KWIT: Shucked

 KWIT=Kent's Week In Theatre...is this actually a thing now? I mean, I said 2026 was going to be a theatre year for me... but I wasn't really serious...was I?

Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto - Friday, March 6, 2026

Unless someone (like me) tells you directly (as I'm doing now) what Shucked actually is (I will get to that in a moment), then (to me) there's really nothing appealing about a country music-infused song and dance show whose story is built around corn and whose humour is seemingly corn-based puns.

Seriously. This is how the Mirvish website promotes the show:
Join Maizy, the spunky heroine, as she battles to save her beloved crop with the help of a con man posing as a "corn doctor." Get ready for a wild ride filled with toe-tapping country tunes, side-splitting jokes and a whole lot of heart. Will Maizy save the day and find true love, or will the corny jokes be the only thing popping?

That description alone makes me feel like I've eaten a whole large bag of buttered popcorn at the theatre...heavy, bloated and a little sick to my stomach. (For some reason I had a difficult time finding someone to take my second ticket after my original theatre companion had to bail....)

When I read that description, it gives the impression that Shucked consists of, I dunno, like, puerile granny humour and Conway Twitty songs sung by a cast ensemble. It sounds utterly unpalatable.

And yet, this thing was a multiple Tony-award nominee and won for best featured actor so there's got to be more to it then that...right? I mean, the blue rinse crowd is not the main theatre crowd anymore, and grannies are, like, my mom's age, or even younger and don't share "granny" sensibilities anymore. So what actually is this thing?

What you really need to know about Shucked is that it's not *just* corny jokes and bad puns (although there are plenty of those) but that it's a show densely packed with jokes in the vein of a Tina Fey/Robert Carlock production like 30 Rock or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (or the new, really good The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins).  There's just so many jokes in this thing that if the first one makes you groan and the second one make you roll your eyes, the third one might crack and smile and the fourth one's gonna get you. Wash, rinse, repeat. When there's so many jokes, in such density, that even a 25% success ratio means you're still laughing quite a bit, and that's a pretty good time.

The structure of the show has two storytellers (Maya Lagerstam and Joe Moeller here) who narrate, interrupt, intervene and interact with the story, but aren't actual characters in the story. They are, pointedly, a black woman and gay man, speaking with southern twang, and these aspects are addressed as part of the isolated and improbably multicultural southern town of Cob County.

The story proper starts with a wedding, as Maizy (Danielle Wade) is about to marry her childhood sweetheart Beau (Nick Bailey), but during the wedding, the corn starts dying and the wedding is halted. Beau may be dim witted but he knows corn, yet he can't solve the riddle of why it's turning blue and dying. Maizy then comes up with a plan to venture out of the walls of Cob County and find outside help, even though everyone essentially tells her there's no reason to, and Beau tells her if she leaves, it's over between them.

Maizy empowers herself and heads out...to Tampa, where she meets Gordy, a largely unsuccessful flim-flam man from a family of scam artists and swindlers. He's posing as a podiatrist (advertising himself as a "corn doctor"), which is a silly scam to run, and he's in deep in gambling debts. When Maizy mistakes his advertising, Gordy sees not only an escape for his troubles, but also, from Maizy's jewelry, that Cob County may just be sitting on a minefield of rare gems.

And so the story heads back to Cob County where personalities clash and tensions raise and romantic entanglements get complicated. Jokes are told, songs are sung, and it all wraps up in a happy ending of course.

Shucked is not a spectacle of a show. The set is largely static with a few rolling corn field sections that rotate to become the "TAMPA" sign. Occasionally some barrels are rolled out or a mobile quarter-porch set, but this is not a visual show. It's a flat-out comedy, so the jokes and interplay and comedic set-ups are it's highlight.  

Beau's brother, Peanut (Mike Nappi), has a real deep, slow drawl, and often steps aside to tell a string of "Well I think" jokes which feel very Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a redneck" inspired. Again, just one type of humour employed in a show that crosses a bridge between Hee-Haw and Letterkenny. There's a sense that the show is making fun of small town southerners, or "simple folk", and at times it really, really is, but there are stabs, especially in the second act, at showing the merits of tight knit communities. "We may be simple" Beau says to Gordy, "but that doesn't mean we're stupid. That's a simple mistake stupid people make."

The book is by Robert Horn with additional compositions/lyrics by Grammy award winning powerhouse country music songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. There are the cast ensemble songs and the story framework songs which feel like traditional musical numbers with just a little bit of twang to them, and then there are the solo numbers, the real nu-country power ballad type songs which are rather exceptional, if you like that sort of thing (though not my style).

But if the show's fullest intent is to be a comedy, then it is the songs where it falls flat for me. There's not a lot of humour in them, specifically in those big power numbers. They are, frankly, too earnest for the tone of the show. Shucked is not really all that interested in real emotions, so the big numbers are somewhat disingenuous.  I think these songs needed to be more in the Lonely Island vein where the first two verses and the chorus are the big, emotional numbers, and then the third verse takes a turn into something absurd, and the absurdity builds through the rest of the song, before abruptly coming back home to the emotional core it started with, but now completely undercut by whatever the absurdity was. 

Alas, what we have seems like musical numbers meant for people to listen to in earnest after the show. I'm sure it's been successful at that.

Shucked was an honest surprise, not remotely as cringe-inducing or saccharine or groan-evoking as I was expecting. It had a lot more bawdy humour than I was expecting, and much more cussin' than I was expecting (I still never expect swearing in musicals... one song is even titled "Holy Shit", the refrain of the song), but it's still not very provocative or challenging, I think to its detriment. It never actually deals with small town prejudices, and although it's clear that the one narrator is gay, there's nothing outwardly LGBTQ+ friendly about Cob County, it's pretty monocultural, and it likes it that way.

Double Dose: The Wiz(ard of Oz).

 (Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme or property...you get it...pretty simple. Here, it's a return to Oz, but not Return to Oz...that will probably come later.)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, d. Victor Fleming - crave)
The Wiz (1978, d. Sydney Lumet - rental)

I am on the record multiple times on this blog as saying that I do not like the 1939 adaptation of L Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. I even insinuated at one point that I perhaps detested it.

Harsh words.

Untrue.

In the latest rewatch (full disclosure, I rewatched while listening alongside a podcast's audio commentary) I couldn't help but continually be dazzled. It is one of the most vibrant films ever made, it has an allure, the primary colours of the yellow brick road, the Emerald City, the ruby slippers and red poppy field and all the rest of it that is impossible not to find alluring and utterly watchable.  As many times as I have seen it throughout my life, I still can't exactly remember how it plays out its story (likely muddled by the multitude of other interpretations no doubt) so there's also a sort of memory game that I play when I watch it.

But, I also find the songs verging on interminable. They've been such ubiquitous songs in my life that they have run their course into tunes I don't think I really ever need to hear again.  There's no magic left in them for me, they've been played out.

Likewise the performances are legendary but have also been mimicked and mocked and impersonated so many times that they've become a victim of their own success. I imagine should I ever watch The Godfather I'll probably have the same reaction.

I recognize with The Wizard of Oz there is an inescapable delight, but for me, also, an exhaustion.

So being prompted to watch The Wiz for the first time, ever, was a bit of a revelation.  Watching The Wiz was never something I've ever really wanted to do, in part because its previously generally maligned reputation preceded it, but also the last thing I ever really want to watch is yet another spin on Dorothy Gale's journey down the yellow brick road. There are dozens of Oz books beyond the first one, but Hollywood seems solely fixated on reinterpreting aspects of the 1939 film, and not paying any attention to the Baum novels beyond his first.

Yet within opening minutes of The Wiz -- a film produced by Motown in association with Quincy Jones, based off an award-winning stage musical that debuted earlier in the 1970's -- it was very clear that the film has a different take on what the story is about.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's journey is literally a journey, a fantastical adventure through another land where the character's sole focus is returning home, while making friends along the way. In The Wiz (soon --or already? -- to be released in a Criterion Collection edition) Dorothy (Diana Ross) is 24 years old (Ross was a decade older than that) living in a Harlem apartment with her aunt and uncle, afraid to leave her neighbourhood, afraid often to leave the house, working as a kindergarten teacher afraid to move beyond being around children, afraid to even risk love by going on a date or speaking to a nice eligible bachelor. Dorothy is riddled with a crippling anxiety in a time where such emotional disorders weren't adequately qualified. Her anxiety keeps her not only constrained, but detached. She thinks of Em and Henry's place as home and their nudges for her to go out in the world have her fearful that it would mean she loses home, but then "home" also doesn't feel like home, a feeling she doesn't understand.

So when her precious cairn terrier Toto runs out of the apartment into a blizzard, and she gets caught up in a ridiculous snow tornado (snownado), aided by the gentle guidance of Glinda, she's sent to the upside down of Oz, where a very familiar, and yet wildly unfamiliar adventure awaits her.

The Wiz was critically panned for years and a bomb at the box office. It was no doubt a massive disappointment, in no small part because of it's massive budget (doubling that of Star Wars but not recouping it at the box office). The money is absolutely on screen. Massive set pieces are decorated to the nines, the costuming is all exceptionally unique. Noted legend in the visual effects game Stan Winson was on the project and so much of the realm is intriguingly chaotic and unexpected. The world of Oz in The Wiz is like the Stranger Things upside-down reality version of New York, a bit more of a nightmare than a fantasy. It's almost a wasteland, with husk of buildings surrounded by rubble, or walls of trash lining the streets, and cabs who are perpetually off-duty the moment you hail them, and street vendors stalking, stalking, stalking you. There is a sequence in Oz's parallel subway system that is genuinely creepy and had me absolutely giddy watching its unsettling practical effects play out.

Oz here is everything Dorothy fears, all the worst case scenarios come to life, except... she meets the Scarecrow (Michael Jackson) whose brains are made of garbage. She meets the Tinman (Nipsey Russel) whose wife has done away with him, but he yearns to have a heart to still love her with. She meets the Lion, an outcast, full of braggadocio but nothing to back it up with.  She makes these fateful companions who become friends on her journey to find her way back home, hoping that the Wiz will help them. 

But first they must defeat the wicked witch of the west who runs a sweatshop with an iron fist. The wicked witch (Mabel King) is not a major part of this story, she is yet another vignette kicking off the third act, and otherwise not a presence in this film. The adversary Dorothy has to face is her own discomfort, and when she finds out the Wiz (Richard Prior) is nothing but a simpering charlatan, she realizes that he wasn't needed at all. Dorothy teaches her friends to have compassion for their own perceived deficits and to prove to them they have the strengths they fear they lack. But it takes Glinda (Lena Horne) to show Dorothy that her desire to return home is not the same as her desire to find home, and teaches her that "home" is a place that exists within herself, the center of her being, something she carries with her wherever she goes, an idea that can comfort her no matter what happens or where she is. Diana Ross then delivers her big moment, tears streaming down her face, filled with a new sense of self. It's not the same as the Lion's gaining courage, but instead she's found comfort within herself and a sense of her own being.

It's a journey not taken by Dorothy in Victor Fleming's classic, the only message in that film is stamped right on the package "there's no place like home". The Wiz delivers a journey that's much richer and deeper.

Of course, The Wiz is not without its flaws. At 2h 13 minutes it's a full half hour longer than the classic film, and those extra 30 minutes are dearly felt. The songs are, generally, really quite good, with that Quincy Jones magic spinning around the creations conceived for the stage production five years earlier, but also, some of them get belaboured in the long-playing disco era where the instrumentals just keep repeating and the dance breaks become long enough to literally take a break to grab a snack or go to the bathroom.

As exceptional as the production values are, I found the makeup on both the Scarecrow and Tinman to be immediately horrifying and that reaction didn't abate much throughout watching the remainder of the film (and then watching the film again alongside a podcast commentary track). I get the design sense behind them but they're not great (and yet every background dancer in every scenario looks phenomenal).  

The film's key problem is that director Lumet is not a director for this scale of production, with this many moving pieces (literally). His direction of the music numbers and extended dance sequences is ... uninspired. Often with static cameras at vast distances away taking in as much of the scenery as possible without really anything in the way of camera work or editing to capture the momentum or excitement of the moment. He's telling the audience to look at the spectacle but not inviting them to be a part of it. It just so happens I like to look at spectacle so I was still enamoured with the composition, but there is definitely energy lacking.

I can understand why The Wiz didn't catch on. It's not an overtly uplifting film and Oz isn't the most obviously fantastical place. Dorothy, played by a 34-year-old woman, is constantly in tears and seems petrified all the time (it's really effective in hammering home her anxiety disorder, frankly), not making for the most inviting or inspiring protagonist... and yet, I believe the journey she takes. I believe her when she sings her heart's song that she has grown as a person and is ready to live the life she's been too timid to find before. And the weird, unfamiliar, slightly dangerous and exciting nature of Oz makes it such an incredible place to visit, especially compared to the vibrant familiarity of The Wizard of Oz.

If The Wiz were a Wicked Part 1-style smash hit, I'm sure I would be as sick of it today as I am of the 1939 film, but even after almost 50 years, The Wiz feels like a forgotten gem, an underdog, a secret (mostly) success nobody wants to talk about and certainly nobody wants to license songs for their commercials. It only makes it more enticing to me. I thought I was running out of big spectacle films to discover from the 70's and 80's, I only needed to branch outside of science fiction to find more.

.

KWIF: Better Man (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. "Week" with a ten-day break in between watching films. There were no films watched in the 10 days in the UK. There were British panel shows and game shows to delight in or be puzzled by in the later evenings. 

This Week:

Better Man (2024, d. Michael Gracey - on plane)
Relay (2025, d. David Mackenzie - amazonprime with ads)
Mother (2009, d. Bong Joon Ho - on plane)
Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller ("Tales for All #7" - 1988, d. Michael Rubbo - crave)

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I haven't really given two thoughts to Robbie Williams in the past 30 years. Even when his bigger hits were exploding on the charts in the UK and here in Canada ("Millennium", "Angels") it was not.at.all the kind of music I was remotely close to being interested in listening to.

The idea of a film about the story of Robbie Williams' rise to fame as part of manufactured boy band Take That, and then his own solo career was of little interest, because I just had nothing invested in the man or his career or his music.

But why was he being played by a cgi ape-man?
That's... a choice.
It's a choice that had me at least mildly intrigued, but not enough to actually watch it.

And then film essayist Patrick Willems wouldn't shut up about Better Man for much of his 2025 output, most centrally in his essay on "Are biopics good now?" It was that latter essay that sold me on seeing the film. And now I get what he was talking about..

If Better Man were fiction, it would be an A+ achievement.It really is only the fact that Williams himself is directly involved in the telling of his own story that tarnishes the film's lustre, if only a little. Surprisingly, Williams, a man of much braggadocio, is also one of incredible self-awareness and the crooner's candour about his life, his demons, his mental health struggles, his substance abuses, his abrasive personality and his daddy issues all make for a remarkable story of success and self-destruction.

It's not a unique story, particularly in the musician biopic game, but as Ursula K. Leguin said,  the story is not in the plot but in the telling, and Better Man is remarkably told.

Williams narrates and provides singing vocals for the character of himself (otherwise performed by Jonno Davies in mocap), who, yes is an anthropomorphised chimpanzee. The reason for this is because of his own self loathing, his perception of himself as something of a wild animal, as something other. His physical appearance is not something any other character in the film comments upon, but from moment one it sets the stage for metaphor being very important to this film. He's not literally an ape, and he doesn't literally think himself an ape, but from his pov he's not properly human.

From a very young age, Williams tells us, he's had a knack for showmanship, and becoming *someone* in the world of entertainment was his only dream, until that dream came true, and then it wasn't enough. He needed the spotlight, he needed the credit, he needed to express himself, but didn't think he had the support.

His dad, Peter (Steve Pemberton), left him and his family when he was a child to become a stand-up comedian, a performer, changing his name from Williams to Conway, who really knows for what reason, but he didn't see his son again for many, many years.

Williams finds himself in the next big thing, the boy band Take That, and it's, again, part of the metaphor. He becomes a singing and dancing monkey. And it's here the self-loathing really takes hold, and doesn't let go. He sees reflections of himself in the audience, taunting him, lambasting him, and he turns to drugs and alcohol to shake them, but these crutches seem to only make the demons stronger.

His father returns to his life, but only because he's successful, and after being booted from Take That for his "bad boy behaviour" he finds solace in a chance meeting with girl group singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) of All Saints.  The film is exceptionally careful not to make too much out of the other members of Take That or Nicole (or even, really, Willams' rivalry with Noel Gallagher), leaving the spotlight on himself, yes as the center of the film, but also as the person at fault in how things went sour in all those relationships.

The film's musical set-pieces are exceptional, and, as Patrick Willems pointed out in the aforementioned essay, they aren't just music for music's sake, not just getting Robbie Williams hits in the film, they actually have purpose and intention, and as far as I understand each track was re-recorded to emphasize the dramatic intent of the narrative. "Rock DJ" is arguably a song with terrible lyrics, but it's got banger energy and the resulting song-and-dance number is epic in scale meant to emphasize Take That's meteoric rise in the UK pop charts, and a bit of Robbie's stumbling along the way. It's full of humour and some crazy moments that make for a stunner of a sequence (that I'm sure would have played much better on the big screen than on an airplane seatback monitor). "She's The One" really hits home how important Nicole Appleton's arrival into Robbie's life was, but not enough to overcome his demons, as he hid them from her. "Something Beautiful" is structured as Williams heartache over Appleton being forced into an abortion by her manager if she wanted to stay in her band, something it seems Williams has never recovered from. And "Angels" is the powerful ballad about the loss of Williams' beloved Nan, and his regrets that his career, ego and substance abuses kept him apart from his family when they should have been his grounding rod.

The story is a rich (if only a snippet) of William's life, but manages to delve into his psyche effectively. I was not expecting to be anything but superficially entertained by Better Man but was astonished at how rich its text truly is. The culminating scene, as Williams belts out "Let Me Entertain You" finds him battling the record-setting crowd at Knebworth Stadium who have all turned into the doppelgangers of himself, all who have nothing nice to say to him. It's a ruthless battle that Williams has to win if he wants to live (and that is a question itself he wrestles with). It's an incredible scene and potent metaphor for what Williams was struggling with despite being rich and famous and talented.

Better Man was a film that got the better of me. I found myself weeping on the plane more than once (three times in fact) wiping my tears on my sleep hoping nobody was looking.  It was a seriously affecting journey that is a magic trick, because I still don't really care about Williams as a performer, nor do I particularly like his music, and his personality is as abrasive as yoga pants made of steel wool, but I really did love this movie. When it was over I immediately wanted to watch it again.

---

Relay is an intense thriller that starts our at a seven on the anxiety level an just sits in that simmering tension right until its finale. It's percolating drone of a soundtrack by Tony Doogan feels like getting needles pricked into your skin while tweezing hairs out...it's not exactly intolerable, but the discomfort level and sensory overstimulation is high.

The plot of the film finds Riz Ahmed's Ash helping Lily James' Sarah negotiate the return of some highly sensitive, highly classified documents that could cost a massive agri-corp's a tremendous amount of money as well as be exposed as responsible for deaths and illenesses globally. Sarah's conscience was initially to expose them for their callous capitalism, but the threats and intimidation got the better of her and she's reached out for services to help her return the documents for a cash payout.

This is Ash's business, the negotiation between both parties. As he says, both sides are his clients and he's looking to resolve the situation amicably. But in the meantime he's using every bit of leverage he can to squeeze the corporation into cooperating, when it's evident they've sent the dogs after Sarah, a very savvy and sophisticated mercenary team let by Dawson (Sam Worthington). 

The trick or it all is Ash never meets anyone in person, never talks to anyone directly. He uses the government-run teletype relay service for the deaf to communicate, a service which provides a person to interface between the disabled and non disabled parties. It doesn't retain any data on its callers and everything is strictly confidential. (My favourite parts of the film are the reactions of the different TTY agents as they work through the tense negotiations they are relaying, some acting cool, casual and professional, others looking decidedly uncomfortable or freaked out).

Dawson and company try to flush out Ash, while Ash tries to resist being enamoured with Sarah, who starts being a little flirtatious with her protector. For much of the film's runtime Relay feels like a classic 80's or 90's thriller that used to dominate the box office and it's a real cracker of one (although, given Relay's almost non-existent presence at the box office, it's not likely to revive the trend).

So it's just such a shame that the film, which accomplishes everything first-time screenplay writer Justin Piasecki and director David Mackenzie (of the excellent Hell or High Water) set out to do falls apart when one considers the details of the film after it's over.

I won't spoil that here, but read Toasty's post on Relay if you want those details and the comments section there for my feelings on them.

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Mother's opening shot is of an expansive field of dry, tall grasses. Into the frame walks Kim Hye-Ja in her matronly garb, where she stops, stares down the camera lens for a beat or two, and then starts dancing. It's a tentative, reserved dance that also feels liberated somehow. It's mysterious, confusing, and delightful. It's hard not to think of it as a Lynchian moment, especially for how disconnected this "prologue" (or, maybe, overture?) feels from the film that starts immediately thereafter. What it does tell you is you're in a Bong Joon Ho film, that is for sure.

The next scene we see is Kim's "Mother" (she doesn't otherwise have a name) working in her herbal remedy shop chopping up some long stalks. Out the front door and across the street is her adult son Do-joon (Won Bin) who is holding up a dog on its hind legs and waving its front paws at his mother. A car whips down the street, striking Do-joon and Mother, distracted, slices her finger. Ignoring her own injury she races out to her son, who seems physically fine, but she's panicked over his bleeding (which is just her own blood on him). Do-joon's friend, Jin-tae (Jin Goo), grabs Do-joon and they run in pursuit of the Mercedes that ran him over. They go to the golf club to find the assailant responsible. In the process we learn that Do-joon is intellectually disabled and that Jin-tae is rough around the edges. Their mischief winds up in a brawl with golfing lawyers, and they all get arrested.

Mother dotes and coddles Do-joon (one scene finds Do-joon urinating against a wall and mother walking over and feeding him a broth while he urinates), and Do-joon has trouble remembering things, and is easily manipulated (it would appear that Jin-tae uses Do-joon to get himself out of trouble on a regular basis). 

A 15-year-old girl winds up dead, and Do-joon is implicated in the murder. The police railroad a confession out of him, which isn't all that hard, given his diminished capacity. The case is quickly closed and Mother is convinced of his innocence. He wouldn't hurt a fly, that is, unless you call him the "R" word, which will send him ballistic.

The film then is a dark comedy masking as a neo-noir (or a neo-noir masking as a dark comedy) as Mother attempts to conduct her own investigation. Mother clearly has traditional medicinal knowledge and social skills but otherwise does not seem well educated or savvy, and so her investigations are mostly blunders. But after she falsely accuses Jin-tae, she winds up enlisting his help to strong-arm information out of people, and he starts to fancy himself an ace detective.

The revelations around the case, as well as Mother's history with Do-joon, can get pretty shocking, as Do-joon's meditations and injuries in jail start to trigger memories, not just of the night the girl was murdered but also of memories from his childhood. It's all very dark, and sometimes very funny.

I used the term Lynchian before, and there's definitely some of that in Mother, as well as a sprinkle of Hitchcock as well, without a doubt, but overall this is inescapably a Bong Joon Ho production, his sense of humour and that slightly warped way of storytelling that is uniquely his own are prominently on display. There are ways stories are supposed to go, and then there are the ways a Bong Joon Ho story goes, and you can't often predict that. Class issues aren't at the core of the story, but the topic seems inescapable in Director Bong's work, and status does affect Mother's ability to investigate (and is also responsible for people underestimating her).

With the exception of his first feature, Barking Dogs Never Bite, I have now seen all of Director Bong's filmography and I adore him as a filmmaker. Everything he's made is a distinct pleasure, but I think Mother may be my favourite of his many exceptional works. I guess I'm just going to have to do a whole filmography rewatch to decide.

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In my hazy recollection of the the CBC airings of the "Tales for all" series of films in the late 1980's and early 1990s, it was the English language productions that ran the most often and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller seemed to be on all the time. Truth be told, I don't know that I ever watched the movie in full, but the idea of being able to magically put one's self onto a stamp and be able to travel to a new destination on that stamp, being returned to human upon arrival at the letter's intended destination...well, that's pure 1980's kid fantasy fuel right there.

So it's a cardinal sin for the film to take 45 minutes of it's 100 minute runtime to even bring up the idea of stamp-travelling, never mind putting it into action.

But that's not the only flaw of this film. The titular Tommy Tricker, for the first act of the film, is our protagonist. We watch as pre-teen Tommy hustles his fellow students into buying stamps he claims will be so valuable in the future, and as such should pay a premium for it today. He finds a more dedicated mark in Ralph James, an anxious, stuttering, toe-headed boy who shares the passion for stamp collecting with his father. Tommy pays his house a visit and tempts him with a rare set of stamps, but Ralph doesn't have much to offer him in return. In looking through Ralph's father's collection, they find a loose "Bluenose" stamp that Tommy manages to swindle Ralph out of. It was a bait and switch, Tommy showed him one set of stamps then gave Ralph another. Ralph's dad is going to be so pissed.

We see Tommy go to the stamp shop where he manages to cash out his newly acquired Bluenose for 300$ which he spends of groceries to feed his mother's vast brood of children. She asks where the money came from to which he replies "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".  

Tommy seems like a desperate young lad who makes opportunities where otherwise none would be. He's a troublemaker, a trickster, a hustler, a swindler, but it's evident why...it's survival for him. I'm not sure what lessons he needs to learn here, when you're dealing with class struggles, sometimes an upper-class kid like Ralph needs to be swindled by a lower-class kid like Tommy because some have too much and some have too few. It's not "right" but the systems are built for the rich to get rich off the backs of the poor, so sometimes the poor need to take back by any means necessary. 

But this isn't a class struggle film, this isn't a film that truly cares about understanding Tommy Tricker, because after all this early drudgery about stamps and stamp collecting (this is a reality where stamp collecting is seemingly everyone's biggest passion, the world over) the focus shifts suddenly to Ralph, and the absolute shitstorm he's in when his father finds out he got hustled. Through a truly convoluted and nonsensical series of events, Ralph's sister Nancy winds up with a seemingly worthless book of stamps from a deceased collector. Ralph, in a rage, tears the book apart, and they discover a secret message that, eventually leads them to discover the secrets of stamp travelling and puts them on a quest to recover a book of precious stamps.

Eventually Tommy returns to the story but only in the peripherals, and solely as an interloper in Ralph's adventure. Or rather, misadventure, as Ralph wind up in China as a result of Tommy's intervention where he needs the help of Nancy's penpal to get sent onward to Australia where he can hopefully track down the secret location of the stamp treasure. 

The second half of the film, filled with magic and stamp travelling and adventure is pretty inspired if not exceptionally well executed. The first half of the film is exhausting in its pacing and the ineptitude in which it reveals its characters and its scenarios. Everything that happens in the first 45 minutes could have, and should have been conveyed in under 20 minutes.

It also doesn't help that all of the kid actors, every single one of them, delivers every line stiltedly. It's frequently painful to watch as these young wanna-be thespians attempt to put inflection and meaning behind the words they're saying. They're taking the direction, surely, given the gestures they make and the physical interactions they have, but they aren't able to perform any of it convincingly, and often takes seem like they had to do, because the production's limited budget meant they had to move on.

At it's core, there's a tremendously fun story and adventure to be had, and I'm sure a modern remake in live action or animation would certainly improve on the many faults of this original.

KWIT: The Devil Wears Prada

KWIT=Kent's Week in ...Theatre?? What the...?

The Dominion Theatre, London - Wednesday, January 28

I'm not a theatre guy. I've never quite caught the bug. Plays are, to me, conceptually boring - people standing on stage talking with limited room to move, limited scenery to traverse? And musicals, well, that's not music that I like to listen to.

And yet, I do get a bit exhilarated whenever I go to the theatre, particularly musicals. Even if it's terrible, I come out a little amped up and want to experience more, right away.

Lady Kent loves really only Shakespeare on stage. In our trip to London last week she managed to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in an afternoon show while I was at a work event. Shakespeare tends to make me sleepy but the experience of candlelit theatre sounded neat. She was all good for theatrical experiences but we were in London and I needed mine. I had her look at the extremely long list of productions (so many of them either adaptations of movies or turning a musical artist's catalogue into some sort of singing-and-dancing narrative) and she decided to go with what's familiar... The Devil Wears Prada. (Also 2006 marks both the film's 20th anniversary and our 20th anniversary since we started dating, and The Devil Wears Prada was our second movie we saw together, so a bit of a sentimental connection there).

It's off season in London travel so tickets were dirt cheap and when we got to the Dominion, the theatre was not so lively. it was maybe a 2/3 crowd on the main floor.

The big name draw of the show is Vanessa Williams playing the Miranda Priestley role originated by Meryl Streep. The rest of the cast is comprised of primarily British actors, including Stevie Doc as Andy, James Darch as Christian, and Matt Henry as Nigel. Canadian actor Keelan McAuley plays Andy's boyfriend Nate, who is just as aggravating a whiny and needy character as he is in the film, if not moreso.  I bring up the nationality of these actors because, with the exception of Emily (played by Talia Halford), these main characters are all American. And only Henry comes close to pulling off a convincing American accent.  The end result is, any song involving Andy, Christian, Nate (or the sexy nurse that Emily sings a duet with) all sound horrendously flat.

I don't know theatre well, so I'm not sure where the dividing line is with music by/lyrics by/book by credits, but the "music by" credit is to Elton John, and maybe you can hear it a little in one or two songs (ok, "Dress Your Way Up" is absolutely an EJ banger) but for the most part the music sounds like derivative musical theatre pap. I suppose like Hallmarkies or sitcoms or crime podcasts, there comes a sense of comfort with familiarity, so when a musical tune sounds like a musical tune, I suspect there's a segment of the musical theatre-going crowd that just eats that shit up. I point to the hilarious "Rogers: The Musical" from Marvel's Hawkeye TV series which apes the cliched musical tune to the extent that it acts equally as parody and loving homage. The opening number of The Devil Wears Prada, "I Mean Business" sounds almost exactly like the "I Could Do This All Day" number from "Rogers: The Musical", and I'm sure a thousand other musical theatre songs.

There are a few songs, "The House of Miranda", "In or Out" and "Dress Your Way Up" which have a disco feel, and the energy whenever that disco vibe is in play the music the whole show comes to life where much of the rest of it falls flat.

Henry gets a powerful solo in "Seen", the highlight song of the show, which, for the fourth lead of the show to have the biggest show stopper is pretty wild. But it's about growing up and hiding one's identity only to move through the world, shedding the layers of protection and masking to be seen as one's true self, and it's the only tune in the whole show that seems to have any real resonance for the character singing it.

If you know the movie, you know this story, and it's the same, just with song and dance numbers in it. Except that Andy seems very much a passenger in this story and not the protagonist. Everything sort of revolves around her, but musical interludes interjecting into the thoughts and emotions of the other characters really steal Andy's thunder, and frequently overshadow her. By the ending number, when Doc is belting out Andy's tune of independence, "What's Right for Me", the rest of the cast falls away and it's just Doc on stage giving it her all, and I'm not buying a moment of it. The solo spotlight still didn't feel earned for that character, and the emotion of the song felt inauthentic.

As for Williams... on paper, she seems like perfect casting for the role. In reality, I'm not sure what that role actually is and what is requested of it. I don't think I realized it from watching the film a few times, where Miranda seems like such a massive role, but she's actually barely in the story at all. She is the phantom, the spectre that looms large over everything, has her hand in everything, bends everything to her whim, but she's not present. And so when Williams first appears, lifted up from below stage by a rising platform, she's obviously getting that rousing, show-stopping applause, but then she proceeds to sing-talk her way through the opening number she's participating in.  "Stay On Top" is Miranda's big number, but what it unfortunately does is expose Williams' limitations as a singer.  She's a tiny lady with big stage presence, but doesn't really have that big stage voice. If you think of her big hit "Save the Best for Last", you're not thinking of powerful vocals in that track. She has a way of hushed singing, and when it comes time for power, it never fully materializes.

The worst number of the show is easily "I Only Love You For Your Body", where Andy and Nate are supposed to be playful and sexy and funny, and at best accomplishing playful. There's no chemistry between the two performers and the choreography gives Nate some very feminizing movements which makes you question whether Nate would be attracted to any woman.

The show is not great overall but also far from a disaster.  It has its highlights in its numbers, some of its sets, and most specifically its costume design. Everyone, with the exception of Nate and Andy early on, looks incredible. The wardrobe all naturally needs to be functional in song-and-dance routines, but they all look like extremely high end fashion, tailored to all the performers perfectly. It's the saving grace of the show that it looks so damn good. I was never bored with gawking at good looking, fit, exquisitely dressed people. 

I came out of the experience truly aware that I enjoyed myself with a heavy pinch of the ironic salt. I couldn't get Lady Kent to commit to another, but I'm thinking 2026 might be a theatre year for me.

So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2025) - part 1?

 

AD/BC: A Rock Opera - 2004, d Richard Ayoade - Tubi
La guerre des toques (aka The Dog Who Won The War) - 1984, d. André Melançon - Crave
Cup of Cheer - 2020, d. Jake Horowitz - Tubi
A Make or Break Christmas - 2025, d . Martin Wood  - Hallmark/W

Preamble:
Between Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV, GAF, and all the Canadian (and non-Canadian) independent production company's, I would conservatively estimate there have been over 500 original Hallmarkies produced and released in the past decade. Together Toasty and I cover, conservatively, 25 of them in any given season on this here blog and we only started in earnest in 2019. So we're at about 25% coverage rate at best, which means...well, we have a mental illness. 

To be fair (tooooo BEEEE faaaIIIIIRRRRrrr!) we're not even trying to cover them all, it was never the objective. We would have to devote pretty much all of our watching and TV viewing time for the next two or three years to catch up. Even the Deck the Hallmark crew who do year-round Hallmarkie viewing and reviewing multiple times a week are still probably only at about 70-80% completion rate.

The point I think I'm trying to make here is, there's a lot of damn Christmas movies, and more every year. Even outside of Hallmarkies there are upwards of a dozen actual non-romance-based non-TV Christmas movies released every year in all different genres. It's impossible to watch them all, and if you find some favourites, it's hard to rewatch them when you're writing a blog and dedicating yourself to watching at least a dozen new ones every year.

Each holiday season I see new movies that I would like to rewatch in subsequent year and rarely do (Holidate excluded). But the same goes for regular movie watching where I find films I absolutely love and would like to rewatch but rarely do because there's so much new stuff to consume.

I always start into Christmas movie season in November, and by December Christmas movies are pretty much all I want to watch. I'm glad Toasty and I switch off days on the Advent Calendar because while I could probably write up 24 days on my own, where would I find the energy? (I'm not sure how Toasty does 31 horror movies in October every year). And so... here's some more Xmassy things:

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Under the pretense of being a forgotten televisual special (tele-viss-you-Al spess-eee-Al) from 1978, the cleverly titled AD/BC: A Rock Opera tells the story of the nativity, but from the innkeeper's perspective...you know the one guy whose sole part is "There's no room at the inn!"

In this funk and psychedelia infused parody of hippie rock operas like Godspell and Hair, Matt Berry plays the writer and star of the rock opera (op-ear-aaahhh) Tim Wynde who introduces the special, as well as performs the lead role of "Inkeeper" (no first name).

Inkeeper is in competition with big hotel across the street run by Tony (Julian Barratt) but is also leasing the property for his in from Tony. Innkeeper is paid a visit from God (Matt Lucas) who tells him that he should expect a divine occurrence, a divine guest at his meagre in. So he cancels all reservations and kicks all the guests out (his mother-in-law included) in anticipation. His wife, Ruth (Julia Davis) is upset and decides to leave him but he throws her out an she turns to Tony for solace, which Tony is all in for.

Eventually Joseph (Richard Ayoade) turns up with (unseen, unnamed) pregnant wife, and Inkeeper tells him that he's expecting a special guest but offers up his meagre stables. A child is born, a bright star shines upon all, and they all feel the joy and rapture of the event. Tony encourages Inkeeper and Ruth to rekindle their love, offers his hand in friendship to Inkeeper, and the pair declare they will offer reasonable rates and exceptional service, not as competitors but as collaborators.

AD/BC is tremendously silly, and is completely keyed into the style of British comedy that Berry and Ayoade (co-writers of the piece) were really into at the time, which heavily, heavily relied upon pastiche and lampooning without going full parody (pair-oh-daaayy).

It is indeed a singing-and-dancing rock opera throughout, most of the dialogue is sung. Berry, whose comedic performance  I've been a fan of for a long time, always likes to infuse music into his projects (see also Snuff Box and Toast of London for example) and in his non-acting time he's a prolific (pro-liff-yick) songsmith. The only problem is I've never really attuned to his style of music, and I find it can get exceptionally same-y (he will often have the same or similar chord progressions or keep returning to specific sequences of notes) and his vocal range is quite limited. Here he once again taps into familiar tones of his own use, but also dipping into 70's era music like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival or... others (memory already failing).

But in a comedy special like this, it's less about whether I'm humming tunes afterwards than if I was laughing or chuckling throughout, and it's a sold half hour of gleefully silly, anachronistic comedy.

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Kids sometimes become obsessed or enamoured with the things that scare them or traumatize them (emphasis on the "sometimes", don't go seeking to scare or traumatize your kids) and one such scary thing for me as a youth in the 1980s was a Canadian oddity called The Peanut Butter Solution.  It's the story of a young boy who gets so scared upon entering an abandoned house that all his hair falls out. He finds the solution in a gross mixture of peanut butter, eggs and, I want to say frogs? This solution then causes his hair to grow rapidly and he's kidnapped by a weird artist who harvests his hair to make unique fine art brushes.  It's gonzo, and I've always loved it (I acquired it on blu-ray in 2017 and only wrote about it briefly in the year-end post).

What I didn't know until recently was that The Peanut Butter Solution was a part of a series of films produced by legendary Quebec producer Rock Demers under the banner "Tales for All". The series lasted some 30 years (up to 2014 before being acquired by another company which has since continued the series) Some of the titles in this are familiar to me in name only but were in as frequent rotation on the CBC as The Peanut Butter Solution, but none of them have had the same staying power... for me.

But arguably the most famous of all of these "Tales for All" is La guerre des toques (in English "The War of Toques" but popularly know as The Dog Who Stopped the War), the story of a gang of pre-teen friends and neighbours who decide on their winter break from school to pick sides and wage a snow war against one another.

On one side is take-it-too-far Luc, who calls himself the General because he has his grandfather's bugle. On the other side is the much meeker Marc (actually it's Pierre, but for some reason they changed it to Marc in the dub and even the English subtitles). Only three lads choose Marc/Pierre's side, and so they are greatly outnumbered. Luc gives his enemies a day to build their snow fort, and it turns into a thing of glory. But they are so outmanned they have no choice but to accept the assistance of the new girl in town, Sophie, and her younger sister Lucie.  

Turns out Sophie is tough as nails and also a bit of a tactical genius (well, for a 12-year-old). Luc sets his sights on her, and, she, in turn, sets her sights on him. It's clear they dig each other in that very confused pre-teen, don't know what to do kind of way. And they're so French about it.

La guerre des toques is an incredibly low-key film. We're reminded frequently that these kids are supposed to be friends and that there are rules they have to follow, but that sometimes kids can't help but get carried away in their actions. Things can get pretty rough, like when one kid drops an ice block on another kid's head, or Luc sets his troop on kidnapping Sophie in the dark, a clear violation of the rules. She runs like her life depends on it, and it's a pretty intense sequence for what is just supposed to be child's play.

If you haven't seen the film before, there's a big honking ***SPOILER*** I'm about to drop, so skip on down to the next post if you don't want to know....

There are about a dozen or so kids participating in the war (and little brothers or sisters who want in but aren't allowed) so there's a lot of little white French kids to keep track of, mainly distinguished by their unique winter garb).  But one of the major secondary characters, and sub plots, is around Marc/Pierre's dog, Cleo, a big loveable old Saint Bernard.

Cleo has been feeling depressed ever since Marc/Pierre's younger sibling came along. Cleo keeps getting scuttled outside and is lonely being away from her family so much. Eventually, because of shenanigans during the war, Cleo is forced to stay outside. Marc/Pierre builds her a dog house, but she stops eating and is just so sad. Marc/Pierre also stops taking her out with him to his wartime events.

So on the last day of winter break, the kids plan a big final battle at the castle, and Cleo breaks free of her restraints and finds her way into the mix of the battle... the tower to the castle collapses in the heat of war and ...well, it crushes Cleo, like, to death! Seriously, the kids playtime killed the dog. And then they do the admirable thing and bury it in their secret storage spot in the abandoned shed they play in. Like, what are Marc/Pierre's parents going to say (well, Marc/Pierre's dad, always off screen, probably doesn't care that much, he's the one who wanted it out of the house).

But yeah, brutal and even as an almost 50-year-old man, traumatic!  I noticed Crave had a newer version of "The Dog Who Stopped The War", a modern 2015 animated remake that uses the style of massive heads on wee bodies that seems to dominate cartoons these days. It's a decent overall production, but I didn't watch the whole thing, I scrubbed through to the end just to see if they would chicken out or not...and to my surprise they did not. It's clear they changed the nature of Luc's character in this remake, losing some of the subtler touches of the original, but still pretty brave.

I liked this movie tremendously, and I'm going to be diving heavily into "Tales For All" in 2026.

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I'm not sure what the first holiday romance parody was (probably a Saturday Night Live sketch or something) but by 2018, the year after I really started watching Hallmarkies in earnest, the "ironic watch" and drinking games had already started to crop up. It wouldn't be long after that actual movies were being made making fun of the formulae and tropes of Hallmarkies.

I've seen many of these, including A Christmas Movie Christmas, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, A Hollywood Christmas, and Christmas With The Campbells (I watched the first half hour of The Christmas Classic starring Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen and Amy Smart - three very recognizable faces from TV and movies - thinking it would be a gentle parody like Christmas with the Campbells, and it's not...it's just a very bad Hallmarkie probably directed by a guy whose dad had money to burn...but I digress). I had not even heard of Cup of Cheer.

It popped up in Tubi's list of recommended viewing after watching AD/BC (see above), and the preview that started autoplaying showed a scene where the film's heroine arrives in her childhood perfect small town, to be greeted by a friendly santa-like hobo who offers her cookies from his pocket, only for her to run into her future love interest who is carrying what can only be described as a vat of hot chocolate which he then spills on her.

It's not really that funny a sequence, but I'm always curious about Hallmarkie spoofs and parodies.  This one coming from 2020 was an early adopter, a beautiful animated "Indiecan Entertainment Inc." title card declares this is very much a Canadian production which usually would make me say "uh oh" but the sheer quality of the title card had me feeling ...pride? Weird.

Cup of Cheer is a parody and a spoof, leaning hard into the maximum jokes per minute (jpm) with very little in the way of ground rules. Unlike Clüsterfünke or Christmas Movie Christmas which still tried to retain the chaste and puritanical nature of olde style Hallmarkies, this falls somewhere in between the great Zucker-Abrams-Zucker style of parody and the horrible "Not Another X Movie" non-series.  The jokes are a mix of leaning hard into Hallmarkie tropes and pushing them even further, some dexterous wordplay, some real bawdy humour, surprise cursing, and even a (*ahem*) splash of gross-out humour. 

The jpm is so high in this thing, and, frankly, the hit rate is at best 40%, which is not necessarily a passing grade, but when you're still getting a good laugh or chuckle 40% of the time, that's not actually too bad. When it comes to comedy, so much of it has to do with performance, and the relatively novice cast here are all surprisingly adept. The average Canadian Hallmarkie often only has one strong lead (occasionally two) the the supporting players a steep step down and the bit players even further down the quality slope. Here, I really couldn't find fault with any of the players throughout. 

Storm Steenson plays Mary, the big city girl who gets assigned to cover a big cover story for the big city magazine from the big city, but her assignment is in the perfect small town of Snowy Heights(ville Fallstown) which just happens to be the perfect small town she grew up in and left for the big city. Oh and she has to file the story by Christmas Eve. There she meets cute with Chris Mass (Alexander Oliver) in the aforementioned hot chocolate collision. Turns out he runs a failing hot chocolate shoppe with his brother Keith (Liam Marshall) which was bequeathed to him from his Grandmother. It's failing primarily because Chris doesn't feel right about charging his customers.  And then the big citiot with sever gastrointestinal troubles and a toxic personality, Mai Ex (Shawn Vincent), who happens to be Mary's ex, arrives and announces that he's opening a big hot chocolate chain cafe in the very spot Chris' hot chocolate shop is in... on Christmas, unless Chris can raise enough money to save the shop... but he's not willing to take charity or even work for it.

The movie is so joke dense and so joke focussed that the story and the characters get lost. I never felt too invested in the characters or their journeys and their relationships with one another were really hard to really grasp hold of. I think Chris being such a negative Nancy and such an utterly terrible businessman deserving to fail was probably a bad choice. Oliver performs him well enough that he's still somewhat likeable, but it's hard to see what Mary might be falling for (the fact that the falling in love is sort of perfunctory is probably just another joke, it's just a barrier to liking these characters though).

Brother Keith works part-time at the mall as an elf, it's set up and reiterated a couple of times before the big payoff is finding out that Keith is actually a stripper, which is news to Chris who needs his brother's advice while he's working. This results in some hilarious wordplay and really entertaining physical comedy from Marshall and Oliver as one brother is forced to lap dance the other brother in order to have their conversation. If you're looking for a gentle spoof in the same tone as an actual Hallmarkie, this isn't it, but it leans much more towards playful than mean spirited.

It's a cartoon world so the film's best running joke, about Chris and Keith's niece who gets kidnapped and nobody notices, comes across as toothless fun rather than dangerous or dark.

I had a good time with Cup of Cheer, and I didn't even mention the side-plot of Authuh (Jacob Hogan) the time-traveling prince from centuries past who very much takes a romantic shining to Chris but is primarily focused on trying to find a way back to his own time. As noted, it's definitely not perfect and it's throwing so much at the wall to see what sticks, it could prove as exhausting (or off-putting) to some as it is entertaining to others.

Also, so much actual Canadian snow for the win!

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Make or Break Holiday

The Draw: I find Hunter King sooo cute, but she's been almost only in terrible Hallmarkies and after last year's godawful football/KC Chiefs-themed Holiday Touchdown I was ready to swear off her for good. But then I found out that this season's Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig was going to have a part in A Make or Break Holiday that made it mandatory follow-up viewing, for better or worse.

HERstory: Liv (King) and Daniel (Evan Roderick) meet at a Christmas Party held by a mutual friend (never to be seen again). They start talking about cookies and never stop talking about cookies (too much cookie talk to the point of annoyance). 

Montage for the next year showing photos of their first date and other events (who took those photos!?!). By the next Christmas they have bought a house together (seriously how the ffff* did they afford *that* house...their professions are never indicated). But all is not as perfect as the perfectly made up house of Christmas. To put it bluntly Liv has OCD and the need to appease while Daniel has ADHD and can't seem to get started on some tasks or finish other tasks (I wish this were a more literal OCD meets ADHD-coded relationship...the analogy is such Hallmarkie accidental). Daniel hasn't even gotten rid of his apartment in the city yet and they've had the house for 3 months (red flag, Liv, red flag!)  They get into a fight and the Ross-and-Rachael idea of "a break" comes up, and they're both too escalated to be rational, and they both agree to "the break" (of course Daniel still has that apartment so he's already ready for "a break" I'm sure). 

They try to call off their Christmas festivities with their respective families but Liv's afraid of disappointing her type-A parents and Daniel is guilt-tripped by his mom before he can even say anything. So they agree to put up a charade for the holidays. The whole family comes, their hotels are overbooked, so they're all staying in the house, including Daniel's grandma and sister, Kim, and Liv's parents and brother, Reid (Craig Mr. Christmas).  

Immediately Kim sniffs out that there's trouble in paradise, while Liv confesses to Reid who wants to hear none of it because he's bad at secrets. And then it's all shenanigans as the family all needles and annoy one another while Kim and Reid conspire, poorly to reunite the lovers who have clearly just made a mistake.

Oh and Daniel keeps trying to hide a gift box that is so obviously a box-within-a-box-within-a-box engagement ring. It's a literal Chechov's Box-Within-A-Box-Within-A-Box Engagement Ring...it's only a matter of when, not if it will go off. And when it does, well, that's the third-act complication I guess (even though this film starts with the complication).

The Formulae: The film opens with a Christmas baking montage as Liv makes a Nutella roll (we only see "Nutella" prominently displayed, like, a million times in that first 120 seconds. There are ugly Christmas sweaters. The house is decorated to the nines with no less than 3 Christmas trees, one of which is the catalyst to Liv and Daniel's arguement. There's a hot chocolate toast, and festive games leading to conflict (there's a bullshit Christmas obstacle course that no family ever has set up every year). Grams watches a Christmas baking show (intently). There's no less than three trips to the Christmas market. There's an outdoor christmas dinner(!?) which is interrupted by everyone getting up to dance (!?) before getting kicked out because they start taking the microphone and making speeches and Reid grabs the snow-maker-blower thing and cranks it to 10. Oh yeah, and so much goddamn cookie talk.

Unformulae: What no Christmas/Eve deadline? No caroling? No ice skating? No perfect small town? I mean they hit so many other tropes, can't fault them for the ones they missed. Oh and no red dress, just fetching silk blouses.

True Calling? "Make or break" is defined as "be the factor which decides whether (something) will succeed or fail" so yes, I guess this is a true calling. This Christmas will be the deciding factor in whether Liv and Daniel succeed or fail.

The Rewind: When Liv and Daniel split off to call their parents and tell them Christmas is off, the edit goes into a series of split screens cutting between the couple and their families in a surprisingly complicated fashion. It gets recalled later in the film as well. It's a surprising DiPalma-esque touch I really, really wasn't expecting and it's very well executed.

The Regulars: Hunter King is part of Hallmark's next wave of superstars, while Evan Roderick seems to be a desperate "we need a new, younger Andrew Walker-type". He acquits himself just fine (he's also been in a fair share of Hallmark stuff...as well as an Arrow veteran). Craig (Geoghan apparently is his last name) was obviously on Finding Mr. Christmas, and I have to say this role of the sort of put-upon younger brother who is a grown-up but still a bit immature was pretty much the perfect starter role for him. He was surprisingly enjoyable. I still can't imagine him as leading man, but he can work his way up to it I think (now). Sister Kim is played by Brittney Wilson was pretty great in this role as the pushy sister character (I was worried they were going to try and pair Maya off with Reid, but thankfully that didn't happen) and used to be in a lot more of these pre-pandemic. Daniel's flighty mom Maya is played by Jennifer Juniper-Angeli who has been in XMas Hallmarkies the past two seasons. Liv's dad is played by Days of Our Lives legend Roark Critchlow (see also this year's The Christmas Cup)...he seems to have been more of a Lifetime murder movie staple than holiday romance guy. Liv's mom, played by Marlee Walchuk is a regular on Hallmark's Chicken Sisters but otherwise doesn't have much history in Hallmarkies. And Grams, played by Linda Darlow has a few under her belt, like Hanukkah on Rye from 2022.

Oh and Jonathan Bennett makes a cameo as the restaurateur angry at Reid for grabbing the snow-maker-blower thing. He says "how'd you get that" to which Reid says "I won a contest". Zing!

How does it Hallmark? It's enjoyable enough and certainly watchable. The complication of Daniel and Liv being broken up seems almost completely unnecessary when the plot simply could have been trying to navigate dealing with each other's parents...or it could have been more poignant had they leaned into each character's neuro-atypical nature. A sharper comedic mind could have really made this just a full on "Meet The Parents"-style comedy but instead it just sits as a pretty average Hallmark movie.

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow? Rolls upon rolls of cotton batting topped off with shaved ice or soap flakes.

ReFried Disney: Snow White

2025, Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) -- Disney+ 

Stupid Boy Project? Oh, stupid stupid boy.

This is one of the rare movies in this project that is not a remake of a recent Disney animated movie, and by recent I mean that "new era" of original Disney animated musicals that started all the way back in 1989 with The Little Mermaid. Its kind of odd to say "new era", because only ten years prior had been Disney's last animated musical, Pete's Dragon. Ten years is not all that long in cinematic eras, at least it isn't these days. But what I am getting at is that this movie is a "live-action remake" of the Classic Era of Disney Animated Musicals (deemed worthy enough to get capital letters) that stretch from the 60s to beyond. The original Snow White was in ... 1937. Nineteen Freaking Thirty-Seven!! And I probably haven't seen it since my days sitting in front of grannie's TV during The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday afternoon.

I don't have much recollection of the original animation, but a lot of imitators came to mind as I watched this movie. Less imitation of the animation and more of the motif that became part of the collective conscious. Think Amy Adams in Enchanted. Less imitator and more homage? I mean, the story of Snow White is built into our fairy tale brain, but was that ever from a non-Disney source? I am old enough that I had an actual collection of classic Grimm / Perrault fairy tales, so it must have been in there, but admitedly the core of the story must have come from 50+ years of exposure to Disney's adaptation. From the colour scheme, to "heigh-ho", to an evil queen with her hair tucked inside a skin tight dark wimple, all are indicative of the fairy tale but visuals from Disney.

Anywayz, this movie. Cough.

I was tempted to write three paragraphs consisting only of "Fair fair fair. Fair fair FAIR fair. FAIR ! Fair fair." This movie was really really REALLY trying hard to rebrand "fair" as not referring to Snow White's skin colour, but to fairness of judgement. As in, her father was a Good and Fair Ruler. But not even Mjolnir herself could have hammered that definition into the Magic Mirror's proclamation that the Evil Queen was ever fair. Snow White was the fairest, always and forever, as was her father. That mirror was a fucking liar.

Not bothering to comment on the "her skin isn't snow white" utter whiner troll shite on the Internet. If I roll my eyes any harder at that, I will hurt myself. There are plenty of other things to dislike about the movie without that weaksauce.

The tale begins with a fair (cough) kingdom ruled by a fair King and Queen who are equal with their people. Oh, they live in a castle and wear finery and probably don't actually do anything but they also spend one day a year picking apples and preparing pies for their people. I mean, I highly doubt they bake the pies, as they probably have people to do that but they carry the prepared pies to the tables, for the villagers & castle folk. The fair princess Snow White helps, so named because she was born on a cold winter night, and sure all the people seem to love her, but one does wonder what would happen if they didn't defer to her.

Fuck you King; howsa 'bout instead of serving us over-sized pieces of apple pies (from our orchards by the way) you release us from our vassal-state and pay us a living wage? Sure, you might own the land but....

Then the queen dies and the king gets a new wife, and almost immediately after sets off to fight in a foreign war, where he dies. New Wifey (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) takes the throne, and immediately makes changes. Once prosperous villagers (OK maybe they were making more than a livable wage) are conscripted into her royal guard, and Snow White is relegated to scullery maid. Nobody argues, because Evil Queen.

Waitasecond here; she doesn't actually have a NAME ?!?! She's really just called "Evil Queen". I would love to see her business card.

Snow White (Rachel Zegler, Y2K) grows up in her now impoverished kingdom, locked behind castle gates. One day she bumps into a thief stealing potatoes. Snow White's royalty shows through, as she does not like him being a thief. He is caught and tied to the gates, I guess the Evil Queen's version of a crow cage, but Snow White frees him anyway; I mean, it was just potatoes. That pisses off the Evil Queen, who has been getting "yer the fairest" from the Magic Mirror, until that act by Snow White. I am still convinced the Mirror was lying all along, but not sure why he suddenly got some courage. No matter, pissed off Evil Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and cut out her heart. Not sure why she just doesn't have Snow White murdered right there in her throne room; its not like she has a reputation to uphold.

Part of me wonders whether the source fairy takes tell us why.

Of course, the Huntsman feels guilty and sends Snow White off into the forest to hide. In this version, he doesn't even kill a deer, from which to cut out a heart, but puts an.... apple into the box? He knows his fate; he's just delaying. The forest is initially dark and scary and definitely UnSeelie. I know that this is supposed to be representative of Snow White being a city girl and dark rural forests are scary, but I have always like to think of it as an actually fae infested wood with its periphery tainted by proximity to the Evil Queen. Luckily though, some Uplifted Animals find Snow White and guide her to the quaintest of quaintest cottages deep in the wood.

The Dwarves Miners own the house and are away for part of the day slaving away in the mines, using their magic powers (yes, the exhibit magic) to light up the location of gemstones, which they cut out of the stone and load into mine carts for... well, I am not sure we are ever given a reason the "miners" mine the gemstones. I kind of thought they were hinting that the Evil Queen has tasked them with this duty for her throne room is going to be littered with an endless supply of perfectly cut gemstones. But I am not sure if it was edited out, or underplayed, because I don't recall any reason for all this labour. 

But complaining about minor miner duties is burying the lede. The real complaint here, and admittedly, I thought it was all the blame of Disney's terrible sub-titling, but why aren't they called DWARVES ?!?!? Seriously, if anyone is going to give fuel to the "woke agenda" bonfires its choosing to ... to what?? Choosing to not offend little people? I mean, they went with entirely CG representations of these not-dwarves!! If they wanted to separate themselves from whole "dwarf" label (and we will completely ignore the fact these are not and never were "little people" but fairy tale dwarves, i.e. the folk tale fae creatures used as inspiration for Tolkien's story species) then just make them weird human miners with odd personalities and funny names.

Umm, isn't "dwarfs" more correct in this context? 

Shaddup you.

When the miners return home, they find the lady who broke in and slept in their beds. Most of them are suspicious but a few are at least understanding of her plight, being a Princess who was almost murdered by her step-mother (cough, E. Queen). Despite being a bunch of bachelors (no implication of familial connection) living together, they don't really get along. Even if you ignore their distinct personalities and/or named-traits, they all seem to pick on Bashful. But with a song and some gentle chastising, she shows them how to work together and clean up their house, in a way only a young woman can. And by whistling. Not at young woman, but.... oh nevermind.

Snow White is convinced her father is actually not dead, just that he never came back from the war in the south. She hopes to find the rebels in the forest, or bandits or whomever is rumoured to be still loyal to her father, and not beholden to E. Queen. What she finds instead is that the rebel/bandits are actually just unemployed minstrels, and more than a little buffoonish, led by the potato thief Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, The Front Room). The two make googley eyes at each other when the Evil Queen's henchmen show up and attack. Jonathan is injured and she takes him back to the "miners" where she begs Doc to help the cute boy. "I'm not that kind of Doc," he says, implying he's probably a doctor of philosophy or something to that eye-rolling effect. Whatever he does helps either way. The two decide they are in love, and that Jonathan and his Minstrels should head off to look for their King. They instantly get caught, cuz, you know they aren't bandits nor rebels, just fucking useless musicians and actors.

From them the Evil Queen learns where Snow White is hiding and concocts her poisoned apple bit. Apparently the Fair King had a rather diabolical Evil Queen Ready dungeon/lair in his basement all along. Putting on the Kindly Old Woman disguise, which has never ever been kindly looking but Halloween Witch scary, she gets Snow White to bite the apple, and thus, sleep of death. Jonathan and the now imprisoned Huntsman escape and find Snow White and all the weeping miners (folk core prog rock band). He steals a kiss and she wakes up. 

Snow White's pissed, and decides that even though she doesn't have an army, not even any rebels, she will head back to the castle and ... guilt them into surrendering? Which is exactly what she does. Once the Evil Queen realizes that five guys wearing her armour would rather do what Snow White says, instead of her, she runs back inside and gets all pissy in front of the mirror, sealing her fate. Seems her power, and maybe long life, was tied directly to the mirror - smashing it out of frustration is not the best choice. The End, but for one long song and dance number which must have used up the urine of every man, woman and barn yard animal to get all the clothes that bleached white.

I did not like this movie, in case my mockery was too subtle for you. I knew going in that I am not a fan of musicals, but usually I can tolerate, and some, I even like. Give me one banger of a tune and I am OK. There were none, not even the ones they stole from the original. To me this felt like a boardroom full of Purple Suits (I guess that is the collective noun?) paving the way for a off-Broadway stage musical production, and didn't really care if the movie did well or not -- they just needed the framework, set visualizations, musical numbers and visually appealing costumes. 

It does not adapt the original nor any fairy tale source material well. It seems to shoe-horn in some standard, run of the mill musical components, wedged in between all the "I remember that!" scenes from the original. The (lack of) story is forgivable in a 1937 animation, but here it is just brain-numbingly empty. Nothing feels like world building, nothing feels lived-in, nothing feels enchanting. Not a single song is memorable nor are any of the visuals above passable. Characters are more often labels, not people -- see E. Queen reference above. This movie does not have much going for it, so I hope it at least appeals to seven year old dim witted children.

As for the dwarf controversy, the CG one, as we already covered the dwarf vs miner one, I was not horrified nor annoyed. I get what they were trying to do -- recreate the original animated visuals but with some resemblance to ... real people? For Average People they must seem very Uncanny Valley (maybe that's where dwarves er miners come from?) but for someone raised on video game cinematics and The Lord of the Rings they are just passingly acceptable fairy creature depictions. Nothing offensive, nothing too terrible. But to tie in the original complaint, if they were not mythical creatures, why the fuck not just cast real little people?

Hmmm, too late to back out of the Stupid Boy Project, Mr Stupid Boy?

KWIF: KPop Demon Hunters (+4)

 KWIF= Kent's Week in Film. So much this week. Like, almost a Toasty-paced week of film watching. And a lot of pulling from the binder.

This Week:
KPop Demon Hunters (2025, d.Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang - netflix)
O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000, d. Ethan (and Joel) Coen - dvd)
Marathon Man (1976, d. John Schlesinger - dvd)
Superbad (2007, d. Greg Mottola - dvd)
Sorcerer (1977, d. William Friedkin - dvd)

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As a lifelong "outsider", I'm intrinsically suspicious of anything that's popular. Suspicious, and sometimes dismissive, perhaps even resentful, and often curious.

KPop, as a genre, is not designed for me, and as music, it is most definitely designed. Like girl and boy bands the world around, it's taking sounds that are popular, hollowing them out, and ramping up the feel goods in multi-part harmonies, unique hairstyles and choreographed dance moves. It's as much about aesthetics and performance as it is about music. It's as much about commodifying images as it is about meaningful sounds. It's just pop. It's for the populace, of which I so rarely feel (or desire to be) a part of.

KPop Demon Hunters is most definitely not designed for me, as it's so designed around the conventions of KPop and KPop celebrities, and yet it is a film that, if you give it half a chance, challenges you, and challenges you hard to not be charmed by it, at least a little.

It is the product of North American writers and directors, based off a story originated by Korean-Canadian Maggie Kang, with Korean-American and Korean-Canadian voice actors as well as Korean and American singers. It's firmly set in Korea, with Seoul being its primary backdrop. Aesthetically it's vibrant and full of life, and its rhythms feel one-part anime, one-part music video, and one-part Nickelodeon comedy.  I went into the film, unintentionally, with walls up, and the humour knocked the first brick out.

The story tells of the the history of demons preying upon the people of earth, and of the legacy of women with golden voices who hold those demons at bay. Now, because of the popularity of KPop, the trio known as Huntr/x -- consisting of brash Mira, peppy Zoey, and leader Rumi -  is so very close to turning the Hunmoon (a protective magic barrier) golden and permanently disconnecting the demons from this world. But Rumi's secret is she's half demon, and the closer she reaches to her goal to cutting her demon half off, the more she loses her confidence.

Meanwhile their adversary, the demon god Gwi-ma, senses his defeat impending, and agrees to let one of his most adversarial demons, Jinu, fight fire with fire by starting a boy band to steal some of the glory of Huntr/x and stop the golden Hunmoon.  Naturally Jinu finds out Rumi's secret, and she sees something in him he hasn't seen in himself in 400 years, and they crush hard on each other. But can they really trust each other, especially when Zoey and Mira are beginning to have doubts about Rumi.

This is a movie full of songs, but it's hard to call it a musical, given that the characters don't bust out into song and dance, except for when giving performances, and they seem to always be giving performances. There is, seemingly, an album worth of songs here, most of them derived/appropriating their style and swagger from modern popular hip-hop and R&B, again with the edges sanded off and the whole thing polished into something shiny and reflective. The songs are mercifully well-crafted (this wouldn't work at all if they werent) and deviously infectious (if you're of a certain mindset, you'll find them aggravatingly catchy, and hate yourself for admitting that you like it, if only a little).

There's potentially some culturally Korean aspects that I didn't pick up on, like its main theme around shame and guilt are relatable to a certain degree, but I wonder if there's deeper cultural context to the struggles the lead characters are facing. For all the soda pop-iness of the picture, there is aspects that dive deeper than just the saccharine sweetness and empty calories that it could have subsisted on at the surface.

By the film's finale, which climaxes in a big song that is at once a reunion, a declaration of self-love and respect, and of a promise to not blindly follow the path that's always been taken when one can see a different way forward... it's powerful and had me swelling with emotion. 

There's been talk of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot, but Buffy had her time and KPop Demon Hunters is clearly the heir apparent to this kind of story. 

It's a well-earned phenomenon. Not intended for me, but I liked it all the same.

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The power of film is often to transport us into another reality. It could be another place, another time, another world, or another mindset or perspective than our own. Movies are an escape, but not all movies are escapist movies. Some are reflective, mirrors of the world we live in or of the self, and some will stir up traumas, intentionally or not.

O Brother, Where Art Thou is intended as an escapist film. Loosely based off Homer's The Odyssey, it follows three convicts of varying intellects and educations as they escape off the chain gang and into a series of vignettes in late-Depression Era Mississippi. It is, at its core, a comedy - full of old timey slapstick and farce - subcategorized as a musical and an adventure.

There are some great visual gags and physical performances in this film, a lot of it from Clooney who really does lead the film with every watt of star power he has within him. Save for some little moments I don't find the film very amusing as I actively resist being transported into the world the Coens are trying to drag me into.

The Depression Era is, like, a total bummer, man, and the deep south is so, so, so very racist (even more so than the film lets on, and it lets on a fair deal...there's an extended Klan sequence that I have a real hard time with). These are not places I particularly want to spend time in, and I can't ever help but question the motivations of characters and the authenticity of how scenes play out. I know it's fiction and it can push and pull and twist its characters how it wants, but I have a real hard time relaxing and letting the Coens push and pull and twist me along with it.

Music plays a very big part in the film overall, with a key moment in the film finding the trio (made up of Ulysses, Pete and Delmar, played by George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, respectively) stumbling into a radio station/recording studio with Tommy, a bluesman they picked up at a crossroads in a stolen car. They record a very uptempo, impromptu rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow", which, unbeknownst to them when they continue on their travels, becomes a massive success.  

The music of the film, produced by T Bone Burnett, ripples through gospel, blues, bluegrass, swing, folk and country. It all owes a complete debt to the Black musicians of the south but is largely performed by white vocalists, and the movie is, by and large, excessively pale. I have a hard time spending this much time with culturally appropriated music that really seems like "Black music for white people"... which is exactly what it wound up being. The soundtrack won "Album of the Year" at the Grammys in 2002, and it has sold over 8 million copies since its release, but much of it really sets my teeth on edge.

Like the film, the songs are exceptionally well crafted. The film looks great (thanks Roger Deakins) and the sounds are exceptionally well-produced, but for me I just cannot get into it. When the soundtrack blew up in the early 2000s and indie music bloggers were raving about it, I really didn't know what the hell was happening in the world. The film was a slow burn success but I didn't wind up seeing it for years because it didn't look like something that would appeal to me (and when I did watch it the first time around, I was most definitely right about my assumption).

I've said many times now that Coen Brothers films can take time and repeat viewings to get into. I really had no memory and basically an absence of an impression of how I felt about the film from my first viewing between 15 and 20 years ago, so in essence this rewatch felt like a first viewing all over again. It may truly just be that I need to give it another watch, and soon, to see if I can move through the film with maybe anticipation of certain moments that I liked, but for now it's truly sitting at the bottom of my rankings list.

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I had never seen Marathon Man before, but the dental torture scene, with its "Is it safe?" refrain was unavoidable piece of cinema history. (Did the Simpsons parody it? Probably.) It was a reference I've been meaning to put into context for decades, to wit, I've had a dvd copy of the film since the mid-2000s and have only now gotten around to watching it.

The film opens so damn curiously with a road rage incident in New York that finds a Jewish driver aggressively confronting a German driver, before an intervening tanker truck filled with gasoline calms the whole situation down with fiery death.

The connection at first is obtuse. The film takes its time setting its players up. There's the graduate student, Babe (Dustin Hoffman) practising to be a marathon runner. There's Doc (Roy Scheider), a spook practicing his craft in Paris, who turns out to be Hoffman's brother (have there been two more distinct noses in a film that are playing kin?). There's Christian Szell (Lawrence Olivier), a Nazi scientist who has escaped to South America, but whose brother was the German who died in the New York car crash.

How these three come into engagement with one another is convoluted, and involves Babe's new girlfriend Elsa (Marthe Keller). It is the process of discovery as director Schlesigner pulls on the individual threads that starts binding them into a tighter and tighter knot.

I was never exactly certain where Marathon Man was going, and it's surprising how many genuine surprises it retains even 50 years after its debut. The "Is it safe?" sequence, while memorable, is actually of so little consequence in the film. It's a scene of futility, of a man trying to extract information out of someone who has no information to give him.

I would flat out love this film if not for Dustin Hoffman. I've never been much of a Hoffman fan, even as I admit that his sort of nerdy, naive presence in this film is so close to being exactly what this role needs (he's sort of the Jesse Eisenberg of his generation). But Hoffman goes large too often. Too often the ego of the actor appears in his character and he falls out of servicing the role and instead services himself.

I'm also left with the question (no, not "Is it safe?") of ...how old is Babe supposed to be. Hoffman was in his late 30s shooting this film, and he looks every bit his age. It's clear the film is trying to age him down, but he looks like a middle aged man attending college. If he's supposed to be a college-aged student, then Marthe Keller (who looks like a grown-ass woman) seems way too old for him, but if he's supposed to be his own age, then it's like, she's far too attractive to be interested in a nearly 40-year-old man who is still going to college.

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By the time Superbad debuted in 2007, the majority of crass teen sex comedies of the 1980s had already aged poorly. The "gotta get laid" urgency mixed with the ogling male gaze meant that the gender and sexual politics of the film were beyond juvenile and often criminal.

Going back to Superbad for the first time in quite some time was met with a little trepidation. I mean, in the intervening years, somehow, Seth Rogen has become the busiest man in Hollywood, starring in multiple award-nominated TV shows, appearing in goofy comedies and prestigious auteur-driven movies alike, producing a plethora of successful TV shows in both animated and live action formats, and being a highly accomplished writer and director himself, alongside his partner Evan Goldberg. All this to say, he's gotten to where he is for a reason, so in that I had some trust that Superbad was maybe not going to completely disintegrate with age. 

Rogen and Goldberg started writing Superbad even before they had a career in Hollywood, but when they were given the opportunity, this was the script they knew could be their calling card, the script was very personal to them, an embellishment of their time at the end of high school in Vancouver. The characters played by Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are not coincidentally named Evan and Seth.

As the film begins, Grade 12 is winding down. Evan and Seth are seemingly attached at the hip, best friends for life, but college is going to tear them apart as they're attending different schools. Evan seems eager for change, though not as a slight to Seth, but Seth feels like Evan is going to move on without him. As school winds down, they both have girls they've been crushing on, but have been too awkward to really make a move. They sort of make a pact that they'll both make moves, especially when one of their crushes throws a party and invites them. Their friend, Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), has just gotten a fake ID, and so they promise to bring the booze. Of course, nothing in the transaction goes smoothly, and what results is a wild and crazy night for these outsider kids as they try to make it to the party and impress the girls they like.

Seth, in Hill's hands, is an abrasive motormouth with no off switch. He seems incapable of over sharing, and has no filter. He's a lot, and, although it takes a while, the film shows us he knows it. For it's many hilarious scenes and the McLovin of it all, the film's greatest accomplishment was casting Emma Stone as Jules, who seems to see through the coarse surface and finds something charming in Seth, something which Jules seems to match and feed off of. Likewise, the pairing of HIll with Cera, who is still in full George-Michael in Arrested Development mode at the time, is spot on. Cera plays the awkward nerd who clearly gets frustrated with his loudmouth friend because he approaches the world so differently, but also he just as clearly admires him for moving through the world in a way in which he never could.

The film's finale, which finds Seth rescuing a passed-out Evan by carrying him from the house party being raided by the cops, is the sweetest damn thing. It ends with the boys having the easiest of reconciliations after a fight earlier and drunkenly dozing off in sleeping bags on the floor of Evan's basement professing their platonic love for each other. It's freaking adorable and warms my jaded heart. If only every story were so open as to show two men sharing honest emotions with each other so as to provide men with both exposure and the roadmap how to.

Also, the cops in this film, played by Rogen and Bill Hader, who take McLovin under their wing, are an absolutely brilliant construct of two guys who abuse their every power, and are representative of cops kind of being the worst (ACAB), and yet, as supporting characters for Fogel, they're fantastic.

Any worries I had about the film not holding up are non existent after the rewatch. If anything, it's the precursor to Netflix's Big Mouth which would debut a decade later, but feels so indebted to Superbad. It's a hilarious movie, with richly formed central characters, an incredible supporting cast, and it executes one of the best in "one crazy night" subgenre of comedy.

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William Friedkin's Sorcerer - a remake of the French thriller The Wages of Fear, itself an adaptation of the French novel Le Salaire de la Peur - has been sitting on my "to watch" list since the 1990s when Tarantino cited it as one of his favourite films and called it one of the best films ever made.

It was a film that came out in 1977, up against some garbage called Star Wars which consumed all the air on the planet and choked it to death. Sorcerer has developed a cult following, in large part thanks to the Tarantino citation, but it has never quite dug itself out of the grave Star Wars put it in.

I found a copy of Sorcerer in the used DVD bins last year and snapped it up. I imagine there has been a more prestigious release (yup, in fact Criterion just released a new edition in June), and I have to imagine a new 4K restoration probably adds something to this film. The old DVD is a "fullscreen" version that is muddy as hell (but then it is literally a muddy pictures... so much wet dirt).

Like Marathon Man the film opens obtusely, with a series of disconnected events. The first shows the murder of a man in Veracruz, Mexico, the next a Palestinian bombing in Jerusalem and very brief manhunt. The third jumps to Paris with a very Fargo-esque vignette about a man deep in debt and desperate to find a way out (without trying to appear desperate), and finally a heist gone very wrong in New Jersey.

All of this leads to a character from each of these segments having fled to a remote village in South America. There's an operation taking place, setting up an oil pipeline, and there is need for a lot of manual labour. The village is largely local, but with no shortage of international players, all who seem in the same escaping-from-something position. When an accident occurs and the well catches fire, the only means the company can find to put it out, given their remote destination, is an old supply of highly volatile TNT.  They need to teams to venture thought the jungle in refashioned, Mad Max-style trucks to transport the dynamite to the site so they can smother the fire.  The journey is, quite literally, killer.

There are certainly political and sociological subtext to examine in this film but it works so remarkably well just on the surface as a riveting and intense procedural, where the procedure is delicately navigating harsh jungle paths and the craziest of bridges while transporting cargo that seems ready to explode at the slightest provocation. There's not really much need to dig deeper even though you can.

There are remarkable "how'd they do that" sequences that feature no indoor sets and no miniatures, just crazy preparation and a little on screen magic. In modern cinema, they wouldn't take on the expense or the discomfort and variability of remote shooting, they would just CGI it all, and it's a gazillion times more impressive in all being practical. As well, the film never oversteps its peril, it shows you the stakes and it lets its scenarios play out those stakes without adding complication upon complication. It's tense enough thank you without having to overtax the audience.

It is, at its core, a dark story about desperate men, and not, say, two evil wizards throwing fireballs at each other in the jungle as I originally surmised it to be. But don't hold that against it.