31 Days of Halloween: Moar TV

Below, 2026, Netflix
Carrie, 2026, Amazon

This was the show I was anticipating for this season. 

A few months ago, I remember there being trailers for two media releases regarding the mythological Kraken. One, the Norwegian movie I watched and was disappointed with, but I couldn't find any evidence there was another movie released, ignoring any mockbusters that showed up. But it turns out, it was this TV series.

Its not like they are hiding anything -- 1986, fishing village in Newfoundland (actually set in NF) is being relocated, complete with the (floating) family home being towed by a small fishing boat. This  is something they actually did during the resettlements of the 50s to 70s, to bring families from isolated fishing communities closer to services. Their house gets snagged and when dad goes to inspect the cause, the house, and dad, are sucked down below. His son gets a brief look at a gargantuan eye before they cut the rope and the house is gone.

Fourty years later. The new community is suffering what the old one did and is in danger of resettlement once again. Most money is made from the distillery, made from ice burg water, and tourism. Calvin Penney (Josh Hartenett, Trap), the now grown kid from the opening, makes a meagre living pulling ice from the water and selling to the distillery, but the latest chunk turns out to be more stinky mucus than water. He brings it to scientist Dr Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis, Halt and Catch Fire) to find out exactly what it might be. Meanwhile he deals with his kids, including Wade (Charlie Heaton, Stranger Things), the son who has stayed with him, and Mary (Ruby Stokes, Lockwood & Co) who lives in Montreal, but has come home for a visit, BF in tow. 

Not as much goes on in this first episode, as did with Carrie. Its more about exposing the viewing audience to the setting, which is faithful in geography, not so much in the casting and accents. Newf will always be a challenge, especially the remote community accent which can be unintelligible to the average ear, but the success of these actors ranges from barely passable (I wasn't sure Mackenzie Davis was even trying) to mostly authentic. They do a cute scene where Wade talks to his AirBnB tourists while setting them up with a fried baloney breakfast, and it took me a moment to realize they were challenged in understanding what he was saying. But they toss in a "Screech-in" ceremony, for the tourists, to ask forgiveness, or invite mockery, depending on your viewpoint. This show will not be treated gently by actual Newfoundlanders.

But the monster. What will it be? Probably the same as the movie, in that the climate affecting changes by stupid humans are waking up things that should have been left asleep, or in deep oceans. There's no hint of Lovecraftian background, so it was just end up being a big squid. Still, I am onboard.

***

Carrie episode two spent its time dealing with the fallout of the tampon-shower-first-period-bullying incident, and introducing the remaining supporting cast, including teachers Miss Desjardins (Amber Midthunder, Prey) and Mr. Peist (Rahul Kohli, iZombie), as well as principal Grayle (Matthew Lillard, Scream), and guidance counsellor Mr Morton (Tim Bagley, Grace and Frankie). We also get to know more about the Queen Bitch Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency), who quite frankly, is not having a good family life either, and setting us up to be conflicted by "nice girl" Sue Snell (Siena Agudong, Resident Evil) who spends equal time going along with the terrorizing led by Chris, as she does in questioning her own actions. Despite her "niceness", I suspect she will play a larger part in the final events than the interviews are leading on.

Also, Carrie's mom is being setup as quite the villain. She was not a prepper's "kept woman". She was her own religious fanatic, building her own xenophobic viewpoint of the world outside their house, and her simultaneously protecting Carrie from it, as she is poisoning the girl to any honest understandings. Luckily, Carrie is more than up for the task, both thoughtful and a quick learner. Problem is that with puberty's awakening, her powers are becoming.... more prevalent, and she's realizing she has some control.

Still not sure how I feel about the Xavier School for the Other Psychic Girls side plot -- wonder if they will attempt to connect it with Firestarter and its franchise.

3 Short paragraphs (Or Not): The Rip

2026, Joe Carnahan (Copshop) -- Netflix

The Rip is a cops & crime movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as two aging, tired and possibly corrupt cops dealing with finding Too Much Money in a cartel stash house. Ben and Joe worked together twenty years ago on his movie Smokin' Aces but Matt and Joe have never worked together before. But seeing the two friends together in a movie, under Joe, says a lot about the collaboration between the three. 

When the credits rolled was the first time I was reminded this was a Carnahan movie.

The movie begins with the murder of police captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco, S.W.A.T.). She's walking in a parking lot when two masked individuals attacked, ending her life with a shotgun, but not before she enters a txt into a phone and tosses it away.

Next up, the intros. As the Tactical Narcotics Taskforce (TNT) squad reels from the death of their captain, Internal Affairs and "the Feds" (FBI) are also there, as this Miami-Dade station is already under the microscope after the disbanding of a fully corrupt major case squad, which has made things tough for the TNT. This little opener, constantly switching between Detective JD Byrne (Ben Affleck, Mallrats) and the others in the bullpen, especially him squaring off with his own brother FBI Agent Del Byrne (Scott Adkins, Avengement), to the point of fisticuffs. Meanwhile, Lt Dane Dumar (Matt Damon, The Wall), squad leader, is chatting with Major Vallejo (Nestor Carbonell, The Morning Show) about how difficult this all is, and whether he really even wants to be a cop anymore. Between the damage to their reputation by way of the other corrupt cops and the death of their friend and comrade, he's dispirited.

This opening is dialogue forward; in fact, much of the movie is. Writers Carnahan and Michael McGrale (The Following) really lean into the cop shop talk, a mixture of cop jargon and street lingo. They build personalities and build expectations for the viewer, of what we will think of these guys. Are they Good Guys? Are they just another bunch of corrupt cops. And also, Vallejo has pointed out the Feds are here because they believe another cop was responsible for Velez's killing, so pretty much everyone is a suspect.

Just need to post at least one line of dialogue, so you get the idea; from Byrne, as he talks to his brother about the aforementioned corrupt cops:

"Not a lot of straight-A students. But superb fucking murder police. And you guys fucking torched the place. Which further hamstrings Jackie’s investigation because now all the VCAT guys, not just the bent ones, are buried fucking alive."

Then Dane gets a tip on his phone, a text message from a burner phone about a money house belonging to the cartels. As they are all leaving the station, he tells them what's what and they are all coming along, no OT, it just has to be done. If you are quick, you might catch that he tells one person one dollar value, another person a different amount. Hmm...

From there, its somewhat typical Miami cop fare. They go to a run down subdivision where apparently the only occupied house is the one they are going to. The cartels buy up homes to hide their monies in plain sight. Inside is Desi Lopez Molina (Sasha Calle, Sugar), living in her late grandmother's house. "Nope, no money here!" she says, of course, but they bulldoze their way in with typical veiled cop threats. We are not exactly supposed to like these guys, definitely not trust them. In today's context, that's not hard to impress upon the viewer. Then they find a completely empty attic. In an old lady house, just this side shy of hoarding (the garage has 30 years worth of phone books...), an entirely empty room is more than a little suspicious. And Desi has no idea, nope, no way. When they kick in a wall, they find industrial tubs jam packed with neatly sorted, packaged and labelled cash. Not $150k as Dane suggested to some, but much more... way way WAY more. Millions. Tens of millions.

And with my typical overly long opener, the movie is presented. Stupid Money. Enough money for all these cops to just disappear, even if they weren't corrupt. Even the best of them would be tempted. And Desi just sitting, handcuffed, on the sidelines, being all nervous, cuz she knows exactly who owns the money.

And it begins. The movie instantly begins playing them off each other. Dane vs Byrne, the two biggest personalities in the room. Some come together, just counting the money and postulating what they could do with it, like everyone does when they see a big lottery number on the TV. Others are acting very suspicious, pulling out burner phones, even though Dane specifically asked everyone to give up their phones, as this is the kind of money that ruins everything. But do we even trust Dane? Byrne definitely doesn't. But who do we trust? The movie plays on our expectations, manipulates everything we know about these kinds of movies and has a lot of fun with the constant, never ending stream of dialogue and chat, back and forth between the squad. 

There are a few twists. A phone call from the cartel saying "go ahead, take the money, we don't care, we will accept the loss, and no we didn't kill Jackie, but we don't need the heat from killing a house full of cops." And who is Detective Ro (Steven Yeun, Nope) talking to on his burner phone? And what about the house at the far end of the roundabout that is blinking "PIGS" on their porch lamp in morse code? What about when the power is cut and masked, armoured thugs unload automatic weapons into all their vehicles, essentially trapping them all there. Its not a scene-ender, it doesn't kill anyone, so... why? What the ever living fuck is going on here?

I thought the movie was pretty effective in leading your around by the nose but not directly to the conclusion. You might get an idea of where you will end up, but I doubt most will. I am not saying there is a Big Reveal, but there are some satisfying revelations. The pair of leads are now aging action stars, so the movie does lean on them being tired. grizzled veterans, but with still the power & motivation to be effective. And I loved the fact that the movie wanted you to put down your phone, sit up on the sofa and just listen.  I also enjoyed that it was pretty much a "bottle episode", primarily taking place inside the stash house. We get to become comfortable with the characters, watch their faces, make our own decisions on what happens next.

Oh, and we do find out why Jackie was killed, her connection to the stash house and who was corrupt, and who wasn't.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Hold the Dark

2018, Jeremy Saulnier (Rebel Ridge) -- Netflix

No, this wasn't swallowed by the hiatus of 2018, I just never got around to watching it, and it came out in October which was dedicated to horror movies. Kent did, exploring it as Horror Not Horror. And just recently, I decided to poke a pin in my Watchlist and pressed Start. 

Saulnier doesn't have a large body of work. It started with the very indie Murder Party almost 20 years ago but got noticed with Blue Ruin. I have only seen Green Room and the recent Netflix dear, Rebel Ridge. Even with this minimal exposure, its clear the man makes movies about violence and violent people. 

Alaska. Medora Slone (Riley Keough, Logan Lucky) has asked writer & wolf-expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright, Westworld) to come and deal with the wolves that have taken her son, and two other children, from the remote village of Keelut. Medora is a shadowed figure, all trauma, who unnerves Core with her talk about the Alaskan long nights, the cold and her wolf-mask... the spontaneous nudity doesn't help. She tells him this needs to be settled before her husband comes back from war. Core does set out, but doesn't have many hours of daylight to work with, and he is not convinced this is wolf behaviour. He witnesses them eating their own young, but does not shoot when given the chance. When he returns, Medora is gone, and her son's body is in the basement. No wolf took him; she strangled him with her own hands.

The not so local authorities are involved, including Detective Marium (James Bade Dale, World War Z; I assume he is a detective, but in this environment, he just appears as a high ranking member of the state police) who inform Core that Medora's husband will be returning imminently, having been wounded. We get a brief scene where we see Vernon Slone (Alexander Skarsgård, Mute), overseas, murder a fellow soldier after finding him raping a local; he is wounded immediately after. After his arrival back in Alaska, there is discomfort between Slone and the police, with Core caught in the middle, which explodes in surprising violence -- Vernon shoots two police officers, takes his son's body and disappears into the wilderness. He will find his wife on his own terms and apparently doesn't want anyone else involved.

This act of violence is followed by an even greater one, as Marium and the authorities descend on Keelut to detain Vernon's best friend, who they know was involved. His response is to open up with automatic weapons on the arriving police, cutting most of them down horribly, while Core can do nothing but hide and witness. He is not a cowardly man, and tries to intervene, given a chance to rise above the impotence he feels from the recent events. But Marium eventually takes down Vernon's friend.

We are Core. We are witness to extreme violence, isolation and the darkness that Medora spoke of. Night comes early and everyone seems battered down by it.

The remainder of the movie has Core and Marium tracking the Slones to a hot spring cave deep in the wilderness, the one place Medora claimed to have felt warmth. But before that, we get a moment where Vernon tracks her to a closed-mine-turned-quaint-roadside-inn where another small piece of the puzzle of violence falls into place. 

Chilling spoilers hereafter.

Long ago Vernon's own father brought him here, to be treated by a shaman who lives on the premises. Something about wolves-oil. The thing is that, in the movie, I don't believe the puzzle is clear. We know a few things. Vernon and Medora have known each other their whole lives -- a picture of the two as children, very happy, very blonde. We get flashbacks of Vernon teaching his emotionless son how to hunt deer. They talk about killing, killing people. We get a bit of the darkness Medora spoke of. But what we don't get, or at least I didn't, was that Vernon and Medora were brother and sister. You'd think the village would be a bit more adverse to that, that such a history would come up as the police talked about her murder of her own son. Its possible they don't know, that the small village of Keelut kept its dark secrets to themselves. What we are also left to postulate was that the children of the village were not taken by wolves, but by Medora's own son. She strangled him to end the cycle there, likely hoping her husband would kill her as well.

He doesn't. Core and Marium do track the couple to the caves, where Vernon surprises them, killing Marium silently with a compound bow, as Core rushes to warn Medora, before taking an arrow himself. His final vision before unconsciousness is the two kissing and leaving together. Vernon leaves Core alive, barely, before he is rescued by some locals. But just before Core is rescued, he is surrounded by the wolves he did not shoot earlier in the movie. They do not tear him apart.

The movie ends with Core recovering in hospital, his estranged daughter at his bedside.

Violence, tragedy, horrible acts, the bone chilling cold. Movies like this are not supposed to have a point but have us experience something, and have us react to it. So many people in the movie temper their emotional reactions to everything, but as we watch Core watch this unfold, we can feel it creeping up within in him, a scream desperate to get out. He lets it fuel his need to reconnect with his lost daughter, a final act of life amidst all that witnessed death and loss.

Wright is always watchable. He carries darkness well. Saulnier is able to give us a chilling movie, but to be honest, I don't think the Long Night was as impactful here as I have seen it in other stories, such as True Detective: Night Country. I guess the idea is that people can be colder than weather.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Storied Life of AJ Fikry

2022, Hans Canosa (Conversations with Other Women) -- Netflix

Based on the novel of the same name by Gabrielle Zevin, with whom Canosa has collaborated before, this is a sweet & sad movie about a curmudgeonly book store owner on Alice Island, a fictional locale a ferry ride off the coast of Massachusetts. 

I still read books, more often digital, usually on my phone, but still the occasional paper novel, hard or softcover. I read mostly specfic, with a bit of other varied stuff in there on occasion. As a bookseller, AJ Fikry was more of a literary reader, dismissive of most of the books Amelia Loman brings to the island in her role as a book seller for a publisher. She is marketing trade paperbacks -- generally easily read, sentimental books. I know I am doing them a disservice by generalizing, but its how the movie starts out. And, it is also the place in which the novel the movie is adapted from sits. Think Oprah's bookclub, but that reference is very very dated, and I do not have a more current one. Is there even a zeitgeist reference to reading books anymore?

Anywayz, these kinds of novels are at a level above generic romance or mystery novels, but do generally grow out of an author's love for literature. Unlike, say Train Dreams which comes from the lofty Great American Novelist place, and these authors still love the written word in ways that churned out romance novels do not. And yet, it pains me to compare, but this movie comes in, as an adaptation, not much above the place in which Hallmarkies sit. 

OK, we have AJ Fikry (Kunnal Nayar, Spaceman), the bookseller in question. His wife died, but he is still tentative friends with his late wife's sister Ismay (Christina Hendricks, Good Girls) and her populist writer husband Daniel (Scott Foley, The Unit). The movie begins with the first visit to the island from Amelia, and her love for a memoir from a 98 year old first time writer. Fikry offends Amelia (Lucy Hale, Pretty Little Liars) with his opinions on such sentimental tripe, likely an experience from Zevin's own world. Later, Fikry wakes up from a drunken stupour to find his battered copy of Edgar Allen Poe's Tammerlane has gone missing. We are being led to assume Amelia disappeared with it. The crime, which is not solved, allows us to be introduced to a handful of the islanders and Fikry's "friends".

Strangely enough, the movie is not about the charms of living on an isolated, lovely Nantucket-ish island. It brings up the limitations of such, but the only real selling of this usually highly touted kind of setting is having Fikry start to jog, so we get a series of images of the various locales on the island. They are all quaint and lovely. I cannot help but compare it in my mind to the depiction of the island, and island life, in Widow's Bay which gives us an island that wants to be what this one is, but isn't quite there yet.

It is definitely a "storied life" in that the movie presents itself in vignettes. Next up from meeting Amelia and the theft of his book is the arrival of Maya, the child in a basket left in his store. The next morning, the mother washes up on the beach. Grumpy still-grieving Fikry decides to adopt Maya, becoming subject to the sentimental tripe he so loathes.

Maya (Blaire Brown, The Big Leap) grows up.  

Its funny, but never before have I noticed how much I am prone to longer opener paragraphs than the mid and ending ones. The previous "chapter" is depicted by scenes of May running up and down the stairs of the bookstore, to AJ's apartment above. AJ is still in contact with Amelia, and he is helped in the raising of Maya by his sister-in-law and friend, police chief Lambiase. AJ decides to woo Amelia after her engagement pans out, and against her better judgement (she lives on the mainland) they start up a relationship. Then AJ gets sick and ... well, dies. Its years later by then, Maya is a teen, Daniel has been killed in an accident, Ismay begins a relationship with Lambiase (David Arquette, Scream 3), who always pined for her, and Maya has turned out to be a lovely writer. 

Its pablum, but tentatively well-done oatmeal? More accurately, its authentically made breakfast food, but lacking in much of the ways of flavour. The actors obviously like being in this movie, but there is not much that challenges anyone here. For example, AJ is depicted as "curmudgeonly" but he's generally a nice guy, and we only see him being crotchety with customers. Everyone else, except self-aggrandizing Daniel, is just nice. I shouldn't complain, as I like nice people, but as I mentioned off the top, the movie is not that far above a Hallmarkie, and at times, even feels like its directed in that manner.

Oh, and the movie does explain the mystery of Tammerlane's disappearance. You see, asshole Daniel, prone to sleeping with his fans, had gotten Maya's mother pregnant and she approached Ismay asking for help. Despite Daniel being a popular author, he squandered all their money, so Ismay stole the book from drunken AJ, to give to the mother, to just... go.. away. It doesn't work out as no one with buy the book, and the mother returns to the island, to dump Maya in the bookstore, and to kill herself. Ismay has lived all these years with the shame of this story, and only reveals the truth after Lambiase finds the book hidden in a closet. Its a surprising bit of extraneous drama that probably says something about the mid-range trade paperback industry?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Train Dreams

2025, Clint Bentley (Jockey) -- Netflix

Stubbing this out, even though I have not yet finished the movie, as the voice of it has sent me down a rabbit hole for the adapted novella's author, one Denis Johnson. I read mostly pulp fiction: scifi and fantasy and horror and crime. Rarely do these works have a "voice" but I just absorbed Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" and its nothing but voice, as strong and clear as Will Patton's narration of the Bentley film. I imagine the film director felt it was necessary to capture the author's voice, as while I imagine the soul & plot has been captured in the movie, all too often the author themself is absent from the medium.

This was a sad movie, but not in a bad way. To misquote Kent, the movie is "contemplative & meditative." It chronicles the life of an average man, not a simple man, but also one not complicated by intricacies. He was a loner, often lonely, but not an unfriendly man, dismissive of company. He was a logger, but much of the life portrayed he is apart from that. His life has poignant tragedies, but what life doesn't. Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton, It Comes At Night) was just a man who lived through better part of the 20th century, observing civilization grow up around to him, connected by train tracks and technology, but despite his contributions, never really became a part of it.

I am going to have to let the movie settle into my brain pan for a while, before I complete this. Later. Unfortunately, doing that let all the storied thoughts in my brain seep out. I have to say, it had a great impact on my while watching, and in the days not long after, but... now, its mostly gone. I won't let that judge my fondness for the movie. I suspect that in watching the movie, and in reading a bit of Johnson afterwards, I found another place in my mind, one I don't often travel to anymore. And I left the memory of that movie there, when I returned to the anxiety & stress of my real world.

I came at this movie thinking it was going to be about trains and about trees, and about a great tragedy. But while it is about these, they are not its core. The train trips are linkages, the trees are ever present, as Robert only leaves the forest once, late in life. The tragedy is great, very great, perhaps the greatest impact on his life, but its not the only impact the movie portrays. In fact it begins with an injustice, a short scene where European railway workers murder a Chinese worker, and Robert does not stop it; the scene leaving us to wonder, was he about to help the killers? This act haunts him, literally, forever. 

Its hard to relate this movie by its plot, by its story, because that is not what it is about. Already adapted from condensed source material, the novella, it is not seeking narrative arcs. More, its giving us a mood through translation of words to screen, sometimes helped along by Will Patton's voice-overs, an actor already know for reading Johnson's voice. In some ways, I drawn to this by it being akin to the vignettes I write, small condensed images in hand-written word, nary a plot to be found. Being formed around Johnson's beautiful prose, Bentley creates his own beautiful imagery in sunlight, in shadows among trees, in steam & smoke, in people's faces. 

One of the strongest things from the movie that stayed with me, are the images of Robert's musings. He is often lost in thought, staring out at the world, not really part of it. He is re-playing times, voices, images from his past constantly. Robert is a man of many thoughts, but few words. I think that is where the train dreams come from, because like myself, when he is forced to a time period when all he can do is think, sitting in his seat, watching the world pass by outside the window, he slips into a dream like state, of ponderances. 

Next time I watch a movie like this, I will set myself aside, stare out a window and keep this laptop handy...

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): War Machine

2026, Patrick Hughes (The Man from Toronto) -- Netflix

I can hear the blurb now, "Predator but with a big ass robot instead of an alien. But its also an alien."

We begin with a flashback.... or an establishing scene in the past? Whatever the filmic term is, its a Gulf War and Our Hero (Alan Ritchson, Reacher) is a military engineer pulling up to a convoy. His brother has fucked up his Humvee again requiring some quick repairs and brother to brother manly banter. They both talk about trying out for the Marines Army Rangers. And then they are ambushed. Everyone is killed except Our Hero and his barely alive brother, who he tosses onto his shoulders, and begins to walk.

Years later, he wakes up from the dream, of above, on a bus to RASP, the Ranger try-outs. Of course, he does really well, but for the not-sleeping and human interaction components. Because of his refusal to show leadership, the regiment leaders (toss away cameos from Esai Morales, Titans, and Dennis Quaid, Reagan; the latter channeling his very MAGA self) try to drum him out, but he refuses and they angrily assign him Team Leader to the final test -- a play-mission recovering a downed pilot in enemy territory. Meanwhile, in the background, on TV screens, there is news of a large asteroid passing near the Earth. In these movies, we know what that will entail.

Our Hero is 81. Its a cute gimmick in that all the characters have been assigned only numbers during training. No names allowed. Which is fine, because we wouldn't remember most of the names and the numbers are clearly displayed on their uniforms. Of course 81 doesn't bond well with his teammates but at least one of them recognizes his competence. Things go well until they find a weird scifi pile of junk in a riverbed. While 81 scouts out the surrounding area, some of the others prepare to blow that shit up, as per mission parameters. That is when 81 discovers the actual mission objective, the downed plane. Whatever that is in the river, its not what they came here for. And setting off explosives doesn't destroy it, it just makes it mad wakes it up (probably makes it mad, too). It should also be noted that because this was a training mission, they do not have real weapons.

And then begins the Predator style kill-off of each of the trainees. Of course, a bunch are kill in the initial sortie, so we can get a good look at the CGI robot monster machine, sort of a big chicken-walker without head, but with big, broad shoulders, and glowing red, which is never a good colour. The remaining soldiers are going to escape to the base of operations of their training mission opponents. There is a neat establishing scene where 81 puts together the news shots & stories with the big hole seen in a distant mountain -- this thing came down from space. 

The tension of this movie comes in knowing that the point of it is to actually kill off some, if not all, of the trainees. You get to know them, disliking some, bonding with others. But at any point, they can get blown up or shot. And the movie doesn't shirk from toying with you. Once they reach the training base, which has already been destroyed by the robot during its initial landing, they get some actual weapons -- they don't really help much. It takes some Arnie-covered-in-mud energy to take the thing down.

For what it was, this was a pretty effective movie. Ritchson is coded to be a depiction of military power these days, but also is capable of reflecting the emotional energy that is required of this character. And good action requires pacing, tension and exciting effects. I always feel like I have to apologize to the That Guy in my head that nothing about the movie broke new ground -- we've got mashups of a few other movies going on here -- but honestly, as long as they do the mechanical components of this genre well enough, I am invested. And entertained. And distracted from my own head for the briefest of moments.

Snarky aside. Red Glowing Lights say "Bad Guy" to us, while Blue Glowing Lights say "Good Guy" or at least calm & peaceful. What if you mashed up the Pink Glowing Lights from horror movies of a few years ago with this mechanical light emittance? What cinematic mind's eye would you unlock? Fuck AI Gone Evil movies, how about a Robot Possessed by Cosmic Horror?

ReWatch: The Time Machine

2002, Simon Wells (Balto) -- Netflix

The problem with having a movie blog that is over almost 15 years old is that I am not always sure I have already written about an older movie. This is most undoubtedly a "rewatch" as I know I saw it before but I do recall it being so bad, I never felt the need to rewatch, but I wondered if I had already succumbed to curiosity, like I did this time. Yes, my memory is that fallible these days.

I might need a tag "wait was it really that bad ?" 

This was a terrible movie. It is still a terrible movie. It is Hollywood spectacle for the sake of spectacle and doesn't even try to make a lick of sense. Part of my brain went down the silly path of "they weren't very smart back then" postulating that the Purple Suit brain was even less formed back in the early 2000s than it is now. Its like looking at a medieval painting and marveling at how unsophisticated they were in manners of artistic ability. But no, there have always been silly, terrible, badly made movies, with budgets, and there always will be. Besides, despite what my 20sumthin coworkers say, "the early 2000s" was not that long ago.

Its 1899 and Dr. Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce, The Rover) is a college professor in New York City... so, four years after HG Wells published his novel on time travel. As with all Funny Professors, Hartdegen is socially awkward and would rather work on weird gadgets and scientific theories than interact with people, who have boiled down to his house main, his friend & fellow teacher David Philby (Mark Addy, Game of Thrones) and his latest fiancée Emma (Sienna Guillory, Meg 2: The Trench), a woman who finds his weirdness and forgetfulness charming. He intends on marrying her but on the night he proposes to her, she is killed by a Central Park mugger. 

Dr Alex becomes obsessed with Changing the Past. He isolates himself from everyone and works on one of the prettiest renditions of The Time Machine in cinematic history -- a big steampunk thing of brass tubes and shaped glass. But Time Travel doesn't help, as no matter how much he alters events so she isn't killed by the mugger, she is killed somewhere else by something else. The past is rigid. So, he decides to go into The Future to see if they have figured out why you cannot change the past.

He makes a brief pitstop in 2030, where he talks to an AI Librarian (learning about the HG Wells novel, nudge nudge wink wink; Orlando Jones, The Good Lord Bird) and then pops over to 2037 they have Blown Up the Moon (!!!). Then he bumps his head and ends up in 802,701. In this Far Future, everyone is brown and primitive. I cannot decide if this is just being faithful to the novel or low-key racist or scientifically likely. Anywayz, when, almost a million years ago, they Blew Up the Moon it pretty much ended civilization as we know it. Except for AI Librarians who not only have really good batteries but also storage & display media built to last a million years -- yeah, uh huh.

Anywayz, the lovely primitive cliff dwellers, Eloi, are being attacked and taken on regular cycles by the cave-mannish Morlocks. Despite being obsessed with saving Emma, only months before, Alex sees pretty primitive Mara in her revealing skirt and friendly ways and.... googley eyes! He's also suddenly less socially awkward, which is made even weirder by the fact he has been pulled out of Victorian times into a birds next hanging off the side of a cliff. Then, one day, on a visit to the Eloi wind vanes that don't serve any real purpose, the Morlocks attack, jumping out of the sand, grabbing Eloi and jumping back into the sand. This effect makes no sense. As said, not much of the movie doesn't. But its exciting and I guess follows a Rule of Cool ?

Do they burrow? Are there looser sand pockets? Do they have psionic mole abilities to push sand out of their way? Why does it fill back in after they jump in/out?

Anywayz, underground Alex discovers two things: the Morlocks eat Eloi and there are Über-Morlocks, evil white-skinned, intelligent and telepathic Morlocks that still look human... somewhat. They control the other Morlocks and keep them from eating every last Eloi, which would deplete the food supply.  I guess there are no other animals worth eating? Anywayz, Mr Über-Morlock (Jeremy Irons, Dungeons & Dragons), who is the best cinematic depiction of Elric of Melnibone I have seen (Google it) explains to Alex that the reason he cannot change the past is because The Time Machine was invented because of Emma's death, so it cannot bring him to a place where he could undo itself. Timey Wimey Grandfather Paradox shit. 

Then Alex and Mr. Über-Morlock fight it out, send The Time Machine into an even FURTHER future where Alex sees the Morlocks ruling over a (even more) broken Earth. He kills Mr. Über-Morlock and then goes back to Mara (note: only saving her, all other Eloi are Morlock Snacks) and decides to live Happily Ever After in the The Future. He blows up The Time Machine.

Huh? There are still hungry Morlocks, even if Exploding Time Machine energy wiped a good amount of them away. And there are other Über-Morlocks, just not in this region. I guess this was lame franchise attempts? 

I am sure there is a "How Did This Get Made?" episode of a podcast or treatise on the production of this movie somewhere on YouTube or in a (gasp!) print magazine. No matter how far we come, as Hollywood evolves we will always have incredibly terrible Hollywood Spectacles that are made the way they are for one reason or another. And I will probably end up watching them, and probably more than once. THAT is the bigger question.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The King

2019, David Michôd (The Rover) -- Netflix

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dude, you are being played.

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

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

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

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

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Rats: A Witcher Tale

2025, Mairzee Almas (Shadow and Bone) -- Netflix

As of this stub's date (Feb 19) I have been off for a week, and ill most of it. Yesterday was the first day I felt somewhat human. My winter ailments usually involve sinus infections and that always puts my brain & moods out of sorts. One additional effect has been furthering an inability to watch/enjoy much. I literally have four movies in some state of "started". The only things I have been able to complete are TV episodes, which I continue not to write about, and a couple of movie rewatches, only one which I will write about. And this movie, which is more a movie-length episode of The Witcher, which I also watched in fits & starts.

The movie stars some characters from a side-plot in the series, a group of street urchin thieves who call themselves The Rats. In the main show they are seen as a self-aggrandizing bunch of teens/20-sumthins that are more bluster than successful rogues -- admittedly, my own opinion colours that statement. And they all die horribly before the season is out. In fact, this movie picks up right after those deaths and is done as a sort of recollection-tale by the show's scariest villain, a tale that doesn't make a lot of sense considering what he could know and not know, but... well, this show doesn't care.

My whole feeling for this movie, and these characters, makes me feel like an Old Man Yelling at Clouds. I want to dismiss my dislike for the whole setup and their depictions as a "they are not meant for my age-demographic" situation. But the objective pop culture consumer part of my brain, the one which is currently coming back online after weeks of fuzziness, recognizes its just Not Very Good. I highly doubt youth would make me like them/it any more.

I am also struggling with this while watching "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" in that I am only enjoying it being in the "Star Trek" universe and not really enjoying all these runs at Teen Drama™ that the show is literally built upon. I am not going so far as saying its a terrible show, as much of the Enragement Bait Internet Rhetoric relies on, but I spend a lot of time rolling my eyes. And I don't really like any of the main youthful characters. Holly Hunter as the immortal Captain/School Chancellor... well, she rocks.

So, The Rats. This movie gives us Moar Background on them, primarily for the pack leader Mistle (Christelle Elwin, Death in Paradise) and her vaguely mentioned royal and/or wealthy background. I got the impression from the main show that she ran away from her life of refine, but this movie establishes that her family, and her girlfriend, were killed by the show's Main Bad Guys -- the fascist dresses-all-in-black country of Nilfgaard. It also gives us some connection as to why Mistle fell for Ciri so quickly in the main show, cute blondes and all that.

Anywayz, if you are going to do a show about rogues then it has to be about acts of thievery, so this one's a heist, where in they intend to rob the vault of a fighting ring, one run by the most dangerous & notorious crime gang BUT also more directly organized by a Bad Guy involved in the death of Mistle's family. And there is a monster involved, so they need a Witcher, and happen to find a drunken useless example doing his own play-fighting for coin in a bar, one Brehen (Dolph Lundgren, Aquaman) of the School of the Cat. His Tragic Backstory was that he failed to free King Foltest's daughter from a curse, losing his friend in the act, and Geralt of Rivia had to get involved. Blah blah, he's a self-pitying drunk. But they convince him to join them on the heist and ... ouch, I hurt myself rolling my eyes again... they all become a fast family.

Insert training montage after training montage.

Apparently this movie was cobbled together from the failed attempt to spin off a side-series. And it shows. Its rushed and empty of any real heart. Sure, they actually accomplish the heist, stealing a goodly sum of coin (but are broke again by the time they enter the main show, months later... losers) but losing Brehen in the attempt, and garnering the ire of the biggest, baddest villain the show has had in all its seasons, literally the only thing that compelled me -- one Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Coply, Elysium), a scarily effective and nasty killer of people, not monsters, especially enjoying adding to his collection of witcher pendants. He's the teller of the recollection-tale.

Maybe it could have been better, as a series, but I doubt it. Even as a big fan of Generic Fantasy, always enjoying the set dressing of these shows, this has no center. Reminding me of Xena: Warrior Princess which was the template for Terrible Generic Fantasy in terms of empty story telling, uninspired costuming and flat, bright lighting that makes everything look like a sitcom, this show squandered a substantial budget in lieu of terrible quipping and boring "quirky" characters. It looks good in many ways, as money was spent, but as mentioned earlier just doesn't have any heart. The locales, while full of sweeping vistas, don't have any particular feel to them, they just transplant from The Witcher's European forests to a place of stone and sand, but it doesn't feel authentic in any way, just bland, brown and boring.

But, yay (?), I finished it?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Great Flood

2025, Byung-woo Kim (Reborn) -- Netflix

South Korea has the world's lowest birth rate, caused primarily by a change in focus from marriage & family to careers & personal growth. Support for women doing both is almost non-existent, and that combined with traditional value systems is forcing more women to delay having children. These are stats drawn from a brief scan of the topic, which of course is expected to be biased in one way or another. But of course, there is always a kernel of truth to it, and pop culture will reflect what society is thinking. Eye-Eee, movies reflect what is going on in the culture.

This movie displays as a disaster movie, the ending of the world as an asteroid strikes Antarctica and almost instantly melts the ice shield, raising the ocean levels within hours, tsunamis ending human life as we know it. There is a toss away comment about the world governments knowing, but doing nothing as there was nothing to be done. Our main character, Koo An Na (Kim Da-mi, The Witch: Pt 1 - The Subversion), lives in a cramped apartment complex, a widowed mother of a single child, and as the flood happens, she is racing to get the boy to the tower roof. A government agent appears, there to assist her, as her job is important and a helicopter awaits them on the roof. Challenges abound, from panicking people to has explosions to the crashing tsunami.

And then she dies.

And then it starts over again.

From here on in, spoilers abound.

And no, not a time loop movie, but it does bear resemblance to the genre. Of course, we know something hinky is going on here, but we don't know what, but the movie has very decisively slipped away from the disaster to the ... iterations. Yes, more than one, MANY more than one. And along the way we get insights into An Na's job and her ... son, and her life choices. By the time we are deep in the repetitive flow of An Na trying to, unsuccessfully, reach the top of the apartment tower, we know we must be in a simulation, because how else could the same disastrous events keep happening and happening over and over again. But things are changing, such as discovering the boy is ... not a boy. He is an... artificial life form? An Na was part of a government program working on the emotional construct housed in a jar grown body. The entire movie focuses on the emotional component, and to that, on the relationship between a mother and her son. As iterations pass, the boy in the simulation has become aware he is not real but still throws a very child like tantrum, running from his "mother". And she has become desperate to find him, again and again, so they can reach the top of the tower and "escape".

This is where the movie lost its integrity, as it wants to be a speculative scifi movie about the idea humanity's last hope hinging on whether a mother will abandon all sense of self for the safety of her son, but it loses its own threads in the scifi behind it. If this is all a simulation, why does it matter if their is an artificial boy becoming self aware? I mean, he's not a construct but just a factor in the simulation. I get it is meant to further the goal of making the perfect, self-sacrificing mother, to be mythical mother to a new next-evolutionary-step artificial human race, to come back and re-colonize an abandoned, watery Earth, but then why even have the plot point of the boy becoming aware? If the idea is to enforce that an Artificial Mommy will protect her Artificial Son, then the only important part is the Simulated Mother. Also, once she knows its all a simulation, and is making all her choices based on that knowledge (Hell, she has 21,314 printed on her tshirt, showing how long they've been at it) of being simulated, doesn't that taint the results? 

Like other lofty scifi movies, they often lose themselves in their agenda and end up shoe-horning in the speculative elements to just let the desired point come through. The whole movie seems to be screaming out loud, "The human race will just end unless women remember that being a mother is the most important job on the planet !!!" ? Everything else is just tacked on for disaster-y, scifi-y and emotional-ly brownie points.

Oh yes, as for the "disaster movie", the parts we do get, the expanded locked room, in that the movie takes entirely in the stair wells and the cramped apartments and the watery depths of a drowning world, it was incredibly... visceral? A Korean movie about an apartment tower cannot help but comment on the cultural construct of villages transposed to apartments.

While watching this movie, part of my brain harkened back to Hollywood-ish takes on the idea of artificial life forms vs motherhood, in Mother/Android and I Am Mother, both of which went the other direction, in that they have a plot point ("motherhood is good!") but were dazzled by their own scifi. Their "agendas" are less at play, but they are all in the same place, a focus on the power of motherhood.

I Saw This (!!): Hallmarkies Interruptitis

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our [semi-retired] feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.

As mentioned in the "2000th Post (Spectacular)" my "3 Short Paragraphs" (never short) have overtaken the "projects" but primarily because I get a stub-post in such format placed, and eventually fill in the rest of the details. But in this instance, while I have had all the stubs in place (here, look behind the curtain) I doubt I am going to remember enough (because I saturated my brain with Xmas Movies and Hallmarkies) to write... all... three... oh wow, that sounds lame saying it out loud. Anywayz, excuses aside, I am going to resurrect the format for at least this post. And steal whatever I had in the stubs.

Kind of weird to say you are stealing from your own writing.... or is it that you are stealing from me, your other voice?

Amusingly, to me only of course, I believe this was the last time I used the format, which includes a film that is the first in a pair I write up in THIS post.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, 2025, Rian Johnson (Looper) -- Netflix

It irritates me to no end that I thoroughly, almost painfully, enjoyed every moment of this movie, but so little stayed with me. But for key scenes.

Knives Out introduced Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, Logan Lucky), a flamboyant celebrity detective. I wasn't overly impressed by the movie at the time, but in times since, it has both grown in admiration in my mind's eye and in rewatches. Sometimes solid, very solid, production & performances is all you need to be impressed. And again, Johnson delivers.

Set in a small town in upstate NY, Blanc is brought in unravel a locked room murder mystery (literally, by the book) of an infamous local priest, one Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin, The Goonies). His deacon, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor, The Crown), has been accused of murdering him but not even the local police believe he did it, enough so that they allow Jud to follow around Blanc, gathering clues & information from Wicks core group of "followers".

Wicks was a horrible HORRIBLE man, but a man reflecting what we see now, every day, down south. Johnson ignores what is going on around him in America (not really, more he ignores the danger of speaking plainly and with conviction) and it is obvious what he thinks of the current political rabble. This is a movie which speaks openly and loudly about faith and decency, Good and Evil. Blanc is more vocally an atheist, but also very respectful of the people he is working with. Jud is a Man of God, a proper good man who believes in what he is doing and WHY he is doing it.

The movie had some chef's-kiss moments of film making, things like light & colour playing out in a cathedral more appropriate to Europe than NY state, where dialogue and sunshine reflect each other. Like a shifting of tone and mood, mid spoken sentence, when a priest shoves aside the murder mystery he is wrapped up in to tend to one of his flock, a woman in pain, who needs his shoulder, his voice. This is the kind of movie watching I want to do more of, which is made easier by a genre I am attracted to and performances I just chew on.

Kent's.

Tron: Ares, 2025,  Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) -- download

People dislike Jared Leto as much as Jared Leto loves his (currently) luscious long hair, and probably himself. It only takes a little bit of research to find numerous examples of him as a sex pervert / douche or him as a toxic method actor who annoys everyone he works with. But he does decently with the roles given him even if many of them just add to Dislike Bucket (i.e. Morbius and his Joker).

After the mediocre draw of the last legasequel (which was 15 years ago!!) I was surprised this was being made, but not all that surprised that it distanced itself from the previous, and I was mildly disappointed they dumped the whole Sam Flynn and Quorra storyline.

Ares is a program made by Dillinger Systems, an ENCOM competitor company. He is a security program (i.e. soldier) and is part of an experiment to bring programs from "the grid" to the Real World. The movie uses the lovely visuals of a 3D printer on a massive scale, and envisions programs being used to create soldiers, support vehicles and weapons for the military industrial complex. Problem is, no one has been able to recreate the indefinite "solid state" of Quorra -- all "printed" programs fall apart after 29 minutes. That is, until Eve Kim, current CEO of ENCOM discovers that "permenance code" on her dead sister's computer in Alaska, which turns out to actually be Kevin Flynn's computer.  The movie is a race for Dillinger to get that code, with the added hiccup that his primary security program Ares has gone rogue, because after countless failed iterations, he has become not only sentient, but bearing morals.

Its a visually stunning movie and along with the soaring soundtrack by NIN, its quite thrilling but probably meant to be seen on a  very very big screen. I was only mildly enthralled despite being objectively thrilled by what I was seeing -- probably because of the lackluster story. 

Another thing caught my attention, in that much of the cast were the odd-ducks from other movies/series. Of course, we have Ares (Jared Leto, Blade Runner 2049), and then there's ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee, Russian Doll), Dillinger's CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, Monster), and Kim's assistant Seth Flores (Arturo Castro, Road House). I am not entirely sure where my brain was going, considering other casting choices (e.g. Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson) but the others seemed... interesting cast choices.

Kent's. And yes, I should have posted something during my recent-ish rewatch of the second.

Troll 2, 2025, Raur Uthaug (The Wave) -- Netflix

In hindsight, I was not convinced I really enjoyed the first one, Troll. Sure, I remember enjoying the over-the-top American action click approach (I called it "Michael Bay Norway Method" totally missing calling it  the "Michael Fjord Method") but I seem to feel I should have been more... annoyed with it? Maybe its just my perpetually cranky state of late, but this one... well, the sequel annoyed me in the way the most recent Godzilla vs Kong movie did -- of note, I recently rewatched that and yes, I softened on my dislike for it.

Anywayz, I think I literally nodded off three times during this one, so write-up may be spotty.

Good thing we lifted & dropped it into this collection, where all is forgiven.

So, in the first one, they killed the troll they woke up by using giant ultraviolet lights despite the ecologist main character Nora Tideman's (Ine Marie Wilmann, Furia) cries of, "Its not evil, its just following its nature!!" This movie follows up with her being introduced to a SECOND troll, one the government did not tell her about. They accidentally wake it up so it can, insert comedic element, walk through the newly re-built house of a random rural farmer on its way to purposely stomp on Oslo. Meanwhile Nora had her own secret, in that hidden in a deep abandoned mine shaft, she had discovered a "child" troll which she has made some sort of connection with. She tries to get Baby Troll, who is also kaiju sized, to convince Angry Troll to not stomp Oslo but all that does is get Baby Troll murdered. All that is left is the military intervention, once again in grand Michael Fjord style.

In said style, the American style of overbearing military types, bleeding heart liberals and stupid people making stupid choices, they end up choosing the most ludicrous, annoying, but dramatic (!!!) way to end the Angry Troll -- by sacrificing a lovable supporting character, even when there were so many other ways they could have handled it, such as, "You know you can try original plan again; there is nothing stopping you from TRYING AGAIN LATER !" Anyhoo, was... fun?

Deathstalker, 2025, Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman) -- download

Oh my. They did it, they actually re-made a terrrrrrible fantasy action movie from the 80s, one of those Conan rip-off's about a bare chested barbarian warrior doing fetch-quests for a witch, and starred the most ludicrous sword in all the terrible sword & sorcery movies made at the time. But, of course as a child of the D&D playing metal-music listening era, I saw this movie and probably... liked it at the time? Maybe not so much, as I have never felt the urge to rewatch. But other such now grown children must have had fonder memories as it was remade. And no, its not a requel, its pretty much the a full remake, but with ... 21st century sensibilities?

Deathstalker (Daniel Bernhardt, John Wick) is an ex-knight from a country losing a war against an evil sorceror named Necronemnon and his magical red armoured soldiers called Dreadites. We find him picking the carcasss of his own ex-army when he is attacked by Dreadites, but he makes quick work of them. The fallen prince is amazed at his survival and expects Deathstalker to help him; instead the man just picks him of valuables including a strange disk/medallion.

The rest of the movie has Deathstalker, who does have a real name but few call him by it, mainly people from his old life, trying to get rid of the magic medallion which, when the plot remembers, will return to him automatically if tossed away. He consults a witch, ends up in a cave where bandits have died but left behind a tiny imp-like minor wizard, with a complicated name but who Deathstalker calls "Doodad". Doodad (voiced by Patton Oswalt, The Sandman) knows that the medallion is coveted by Necro-dude, but thinks Deathstalker should try and return it to the remaining member of the royal family. Meh whatever, is DS's point of view.

Its a silly, over the top, badly acted, badly scripted movie with badly done (OK, decently done) practical effects but amusing because its very very self aware. It knows what nostalgia its drawing upon and the tone & style is akin to the source, which is not neccessarily a good thing but... appropriate? It was very popular with the D&D playing celebrity crew, so I guess it knows its primary audience.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, 2016, Michael Bay (Transformers) -- Netflix

Was in the mood for a soldiers movie; didn't recall it was a bay-splosion movie until the credits rolled. But should have guessed, while watching, due a good amount of a) American flags and b) bay-splosions. The funny thing is that its not much of an American rah-rah, given that the government did not provide any support to this compound, and its staff, when shit hit the fan in Libya.

So, "true story" movie. In 2012, an American CIA compound in Benghazi, something not publicly disclosed, was attacked by Libyan forces, just after they destroyed another American compound where an Ambassador was staying. This was all part of the chaos going on in the region after the 2011 Libyan civil war and interventions by NATO forces. The US did not officially have any CIA presence there, but a handful of contracted soldiers were assigned to the compound as protection. After the walled home where Ambassador Christopher Stevens was staying, with minimal protection as he was generally seen as a "friend of Libya", was burned out, the attacking forces moved onto the supposedly secret CIA compound - they lost the ambassador. The American soldiers defended the place until Libyan government forces showed at dawn and escorted the survivors to the airport.

This is rough & tough men being all tough and rough. Given that each is working a job, not fighting a war, there is lots of regret and emotional turmoil bandied about. Still, as in all Bay films, the actioned is well done and the characters are admirable.

Neighborhood Watch, 2025, Duncan Skiles (The Clovehitch Killer) -- download

Small movie with a deceptive title and accompanying trailer -- it is not about a neighbourhood watch at all, just a small movie about Simon, a young man recently released from a hospital, but still suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and Ed, his asshole neighbor, a retired campus security superintendent. Simon sees a girl get slapped around and then abducted by a man in a white van. But does he? The police don't believe him, or if they do, they don't care. So, Simon goes to Ed.

Ed decides to help Simon, but more because it plays on his ego to do some real detecting. He may be retired but he cannot help but hang around the college he once worked at, looking for criminals, and the security staff left behind hate him. Like, loathe him. He's alone, lonely, refusing to acknowledge he has any number of over-50 health issues and is losing money to online poker sites. So, Simon and his assumed-hallucination is at the very least, a distraction. Meanwhile, Simon is taking this very very VERY seriously needing to prove the voice in his head (his dead father) wrong. They begin asking around about the girl, the van, the guy.

Things don't go well, eventually leading to violence and deaths, with the cops chasing them as much as seeking out any bad guys. Since the police didn't believe him, Simon is the only one seen as a Bad Guy. But despite these odds, he pursues what he thinks he has to do. And Ed finally sees something admirable in the fucked up kid. As you know, I like small performances, focused and narrow on what is happening as much as the characters themselves.

That is a great poster.

Toast & Kent's XMas (2025) Advent Calendar: Day 16 - Champagne Problems

2025, Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider) -- Netflix

Ghost Rider? Huh.

The Draw: Budget. But also, because, back when we started rearing this beast I started with a Netflix take on the Hallmarkie, Holiday in the Wild followed by The Knight before Christmas. Both were part of Netflix's earlier forays into Hallmarkie territory but with the budgets of Netflix behind them. Eventually that allure faded for the Netflix-ian Purple Suits and they went down the more traditional Xmas romcom path. Remember, even without the trope-laden structure of a Hallmarkie, there have always been Xmas romcoms, but they always feel distinctly different than these. This year, Netflix seemed to add a few back into their roster.

That said, its not like Netflix actually produces these movies, they are just the distributers, but there strikes me as a distinction when the production companies get the go ahead because they know it will end up on Netflix, and construct with that in mind.

HERstory: We actually begin with the story of Dom Perignon, the monk not the expensive champagne, and how he "accidentally" discovered the bubbles. Then we almost immediately switch to the Big City with Sydney Price (Minka Kelly, Titans), a work work work woman from The Roth Group who gives an impressive presentation on how TRG can acquire floundering champagne producer Château Cassell, in France. Sydney impresses her boss so much, he sends her to Paris to meet with the company, who will also be hearing three other proposals.

Sydney is all about work but promises her little sister that she will enjoy at least one night, and thus builds an itinerary for speed-running Paris, all the places marked, with times. Except she has one gap -- a good bookstore to pickup something for her sister. The concierge, who have always been the magical figures in movies centered around hotels, suggests a quaint little place called Les Etoiles which is magic unto itself. Unfortunately, no its not a real Parisian bookstore but the movie is actually shot in Paris, as opposed to Vancouver. And in the bookstore she runs into the handsome helpful Henri (Tom Wozniczka, Slow Horses). He doesn't work at the bookstore.

They banter. They flirt. He's better at it than she is, after all he's Parisian. She has a terrible plan to see all the tourist spots and he offers to show her the real Paris, a better view of Paris (nudge nudge wink wink, say no more). And its Xmas in Paris, so all the wow's. They have Xmas Market crepes and mulled wine and macarons (he pronounces it correctly) and they end up at the Paris Ferris wheel for the more heartfelt all alone with a spectacular view conversation. It ends with, "I had a great life today..." and a proper non-Hallmarkie kiss, no interruptions. And then.... (GASP!) sex.

Next morning, after glow, and he's out getting coffee & croissant and ... she's late!! Off she rushes to the hotel, showers and dresses and has to run to the place where the work work meeting is happening. She comes in to find the other companies doing the presentation -- the prim Brigitte (Astrid Whettnall, Winter Palace), the flamboyantly gay playboy Roberto (Sean Amsing, Love, Guaranteed; I am not sure, but I think he plays the exact same character in this also Netflix also romcom movie) and the grim and proper Otto (Flula Borg, The Rookie; apparently Flula also plays D&D), from Germany. And then, just after Sydney is about to begin her presentation -- in walks the owner's son, Henri from last night.

Awkward. Especially since he seems to know the reputation of TRG better than Sydney does, and its not good.

The owner, Hugo (Thibault de Montalembert, The Tunnel), sees the challenges before him and decides he needs more time to decide on who should take over his legacy, that all the presenters should experience what making champagne is all about, and asks them all to come to the Château Cassell proper, in a quaint French version of the PST.

The idea Hugo has is to present each person with an experience of something involved in the wine making business. Just because its December, it doesn't mean everything shuts down. They snip at vines, they rotate bottles, they get to know each other. Roberto is all about hedonistic experience and spending his daddy's money, Otto is a cliche hoping to impress German precision on Hugo's family business,  and Brigitte is a known factor and someone who has the eye of Hugo, the longtime widower as we learned on the Ferris wheel.

Sydney still wants to impress upon Hugo and Henri that she is about giving smaller businesses a chance to survive, but she doesn't know that her company has been gutting said businesses after she made the acquisitions. How she doesn't know this just says she is so very myopic. But seeing how she interacts with his father, whom she finds real affection for, softens Henri to her all over again. He even finds her cheese farts cute. 

As I have mentioned before, so many of these Hallmarkies are as much about processing grief as they are about finding love. Hugo and Henri have never really reconciled about losing Henri's mother, and are in an angry, hurting, stagnant point of their lives. Sydney herself has never let herself move on to having her own life, since her mother's passing. The three really are what each other needs the most.

In the end, after the complication where Henri overhears Sydney complying with TRG's plans to entirely destroy Château Cassell, but not her quitting the company, and he tells her to go away, and she does, Hugo gives the company to the fop, as champagne is all about celebrating life and that is all Roberto does -- party. But a bond has formed among the quartet, which says each of their strengths will be leveraged in the future of this family company.

But Sydney has run away, back to Paris, back to the bookstore to grab something before she flies home to find a new job, a new adventure when.... Henri arrives. The kind of magic concierge has redirected him there for another kiss, a sealing of a future. We end  the movie on a "one year later" Happily Ever After.

The Formulae: The movie makes use of them but in the more glitzy, glossy way that is Netflix's backing approval. The PST, all snow covered in French countryside December, is a quaint but not tiny village -- when they have the Xmas festival, the architecture is grand and sweeping and its more a rave with hundreds of attendees. We had the deadline, the signing of the deal before Xmas. We had the "smaller" Xmas fair where crepes and mulled wine are had. We had the complication, and we had rivalry, where in cheese is fed to a lactose intolerant girl (cute farts!). The less gratifying trope is where Sydney, who has worked hard to get where she is, dumps her job to stay in France with Henri, but at least it sounds like she finds alternate more gratifying work. Also, Henri doesn't have to take over his father's business, so gets to open his bookstore meets wine bar, his heart's dream. 

Unformulae: Sex! Kissing before the final scene! Not shot in Canada! Did I mentioned SEX ?

True Calling? I guess it did? There was plenty of champagne and there were plenty of problems?

The Rewind: I had to check whether the flyover of the PST was AI generated or just the usual CGI enhanced shot. I am rather sensitive this year to the coming onslaught of AI generated material which will eventually replace what stock & CG footage used to provide. Oh, and I had to stop and rewind the cute puppy chases the bunny wabbit scene, especially when they puppy stumble... but the bunny is sooooo fake looking.

The Regulars: This is off-market Hallmarkie so no, nobody has done many of this kind of movie. But I think Minka could find a life in these movies, as she adapted well to the concept.

How does it Hallmark? In this world of post-Hallmark after-market producers & distributers, but with money, it does a decent job.

How does it movie? No, of course it doesn't. But what surprises me more is that people seemed to expect it to be a proper Xmas romcom. In reading through other reviews and recaps, I was surprised at how many people lambasted it for .... well, all the reasons people watch these kinds of movies. The plots are contrived, the characters 1.1 dimensional and the lines usually incredulous. But that's to be expected. If anything, the extra money behind this did enhance to a greater degree --- the sets were utterly spectacular. And I have to shout out to Flula, who plays his German weirdo act to perfection again. And if I am being honest, I rather adored Minka in this role -- she's a beautiful woman over 40 allowed to play a beautiful woman over 40.

How Does It Snow? There was some actual laid out snow in some chase-the-cute-puppy scenes.

KWIF: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. With the holiday season upon us, more of my energy is going into holiday movie watching for the Advent Calendar, rather than cinema. But also, having just restored AppleTV, it's been catch-up time, dominating the other side of my viewing schedule. But some movies just won't wait, and when there's a new Benoit Blanc/Rian Johnson/Knives Out joint, it's go time.

2025, d. Rian Johnson - Netflix

It's almost 45 minutes into Wake Up Dead Man that the central detective of this series of murder mysteries rears his head. Up until then we are following Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor, The Crown) as, after punching out a fellow priest, he is assigned as the assistant pastor at a small-town parish led by the tough and vociferous Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin, Jonah Hex). Wicks takes delight in fucking with Jud, particularly in his confessions, but Wicks' strong personality and tight grip over his ever shrinking group of disciples which he steers with rage, fear and right wing propaganda lead the two men to conflict. And then Wicks ends up dead --murdered-- in a manner that seems, at its face, impossible. Father Jud is the only plausible suspect in this impossible crime, and the disciples (and town beyond) point fingers in blame. What can a priest do but pray for God's to send help.

Thus enters Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, Cowboys & Aliens), the notorious erudite cajun detective. The meeting is a scintillating piece of filmmaking. Father Jud asks Blanc if he is a believer, and Blanc, a man of logic, is most definitely not a believer in things he cannot see or logic. The scene, within the gorgeous church architecture that is one of the main sets of the film, starts lit incredibly warmly, as if bathed in lush summer sunshine, with Blanc's entrance the seemingly divine intervention Father Jud asked for. But as Jud gives Blanc space to elaborate upon his beliefs, which entail an inability to look at the Church or religion and not see the vast and continued history of darkness that underlies it, the temperature of the room cools greatly, as if the sun not just clouded over, but blew a fuse. Father Jud, however youthful and out of his depth he has seemed over the preceding 45 minutes, doesn't just hear what Blanc says, he understands it, and his rebuttal, which isn't even so much a rebuttal so much as the other side of the coin, returns the warmth to the room, returns the sunshine to the sky. Blanc hasn't so much lost an argument, but found his chess game put in check. It's one of the most exhilarating scenes I've seen in movies this year, and it's hard not to feel those temperature changes as you watch it.

Asking an audience to spend 45 minutes without the feature character of the particular film series may seem like a big ask, but the set-up here is wholly engrossing. What we learn eventually is that those 45 minutes, as narrated by Father Jud, are him writing down the events as he recalls them at Blanc's request. O'Connor, who star was pumped full of light in last year's Challengers, should now hang high and bright going forward. It's an immensely charismatic performance with an extremely likeable and brilliantly written character. Father Jud is thrown into a sea of sharks at his new parish, and the 45 minutes is well spent diving into the personalities at play, starting with Wicks, the church's assistant Martha (Glenn Close, Guardians of the Galaxy), her beloved groundskeeper Gus (Thomas Hayden Church, Spider-Man 3), the alcoholic town doctor and recent divorcee Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), the cellist with debilitating nerve pain Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny, Pacific Rim Uprising), the successful sci-fi author Lee Ross who has taken the red pill (Andrew Scott, Sherlock), local lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer) and Cy (Daryl McCormack, Twisters), her half brother who she was forced by her father to adopt, who fell into the Black Republican cesspool and refuses to exit.

Who these people are, and the snippets of their past that we're introduced to, all have relevance to the proceedings of the film. For a 145-minute film, so little of it is wasted. I struggle to think of extraneous details. What it does, as a detective story, is invest the audience so much more into the characters and their dynamics, that it's so much more the interesting part of the story than the whodunnit. And it's not just a whodunnit, but also a howdunnit, and a whydunnit. Having so many questions to answer alleviates the audience from guessing games, the usual meta part of watching a murder mystery. I think only once in the entire run time of the film did I make a guess as to who the murderer was, and even that wasn't so much a guess as it was a "something's fishy about this person's story".

Clearly director Johnson, having also created the neo-Columbo TV series Poker Face and the neo-noir Brick which launched his career, loves detective stories, and even within this film gives the audience a reading list of novels about impossible murders, one of which serves as this film's murderer's guidepost. Johnson's deep investment in detective stories pays off in a film that understands the genre enough to not only play to all its strengths but also play with how to tell such stories and to layer different sub-sub-types of the genre on top of one another. He leans into cliches as much as he subverts them and uses them all to his storytelling purposes. And he uses the format as a foundation upon which to drop the most scathing satire of the America that Bannon and Trump have built, and some remedies to it, starting with not letting the bastards get you down, and connecting, genuinely, with one's community.

As brilliant as Blanc's first meeting with Father Jud is, it's not the film's best moment. That comes when Father Jud makes a phone call as part of his investigation with Jud, expressing to the woman on the other end of the phone the urgency in which he needs the information. She's a bit of a talker and Jud tries to hurry the conversation along, and apply pressure when she puts up blockers to his information request. Father Jud's impatience, and Blanc's beside him, are palpable, but the scene is full of humour, until the woman ask Father Jud, after a long, patience-thinning pause, if he would pray for her, and he with barely a moments hesitation, snaps into Priest mode and everything, quite literally changes.  I have not seen Bridget Everett's much lauded HBO series Somebody, Somewhere, but from what I've heard of the show, it's evident why Johnson cast her in this part and maybe even tailored the part to her. The tonal balance between comedic performance and then the turn to something deeply emotional seems to be Everett's baileywick, and it's a scene in this film that surprisingly brought me to tears. 

This is a film that features religion at its centre, and there are, in both dialogue and structure, arguments in favour and against religion. But it's not a film taking sides. It's a film that ultimately wants hope, and community and charity and forgiveness to win out. It's a film that wants people to come together rather than be pulled apart, even if they don't see eye to eye on everything. It's a film that knows greed is probably the most active deadly sin, perhaps fuelling or even manufacturing the other deadly sins beneath it.

A genre pic like this, especially one that is almost two and half hours long, could feel bloated with self-importance, and bogged down in messaging or thumping, and instead it's a highly energetic, tremendously entertaining, propulsive film full of terrific moments, a neck-breaking amount of organic twists, and fantastic performances.  It's a damn great time.

[Note: I still think it's weird whenever a series takes the name of its first film, and yet the series name has nothing to do with the rest of the films. Like, this should be subtitled "A Benoit Blanc Mystery"... just as there were six films with "The Thin Man" in the title, when the titular Thin Man was just a suspect in the first film. Bah. Stupid.]

[Poster talk, briefly... I don't find any of the posters for this film particularly compelling, particularly the breadth of character-based posters. I wish there were iconography posters, selling on particular elements of the story... the wolf's head, the mausoleum, the "l'Eveil Appel", artfully done of course].