KWIF: The Devil Wears Prada 2 (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. It was a real toss up: final two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again's second season, or the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada. It was no toss up. Daredevil has been, to put it bluntly, repetitive and boring, while TDWP2 is an event! It wasn't even a competition.

This Week:
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026, d.  David Frankel - in theatre)
Mortal Kombat II (2026, d. Simon McQuoid - in theatre)
Keyhole (2011, d. Guy Maddin - tubi)
Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (2002, d. Takashi Miike - tubi)
Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988, d. Akio Jissoji - tubi)

I am not a journalist. Despite having been a writer and for many online resources for over 30 years, nothing I've done is what I would call journalism. The closest I came was a 3 year stint on editorial at my student newspaper in University (I thought this was an extraordinary and fundamental time in my life but in hindsight, turns out it was a somewhat juvenile and retroactively embarrassing era for both myself and the paper, full of (my own) sloppy work, ill-informed editorials, and errors in judgement. My desire to be more like the Harvard Lampoon or Mad Magazine than anything with journalistic integrity (which is not to diminish the work of my collaborators, but I was really not up to the task...but I digress). 

I got a degree in business, not journalism, and I cared about each equally (which is to say, minimally). It's probably for the best I never went into journalism professionally (though I tried on a few occasions). I don't have the stones for it. Much like being an artist, being a journalist requires sacrifice, and the rewards are not monetary, and you have to love it (which I don't...I respect it, don't love it so much). Plus, in the past 15 years or so, there's been a decided attack on journalism as an institution. Truth telling is now all a matter of perspective (or so the 1% overlords would have us believe). It's been a rough dozen-plus years for the media. Most of my favourite writers are now doing their own Substack or Substack-adjacent writing, and supplementing any written work with podcasting. The world is a lesser place for social media having supplanted traditional media as people's primary source of news (or, rather, "news"). There's no security to working in the world of journalism.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a sequel that doesn't need to exist. Nothing about the end of The Devil Wears Prada demands we know more. But now that it does exist, that it sets itself on top of the backdrop of the failing state of traditional media and the billionaire bros who snap up media outlets so they can control the narrative with their detached-from-the-layman world view...well, at least there's something for it say, something to explore in this moment, even if it doesn't quite have the firmest grasp on its message.

We find, when this film starts, Andy Sach (Anne Hathaway) has just won a journalism award but also, at almost the same moment, via text, finds out that she and her entire staff at the newspaper she was writing for have been laid off. Meanwhile Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) has just had an expose written about how Runway Magazine has promoted and supported a brand who runs a manufacturing sweatshop. This is a scandal, one which Miranda of 20 years ago would never have found herself in (it's telling in many ways that she has).  The owner of Runway's media parent, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) needs damage control, and thus returns Andy to Runway, the place where she interned 20 years ago, now as the new features editor.

She reunites with Nigel (Stanley Tucci) and Miranda (who doesn't remember her, or so she says), and is instantly swept into a meeting with their key advertiser, Dior, where Emily (Emily Blunt) now works as retail manager.

Andy finds Miranda in a subdued position relative to where she once was. Still a titan of the industry, print media is all but dead, and the online sphere for Runway has trouble competing with other scroll-and-like spaces. Andy's role is, at first, damage control, but also about trying to raise Runway's profile up.  It needs to be more than just about the pictures, people need to read it for the articles too.  Without saying it, it's attempting to "Teen Vogue" it (where in the mid-2010s Teen Vogue shifted its focus from fashion and entertainment and rapidly gained attention for it's provocative and insightful political articles.... Teen Vogue was collapsed into the parent Vogue in 2025 by its publishing overlords, according to many to stifle its anti-right wing messaging).

Andy's efforts to raise the status of the magazine is noticed in the media, but not represented in the site traffic. She needs a big gambit both to secure her place and to gain at least a modicum of respect from Miranda. She needs to land the white whale interview: Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu). The ex-wife of one of the world's richest men (a chuckling tech bro doofus played brilliantly under gobs of makeup by Justin Theroux) is now the world's richest woman, but Sasha hasn't given an interview in the three years since the divorce. Andy lands the interview (conducted by Miranda but the article written by Andy) and not only gets in Miranda's good graces once again but becomes a bit of a legend.  

The crux of the film, however, is that no matter what one good story brings for a day, a week, or a month, it's not enough. The cycles move on so fast that there's no time to rest, and media and journalism are still a dying form, unable to demand enough attention in the attention economy when there's injured baby foxes being fed milk from a bottle or video game live streams that run for two days straight to compete with. Runway is on the table to be sold...or on the chopping block to be axed.

While the first act is all about Andy getting reacquainted with a world she left behind 20 years earlier and noting both the similarities and shocking differences, the second act is about settling in, about establishing a new life in a roller-coaster world of uncertainty and insecurity. Miranda is the only one who seems like teflon-coated steel, nothing penetrates and nothing sticks...but even she is showing signs that that it's all actually getting to her too. The world is changing and she can only do so much to change with it.

The third act then becomes about Andy's perception of the situation, that the threat to Runway, one of the last bastions of traditional media, is the warning siren and that saving it means much more than just saving a magazine but providing hope for the entire industry of journalism.  It's idealist and optimistic, and it takes the audience on that ride of hope and scrappy-can-do attitude.

And then Miranda slaps her in the face with reality. It's only a matter of time. There's a boa wrapped tightly around every industry, squeezing tighter and tighter trying to milk them for everything they're worth, until they're worth nothing, at least monetarily. The solution to the troubles in this picture all rely on the good graces of an ultra-rich benefactor to whom minimal, or no returns (or even negative returns) are worth the investment for the art and integrity. You can't monetize artistry and integrity.

This, mercifully, isn't a naive film, although at times Andy is far too naive as a character, and Miranda is far too withholding to fully invest in the driving story forces at play. It does oversimplify its narrative so that it can have a satisfying ending while still being cognizant that there remains a dark cloud overhead and the struggle will continue after the last pan of the New York skyline.

The Devil Wears Prada was a really good movie that has become sort of legendary. The sequel doesn't tarnish the legend, though it fails to find its own legendary status in the process. It's a pretty picture, with tons of fabulous outfits, sets, and settings (and boy does Anne Hathaway look more amazing than she ever has), all of which are a must, and it mercifully doesn't wallow in the past. It does unfortunately seems obliged to put Andy kind of in the same place she was in during the first movie, even though she has two decades of prestigious experience, world travelling and her own life under her belt. It's natural for someone to find themselves repeating patterns of behaviour when with certain people, but I just felt like she should be much more assured than she is here. Similarly, Miranda shows next to no sign of growth, yet she feels muted compared to the ruthless ferocity which she had in the prior film. But she's also almost 70 now, and there does come something of a softening with age which we should find believable.

Already a massive box office success, the best we can say about The Devil Wears Prada 2 is that it does fine as a sequel. It doesn't at all diminish what came before, nor does it immediately discount its own existence. I find myself wishing that it were more interested in its setting, exploring the erosion of media and journalism, especially given the eyes it has on it, but that's not the audience its serving (this isn't The Paper 2 or Broadcast News 2). It serves its audience well...or well enough.

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I didn't see the 2021 iteration of Mortal Kombat (but Toasty did) and, to be honest, I didn't care to. From all reports it was attempting to be a character-driven narrative exploring the characters of Sub-Zero and Scorpion, and that there was not, in fact, any Mortal Kombat to be had. I mean, what's the point then?

I am by no means invested in Mortal Kombat as a property. The last version of the game I played was its original incarnation. But that said, I've long had a soft spot for the '95 cinematic treatment from Paul WS Anderson, a film that has aged surprisingly well in that it was always kind of hokey and wasn't taking the whole thing too seriously. The last thing we need to do is take Mortal Kombat too seriously.

It seemed like (at least from Toasty's report) MK2021 was taking things too seriously. Mortal Kombat II wants you to think it's not taking things too seriously... but it still is. What story there is within the film is wildly unfocussed and largely predictable, with absolutely no tension built along the way (for a number of reasons). The movie starts by introducing the concept of "Mortal Kombat", where two realms, instead of waging war, compete in a tournament of 10 fights. The first to win five of these fights is victor and the losing side's realm is theirs. Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) watches her father get brutally defeated by Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) and her mother and people immediately subjugated under him. He takes her as his daughter (I can't say for certain the scriptwriter was just aping Gamora's story from Guardians of the Galaxy/Infinity War but it's basically the same) which I'm sure will work out fine for everyone as a big happy new family.

Meanwhile Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) is a washed up Stephen Segal-type 90's action star who nobody cares about anymore. He's sad about his life but Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) recruit him for Mortal Kombat, Raiden promising him a greater, more fulfilling destiny. He declines, but, it turns out, he doesn't have a choice.

And so Kitana fights for her father, reluctantly, while Johnny Cage fights for Earth, reluctantly, only it turns out Kitana is a spy for Raiden and Johnny Cage has a warrior within, so the dramatic narrative arcs these characters can take are, well, straight lines rather than curves. Their stories go from A-to-C without even thinking about venturing towards B along the way.

So if there's no real character arcs in this film, surely it will have fun with team dynamics, right? Inner conflict and romances and whatnot? Notsomuch. Or at all. The "team" here, Raiden, Sonya, Johnny, Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Jax (Mechad Brooks), and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) spend their time together largely spitting exposition. There's no real sense of camaraderie or any sense of these characters becoming friends or connected to each other in any way (we're told that Sonya and Jax are old friends, but do we feel it? Notsomuch). 

The film spends a lot of time trying to circle back on characters from the prior movie, even though they are not central figures here. As such, unless you are really invested in MK2021 then these beats have little to no weight on their own (like, Hiroyuki Sanada returns as Scorpion, but in the underworld, where he resumes his fight against the revived Sub-Zero to no real effect of the story at hand). 

So, if it fails at developing anything meaningful with its characters, MKII must be all about the tournament and the fighting, right? Yes and no. It does feature heavily its match-ups, the one-on-one fights, but none of them carry with them the weight of what the stakes of the tournament, and the fate of the "Earth realm". The film brutally fails at finding any tension within the tournament itself. With one or two exceptions, nobody witnesses the fights, so there's no crowd reactions, no cut to team-mates or friends as they watch their friends succeed or fail brutally. There's just nothing exciting outside of maybe a few cool manoeuvres or a particularly gory fatality, and there's not enough of those to justify a feature length movie this uninteresting.

It wouldn't be so bad if the film at least had style, but it's so evident that it was filmed on the Volume or similar on-set digital backdrop technology, and that the crew were either inexperienced with it or didn't have the time to refine their shots. The actors are lit so horrendously that they have a soft glow outline around them much of the time, while the backdrops too often don't feel tangible at all (I will concede that it's entirely possible that watching this on an IMAX screen made this so much more evident than a standard movie screen, or any home viewing implement). The few sets actually constructed feel cheap, much cheaper than an $80million budget would presume.  That, visually, this film feels inferior to the 1995 adaptation of Mortal Kombat is very telling.  That film used mostly practical sets that were well lit and well shot. This film seemed hampered by its constraints and is pretty ugly as a result.  At the very least the 1995 film had a still-iconic techno soundtrack, and this film's score doesn't even seem to be trying. 

There is one sequence not shot on a set, where Johnny, Liu Kang, Sonya and Jax venture into the home terrain of the excessively-toothed character Barada. It's an exterior desert set that has scale and doesn't feel contained by walls or barriers. Since it's outdoors there's a lot of natural light, and it does everyone a world of favours that the rest of the film does not. The fight between Johnny and Barada is fun and silly and feels like the only real payoff for Johnny (or any character for that matter) in the film.

Fans of the franchise will probably get more out of this than I will, but a films at this budget really should be trying for something more than fan service.

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I'm a bad Canadian cinephile. I don't spend enough time exploring the films or filmmakers of my home country. This is in large part due to the fact that Canadian cinema, by and large, doesn't have the resources that the films of other countries do. And with the exception of Quebec, which has an industry all its own, most of our best talents get co-opted by our neighbours to the South, obfuscating a film's Canadian-ness, if anything remains at all.

There are a few notable filmmakers who have made a name on an international scale that still largely work within the Canadian system and tell stories set within the country.  Guy Maddin is definitely such an auteur, one who likes to combine his fascination with the earliest era of filmmaking with a love of his homeland. Or so I've been told. I've seen maybe one or two of his films in the distant past, and have long been meaning to catch up.

Keyhole, his 2011 effort, was maybe not the first place to start. A psychological noir set in a haunted house, the film follows Ulysses Pick (Jason Patrick) and his gang of thugs as they barricade themselves in Ulysses' home. 

Our key signal that things are askew finds Ulysses' second-in-command telling the dead to face the wall and the living to face forward. The dead, then, march out the back door to face a proper disposal.

Ulysses emerges from the rain with Denny (Brooke Pallson) slung over his shoulder. They're both drenched. Eventually Ulysses will get dry, Denny will always seem perpetually wet, despite a change of clothes.

Ulysses warns the gang the house is haunted and to beware of touching ghosts. Meanwhile he searches the house with Denny in tow, her ability to read into his thoughts aid him in his quest to find his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) within the twisted maze of hallways and stairs and doors. 

He is vexed by the ghost of Hyacinth's father (a very nude Louis Negin), who manipulates environments throughout the house, though does not seem to have any real control.

The journey is an abstract one, lacking decisive logic, living between metaphors. As a film, it is an exploration of Ulysses' life, his failures as a husband and father, and it questions whether these failures mean anything to him.

It's a puzzling film which it both its greatest and most detrimental asset. Bending your brain to understand what it is Maddin is trying to convey has its rewards when you can reach an understanding in what you see, but the dream logic that prevails often has no meaning, serving primarily to keep the audience off balance.

Maddin's first digitally-shot film, it's a black-and-white production but doesn't have the olde-timey feel (the heavy make-up of the silent or gangster film eras, for example) and it doesn't look particularly good. The sets, lighting and costume seem constructed on a shoestring budget (which they probably were) and lack the usual hand-crafted flair of the films of Maddin's I'm (not-so-)familiar with.

What probably lets the film down the most, however, is the character of Ulysses, who just isn't very compelling. Whether it's Patrick's performance or what he was given to work with, I was never certain why we should care about Ulysses or his journey.

Once I get into the swing of watching Maddin's pictures, acquainting myself anew with his sensibilities, I might soften on Keyhole, but as stands I found it a pretty rough watch.

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If I were to attempt to catch up on the works of Takasi Miike, it would have to be the only movies I watched in a year. The director has made around 120 films since his debut in the early 1990s and dozens upon dozens of television episodes. That prolific level of output seems unprecedented, and one has to wonder what gets sacrificed in the process of producing as such speed.

Like Guy Maddin above, I'm not particularly well-versed in Miike's repertoire, certainly not enough to speak to any overall style or sensibilities (a quick search of this blog finds no entries of Miike films...which surprises, me. I thought for sure Toasty would have one or two Miikes written up). 

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (aka "Noboru Ando's True Outlaw Tales: Raging Fire") opens with a primal scream over a heavy metal track. The camera tracks a young man running full tilt through the streets of Tokyo (intercut with flashes of...other things, a perplexing montage of images at this stage of a film to be sure). Finally the young man, guns drawn, leaps over a small barricading wall of an outdoor stairwell and begins firing on the group of men below (clearly mobsters, based on the way the one man is dressed compared to the other men around him). The gunman dispatches everyone, having hit the boss at least once at this point. The boss does not fall, he keeps lumbering forward, taking more and more bullets, until he has his hands around his assailant's throat. The only escape the gunman has is to cut the man's hand's off. Thankfully his partner has come by for clean-up.  The next shot of the young assassin, we see him naked on a couch, the severed hands still attached to his throat.

Yeah, this is kind of what I think of when I think of a Miike film. Extremes.

The story of the film finds Arata Kunisada (Riki Takeuchi ) freed from prison. The mob boss that was just assassinated was a father figure to him, and he is distraught and vengeful. 

But this isn't a one-man-assassin squad/John Wickian tale, at least not yet. The film cuts between different mob factions and Kunisada's journey, which for much of the film's run time finds him hiding out, rather than pursuing his revenge.  But eventually Kunisada gets back on track and, well, finds a missile launcher to help him on his quest.

Having just watched the excellent Italian mob-revenge actioner Big Guns, this very much feels like another take on the same story, right down to the police sort of standing by, or perhaps even aiding the protagonist in their mission of revenge. The difference is Big Guns felt quite calculated and detailed in its execution. Rekka on the other hand feels quite rushed and unrefined. That shagginess has a bit of an appeal, for sure, but it makes for some confusing story beats, or even whole acts. (There's a detour that Kunisada takes with a possible love interest that seems completely inconsequential to the overall story, and, for the amount of screentime it takes, contributes little to our understanding of this rather one note character).

The film dabbles with character drama and mafia intrigue but isn't particularly committed to either, and by the time the big rocket-launcher climax happens, it becomes a big old cartoon that betrays whatever it was trying to do emotionally before. 

The film closes with the ghost of a dead mob boss popping his head into frame, shouting "rock and roll!" It's not a vibes movie, per se, but perhaps Miike is a vibes director, and you're either on his wavelength or you're not. I dunno...Rekka wasn't boring, except when it was.

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One thing I'm always searching for is films from the 1980s with great special effects, including miniatures and big sets and puppets and stop-motion animation. I've exhausted most of the North American releases some time ago (though there is still the rare surprise) and have to look internationally for such pleasures. The main problem is I have no idea where to look, or what I'm looking for, and sacrificing a few hours hoping for something inspired to look at can be such a gamble.

The opening moments of Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (aka "Teito Monogatari") deliver instantly. A glorious barrage of manufactured clouds, impeccably lit with purple and red hues leads way to a massive set where a group of mages start mumbling incantations, causing the set to rumble and fracture and animated lighting to strike. There are rods sticking up from the ground that receive the lightning and are rotoscoped with a glowing red tinge. This is all glorious even if the dialogue of the scene is moving so fast that I had to rewind at least three times over to catch all the exposition.

The gist of The Last Megalopolis is that, centuries ago, Taira no Masakado led an uprising against the lords of Tokyo and failed. His spirit, though dormant, haunts the city. Should anyone dare to desecrate the site where he lay, he will awaken and destroy the city. And so, the demon Yasunori Kato (garbed in an Imperial Officer uniform, he is no doubt the inspiration for M. Bison in the Street Fighter video games) seeks to do just that, but in order to awaken the Masakado, he needs the blood of his descendant to do so. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

What follows is a convoluted but enthralling tale that takes place over three time periods from the early 1910s to the late 1920s. It's heavy on incantations, sorcery and witchcraft (of a type), and a bevvy of effects to go along with it. The best special effects in the film find paper being dispatched by both the good guys and bad, sailing on the wind before crumpling itself up and then transmogrifying into a bird or a wee little rat-like beastie. It's really, really cool.

The Last Magalopolis is based off the novel "Teito Monogatari" (adapted into Manga prior to the film's release and into an anime series in the early 1990s), and combines elements of real Tokyo history with epic fantasy and spirituality. A lot of the characters in this story are actual historical figures, and I guess the production team thought that it was enough of a shorthand to not really explore these characters at all.  It is completely a story-driven film, and figures wind their way in and out of the story in such a manner that if you're not used to Japanese names it can get confusing as to who is being referred to in a given situation and why. Also, this film is not waiting for you to catch up.

It's a propulsive narrative, even at two hour and fourteen minutes, and by the end while it has a resolution, barely feels resolved... because it isn't. This is effectively the first half of the story, condensed. A follow-up film, Tokyo: The Last War would be released the subsequent year. 

Part fantasy, part horror, part historical fanfic it's a wild and dense production that perplexes and delights in equal measure.

KWIF: lazy Sunday

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. This week's film watchings was interrupted by the return of AppleTV to the household, and by the awareness of a mouse in the house and the rampant messes that it made beneath our own cluttered masses. After a five day hunt the mouse was finally defeated, and I am exhausted. But prior to both of these events, I had a lazy Sunday of movies and Hallmarkies.

This Week:
Devil In A Blue Dress (1995, d. Carl Franklin - Hollywoodsuite)
S.O.S.: Save Our Skins (2014, d. Kent Sobey - Hollywoodsuite)
Three Wisest Men (2025, d. Terry Ingram - Hallmark/W)
A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025, d. Maclain Nelson - Hallmark/W)

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When you think of detective noir genre, you're thinking 1930s or '40's, black and white, lots of sultry horns on the soundtrack, cigarette smoking and stylish hats, dames in dresses and so much sexism, twisty plots and downer endings.

I never really embraced the detective noire genre. It seemed so...outdated when I was younger, and couldn't get over how much of it seemed like...affectation. It didn't help that the genre was riddled with cliches which comedies had mined to death. So at 19 years old when Devil In A Blue Dress came out as Denzel's sixth movie in the two years following Malcom X, well, I wasn't interested in this olde timey claptrap. Give me Virtuosity and Crimson Tide, all day everyday.

But, I've been in a detective/noir mood of late, inspired largely by rewatching the films of the Coen Bros., and it struck me, pretty hard, that I should give Devil in a Blue Dress a shot. I mean, if detective noires demand a strong lead, you don't get much stronger than Denzel J. Washington, Esq.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an adaptation of Walter Mosely's 1990 neo-noir novel of the same name, and introduced the world to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Washinton) [just try to tell me that Easy Rawlins is not the best noir detective name ever], a veteran of WWII who gets laid off but is desperate for work to pay his mortgage. He gets sent his way a smarmy, suspicious looking character, Albright (it's Tom Seizmore, so you know he's bad news) who wants Rawlins' help in looking for a woman. Easy sees the money, and even though he already senses something is off about the request, can't help but take the work.

Even though Easy is not a detective and has no past with law enforcement, he has a way with people, a confidence most others lack, and a physicality which is very intimidating even if you're twice his size. Soon after taking the case, an acquaintance who knows the woman he's looking for winds up dead, and suddenly things are getting real. Albright we quickly learn is a thug, and has misrepresented what exactly he's after. There's also an L.A. mayoral race at play and somehow both candidates are involved in whatever this big mess is.  At a certain point, Easy needs help, and calls in his army buddy Mouse (Don Cheadle) but Mouse's more...trigger-happy tendencies may be more of a hindrance than a help.  

Beneath it all, Easy still has PTSD from the war, and whatever the active version of traumatic stress disorder is from just being a Black man in America. The cops harass him, the white men play him, and he knows a white woman need say but a word and a mob will come after him.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an incredible noir story, featuring incredible characters, from the most major to the most minor (there's a mentally challenged man on Easy's street who keeps trying to cut down people's trees, and Easy is constantly chasing him off...while still acknowledging him as part of the community), and there's nothing quite like watching a character get chucked into the deep end and having to learn how to swim, only to discover they're an olympic caliber swimmer.

Devil in a Blue Dress did not do great at the box office, and it's a damn shame. Mosely has written 14 novels since 1990 starring Easy Rawlins (the latest came out this year), and we should have gotten a new Washington-starring Easy Rawlings adaptation every three years. With AppleTV killing it with their novel series adaptations, I think we need an Easy Rawlings relaunch as a series, maybe with John David Washington in the lead?

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In the before times, one would surf channels until they found something the caught their attention and just watch, usually all the way through, no matter how bad it was, because options were limited. We have nothing but options now, and it causes "analysis paralysis" where you just scroll and scroll and scroll through your various streaming services, often watching nothing more than a 60 second auto play snippet before moving on to the next thing. So much of the pain (and sometimes fun) of sifting through streaming is cutting past the cheaply produced, licensed-in-bulk amateurish garbage, only to occasionally find one starring a whole bunch of name-brand actors from TV series you used to watch 15 years ago, or it features a conceit that you just can't pass up watching.

S.O.S.: Save Our Skins is very much from the cheaply-produced, licensed-in-bulk pile, a British/Canadian co-production starring nobody I'm familiar with, but tantalized me on concept alone.

Two British nerds, Ben and Steven, have travelled to New York City for a comic book convention, only to wake up and find that the TV is off and their mobile service is down. Oh, and when they hit the streets the city is empty.

Right off, it's incredibly impressive for this exceptionally modest production to have managed to capture scenes on absolutely vacant NYC streets. This was shot 6 or 7 years before the idea of lockdown was in anyone's mind.

The nerds do what nerds do, which is annoy one another, look for junk food, go shopping, and panic only a little... er, well, a lot when they encounter a blue monster (which looks like if a pro wrestler from the 1950's joined the Blue Man Group). While foraging at a bodega, they encounter another man who invites them around to their place, and, yeah, he's a creep. The internet still works (I really have to wonder how much of our infrastructure can truly run on autopilot and for how long without human intervention) and they send out a message, which in turn they get a response from two Canadian nerds who beckon them to Toronto.

Along they way they encounter a mentally deranged woman who tries to assault them. Ben takes a liking to her and calls her "Killey". It's not a very flattering portrayal of the mentally ill, and also the fact that Ben, a lonely nerd, effectively grooms this woman who doesn't seem completely in her faculties is all kinds of ick.

At the centre of the entire story is a series of random images that flashes on screens, subliminal messaging from a strange figure who plays into the final act, where we learn about what's actually happening and why.

S.O.S. is meant as a comedy, but is rarely ever funny. The character portrayals are incredibly thin, with Ben being kind of oblivious and id-drive while Steven is the worrier who just wants to get in touch with his mum. 

The film does manage to effectivley capture, at least visually, the sense of emptiness with nobody else around, but emotionally you never truly feel it. I can only imagine what this would look like as a Pegg-Frost-Wright joint, which this is clearly a pale shadow of.

The ideas are definitely there, and it's decently well acted, but the characters, the adventure, the humour are all very much lacking.

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A  Light Toast to HallmarKent: Three Wisest Men

The Draw: Three Wise Men and A Baby was a goddamn delight. The casting of Hallmark superstars Andrew Walker, Paul Campbell and Tyler Hynes as brothers in a legit comedy was inspired. The sequel was diminishing returns, but still the leads made it more than worth the while. A third entry was going to be the "must watch" of the season, because even if it was lesser-than what came before, there was no doubt it would still be a joy to watch these three men perform together.

HERstory: Mom (Margaret Collins) is selling the house! Taylor (Hynes) has been given a job offer...in San Francisco... and his ex Fiona (Ali Liebert) is there too. Mom selling the house means he has to move anyway, but he's having commitment issues with current girlfriend Caroline (Erin Karpluck). Stephan's (Campbell) indecisiveness is getting in the way of marriage preparations with Susie (Fiona Vroom), and their house springs a leak just as Fiona's dad (Lochlyn Munro) comes to visit. Luke (Walker) is expecting twins (well actually it's Sophie [Nicole Major] expecting twins but Sophie's always been such a non-entity in these movies) and Thomas is getting jealous and acting out. Um, they're all staying at Mom's for one last Christmas in the home and it gets tense. Hijinks ensue.

The Formulae: Oh cripes...there's really none? Even the "getting a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve" trope is brought up but skipped over. There's no snowball fights, no cookie baking montage, and no overt propaganda for Big Hot Chocolate.

Unformulae: At one point the three boys, each in the midst of their own personal dilemmas, sit down to have a drink...and they're drinking beers, not hots cider or cocoa. This, unlike other Hallmarkies (not even the Evergreen movies), is very invested in its franchise and brings characters back from previous movies. Unlike the first sequel, it avoids callback-as-comedy which is great. This also steals a sub-plot from other movies like Jingle All The Way where Thomas wants a popular toy for Christmas but it's hard to get, so the boys go to extremes to get it. Where that could have been a whole movie, it's just a 10-minute aside.

True Calling? Who cares at this point, it fits the series, and it's more eloquent than the clumsy Three Wiser Men and a Boy.

The Rewind: There's an early sequence in the film where Luke and Sophie are at Lamaze class for parents expecting twins (or more) and the instructor is in the midst of a meltdown, providing no reassurance for the attendees as to what life will be like with multiple babies. As she starts bemoaning her husband's own mental breakdown, there's a brilliant smash-cut to "Tom" on his knees with three babies strapped to him like a baby bandolier.  

The Regulars: They're all regulars at this point, if not of Hallmark, then at least of the series.

How does it Hallmark? Because it's the third in a series, it's kind of way outside the usual parameters of a Hallmarkie. Where the first was still infused with holiday romance, because each of the brothers was single and they meet someone, and at least the second one hat Tayler meet cute-ing the awesome Caroline, this one has no romance at all. There's the hint of complication with Fiona (Taylor's love interest from the first) but the film doesn't play it out. So with that, and not leaning into any of the usual holiday tropes, it's not very Hallmarkie.

How does it movie? It remains a joy to see these three leads together. But this should have been a six- or eight-episode half hour sitcom. There's too much going on and not enough time for the movie to explore it all, and the shenanigans they get themselves into together feel disconnected from their individual story arcs.

The Taylor love triangle never pans out. Luke's anxiety over becoming a dad of twins isn't adequately explored. Stephan's Meet The Parents anxiety is the most underwhelming sub-plot, but make this a sitcom, give these stories room to breathe for both emotion and comedy and I think it would have been solid gold, rather than tarnished silver in need of a good buffing.

How Does It Snow? There's less than 60 seconds of outdoors in this movie, and what little outdoors we see are establishing shots of real winter scenes, or backgrounds where they've tufted some batting to make it look like snow around the edges. 

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Keller Christmas Vacation

The Draw: Brandon Routh makes his triumphant return to Hallmark movies in a non-cat-centric movie this time. I'm here for it.

HERstory: The Keller kids are joining their parents on an Austrian riverboat cruise visiting the best Christmas markets in the world. College football team manager Cal (Routh) just lost out on what he thought was the love of his life. Construction executive Dylan (Jonathan Bennett) needs a break from his boyfriend (William) after his proposal is met with a "this is not the right time". Data analyst Emory (Eden Sher) has just been laid off. So they each are coming to the trip with baggage. But when a kindly grampa introduces Cal to his comely granddaughter Felicity (Jill Winternitz), and the ship's events coordinator takes a shine to plucky Emory, and William decides to join the family trip anyway. Mom and dad have a secret they need to share. It's all, well, it's a trip full of family bonding and romance. 

The Formulae: There is a scene where Emory and her bestie talk while decorating a Christmas tree. There's a gingerbread house making contest on the boat.

Unformulae: The film's opening credits play over a photo album that features the main family cast in different locales at different ages which is, I'm sure, all AI generated. The photos are too clean to be Hallmark's usual sloppy photoshopping. Strauss' "Waltz on the Beautiful Blue Danube" plays overhead, a touch of class over the AI tarnish.

Hallmark rarely springs for location shooting, and here they have a riverboat as a main set, they have beautiful Austrian cities and markets as backdrops, there's a rustic converted barn that's an ale house and lodge, and the kids have to take "Hansi" (a motorbike with a side car) through the hillsides to catch their boat after missing it the previous night.  Actual production values and wild, non-Canadian locations are so exciting and rare in Hallmarkies.

True Calling? They are Kellers, and they have a Christmas vacation.

The Rewind: So, Felicity is introduced to Cal by her grandfather and these two very attractive people take one look at each other and say "huh...not right now". Felicity is recently divorced, and Cal has some thinking to do. But they keep talking to one another, not flirting, just being friendly. But then in the Vienna market, Cal starts getting hit on by a pretty Austrian lady who is entranced by this American and Fiona, even though she has said she's *not interested* totally cock blocks him. "I love being rescued from an adorable Austrian who is totally flirting with me, especially when it's by a super-cute American whom I'm not allowed to flirt with." But in the scene right after that, the leering glare of the Austrian in the background...oh, the daggers her eyes are throwing.

The Regulars: Bennett is Hallmark royalty, Routh has a few of these under his belt, but this is Sher's first, but probably not last (she's got serious Lacey Chabert vibes, so it seems like they're seeding her). Winternitz's only prior is "Christmas in Scotlan", while handsome and charming Anand Desai-Barochia is a first timer as Bennett's boyfriend, but he's so sultry on screen without even trying (their kiss is great). Mom and Dad (Laurel Lefkow and Nigel Whitmey) are new to the genre, which is surprising given how the parent roles are usually where you find the most veteran of Hallmarkie actors. Beyond our leads, I think most of the performers here are regional hires.

How does it Hallmark? It's a top notch Hallmarkie, not defying the standards of a Hallmarkie too much while still offering something heartfelt and Christmassy. It's charming and funny with some sweet moments and a few pretty decent romantic moments.

How does it movie? As a Hallmarkie it's on a much grander scale than most, but even at that scale it's still shot like a Hallmarkie, and as well as it's acted, I don't think anyone could confuse this cast for a movie-movie. I mean Jonathan Bennett's hammy physical comedy and over-the-top snoring immediately take it out of contention for actual movie movie.

How Does It Snow? REAL SNOW! And LOTS OF IT!......

KWIF: six films for sick days

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Laid up on the couch with a fever and a stuffed-up head for a few days meant I had plenty of time to start picking away at the list of saved movies on my cable box and some other things of interest, including saying goodbye to a legend.

This Week:
After the Thin Man (1936, d. W.S.Van Dyke - dvd)
Southland Tales (2006, d. Richard Kelly - hollywoodsuite)
American Graffiti (1975, d. George Lucas - hollywoodsuite)
Get On Up (2014, d. Tate Taylor - hollywoodsuite) 
Rainbow (1996, d. Bob Hoskins - tubi)
Three Days of the Condor (1973, d. Sydney Pollack - rental)

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I have a collector's brain. It wants complete sets, whether it's a full line of action figures, the entire run of a comic, the complete discography of an artist, or seeing every film in a series, my brain demands satisfaction, and if I don't satisfy it, a little worm wiggles around in the back of my brain until I do. I've got a lot of worms in my brain. I've learned to tune out the noise they make as they multiply.

After watching The Thin Man last week, a new worm found its way in, and started wriggling frantically. Knowing there was more of Nick and Nora out there to consume perhaps created the fever that bred in me this week. Perhaps I thought acquiring the DVDs of all five sequels and watching the first of them would be enough to relieve the fever, but apparently not.

Picking up where The Thin Man left off, Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) return to San Francisco, where Nora is immediately beseeched by her cousin, Selma to come over to a dinner party, and to bring Nick, she is in need of help. Nick is reluctant, because Selma lives with Nora's battle axe of an aunt who really dislikes him and is not shy about sharing.  It turns out Selma's dirtbag husband Robert has run off, again, and there's no telling where. Selma in the meantime takes solace in the companionship of her ex-boyfriend David (Jimmy Stewart). 

It takes Nick virtually no time at all to stumbled across Robert at a Chinese nightclub, where he and Nora are very quickly thrust into the mix of intertwining lives and conflicts. The club's chanteuse is having an affair with David while she's also in an entanglement with the club owner. The owner has just beat up and kicked out her brother who was trying to extort money out of her. They learned that David offered Robert twenty thousand dollars to leave Selma and San Francisco and never come back. Robert, much to David's chagrin, pays one last visit to Selma, mainly to steal her jewels. As Robert takes off into the night many players are in witness although Selma is the only one seen with a gun in her hand when Robert is shot and killed.

In acquiring the full set of Thin Man movies I had my worries about the series not maintaining its roots as a screwball comedy merged with noir thriller. The opening moments of After the Thin Man did little to assuage that concern as the formerly rat-a-tat dialogue became more stilted, less easy, less flowing. There's still a lot of comedic punch to what is there but it doesn't sing musically like the first film.  

At a certain early point, with Nick and Nora's return to their home, I thought we may be instead heading into, like, sitcom territory. There's an absolutely bonkers moment where their dog, Asta, spies his kennel where lives Mrs. Asta and their little Wire Fox Terrier puppies...except out of the house toddles a little black Scottie puppy and Asta is perplexed, until an adult black Scottie crawls through a hole under the fence only for an outraged Asta to charge at him. For some reason this little domestic quarrel rears its head again one more time in the film.

But the mystery comes into play (outlined by Nick and Nora's creator Dashiell Hammett) and I was delighted by how intricately woven it was. Though Nick reluctantly takes up the case, he's also partnered up with the easily frustrated Lt. Abrams (Sam Levene). Abrams in Levene's hands is a great character who isn't a hapless detective, nor is he the usual police bully of noir films, but somewhere in between. He's trying to conduct a legit investigation but he's also easily flustered, where Nick is always too soused to let anything truly rile him.

Nora is more intricately involved in the plot of this one, and I absolutely delight in watching Myrna Loy get wide-eyed and enthralled by something. She is captivating. Nick does sideline her (again) at one point and it's so unfortunate how the chauvinism of the era dulls the edge of an otherwise sharp pairing. Splitting Nick and Nora up in these films is a mistake when everything is much more vibrant and lively with Nora on screen.

The film ends with Nora pregnant and the cover of the DVD for Another Thin Man shows Nick and Nora with a baby... which bodes ill if the history of sitcoms has any bearing here.

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Richard Kelly's debut feature, Donnie Darko, was not an enormous success when it premiered in theatres, but by the time it made its way to home video, it had already reached cult classic status. It became a dvd and cable classic in short order, and cemented Kelly as an talent to watch.

A half decade later, Kelly returned with Southland Tales, a multimedia sci-fi dystopian epic dealing with the post-9-11 trauma, and a prescient, bitter awareness of Republican tactics for swaying a nation to give up their liberties in favour of security and fascism. If you oppose the Republicans in any way, you're a terrorist.

It is an ambitious movie, the kind of blank check swing directors don't really get anymore after having a solid indie hit. Now they just get subsumed into the "franchise" circuit, whether it's Marvel, Sony, Jurassic Park...whatever. But maybe it's because of Southland Tales and its miserable (less than one million dollars) box office take that these young directors need to prove themselves with more than just one film.

In perhaps its only nod to Star Wars, Kelly opens his film as "Chapter 4", implying that more came before, and more is to come (there were three graphic novel prequel chapters, and this film is comprised of three chapters). 

Through intense channel surfing of info-dense TV screens as well as info-dumping voice over from Justin Timberlake's character, we learn that the world has escalated into a seemingly never-ending war over oil in the middle east. As a result of their instigation of these wars, the U.S. has been cut off from outside oil and their reserves are depleting. But a billionaire industrialist (Wallace Shawn) has developed a new technology based on ocean currents that will generate limitless energy transmitted as a signal across the globe.  

Unfortunately this new technology has unforseen consequences which is what drives the film, at least in the background until deep into its third(/sixth) chapter.

It tries to center itself around the story of famous actor, Boxer Santaros, (Dwayne Johnson) and husband to a Texas Republican Senator's daughter (Mandy Moore). Boxer, however, went missing and his disappearance has caused a huge stir. He turns up in L.A. in the grips of the Neo-Marxists, a terrorist organization opposed to the US-IDENT technology that will control people's access to the internet and, well, everything. Boxer has amnesia and has found a new romance with porn star/aspiring mogul Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar).

The Neo-Marxists also have in their possession Officer Roland Taverner and his twin brother. They have conscripted the brother into impersonating Roland, bringing Boxer for a ride-along where "Roland" will act very racist and then unprovoked shoot and kill a mixed-race couple having a domestic dispute (all staged for Boxer's camera). The idea, I think, is to use the footage to incite people against the police and to damage Boxer's reputation and by proxy his Republican family.

I dunno. At a certain point the machinations of the various characters and factions and split personalities and dual identities all get too convoluted to track. This is a busy, busy movie, and I suspect, even at 144 minutes was heavily edited down from the full length Kelly wanted to make. The third act/sixth chapter seems like it takes a jump from where the fifth chapter left off, and barrels into heavy exposition mode trying to tie all the nonsense together.

Southland Tales is a wildly bizarre movie, one that has aspirations of being a weighty and important metaphor, while also considering itself a form of satire or comedy. Stacking the cast with Saturday Night Live alumnae, and having the film's big bad be Wallace Shawn certainly tips its hat that it's trying for something...I don't think Moby, who made the score, got the message though, and his drowning electronic soundtrack makes everything feel ominous at all times...except when it pauses for a musical number. 

It seems like Kelly's going for Vonnegut vibes, Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse Five but with the dreamlike surrealism of Lynch (Kelly does get Rebekah Del Rio to perform a soulful, part-Spanish rendition of the US National Anthem, much in the vein of her rendition of "Cryin'" seen in Mulholland Drive). The only problem is Kelly has neither the wit or sharpness or storytelling acumen of either Vonnegut or Lynch, so it comes off as an amateur imitation of both.

I can talk shit about this movie and how much it doesn't work, and how much it feels like a poseur, but in the end I was fascinated by it. I haven't seen Megalopolis yet, but I feel like they're sibling disasters of directorial hubris, films of men with something to say but no clarity on how to say it.

I'm probably going to watch this again at some point. There is so much going on that it would definitely reward rewatching (and tracking down those graphic novels), even if it never finds the competency it needs.  Kelly would make one more feature, The Box a few years later, and has not been able to get another production off the ground in more than a decade. The spectre of this ambitious failure I think still haunts him.

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George Lucas as the creator of Star Wars, founder of Lucasfilm, Lucasarts, Industrial Light and Magic and Skywalker Sound, has meant a lot to the world of film, and to me personally for the past 50 years.  He's a visionary, and an admirable businessman (especially in an age where that's very much not the case) if not necessarily the most revered of directors. 

Lucas' problem as a director, as made most evident by the "Prequel Trilogy" of Star Wars films, is that he's more interested in technology and visuals than performance, very much to a fault. At a certain point he decided that everything could be fixed in the edit, somehow forgetting that performance is in the moment and cannot be adjusted (much) after the fact.

Of his films I'd obviously watched all of Star Wars, and I've dipped into THX-1138 a few times, a real classic "vibes movie". I've avoided, for some time, American Graffiti due mainly to lack of interest in the car culture or teen culture of the 50's and 60's. And surely what could possibly be enticing about a George Lucas film without special effects and sci-fi themes?

As much as I get no Star Wars out of American Graffiti, I do get dozens upon dozens of other things. The teen sex comedy/dramedy seems borne out of this, and the archetypes of the older rebel who can't let go of the glory of his high school days or the nerdy wimpy kid who goes on a big adventure all seem to spill out of here. The opening credits over the imagery of Mel's Diner and "Rock Around the Clock" playing spill into so much TV content of the 1970's...Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Alice... it's surprising Lucas isn't a producer on all those shows for all they owe to this film.  

But at the same time it's clear that, much like he did with Star Wars, Lucas is leaning on reference, the most obvious being James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and The Last Picture Show. 

It's a "one crazy night" kind of movie, though more dramatic than funny. It follows two high school graduates, Curt (Richard Dreyfus) and Steve (Ron Howard) on their last night in town before flying off to college on the east coast, 3000 miles away. Curt is having cold feet on the whole endeavour while Steve's looking forward to a whole new, liberated college life. Steve gives his nerdy pal Toad (Charles Martin Smith) his car to look after in his absence, and they look to their studly drag racing pal Milner (Paul Le Mat) more as a warning sign than an aspiration, as he's still cruising for high school chicks despite being in his 20s.

The film splits everyone up into their own adventures. Steve's is the most tedious, as he asks his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams) to open up their relationship while he's gone, and so their whole evening is fraught with their conflict as well as their obvious connection (or co-dependency?). 

Curt's journey is more meandering, as he winds up in multiple places, including facing off against the local street gang, but ending up in their good graces. It's the story that I had the most difficulty with because the script never tells you who Curt is or what he wants, but it's kind of the point because Curt doesn't know who he is or what he wants. His journey has him exploring a lot of different angles, some great, some not so much.

Toad/Terry's story is the cliche or the hapless nerd with the black cloud hanging over his head, hoping just once to bask in the ray of sunshine. Being gifted Steve's car, Toad immediately takes to cruising, and actually manages to get a girl off the street into his car, mostly by being sweet, even if his horny teenage mind is thinking anything but. Adventure finds him and Debbie (Candy Clarke) as they seek out booze, make out, get the car stolen, try to steal the car back all while Terry tries to pretend to be someone he's clearly not, and Debbie seeing through it all to who he really is and kinda being into it. It's cliche, but it kinda works when Terry gets that ray of sunshine at the end.

The best subplot of the film find John Milner, the fastest cat in town, saddled with a 14-year-old riding shotgun. The dynamic between Milner and Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) is antagonistic, and all Milner wants to do is dump this girl on the side of the street and go cruising, whether for girls or for a race (especially when he hears there a new challenger in town, played by Harrison Ford). But, surprisingly, for all his greaser hair and tough guy exterior, Milner has a big compassionate heart and he takes a shining to this spritely kid. Mercifully it never turns into anything untoward between either of them, it's just fun and playful in a big brother/little sister kind of way and you can imagine these two just being best of platonic friends if not for the era (or the film's bummer of a coda.)

As a dad who has (and has had) teenage kids, I see the Gulf of difference in the activities of kids these days versus my years as a teen, and I can see the huge difference between my teenage and those in the 50's. And those differences feel not just unfamiliar, but almost alien. The gender roles and expectations are the biggest hurdle to surmount, but also just the car and cruising culture, the dance and music, the hangout culture, it's all so foreign.  So in a way, this film is a bit of an archive, a slice. It's not universal, and yeah, it's full of cliche, but it certainly captures something that really doesn't exist anymore... and that's Lucas' capacity to get good performances out of actors (zing!).

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This past week on the Nebula service, film essayist Patrick Willems dropped his latest video about a new age of musical biopic, mostly based around his love of the 2024 Robbie Williams biopic Better Man but also a few other recent examples. He contrasts these against the routine biopics of the 2000s and 2010s, and cites Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story lampooning the formulae as being responsible for killing it. But Walk Hard's failure at the box office resulted in the Christ-like resurrection of the music biopic formulae, the result of which was multiple Oscars for the abominable Bohemian Rhapsody. (If you want to watch Patrick's essay now, ad free, you can sign up for Nebula or wait a few weeks and watch it on Patrick's youtube channel).

It was with this in mind that I pressed play on the James Brown biopic Get On Up. It is everything you expect a music biopic to be, and delivers on all the cliches you would expect. But even clocking in at whopping 139 minutes, it's still hardly long enough to do justice to James Brown's entire life, a life full of highlights and lowlights at every age.

It is your typical vignette-heavy biopic that director Tate Taylor (The Help) and editor Michael McCusker try to spice up by telling in a non-linear fashion. It helps distract from the formulaicness, but only a little, and only for so long. And in its jumping around between time periods, the editing only serves to highlight just how unfocussed the story is they have to tell.

The saving grace for the picture is clearly Chadwick Boseman (RIP King). Boseman was a goddamn supernova, he burned so brightly and then he was gone. But man, when he burned could you feel the heat. He developed a James Brown affectation that he settles into comfortably in the film, he adopts the physicality, the ego, the strengths and weaknesses of the man, all while still shimmering loudly as Chadwick Boseman. I don't know if I ever got over the fact that he's a good half-foot taller than James Brown in heels, and so the amount of people who have to look up to Boseman as J.B. always feels wrong somehow, but it never diminishes the impact of his performance.

The third act finds a purpose beyond just history lesson or highlight reel, it settles into the idea of James Brown as a man alone, a man who puts up walls and barriers between himself and others, and man who put himself so high up on a pedestal he couldn't find his way down to retain friendships or partnerships or relationships.  The through line should have been there throughout the whole movie, centered around his partnership with Bobby Byrd who was his right-hand-man on stage and best friend off stage for decades, until, one day, he wasn't.  The final sequence of the film finds J.B. singing acoustically directly to Bobby in the audience, telling him that he loves him and needs him and misses him through song, because he's only able to express emotions from the pedestal. It's pretty powerful, but it would have been even more powerful if the film had solely focused on that partnership, or told James Brown's story though the eyes of Bobby Byrd from the outside. But this is a production that couldn't truly thing outside of the genre's storytelling conventions.

At times it tries something different, like the half dozen (or less) time Boseman-as-J.B. addresses the audience directly, right down the barrel of the camera. There was something there as well, an alternate path, a glimmer of inspiration of what could have been had we had Boseman breaking the fourth wall throughout the picture, on the regular, giving us insight into the man's mind (which, it seems pretty clear, the scriptwriter and director barely have a handle on, and only Boseman in performing him even gets in proximity of what was really driving James Brown).

It's not a bad movie, but not a great one either, but there's a wonderful one just lurking in the shadows.

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For some reason renowned character actor (and sometimes leading man) Bob Hoskins found himself behind the camera in Montreal in 1995 shooting a children's film that has the distinction of being the first ever production to be fully shot digitally.

If you have any experience with Canadian television of the 1980's and 90's, then you will recognize the aesthetic of this production... unpolished, to put it kindly. For some reason Canadian television always looked very distinct from American TV, far less glossy and polished, the lighting, sets, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and even actors were all less pretty, glamorous, sophisticated. Canadian television did not have the same budgets, and so the same technical gear was not employed, and the craftspersons were used to focusing on fast and cheap over quality. So it's no surprise that an inexperienced director like Hoskins coming to shoot in Canada would rely on his Canadian crew to see him through the execution of this project, especially when it's pretty clear he had no real vision for it himself.

The story is set in New Jersey, where Mikey, along with his two school chums and his older brother Steve (Jacob Tierney, Letterkenny), finds the end of a rainbow, and is transported to the cornfields of rural Kansas. They discover the local farmhouse and are taken to the local Sherriff (Dan Ackroyd in full ham) who wants to put them on a plane home. For some reason the kids don't want to go home and so there's weird airport hijinks as they try to elude their police escort.  The one kid's mom works for the news and they catch wind of the kid's story and there's a crazy media blitz upon their return home, except everyone thinks they stowed away on a plane. Only their science teacher (Saul Rubinek) doubts the official story when he sees the photos the kids took inside the rainbow.

Unbeknownst to anyone but Steve, Steve took golden orbs from the rainbow, so that he could sell them for cash to buy a motorcycle to impress the tough girl he has a crush on. What he doesn't know is that stealing from the rainbow has broken the colour pallette on Earth and ushered in a doomsday scenario. People are going mad as the world desaturated of colour, and violence raises to calamitous proportions. Everyone's mean to each other. Steve tells his mom after being grounded "No wonder Dad left you" and she slaps him. Real greasy stuff.

It's up to the plucky band of kids and adults to figure out the solution to saving the world, and Mikey to take the ultimate trip on the rainbow in order to restore things to normal.

It's a really poorly executed movie overall, lacking any real sense of adventure. Its a film with only a few simplistic ideas to fuel it and it's completely hamstrung by talent and budget despite some actual talent involved. Its swearing and dark-turn third act keep it out of TVOntario rotation where it should otherwise have a home, but if The Asylum had a kid's sub-label, it would fit right in there.

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Robert Redford has never been my guy, because, well, I grew up being a sci-fi/superhero kid and my trigger for being a semi-cinephile were the works of new talents in the 1990s. Redford didn't fit much into this band of viewing. And yet, even having only ever seen five of his acting roles and one of his directorial efforts, I've always liked the man, even though I couldn't tell you exactly why. Since he passed away this past week, there have been plenty of tributes out there that explain why...he cared a lot about film, about the environment, about people and politics, which showed in his work, as did his seemingly effortless charm. While he remained an attractive man even in his golden years, he was devastatingly handsome in his prime.

If ever I was going to start somewhere with Redford's filmography, the first stop of course would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the second stop would be Three Days of the Condor...because next to superheroes and sci-fi, I like the spy stuff.

In Three Days... (based off the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady) Redford plays Joe Turner, a reader for the CIA, a devout bookworm whose job it is to look for secret codes and messages in print. When we meet him he's riding an underpowered scooter through New York, holding up traffic (using the coding from American Graffiti, Toad rides a scooter, therefore scooters are for nerds). He's late to work, but when he arrives he walks in like he owns the place and knows everything about everything. He's very handsome and he's very smart and he flaunts both, but instinctively, not intentionally. 

When Joe heads out to collect lunch for the team, a group of trained killers raid the office, murdering everyone. It's clear they have a specific objective, which is to clean house, as they ask no questions. Joe returns and discovers the scene, his coworkers (including his lover) are all dead. Moving past his grief, his logic kicks in and he knows he needs to be careful. He leaves, finds a pay phone and calls it in. He's given a rendez-vous and the CIA find a friend he can trust to meet him, but his distrust of the whole situation leads to caution, and he very quickly learns it's all a set-up. He has no familiar place to go where they can't find him, so his only choice is to find a safe haven with a stranger.

At random, one of the most handsome men in New York winds up picking one of the most beautiful women in New York, photographer Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway) to hold up at gunpoint and hitch a ride out to her Brooklyn Heights basement apartment (we don't see basement apartments in film very often). Joe is desperate and not incredibly sympathetic towards the situation he's put Kathy in. In his mind he's being utterly logical and his actions are justified. He tells Kathy the situation, but in a manner more to work through it for himself rather than to get her on his side. He doesn't really think much of her at all.

Kathy, for her part, was just out buying stuff for a ski-retreat with her boyfriend. When she doesn't show up, the boyfriend calls and the conversation is tense, not just because Joe is holding her at gunpoint to keep it casual, but because Kathy has a pattern of behaviour with him, signifying she's just not that into the relationship.  We never, truly understand Kathy's motivation for suddenly being on Joe's side. He's upended her life, held her up at gunpoint, tied her up, stolen her truck...but at a certain point she's just in it. Stockholm syndrome, perhaps. Or she's just so frustrated with her life that she's kind of happy someone's come along to usurp it. Or maybe it's just the Joe is played by 39-year-old Robert Redford and is just delicious. Or there's the moment where Joe is looking at her photographs, and in the way he looks at them he sees her like no one has before.  There's a bevvy of explanations, none of which are obvious on screen, but I guess she sees a desperate, intelligent, sensitive, hurting man who she wants to help, so they have one of the worst sex scenes committed to screen and then she helps him get a leg up on the men who are after him.

Beyond the perplexing romantic entanglement, Three Days of the Condor is a taut and propulsive thriller that, once set into gear, doesn't really stop til its final freeze frame. The most intriguing espionage thrillers are the ones where the story's protagonist (and therefore the audience) doesn't ever fully understand the game they are playing, and this is one of the best examples of that. Even when Joe thinks he's got it all figured out, it's clear there's still more going on than he knows. It's the source of the film's excellent tension, and the film's ambiguous ending provides little actual relief for our title character, leaving it to the audience to wonder what kind of life Joe will lead from this point forward, and for how long.

Not a perfect movie, but a classic nonetheless. Redford carries the picture on his shoulders with ease, and conveys Joe's hyperintelligence so nimbly it makes you think that Redford is just as smart. This does make me want to watch more Redford, so what should be top of the list?

KWIF: The Thursday Murder Club (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
The Thursday Murder Club (2025, d. Chris Columbus - netflix)
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001, d. Joel [and Ethan] Coen - dvd)
The Thin Man (1934, d. W.S. Van Dyke - dvd)

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Adapted from the novel of the same name written by British media personality Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club is a star-studded story of sleuthing senior citizens.

All alliteration aside [ahh, apologies] the movie is set in England at Coopers Chase, a retirement community set on the grounds of a converted palatial estate. It's very, very bougie. There, new resident, Joyce (Celia Imrie), finds herself a new set of friends who run a club solving cold cases in the puzzle room on Thursdays.

The club is headed by Elizabeth (Dame Helen Mirren) who used to work for MI6, and also features psychiatrist Ibrahim (Sir Ben Kingsley), and ex-rights activist Ron (Pierce Brosnan), and each member has a particular set of skills to bring to the table the others do not. Joyce, as an ex-nurse, brings with her medical training and knowledge.

No sooner is Joyce revealing in her new friends and the latest cold case then rumblings of discord between the partners who own Coopers Chase start to spread. Ian Ventham (David Tennant) wants to raze the building (which surely has some have some historical protections, no?) and uproot the adjacent graveyard and develop the land. Tony Curran, Ventham's partner, opposes the project as he has a personal stake in keeping Coopers Chase as is. Soon Tony is dead and it's up to the Thursday Murder Club to figure it out, and, hopefully, at the same time, save their home.

Of course, there are real police on the case, DCI Hudson (Daniel Mays) is frequently irritated by the TMC's involvement in his investigation, but they have a plant, having seeded their young friend Donna (Naomi Ackie) as DCI Hudson's partner on the case. 

The film is generally pleasant, with a few amusing polite British chuckles along the way, but in spite of it star power (bright enough to give you a tan) it's about as sharp a mystery as you would find on the Hallmark Channel.  The material is so beneath the performers involved, that every time another recognizable face turned up, like Jonathan Pryce or Richard E Grant or Tom Ellis, I could only exclaim "HOW!?!" 

The sets, particularly the individual apartments, are beautiful, and the costuming is above average (the actors all, largely, look really good...Brosnan still so damn handsome), but it's so brightly lit and devoid of any real ambience that it looks more like a TV pilot than a feature film.

The music is by Thomas Newman, who can be capable of incredible scores, but here seems like he's on autopilot, not challenging himself in the slightest. At times the sounds would recall Finding Nemo, A Serious of Unfortunate Events or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (also directed by Columbus), but mostly would just feel like the defacto plunking one hears in your average Hallmark holiday romance.

I've seen griping online of an American working on a British production bringing American sensibilities to it, which doesn't serve the story, setting or characters well. And, well, their not wrong. I think part of the Hallmarkiness of this outing is that Americans in trying to evoke "British" production style wind up being too earnest, cutesy and puerile. 

I was mildly entertained, but it's not good.

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Ten weeks into rewatching the Coen Brothers' filmography and I'm still learning that I'll never be literate enough (in neither film nor books) to understand where the Coens are drawing all their inspirations from. A lifetime of obsessing over comic books, toys and indie music hasn't left a lot of time to gorge on classic cinema or read a lot of Greek epics or hardboiled detective fiction. So you'll forgive me for not being able to even hazard a guess as to what the Coens are riffing on with The Man Who Wasn't There beyond it's film noir stylings.

Filmed in gorgeous black and white contrast by Roger Deakins and set in post-war anywhere America 1949, The Man Who Wasn't There stars Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, a meek-mannered barber. His wife Doris (Francis McDormand) is cheating on him with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), who she does bookkeeping for at the department store. Ed doesn't seem to mind so much. Doris keeps it pretty descreet.

But when Ed hears from a customer about the future of dry cleaning, and the customer (Jon Polito) needing an investor, Ed, who has kind of fallen into everything in life without really much effort, is ready to take a reach chance, be real proactive. So he blackmails Big Dave with an anonymous letter, threatening to tell his wife (the heiress to the department store business) of the affair, and he will lose everything.

Ed gets the money, but it didn't take much thinking for Big Dave to figure out who was behind it and in the midst of a kerfuffle, Ed kills Big Dave. Unfortunately Doris gets pinched for it. Ed then has to either sit with his guilt or try to exonerate Doris, and he's kind of hapless and ineffective at doing either.

Many a noir finds a hapless bystander getting involved in an intricate plot of murder and/or intrigue, while many other a noir finds a character charging recklessly forward driving the plot through their actions. Ed here is both the instigator and the bystander. In trying just once to do anything proactive in his life, he's set a whole chain of events in motion that he is incapable of stepping in front of to stop it. 

And so, as the story plays out, Ed's sad life just gets sadder. He finds a little joy in the piano playing of his lawyer's daughter (Scarlett Johannson) but once again his efforts to try something proactive backfire spectacularly. (I'll diffuse the tension right now, Ed has no sexual desire for teenage ScarJo, and in fact seems like an asexual character overall, not something much represented on screen and probably a might unintentional on the Coens part).

The Man Who Wasn't There is one of the Coens' longer films, brushing up near 2 hours, and in different lighting and pacing it would be another one of their screwball crime films. As it is, it winds up being one of their most visually striking movies (in a repertoire of visually striking movies), but also probably their most laconic by intention.  It's devotion to exploring a sensationalistic story but through a humdrum character means the film itself emits a bit of a humdrumminess, and yet, that's really its charm.  

I find its exploration of Ed, and his inability to escape his sub-mediocrity (both in life and self), fascinating. He's not a bad person at all, but he's also not a good person. He is the titular man who wasn't there. He floats through life, largely unnoticed, and it's not even that he has desire to be noticed, in fact he seems to prefer not having any attention put on him (like, look how uncomfortable he is with Big Dave trying to be friends with him). This is a film that's so deeply rooted to the ground, that it introduces flying saucer that seems to go to great pains to try to acquire Ed and whisk him away from his drab life into something more exciting, only to decide against it at the last minute a fly off.

The final 20 minutes really is when The Man Who Wasn't There comes to life, with the perfect sour ending that just revels in karma..For some it may be too late, but for me it's the meat of the film, where it goes from being a Coens also-ran to being an also-ran of-note.

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As I just noted, I've not spent much time with "the classics" of cinema. My interests don't usually take me there too often. In my lifetime I doubt if I've ever seen 100 films from before 1950.  I also don't know that I'll rectify that any time soon. I find diving into old films akin to diving into foreign films...there's so much of it out there it's hard to know what is not just good, but worth the effort to sit through filming or scripting styles that may not resonate with me or retain my interest. There's only so much time in a day, in a life, that I can't wade through everything to find the gems.

I also realize that in my reluctance to wade through the unfamiliar that I'm liable to miss out on those gems, and it think my life would be much the poorer for never having gone slack-jawed over Myrna Loy as Nora in The Thin Man. Va-va-va-voom.

I had heard about the "Nick and Nora" series long ago, mostly legendary for it's rapid-fire repartee, but my interests never truly aligned. I underestimate old Hollywood productions, thinking that their entertainment factor is significantly reduced based on the naivete of the times in which they were produced. It's true that people were a lot simpler in the olden times, and my modern, refined, erudite, sophisticant palette is just so above it all. I can fall prey to snobbery at times, and think myself better than others, past or present. I'm not proud.

The Thin Man is based on the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name. Hammett is cited as one of the godfathers of hardboiled detective fiction, but this "comedy of manners" was a real pivot for the writer (in what would ultimately be his last novel).  It's central plot revolves around a missing scientist whose secretary has been murdered, and sussing out whether the scientist was the kill or someone else, especially as additional deaths occur and the cast of suspects piles on.

But it's really not the murder mystery that is the draw here. That would be Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy). Nick is a renowned detective who has retired from the profession since marrying socialite Nora and taking up running her father's businesses. They enjoy drinking immeasurably and the fluidity of their alcohol consumption is only outpaced by their snappy banter. They always have the perfect retort for each other, and, well anyone else. They seem perpetually soused and are the liveliest, most high-functioning alcoholics in the world.

Despite his protestations that he's out of the business of sleuthing, Nora implores him to get involved in the case, because she's never seen him do his legendary work. How could any man resist anything Nora implores of him?

The Thin Man is the very definition of rollicking. The wit and charm assault is relentless, but never exhausting, though it can be hard to keep up with. I'm not sure if there's a modern comparison...it's not a comedy assault machine like, say, 30 Rock, it's much more dialogue-centric. I just can't think of any other film scripted with this density of dialogue so persistently.

The murder mystery is engaging enough, if only because of the characters involved. But there are a few little twists I didn't see coming. If I have any disappointments it's that Nora was sidelined when Nick finally capitulated to actually getting involved... the old chauvanistic (deemed chivalrous at the time) man's work, sparring Nora any unpleasantness. I think here naive exuberance would have made it even more fun and adventurous. Plus I just wanted more Nora.

There's five sequels to dive into, so along with more Coens, expect more Thin Man.

KsMIRT: August wind-up [part 2]

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (or mebbe twice each month?!?) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. 

This (half) Month:
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4 (2024, 5/5 episodes, Netflix)
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, AmazonPrime)
G.I. Joe: Renegades Season 1 (2010, 16/26 episodes, Tubi) 
Time Bandits Season 1 (2024, 2/10 episodes, Apple TV+)
Derry Girls Series 3 (2022, 7/7 episodes, Netflix)

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4

The What 100:  The big pappy of true crime series returns with five new yet-to-be-solved events of a suspicious nature. These include new looks at Jack the Ripper and the mothman (having now migrated from its usual West Virginia stomping grounds to Illinois' Chicago area), as well as a "who did it?" in Calgary, a "whose head is that" in Florida, and a cold case of a murdered college student on campus in the late 1970s.

(1 Great) Having watched many a season of the vintage Robert Stack-led Unsolved Mysteries giving myself many a night terror as a result, I have to say the new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format is pretty great. For the most part, I like how this format frequently teases out the mystery for a good while. The storytelling, the editing is exceptionally good, and as a result a lot of these stories have a stickiness to them that make them hard to easily forget or let go of. I puzzled over "The Body in the Basement", a captivating highlight (and gut wrenching tragedy) for days before my brain settled in on there being no answers to the questions it was asking. Did she fall or was she pushed? If those are her own footprints in her blood, why did she stop short of going upstairs? What happened to her phone? Was the door locked or not? Why were there no paw prints in the blood? So many questions that make no sense.

(1 Good) I like that even though it's using this new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format, it's not just going with murder/death mysteries, but still exploring the paranormal phenomena the original series did with the same documentary-style lens as the other stories. The Jack the Ripper bit was probably the least intriguing because we're no closer to answers than we were two decades ago, but this was all about dispelling myths. "The Mothman Revisted" episode, though, was neat for how it cited the classic Stack episode on the Mothman, but had something definitely new to talk about. The middle episode, as well, neither a murder/death mystery, nor a paranormal mystery, but instead, a found embalmed head and the people trying to identify it. Curious.

(1 Bad) What's missing from this series that the Stack series had was updates. It directs you online for submitting any tips or info on the subjects at hand and for updates, but the old series used to do updates on repeats or in a subsequent episode, if there were updates to be had. There was something very satisfying about them. In this host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format on Netflix, there's not the same space for updates that there was in a 20+ episode season of a weekly TV series. That said, they could drop Unsolved Mysteries updates on Netflix at any time, as part of a season or just stand alone.  I don't know why they haven't unless nothing material has come of any of the cases yet.

META: I don't really do a lot of true crime... I've dipped into a podcast or two, I watch the occasional documentary film or series, but it's not a regular part of my diet. Still, I actively look forward to each "Volume" of Unsolved Mysteries. Something about having a dose of the unresolved in my diet is very stimulating mentally, even if the subject matter is disturbing.  I can't explain it.

... Wait.... there's a podcast?!? And Volume 5 is coming... October 2nd!

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Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1

The What 100: It's a new Batman animated series from the co-creator of Batman: The Animated Series...Bruce Timm. He's backed by The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves as well as J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company. It's a more mature animated series set in a vaguely 1930's/40's noirish reality, and early in Batman's career as a vigilante. The over-arching stories are about district attorney Harvey Dent's fraught campaign for mayor, and corruption in both politics and the legal system.

(1 Great) As jarring as they may be, I absolutely love the swings this series is taking. Actually being set in the 1930's (ish) rather than the "neo-'30's deco-styled modern Gotham" of The Animated Series allows it to establish a very specific tone, that of the hardboiled, noir stories of the era. On top of that it plays fast and loose with established Batman lore. The Penguin who pops up in the first episode is not at all like any Penguin we've seen before, but I think she's incredible. Same with the divergences for Harley Quinn or Gentleman Ghost or Firebug, among others. 

(1 Good) It's a show aimed less at satisfying the comic book geek and instead scratching the pulp origins itch that clearly Timm always had and never shook.  It's aged up in terms of tone, for a cartoon it's happier with the darker corners of its world and emotions. It's not unapproachable for children, but it's not softened for them either. Batman's kind of a dickhead (every time he coldly calls Alfred "Pennyworth" I die inside just a little...but there's that moment of redemption in the finale that shows there's room for character growth in this series). They're also not afraid of finite ends to their stories or characters, so tread lightly with your expectations.

(1 Bad) As much as I understand the series is not much interested in a world of spandex, and that it's creating its villains as if they were out of 30's and 40's cinema, I still desperately want the mythology to flesh itself out. I want hints that Barbara is going to be Batgirl and Renee will become The Question. They're both agents of upholding the law, but they're both becoming more and more aware of how the system fails, and I wonder how long they can keep at it before they become disillusioned and join Batman in his style of justice?

META: If one is doing a new Batman for TV, it either needs to be a bold reset, or a near-continuation of what has come before. Rarely is it ever a near-continuation of what has come before, and bold resets can lead to disgruntled fanboys (is there any other type?). The word on the street for The Caped Crusader (despite the creatives saying otherwise) was that it was a continuation, or maybe a prequel to The Animated Series. It is not. If anything, though, because TAS was so art deco inspired and had that feel of the 1930s, it's almost like this didn't veer far enough away from that aesthetic to fully distinguish itself. I think that's what many fans who may wind up disliking this are feeling. But I dig it.

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G.I. Joe: Renegades

The What 100:  Scarlett recruits Duke, Roadblock, Tunnel Rat and Ripcord on a secret mission to infiltrate Cobra Industries and expose it for what it is, not a multinational manufacturer of diverse goods and services, but a secret military with designs on taking over the world with experimental, illegal technology. Not only do they have their hands in seemingly everyone's pockets, but they have their own 24 hour news network to spread whatever lies and disinformation they want. And so, our heroes, in trying to uncover this new world-class evil, are instead brandished as terrorists and outlaws and are on the run from their very own military employers.

(1 Great) I clued in during the initial two-parter that it seemed kind of A-Team-ish in its construction, and then the third episode rolled out its new opening credits:
"Accused of a crime they didn't commit, a ragtag band of fugitives fights a covert battle to clear their names and expose the insidious enemy that is... Cobra. Some call them outlaws. Some call them heroes. But these determined men and women think of themselves only as 'Ordinary Joes'. And this is their story."

Yah, it's the A-Team all right. Each episode is mostly just the Renegades roll into town, find the townspeople embroiled in something Cobra Industries related and they try to help out or expose it. It's formulae, and it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's pretty great.  

(1 Good) I was genuinely surprised by the episode "Homecoming Part 1" which jumps into flashbacks of the origin of Duke's rivalry with Flint which is some pretty deep character building for ostensibly a kids' cartoon. There's a lot of nuance introduced into their dynamic which then pays off in "Homecoming Part 2" where the Joes are captured by the military, with straight-laced, by-the-book Flint maybe seeing a crack in his worldview.

(1 Bad) I do get why this didn't resonate with Joe fans. Despite being exceptionally well animated, it's too divergent from the core G.I. Joe idea, that of a highly trained special mission force who are in an open battle against terrorist organization Cobra. The silent war of Renegades is so 2010, of anti-capitalism, and illicit behind-the-scenes dealings, of there being forces in the world so large that nothing will change in the way the world works unless they decide it should change... it's heavy shit, and G.I. Joe isn't really that known for its heavy shit.  Plus, like Batman: The Caped Crusader all of the characters are some type of reinvention of their previous incarnations. Snow Job, Shipwreck, Dr. Mindbender, all of them, with the exception of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (again with this ninja shit) seem pretty vastly different from how they've been portrayed elsewhere. It's hard to just sit back and enjoy it, and not want it to just get over its "on-the-run" business and become outright Joes vs. Cobra.

META: It's G.I. Joe, but the A-Team! It seems incredible to me - the me of 2024 - that any regular series would so blatantly rip off the formulae of an old TV series (uh, like Poker Face did Columbo?) but a cursory look at 2010 and yeah, the Liam Neeson-led A-Team movie had just hit, and I think this was made in parallel production. I bet that they had banked on the A-Team movie being a massive success (where the first G.I. Joe live action movie truly wasn't) and they would look like geniuses for reformulating G.I. Joe in that manner. But the A-Team failed (not dismally, but not inspiring a whole new generation of A-Team obsessed kids) and so did Renegades. Even the long-running G.I. Joe action figure line produced a wave or two of figures styled after this cartoon (pretty great looking figures) but failed to ignite much fervour (much of it went on clearance, though they've since become pretty collectible). I'm just picking off episodes here and there, but I will definitely complete it (and probably be sad there isn't more when I'm done).

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Time Bandits Season 1

The What 100: A reimagining of the 1981 Terry Gilliam film by Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris. Young, talkative, nerdy Kevin is 10 years old and not very well liked by anyone. He's bullied at school and by his sister, and his parents, obsessed with their phones, don't understand why their unusual, curious, intelligent child isn't into "normal" stuff. When a  troupe of time traveling thieves with a stolen time map use his bedroom as a passageway, he finds himself swept up in their journey, much to the chagrin of the Bandits.

(1 Great) The show, by and large, looks pretty good. There are some interesting sequences, displays of effects (both practical and digital) that are quite eye catching or stimulating.

(1 Good) Jemaine Clement plays a ruler of demons, a sort of devil, one might say, that is very interested in the bandits and their time map. The scenes of Clement in his ample prosthetic make-up and the absurd hellscape sets he's in are pretty imaginative.

(1 Bad) We only made it two episodes in.  Both episodes were written by Clement, Morris and Waititi with Waititi directing. We have ample love for Waititi and Clement, both individually and together Lady Kent and I do, and yet this did not work at all for either of us. There were a few chuckles but no real laughs, there was a twinge of interest, a glimmer of adventure, but most of it fell flat. Kevin is supposed to be annoying and young Kal-El Tuck really gets it, but there's too much of this riding on his nascent shoulders. The leaderless bandits are led by Lisa Kudrow's put-upon Penelope, but it's Kudrow's sense of smart-idiot quirk that doesn't jibe well with the sensibilities of Waititi and Clement as I know them.  Unlike Our Flag Means Death or What We Do In The Shadows, the writers and performers do not give their individual bandits enough unique character or charisma to stand out. They are a unit that all seem to behave much the same way, they're not very fun.  

META: I have only seen Gilliam's Time Bandits once as an adult, and it didn't resonate with me. At this point it's a vague memory. I more recently read the Marvel comics adaptation (like maybe last year even) and I can't remember that at all. Perhaps it's the property that doesn't work for me.  But specifically here, I look at the repartee of Our Flag... or The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin and there's a template there for these types of characters and how to make them funny and subversive and for some reason these very talented creators just couldn't figure it out.  But is it the writing, or the casting? I'm not sure any of the bandits besides Kudrow stands out, and she stands out for the wrong reason. It just doesn't work and I'm feeling completely uninspired to return to it.

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Derry Girls Series 3

The What 100: One final go for the girls from Derry, their families, and Sister George Michael. As The Troubles reach their revolutionary turning point in the mid-1990s, the girls come of age, ready to graduate and it seems all of Ireland is ready to move on to the next moments of their lives.

(1 Great) The best episode of the series is "The Reunion" which finds the moms and aunties and their friends reuniting for their high school reunion. This leads to all the old anxieties, hurt feelings, and pubescent emotions rushing back, with long buried secrets trying to crawl out of their grave and embarrass everyone. It's an episode replete with flashbacks of the women in their younger years of the late-70's with the obvious parallels to the main young cast of Derry Girls providing the most rewarding threads (especially considering that Mary used to behave exactly like Erin does and yet she comes down on her so hard for it). The whole long-buried (literally) secret is a great through line and provides a little mystery to unfold to really suck in the audience. It's a wonderfully crafted, hilarious episode.

(1 Good) After two highly, highly successful seasons, Series 3 seems to break out of its small-scale shell and go much, much bigger with every episode. It's almost like a different show, the scale of production seems that much larger, and the writing that much better at balancing the adventures of the young cast and their parents, grandparents and teachers such that it doesn't just feel like a teen comedy anymore.  In some ways it could be seen as a betrayal of what was established before, but in other ways it feels like it's finally coming into itself, somewhat unfettered by its previous limitations. Most of the episodes this season take place on location, whether it's another town, or on a train, or at a police precinct with Liam Neeson in charge.  My initial impulse is to bristle a things like appearances by Neeson or Fatboy Slim, but they're really just damn good fun.

(1 Bad)  Episode six finds the teens trying to get tickets to a Fatboy Slim concert being held in town. When they come up in the line to buy tickets, Clare has a meet-cute with the ticket girl, except they are the last tickets available. The street toughs behind them aren't pleased and accuse them of jumping the queue and then want to fight James for the tickets. Things take a turn, and later Michelle goes on a sob-story-leads-to-wish-giving TV program and lies about James getting beaten up and their tickets being stolen. This leads to the Girls being VIPs for the concert but Clare the whole time is just fixated on meeting up with the ticket girl. The Girls have another encounter with the street toughs, while Clare makes out with ticket girl, and they get thrown out, yet it's still pretty triumphant overall. A rollicking episode. Except Clare's dad dies and it ends with her big gay triumph undercut by weepy memorial for her Da.  Why? What does this serve, like, at all? Did we ever even meet Clare's dad in the series? Why decimate this triumphant moment for her like this? Even if it's something true from the creator or staff writer's lives, there's no time in this show for this rapid mood swing in the storytelling. It's the most bizarre creative moment of the series and leaves a real bad taste for the penultimate episode.

META: As I mentioned when I last wrote about this show, each series is too short. Even at 7 episodes it's not nearly enough. There's only a total of 19 episode in the entire run. There's something to be said about not milking a premise or quitting whilst one is ahead, but when you have this great of a setup there's so many possibilities for storytelling. I feel like they barely scratched the surface and we barely got to know these characters. Their growth from series to series seemed so spontaneous.  And it's not like you can just do a revival, since these performer are only getting older (Saoirse-Monica Jackson in The Decameron now looks like a grownup, no longer a viable teen), so they needed to do more when they could have. It's a shame.  Like, why not just a Sister George Michael spin-off show then?