KWIF(3): City Hunter (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's "Week" in Film. I realized this past weekend that I had watched almost a film a day this August, so the goal has become to cram the last bunch of films in on the final couple of days. These are numbers 29 through 31.

This Week:
City Hunter (2024, d. Yuichi Satoh - netflix)
Seven Psychopaths (2012, d. Martin McDonagh - tubi)
What's Up, Doc? (1972, d. Peter Bogdanovich - tubi)

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After watching Jackie Chan in City Hunter, I started to inquire into what other City Hunter adaptations were out there. I had no idea there was a Netflix-produced mid-budget feature released just two years ago... but then again, why would I? Anime/manga properties are not my wheelhouse by any means, so why would I be paying attention to adaptations of them? 

Anyway, here we have a modern take on the franchise which finds Ryohei Suzuki playing horny PI Ryo Saeba.  We're introduced to him via a hero shot of him standing on a rooftop..but with binoculars ogling girls in bikinis at the bath house across the way. Acting as a sort of origin point for the City Hunter story (as so many comic or cartoon adaptations like to do, rather than, you know, just present a new adventure of this already well-established character), Ryo's partner, Makimura is killed as fallout from a case they are working on together.  Makimura asks Ryo to look out for his sister, Kaori (Misato Morita).  Makimura's death relates not just to the missing persons case they were working on, but a larger story about an experimental drug that gives its users super strength and agility, but also extreme rage, temporarily, before killing them, and it's being tested on street kids. This is all the product of an international criminal cartel called The Union, and, the story relates, improbably, to Kaori origins as Makimura's adopted sister as well (this is really a nothing thread and did not need to exist).

The film jostles back and forth between being a goofy, horny comedy, with Suzuki ably letting his freak-flag-fly (this is after all the star of Hentai Kamen: The Forbidden Superhero, look it up...or better yet, don't?) and heavy melodrama, and the two do not mesh well together.  It feels so emulative of the the last 20 years of comic book cinema, all the hoary overused tropes are there...and it would be one thing if this adaptation of City Hunter were lampooning such tropes, maintaining a consistent comedic bent throughout, but it does not. So when a depressed and angry Kaori starts following Ryo around the darker edges of Tokyo society, he winds up bringing her into his world...which involves showing him performing a "Mokkari Dance" on stage, a hyper, horny male burlesque show of sorts. While the Chan version of City Hunter may have not been the purest adaptation either, it at least found a tone and stuck to it.

Suzuki is perhaps the ideal Ryo, a very, very good looking guy with charm to spare who can easily flip the switch to salivating pervert and flip it off again to look the dashing hero and very ably perform some really fun choreographed fight sequences (one sequence finds him fighting an assassin while also fending off tranq darts fired by a sniper, all taking place at a cosplay modelling show, while having a giant stuffed horse head mounted on his crotch... it's the right tone, loaded with inventiveness and humour that most of the other fairly well-done action set-pieces lack, instead making them too straight.)

Also unlike the Chan movie, the women of this adaptation are a little less capable, a little more damsels...maybe not in distress, but also not the ass kickers we saw in the Hong Kong adaptation. It is pretty funny though that the only women in this movie that seem legit charmed by Ryo are the many, many sex workers he obviously frequents (and who are paid to be charmed). Every other woman seems somewhat put off by him, if not immediately upon meeting him then soon thereafter.

The things that work here really work, and when they're working it's quite a lot of fun. But whenever it falls into the trap of trying to be "real" it just comes undone. A sequel has been greenlit, which I hope means that they get a second chance to try harder at making this a full-on action-comedy series about a horny detective and the women who tolerate him because he's so damn capable.

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Martin McDonagh is primarily a well-regarded Irish playwright. His turn to film -- which is almost like a hobby he's dabbled in over the past 18 years -- has been likewise pretty well-regarded.  His first short film, Six Shooter, won him an Oscar, which led to his first feature length film, In Bruges. It was a film I didn't respond to at the time but has a sizable cult following (plus I've heard at least a few film nerds cite as their favourite film, ever). His third film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a major awards contender in 2017 and a massive success despite its dark subject matter (I didn't see it, but Toasty did) . The Banshees of Inishirin was a critical darling in 2023, and I liked it quite a bit. His second film, 2012's Seven Psychopaths is kind of the outlier, a bit pulpier and more divisive.

The setup here finds L.A.-based screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell) who has literally nothing but a title for his overdue screenplay, "Seven Psychopaths". He's best friends with Billy (Sam Rockwell) whose current job is stealing dogs from parks, waiting for reward posters to go up, and his partner, Hans (Christopher Walken in prime form) returns them. Billy steals the wrong dog one day, taking the beloved shih-tzu of mobster Charlie (Woody Harrelson).

Of these characters I mentioned, only one of them is labelled as one of the seven psychopaths when we first meet them, but eventually a couple more will be a part of the seven. The remaining psychopaths are part of the stories told to Marty as he's trying to fill out his screenplay, with Billy providing a story or two and a stranger, Zachariah (Tom Waits), responding to an ad, tells his dark tale.

The script is, at times, very funny, quite punchy, but also at times too clever to the point of cutesy and annoying. I'm frankly tired of stories centred around script writers, because all too often stories about script writers start to get meta about talking about the actual scriptwriter, and get too lost in the idea that there's something laborious or glorious about the process of writing. Here, more than once, Marty talks about how he wants a certain type of pacifist psychopath protagonist or placid tone for his movie, while Billy desires much more a splashy, guns-blazing type of tale. So naturally we get both. *Wink*  

McDonagh also blurs the line between screenplay and screenplay-within-a-screenplay a few times, telling stories that are just tales that turn out to be true within the context of the film, or a story that just can't be cracked. As sharp as McDonagh can be, the agonies of a writer are not that exciting.

Farrell is sort of promoted as the lead but is a passive passenger in the film. A somewhat hapless guy with a drinking problem that he refuses to admit is a problem, he kind of lets things happen around him without intervening. Rockwell is more in charge, certainly spewing the most lines and having the most fingers in the plot pot. Walken is magnificent, and there's probably a better movie if he's just our central figure. 

It's definitely not neo-Tarantino, and we should be thankful for that. There's something more at the root of it that McDonagh is looking for with this story than just a off-brand Coen Brothers mobster picture, but I don't know that he ever finds it.

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I have only ever seen one other Peter Bogdanovich film. It was The Last Picture Show, a "new Hollywood" classic which I watched, and neither enjoyed nor appreciated much back in 2019. I don't think I've ever seen a Barbara Streisand movie before, but, growing up, Streisand was still an important pop culture figure even if you didn't listen to her music or see her films. You just knew who she was.

I have, however, seen quite a few works of screenwriter (and also actor and director) Buck Henry. Get Smart was fundamental to the development of my sense of humour. He's one of three screenwriters credited on the Bogdanovich-directed, Streisand-starring What's Up, Doc? (with story by Bogdanovich) but you can definitely tell what Henry contributed to the film.

The story finds Ryan O'Neal's handsome but drab musicologist Howard Bannister arriving in San Francisco with his drab and dour fiance, Eunice (Madeline Kahn) to attend a special dinner party where he will lobby for a research grant. Upon checking in he's spied by Judy Maxwell (Streisand) a creature of id, who cherchez l'homme right into a drugstore where she forces a meet-cute upon them and proceeds to both attempt to woo and grift him.  We were introduced to Judy mere moments before as she followed a man carrying pizzas perhaps through San Fran traffic causing many a scene...her stomach motivating her more than common sense.

Judy and Howard just so happen to have the same plaid duffel bag, and it also just so happens that another hotel guest also has the same bag.  He's just arrived from the airport where he's collected the bag, which is revealed to be full of top secret documents. He's been followed the whole time by a man who is very poor at being discreet and yet still doesn't blow his cover (we're not sure for some time who is the good spy and who is the bad spy in this scenario). Meanwhile a fourth guest at the hotel, a posh, upperclass elderly woman also has the same overnight bag, only this one's stuffed with jewels. The hotel clerk has shady colleague who he is colluding with the steal the jewels before they're locked up in the safe.

So the thrust of the film is two-fold, Judy is almost criminally forcing herself into Harold's dull, dull existence, shaking everything up and spraying it all over the walls, floor, ceiling and anything touching them. And then there's the game of bags being played like three-card monte, as people come in and out of the hotel rooms mixing up the bags that makes it almost impossible to keep track of which one's where at any given time.

The Buck Henry influence finds a tremendous amount of quick-talking characters who have the snappiest responses, taking them out of the sphere of normal and into something quite other. And then there's the situational comedy of it all, which together with the dialogue, feels so Get Smart adjacent to me. The film escalates into a chase sequence across San Francisco which doesn't get into Blues Brothers level of chaos (nothing else really does) but still is quite chaotic and features an extended sequence within playing with the gags of smashing a pane of glass and knocking a guy off a ladder.

Streisand as Judy is iconic. Her blue eyes have such a majestic twinkle, a little devilishness that is very flirty and sexy. She is a poster child for ADHD. There's not as much chemistry between her and O'Neal as one would hope, mainly because he's meant to be fighting his attraction for the entire picture (but mid-way, when a kiss just so happens to occur, well, it's an all-time cinematic kiss, as opposed to the one at the end pales direly in comparison). 

What's Up, Doc? is straight up a zany comedy that just so happens to have a little bit of romance. It's not a romantic comedy, which is truly unfortunate. We don't ever really see the moment where Harold falls in love with Judy, just the moment where he gives in to her, mostly because they're too busy dealing with the swapped bags and angry gangsters and other sub-plots that have nothing to do with the romance. 

There's a lot to like, little to dislike, just a desire for a little more of what we don't get.

KWIF(2): The Running Man (+3)

KWIF=Kent's "Week" in Film. I realized this past weekend that I had watched almost a film a day this August, so the goal has become to cram the last bunch of films in on the final couple of days. These are numbers 24 through 28.

This Week:
The Running Man (2025, d. Edgar Wright - crave)
Zodiac Killer Project (2024, d. Charlie Shackleton - hollywoodsuite)
City Hunter (1993, d. Wong Jing - tubi)
Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970, d. Mario Bava - tubi)

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The Running Man falls into my beloved "most dangerous game" subgenre. The man-hunts-man-for-sport (and/or entertainment) never gets tired for me, although its entries are frequently not very well done. The Running Man, like The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, is kind of a brand in the subgenre, or at least notorious enough to be a name big enough to check-point (as in "Oh, it's like The Running Man").

While I've read the Stephen King-as-Richard Bachman novella three and a half decades ago, I don't recall it very specifically, and likewise it's been quite some time since I watched the 1987 Arnold Schwartzenegger-starring adaptation. From memory, that film was definitely a product of Reagan-era economics, and was concerned about wealth disparity and social order, to a degree. It was concerned with crime, totalitarianism, and classism. 

We're now in an age where the wealth gaps are far more dramatically pronounced and we have government institutions that seem to only be serving to perpetuate that trend. We've given too much power to corporations, non-corporeal entities that have their own rights but seemingly no responsibilities. The people in charge of corporations seem to have free reign to influence government policy, and are not held liable for their actions and decisions made while running such organizations. Lands and waters are polluted and poised, people get sick or are killed, minds are manipulated and tainted by increasingly clever propaganda, and a token sum is only ever paid when they corporations are caught...and the execs still get paid.

Edgar Wright's new adaptation of The Running Man finds its protagonist, the angry and righteous Ben Richards (Glen Powell), blacklisted from the Network, which, in this dystopian future, pretty much controls all of America. They are the primary source of employment and entertainment in the country, and though they are not the government, their sheer economic power means they pretty much dictate policy. With a sick daughter at home and no income, Ben turns to his last-ditch option: Reality TV. Looking to get on any of the Network's many programmes except the brutal, life-threatening "The Running Man" program (the Network's most popular show), he, of course, is chosen for "The Running Man" because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

He's sweet-talked by the Network's head honcho into signing the deal to join the show. Surviving 30 days wins Ben and his family a cool 1 billion New Dollars, while he also receives a daily survival bonus, plus a bonus for killing any of the Network's security goons or the show's elite "hunters".  But from the jump, Ben sees that the Network doesn't play fair. They introduce him (and two other runners) with lies about being career criminals, disparaging their name, and denigrating their families, going so far as to have doctored clips (the use of deep fakes is central to this movie but it doesn't ever reckon with the general public's awareness of them).

Needless to say, Ben survives with the help of some activists and supporters, but it's never easy, and (once again) the Network cheats, tracking his location (duh) and manipulating the narrative of the show by coaching the hunters when, and when not to go in for the kill. The audience is also invited to participate, with the Network offering a hundreds/thousands of New Dollars for anyone who rats out a Runner and leads to a kill. It takes the audience out of being passive observers with, maybe, some moral responsibility for the perpetuation of this barbaric program, and turns them in to active participants in murder. And, of course, it's all propaganda, fuelling The Network's ideology of keeping the teeming masses stupid and hungry, and distracting them from the real cause of the problems in their lives.  It's up to Ben, who's really just doing this all for his family, to realize he's the catalyst for waking people up as to who the real enemy is.

The opening scenes of The Running Man are, to be blunt, really clumsy in how they set Ben Richards up. These scenes are meant to establish Ben as a rage-filled man, a man who fights injustice, and a man who desperately loves his family, but the writing and performances lack nuance, to the point that I was concerned that Powell was decisively the wrong guy for this part. He turns out to be fine, in the end, but Edgar Wright's script pushes and/or pulls Ben through the plot, without him doing much to instigate things on his own. He's a passenger in his own story, and through to the third act he's not consistently written. 

He's established as a man who does the right thing and then turns him into a murderer. He's established as a man who defies the order of things, but he denies being a revolutionary. He's a good person, and, for the most part, remains a good person...but Wright's script never quite finds the right balance for shifting between his anger and his kindness, and Powell seems to only be following direction. A likeable enough lead, but not clearly defined enough.

Similarly, the dystopia we find Ben running around in is fleshed out only so much. We don't get enough establishment between the different, disparate class hierarchies, but the film is very clear that the propaganda machine the Network employs is very effective across the class spectrum.

As a "most dangerous game" story, it's not unexciting or entertaining, and the film is asking people to hold the persons in charge of nefarious corporations accountable, but even still it's not the clearest message. It's still a retrograde story where T.V., and not the internet, or social media, is the primary form of audience engagement and how organizations manipulate the masses. As much as it's trying to represent modern concerns, the atmosphere of the story doesn't reflect our modern society enough.

I'm a fan of Wright's work, but couldn't exactly pin down the man's style (much of it is married to music or toying with genre tropes, neither of which is l'objet du jour here). In the piles of effects and craftsmanship needed to realize the dystopian future, I think maybe Wright's particular cinematic flair gets lost. As Toasty said in his toastypost "the movie is not over-the-top enough or biting enough to be a fun, corny romp. Neither is it dark & grim enough to reflect the Dark Urban Future it wants to rail against". We certainly agree.

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Zodiac Killer Project sounds like a cheapo Tubi-original slasher movie or possibly a Tubi-original pseudo-documentary with some weird right-wing bent (as befits the service's Fox Corp ownership). Turns out it's neither of these, though it's clear it's still a very modestly budgeted production.

Over a decade ago filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was prepping for a documentary based on the 2012 book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge" by Lyndon E. Lafferty, a former California highway patrol officer whose maybe-encounter with the Zodiac Killer sent him on a decades long crusade to bring the man he considered to be responsible to justice. It was unsuccessful and Lafferty, and his suspect, are little more than a footnote in the Zodiac Killer conversation. But as Shackleton was ramping up production on his doc, he lost the rights to the book, and all his investment in the documentary was for naught.

He couldn't escape it though. In the intervening years, true crime podcasts and documentaries have proliferated on every channel and streaming service, and with them a visual language all its own has developed. In Zodiac Killer Project, Shackleton relays what he would have done, how he would have shot the b-roll footage, the "backtors" (actors in true crime reenactments whose backs are all we see), the locations, and how it all would have been to serve an entertaining narrative far more than the truth.

Because Lafferty's accusations and investigations were not limited to his book, Shackleton has some clearance to discuss Lafferty's prime suspect and the situations that led him to believe his suspect was the killer as well as many of the details around his investigation in to the suspect (what he can only touch upon is why Lafferty suspects there was a cover-up to dismiss and not investigate his suspect, which leaves a big cloud over the whole proceedings here).

In detailing how he would have made what sounds like a pretty bog standard true-crime documentary, Shackleton drolly takes apart all the tropes we know from most other true crime docs... specific types of footage or editing style, the presentation of certain information, the cheats the productions do to condense the story or make it more entertaining that may be stretching or warping the truth.  What Shackleton doesn't really do is account for the ethics of it all, of making entertainment out of these real-life horrors, and his capacity for examining why the public is so enthralled by such media isn't very deep.

The Bay area location imagery that Shackleton and his team shot, mostly of empty or vast spaces takes on a slightly meditative nature, with Shackleton's voice over occasionally calling out whether the footage we're seeing is at all relevant to the point in the narrative he's discussing.

Dryly funny with a slight intensity and more than a little reserved playfulness, Zodiac Killer Project doesn't get us anywhere new with the whole Zodiac Killer thing, but it brushes back the fur on a genre and exposes its soft, and kind of ugly, underbelly.  

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City Hunter was a manga that ran from 1985 through 1991, while near-simultaneously an animate tv series ran parallel, between 1987 and 1991. I have a vague recollection of having watched some of this anime on Canadian TV, but I may be wrong.

Jackie Chan's starred in the 1993 Hong Kong adaptation, which I think is pulling more from the anime than the manga. Chan's City Hunter is a very, very broad comedy that's trying to be a live action cartoon, one of the most difficult cinematic challenges ever. 

"City Hunter" is the nickname of infamous private investigator Ryo Saeba (Chan) an affable, womanizing, and semi-capable man-of-action. He is assisted by his deceased former partner's little sister, Kaori, who he sort of had a hand in raising and now, as an adult, she's in love with him, and he has to resist his own libido and keep her at arms length. It's a gross dynamic that, for the most part Ryo is on the right side of, but not always.

Ryo and Kaori, through separate misadventures, wind up on the same maiden voyage of a cruise ship which gets taken hostage by a ruthless white American pirate, Col. "Big Mac" MacDonald (Richard Norton). The plan is to kill all the lower-deckers and hold the richest hostage for their money. Unfortunately for them, not only is City Hunter aboard, but so too is undercover officer Saeko Nogami (Chingmy Yau) and gentleman thief Kao Ta (Leon Lai) to aid in liberating the boat.

City Hunter is a goofy movie, one that is really leaning into comedy far more than action or adventure. This is no Speed, more of a Speed 2, if Patrick Muldoon stared at Sandra Bullock's boobs and imagined them as hamburgers.  Ryo is very charming but also a known cad, so women are as apt to bat him upside the head as to fawn over him or give him a kiss. Chan isn't really known for playing much of a romantic hero, and certainly not known for playing a sexual one, so here Ryo's horniness is tempered by the fact that the character spends much of the film starving and just hoping to eat something...anything.

The usual Chan flair for action and physical stunts seems to be scaled back pretty dramatically from his more infamous efforts, I think out of service to the situational comedy. There's less physical comedy overall for Chan to perform as well. He may be a bit of a goofball but we also have to believe he can turn on the charm as well and that ladies will not only fall for it, but actively pursue it (the who Kaori side-plot depends on it).

There are some very regressive (and, at one point, brutally offensive) jokes in this film, which shouldn't be surprising for any '90's comedy. The sexism or gay-bashing aren't persistent, but they are there. On the plus side, the women of the film are largely pretty strong, capable, independent and a diverse (personality-wise) group, and central to the film. I liked them all.

Trying to do animation-style gags in physical reality is very, very challenging and doesn't often work because, well, real world physics get in the way of having these things really happen, so special effects making them happen can look really awkward and corny.  As much as this type of gag in City Hunter doesn't work, through Chan's immense charms and a remarkably game cast of performers, it winds up being a fairly fun, if not fully successful production.  The extended set piece where Chan and his opponents become Street Fighter characters after getting electrocuted by an arcade machine is a highlight of the film though (lowlight, the painfully prolongued musical number at the midway point, made worse by the fact that it wasn't subtitled ... also, if I'm not mistaken, much of the film was performed in English then dubbed and subtitled...curious).

I had fun, but this isn't essential Chan by any means.

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Five Dolls for an August Moon is a last gasp of beatnik free-love-era filmmaking and sitting just outside of the Italian giallo wave. It's a murder mystery of sorts, but a film full of characters that seem pretty disinterested in the murders, and even more disinterested in the mystery.

Industrialist George Stark (Teodoro Corrà) has invited four associates and their partners to his remote island home for a weekend holiday, but really it was all a ruse to get the men facetime with Professor Garry Farrell (William Berger) and try to convince him to sell them a secret, revolutionary new formula for a resin that will redefine...something. Whatever.  

The next morning, the houseboy winds up dead, and you know what, nobody really seems to care. They wrap the man up in plastic and put him in the meat locker. They discover that Stark's boat has gone missing and the radio has been tampered with rendering it useless. Typically this would start sending people into a panic, a murderer loose on an isolated island, nowhere to go, no one to call. But, these upperclass twits keep on partying as if nothing is happening. Except, there's plenty happening, including each of the men propositioning Farrell to obtain the formulae alone, and two of the wives having a secret affair with each other, and another of the wives having affairs with, well, everyone else. And what's up with the island girl in the mini-skirt (Justine Gall) watching everything from afar?

The bodies start piling up in an almost comical fashion, new additions to the meat locker in pretty rapid fashion, along with a couple disappeared bodies that are even more puzzling. In a typical giallo, someone would be trying to figure things out. In a typical suspense thriller, everyone would be pointing fingers at each other and things would get tense.  Here, everyone's still just drinking and trying to figure out how to get that damn formula.

The ending reveals/twists are ... to be blunt... silly. But then the fact that no tension has built up around these reveals means there's little sense of stakes here. There's an organ-led jazzy soundtrack to the film from Piero Umiliani that is far too bouncy and upbeat for the events of the film.  And that the film is largely shot with gorgeous Italian seaside daylight and perhaps a slight overexposure, there's a vibrancy to the proceedings that leaves little hidden in shadows.  I'm really not sure what exact tone was trying to be set.

Bava's an incredible director, though, so his films, even the lesser ones, still have style and impact. Here he uses a lot of split fore and background shots with a character very close in the front of frame and other characters deep in back of frame all in focus. As well, he's exceptionally focussed on the eyes and letting the eyes tell the characters' stories of lust, love, suspicion, betrayal, intrigue, etc. And with such focus on eyes, also is point of view, most highlighted by the many whip-pans the camera does to shift our point of view... not in a first-person sense but a third-person. We will see a character staring off and the camera will whip across to see what they are looking at, and if someone else is looking back we'll whip back to see their perspective. It's a curious but effective technique, even if it's not perfectly deployed here.

Had maybe the island girl been investigating these murders from the outside, and her life put at risk for doing so, this would really feel like a true giallo. As is it's a mystery that barely lifts the eyebrow, and tepidly sexy. 

KWIF: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I also saw The Odyssey in true IMAX. It's a big movie on the biggest screen. I don't know that the viewing experience was all that much different than the first, other than I could see a lot more sand and sky.

This Week:
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026, d. Jane Schoenbrun - in theatre)
Illustrious Corpses (or Cadaveri Eccellenti - 1976, d. Fracesco Rosi - bluray)
Pavements (2024, d. Alex Ross Perry - bluray)
Synecdoche, New York (2008, d. Charlie Kaufman - dvd)

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Jane Schoenbrun's latest academic-cum-schlocky meta head trip opens with heavy breathing, and camera work implying we're watching from someone's specific point of view. It's every masked serial killer since... Jason? Michael Meyers? Leatherface? The intensity is ingrained when we watch from this perspective and hear the sounds of someone's breath reverberating inside a contained space. And then into view is tents and cameras and sound gear and crew, and someone steps very closely into frame and seems to be adjusting whomever it is that is behind the camera.  This should be our first indication that this isn't going to play out how we expect.

The opening credits - set to Okay Kaya's cover of R.E.M.'s Nightswimming - takes us through all the pop culture hoopla and paraphernalia of the (fictional) "Camp Miasma" horror franchise and it's vent-headed killer "Little Death". News articles, posters, video games, toys, websites, all detailing the rise and fall of the Miasma series, much like the 80's heavyweights like Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street.  It's a series that had its day, and then it's corporate overlords kept trying to make it a thing, outstaying its welcome. 

This credits sequence is so information dense and so evocative it's easy to get lost in. As a pop culture and paraphernalia junkie, I just wanted to watch this opening on a loop five times over just to take it all in (my favourite bit is that "Little Death" released a much derided rap album). This density serves as an intentional disconnecting break from the film's initial imagery (and sounds). It's there, in part, to make us forget what we initially saw, so that when we meet Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) we don't suspect what the film will eventually be telling us.  

Kris stops in at a gas station convenience store, loads up on candy (so much candy, too much candy) and finds a random copy of "Camp Miasma VI" on DVD. When she checks in and asks the hotel clerk (Kevin McDonald) if there's a DVD player she could use, he lets her know he had a small part in the locally-shot film. We learn that Kris has been hired to be the director of the Camp Miasma reboot. The series has a problematic past in that its killer is problematically trans-coded and the studio execs want a queer director to reboot it for, well, optics.

Kris is in the Pacific Northwest to meet up with the original Miasma "final girl", played by Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson, adopting a thick Tennessee drawl... which I mean to say is she's doing Dolly Parton's accent...and laugh... RIP Dolly). Presley's been a recluse since declining to return for the sequels, and is basically a non-commodity, but Kris is infatuated with her, in particular the sex scene in the first Miasma film which was both a sexual awakening as well as kink origin story for her.

Billy, who now owns and lives on the camp grounds the original Miasma was shot, is introduced walking in on an obviously titillated Kris watching this scene. Billy is presented stepping out of the shadows, hair a vibrant golden yellow, lipstick a stark blood red, and an obscenely big hat, all making her look like a femme fatale straight out of a noir film.

This is all still very early in teenage Sex and Death at Vamp Miasma, and it's hard to fully describe what the actual experience of watching it is like. There is obscene, face forward product placement that, if it takes you out of the movie, it's acting as intended. If Anderson's just-shy-of-over-the-top drawl is almost too much, it's as intended. If you are, like I was, made to feel in awe of Anderson, to be reminded of how hot and iconic Dana Scully was in the X-Files then that too is intentional. It's all intentional and it's all part of the layers of artifice that this film puts on.

Kris is not at Billy's home just to recruit her for her reboot of the series, she's there for a more personal and intimate reason. She saw in a still frame of Billy's eye in that original film a look - at the crossroads of pleasure and pain - little death and Little Death. She's been fixated on this imagery and this idea and cannot get past it. Billy gets it. Kris has a kink that she's too ashamed to admit to, and she's a willing participant in unlocking that for her.  I don't think Anderson really cared for Scully being a sex symbol, but she certainly seems on board with making Billy Presley one. That there's a 30 year age gap between Billy and Kris hardly matters. There's no power imbalance, and nobody is taking advantage of the other. Consent is explicit.

The second act of the film finds Kris and Billy watching the original Miasma film, which Schoenbrun's spot-on riff on 80's slasher films (including making near-40-year-old Zach Cherry playin a teen sleepaway camp counsellor) is both entertainment and foreplay for them. The film-within-the-film (-within-the-film) explains the origins of Little Death, which dives into its own variation of the all-too-common transphobic origins of horror's cinematic murderers.

Schoenbrun examines the warping of young minds that comes with horror film's obsession with titillation and brutality, but from a feminine lens, not the masculine one in which most horror (particularly those of the 80's) were presented in. Schoenbrun doesn't cast judgement. That "Little Death" rises again and chases Kris (who intentionally doffs her clothes down to her underwear) all the way to Billy's rose-petal coated bed and skewers the both of them as they fornicate is all just part of the role play. It's not horror, it's leering and alluring. It's wrong, and yet, ok?

There's not a lot of direct horror in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, but there is a lot of flesh and fluids, as Billy says. It is a satirical examination of horror as a genre... both a loving and biting one. It's almost a sex comedy, but also... not really.  

I am not well versed in 80's horror, nor do I have any first-hand familiarity with women's sexual awakenings (that I know of!), and though I've done some reading of trans media analysis, I too am not an expert in that to comment extensively in the context of this film (critic Willow Maclay's review is exceptional from that context), so ...Camp Miasma is, in some respects, not in any way meant for me, a straight, cisgender, horror-averse man. But at the same time, it's also not throwing a hand up to explicitly excluding me either. 

Beyond the aforementioned themes of film and sex and transphobic media, it's also asking the audience, whomever you may be, to think about voyeurism, about what it can mean to be the watcher, or to be watched. How do these different perspectives impact us? What does it mean to look...is it leering? Is it desire? Is it judgement? And what does it mean to be looked at? Is it affirming? Is it off-putting? Is it exciting or upsetting? And where does context fit into all of that?

It's only once Kris reports back to the studio big wigs her progress on the film, kicking off the third act, that we start to understand the context which the film has actually been presented to us all along. Kris insists it's not "meta" but it very much is. The artifice is also the substance. I don't think a film has thrown me for a loop this befuddling and inspiring since Synecdoche, New York. 

It's a fascinating picture, deep in thought, with multiple themes playing in concert together (including Schoenbrun taking some jabs at the Hollywood intellectual property machine), each that could be picked apart and analysed from an academic perspective, but at the same time being playful and having fun with it all, not taking itself too seriously.  

...also, fyi...miasma: a heavy vaporous emanation...
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I have been dipping my toe into giallo movies the past little while, a very tentative dip that likes the temperature but still won't commit to jumping in with full gusto. The Italian murder/mystery subgenre of film is pretty vast with many names of directors and stars swimming in the pool (if you'll allow me to extend this metaphor), it almost feels too crowded to just dive in. Amid all the splashy titles, and the plentiful boutique physical media labels just trying to sell their wares, it's hard to know what's truly worthwhile, it's like I need a coach at the end of my lane to tell me where to turn (ok, I've lost a grip this metaphor).

Illustrious Corpses was a recommendation on the relatively new-to-me (but not new overall) podcast The Big Picture from regular Chris Ryan... a recommendation that would test whether he was a trustworthy source or not. Turns out this film isn't a giallo at all, but the recommendation was still a good one... nay, a great one.

The film opens in the real Capuchin Catacombs, looking at real desiccated corpses. It's a stark visual but not one meant to scare or frighten. The character, an older man with a real lived-in face, looks deeply into the mummified faces, intrigued and ponderous. He leaves and is promptly assassinated. It turns out he was a prominent judge. Assigned to his murder case is Inspector Amerigo Rogas (Lino Ventura, another very lived in face, but with a little more mileage left to go).  He monitors the big, stately funeral, and suspects, maybe, mafia connections were to blam. In the streets, youthful protesters decry the dead man as being connected to the mob.

As Rogas investigates, there's another murder, another judge. And then a third. Rogas starts piecing together that the three judges were connected by more than profession, there is perhaps a vengeful aspect to this string of killings. But as he digs into these men, he starts uncovering information that might not be directly relevant to the case, but certain powerful people want to keep buried.

Soon Rogas' hunt finds the tables flipped. There's potentially a conspiracy afoot, and not only isn't it something he cannot solve, he may not be able to get out from under.  

I may have mentioned in my review of Dario Argento's The Five Days  that my knowledge of Italian history is verrry slim, so the backdrop of Illustrious Corpses, the political tensions involving student protests, labour shutdowns, neo-fascism and a burgeoning communist undercurrent are all pretty new concepts to me, but director Rosi certainly captures the mood. The vociferous chants of protests are a common soundtrack to the picture tell of a country ready to explode, and more than once we catch wind of a government doing everything it can to keep such an explosion from happening, even if it means scuttling a murder investigation or three (and committing a few more of their own).

What starts out as a high profile murder investigation soon bursts into full-blown '70's conspiracy thriller, and it is pretty incredible. Ventura's Rogas starts out so cool and assured, so observant and above it all, and we slowly watch that confidence, that comfort, that sense of being untouchable erode away and, eventually, collapse into the sea.

Director Rosi and his cinematographer Pasqualino Del Santis frame everything in beautiful, massive, old spaces, as if Italy itself is constantly threatening to consume our primary characters. We often see Rome and Venice in film, but Rosi takes us to many different locals, each with their own charm, some decadent, some rugged. The camera's gaze, often, is snapshot worthy, even if the innate colour tone is almost always some shade of brown (with maybe a hint of blood red).

This was a total surprise, as I had settled in for a delightful picture about a crazed murderer and instead felt the wave of historical anxiety and tension Rosi so ably builds overtake.  It's up there with the best of the subgenre, a real damn surprise.

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Pavement was never my band. I enjoyed the few songs I heard of theirs back in the heyday(s) of my indie-rock years (about 1993-2011), but never actively pursued them, never owned an album. I was always just happy to hear a new tune every few years, but always felt listening to too much of them would perhaps sour what I did enjoy.

I have to say, watching director Alex Ross Perry's 128 minute avant garde "documentary" on the band was the most time I've committed to the band since first hearing "Cut Your Hair" back in the mid-'90s.

In Pavements we have:
- A behind-the-scenes document of the 2022 reunion tour;
- An archival footage retrospective;
- A making of the cliche-laden Hollywood biopic;
- A behind-the-scenes telling of Alex Ross Perry's attempt to launch an off-Broadway jukebox musical adaptation of the band's music; and
- The opening of a celebratory museum gallery tribute to the band and their history.

It's a lot to string together into anything approximating a cohesive narrative, but editor Robert Greene gets pretty close, and in the end, for all the fake productions attempting to mirror reality (the Hollywood biopic is completely fake, the musical is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek cheeky production, and the museum is not entirely fake but constructed for the purposes of the film), it winds up somewhere honest and tributory without being overly sentimental or fawningly admiring.

At once pretentious and silly, there perhaps too much facade to Pavements and not enough introspection/retrospective to function as a satisfying introduction for anyone not familiar with the band, or, for someone like me who only ever flirted with them, never committing. 

It's pretty clear though, frontman Stephen Malkmus was never going to approve of anything remotely standard, nor was he going to sit for anything approximating a conventional interview, and had little interest in assessing his band's, history or his own.

As is, I think this one is for the fans.

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In referencing Synecdoche, New York in the above Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review I was reminded how long it's been since I last watched the film, a time which predates this blog.

The impact of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut never left me, although the majority of the details had long since faded. Was the comparison even apt between these two films? Am I just a fake critic who really doesn't know what he's talking about? A. Yes and yes. 

Much like Miasma, Synecdoche... is a very personal journey through the working thoughts of a director's brain. I don't think if Kris in ...Miasma or Caden Cotard in Synecdoche... are fully meant to be stand-ins for the directors of their pictures, but both are certainly speaking for the director.

While the themes are somewhat different, I still see synergy in how they approach their stories, layers of surrealism to inform the viewer that what they're about to see, that the world the characters in the film inhabit is a skewed depiction of reality.  Schoenbrun is more obvious about it in ...Miasma than Kaufman is (at first) but when Kaufman wants it to be known, he hits you with a literal house on fire.

The story of Synecdoche finds Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a successful theatre director, inhabiting a life that's falling apart, but he's kind of oblivious to it, a passive player in a way. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) is an artist who leaves him to exhibit in Germany, taking their daughter with them. She had been pretty disconnected from any engagement with him (though as we learn more about Caden, the disconnect seems to have started on his end). Caden also has had a string of maladies plaguing him that seem to reiterate his view that death is waiting specifically for him.  He flirts with Hazel (Samantha Morton) at the box office but he can't seem to take action even when Hazel couldn't be more direct about how she feels about him. His young actress from the play, Claire (Michelle Williams) is utterly infatuated with him, and at first he knows it's a line he cannot cross, but he crosses it when Hazel moves on from him. 

Caden gets a sizable grant to produce the play of his dreams, a very personal work, a play about death coming for us all, but the only story he knows to tell is his own, and so the world around Caden is largely shaped by his own reality, a mirror within a mirror within a mirror, without any real sense of identity or direction. Soon the world within starts to bleed with the world without and the become intractable. The one area of his life he proactively controls, he loses control of, and he needs someone else to step in and take over as him... and it seems the most comfort he has ever had in his life is when someone else tells him exactly what to do.

Time, in Synecdoche, New York, is the main thematic element. Kaufman lets us know without any exposition that time is passing in Caden's life and he's missing all of it, stuck in routine, stuck in ruts, stuck in his own mind, stuck in his own obsessions. The opening scene takes place over the span of the month, but plays as if it were one continuous scene. It's not obvious, but it's there. When Adele leaves, Caden thinks she's been gone a week or two, but Hazel tells him it's been a year, and she's not coming back, and the fashion magazine moments later tells us it's been two years.  Time in the film keeps moving like this, and Caden keeps losing track of it because he's so insular, so fixated on his own fixations.  The film spans Caden's life as he begins middle age to his very old age², and it seems to go by so fast.

In creating a lasting work of art, Caden misses out on actually living his life. His work misses the larger patches of what's going on in the world (things are bad outside of the confines of the warehouse he's operating out of, as implied by the increased military presence on the street, with no context given because Caden can't be bothered to pay attention to it). I'm not certain if this is Kaufman's specific point, but there's a reading that only drawing on one's own life for the sake of art can lead to one's art consuming one's life (as well as an obsession with not dying might result in losing out on actually living).

This is both a deep and purposefully obtuse movie. Kaufman is a very intelligent writer who obsesses about his own mindset and his career and the immediate world around him, and perhaps this is a self-criticism, but also with the awareness that he can't see another path for himself. Death is the inevitable. The end is prescribed at the beginning. 

I didn't really understand Synecdoche, New York when I first saw it. I understand it only a little better now, but I love the puzzle of it. A marvelous film.

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KsMIRT: ...into November (part 2... or.. better late than November)

 K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (eh..?) Kent steps through the TV series he completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  The last post was getting pretty long, so I broke it into 2 parts (why haven't I thought to do that before?).

Also This Month:
The Haunting of Hill House (2018, Netflix, 10/10 episodes) Creator: Mike Flanagan
The Franchise (2024, HBO max, 8/8 episodes) Creator: Jon Brown
Interior Chinatown (2024, Disney+, 10/10 episodes) Creator: Charles Yu
A Man on the Inside (2024, Neftlix, 8/8 episodes) Creator: Michael Schur

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The Haunting of Hill House 

Created by Mike Flanagan

The What 100: The Crain family moved into Hill House for a few months in the early '90's with the intent of renovating it and flipping it for a wild profit. What they didn't know but would soon enough learn, is the house was not only haunted, but some kind of place of holding for the afterlife. In the present day, the surviving members of the Crain family are still processing what they went through in their younger life, some in denial, some willfully ignoring, and some trying to forget. But Hill House isn't done with them yet.

(1 Great): Unlike Midnight Mass, which came out of the gate with one of the best first episodes since Lost, The Haunting of Hill House was a much slower burn. It took about three episodes before I settled into the rhythm of the series as each of the first five episodes dedicated its focus to one of the five Crain children.  The absolute best of these was episode five, which follows the youngest sibling Nell through her childhood traumas, and simultaneously explains her mindest as she got older. Her family never really understood her, and the previous four episodes painted a very different picture of Nell than what we get here. It's a devastating, beautiful, clever, and horrifying episode that builds so well off of what we were shown before.

(1 Good): The way in which the series jumps back and forth in time is largely a subject of point of view, and as such the truth of what is happening both in the past and in the present unfolds as a result of the shifting points of view. The result is a series that keeps peeling layers off episode after episode, and although it takes a couple episodes to really get going, it does fully sink you into those layers.  As usual, Flanagan takes his conceits of ghosts and psychic connections and builds a very human world around it, zeroing in on characters and their relationships to one another, and that becomes as much, if not more what's worth sinking into that the questions of what happened (both past and present).  The sixth episode, taking place at Shirley's funeral home, brings the family together with their estranged father for the first time in a very long time, and it's a doozy of an emotional roller coaster from airing of grievances, but also has plenty of enticingly creepy moments. It's like the first four episodes culminate in Episode 5, the events of which gives way for Episode 6 which acts as the slingshot that propels the series forward over the next four episodes.

(1 Bad): I could harp on Flanagan's penchant for monologues, but it's just something he clearly likes to do and his audience either needs to get over it or just move on from his work. I'm really not ready to do either. But I think for me the least enjoyable part of the series was the Dudleys (Annabeth Gish and Robert Longstreet), whose family were the longtime caretakers of Hill House. They were such background characters whose presence never much made sense to me. I guess I just am not familiar with such a concept of estate caretakers.  I felt like they either should have been incorporated more, or excised completely. A lot of their presence in the show did seem extraneous and when we finally get their story, also quite tragic, it felt very deus ex machina.

META: Were I to hazard a guess, just looking at the timing, Flanagan was working on The Haunting of Hill House at the same time as he was working on the adaptation of Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, and the influence of Doctor Sleep really shows.  In many ways you could easily tie Hill House into the same universe that Doctor Sleep inhabits. Theo has a psychic ability (as did her mother) which could just be the Shining. The way that Flanagan employs ghosts is very similar to how they are employed in Doctor Sleep, and Hill House has a very similar vibe to the Overlook Hotel, and the way that Flanagan explains the Overlook in Doctor Sleep as almost a living entity is so similar here. Flanagan does tweak the concepts enough to not make the connection fully work, but it seems very much like Flanagan was enamoured with the ideas within Doctor Sleep and just wanted to play with them in a totally different context. Fair enough.

Flanagan's stable of performers are present, but it was the younger cast that impressed me, and shocked me with how many familiar young faces there were. Julian Hilliard who played young Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen played older Luke) was Tommy in Wandavision. Violet McGraw played young Nell (played by Victoria Pedretti in her older form) was also young Yelena in Black Widow and was in M3GAN and Doctor Sleep. And of course McKenna Grace playing young Theo (played in her older self by Kate Siegel) is one of the standout performers of the entire Hill House series and is also the star of the modern Ghostbusters franchise.  The young-old casting was uniformly great, and I especially liked how patriarch Hugh Crain was played so consistently by Henry Thomas and Timothy Hutton...it was a real performance in tandem.

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The Franchise 
Created by Jon Brown

The What 100:  A satirical look behind the scenes on a big-budget superhero movie that is the latest in a Marvel- or DC-like franchise that is past its glory years and  trying to maintain relevance. The center of the series is Himesh Patel's first assistant director Daniel Kumar who seems to be the only one who legitimately cares about the property being filmed and is trying his damnedest to keep the machine functioning amidst the great many inflated egos, the war between the director and the studio heads, and trying to keep the energy up on an overtaxed crew. And then the studio sends his ex-girlfriend in as his new producer/boss.

(1 Great): You can't go wrong, I think ever, with Richard E. Grant, who plays an egocentric thespian who is too good for the material he's working with (but not too good for the money he's getting paid). He's largely background colour, but he pops every time he's on screen, as he is wont to do.

(1 Good): There are a few other great secondary character that are just joke machines, including Lolly Adefope as Dag, Daniel's Second A.D. (she really doesn't give a shit about any of it, but is ready to work her way up the ladder), Billy Magnussen as the heroic lead of Tecto:Eye of the Storm, Adam Randolph (whose ego is the thinnest sheet of glass, standing precariously on its edge), and Darren Goldstein's studio exec Pat Shannon (just swinging big dick energy everywhere, and teeters so close to reprehensible but comes out as one of the series' brightest spots).  But the series doesn't work at all without Patel shouldering the whole thing, and, let's face it, the guy is a star, and he does carry the whole thing on his back. He's likeable, vulnerable, but also flawed, and Patel has to do so much hiding of the character's true self putting on a different face for each of the other characters, with only spare moments to let his guard down and reveal the sensitive family man and old-school comic book nerd with ambitions and desires of his own.

(1 Bad): I enjoyed a lot of The Franchise but as a whole it just didn't fully click with me. I wondered, as a fan of the MCU (still) whether I was just being a sensitive fanboy at the jokes it was clearly making at its expense. But no, I'm not that sensitive a fanboy, and I liked a lot of those jokes. Largely I think this series --in exposing franchise filmmaking as a rather callous cold-hearted, profit-centric machine -- is missing exactly what it needs, which is heart. The people in this production largely don't care about what they're doing, and they don't care about each other, and that makes it hard as an audience member to care about it all as well.

META:  I can honestly say that any of the satire and lampooning of franchise filmmaking here is probably pretty accurate, if exaggerated, but this series isn't made with love, it is full on a barbed critique. It's a series that clearly dislikes the whole franchise filmmaking venture, and thinks of it as an entirely miserable experience for all, from start to finish. There's next to no room here for affection, with only the slightest glimmer of it in Patel's character, but its not put in front of the audience enough to care. 

It's also really hard to give us a 200 million dollar movie in a show whose operating budget is a small fraction of that. Tecto looks like an off-brand superhero movie from the '90's and doesn't ever feel like something that could even remotely be a successful movie. 

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Interior Chinatown
Created by Charles Yu

The What 100: Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang, Love Hard) is a busboy at his uncle's Chinese restaurant who dreams of something bigger in life, but seems resigned to his constrained fate...until he witnesses the kidnapping of a nail salon worker. The kidnapping brings the bright, shiny, quippy, dynamic police detectives of Black and White to Chinatown, where Willis can't seem to get noticed beyond a few cursory questions. But then a hot new detective (Chloe Bennett, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) joins the scene as a Chinatown expert, and she not only takes notice but puts Willis to work as his man on the inside. There's strange dealings going on in Chinatown, and at the precinct, and it all connects back to the disappearance of Willis' older brother.

(1 Great): This show is a trip. A legit trip. The premise, if not clear above, is that Willis is a background characters in a Law & Order-style TV series set in the late 1990s. The show blurs the line between its interior reality and the reality of a TV show as to be somewhat indistinguishable except that there are very blurry dividing lines between the two. There are times where the characters in a scene transition seemlessly into the background (and sometimes the foreground) of a commercial break, promoting a hard seltzer or stylish watch then resuming conversations. The visuals will often cut to a television set which then shows characters from the reality of Interior Chinatown as characters within Black & White or a  commercial or something else.  It is the wildest series I've watched since Mrs. Davis, another show which obfuscates its reality quite adeptly.  

(1 Good): I particularly loved how it flipped the dynamic of the background characters being the foreground protagonist and pushing the two detective characters into flimsy archetypes. But the reality of these characters, and other characters, whether lead or background, all start to shift as Willis starts infiltrating spaces he's not otherwise meant to be.  There are "awakenings" in a way, where the extras, or single-line supporting players start to find a voice within their reality, and my favourite exploration of this was with the Black & White leads, Detectives Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones, a complete unknown to me but comes alive in the series second half) and Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy, who I know only from the Comedy Bang Bang podcast but really breaks out here). Turner starts to question everything about his surroundings, and eventually just breaks free of them, while Green wants nothing more than to embrace everything about her trappings, to succeed, but she can't stand the cost of doing so.

(1 Bad): There wasn't really anything bad about this show. I was invested from moment one, and continued to be absolutely glued to every moment of the show as it played out. But if there was a critique, it would be that the main characters, Willis, his best friend Fatty (the always sarcastic and enjoyable Ronny Chieng, Shang-Chi), his mother Lily (a soulful performance from Diana Lin) and even Bennett's Detective Lana Lee all spend so much time apart from one another in their own story lines. Willis' distance from these other characters all has narrative context, and metanarrative context, and it's employed quite well. The disparate threads do all come together in the final episodes quite successfully, so I can't complain too much, except that I liked Yang and Chieng's dynamic together (with Chau Long's sweet doofus Carl as an interloping third in the duo).

META: It's all very, very meta. The narrative is clearly the lack of representation of Chinese Americans in American television and cinema. There's a total lack of respect, and a total disinterest in the mainstream to telling their stories, and letting them tell their stories. The narrative drive here is Willis taking ownership of his story, of exposing the systemic racism that has been holding him down, and along the way commenting on how, even outside of the entertainment industry the immigrant populaces are either ignored or targeted for displacement via gentrification, their culture subverted by the whims of capitalism.  It's a damn enjoyable series for its unique weirdness, but it's so much the better for having the underpinning of cultural criticism.

I freaking loved this show. One of my favourites of the year.

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A Man on the Inside 
Created by Michael Schur (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place)

The What 100: Charles (Ted Danson, Becker) is a widower and former professor who seems to be floating through life. He's got his routine, but it's unfulfilling, and he's emotionally distant from his only daughter (Mary Elisabeth Ellis, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and her family. Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada, Chicago Med) is a private investigator tasked with finding out who stole her client's mother's necklace - a family heirloom - in her nursing home. Julie needs a senior to be her man on the inside, and puts out an ad in the paper, the only place she can be sure to find her target audience. Charles, a big fan of John Le Carre, jumps at the chance to do spy work, and for lack of other viable options Julie is stuck with him. 

(1 Great): Fucking Ted Danson, man. The guy has been at it on television for almost 50 years and in the past five or so years he's just hit his peak. The Good Place gave him the best role of his career, but with A Man on the Inside he's at his most soulful and vulnerable.  

Danson plays Charles as a man carrying deep pain but incapable of addressing it. His wife had dementia and died suddenly from complications, and the experience was traumatic for him, but he didn't know how to process it. So he floats, navigating his daily routine that offers little surprise but little possibility for hurt either. In taking the job with Julie and coming to Pacific View, he doesn't just find work and purpose, though, instead he finds a community of contemporaries, and connections to people and passions and memories and experiences that awaken him from his fugue state. The work forces him out of his protective shell and in inquiring into other people's lives it opens him up to sharing his life back, and finding the pain he experienced is not unique. Danson sells the stoic nature of Charles, the giddiness of playing spy, the tenderness he has with a Pacific View patient with early signs of dementia, and ultimately opening up and connecting with his daughter Emily (in an episode where Charles visits Emily and her family following a loss at the retirement home, it finds Charles playing video games with his three grandsons and breaks down in that moment...it's both beautiful and devastating, and one of Danson's best-ever performances that makes me cry just thinking about it).

(1 Good): Brooklyn Nine-Nine veteran Stephanie Beatrix plays Didi, the manager of Pacific View. The first few episodes Didi is a very peripheral character, which seemed odd given Beatrix's core cast role in Schur's previous series. At first Didi seems suspicious of Charles' behaviour, and it seems like its setting something up, but by the end of the third episode Didi has locked her suspicions away, like Schur was pivoting on what his initial intent for the series was (from this odd detective comedy series, to longer form sitcom in a retirement home), But Didi gets a spotlight episode just past midway through the run which demands a lot from Beatrix, and she delivers so powerfully as a woman who cares for people, even within a corporate structure that really only cares about money. It's leadership, and forming a team of people who follow that leadership, it's not just a job.  And when Charles is eventually outed, the hurt from the deceit is experienced by many, but it is Didi who is the most devastated by it, and Beatrix makes you feel that so deeply, even though you are sympathetic to Charles. His intent was never to hurt anyone, but it happened despite the best intentions.

(1 Bad): No bad here. A little wonkiness in the episode-to-episode consistency. I don't know if it was the series who had unsteady legs, or if it was just me as a view and the expectations of what I thought the plan for the series was.  It's not a conventional narrative, and Schur uses Netflix and its lack of ad breaks to play around with TV sitcom structure in a way that doesn't always work fully, but never actually fails to deliver the showrunner's intent. I think the most awkward part of the series was the cutaways to Emily and her family, which seemed so outside the narrative of the rest of the show. And yet, Lady Kent and I felt so seen by modern parenting, and the way kids behave so distinctly from the way we behaved, it's hard to say it shouldn't belong (even if it could maybe be a whole other series). These moments with Emily and family are especially important though for when we get to that powerful scene of Charles with his grandsons. I don't think it would have worked half as powerfully if we hadn't gotten to know these kids before hand.

META: Strangely Michael Schur's first, and probably biggest success was The Office, a show I cannot tolerate to watch. I've tried, twice, and I find it unpalatable. Parks & Recreation on the other hand, after it ditched its Office clone vibes, became one of my all-time favourite comedy series. And everything Schur has done since then has been right up my alley. There are few other comedy creators that I trust as much as him, because his track record has proven himself (Bill Lawrence, maybe? Tina Fey and Robert Carlock possibly). And A Man on the Inside makes good on that trust, and shows how Schur continues to evolve as a creator. His interests are of a deep and curious nature as to different facets of human existence. In this case he's looking at people in the final years of their life who are in an establishment that, perhaps, people see as a place where they go so they can be ignored and forgotten about. A Man on the Inside shows there's still vitality there, a need for connection as much, if not more than a need for care. In some cases these are places where people where "put", but the point here is that for some it's a chosen place, a home and community where there's new shared experiences and connections. It's really quite beautiful. 

Another of my favourites this year.

T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar - Day 14: Sugarplummed

 2024, d. Ryan Landels - Hallmark/W Network

The Draw: High concept Hallmarkie? Let's go!
(Liveblogging my watch because of time constraints today)

HERstory: The movie opens with flipping through channels before the bumper tells us "You're watching the Harmony Home Network, the channel with the most original holiday movies" and this week is a "Sugarplum" movie marathon of the channel's most popular franchise. But wait! There's a contest to find the most Christmassy house where "Sugarplum" would feel right at home.

Cut to the "real world" where we meet Evelyn who we can tell from her pencil skirt and wine-coloured blouse that she's a busy business woman, plus she's on the phone talking about something important. She has fruitcakes going in the oven and yells for Ben (husband) and Max (son) to get ready. Teen Nina is focusing on her music instead of cleaning her room, and wants to go to the Berklee School of Music instead of the plan mom has set out for her. (Nina is a deadpan, sarcastic redhead of the deadpan, sarcastic redhead variety. See also: Natasha Lyonne, Lauren Ambrose, Sarah Snook, etc).

Ben is working on a miniature model for his boss at the architecture firm. He complains about being micromanaged...by his boss, but it's clear he's getting it at home too. (Ben clearly gravitates towards a certain type a' person...). Teen Max is making dance videos but never posts them. He's not fitting in at school. 

Family meeting. The Holiday Checklist: 5 thinks Evelyn mom used to do to make Christmas perfect. She's so "type A" (like this is 2016 all over again), Mom needs everything perfect and plans things out the wazoo, but the family all has their own lives and can't stick to the plan. She wonders "when did this family give up on Christmas".

But just for comparison, we meet neighbour Debra who is even more type A and particular about *everything* and complains to Evelyn (who is tossing out her burned fruitcakes in the garbage can) about "strong smells" like mulled cider and... burned fruitcakes. 

At work, Evelyn's assistant is watching Sugarplum movies at her desk, and while mildly annoyed, Evelyn seems to be elated to have someone to talk Sugarplum movies about, and they start discussing the rules of the movies like: every house has to be perfectly decorated, whenever there's a perfect gift for a loved one they always manage to get it, and at the end of the story it's always tied up with a perfect kiss on Christmas Eve. Evelyn's so "type A" she's even too hyperfocussed on discussing Sugarplum movies to the point of annoying her assistant (and probably putting her off of watching Sugarplum movies ever again). What does Evelyn do at this busy office? Not established. What does she ask her assistant to do? Pull her Christmas decoration bins out of storage. You know, work shit.

Evelyn returns home, lamenting about how she wants everything perfect and nothing is ever perfect. Even her assistant basically told her to relax her expectations and give up on the Holiday Checklist. (This is clearly a "lesson movie" where our protagonist has to learn to let go of her standards and just accept (and love) her life for what it is.) Her house, by the way, is open concept and spacious, not cozy and cluttered with Christmas like most Hallmarkies. And the decoration bins were accidentally sent to the office instead of her house. (I guess her beloved assistant isn't great at her job?)  So Evelyn, with "a perfectly decorated house" #1 on on her checklist, goes back to the office to pick up the "bins" which turns out to be a large box with no tape on top, or on bottom as it seems (how did it even make it to the office?) and everything spills out. It's a real random assortment of ornamental crap that doesn't seem at all what one would need to make the "perfectly decorated home". She picks up a gold star tree topper which has writing on it that says something about granting a worthy wish.

Suddenly, her assistant's monitor pops up, and it's a "Sugarplum" movie playing. Jess looks at Sugarplum and decides to wish for a more connected family, a magical Christmas like in the movie, one where she checks of every item on her list, and she wishes for a Sugarplum Christmas. The music swells. Nothing happens immediately. She deflates. Then the star starts glowing, the lights in the office start going crazy, the monitor starts flickering, and suddenly Sugarplum pops out of the TV.

Sugarplum is surprised but somewhat unphased by her new surroundings. She asks Evelyn to point her back to her perfect small town of Perfection. Evelyn tells her she's come out of the movie, and Sugarplum says "we're outside the movie? That's not supposed to happen." (Ugh, this movie may have just lost me here...Sugarplum, the character from the holiday TV movies is already aware that she's a TV movie character...that just doesn't work for me conceptually...let's see how it plays out). But learning that Evelyn made a wish on a Christmas star perks her right up... "It's Christmas Magic!" Suddenly she's into it and wants to help Evelyn with the perfect Christmas. "Does the town bakery need saving?"

Evelyn thinks she's having a breakdown. The janitor shows up and can see someone is with Evelyn, but part of the magic is only Evelyn can see she's Sugarplum (you know, from the movies). "Why isn't everything covered in Christmassy snow?" "Because it mostly rains here, like, a lot". (It's Seattle, so, fair).  Sugarplum poo-poos the list... but because Sugarplum has a book... a book called "The Rules" ("Rule 142: Flannel is a natural aphrodisiac").  

"Rule 61: Whenever a holiday traveler is stranded in a faraway place, they'll be invited to find a harmonious home with new friends." What Sugarplum knows is following the rules leads to a happy ending. So Sugarplum is back at Evelyn's home, under the guise of an old college friend passing through for the holiday Sue Garplum (but sleeping on the couch? I can't believe this is to Sugarplum's satisfaction). 

First thing in the morning, Sugarplum has a whole crew decorating the house to the nines like a holiday movie, and the bill, handed to Evelyn is $5300. Sugarplum is shocked that these people aren't just doing it out of the kindness of the holiday spirit. She also doesn't understand sarcasm. Nina is suspicious, but Max likes her (I like you too!). Sugarplum has a plan to cover the cost of the decoration, by pawning a tiara she was given by the Prince of Armstrongia. She has whole bag full of flawless jewellery from all the various princes she met.  

Sugarplum is shocked to learn that Evelyn is a big city girl who didn't turn her back on her career to find love in her hometown, and insists on seeing her at work, because she's just never seen the like before. Evelyn, I guess, is a lawyer? And her client is trying to keep her family ski lodge/Christmas tree farm out of the hands of a ruthless developer. And the client (Hallmark regular Fiona Gubelmann) and the developer (Hallmark regular Victor Webster) can't stand each other. Oh, of course this sounds right up Sugarplum's alley. She knows all the rules for this scenario. The fact that she so easily fixes the scenario with the perfect Hallmarkie solution shocks Evelyn, but it also frees her up for the holidays to spend more time with the family. Checklist item #2 done.

Item #3, Christmas shopping, and Sugarplum is into it. But Nina wants limited edition headphones sold out everywhere, and Sugarplum doesn't understand. But they learn there's a competition to win prizes at the store. The competition is all Christmas related like gift wrapping, snowflake making, knitting, gingerbread house decorating, and of course Sugarplum is excessively amazing at all of these and wins the headphones.

Oh and it turns out that the home decorating service entered her home into the Harmony Home Networks' most Christmassy home competition. (Rule 51: When a festive competition is introduced into the story, a fun and winning new perspective on the holidays is guaranteed for all... you know what, I want a copy of this book. Is it at Hallmark stores?).

It's career day at school, and Evelyn was supposed to go to Max's school, but she needs to work on the deal, so Sugarplum subs in. But telling her movie stories starts embarrassing Max in front of the class (especially the girl he likes). But she gets him to shake the magical snow globe Santa gave her and it snows inside the school. The kids have a snowball fight indoors, and suddenly the girl he likes is impressed with him. 

[Omigard, fast forwarding as this is only the halfway point]

Nina wants to talk about her Berklee scholarship application, but Evelyn pushes her off to talk about getting selected as a finalist for the most Christmassy home. All the perfect things Sugarplum start going awry just as Evelyn is starting to embrace the rules ...like Sugarplum gets arrested for "vandalizing" the school in "a snow-related incident". And it's all because Evelyn is paying attention to "the perfect Christmas" instead of her family's needs.

Evelyn turns up as Sugarplum's lawyer and despite being a contract lawyer it seems she keeps up on the criminal code and other laws. She has Sugarplum released into her custody (her fingerprints are snowflakes). Ben has his project due date updated to Christmas Eve, Max is suspended from school, and Nina is not happy with mom, feeling ignored.

"The Rules" are backfiring. The Christmas magic is fading. Sugarplum is in huge, huge trouble...and not the legal kind. This is a Frosty is melting kind of scenario. 

But maybe reinvigorating the magic is finishing the Holiday Checklist, and #5 is making a memory as a family. Evelyn thinks this needs to winning the TV competition...but Sugarplum is unsure that this is the right approach. Max wants Christmas Eve traditional eggnog, and Nina is anxious about her performance which is happening right after the broadcast and Ben is stressed about work...and all Evelyn is focusing on is the competition. Everyone turns on Evelyn's plan for "a perfect Christmas" and maybe it's finally clear to her that she's, quite literally, lost the plot.

Evelyn has kind of gotten everything she wished for, but it was all for her, and not for her family. Sugarplum advises letting this Christmas be "perfectly imperfect". Evelyn sends the TV crew home and races to Nina's pageant, where Nina's freaking out because the Berklee admissions officer is in the audience? It's up to Mom to finally encourage her daughter instead of holding her back.  Evelyn also tells Ben that she's going to live in the moment and needs Ben to live in the moment too. Just then his boss shows up (yes at the school), but Ben gives him a stern talking to and threatens to quit if he doesn't get more time with his family. Nina's performance is a peppy poppy and upbeat tune (if a little generic) and she gets a standing ovation.

Ben's boss turns up at the house and has had a change of heart, and all the storylines have come together with a happy ending. Sugarplum has to return to Perfection, but with lessons learned from being with Evelyn and family, that maybe it's the imperfections that make the perfect Christmas. 

Evelyn and Ben have a "mistletoe moment" that Christmas Eve kiss, and the family sit down to watch a Sugarplum movie...only for Ben to ask... "Is it just me, or does Sugarplum look...a little familiar...?"

The Formulae: It's constantly talking about "The Rules" and showing "The Rules" in action (even if it only covers a fraction of a book which contains hundreds of rules).

Unformulae: Well, "The Rules" start falling apart, but they need to fall apart in order to come together.

True Calling? "Sugarplummed" feels like Hallmark trying to force a phrase into the lexicon. It means nothing until you watch the movie, but once you know what Sugarplum is, it does make sense, even if Sugarplum is a horrible name even for a Hallmarkie-within-a-Hallmarkie character (the preciousness gets more intense the more Meta things get).

The Rewind: Every time they cut to "The Rules", the character always reads one page, but there's a second page on screen they don't read, so the rewind is to see some of the other Rules not employed in the film.

The Regulars: 
Maggie Lawson (Psych) is Evelyn, and is a Hallmark regular including a veteran of the Christmas In Evergreen series.
Janel Parrish (To All The Boys...) is Sugarplum, and is also a Hallmark regular, including Never Been Chris'd.
Brendon Zub is Ben, and he's been all over the holiday romances (Hallmark and Lifetime) and not just the Christmas ones.
Plus the aforementioned cameos by Hallmark superstars Fiona Gubelmann and Victor Webster having their own intoned cliche holiday romance in the very far backdrop of this film.
This is writer-director Landels' second Hallmark, after Santa Tell Me. I think this guy has the juice for making vaguely meta-but-not-too-meta Xmas fantasy movies. Hope to see more. 

How does it Hallmark? This honestly doesn't feel like a Hallmark movie at all. Hallmark has deviated so far from the formulaic "holiday romance" over the past few years that now they're just kind of making legit "Christmas magic" movies that play in their own space without needing to adhere to "holiday romance" tropes.  For a meta holiday movie, this one swings away from the romance and instead focuses on, as predicted, teaching a lesson to the main character.

How does it movie? Honestly, this felt like an old-fashioned, pre-Hallmarkie Christmas movie. It's not theatrical grade, but it stands up with the more enjoyable fantasy TV Christmas movies pretty well. It's charming, well-acted and it turns out I flat out loved "The Rules" as a storytelling device. There's a total Mary Poppins vibe to Sugarplum and even though her movies-within-the-movie character is of the "holiday romance" persuasion, she adapts quickly to the scenario at hand and is ready to help. She's even got a bag of holding within which contains multiple wardrobes, countless precious jewels and more.  I could see this being a franchise movie where Sugarplum is called out to help in all different sorts of Christmas movie scenarios. I figure the third film would focus on Sugarplum herself with things going wrong within her own world.

As noted, I was worried the meta-ness of the story would wear on me. The last movie I recapped, A Hollywood Christmas, was a more-of-the-same meta-holiday romance, and to be frank I'm kind of tired of that subgenre. But this type of meta-as-Christmas-magic really works for me and it stands out from the pack. It's not transcending anything, really, but it was quite enjoyable. I do wish it were funnier, but Hallmark, generally, has a hard time with comedy.

How Does It Snow? It's Seattle, so it rains (I'm guessing it was shot in the springtime, given the sunnier scenes are real sunny). But the magical snow globe makes it snow indoors, twice.