being scandalously broken by way of a series of wicked, nasty, filthy letters delivered to one Miss Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman, Secret Invasion), at this point a spinster still living at home in her mid-50's, still under the thumb of her controlling father (Timothy Spall, Chicken Run).

The most likely culprit is their next door neighbour Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley, Men), a widow and single mom, and also an Irish immigrant and a real liberated woman, whose no-holds-barred, profane way of speaking bemuse and shock in equal measure. As Rose states, though, she has no reservations about expressing herself, so why would she resort to writing anonymous letters to say what she would already say out loud?

The scandal hits national level, and Rose is an easy scapegoat. The film is very clear about the hypocrisy of this mass propriety, as the men expect women to behave a certain way, to be unsullied by any awareness of lewd or profane words or acts, and yet in closed quarters the men talk this way about such things with jovial frivolity, as "Woman Police Constable" Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan, We Are Lady Parts) witnesses. She is torn between "knowing her place" as the town's first woman officer, and actually serving justice, when her male counterpart is an idiot and her superior is lazy. ACAB, man.

It's difficult to talk about the film without revealing the writer of the letters, so we'll discuss more some of the subject matter after the Spoilers cut, but just to say that it's not actually a mystery that the film holds close to its chest and it reveals the answer to the audience (but not the characters in story) about the midway point.

Coleman and Buckley are both phenomenal actresses, and they're both excellent here.  I don't think I've ever seen Coleman deliver a bad performance, and she is has a lot to do here, as Edith is torn between the expectations of her from her father, her lapsed friendship with Rose, and the notoriety that she's received as a result of being a victim of the letters. Demeanour shifts are frequent, and Coleman has mastered her control of nuanced facial expressions. I don't know if I've seen Buckley in a role like this before, where she's sort of comic relief, but also an emotional lynchpin. She has a zeal, a liveliness, and an untamed natuer that flies in the face of the stiff-upper-lip/well-I-never crowd that is so delightfully appealing. She is the antidote to the buckled-down, boring existence of Littehampton.

The film utilizes colour-blind casting which is in equal measure admirable and distracting since nothing is ever mentioned about anyone's race or background. I know I was expecting the elder Swan, when ranting about his neighbour Rose, to bring up her Black boyfriend in a derogatory way, but he never does. The film holds squarely in its lane in examining sexism. Even its critique of the police, and their structures winds up rather toothless in the end.  It's a film that says much, and rewardingly, but had the potential to say even more.

[Toastypost]

**SPOILERS**

It's really to no one's surprise when we find out that the writer of the letters to Edith Swan is none other than Edith herself.  The letters seemed to be spurred by befriending Rose, and revealing in her liberation, but then having that friendship quashed by her father. So she, in secrets, begins to liberate herself by way of writing the most foulest things she can think of. That those thoughts are directed at herself is a product of a caged woman loathing her inability to escape the cage, and it's telling that when the letters extend beyond her, that they are directed at the other women of the town, she's admonishing them all for their upholding of the systems that keep them down. It's equally telling that she never writes a letter to the person she fears the most, her father.  Edith's greatest sin is not writing the letters, but letting Rose take the fall. In her admiration (and emulation) of Rose, she also cant escape her patriarchal thinking, that Rose's liberties as a woman are somehow criminal and deserve to be punished and reigned in. Afterall, why should Rose be allowed to curse and cavort so freely when Edith cannot?

It is a bittersweet ending when Edith is found out and sentenced and carted off to jail. She is a victim herself, afterall, and yet, being sent to prison allows her freedom from her father for the first time in her life. The downside is it is still jail, though, and whose to say she won't encounter a whole institution of men (and women) looking to subjugate her just like her Father?

I think back to my Grandmother, and it's distinctly possible she had a father who was somewhat like Edith's father, who demanded a certain discipline and propriety, and that her mother would have upheld such structures in the household [edit. not exactly a true assumption on my part, but generational trauma resonates in expectations and behavioural norms].  I know my Grandmother had husbands who were maybe less forcefully demanding, but expectant of such norms. My Grandmother also worked, she had a number of jobs throughout her life which began out of necessity, having fled an abusive relationship with two small children. Despite marrying again (and again) she retained a definite drive and work ethic, perhaps a desire to stand on her own two feet, to not need to rely upon a man financially. In her own ways, she broke free of the patriarchy despite being unable to let go of its legacy of teachings. She was a remarkable woman who led an impressively active life well into her late 80's before dementia robbed her of her resources, and I miss her. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Irishman

2019, Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street) -- Netflix

There are directors you are supposed to admire, movies you are supposed to see -- or at least that is what they say. Scorsese movies often end up in the Oscar race for one aspect or another, but that is their decision. I am not sure I see what they see.

Scorsese is not really my thing. Nor is he Kent's. We have seen a handful of his movies, even wrote about a few. But I have never really felt compelled to watch his movies. Even this one, I more felt compelled to watch it to see a different side of film, something that the industry talks about, speaks favourably about, holds as high standards in making cinema. I guess I don't see it.

Oh, I see it. I see that he is a very competent director, a compelling film maker. He does a brilliant job on the finer details of a movie, such as framed shots, dialogue, pacing, etc. All the components are masterfully done. But even so, I am left feeling... much like Frank did in this movie... nothing. Like everyone, I loved Goodfellas when I saw, but I don't think I have felt a need to rewatch it in the 30 years since I saw it. I did once attempt to watch Gangs of New York again, as I recall it being much more fantastical in nature, but I didn't make it all the way through.

This is another gangster movie. It tells the story of 1950s truck driver Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro, Machete), an Irishman, who catches the attention of the Phily mob, joins their ranks, and then moves with them through the years, until they all die off. It is based on a non-fiction book "I Heard You Paint Houses", which is mafioso for "kill people" and explains the story of what happened to Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino, Danny Collins). If you are of a certain age, you grew up hearing about the disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa, all the speculation and conspiracy theories behind it.  This book is not considered a historical fact as to what happened, just another part of the mythology. You may also be like me, and never really understood why we were supposed to care.

I watched this three-and-a-half hour movie over a number of days. The Media PC has been turned off this week due to the heat, and I have been left to my streaming services. I cannot imagine watching this movie in the cinema. let alone in one sitting on the sofa. But in giving it multiple sittings, I can only say it probably lent itself to keeping my attention. I wasn't afforded the opportunity to get truly bored or annoyed by it. 

Scorsese is known for his "conversations", his dialogue. Almost the entire movie is about conversations between two men, with the occasional break so Frank can shoot someone in the head, or family gatherings, over which we can hear Frank's voiceovers of the events. Every so often there is text laid over a scene, to show how a mobster met his end. Often the conversations are saying something, without saying exactly the thing, as if they are worried about being bugged. I was not sure if it was a statement on how they always felt they were being listened to, or just an affectation of being a mafia man. If anything, it lends to the immersion.

If anything of the movie caught me, it was the immersion. The depiction of the less than glamourous lives of these gangsters felt very tangible. They are all making godawful amounts of money, but it never really shows. They did most of their work in run down cafes, or in the backs of middle-class businesses. Their lives outside work are not elegant, more visually well-off upper middle class. But one thing felt entirely off for me, and that was the use of Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran. The movie tells the tale as a recollection, elderly Frank talking to someone, a priest or empty room, we are never really sure. When Frank started working for the mob, he was in his mid-30s, but De Niro was around 75. Sure, they shoe-polish his hair, and De Niro is a spry man for 75 (a lot more than I will be 25 years from now), but its very very apparent this is not a man in his late-30s, or his 40s, and even stretching believability when he reaches his 50s. No digital work is used, thankfully, but I was not immersed so much that I let it go.

In the end, I can say I watched the movie, and was glad for it. But that's it. Nothing else. No revelations, no break throughs on the work of Scorsese, no grand opinions of the work of a "master". It was a movie, well-done, well acted, incredibly well shot.

Meh.

Kung-fu Quarters: Four HBO (Asia) Originals

Master of the White Crane Fist: Wong Yan-Lam (2019, d. Guo Jianyong - HBO/Crave)
Master of the Nine Dragon Fist: Wong Ching-Ho (2019, d. Si Xiaodong - HBO/Crave)
Master of the Drunken Fist: Beggar So (2016, d. Guo Jianyong - HBO/Crave)
Master of the Shadowless Kick: Wong Kei-Ying (2016, d. Guo Jianyong - HBO/Crave)

[I am by no means an expert, nor a connoisseur when it comes to kung-fu, wuxia or Chinese martial arts history, so please excuse me any ignorance I may have to the titular characters of these films or the historical contexts they might find themselves in. ] 

On all the streaming services I am subscribed to I have a watchlist. They're never well-curated, usually just a dumping ground for anything that seemed to have an interesting description, or maybe I had heard about on a podcast, or maybe stars or is directed by someone I kind of like. If it was *really* something I wanted to watch, I would have watched it already and taken it off the list.

On Crave -- a Canadian streaming service with its own original content, as well as curated new release and older movies, and, with the extended package, all of HBO's content -- I discovered these four films. I think Crave had a little Jackie Chan kick for a month or two and these came up in the "More Like This" section.

Given their titles, they all seemed of a piece, perhaps even a connected series, which seemed intriguing enough, so I added them to "My Cravings" and saved them for a later day.  In the frequent perusing of my various watchlists when looking for something to watch, I've passed these over dozens upon dozens of times, sometimes even wondering why they are on there.

With seemingly nothing but time this past week (not true, but seemingly) I started chipping away at "My Cravings". Master of the White Crane Fist was the first of this quartet to be chosen for no other reason than it was the shortest and it was late.

I can't really express why this very middling TV movie spurred me on to watch another, which was of even lesser quality, which then spurred me on to watch another, and by that point I might as well just finish them off. 

I'm not really lying when I say these feel like the kung-fu version of Hallmark movies. They've got some budget but corners are definitely cut in the production values category. The lighting is often natural and oversaturated giving the image an amateurish feel, while the sets can range from decently immersive to obviously anachronistic.  If they were all shot on a studio backlot in China somewhere I wouldn't be surprised, as everything seems so crisp and new, unweathered and not lived in.  One exterior setting in Master of the Nine Dragon Fist reminded me of a Disneyworld main drag.

These films are not really connected in any way, save for the fact that three of the four were directed by the same man, Guo Jianyong, which explains the samey-samey vibe of them, not to mention the speed-up/slow-mo/speed-up pseudo-Zack Snyder technique they use constantly that just makes my teeth itch. But I cannot solely blame Guo because, woof, those scripts all needed at least two more passes before they were ready to shoot.

From my limited experience with historical kung-fu of the Shaw Bros. classics and the like, these seem like they're trying to pay homage to them in terms of both story structure and kung-fu spectacle. But these films make two critical errors. First is they are each too self-serious, they play too far into the melodrama and not far enough into the sense of camp and visceral violent fun. Second, they are using digital cameras instead of film, and there's a surreal grittiness to film that is absolutely lost with the crisp brightness of digital high-definition. These films needed a filter or even a digital pass to mute the brightness. They feel largely sterile.

While I compare them to the rote, predictable Hallmark movies, I also need not remind the loyal Disagreeables (that's you, dear reader) that we have a thing for Hallmark movies over here. We're not snobs.  And in the same way that one can find value in the differences between one Hallmarkie and the next, I too could see the differing redeemable qualities in these HBO Asia/China Movie Channel productions.

---

Master of the White Crane Fist: Wong Yan-lam wound up being my favourite of the four, largely because its opening half quickly won me over. It starts with a gang of bandits taking over a tea house theatre, cutting then to a troupe of guards walking their heavily manacled prisoner in the rain, only to arrive at said tea house. The tension becomes thick as the bandits have to play nice to the very suspicious head guard. And then enter Wong Yan-lam, a travelling prognosticator who appears seemingly out of nowhere and gleefully starts engaging the very confused room. Everyone seems to have their own agenda and this quite Poirot-esque mystery builds up exceptionally well for a good forty minutes before it all deflates unsatisfying like a  balloon in a thresher. 

The second half fumbles around trying to concoct reasons for people to fight in between melodramatic exposition. The fight coordination is not bad at all (which can be said for all of the films) but it's not always shot the best nor does the fighting always feel cohesive to the story or character. I mean you think for a film called "Master of the White Crane Fist" that it would spend some time setting up how awesome the "white crane fist" technique is and then showcase said technique, at least in defeating the main villain. But no, the big climax of the film decends into a no-holds barred street-style brawl, which, I have to say, is a pretty fresh thing to do in a kung-fu movie.  All the actors present are particularly good, but the lead actor playing Wong Yan-lam is super charming, and the lead villain actor has the most wonderfully nasty charisma (the credits were too small to read and there's no listings for performers on IMDB or Letterboxd).

---

With only a couple exceptions, which I will most definitely get to, the performers in Master of the Nine Dragon Fist: Wong Ching-Ho are also extremely charming. Master Wong himself is the standout but strangely Master Ho is almost the secondary character of this film, as it follows for a long time Man Sing, a Northerner who has come to Guangzhou with his family to find work at on of the city's many kung-fu schools, only to be ostracized for being a Northerner.  The inner-country prejudices are just as prevalent in this film as are the anti-western, anti-opiate sentiments that frame the story.  Man Sing, master of the Iron Shield skill, protects his family from assault by rioting rival schools, but is left desperate without money, food or lodging, and has nowhere to turn but the unscrupulous western opiate trader Mr. James.

Mr. James, in collusion with the local authorities, sets Man Sing out in the streets to challenge all the school masters to a kung-fu duel, to prove who is the most talented in the city.  The intent is to undermine Master Wong's attempts to organize the schools into an anti-opioid patrol, as well as his opiate addiction recovery clinic. While everyone agreed that Master Wong is the most talented, Man Sing surely can give him a run for his money. But Mr. James stacks the deck against him by having his pregnant wife targeted by street thugs, and later has Master Wong arrested for opioid possession (I think he was treating opiate addiction in a methadone kind of way) during which one of the city guard ruthlessly punches his pregnant wife in the gut killing her and the baby...in broad daylight...in front of dozens of witnesses... with no repercussions. ACAB, man. ACAB.

There's a lot of injustice heaped upon poor Master Wong, and for him to triumph in the end means that our poor, deceived, ostracized Northern master Man Sing must lose, and it's so unintentionally soul crushing... I have to wonder if the filmmaker is sort of an anti-Northerner bigot himself, or if it's just careless scripting?

One of the most bizarre aspects of the film is opiate trader Mr. James. He's played by a white performer who is not much of an actor at all. He spends almost all of his time in the film comically looking out a second story window with a spyglass. When he's not doing that, he's stroking his beard menacingly. Or half-grin smirking, menacingly. The performer has no idea what to do with his hands or his face. He's also completely dubbed, both in English and Cantonese (I think...I looked it up and Cantonese, not Mandarin is the traditional language of Guangzhou) by a Chinese performer. The English dialogue is almost unintelligible, while Mr. James's Cantonese (?) voice is hilariously nasal and mumbly. (I think they're further taking the piss out of him). Mr. James is a hilarious cartoon white devil villain and serves as the butt of a very anti Western message... which I have no problem with.

The absurdity of Mr. James elevates this film to nearly "so bad it's good" territory, but its crimes towards Man Sing (including his unbelievably shrill nagging wife) and fridgeing Master Wong's wife really bring the mood down something fierce.

---

My experience with other drunken fists/masters/boxing in film and TV it it has always had a tremendously playful aspect to it, but beyond the initial encounter between "Master of the Drunken Fist" So Chan (as written in the movie description but written as Su Can within the film's subtitles) and Lau Pak-Gwai taking place under a very tall dining table there's not a lot of fun to be had in the technique here. Master of the Drunken Fist:Beggar So is an overly self-serious movie that follows Su Can's journey from brash and cocky military scholar, poised to be the next great commander, only to have a sudden and immediate downfall into poverty, mostly as a part of the convoluted machinations from the eunuch Song Fok-Hoi.

Now, Song Fok-Hoi is actually a pretty tremendous cartoon villain, and I wish this film could embrace the campiness the actor brings to the role by matching it everywhere else, but it seems to think it's doing some important historical storytelling...on a Hallmark budget.

It's also a script that can't decide what's more important: Su Can's overplayed redemption story or Song Fok-Hoi's overwrought ambition to, what, stop a rebellion attempting to depose the Dowager Empress as she's wielding too much control over her Emperor child...or something. I really couldn't follow the politics at play here and its storytelling suffers greatly for how much it entangles itself in Fok-Hoi's plans, especially in the climax which reveals schemes within schemes within schemes. Unnecessary.

That all said there are some likeable performances from all the main leads, but it's really a shame that Lau-Pak Gwai is not in the film more, he abruptly departs at the halfway point. I assumed he was off to have a showdown with his old nemesis Fok-Hoi, but, upon review, it seems he just turned tail and ran into the woods. Unheroic.

This story really needed to use The Mask of Zorro as a template, investing more into the mentorship and romance (oh boy the romance between Su Can and Yoke-Long is all over the place tonally -- including an abruptly started and just as abruptly cut away sex scene -- as is Yoke-Long's characterization).

---

The final film, Master of the Shadowless Kick: Wong Kei-Ying, doesn't even have the good graces of good performances. Our lead playing Wong Kei-Ying is a dry, charmless performer who may yield sympathy but not much else.

Wong Kei-ying is legendary Wong Fei-hung's father, and little Fei-hung does appear in the film. It was only after the film that I reminded myself who Wong Fei-hung is (Once Upon a Time In China, Iron Monkey, Drunken Master) and suddenly it made sense as to why the film was so focused upon us hearing his squeaky little voice calling out for his father all the damn time, and then the film ends with a post-script mentioning Wong Fei-hungs impending greatness (it really undercuts Wong Kei-ying's importance as the lead of the film, it really, really does). 

The story of Fei-hung's dad, starts out pretty rough but builds in intrigue through its first half with a intricately woven plot that finds Fei-hung's dad embroiled in helping a government official take on an opium gang, only to later learn that said official has kidnapped his master and deceived him into handing him full control over Guangzhou's drug trade.

Like Master of the White Crane Fist, the film's second half is unable to sustain this intrigue the first half establishes, as once Fei-hung's dad discovers General Wei is no hero, he's unable to hide any moves against the General, and ultimately winds up hooked on opium in an ill-advised cinematic side quest. Eventually, Fei-hung's dad must rescue his child (Fei-hung if you didn't know!), sister-in-law and other friends he's made along the way from the General in a tournament of death, which is mostly entertaining if it didn't feel so out of place and unlikely to resolve the far bigger societal problems at hand in the film.

---

While Wong Kei-Ying and Wong Ching-Ho both explore China's problematic history with opium and government corruption, it's not really the common thread for all. There could be revenge plots in each of these films, but revenge never ultimately seems to be the motivating factor for the heroes in question, there's always got to be some nobler goal. But in robbing these characters of their revenge fantasies (which these films do repeatedly) the catharses of the films are all pretty much negligible. I didn't find any of the endings very satisfying.

These films, running between 86 and 98 minutes, still feel too long by at least 20 minutes. They should be far tighter, and again, much more fun to watch.

If I had to watch any of them a second time, it would be Master of the Nine Dragon Fist just for being sheer bonkers, yet, I don't think I can really recommend any of these when I know there are far better kung fu and wuxia products out there that deserve eyeballs much more than these.