KWIF: Dust Bunny (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Since I posted last week's KWIF a little later into this week, this is a slighter week, but also a lot of re-watches, like Star Wars and Empire (bootleg versions of the original releases transferred direct from film stock, including all the magnificent film grain and burn marks) and getting sucked into the last half of films like Batman Returns and Spider-Man:No Way Home. Sometimes you just need a little comfort food.

This Week:
Dust Bunny (2025, d. Bryan Fuller - rental)
La grenouille et la baliene aka Tadpole and the Whale ("Tales for all #6"; 1987, d. Jean-Claude Lord - crave)

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I see that Toasty has a stump file for his viewing of Dust Bunny and I'm extremely curious as to his thoughts on the film because it was Toasty who introduced me to director Bryan Fuller's TV work (Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Hannibal) and made me a big, big fan. But I'm not going to sneak a peek, because I don't want it to impact my thoughts here at all.

My thoughts are simple.

What a fucking delight.

For Fuller's first cinematic outing he's chosen to create a twee horror action comedy drama about an orphan girl with a monster under her bed who hires a hitman to kill it.

It's an absurd premise, so it takes the absolute right touch in order to make such a wild tale work, and, naturally, Fuller has the perfect touch.

Fuller's work has always been a mish-mash of darkness and whimsy, of beauty and chaos, often with a morbid and playful fascination with death. So the story of Aurora (the marvelous Sophie Sloan) is of course one of a child who has had to grow up too quickly, who sees the world for the dark and dangerous place it is but knows she needs to navigate it anyway, and yet is still a child who doesn't fully understand the world, and so she has to interpret things with her young mind's knowledge. She has been party to a lot of death, so death is just as intriguing as it is frightening.

When, inevitably, her new foster parents are eaten, she looks to her roughneck neighbour (in the subtitles he's called "Intriguing Neighbour") to be not her protector, but her contract killer (how she obtains the money to hire him is hilarious). Intriguing Neighbour (Mads Mikkelson, Hannibal) is, well, fascinated by this little girl (whose name he can barely pronounce right, so he winds up calling "Little Girl" half the time) who is so bold, so independents, so tough, but also naive and childish.

Intriguing Neighbour investigates Aurora's apartment, and finds that a struggle had taken place, but he believes that it was enemies, or bounty hunters, coming to get him who accidentally stumbled on her place. In talking with his handler (Sigourney Weaver, Working Girl), she says that Aurora knows too much and she is a liability. So the handler sends someone to dispose of her.  

So Intriguing Neighbour has assassins coming to get him, while having to protect Aurora from assassins coming for her, and also dealing with the social worker coming around to check on Aurora... and of course, the eventual realization that there is indeed a monster under Aurora's bed.

While the story of Dust Bunny takes place in, in theory, New York maybe, it was shot in Hungary and the feel of the environments (the apartments, the hallways, the alleys, the streets, the rooftops, the restaurants) all seem so European. So it's jarring when Intriguing Neighbour mentions the FBI...I was like "they're way out of their jurisdiction!" 

That said, this is a Bryan Fuller joint and the man's sense of style and design is impeccable. He and his team of art directors, set designers, costumer, and hair and make-up decorate the hell out of every shot of this movie and it's all gorgeous. Fuller's cinematographer, Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, makes every frame so alluring to the eye. The culminating effect of the story and the style make it basically "what if Leon: The Professional was made by Jean-Pierre Jeuenet instead of Luc Besson". It really feels like Amelie but with monsters and killers.

The tone will not be for everyone. It's not a serious movie, and yet it cares for its characters deeply, which is the Fuller way. For all the style and flights of fancy he likes to have in his productions, Fuller always has a grounding point in his characters. Here it is the relationship building between Aurora and Intriguing Neighbour, which, again, is not unlike The Professional but mercifully minus that film's ...undertones. This is really the bond of a girl in need of a parent in her life, someone she can trust to protect her, and for Intriguing Neighbour it's finding something in his life that is actually worth fighting for, and feeling for.

It's a violent film, but a bloodless one. It's got some grim moments (such as Aurora watching, and helping, Intriguing Neighbour dispose of a body) but it's still pretty light even in those moments. It's a fantasy horror in the way kids movies sometimes were in the 1980's but this one is in the vein of Burton or Del Toro, being a fairy tale for adults.

I adored this movie, and if I had to go back to my "best of 2025" list, this would certainly make my top ten. 

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Continuing my viewings of the Quebecois produced "Tales for all" series of films that were prevalent on Canadian television during my youth, we step into a French-Canadian stab at the Flipper/Free Willy style a-kid-and-their-sea-mammal story, one which really, really did not work for me as much as I tried to get into the spirit of what was intended.

Daphné (Fanny Lauzier) is a precocious, independent pre-teen in Mingan, Quebec. In the film, the small community set in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is based around a cozy tourist resort and the attraction of whale watching. Not only are there tourists, but researchers and film crews who come to document the sea life and island birds.

Daphné has a best friend name Elvar, a dolphin who journeys up from Florida every summer. They seemingly can communicate with one another, and Daphné also seems to understand whale songs. When she's tested, it's discovered she can hear frequencies four times higher than the average person (I'm not sure how that translates into understanding what the sounds mean...but the film asks you to just go with it.)

We meet and experience Daphné's specialness via two visitors to Mignan, young couple Marcel (called "Michael" in English subtitles, played by Denis Forest) and his pregnant wife Julie (Marina Orsini). They are gateway characters who serve little purpose other than to immediately fall in love with this precious child and provide us an "in" into her unique experience.

The film is largely conflict free throughout the first two acts, save for Daphné and her other similarly-aged friend causing trouble for the touring guide and camera crews by playing pranks on them and having zero consequences for doing so. But then Daphné learns that the resort is being sold and she aspires to stage a protest but is interrupted by having to rescue a whale, followed by rescuing Marcel and Julie after they become stranded, and then herself be rescued after she's knocked unconscious and falls into the water without a lifejacket on.

There's two distinct parts to the film, which is the Mignan setting and the scenes in the bay with Elvar, the latter of which were shot in Floridia (if I'm interpreting the end credits correctly). It's well constructed filmmaking to make these two locations feel at least geographically together, as the characters enter and leave interacting with the dolphin (and not just the main 3 cast, but a few others as well) almost seamlessly.

The "Tales for all" series has had some very surprising aspects to its stories, often with the child protagonists having to contend with real-world ramifications, or just being youth and having to experience things that are outside of their control. I was really expecting more of the same out of Tadpole and the Whale but at every turn, it's a film that just wants Daphné to be unchallenged by the harsh realities of the world. A whale getting caught in a fishing net is treated as adventure to which Daphné is up for the challenge, and yet the sale of the resort, which would mean her parents likely losing their jobs, and Elvar being driven away from his annual summer home. These would be harsh realities that seem in keeping with what the young protagonists of prior "Tales for all" would have to face ... but not Daphné.

No, Daphné gets to run free and wild and just be a special little flower and the world will bend to her every desire, which is nice fantasy, but feels so antithetical to this series. She should experience crushing disappointment, especially when it comes to her having to face of choice of going off to rescue her friends or staging a (probably ineffectual) protest. Where's the assaulting reality ala Bach et Bottine? 

Besides some wonderfully fun dolphin times and lots of great whale footage, La grenouille et la baliene is a fairly dull movie with almost all characters but Daphné being relatively unexplored. Any personal tidbits (like the conflict between the two Grand-papas or Julie's pregnancy) have little weight on the characters or the story overall.  

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Knox Goes Away

2023, Michael Keaton (The Merry Gentlemen) -- Amazon

Two movies directed by Keaton, two movies about hitmen. I wonder what's up with that.

Another movie about a hitman diagnosed with memory issues, though John Knox's CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) is definitely the worst. By the time he is confirmed to have contracted it, he is in the last few weeks. I said, in my write up of The Killer's Game that it generally has something to do with having consumed "mad cow brain" and articles do say, "only through an injection or consuming infected brain or nervous tissue." But a bit further reading says just the consumption of infected meat can cause. The little detail in the movie of having an opening scene with the two killers, John (Michael Keaton, The Founder) and his partner Muncie (Ray McKinnon, Mayans MC), eating steaks in a shitty diner, was nice.

Memory issues are on my mind of late (until I forget) because dementia is around me. Being of an age where most of my peer group have aging parents, its not surprising their are such things happening, but also being of an age, my brain is no longer storing more than it should. I notice that more and more I am having "those moments" where I lose names of people or things, especially when put on the spot. I just blank out entirely, lose the word, sit still and struggle to put together a trigger for the word, or just plain give up. And let's not get into the "nope, I have no recollection of that..." conversations with Marmy. I am sure its just age, stress, diet, stress but it chills me to the bone when I see these depictions of it.

Two things happen after the diagnosis: he accidentally kills his partner, after having a moment, and his estranged son Miles (James Marsden, Paradise) shows up on his doorstep, covered in blood and panicking. Miles has killed the 30sumthin supremacist who has been sexually assaulting his 16 year old daughter. If anyone knows how to deal with a murder scene, its his father. Knox goes to a close friend and fixer, Xavier Crane (Al Pacino, The Irishman), to build a plan, not just for putting his final affairs in order, but also to remove his son from suspicion forever.

A nice detail that the movie skips the typical hitman / enforcer tropes where its a challenge to get out of the business. Its not like they have a choice, but in other examples, the only way out is death. But Crane presents as a true friend, knowing Knox will not be able to keep on track without help. There isn't a lot of emotion in their relationship, just two criminals saying, "Yep, let's do this." Loyalty. Understanding.

In many ways this is a more thoughtful movie than others of its ilk. Keaton puts a sympathetic hand on Knox but doesn't shy away from exactly how terrible it is to just ... go away. Eventually the disease will not only steal away his memories but also his body's memories on how to function, and he will die. Knox has a lot to do in that short time, in order to clear his son's name, and setup the people he cares for with the money he has made. I still marvel at Keaton compared to how his career started as there is not a hint of funny man here. This is a sobre, focused movie, and while not groundbreaking in any manner (I again repeat, things don't have to be new to be good) it does its job well.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Mechanic

1972, Michael Winner (Death Wish) -- Amazon

I watched the remakes a few years ago. Kent recently watched this original, which inspired me to view.

Migawd this movie dredged up a bias in me that I had thought I had worked through -- a distinct dislike for movies made, and set, in the 70s. From the opening quirky discordant more suited to horror movies music, to the haircuts, to the clothing, I hated it all. And while I tempered to the movie the more it went along, as the story became tighter feeling, for much of it all I could think was, "OMG, this is everything I hate about low-budget, badly directed, badly acted 70s movies." 

That said, the opening establishing sequence was nicely done, despite the trappings I hated so much -- the quiet, methodical nature of hitman Arthur Bishop's (Charles Bronson, Death Wish) setup of his hit, the likely hitech aspects his equipment, his precision. And then the switch, from the grotty apartments of his job, back to his obviously opulent house that the hitman money bought. I cannot say where the hitman genre was at this time, but I have seen enough 70s movies to think this movie was extremely rough around the edges, but was establishing something not before seen. If the same tactic was taken now, if this mythology of hitman was being established now, I would applaud it. And yes, I can see, as Kent did, that it was this mythology that setup The Killer by David Fincher so many years later.

As said, Arthur Bishop is a hitman for a syndicate. After the introduction kill, he is invited over by the old family friend Big Harry (Keenan Wynn, The Clonus Horror [!!!]), who has his own connections to the syndicate. Harry has run afoul of his business partners, and asks Bishop to intercede on his behalf. Instead, the syndicate assigns Bishop to kill Harry. Arthur doesn't argue. The movie does present the emotional toll of his job, from the pills he pops, to the unexpected panic attack he has. But Arthur knows the cost of doing anything other than what the syndicate asks.

And he runs into Harry's son, Steve (Jan-Michael Vincent, Airwolf), who is not all that bothered by his father's death, considering the wealth he inherits. Steve shows an interest in Bishop, admitting an awareness of what Arthur does for a living. Steve's a bit of a hedonistic, narcissistic layabout, and while you get the sense that Bishop doesn't care for his lifestyle, he indulges the man, allowing himself to be introduced to Steve's annoying hippy friends. Bishop sees something in him, but what, I don't know? Amorality? If Bishop is all about control and moderation and precision, I am not sure why he thinks Steve can attain that. Never the less, he invites Steve along on a hit, which goes awry, and Steve finishes the job for him.

That doesn't sit well with the syndicate, that Bishop would involve someone in their business without their express permission, especially the son on the man they just had killed. In recompence, Bishop is sent to Italy to take out another of their own. Do this job and all is forgiven. Except, its a setup -- they are killing Bishop away from his own terf.

Arthur and Steve survive the attempted kill on the boat where he was supposed to perform the hit, and then fend off a number of other thugs on a precarious coastal highway. They survive and return to the hotel with the nice view. Steve is pleased with himself, Bishop seems far too at ease considering his own organization wants him dead. They share a glass of wine, and then Arthur begins to feel the effects. A poison, clear and tasteless, applied to the inside of the glass. Steve is very pleased with himself. But he intimates he won't be slipping into the void Bishop leaves behind, more doing it for the joy of killing. Maybe for money? Maybe not?

Steve (Jan Michael-Vincent, Damnation Alley) returns home, home to Arthur's house, now his. Fully pleased with himself, gets into his fancy muscle car and finds a note from Arthur -- you just triggered a bomb, so long kid.

BOOM.

That the last act took place in Italy kind of surprised me -- maybe the movie was not as low budget as I thought? Winner did have a decent film career before Death Wish, two years later, but maybe the rough edges was his style. I don't do a lot of digging when it comes to these write ups. They are more about the experience at the time, and only on occasion warrant some digging. 

And in saying that, I want to think of this movie as having set a tone for hitmen, that it established something in the sub-genre that would be further repeated. But I cannot say for sure. I kind of liked the movie, but still had to deal with my hangups. And I could never stand Jan-Michael-Vincent, even when he was the centre of much of my childhood viewings, but at least here he embodies the smarm of sociopath Steve. Bronson is Bronson.

Recently, Paramount decided to pull down a lot of the archives of websites they own, including much of the backlog of MTV. Disk Space is expensive, I guess. More likely paying people to maintain is expensive. But I am so glad that the Roger Ebert site hangs onto to everything cuz we get this less than favourable review from 1972.

Also, you can see the creases in the poster. Hee!

KWIF: TÁR (+5)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts.

This Week:
TÁR (2022, d. Todd Field - Crave)
Love Lies Bleeding (2024, d. Rose Glass - rental)
The Mechanic (1972, d. John Boorman - AmazonPrime)
The Breaker Upperers (2018, d. Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami -  Netflix)
Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024, d. Ron Howard - Disney+)
Cyborg (1989, d. Albert Pyun - DVD)

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A few years back, while shooting Nightmare Alley, Cate Blanchett was renting a house in close proximity to my neighborhood. It meant that at any time I might be out walking the dog, and *BAM* I just run into Cate Blanchett. It sent cold shivers up my spine and riddled me with discomfiting anxiety. I just know I would get mush-mouthed, say something really dumb, and then have my knees buckle underneath me as I lay on the ground in a pool of my own drool while my dog would probably just lay down in proximity to me as she would think "this is what we're doing now." And then for weeks, or months, or the rest of my life I would have a surge of red-faced embarrassment and cold panic sweats every time I thought about it, which would be all. the. time.

Toasty's usually the one to talk about his anxieties in a review, and then have an inner monologue in italicized font, but yeah, there's a reason we're friends, as our stupid brains act so similarly stupid.

We shouldn't idolize people, full stop, but when we're in awe of someone for their talent, their looks, and/or their charisma, it's hard not to let a little worship slip into one's thought process. So that anxiety that I was feeling, that fear of embarrassing myself in front of Cate Blanchett, I thought came from a place of great admiration. It's true, I admire her very much. But I actually went down the list of Cate Blanchett films I had seen and, somehow, that list almost all leaned into the nerdier spectrum of her output (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Hannah, Life Aquatic, Benjamin Button).

So, if I was that worked up about running into the woman, what was it I greatly admired her for? I mean, I think of her entire resume like, Thor:Ragnarok probably ranks as more of a lark for her than one of her proudest moments, right? I tried to think of a movie that she starred in that I saw just for her, and I could not think of one. Almost every film I had seen her in was a byproduct of her being in a property or working with a director I already liked. No Elizabeth, no Carol, no Veronica Guerin, no Blue Jasmine....

...well, okay, no Blue Jasmine makes sense.

But right now, I'm perusing Blanchett's filmography and it's startling how few films Blanchett has been the legit star of. She's an immaculate supporting player or co-lead, elevating everything she is in and rarely getting the glory for it. Given her undeniable talent, it's legitimately ridiculous how few films she's been the only face on the poster.

When Tár came out it was an absolute critical darling, and seemed to be all over the podcasts I was listening to, praising Blanchett for her best work yet in a career of little but great work. Lydia Tár even became a regular punchline (not the but of the joke but the a referential joke for those in the know, as if Tár were a real public figure). I don't know why I didn't see Tár in theatres, if only to be part of the conversation, but once the sensation of Tár passed, it fell down my "to watch list".

Ok Kent, enough setup. You want to see more Cate Blanchett movies, so you watched a Cate Blanchett movie. Now tell us about the movie.

Like this post, Tár has a very long, ponderous, pretentious even opening act, about 40 minutes or so of this 158 minute film. In fact, it virtually opens with its closing credits in the tiniest font that almost seems a lampoon of the "you should have seen this blockbuster in theatres" regret.  Yes, for those first 40 minutes, we get a lot of talk about classical music orchestration and conducting, first as an magazine interview in front of a live audience, and then as Tár guest lectures at some university or conservatory.  

If it sounds off-putting, I won't say that it isn't, but it's also not as repulsive as it might sound. In a strange way, it's all done very inside baseball, so as a viewer, if you're not in the know (like me) you're on the outside looking in and striving to pick up as much meaning out of it as you can. All this pretentious patter and audience serves a purpose. Lydia is a horribly pretentious person, and is so goddamn full of herself and her status that she obsessively sanitizes herself after interacting with anyone outside her sphere, as if they're a taint and make her unclean.

The gist of Tár is somewhat of a me too story, a reckoning for the "elite" that think themselves untouchable and unimpeachable just because they have a certain status in one sphere of society, and think they don't have to contend with nay sayers or anyone who doesn't give a shit about their vocation.

Lydia has been stringing her assistant along for years (are they/were they involved?) with promises of advancement. Typical grooming shit. Lydia has another former "protege" that not only has she cut loose but actively has kept her from getting any work in the field. She circles, like a hawk, fresh meat in her orchestra, even while her longtime partner watches. Lydia is smart enough, loquacious enough, erudite enough that she can reduce almost any counter-argument to "fuck you you bitch", a retort she smugly acknowledges as defeat. She's a predator, and Blanchett is utterly compelling, and at times freaking scary without ever raising her voice or making a threatening motion.  Blanchett plays Tár's as impervious to reality until she can no longer ignore it. Her Tár navigates an existence that she has crafted around herself to protect her, she's manufactured an identity that doesn't feel anything but self-satisfaction. But it is an identity that is definitely guarding something, and Blanchett straddles the line about whether that guard is holding something in or keeping something out. 

Writer-director Field approaches his subject with the same fascination as a nature documentary. We're watching the alpha groomer in her natural habitat of environments that look the other way as they stand to benefit from her brilliance. Maybe certain audience members were utterly bemused by the opening acts of Lydia's pretentious ponderings on conducting and composition (it's deep in the weeds nerdy shit for classical nerds, so I shouldn't denigrate it, given how deep in the weeds I get on my own nerd shit) but what is hidden in those conversations is that Lydia, as much of a predator as she is, is also a victim of the patriarchy.

Lydia dismisses conversations around "female conductors" citing plenty of others (which I think runs like 5 or 6 and I wouldn't be surprised to find was a fairly exhaustive list of the most prominent names) and meritocracy. Lydia dismisses a student's objections to caring about the compositions of long-dead, straight, white, problematic men, the artist can affect how one responds to the art after all, but she excuses away any legitimate criticisms, and decimates the poor student that his "woke" attitude will limit him in his aspirations (as if there's no place for conscience in art... but Lydia mistakes the capitalistic structures she benefits from for artistic ones).

The clearest example of Tár's unconscious embrace of the patriarchy is how she models herself on her mentors, and her idols. Throuhgout the movie, when Lydia needs to have a promotional photo or album cover done, she goes to great lengths to recreate the wardrobe and poses of male conductors. 

I won't lie, Tár is a long, and frequently uncomfortable movie. She is not an anti-hero, she is the villain of the piece, and it's a slow burn in revealing it all, until it finally explodes. But Field isn't satisfied for Tár's chickens to come home to roost, he also needs to show what happens when the mighty fall. Blanchett's performance of a humbled Lydia, her roots showing, and what extremes she has to go to in order to get even a tiny fraction of the glory and self-satisfaction she once took for granted...well, the ironing is delicious.

I don't have a place to talk about the truly bizarre closing credits music - yes, even though the credits run in the initial minutes of the film, there are still closing credits for the cast.  After an entire film devoted to classical and neo-classical music, the end credits have a heavy techno thump which made me think we were watching Letterkenny credits or something.

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The trailer for Love Lies Bleeding promised 80's tinged, neon-drenched, lesbian bodybuilders doing a murder or two with quasi-revenge thriller vibes. Um, yep it delivers on all fronts.

The plot finds Jackie (Katy O'Brien, The Mandalorian), a down-but-not-out female bodybuilder hitchhiking her way from Oklahoma to get to Vegas for a competition. She immediately gets entangled with the family of gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart, Panic Room), first with Lou's slimy, abusive brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco, The Afterparty Season 1) who gets her a job at the gun range Lou's estranged dad, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) owns and also runs his illicit gun-smuggling operation out of... and then Jackie falls into a torrid romantic entanglement with Lou herself. 

When JJ beats Lou's sister half to death, Lou is so enraged she's ready to kill JJ but Lou Sr. talks her down. Jackie, having been fed a steady diet of steroids by Lou in prep for the Vegas competition, experiences serious roid rage and takes matters into her own hands. Things only get more complicated from there.

The film never questions whether JJ, a supreme piece of shit, was worthy of his fate, but whether there's justification in the increasingly extreme acts required to cover it up. This is, in its end, a love story, a very dark, albeit exciting, one about two women with pasts they can't seem to face on their own, but could perhaps together if they can only learn to trust what they're feeling.

Love Lies Bleeding is a very bold, stylized dramatic crime thriller that is inspired by the films of the era it's replicating, but with a vastly different vantage point than we'd see in such films from that time. It takes a very specific, bold visual swing in the climax of the film which very much fit the vibe, but may challenge many. For me it was actually the coda that followed the bold swing which felt unnecessary, except to say that the path these two women are on is probably only going to get darker.

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After watching Hit Man the week prior, I had hitmen on the brain, and, well, this cult-classic of the subgenre on my list. The Mechanic stars Charles Bronson at the height of his powers as a contract killer mainly doing work for an international criminal syndicate. 

The opening sequence of The Mechanic runs a wordless 15 minutes in length as it takes us through Arthur Bishop's (Bronson) meticulous process for killing his target. It's both puzzling and riveting filmmaking that ends with a spectacular bang.  It is also, without a doubt, the inspiration for the opening sequence of David Fincher's The Killer.  Both are equally excellent in their own respective way.

From there Arthur meets up with what appears to be his girlfriend but turns out to be a sex worker he sees, and role plays with on an irregular basis. Everything with Arthur is transaction. He's approached by a member of the syndicate, "Big Harry", who seems to be at odds with the rest of the organization. Harry would like Arthur's help in smoothing things over, unaware that Arthur has been given his contract.

After Harry is terminated, Arthur has an exchange with Harry's son, Steve (Jan Michael Vincent, Airwolf) who seems to have an interest and aptitude for Arthur's profession, so he take him on as a protege.  In an early outing Steve loses the advantage on a target, leading to Arthur giving chase on dirt bikes through the hills and back yards of elite L.A.  This was later taken by Bill Hader as inspiration for a similar L.A.-based dirt bike sequence in Barry Season 3. Again, both are equally great in their own way.

There's an inevitability to The Mechanic that mutes the journey somewhat. I've seen enough of this sort of thing to know where it's going. It could be the first, but it won't be the last. The film is also diminished by its lack of characterization for Arthur. It gives him the stoic rebel treatment, a man of skill but also luxury, and a man alone. Bronson was never really known as an emotive actor so there's no emotional component to his playing the role. Was taking Steve on a product of guilt or loneliness? I'm not even sure Brosnan knows, and he certainly ain't telling.

One other detraction, there's use of post-Woodstock hippie lingo that not only feels high camp but at this stage is somewhat indecipherable. I really didn't like it, and it kept coming up...even from Bronson!  Even still, just to see the origins of the subgenre made it very worthwhile.

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We originally watched The Breaker Upperers shortly after its debut on Netflix in 2018 (the dark year). It was recommended by some website or reviewer I followed and we were very entertained. I wrote a brief summary of my feelings on Letterboxd (as was the style at the time):

New Zealand comedy gets me. Love it. I also love a best friend romcom (you know, where it's about the deep rooted platonic love of best friends... we used to call these bromances or chick flicks but they've transcended those problematic classifications into an integral part of the romcom genre). This one is going to get played again and again. It's self aware, it's woke and it's frigging hilarious. It may not be the tightest of executions story-wise but it's never not fun.

Ugh, I hate that I used the word "woke" now. As usual, the man-baby clowns on the internet (and off) ruin everything, including words.

When we first watched it, we only knew a face or two in the production, probably from Taika Waititi's films. Jemaine Clement puts in a cameo, but otherwise it was just enjoying the delightful pairing of Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami as best friends who met after fighting over the same guy and 15 years later live together and run a proxy break-up service.

After years of performing the service, the cracks both in the viability of the service and in the friendship start to show. Jen (van Beek) just turned 40, is still single by choice but is having a bit of a crisis. Mel (Sami), meanwhile, is all about avoidance and what feels good now, and what feels good is pursuing the hot (and so dumb...and sooo young) rugby player (played by James Rolleston, the now grown up Boy of Waititi's Boy) who's come into their office to enlist their services in breaking up with his hard-as-nails girlfriend.

But one case, in which they pose as cops to tell a fragile woman about the death of her boyfriend (who really just skipped town) starts to break the friendship bond, as Mel wants to, well, basically provide an aftercare/friendship service and Jen basically wants nothing to do with other people and their emotions at all.  The divide eventually explodes and then its up to Jen to realize her mistakes and profess her undying platonic love for her best friend.

Since the film came out, I've seen a bit more New Zealand-base programming, like Wellington Paranormal and Taskmaster New Zealand, and Sami has become a much-liked performer of ours from Season 1 of TMNZ, Our Flag Means Death and Deadloch, so I thought it worth a revisit.  It remains very fun, and that kiwi vibe is just such a thick and delightful flavour, but on this go around, I found myself wishing for a little more of the conceit, of watching the shenanigans of the business play out, but it's obviously a film more interested in exploring the relationship dynamics, and I'm guessing better for it skewing that way.  With our uptick in Kiwi media exposure there was a lot more familiarity with the performers this time around, which, given how much I enjoyed it the first time around, you don't really need at all.

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I hate writing reviews about documentaries, primarily because I don't watch enough of them to be able to discern good documentary filmmaking from bad. I mean, I've seen great documentary films, and I recognize them as such, but then there's this whole mushy middle ground of biographical documentaries that takes about two hours to cover someone's life and career. Depending on the person, compressing their life into that amount of time just isn't going to do it justice, and if it does do it justice, are they really that interesting a person?

Ron Howard's ode to Jim Henson for Disney is just one of many Henson documentaries that has been made in the past 30 years since the legendary muppeteer and filmmaker passed away.  It's a documentary that involves his children and his Muppet family in the talking heads portions that kind of sticks to a consistent narrative while avoiding almost any drama at all.

What is absolutely clear is Henson was a man driven by creative impulses and a desire to fulfill those impulses, and puppeteering wasn't his original passion, but it just became the vehicle through which he could step up through the world of media and entertainment. He started his career with his girlfriend-then-wife Cheryl, and they started a business together. But once Cheryl started pumping out babies, Henson kind of left her to it, and proceeded forward on a career without her.  

The film very subtly implies that Henson was somewhat of an absentee father and husband, driven by his creativity, but it never dwells on the fact even though it seems to keep coming up without really directly being addressed. That all his children seemed to enter the entertainment field in some respect speaks to their desires to be closer to their father. There is a telling moment where Brian Henson, a bit of a gearhead and electronics whiz, starts working with his father on advanced animatronics, and he says working and playing with Jim as opposed to his father was a completely different experience.

Henson's early career pre-Sesame Street could support a two hour documentary of its own. I managed to catch part of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street documentary a few weeks back and for the 20-25 minutes Idea Man covers that subject, one should really just take a complete 2-hour detour into Street Gang instead. Likewise, the origins and operations and ending (and attempted revivals) of The Muppet Show are pretty glossed over and need more detail.  There's probably a full documentary worth of story behind The Dark Crystal and there's at least a YouTube video essay worth discussing Henson's sale of his business to Disney, plus I would maybe like to see the event that was Henson's funeral in full... in other words, there's so much more to this story.

While yeah, there were the requisite greatest hits moments of Henson's work in the Muppets and Sesame Street that pulls out the feels, and Idea Man does give a good overview of what Henson accomplished in his life and a sense of what was left unfulfilled for him. For as successful as he was, Henson was not a mainstream guy. He was a weirdo, and it was almost a fluke that he managed to turn that weirdo energy into something the public responded to at large, but it was clear from his non-Muppets output that his hippie-jazz sensibilities were a niche product.

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For the longest of times, Jean-Claude Van Damme's second starring feature, Cyborg, was a joke. That tacky-looking videocassette cover seemed to be everywhere, but word of mouth was that it wasn't even a so-bad-it's-good type of movie. When JCVD hit it big in 1990 with the one-two punch (err...roundhouse kick?) of Lionheart and Kickboxer -- which, alongside Bloodsport, might well just be the same movie -- he solidified his on-screen persona, as well as the type of movie he would star in. A low-budget, no-plot, post-apocalyptic wasteland action movie from the dying days of Canon films, at the time seemed like the kind of thing an up-and-coming actor does just to have a gig, and once they get big, are embarrassed by.

But as direly cheap as Albert Pyun's cobbled-together Cyborg is, JCVD actually comes out pretty clean from the affair, and might I actually say, it's a pretty good physical performance. It's not great acting -- nobody's ever asked him for that anyway -- but the man takes his lumps in the picture and it's wonderful to see him "fight wounded". In the 80's and 90's seemed to be stages to an action star's career where they start out as human beings and then wind up as superheroes. The earlier stages, where they are vulnerable, capable of being injured and they carry those wounds with them, oh, those are far more interesting. There's a sequence in this movie where JCVD's character gets to face the wasteland warlord who murdered his surrogate family, but he's already beaten off a half dozen other guys, been on the run for hours, and is just done. He tries his roundhouse kicks which have no power and are just shrugged off by his massive opponent. He's beaten down once more and awakens literally crucified on an inland derelict ship's mast. It's surprising.

Look, don't get me wrong, Cyborg is a bad movie. It's been said that it was cobbled together at the last minute from the remnants of Canon film's cancelled Masters of the Universe sequel and a cancelled Spider-Man film, both of which Pyun was to direct, and it's been said Pyun wrote the script over a weekend to preserve the budget (I didn't fact check that). While I don't see anything recognizably He-Man or Spider-Man about this, I can totally believe the script was tossed off over a weekend. There's not much here.  It's basically Escape from New York meets The Road Warrior, but without really developing a personality for the lead protagonist (named...Gibson Rickenbacker? Seriously? I don't think that was ever said in the film) and with a director whose shooting style can be described as "good enough, moving on".

As abysmal as the first act of this film is (Gibson is paired up with no less than three women in the first 10 minutes of the film, one of them in flashback) the second act is a bit of a corker. What starts off as a heroic journey where Gibson and his female sidekick pursue the big bad wasteland gang rescue a cyborg they've taken hostage...the tables are turned, as the cyborg has Stockholm syndrome and Gibson and friend become the pursued. In a way, Pyun managed to fall into an accidental subversion of the genre that still plays pretty fresh.

The final act seems... far fetched, the timeline of events don't make a lot of sense, and Gibson should still be half dead, not mounting another very physical assault, but the rain-soaked atmosphere (there are some very wet sets on this movie) provides a definite mood for the climactic showdown. 

Canon Films as a label has developed a cult fandom over the past dozen years or so, and so has the late Pyun, whose repertoire I've been poking at (eg. Nemesis, Dollman) and left underwhelmed . I'm not really a connoisseur of trash cinema, but I do so delight when trash accidentally crosses over into something, if not good, then unexpectedly interesting.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Hit Man

2023, Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise) -- download

Linklater is fully That Guy territory. His early films like Waking Life and SubUrbia and even Dazed & Confused genuinely thoughtful, creative, challenging Film Maker movies. I think the last of his movies I saw was Bernie as That Guy was fading away. I knew I'd watch this movie, even ignoring he was attached, cuz I was hearing (ever so faintly given how little I pay attention these days) the buzz it created. Plus the premise, of someone pretending to be a cliche hitman is brilliant.

Gary Johnson (Gary Powell, Hidden Figures) is a teacher of ethics & philosophy who also works part-time for the New Orleans police department as a tech guy. The sole objective of the squad is to con people into hiring a hitman, and then arresting the subjects. The whole thing seems very entrapment to me, the idea of stopping a crime before it happens, and surprisingly the movie only addresses the issue once, and briefly. Whatever, there seems to be a lot of people wanting other people dead in New Orleans, almost always for entirely personal reasons. The scuzzy cop who usually plays the hit man is put on paid suspension for unapologetically beating up some teenagers, and they have to stick Gary into the disguise. The suspension of disbelief continues with this sketchy squad in that they would put a civilian into a situation of harm, but Gary embraces the idea, taking to the hit man cosplay with gusto. He tailors each hitman to the client, applying research and human psychology to the ploy. This only increases my belief they are conning people into going through with the solicitation as his play acting actually increases their confidence and desire to have murder committed. 

And then Gary, as Ron the cliche suave hit man, charismatic, dark but with a heart of gold, meets Madison (Adria Arjona, Person of Interest), an abused woman who wants her husband dead. Gary/Ron realizes she has many ways out of her terrible situation, so he encourages her to just escape instead of seeking murder. His coworkers at the police department are not happy. Scuzzy Cop Jasper (Austin Amelio, The Walking Dead), back from suspension but jealous of Gary who is now a better fake-hitman than he ever was, is doubly furious with Gary.

And then Gary gets a call from Madison, but as Ron. Not to go through with the hit, but to tell him she took his advice, got away from her husband and has a new life. They meetcute, they connect, they start a relationship. But as Ron and Madison, not Gary and Madison. Gary starts absorbing more of better dressed, more confident Ron and it shows in his real life, his teaching, his topics on ethics.

Eventually it all catches up with Gary, not surprisingly after Madison actually kills her ex-husband. Gary has to come clean with her, and while she is furious, he also does his best to coach her out of being caught. Of course, Jasper has caught on and.... <blink blink> they put him down. And then they go on to live happily ever after.

It took me that long to realize we were watching a dark romcom, almost into the satire vein. Sure, Gary the ethics teacher, talks about how we make choices, how we can accept one bad behaviour in order to encourage other better behaviours, how our choices make us who we are. Everyone, including Nice Guy Gary, are making ethically dark-gray choices here, but always in comparison to light-black choices being made by other characters. The movie doesn't really explicitly explore these ideas, but through your observations, it lets you think about them. Do you accept Gary and Maddie's behaviour? Do you accept the squad's actions? Do you accept the people hiring a hit man, even when they may feel their own justifications? The movie leaves all of that up to you.

As for the romcom, Linklater nails that. They are a hot couple. Powell really embraces the role, and while any actor can put on a funny costume and affect a funny voice, when you see him accidentally slip back into the Gary character, you realize he is actually acting. And his connection with Madison is instant and strong. Madison, obviously attracted to bad boys (as much a cliche as the hitmen here) is va va voom hot and willing to be hotter with Ron. After the milk soggy cookie (mis)connection of Anyone But You, I was glad for a romcom that made me raise an eyebrow.

I am not sure you mentioned she was hot enough times...

I liked the movie more than Kent did.

3 Short Paragraphs: Hit Man

2024, d. Richard Linklater - in theatre

Hit Man had many champions coming out of last year's festival season, and many critics who were quite enamoured with the film lamented that its acquisition by Netflix would mean it would just be dumped onto the streaming service unceremoniously and be lost among the plethora of tepid Netflix Originals.  I don't know if distribution rights wound up being different between the US and elsewhere, but Hit Man has been enjoying a pretty nice ride in theatres in Canada for the past few weeks at least, and does not appear to be on Netflix's upcoming slate in this country (it dropped on the service in the US on June 7). Who knows how these things work.

That I wasted one of my three paragraphs on this preamble sort of highlights my ambivalence around the film. Glen Powell is the fastest-rising star after his mustachioed turn in Top Gun Maverick, the surprise box office success of Anyone But You, and taking the lead in this summer's Twisters, so it's only logical that his increasing notoriety be capitalized upon by putting this film in theatres. On top of co-writing the screenplay with Linklater, he gets a real showcase of his acting ability by playing a guy who puts on personas. He's an ethics professor by day, and moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans Police Department. He researches and tailors his hitman role for each of his marks, which leads to Powell donning many different disguises, accents and personalities. It's fun. But he meets Adria Arjona (Andor, Good Omens) who is in a direly controlling relationship and Powell's hitman takes pity on her, especially after they seem to vibe so well together (and, you know, she's absolutely stunning).  Their weird meet cute does develop into a secret fling, but this proves complicating when certain people start to notice.

The film is a romantic comedy. I was going to say it's an update of Grosse Pointe Blank, but even that bro-friendly romantic comedy has action sequences of which there are none at all in this film. It's really a film that attempts to contemplate ethics and justice, while also being a bit silly and even more sexy.  It can't have it all and it doesn't. The surface level elements like two hot actors doing hot stuff together and the humour work quite well, the morality of deceiving one's partner, of the lengths people will go to for love or pride or whatever, or whether the ends justify the means if the person is terrible enough...well, it doesn't adequately explore these ideas. It hints that it wants to, but it doesn't really. As a result, it's a charming enough movie overall, but doesn't really leave you with much food for thought, almost as if it cut much of such deliberation out to maintain it's pithy, flirty tone.  Also, "based on a  true story", but not really.  More like wildly exaggerated from a true story.

KWIF: The Marvels (+3)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie (or two) which he writes a longer, thinkier piece (or two) about, and then whatever else he watched that week he does a quick little summary of his thoughts. Or that's the plan anyway but sometimes a touch of the flu and an incredibly dense work schedule prevent such things being so timely.

This week:
The Marvels (2023, d. Nia DaCosta - in theatre)
A Haunting In Venice (2023, d. Kenneth Branagh - Disney+)
The Killer (2023, d. David Fincher - Netflix)
The Vanishing on 7th Street (2010, d. Brad Anderson - AmazonPrime)

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The Marvels is both good fun and a great mess.  

There's nothing fun about the meta-narrative around The Marvels and said meta-narrative is nothing but messy.

To get into it... the early word on The Marvels was that it was a troubled production, and extensive reshoots were required, before, ultimately, the director left the edit to the Purple Suits to work on other projects. Now, many, many, many films undergo reshoots for various reasons, but most of these films don't wind up costing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. We'll get back to the director abandoning the edit.

The last Captain Marvel film, of which this is ostensibly a sequel (alongside being part of the MCU formula as the leappad for the future plans for the overall franchise) made over a billion dollars. This one's tracking to maybe not even make its budget back (but, there is hope), which is unheard of for a Marvel film.  

The release date on the film got shuffled, amidst writers and actors strikes. Promotion for the film was greatly reduced as the actors couldn't get out and support the film, and maybe having writers help with the reshoots and/or edit would have made.

The prior film, being the first female-led Marvel production, featuring a lead actress who is an outspoken champion of feminism during peak Trumpism meant the narrative around the film became pretty toxic.  The toxicity persists but I think with the actors not promoting the film, that narrative was pretty mute as the trolls didn't have a steady stream of youtube clips and red carpet premieres to react to.

And then there's the "current state of the MCU", which has been a narrative since, oh, 2015 or so, but in a post-pandemic perspective has become nothing but negative. 

And that's still not all the baggage this film carries with it. It didn't stand a chance, even if it were a great film.

It's not a great film. 

It does have a lot going for it, including a super-likeable cast of both lead and supporting actors and character, a great sense of fun and adventure, and some delightfully quirky ideas.

It reunites Captain Marvel Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) with her best friend's daughter, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), whom she last saw as a child in the 90's.  So it's awkward. Monica still calls her "Aunt Carol", even though it's been 30 years, and there's all these abandonment issues.  Monica we saw as a child in the last Captain Marvel, and then again in Wandavision on Disney+. 

They team up with teenager Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), who is a Captain Marvel and the Avengers uber-fan. She couldn't be any more excited. Her family is less enthused. We first met the Khan family on Disney+ Ms. Marvel, where we also learn Kamala's origin story of gaining powers of hard light construction from an interstellar bangle. One of two.

It's the second bangle that's the maguffin of the story, and its activation by the big bad triggers a quantum entanglement that means any time Carol, Monica and Kamala all use their powers at the same time, two of the three wind up switching places in space and time.  This is clearly puzzling to them, to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson with a lively comedic performance) who was working with Monica when the switching starts, and to Kamala's family, whose home is wrecked as the entanglement brings one of Carol's fights with her.

The dynamics that form between all these characters amidst the chaos of all this switching is the greatest joy of the film. The frustration on display from everyone (except maybe Kamala who just seems to be embracing it all and enjoying the ride) is highly entertaining, and the action sequences are chaotic entertainment.

Carol, Monica, and Kamala then need to seek out the source of their quantum entanglement, while Fury takes care of Kamala's family, bringing them onboard the SABER satellite, along with Carol's alien cat/flerkin, Goose, resulting which is its own adventure.  

Again, the best part of the film is how all these characters interact with each other. So it's unfortunate that the fun comes to a grinding halt every time the main villain, a Kree overlord named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), is on screen. And she is the first character we meet in this film.  It opens with her finding the matching bangle to Kamala's and she starts opening up jump gates with it which she uses to steal resources from healthy planets to fuel her own dying one.  Her motivations have a loose connection to Carol's past, because it all needs to tie in somehow to resentment and animosity and a big punch up at the end. Yawn.

As I watched The Marvels, and laughed and giggled along with it, I also couldn't help but grumble at how apparent the seams on this film were. The Purple Suits got their hands on it and chopped it up and tried stitching it back together but with no finesse or aptitude for the job.  The reshoot scenes seemed pretty evident as there was some quality issues, and the edits wind up making for some pretty absurd leaps in story logic and internal consistency.

The word was testing of the film did not go well, and the Purple Suits got nervous. I have two guesses. First is that the film clocked in closer to 2 1/2 hours, and the new dictum of the Disney overlords is sub-2hours, and so this thing got put on the chopping block, but also the script was so woven between the the very fun, kind of wild set pieces and the drama of Carol's past deeds, Carol and Monica's familial tension plus putting Kamala's hero worship to the test that it was kind of impossible to separate them without butchering the film. Most of the dramatics seem to be handled in reshoot moments which look poorly greenscreened, hastily written, and quickly resolved.  

My second guess is that Nia DaCosta delivered a very weird adventure that made the Purple Suits nervous, and nervous executives lead to second guessing their chosen storyteller's creative instincts, and so they either drove her away or took it away from her and had their way with their hatchets.

In my mind, The Marvels has a solid foundation but took the wrong approach. In my mind I see a version where we don't meet Dar-Benn until the third act. We instead spend the first act with quantum entaglement shenanigans, the second act with the women searching for answers to their problem and bonding in the process (Monica and Carol dealing with their issues and Kamala both getting over her hero worship but also learning from Carol and Monica) and the third act discovering the source of their issues and how it's tied with both Kamala and Carol's past. But instead of making Dar-Benn an irredeemable bad guy, leading to a big multi-powered punch up, the Marvels freaking solve the problem and Carol attempts to make up for past misdeeds. You know, not following the trite MCU formulae.

In theory one could get away with having only watched Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel and nothing else in order to enjoy the bulk of this film. Mercifully it doesn't touch at all upon Secret Invasion. But where it ends, it's in very MCU fashion, teasing connectivity to the past in a very meta sense, and teasing the future of the MCU.

The Marvels had the MCU's second poorest opening apparently next to The Incredible Hulk, which is a big whiff. But the film already has its champions. Lady Kent came out the screening absolutely loving it and I've been hearing that is not an uncommon reaction. This thing could wind up with a cult life, which seems odd that an MCU product would have to fall into niche/cult category, but that may need to be the future of the MCU. It needs to start trusting its creatives, and embracing uniqueness more. 

It's clear superhero fatigue -- superhero apathy even -- has set in, and I don't think expectations need to be reset. These aren't billion dollar products anymore, and if they want one of these to break out of the pack, it needs to provide something different, not more of the same. The Marvels has glimmers of something different, remnants of big swings taken, but it's been edited and reshot into something that seems so "MCU" in a derogatory way.

---

I'll admit, these Kenneth Branagh Poirot films are enjoyable. They came out the gate with an absolutely stacked cast in Murder on the Orient Express that hinted at making a stab at a blockbuster franchise. I think Death on the Nile, however, proved to both Branagh and the studio that if they're going to continue with these that maybe scaling back their expectations and ambitions is going to be necessary if the franchise is going to have a long life.

A Haunting In Venice doesn't feel like a big blockbuster. The stacked cast this time isn't nearly as stacked as the prior two films, with Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Jamie Dornan being the biggest names.  And unlike the prior two films, which featured moving vehicles across exotic locations, this one is a closed-door mystery in a singular exotic locale.  

What breathes life into this film is its straying away from Christie's original Poirot stories and instead crafting a unique tale that more pays homage to "Hallowe'en Party" than adapts it. In not being faithful to the source material, it frees up screenwriter Michael Green to put more of a personal journey for Poirot into the piece. You could sense in Green's script to Death on the Nile that Branagh wanted more of that, but the two couldn't really work it into the adaptation without it feeling a little clumsy.

Here, Poirot starts the film having cut himself off from the world, and, in a way, his own humanity. An old friend asks for his help in debunking a mystic whose ability to chat up ghosts has stymied her. In getting involved Poirot is challenged in his beliefs in facts and evidence, and his trust in his own senses and better judgement.  

Branagh does effectively take you through the picture with no sense of where it might fall on its stance on supernatural phenomenon. Will Poirot come out a believer, or will he completely debunk it? Or will he come out just unsure, and shaken? For a character that supposed to be rock solid in his intuition and observational keenness, it's a remarkably engaging to take him on a ride that shakes that to it core.  It's a film with a murder (or two, or three) to solve, but the tension mostly lies in where it takes Poirot.

[we agree-ish]

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I had intended to follow along with the Blank Check podcast as they reviewed David Fincher's filmography weekly starting with Alien3. I got as far as Fight Club before I hit a blocker with not having Panic Room at hand or readily available on streaming. Had I made it through Fincher's entire filmography, I might have more to say about him as a filmmaker having just seen his new film, The Killer (on Netflix sadly, rather than in theatre).  As it stands, I can only compare the Fincher of The Killer with the Fincher of his earlier works... and you know, I kind of think that really, really works.

The Killer seems of a piece with Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club, but a piece removed... time. The Killer is Fincher approaching his earlier works with a new sensibility. It's based off the French graphic novel series of the same name (by Matz and Luc Jacamon) which makes it Fincher's first comic book movie.  But rather than set up a heightened, or even fantastical reality for the world of The Killer, instead Fincher grounds it in the minutiae and mundanity of realism.  Not reality, realism. Stylish realism.

Michael Fassbender is our focus of the entire film, an experienced hitman who has a particular perspective of the world that the film neither embraces nor denounces, simply presents via Fassbenders calm, collected narration.  There's a kinship with the narration by Ed Norton's "Jack" in Fight Club, except in Fight Club the narration was sermonizing, preaching about the how the world's gone wrong, and how anarchy is the only tool to escape it. Here, Fassbender's killer can only present the world as he sees it, full of structures designed to enforce rules that not everyone has to follow, and notes you can circumvent if you're careful, cautious and dispassionate, but he's neither advising it nor warning against it. He's just figured out something that works for him. 

Fincher's early works had a tautness to them, like a rubber band being stretched over 2-ish hours to their breaking point. They were genre films, of a sort, with an aggressive streak to them that certainly keyed into the impressionable minds of teens and college kids of the era, and created devoted fans (and even a few monsters). The Killer seems to be Fincher saying "how would I make any of those today?"  The answer is with discipline and mastery of his craft. 

The Killer isn't much of a story. The hitman's on a job, it goes wrong, he gets spanked, he spanks back. But Fincher lives with this character, and lives in his mind. We hear the things the killer tells us, but it seems as much as he's telling us, he's telling himself.  He's affirming himself. Fincher delights in the disparity between the narration, and the events on screen, even though they aren't intrinsically comedic. 

This film sits in a moment, where one of the director's earlier works would have had edit after edit across the same span. There's a surprise airiness to The Killer, and rather than build tension continually, Fincher stretches and relaxes the rubber band only in specific moments.  If there's one word that comes to mind that distinguishes Fincher's first era of filmmaking and what may be the start of his third, it's patience.  This is not an action film, it's a meditation in disguise. 

It looks great, it's unexpected, it's dark, and it's pretty enjoyable.

---

There was a period of time in the mid-2000s, when Fincher was on hiatus, that it seemed possible that director Brad Anderson could be the new Fincher. Session 8 quickly became a cult horror classic, The Machinist and Transsiberian seemed to find different approaches to conventional storytelling that critics took notice of, even if the films weren't smash successes.  But Fincher-esque name recognition wasn't in the cards for Anderson. 

Anderson found a place on TV, shooting episodes of The Wire, a LOT of episodes of Fringe, and having a very healthy TV career ever since.  I always take notice of his name when it pops up as a credit on a show. You know it's going to be a little different, with starker use of shadows and light. He's continued making films throughout the 2010s and beyond, but nothing has really gained traction. I haven't even heard of most of them. Like The Vanishing on 7th Street. 

It's a post-apocalyptic horror film starring Hayden Christiansen, Thandiwe Newton and John Leguizamo, which, even if it's not very good, you would think would still have some awareness factor based on cast alone. Hell, I must have read Toasty's review from 2011, but no, I have no sense I knew this existed. 

It's a film that plays into Anderson's strength of light and shadows, but given that this is Anderson's strength, I should have been more impressed.  It feels like a TV-budget feature film, with the sense that it was shot rather quickly, and the set-ups were constrained by timelines.  

The setup is, in a blink, nearly everyone disappears, leaving heaps of clothes on the ground. In Detroit, we follow a few survivors as they literally battle the darkness for their lives. Finding refuge in a bar on 7th street where a generator is running, keeping the lights on. We have a selfish TV reporter, a mom in despair, an insular film projectionist, and a pre-teen missing his mom. The darkness is coming for them all.

What fails the film is not really budget or time or ambition, but lack of character. The script is trite, full of cheesy dialogue, the characters yelling in anger and/or frustration for lack of anything else to say or do. The script doesn't know how to explore the situation it sets up, so its full of inconsistencies, and winds up doing the same thing over and over again. By the end it's very clearly set up a hopeless situation, and so its failed attempt at delivering an uplifting finale is a wash. 

Anderson does get a lot of good visual flourishes in. The perpetually moving shadows, including ones in the shape of people that seem to move towards the camera, are very unsettling, but it's a great effect to little effect, if that makes sense. There's poor mythos building for the scenario, with unsatisfying exploration of it, and no explanation of it.  

The biggest crime is giving Thandiwe Newton nothing useful to do. 

[we disagree-ish]

What I Have Been Watching: donesies

"What I Have Been Watching" is usually the domain of Toast admittedly spending too much time in front of the TV. Kent's equally spending too much time in front of the teevee and is now stepping on Toast's toes (Toastoes? Toestys?) here as a whole bunch of series/seasons have ended and they need to be covered, quickly.

Schmigadoon Season 2: Schmicago - AppleTV+ (6/6 episodes)

Even though I wasn't much, if at all, familiar with the 1950's and 60's musicals of which Schmigadoon's first season was aping, it really didn't seem to matter. I could get the joke of the magical but supremely out-of-touch place of Schmigadoon, and the radical incongruity of two real-world interlopers who are understandably perplexed by the whole thing, and how their modern sensibilities could change the fantasy realm for the better. Plus, at the base of it, there was a core of a relationship in trouble and what escaping into fantasy could reveal to them about their bond.

I was really excited for the return of Schmigadoon if only because the sequel's subtitle, Schmicago, really makes me giggle.  In a sort of unfortunate irony, the subtitle is pretty much the biggest laugh of the season though. Late-60's and 70's era musicals (obviously Chicago, but also hippie musicals like Hair and even a dash of Sweeney Todd) are smushed together (technical term) into a melange of different aesthetics and tones, with the 30's throwback aesthetic blending inharmoniously with the 60's peace and love vibe backed up by a grody pre-20th-century street urchin twist.  Our protagonists, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan Michael-Key) are feeling the drudgery of daily life, especially after unsuccessful attempts at conceiving. They long for an escape from reality and go seeking Schmigadoon, only to find the magical realm has become something else. The players all look familiar, but they're different people, and the world they enter is far dingier, danker and dangerous than where they thought they were going.

With the first season, there was a pretty easy through-line to follow, and even as our protagonists went on side quests by started inserting themselves into the affairs of the residents it all felt organic somehow. Here in Schmicago, every side plot seems to exist to cue up a number. The songs are really good, but they're played pretty straight, not a lot of comedy in most of them. They're showcase pieces for the performers, less about comedy (see the outstanding Ariana DeBose number at the top of episode 6 that's completely disconnected from the show, since DeBose couldn't return to the series beyond this one number).

The lesson Melissa and Josh need to learn is that in order to make others happy, they need to be happy themselves. Or something. It's not entirely clear, even though the Martin Short leprichauns spell it out pretty bluntly.  It's all lip service and not really shown. I don't feel like this season was a cohesive journey, and it certainly wasn't as funny as the first season (the best comedic bits belonged to Titus Burgess' narrator as he played with the metatext of the show).

That all said, it's still an incredibly well produced show (though not nearly as visually assured as when Barry Sonnenfeld directed every episode last season), and not something any other show is doing now. I dig the cast (Strong and Key are a great team, but Kristin Chenowith, Alan Cummings, Dove Cameron and the recurring gang are all wonderful stage pros), so if another season is to come -- say a Schmantom of the Schmopera, or Schmats (it's certainly going to be diving deep into Andrew Lloyd Weber territory, or maybe Les Schmiberables), I'll be there each week to welcome it.

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Mrs. Davis - Peacock/CityTV (8/8 episodes)

Good lord! What a bloody trip this was. 

Jesus, was this the best TV show of the year? Even if not (and I could see a lot of people challenging that statement) it's certainly the frontrunner for my favourite viewing experience this year. 

Holy shit, I could not believe what a bugnuts freaking show this was. It's a grand, globetrotting adventure, full of spirituality and sexuality, and parental issues and relationship issues around trust and respect. It's also an analogy for how we engage with technology in our reality, whether the screens we're absorbed with (and absorbing) are telling us the truth or just what we want to hear, if they're making us happy or just feeding us dopamine hits, if they're truly connecting us or just driving us further apart.  

Mary, mother of Christ, did I love it. Maybe every episode wasn't perfect (episode 3's "Excalibattle" seemed to impede the frenetic momentum the series had established, and episode 5's history lesson was necessary exposition but the framing sequence around it was pretty wobbly) but I was always on board. At the helm is Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen, The Leftovers), with co-creator Tara Hernandez (formerly of The Big Bang Theory, for reals), and they've crafted a supremely goofy quest series about a reluctant nun who is sent on a quest to find the Holy Grail in order to destroy the near-omnipotent machine that effectively rules the world. But amidst the plot is an immensely human story that touches upon so many different little, grounded, real topics that resonate so much stronger as a result of being juxtaposed against, say, exploding heads, a British Knights shoe revival, and going for a dive inside a whale. Enough good things cannot be said about series lead, GLOW's Betty Gilpin, and how incredibly confident she is in holding the tonal balance in her hands.

Goddammit, if it wasn't a constant surprise at every turn as well. Lindelof, Hernandez and crew really, really defied every storytelling norm out there. They played with conventions so fully, that as a viewer, you seemed always so certain of where it could be headed, and it never went there. There was no way to predict it, that's how far outside the box they are. It's a series that lets its imagination run wild, but guided completely by emotion. You can't predict these turns because they're so illogical, and yet they become the only thing that makes sense in the context of the story, because there can be no other explanation.  One can't help but always bring up Lindelof's puzzle boxing in Lost and wonder if there's a plan when stepping into any of his later series. But he's learned to have a plan, and three incredible series later, you can pretty much trust that he does.

Praise be, this is not going to be a series for everyone. The severely atheistic may bristle at the levels of affirmative faith the show embraces.  Likewise the religious might find it too salacious or blasphemous to cater to their puritanical interests. But if you like to be challenged whilst being highly entertained, this will dazzle and confound and maybe even soothe just a little. I found it deeply satisfying.

Amen.

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Yellowjackets Season 2 - Showtime/Crave (9/9 episodes)

Speaking of Lost, countless shows have attempted to be "the next Lost" since even before it went off the air in 2010. We've had over 15 years of imitators, from La Brea to Manifest to Wayward Pines, among many others. The most successful was Westworld, at least for one glorious season, but it found the mystery box set-up unsustainable and forged its own awkward path. Yellowjackets burned very brightly in its first season, dealing with dual timelines, one in the 90's with a high-school girls' soccer team crashing in the Ontario wilderness, and in the present day where the survivors try to live their lives with the secrets that they carry from that past time. In the past, the traumas have only just begun. In the present, they rear their ugly heads again.

It was a delicious premise, and a uniquely female-driven one that played within genres of horror, fantastic realism, suspense, and psychodrama while dealing heavily with both psychological trauma and mental health issues and how they impact one long term. Season 1, at its heart, wanted you to be both sympathetic to why they do what they do and scared of what these girls and women are capable of.

The second season introduces us to two more modern day survivors, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), one who runs a not-a-cult commune, and the other still making a go at a video rental store. Everything converges upon the commune by mid-way through the season, which means the increasingly shaky murder/cover-up story from last season, and Taissa's dissociative identity disorder,  Misty's missed love connection with a rich citizen detective (Elija Wood), and Nat's survivor's guilt all need to coexist in this one space. What happens as a result is the drive of the show becomes completely plot focussed and the characters take a back seat. It's to the point that it raises so many unintended questions (not fun puzzle box questions, but just logical questions about the characters and the world they live in) that they threaten to sink the entire show.

The first season wound up the puzzle box, and creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said they had a 5 year plan for answering it all, but if season 2 is any indication they're not really sure how to execute said plan. Even as they set out providing answers in the past, it's lumpy storytelling that's seemingly forgotten what it wanted it wanted to say about its characters, what it wanted to accomplish outside of just telling a story, and one that's seemingly forgotten its stylistic tendencies.  

By the end of the season, in the 90's story we've been given more insight into where we already know it winds up. There doesn't seem to be any twisting of the perspective of what we've seen before. The show doesn't effectively convey the psychological impact of starvation on the team, even though that's really the undercurrent of it all, that they're slowly going crazy from undernourishment. In the present day, the show tries to wrap a few of its bigger dangling plot threads up into a neat and tidy bow, which feels completely underbaked. If it turns out to just make for bigger problems next season, great, because how could it not. But if it is supposed to be an actual resolution, it's pretty awful.

This season was increasingly disappointing as it went on, and the finale at episode 9, instead of 10, smacks of network interference.  Something's certainly happening behind the scenes that the season was scaled back. I hope they have a more character-focused plan for next season, or I don't think I'll be able to continue through its 5 year journey.

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Barry Season 4 - HBO (8/8 episodes)

[Season 1&2, Season 3]

Every episode of Season 4 of Barry is directed by creator/star Bill Hader, and it's a wonderful-looking show. Hader has a very specific style that combines classic American cinema production with 70's New Hollywood sensibilities. Hader likes a static camera placement, providing a very wide-scale view of the scene with minimal cuts, but he also likes dynamic dramatic acting, complex characters, and big moments.  Hader also eschews soundtrack in Barry, which heightens both tension and comedic relief.  The orchestration and execution of the scripts feel extremely precise, with Hader wanting there to be an immense amount of naturalness, and discomfort in that naturalness.  When done perfectly, it leads to wow-inducing, memorable scenes that feel innovative, yet familiar...or it leads to a big laugh. Hader is perfectly capable of executing on both fronts.

I think Season 4 is about as invested as I've been in the series this whole time. I've expressed in the prior reviews how uncomfortable the show makes me, but also, prior seasons were just too invested in the "L.A. actors" world that, honestly, I find boring. Of course, that was all spiced up with Barry's killer-for-hire other life, and all the complications that brought, so it led to a very uneven experience for me. This season of Barry starts with Barry in prison, and the fallout of that is far more interesting.  Barry's got his time to think about what he's done and who is to blame, while we see Fuchs, Cousineau, Sally and NoHo Hank trying to move on with their lives, which seem just a little emptier without Barry in them. What should be liberating for them seems quite the opposite.

It's quite a ride for the first four episodes, but the fifth takes us through a time jump that raises a lot of questions, and heads up a two episode arc that it maybe didn't need or earn.  I wonder if the season had started with the time jump and worked its way backward if it would have been better, or just more distracting. The final two episodes of the series work really, really hard to bring every major character into view, and the finale works, but isn't completely satisfying. I don't really know what it's trying to say in its final moments (presented as excerpts of the movie of Barry's life and misdeeds, starring Jim Cummings as Barry). I won't contemplate them here, for spoilery reasons, but I wonder the sentiment its actually trying to convey as a series.

Complex.

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Taskmaster Seasons 1-5 - BBC/Youtube (32/32 episodes)

The Brits are experts at the "comedy panel show". There's a rather insurmountable volume of them, and each of them probably has their champions imploring you to catch up on a dozen (or two) seasons of talking heads and shits and giggles. There's a reason UK panel shows work so well, which mainly has to do with a heavily populated, but not very expansive group of countries, mostly composed of islands. Comedians there all tend to know each other, and being in such a limited exposure terrain, their fame is pretty contained, so unless they've migrated to America, their egos tend to stay in check. As such these panels tend to be populated by personalities who are not at war with one another, nobody's climbing up someone else's back to get ahead or more exposure. They're more hang sessions of funny people, not battles for superiority.

I've had more than a few panel shows lobbed my way, and of those I've tried, I have enjoyed, but not enough to plough through the entire back catalog. Taskmaster isn't different from many of those panel shows in that it doubles as a competition/game show of sorts, because there are a great many others that also award points and winners and whatnot. What sets Taskmaster apart from the rest is humility, the humbling nature of bringing a panel of guests on and showing them failing over and over again, sometimes in ways that should be direly embarassing ("that one will haunt me the rest of my life" has been uttered by more than one guest). But in that failure comes both sympathy and admiration for the efforts made, and, occasionally, a flat-out triumph.  It's a warm-hearted show that isn't there to (fully) poke fun at the guests, but to have fun with them.

Hosted by comedic giant Greg Davies, with co-host/creator "Little" Alex Horne, each season has a panel of five guests, who were, months prior to the live-studio-audience panel, subjected to a battery of inane tasks that they must attempt to achieve. Each of the guests does the same tasks as the others, and Greg, as the "Taskmaster", judges them on their accomplishments. Tasks can range from who can put as much stuff in a balloon in one minute as possible, or who can take a giant styrofoam boulder the farthest away in an hour, or who can make a Swedish man blush.  

The tasks can range from very basic, to patently absurd, to utterly difficult brain teaser, to a flex of creative muscles. We watch, along with the crowd and the panel, as the expertly edited clips are presented in astonishingly well-produced order. The dramatic (and comedic) tension that is raised from how the clips are put together and show is as much of the show's fun as what the comedians do themselves.  And after it's all done Davies gives ranks them 1-5 (or disqualifies them) and gives them the equivalent points. The winner each episode takes home an absurd collection of prizes (that the guests themselves brought in as a task at the start of the episode and were judged on, like "hairiest object" or "greatest liquid" or "oddest clock").

The first three seasons are only 5 or 6 episodes, seasons 4 and 5 jump to 8 episodes (while looking ahead, every subsequent season is 10 episodes). Each episode is deliciously entertaining, with heavy belly laughs throughout, while at the same time tweaking your creative brain as you yourself think of how you would approach the task. There is not a dud episode in all 5 seasons, though it does become funnier and funnier the more you settle in with Davies' personality and the dynamic between him and Horne (the kayfabe of their master/apprentice relationship grows over the seasons).

Season 5 is a real standout so far, with an almost perfect panel. Irish absurdist Aisling Bea has the most creative impulses, Scottish oddball Bob Mortimer dips in between utter bizarreness and scatalogical humour (he tells a story about his anus that will haunt me the rest of my life), Mark Watson may be one of the most enjoyably neurotic people on Earth, Nish Kumar seems to be missing the filter between his brain and his mouth, and Sally Phillips is completely horned up yet somehow retains both a sense of modesty and elegance.  Four of the top 5 standout moments from the show for me so far come from this fifth season, with Nish and Mark's "I'm always seeing you (do cool stuff)" song, Sally's "birth of Alex" video, Nish's "oh you bubbly fuck" moment, Nish's most spectacular fail (just one of many) in the coconut challenge,  with the "foot in the crease" moment in season 2 rounding out the top 5.

I genuinely love this show, and can't recommend it highly enough. It's deliriously entertaining and addictive, and there's 15 seasons ALL legally available on youtube.  There's also at least a half dozen international versions of the show which I may tackle once I get through all of these.