KWIF: a grab bag of film across decades

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. I suppose the big watch of this week is the long-awaited release of Kill Bill as a single feature, but, well, we'll get into it. The best watch this week was certainly The Outfit, but I think I may have been one of very few who were eager to get the new Arrow blu-ray in my grubby little hands.

This Week:

In the Blink of an Eye (2026, d. Andrew Stanton - disney+)
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2004, d. Quentin Tarantino - blu-ray)

Mars Attacks! (1996, d. Tim Burton - tubi)
Def-Con 4 (1985, d. Paul Donovan, Digby Cook - tubi)

The Outfit (1973, d. John Flynn - blu-ray)

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Director Andrew Stanton's In the Blink of an Eye went direct to streaming on Hulu/Disney+ earlier this with absolutely no fanfare, unlike his other film Toy Story 5 whose marketing campaign was inescapable and has made over a billion dollars at the international box office (it's not quite pulling Spider-Man: Brand New Day numbers, but hey, second place and a billion-plus dollars ain't too shabby). There's no real point in comparing Stanton's two 2026 releases, as they are vastly different films with vastly different styles and intentions.

This film takes place in three different time periods. The first is in 47,000 BC, which follows the life of neanderthal Thorn (Jorge Vargas), his pregnant mate Hera (Tanaya Beatty), and his children Lark (Skywalker Hughes, real name) and Ebb. The second tracks the life of anthropology grad student Claire Robertson (Rashida Jones) and her relationship with stats major Greg (Daveed Diggs) in modern times. The third takes place aboard a space ship in the 2400s with Coakley (Kate McKinnon) making a centuries-long trip to a new planet with the fate of humanity at stake, her only companion the onboard AI Rosco (also Rashida Jones...I think?).

There's not a specific storyline being told across these three eras, but more exploring all the elements of what it means to live, to be human. There family bonds, and romantic bonds, and friendship. There's fear and anxiety, there's pain, physical and emotional.  There's sex and pleasure and awkwarness. There's birth, and death, there's disease and healing, there's community and evolution, support and trade, and so much more.

The film presents this journey through these moments of existence without any specific linear narrative to them as a whole, thought there are arcs for the characters, each whose stories span decades. Stanton and screenwriter Colby Day present parallels across the three different eras such that what one character is going through in one era, another is dealing with something similar in a different era. The point obviously being that these human conditions are eternal and not unique to any specific time or reality.

These jumps across time aren't always the cleanest or clearest (for instance, I didn't pick up on the fact that Claire and Greg were supposed to be students, not professors or researchers or whatever, basically playing about 20 years younger when we first meet them), but even if some of the nuance is lost, it's not hard to track the emotional storytelling Stanton is working towards. 

It's all underpinned by a Thomas Newmann score which is ever present and would be just as suitable for a relaxing massage or a yoga session. It's truly a vibes based movie, there's no heighted drama nor any specific action to raise the blood pressure. It's rapid journey through time across eras is meant to be reflective, not impactful, and at times I was genuinely moved by what I was feeling. That said, I was also bored at times. Both can be true.

It's so specifically constructed that it seems that Stanton achieved exactly what he wanted with this, but it's no WALL-E or Finding Nemo.

In the Blink of an Eye has not been a warmly received movie critically and it's already been buried in the Disney+ streaming catalogue to the point that it seems the only way to find it is to search for it directly. I don't know that it deserves to be so quickly dismissed, but it's also such a specific mood piece that I find it hard to recommend.

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I've been waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair pretty much since Tarantino first mentioned it when Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out in 2004. I understood that the intention of splitting Kill Bill into two volumes was a Weinstein money move, but I always thought Kill Bill would be presented as the whole it was intended to be once it got to home video. I really didn't think it would take over two decades for that to happen. I've never owned Kill Bill on physical media solely because I was waiting, even though, at a certain point, I assumed it was just never going to happen.

And now, after a brief theatrical run (which I missed due to life's poor timing), The Whole Bloody Affair is here on 4k/Blu-ray and...it really doesn't feel that different than watching Kill Bill as two separate movies.

This home video release still breaks the film up across two discs, but instead of there being closing credits after the Bride's wintery duel with O-ren Ishii, it cuts to an intermission title card and song. Unlike back in the laserdisc days where a screen caption would instruct you to flip the disc or insert the next one, here, after the intermission ends the disc cuts back to the menu screen. Sub-optimal. Disc two then autoplays on its own jumping right into the longer portion of the film.

I've always enjoyed the first "volume" of Kill Bill more than the second. The first 110 minutes are so propulsive, energetic and dazzling, with incredible choreographed fight sequences and a flashy anime sequence exploring O-Ren's backstory (what became readily apparent in the recompiling of the two volumes is that this whole bloody affair winds up being a 4-hour-plus movie. None of the other characters get such a detailed back story as O-Ren, not even Beatrix Kiddo, so the whole anime backstory feels utterly extraneous when presented as a single unit).  

The next 140 minutes (credits are 20 minutes of that, including both end credit sequences from Volumes 1 & 2) are much, much slower paced, all leading the the final hour where The Bride finally finds Bill, spends time with the child she didn't know survived, and then, fulfills the title contract.  There are some excellent moments in this. The Bride's flashback to her 1-inch-punch training and her escape from her buried coffin, her fight with Elle Driver in that trailer home, and Thurman's excellent performance upon seeing her child for the first time. But when there's a four-hour run-time Budd's sorry life at the strip club or Bill's extended speechifying (especially his whole "Superman" speech) feels like unnecessary indulgence from the director.

I still really like Kill Bill generally, but somehow, for me, it worked better as two films than one. Two films feels like it has the appropriate room to breathe. As one, I start checking the clock and contemplating what seems unnecessary. 

I have covered Tarantino a fair amount on this blog, including a full rewatch and ranking back in 2019 (just after Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood premiered) where I ranked Vol 1&2 as a whole in second place of Tarantino's works. I'm not sure I would put it in that same position now (probably bumped down to 4th).  

I don't think I've watched a Tarantino movie since I wrote that rewatch and ranking post (though I read his books, and I did listen to his podcast until it went up behind a paywall). Part of it is I've been more focused on new experiences with my film watching this decade, and the other part is, I think, maybe my fandom has tempered in my middle age.  Perhaps Tarantino's shift from filmmaker to film critic/podcaster (aka the Kevin Smith track) lessens the allure. Perhaps his lack of new features lessens my interest to revisit the old ones. Perhaps I was sated with 25 years of fandom and I've moved on.  Perhaps I've seen roughly a thousand movies since I did that rewatch and ranking and I'm more versed in Tarantino's influences and I'm starting to see the seams. We'll see how I feel about the Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood pseudo-sequel Cliff Booth Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed this fall.

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary (!), Mars Attacks! was seen as both a bomb and a blunder upon release, but has become a cult classic in the intervening years. 

There was only so much story to tell in adapting a series of trading cards into a movie, but Burton's enthusiasm for this production seems to rival his earliest efforts like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.  

I only have a passing familiarity with the trading cards, but it seems evident by the film's lack of direct narrative coherence that Burton was using the imagery from the cards as his guide in constructing the project.

While it flirts with the idea of being a Dr. Strangelove-esque political/social satire, it doesn't commit that hard to the bit. It wants to have too much fun with the "Ack-ack"-ing aliens (watching with the subtitles on and reading along is great!) and their giddy bloodlust for the destruction of the human race, alongside their many institutions and totems.

The digital effects, still pretty new at rapidly evolving the time, have a clumsiness to them that, I'm sure in 1996 and 2006 and probably 2016 seemed kind of atrocious compared to the advances in the technology that would follow, but in 2026 the clumsiness of the digital effects is part of the charm. Just as the film itself was throwing back to the 1950's, now it feels like the effects are a part of the intentional throwback charm.

There's a rich celebrity roster here, with Jack Nicholson taking the forefront in two roles, one as the president of America, the other as a rich Texan looking to get into the casino game in Vegas. Glenn Close plays the wife of the former, while Annette Benning is the partner of the latter. Natalie Portman is the First Daughter, while Michael J Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker play a couple who are also competing news reporters. Lucas Haas is a sweet rural kid who loves his grandma with dementia, while his 'Murica-loving trailer-park parents played by Joe Don Baker and O-Lan Jones disapprove of his sweetness and wish he was more like his jarhead brother, played by very young Jack Black (Christina Applegate plays Jack Black's girlfriend in pretty much an unspeaking role). Legends Jim Brown and Pam Grier play an estranged couple, Rod Steiger is a pro-war military general, Pierce Brosnan is a peace-loving scientist, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones, Martin Short, Salma Hayak and more also appear.  It's just a ridiculously stacked cast playing characters who have no real ark, almost all serving the purpose as being laser-fire fodder for the aliens (voiced by Frank Welker).

The joy of Mars Attacks! is the unfettered glee of the ultra silly aliens joyously destroying humanity (they're proto-Minions in their comically violent antics), and then conversely the icky fun of seeing these nuisance creatures heads get squishe or splattered into a spray of green goo.

It's pure ridiculousness, right up until the notorious finale when it's discovered that Slim Whitman's warble is the alien's surprise weakness (it's a delightful play on War of the Worlds mundane fix for the invasion, and a far better turn than, say, Signs).  Don't think too hard about anything, in fact don't think at all.

This thing should be in the Criterion Collection and I should have it in the binders.

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Back in the days of video stores, many, many movies -  most of them in the sci-fi or horror genre - were sold completely by the cover art of the box on the shelf. So many incredible - usually painted - images that just struck the eye, got stuck in the mind and inspired the brain to go to wild, wild places that, inevitably, the film in the case never actually takes you to.

The box art for Def-Con 4 was a staple in every video store I can remember going to (were Canadian video shops mandated to have this as part of their Canadian Content?) That image of the downed satellite looming large in the background and a space suit with a skeleton inside in the foreground I'm sure was responsible for thousands of thousands of rentals. I never did get to it though. Perhaps the reputation that the movie didn't live up to the box art spread across playground and high school hallways?

Def-Con 4 was brought up recently in an interview with Blackberry/Nirvanna The Band The etc... director Matt Johnson and that image immediately flooded my mind. In my (unfortunately only) recent interest in Canadian film I put it on the to-watch list.

It's a garbage nonsense movie about the end of civilization as we know it. It starts in space as a crew aboard a defence satellite catch word that Libya has hijacked a US ship armed with nuke and are setting them off. Or something. They eventually respond unleashing their payload. Humanity is decaying rapidly under the fallout, or, at least, TV has gone off the air (same thing).

This opening sequence which simultaneously moves too quickly and drags on far too long, seems like its setting up the film's trio of astronaut protagonists, and trying to give us something akin to insight into their motivations for being on this mission in space and hints as to their life back home, but it's so awkwardly written, we're not ever sure what we're supposed to take from all this jumbled info. One of the crew, Commander Cecil Howe, wants to return back to his wife (even though she's been quarantined for some illness and the baby is dead and the radiation is going to kill everyone anyway). But after re-entry they crash land off-course and on a beach. One of them is taken immediately by cannibals, J.J. is left inside unconscious and concussed while Howe looks for help.

Howe is immediately captured by Vinny McKinnon (Maury Chaykin) who threatens to kill him, but he decides to make a trade for supplies on his capsule. Vinny has also kidnapped Alice (Donna King) , and now we have our trio of protagonists who... oh, nevermind. They get kidnapped by a military regime led by a petty, preppy high school student (Kevin King) who is mostly just upset his girlfiend (Alice) left him.  

This post-apocalyptic wasteland is so, so pathetic as to be far more banal than scary.  The rhythms of this are so familiar (it's somehow not all that different than, like, 28 Days Later) and yet it's so underbaked as to basically be raw elements with little to no investment in the characters. The only real drama is the tension between  teenagers Gideon Hayes and Alice and they're like the fourth and fifth leads of this film.

Its Canadianness shines through in, mostly, the worst ways possible, mostly in production value, but also scripting and performance and editing where it feels like multiple takes were just not possible within the budget so they had to deal with what one or two takes got them (I don't know this for sure, but that's sure what it seems like).

The only redeeming quality of this is one absolutely out of place scene where Howe catches some bad guys by surprise and tells them at gunpoint to get off the boat, and then the guys keep reaching for their guns and Howe keeps telling them to stop reaching for the guns. It's a silly farce that seems straight out of The Naked Gun, and I can only imagine how entertaining this would have been had they leaned into this type of humour throughout.  Alas.

That poster, though, remains incredible.

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One of my slow-burn projects on this blog of late has been to watch all the adaptations that have been made of the Parker novels.  The character, written under Donald E. Westlake's pen-name, was a relative unknown commodity to me until I read the incredible comic book adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke. Reading those lit a Parker fire under me (though, not even close to being enough to actually read the novels.... Reading?  Bleh. Who even reads anymore. Given the stats on this blog, like, a dozen people?).

There are a few adaptations that are just out there, readily available, from the two versions of Payback,  the awful Jason Statham film, to the stone cold classic Lee Marvin joint Point Blank ,to the most recent attempt I can't bring myself to watch (yet). Then there's the ones you have to deep dive for, like Slayground, Made in the USA, Pillaged, The Split and this one, The Outfit.

Robert Duvall isn't exactly the mind's eye perfect Parker (or Parker analog). The character is described as a big, broad beast of a man, shaggy and expressionless. The only actor who has portrayed him that really fits the description is Lee Marvin, but even then, he's maybe not as dangerous looking as Westlake described him. I'm not exceptionally experienced with Duvall's filmography, but everything I have seen him in, he's been incredible. I don't think he could take a wrong step if he tried. He's a true character actor, disappearing into a role. There's no specific type for Duvall, as such, despite lacking height or width or the big block fists described on the page, Duvall's Eddie Macklin kind of makes for the most screen accurate Parker in every other context.

Macklin is so, so cold in this film, but for the briefest moments of fleeting humanity, where an errant emotion flashes on his face but then disappears.  We meet Macklin coming out of jail, being picked up by a former lover, Bett (Karen Black), who informs him that his brother's been murdered. She was responsible for giving him up after being tortured. The Outfit, it turns out, was not happy with the fact that Macklin, his brother and their accomplice Cody (Joe Don Baker) hit one of their crooked banks. They're sending a message to everyone.

But Macklin has his own sense of propriety and justice. After getting the jump on some outfit goons he sends a message back. Either they pay up 250K for murdering his brother, or else he keeps hitting them, and hitting them hard, doing what no right-minded thief would do. A joint is a joint, and they all can be hit up. All's fair as far as Macklin's concerned. The heat bears down on him, Cody and Bett, but if he feels it he doesn't let on, and while Bett wants to get out, Cody is ride-or-die. It's not that he's a tactical genius or that shrewd in his calculating. He's just determined to get what he wants, his drive and motivation trump anything else.

While not the most elegantly directed movie, nor the prettiest, Duvall leads a pretty exceptional cast on a an uncommon journey. Knowing that Macklin doesn't have a plan gives the story an anything-can-happen vibe and you're never quite sure what's next on the agenda, or at times, exactly how Macklin is going to get out of a situation.  Whatever the code is that he operates by has an internal logic in the film, and it creates ample surprises and unique moments.

I've been searching for The Outfit for some time, and the new Arrow Video release, full of special features diving into Westlake's history as well as the film's history makes for a very welcome release. It's maybe not a "classic" in the strictest sense but it's certainly a forgotten gem worthy of rediscovery.

1-1-1-KsMIRT: odds on endings

KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. This month, the definite end of one series, the probable end of another, the first seasons of two others, and one show I've been waiting some time to get eyes on.

This Month:
The Bear Season 5 - 2026, disney+ [8/8 episodes watched]
Deli Boys Season 2 - 2026, disney+[6/6 episodes watched]
Spider-Noir Season 1 - 2026, amazonprime [ /8 episodes watched] 
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1 - 2026, appletv [10 /10 episodes watched]
Year of the Rabbit Series 1 - 2019, tubi [6/6 episodes watched]

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The Bear Season 5
[created by Christopher Storer]
Seasons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The What 100: Carmy has told Sid he's quitting The Bear, she's now head chef, so it's time for a change. But uncle Jimmy's made some bad investments and has no money left to prop the Bear up, and is looking to sell the property. The credit cards are cut off, the cupboards are practically empty, and a heavy duty storm is wreaking havoc in Chicago. This could be the Bear's last night, but nobody wants it to end, and they're all going to fight for it's survival.

[1 Great] There is a moment in the penultimate episode that had both Lady Kent and I sit up and say "holy shit!" A literal magic trick that blew our minds.  I don't know if this particular feat is something that's famous in the fine dining world, or if it's an invention of Storer (or someone on staff), but wow. If you're not immediately aware of what I'm talking about, well, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) totally big-times his estranged father, whom he invited to the Bear (as he said, because he couldn't invite his mom, who passed away last season), but also to show off his talent, to show up his father, and possibly even reconnect (but that seems far down the list) and with the Bear's impending doom hovering overhead, he doesn't have much opportunity. A pretty great arc for Marcus this season.

[1 Good] Last season had a literal ticking clock over its head, a countdown to profitability issue by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), though his reasons weren't as clear as they are within moments of this season's start. In this season of eight episodes, seven of the eight episodes take place on the same day as the staff need to battle their own insecurities, their anger and disappointments, the weather, other failures in the building, and fight not just to make it through the day but to hold their family together. While Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) quitting was supposed to remain a secret through to the end of the day, it gets blurted out in the heat of the moment, and it just raises awareness to the fact that Carmen wouldn't be a bonding agent, but one of division. He's immensely creative, and assuredly talented, but the job brings out the worst in him too, and he recognizes that his heart isn't in it, not like the rest of them. "I can't stay", he says to Sugar (Abby Elliott). "Nobody's asking you to," she replies in the way only a sibling can. It's not to injure him, but it's a double edged sword that is both supporting his decision, and cutting down his egocentricness. This season is propulsive (as many of the seasons have been) but the "all in one day" motif really, really makes it feel like a necessary binge. It could have been a four hour movie, but I think it works well with chapter breaks, as each episode still has a distinct and defined segment of the day.

[1 Bad] There's a lot of great things happening in this final season of The Bear. Every main character gets their spotlight, but the secondary characters don't quite get the same spotlight. Uncle Jimmy becomes the comic relief as he and his investment manager/best friend Computer (Brian Koppelman) and Computer's business savvy niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher) try to sort out how Jimmy can get some money, any money, out of the only asset he has left (the Bear). Last season Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) had a subplot working with a mentor (the late Rob Reiner unable to return this season) to develop a plan to franchise out The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and this season Ebra spends his time fretting over presenting his pitch to Carmy and looking for a spoon thief. The scenes of him practising his pitch are great (the running gag about him being bewitched by Carmy's blue eyes was fantastic), and the resolution to this plot is satisfying, but it's Cheese who finds Ebra's proposal and then it cuts past what should have been a great scene of Ebra and Cheese talking, leading to Ebra and Jimmy and Computer meeting. Ebra gets so shortchanged, the only bad thing about this otherwise terrific season.

META: Finales are hard, but this one nails it. I don't usually like it when a series spends the whole final season acting as if each episode is a finale, giving each character a specific spotlight to go out on. I much prefer it to be business as usual with a big final episode, but season 5 of The Bear has it both ways, and it works. It mostly works because it's not trying to close out individual character plots one by one, it's teeing up each character arc in the first episode or two, working through it through the single day, and winding it down by the end of the day. It's all about pacing and it is so very well paced.  The finale then give us moments that follow. We know that pretty much everyone in the cast is still working at the restaurant, making it work, but it's Carmen's story that we need resolution on and we see what's next for him. But we also see hints at where everyone else is going, and showing them still progressing, and reinforcing the found-family dynamic of the Bear.  It's an uplifting, hopeful, and celebratory ending that actually satisfies. I wish I had written this out as a fine dining metaphor.

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Deli Boys Season 2
created by Abdullah Saeed
(Season 1)

The What 100: Brothers Mir and Raj Dar have successfully taken over their deceased father's business and are now the cocaine kingpins of Philadelphia. District Attorney and mayoral hopeful Andrew Chadwater seems all too aware that the impact the Dar family is having and, more than for the social good, just wants the good press of taking them down. The only problem the Dars have is they are making too much money and can't launder it fast enough. They approach mobster/casino owner Max Sugar, who hits it off with Lucky. And then Uncle Ahmad - who the boys discovered was responsible for their father's murder - winds up dead and Raj is arrested, and becomes the internet viral sensation, the "Fuck Me Felon". Mir wants to buy a golf course for some semblance of legitimacy.

[1 Great] Deli Boys is a farce. It's not taking the world of drug dealing, money laundering, corruption and murder seriously in the slightest. In fact it's perception is that it's all very silly. The trick is to have the characters take it seriously, even if some of them are buffoons, or hyper-serious to the point of ridiculousness. Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) are incredibly entertaining characters, with Mir being the more nebbish but also educated but also still out of his element, while Raj is very of-the-moment and, well, often high...and charming, but usually not charming enough. The show is not a joke machine like 30 Rock and its ilk, but instead is a character and situational based comedy, and the characters, pretty universally are wildly entertaining, and the situations are constantly surprising. It's an incredibly funny show which many might be put off simply by the premise (which requires us two root for two outsiders succeeding in doing everything illegal, including murder).

[1 Good]  I don't know that this write-up is much different than the season 1 write-up, just saying the same things in a different way. Of course Poorna Jagannathan is the show's superpower. She's a commanding screen presence, a gifted actress, and an absolutely stunning woman. It's almost unfair to put her in a relationship with Fred Armisen (playing Max Silver) because, at least in attractiveness, she's so far above him (she was paired up briefly with Common in Never Have I Ever and that felt more appropriate), but Armisen is a wizard of comedic characters and so she has to go toe to toe with him in these comedic situations and holds her own. I'm excited to see she's appearing in Lanterns this month.

[1 Bad] This second season of Deli Boys had a reduced episode count...and a significant one at that. Whereas season 1 had 10 episodes, this season only had a 6-episode order. Yeah, that's not good, but the real bad is that the first three episodes of the season feel like they're condensing five or six episodes worth of plot into three episodes and so the events of the show move so incredibly quickly. Raj is barely in jail for a full episode and so they don't get a lot of time to really build upon the scenarios that presents (plus we could have had more of Kumail Nanjiani guest starring as Raj's lawyer and Lucky's ex).  There feels like there was more story, more comedy to be had this season, but whatever plotlines were constructed between seasons weren't reworked but just compressed.

META: The reduced episode count in itself felt like a token gesture from Hulu, and less that they had any faith in the show growing their audience. Unless the series suddenly multiplied its viewership, I don't think it'll be back, which is a bummer because it's a super-talented cast and crew and a hilarious show which could really do with more room to breath and expand (there's so many wild characters they haven't had the time to build out or explore).

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Spider-Noir

[created by Oren Uziel] 

The What 100: In an alternate reality 1930's, Ben Reilly used to be a superhero called the Spider but is now a washed-up private dick who scrambles to make ends meet. The trauma of losing his fiancee Ruby still weighs heavy and he finds it hard to care about the world anymore. In the Spider's absence, mob boss Fin "Silvermane" Byrne has taken control of New York City, but the once meek mayor, seeking re-election, is now fighting back, and things are getting ugly. It only gets worse when new super-powered beings emerge. Reilly somehow winds up in the mix of it all after taking a case from lounge singer Cat Hardy.

[1 Great] Without resorting to heavy-handed exposition, the creatives involved in this series manage to build a world of the 1930s NYC that is recognizable from history but distinctly its own vibe. It doesn't shy away from the ugly nature of segregation and racism of the era, but also never makes it "a very special episode" material. It is just part of the underpinning of the world that these people live in. The sets, costuming, hair, and special effects are all constructed and displayed in a manner to evoke classic noir, all aided by the decision to let the audience choose their own viewing adventure: colour, or black and white. (The series was shot with b&w in mind, so this was the option I went with, and it looks fabulous.)  The aesthetics extend to the sometimes ham-fisted or melodramatic acting which feel very much of the classic noir genre, and the injection of superpowers into the whole thing may be much more advanced than what had been done in the serials of the '30's and '40's but at the same time, there's a baked-in bit of clunkiness to the make-up, the fights, the digital powers to give it a tangible charm even when it might not be so real (the b&w really helps to cover its tracks).

[1 Good] Spider-Noir is not a show meant for kids. It's got a bit of swearing, drinking and smoking, and some violence that goes just beyond the typical MCU cartoonishness. It feels very much like the superhero shows of the 2000s, where a character is either divorced from the greater universe he or she would normally exist in, or is made up from whole cloth. In this case, Spider-Noir has always been an alt-universe character who exists outside the normal "616" and the Spider also has a very minimal history in publication so there's really not much for the series to be beholden to. They pretty much had a blank slate to start with.  We basically know what a spider-man is, what his powers are, so we get a series that begins without necessitating an origin story (but we get that eventually anyway). That frees up exposition for world building. And like the superhero shows of the 2000s, it's able to employ the names and/or power sets of other characters onto pretty much wholly new figures, while still capturing the essence and giving the audience the charge of seeing an "Electro" or "Sandman" or "Black Cat" on screen without requiring fealty to source material. This felt both fresh and retro at the same time.

[1 Bad] Without Nic Cage, I don't think this show was getting made, and given that the actor voiced the character in Into the Spider-Verse and is a lifelong comics nerd (he named his son Kal-El) who really wants to be in comic book properties (eg. Ghost Rider, his ill-fated turn as Superman) it's clear he was putting everything his 60-something-year-old body could into this. It wouldn't be the same without him, and it's a role, once again, without much lore or history to it, that he can own outright and make it his. He sure does. In all honesty, he does a really great job 90% of the time.  He gets to be a smartass with a bit of a mouth, he gets to be a drunk, he gets to have trauma, he gets to act aloof or detached from repercussions (until they hit home)... and he delivers on everything...almost. There is a romantic sub-plot between himself and Cat Hardy that flows in and out of amenable chemistry. Sometimes there's a real flame cooking, and other times Cage seems in his own goofy world of amour. But the hardest part to accept in the series is that Ben Reilly seems like he should be in his late-'40's, not early '60's so no matter how good Cage is, there's always a bit of a disconnect when watching him in the role.  The show does do an excellent job, however, of making Ben Reilly a bit of a broken down veteran. He takes his damn lumps, over and over.

META: I really wasn't expecting to like this show, but honestly I was pretty hooked from the first episode. I watched it in two concentrated viewings, the first four episodes over a two day span and then all the remaining episodes in one sitting a few weeks later. It's a show that seems like it has very little fat on it, but that's just how good it is at hiding it. The flashbacks, and some of the side-quests aren't altogether essential to the story so much as understanding the Spider and where he came from, and yet, the way the show bakes in the origin story is as much about the supervillains the Spider is facing this season as it is about him. There's not much backtracking in this show, it maintains forward momentum excellently and it winds up in the end right where it should. It's quite satisfying in a way that, say, Daredevil was not. The pastiche really helps.  I hear a second season has been ordered. It doesn't need it, but it's not unwelcome.

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Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
[created by David J. Rosen]

The What 100: Paula Saunders is an ace fact checker at a New York-based magazine. She's a divorced, friendless mother who puts all her energies into her job and her daughter, Hazel. With what little time she has left, she finds relief with a cam boy, Trevor, with whom she's intimate with both visually and emotionally. And then Trevor is assaulted on camera and Paula is called for Trevor's ransom. The police say it's a scam. Paula puts her researching skills to the test and tracks down Trevor, only to find him dead. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[1 Great] Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a very modern series, both in subject matter and in storytelling style. It's an exceptionally taut thriller, bristling with intensity, but also it has a wicked comedic streak that helps balance out its heavier impulses. And it's very well balanced. It's obviously a product of the streaming era where episode lengths can be whatever, but most of MPG clock in at around a half-hour. These shorter episode lengths make for a propulsive series that, more often than not, feature an final shot or sequence at each episode's end that just kind of slaps you in the face and makes you want to know what happens next. I honestly can't think of anyone other than Tatiana Maslany who can negotiate the tonal shifts of this show so effortlessly, and manage the many, many demands on her character to be an isolationist, to be snarky, to be an emotionally devoted mother, to convey the stress of the situations thrust upon her, but also find the resolve to quite literally work her way through them. Maslany doesn't make a single false step in the entire series. She's riveting, and the show, while, excellent, is twice as good because of her.

[1 Good] The end of episode 6. I jumped out of my seat and applauded.

[1 Bad] The series spends 9 episodes putting Paula deeper and deeper into trouble and in the end she manages to work her way out of it, and never manages to feel like cheating (well, save for that one cliched moment in the penultimate episode). In the process she uncovers a whole other world of trouble that it seems like she manages to side step, but in the closing moment of the season, Paula receives an alarming text that indicates she's falling right back into the intensity. Hey, it makes sense for Paula to have found her way out of the hole she dug for herself, but not completely escaped it. The layers are many and we've only seen a few without full context. I don't have any issue with this. Really what bothers me is the video Paula was sent. It is confounding in its origin. Where did it come from? Why was it not unveiled before? We know exactly what trouble it spells for Paula and I'm keen for her to once again use her research skills and tenacity to keep her head above water and eventually find the shore.

META: I've watched a bunch of giallo films recently, and some commentary on the subgenre of Italian cinema. Giallos are horror-tinged murder-mysteries where there's a killer on the loose and a non-professional everyman (or woman) either gets thrust into the position of figuring out what's happening or thrusts themselves into the position of investigating. In some respects, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a sort of Giallo, only the killer is a professional cleaner and not a crazed murderer. MPG has much in common with The Flight Attendant, a show with a magnificent season one and a middling season two, but had its title character launched into a Hitchcockian murder mystery but with a heavy side of humour. I genuinely hope MPG is able to avoid the second season curse and find its way into a stellar second chapter.

---

Year of the Rabbit series 1
created by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley

The What 100: In 1887 London, Rabbit is a police detective whose violent and self destructive impulses get in the way of his sometimes astute sleuthing skills. He's saddled with a new partner, the keen and upbeat new recruit Wilbur Strauss, as well as receiving the unsolicited aide of the Chief Inspector's adopted daughter Mabel, who wants to be a copper (but, you know, 1887+sexism+racism). Rabbit has a nemesis on the force in Tanner, makes enemies with public officials, and is only starting to see the signs of a secret society of puppet masters pulling strings around London.

[1 Great] It's always going to be Matt Berry. The man just has an incredibly distinctive way of delivering lines and the characters he inhabits are always a very Matt Berry type. Here Rabbit is boorish and dismissing and self-aggrandizing and hyper-sexual but also on the right side of gender and social issues (well, kinda) and ignorant of the advancements in technology and politics and the social contract around him. His ability to sleuth and deduce are sometimes very Get Smart/Inspector Gadget where he gets it so wrong based on assumption but the people around him direct him the right way. He's a delight to watch, even in the fithy surrounding of grimy 19th-century London.

[1 Good] For a sub-30-minute comedy series, the production values are pretty great at making a particular corner of Londing circa the 1880s look like an absolute shit hole (not to mention the amount of times over six episodes they drop into the sewers or meet filth merchants). But it's the setting that makes everything turn in this show. Playing with the realities of the era in juxtaposition against modern sensibilities is a great source of humour (there's a particularly incisive takedown of the anti-immigrants, the Brexiters and Nigel Farage joke throughout the series). 

[1 Bad] I don't know if making the "big bad" of the series a secret society of women seeking equality with violence and manipulation is really the message that we need today. But hey, Keeley Hawes makes for a great nefarious master manipulator and we get Sally Phillips adopting a deliciously ridiculous accent as a Bulgarian Princess.  Plus this main storyline gives Susan Wokoma's Mabel her narrative thrust and Wokoma is an excellent second lead, and Mabel the show's most interesting and well developed character ...in other words, not all bad.

META: I'm not sure why Year of the Rabbit didn't get a subsequent series. Perhaps it was scheduling with Barry in Canada working on What We Do In The Shadows for years. Maybe it was budget, as period pieces always cost more. Or maybe it was COVID related given the timing of the series 1 release. The show works, though, and it could do with another two or three. I've been wanting to watch the show since its initial release but as far as I know Tubi's the first North American streamer to pick it up. Happy to have finally seen it.

10 for 10: what be on teevee?

[I said I wasn't going to do these anymore...like 2 years ago...but it's back!
10 for 10... that's 10 movies (or TV shows) which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie (or TV show) we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]

In This Edition:

1. Shoresy - Season 5 (2025, Crave, 6/6 episodes watched)
2. Agatha Christie's Seven Dials - Season 1 (2026, Netflix, 3/3 episodes watched)
3. Wonder Man - Season 1? (2026, Disney+, 8/8 episodes watched)
4. The Muppet Show - pilot (2026, Disney+, 1/1 episodes watched)
5. How To Get To Heaven From Belfast - Season 1 (2026, Netflix, 8/8 episodes watched)
6. Hijack - Season 2 (2026, AppleTV, 8/8 episodes watched)
7. Laid - Season 1 (2024, W Network/Peacock, 8/8 episodes watched)
8. The Burbs - Season 1? (2026, W Network/Peacock, 7/8 episodes watched)
9. Look Around You - Seasons 1-2 (2002-2005, Tubi, most episodes watched)
10. Smack the Pony - Seasons 1-3 (1999-2003, Tubi, a handful of random episodes watched)

...and...go!

---
Season  2 | 4

All the talk in 2026 about hockey-based TV shows has been about Heated Rivalry, which comes from former Shoresy writer/director Jacob Tierney. The second most talked about hockey-based TV show of the year has been, well, the Olympics, I guess, where the Americans squeaked out wins against the Canadians on both the men's and women's ice (it wouldn't be so upsetting if America was in a better space right now). Shoresy has had four good years of being the pre-eminent hockey-based TV show, so they've had a good run. This season is, like the other seasons, full of laughs and slow-motion shots of women in thongs walking away from the camera. As ever the dichotomy of a Jared Keeso project of both being progressive and salacious is present.

Shoresy is Keeso's love letter to hockey, a sport he clearly, dearly loves (the man played Don Cherry in a TV biopic mini-series and obviously relished it), and so the writer-star uses it as his platform to examine his concerns or frustrations or hopes and dreams for the sport, by way of a "whale-shit hockey league" in Sudbury, Ontario.

This season, Keeso turns his, and Shoresy's focus to the criticisms facing North American hockey players being too soft, that the Europeans, once known for being real delicate, finesse players, are now the biggest and toughest on the ice. The local league having folded, and the Blueberry Bulldogs no longer having a home, Shoresy, with inspiration from none other than Wayne Gretzky (making a cameo...or is it a literal Cameo), decides to stage an exhibition game of tough North American SOBs against the reigning Euro team.

I'm not sure I agree with the violence-as-sport aspect of the game (the one thing about the Olympics is how tamped down the fighting gets) so this idealizing of it kind of shifts me uneasy, but then, that's the point Keeso is trying to make, that we've gotten soft on the ice, I guess. Elbows up?

[11:27]

---

Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent comes from affluence, but that affluence has waned since her father's untimely death. Her mother has to rent out the manor for parties and events in order to keep up the lifestyle. But in the morning, following the latest soiree, Bundle's beau turns up dead in his bedroom, and things are more than suspicious. Like, what's with all the clocks?

Anyway, turns out Bundle is a tenacious young lady, and also quite astute, and she starts poking around the shadowy world of the elites, which leads her to a secret meeting place upstairs from a private club where a secret society gathers and plots and machinates.  Bundle suspects that the secret society is responsible for the foul play that's stricken her life, but the clues start leading her elsewhere.

I enjoyed Mia McKenna-Bruce's performance as Bundle,  her petite and doe-eyed appearance mask a fiercely independent streak and formidable intelligence. Shockingly, her mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter, appears quite the opposite... she hides in her home, tending to her plants and seems to have little interest in expanding her knowledge of the world outside her ground. The men bundle finds herself surrounded with are largely boys of priviledge, and somewhat daft, inept, pompous or oblivious, except maybe Martin Freeman's detective who definitely sees her capabilities but also sees her only as a vulnerable young woman.

At three sub-hour length episodes, not sure why this wasn't just a movie, but it ends with the promise of something more, something much bigger and more adventurous for Bundle, and if we're going to do "cozy adventure" or "cozy espionage" instead of "cozy mystery", I might be there for it.

[23:51]

---

In the long stretch of Marvel projects since, oh, let's say X-Men appeared in the year 2000, my enthusiasm for a Wonder Man project was at the very least in the lower quarter of said projects. I mean, certainly quite above things like the non-MCU-related TV shows or the Fox Network shows of the early 2000s, but I just have no experience with or opinions on the character. Its star, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, on the other hand, I think is tremendous, even though the majority of his work I've seen has been in other comic book projects (Aquaman, Watchmen).

In a series created by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and writer Andrew Guest (Community, Suburgatory, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), it keeps Simon Williams as a Hollywood-based actor, but it seems that the majority of the show is cut from new cloth...but then I don't really know.

Here Simon is an aspiring actor who invest too deeply in any role he is given, much to his detriment. He's often fired from gigs because he wants to do too much to make his role meaningful to him and to the production. His family doesn't fully believe in him, but there's also worry, because Simon has super powers which have always seemed beyond his control.

Simon meets Trevor Slattery (Sir Ben Kingsley, Iron Man III, Shang-Chi), the actor who played the terrorist The Mandarin, at a movie theatre and they wind up at an audition for the new "Wonder Man" movie (a remake of a 80's cheesy sci-fi classic) and become fast friends. Trevor takes Simon under his very experienced wing and teaches him a new approach to acting to compliment his talent, rather than get in his way. 

It's really not a superhero show, despite being set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is a show about performing, and friendship, with a bit of loving criticism thrown towards the filmmaking process.  The heart of the show is the bond between Simon and Trevor, and both Abdul Mateen II and Kingsley crush the shit out of it. These are two phenomenal actors playing struggling actors who become unlikely friends, and it sells... even as we find out that Trevor is actually a plant who is being pressured by a government agency to expose Simon as an unregistered super-powered individual (even that angle is a critique on how policing agencies wind up having quotas merely for optics, not necessarily for the good of the public).  It's clear that Trevor doesn't feel good about what he's doing and, while the conclusion of the series is a given, it's still a pretty enjoyable ride getting there.

It's a sweet and lovely series, way outside the usual MCU parameters. It's a surprise, and I liked it a lot, but I still fall into the camp of wanting more superheroics in my superhero show.

[42:29 - of course I spend double the time talking about a superhero show]

---

Disney finally, FINALLY, did it. They bought the Muppets off of the Henson company two decades ago and outside of two rather terrific films (The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted) they have really, really struggled with what to do with them. Their attempts to contemporize the Muppets as TV shows haven't ever fully worked.  What the die hard fans have been shouting on message boards for ages is for Disney to just do The Muppet Show again. Disney has resisted for so long.

With Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg among the Executive Producers of the series, there was a slew of creatives involved with a strong desire to recreate The Muppet Show as exact to the vintage series as possible.  Disney conceded but without commitment. They got one episode.  One episode to get it right, to recapture all the feelings of a series that ended 40 years ago, and also make it feel like more than just a nostalgia trip. Pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter, also an executive producer, gleefully offered herself up to be the celebrity guest for the return.

The sets look astounding, as if they were always there and just needed dusting off. The Muppets look great, only the voices -- to this old fan -- seem off, because of course they are. There are different people puppeting the central characters these days. The skits... well they're classic Muppets bits, vaudevillian in nature, song-and-dance numbers, joke-centric comedy that's intentionally corny, and just the lunacy of the Muppets...but the show is as much, if not more, about what's happening back stage as on stage and the way the two bleed into each other has always been the delight of the series.

By all rights, this pilot seems to have been very, very well received with high viewership over an extended period of time, which has fingers tightly crossed that Disney is finally ready to commit to the format, and just let The Muppet Show live again. 

As soon as it was over, I was ready to watch the next one... I need a next one.

[56:29]

---

I probably wouldn't have given How To Get To Heaven From Belfast a second look if not for the auto-play trailer on Netflix highlighting that it's the new series from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee. I liked Derry Girls just fine, but Lady Kent loved it, having watched it through at least twice before I waded in.

Derry Girls was a half-hour comedy about Northern Irish Catholics teenage school girls in the mid-90's during the waning days of The Troubles, How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is definitely not that.

The show is a comedy, but more like a comedy-thriller maybe as three old friends learn about the death of an estranged member of their high-school crew of outsiders. Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher) is now a detective show creator/writer, Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is a mother of three and going mad, while Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is still a died in the wool Catholic lesbian who takes care of her mom as an excuse not to live life. When they get together and venture to the small town outside of Belfast to pay their respects to their old friend, things are...weird. The family is really weird, almost cult-like. And Saoirse thinks she discovers that the body in the casket is not, in fact, her dead friend.

It's a twisty, spinny mystery, especially as the show very clearly and very early tells us that the dead friend (and a wife and mother) Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe) is in fact alive and being held by a woman who seems very much like a contract killer (Bronagh Gallagher).

Everything, though, ties back to a secret from the women's past, a murdered man that they buried and tried to forget about, but now seems to be at the center of everything.

It's an exceptionally weird and twisty show that constantly upends what the actual threat is to these women. The dynamics between the characters is a comedic one so there are tremendous laughs throughout, but the situation is a wild puzzle that only the showrunner knows the answer to. She provide the audience just enough information to keep them guessing at the wrong answers.

It's also a show that subverts expectations over and over again. It sets up many characters as being villainous, but usurps that expectation time and again in terrifically interesting (although just as often, sloppy) ways. 

It's quite a mess overall, but the mess seems almost intentional, as part of the fun (at one point, the show winds up in Derry, where, for promotion of season 3 of Derry Girls, they painted a huge portrait of that cast on the side of a building... that portrait not only pops up in this series, but also has Derry Girls star Saoirse-Monica Jackson standing in front of it eating an ice cream, which is mind-breaking meta).

[whoops, the timer got messed up...let's just say 1:08:30]

---

The next train is arriving...handsome

In the last season of Hijack Idris Elba's Sam Nelson, a high powered corporate negotiator, was on a flight that got hijacked, and he took it upon himself to try to keep the people on the plane safe while helping the boots on the ground and the hijackers communicate and follow-through on demands. The big deal of Hijack was that the hijackers, for the most part, were unwilling participants, and that there were other plants on the plane.

Season 2 kicks off with the methodical business of a subway train in Berlin, which Sam is on, getting hijacked. It seems Sam is keenly aware that something is starting to happen and attempts to intervene...but no, to spoil the surprise at the end of the episode, Sam is the hijacker this time.

Much like last season, Sam is an unwitting participant, as are others involved. Sam must convince the metro control room that he is the lone hijacker, he must take the credit/blame/fall for this action. His only demand is that the Berlin police find Bailey-Brown, the terrorist that was at the heart of last season. Sam's been convinced that Bailey-Brown murdered his son (between seasons) and that his ex-wife Marsha (Christine Adams) is going to be killed if he doesn't follow through.

And so, over the eight episodes of season two, Sam tries to keep the train passengers in line, tries to keep the police actions at bay, tries to deduce who the plant(s) are on the train, tries to keep Marsha safe, all while trying his best to somehow find a way through all of this that keeps everyone alive. Nobody needs to get hurt, but people do get hurt.

I dunno, I've been following a lot of transit nerds on youtube over the past couple years and so I think a lot about subways and public transit systems, so seeing the Berlin network, trains and stations was really quite awesome. The first half of the season is full of upending expectations (not unlike How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, only having less fun with it) and the second half feels at times like it's stretching to fill the runtime. This would have made for a fabulous 2-hour movie, and would have still been really solid at 4 or 6 episodes, but 8 was too long, and it took too much time to get to what was actually happening (the ties to the previous season's adversaries implied that people who watched the previous season cared that much about the bad guys of that season to see them return). 

But watching Elba is always a pleasure. That's a handsome man right there. And of the large cast involved, they all do solid work, but there's not enough time with most of them to really invest in anyone but Sam and so what the other characters are doing seems...unimportant. A movie would have been more tightly focussed.

[1:20:19]

---

Based on an Australian series of the same name and adapted by Nanatchka Khan (Don't Trust the B... in Apartment 23) and Sally Bradford McKenna, Laid is a comedy about sex and death, as so much media is. In this case event planner Ruby (Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once) learns that seemingly all the men and women that she has had sex with are dying, and not from an STD or anything directly relational to her, other than they're dying in the order in which she slept with them.

Ruby's best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet, Madame Web) is a true crime obsessive (worshipping at the feet of Amanda Knox) and immediately wants to get down to business solving this thing, creating a whiteboard for Ruby's sex timeline.  

The gist of the show is that Ruby is a bit callous with her sexual encounters, using men (and women) in disregard for their feelings. She's in therapy but resists any action that would see self improvement.  She finds herself attracted to her client Isaac (Tommy Martinez) in spite of herself, and he in turn is into her, despite himself. But she knows she can't be with anyone else because all of her sexual partners are dying in very weird ways.  Unfortunately, that also means AJ's boyfriend, Zack (Andre Hyland), who Ruby slept with when they both were drunk at a mutual friend's wedding during the brief time in which he and AJ were broken up. The fuse is lit and it's only a matter of time before that bomb goes off.

Ruby is... selfish, self-centered and inconsiderate. She's defintely not the most horrendous person in the world but she's just on the other side of the line from being a "good person".  In trying to figure out why this is happening to her, why her exes are dying, she also needs to examine herself and the impact she has on others... and it's tough for her to escape her seemingly inescapable tendencies.

Laid, as a comedy, is a failure. Each episode has a few chuckles and sometimes a really good laugh or two, but for the most part the comedy is more conceptual, and when you're playing in dark comedy territory, you have to have a really good handle on tone, and this show never quite gets there.  Many times Ruby (and sometimes other characters) actually witness the violent deaths of one of her exes and there's maybe shock or surprise but no sense of trauma or lasting effects on them, and it's the weakest decision the show makes. That people are dying and Ruby is so centered on her romance with Isaac or AJ is just fixated on the mystery does the characters a disservice.

It's only trivian night host Richie (Michael Angarano), from the middle of Ruby's sex timeline, who doesn't die, and gets dubbed her sex loophole. Surprisingly Richie seems to become Ruby's grounding point, despite their sort of disdain for one another. 

While I didn't necessarily love every aspect of the show -- tone was definitely the most challenging part -- I was very invested in how this possibly could be happening. By the end of episode 6, we have an answer as Ruby's world falls apart, and episode 7 gets to the meat of it while Ruby's tries to pick up the pieces. Episode 8 goes for redemption, but Ruby's still Ruby...stripes don't change that fast. But it seems we have a finale, a resolution, except that there's obviously an unresolved Richie plotline and then Ruby's dad shows up the whole thing seems to have started again. Bam, cliffhanger...and the show is cancelled, and the American version didn't really follow the Australian version's plot, so ...no resolution.

The only part of this show Lady Kent seemed to enjoy was the theme, which was just James' "Laid" (of course). Stuck in my head for weeks.

[1:40:32] 

---

Decent remake of the Hanks poster

I don't really remember The 'Burbs, Joe Dante's 1988 dark comedy starring Tom Hanks about a man moving into the suburbs with his wife only to get paranoid about suspicious things in his neighbourhood.  I definitely wasn't itching to see it remade into a TV series.

But much like watching Hijack because Idris Elba, it's almost irresistable to have Kiki Palmer (Nope, One of Them Days), one of the most magnetic performers in Hollywood, in a starring role and not watch it.

Palmer takes on the Hanks role here as Samira.  She got knocked by with Jack Whitheall's Rob after a short courtship, and they got married, had the baby and now are moving into Rob's parents place, which they offered up as they're on a "permanent cruise".  The home is in a large cul-de-sac where all the neighbours seem to be up in each other's business, and stuck at home with the baby, Samira understands why, there's some weird shit going down here...especially across the street in the abandoned manor that was just sold.

Turns out the house used to belong to the family of Rob's friend in his high school years. She disappeared under mysterious circumstances and the family moved away a while later leaving the place to rot. This disappearance gets into Samira's head, as new weird things start happening in the neighbourhood, and she's not the only one who thinks so. She makes friends with a wine-drinking porch crew and they kind of fuel each other's paranoia, as they each harbour their own secrets. 

The show starts as all mystery, everyone is a bit of a blank slate and kind of suspicious, including Rob. Samira's pent-up house-bound energies need to go somewhere, so she puts it into nosing around, and trouble follows.

Palmer is, as ever, a damn delight. The show does touch upon her being a black woman in the suburbs (and the requisite racism that surrounds it) in the first episode but sort of lets the anxiety of it ebb as she becomes part of the community quickly. Julia Duffy (Newhart) reminds us why she was nominated for Emmys six years in a row, and bringing Mark Proksch's weird energy vampire energy from What We Do In The Shadows into the cul-de-sac is a real gift. Whenever Paula Pell and Palmer share the screen, the most unlikely of comedy-duos emerges and I want nothing more than a big vehicle for the two of them to lead up and drive around.  If anything, the weakness of the show largely falls on Whitehall's shoulders.  He's not bad, but there's nothing in his performance that tells me why someone like Samira would be with him, and he doesn't bring anything unique to the role that makes him stand out from the other very talented performers (like RJ Cyler who plays Samira's brother, they needed more of him in the show).

I haven't watched the finale, but already, most of the mysteries are resolved around the main cast, and the central mystery which started it has morphed into another one that's just a little less sticky. It's a fun, if light watch.

[1:56:49]

---

Created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, Look Around You started its life as a series of edutainment shorts that was all about editing, images and voice over, no real roles or characters. On Tubi the nine 8-to-10-minute shorts are compiled into two 35 minute episodes.  They seem to be spoofing something very specific from British culture of the 1980s, but such things are not alien to any child of the 1980's who had access to PBS or TV Ontario. These sorts of informational videos were filler on TV throughout my youth, the only difference here is these videos aren't teaching you anything useful...everything they're talking about is made up and/or patently absurd.

It's pretty frivolous, but at the same time tugs on both nostalgia and comedy strings in a delightful way. There won't be a lot of big belly laughs, but if you appreciate conceptual comedy, this will definitely scratch an itch.

The second season of Look Around You is an entirely different show. It's once again in the edutainment sphere, only this time as a hosted show, likely aimed at kids but for all audiences. The four hosts (including Serafinowicz and Olivia Coleman) all speak in a very gentle fashion as they explain their topic or engage with their guest or chat about the video we've just seen. It's all still styled so very early '80's and it's really silly business being played very, very straight. In one episode, Jack Morgan (Popper) is going to have plastic surgery performed by a miracle robot (operated by Benedict Wong), and in another the cast meet a horse that can predict the winner of horse races, while in yet another they discuss a super-serum that will give an athlete super-speed only for it to cause them to shrink in the process.

My favourite bit of the show is Serafinowicz's penchant for portmanteaus. He slips at least one in per episode.

Silly business. Good fun.

[2:08:10]

---

I like British comedy, but I'm by no means obsessive about it...mainly because a lot of it can be very localized, and/or too broad for my tastes. Well, hows this for too broad... a sketch comedy show starring...3 women? I kid.

I'd heard of Smack The Pony long ago, but really had no idea what it was. An Only Fools and Horses spin-off? I don't know. I never investigated because I had other things to consume.

The show stars Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips, and yeah, it's just sketch comedy, the hardest programming to review. I wasn't keen on starting from episode one, because those early ones can be the roughest of a sketch series as the cast and writers find their feet. It's sometimes better to start in the middle so you can see the peak work and get familiar with the players involved so that you're a bit more forgiving of the roughness of the early shows.

I'm not keen to binge the show, just putting an episode on when I have 20 minutes or so to kill, it kind of fills a hole, being amusing enough, and completely non-taxing. The show has little structure, and from what I've seen so far, no real recurring characters, although there are repeating bits, like dating profiles (where different characters record their absurd dating profiles). 

The show will have long-form sketches where ideas are given room to play out and grow, and there are a lot of sub-1-minute gag-based sketches which are uncultivated nuggets that feel, unfortunately, too slight to be satisfying (my favourite sketch I've seen so far involves characters meeting at an art show, kissing each other on the cheek and smearing lipstick, only for the smeared lipstick to be seen everywhere all over the place in incremental ways, really quite amusing).

More than a few British character actors-to-be pop up here, including Darren Boyd and Sarah Alexander... I'll no doubt come across more as I continue my relaxed pace of consumption. 

Enjoyable, if not earth shattering, my only real problem is the quality of the sound on Tubi. The mix of the audio has the laugh track too loud to sometimes hear what's being said in a sketch. 

[2:22:19]

[I don't know why I fool myself into thinking I could ever get these written in 10 minutes or less.]

---FIN---

KWIF: The Bride! (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I feel like I've fallen off a cliff with my movie watching this month. I'm a little aimless. Blank Check is covering Peter Weir and I'm not all that psyched about following along. My delve into the "Tales for all" series feels like I've hit a wall a bit (although this week's feature may have somewhat re-invigorated my enthusiasm) and the theatres are in just a slight lull (but this week's back with two films I'm very excited about seeing). Maybe it's just the winter blahs and spring tease that's toying with me (the one hour time change also fucked me up for a week, we need to knock this daylight savings b.s. right off), or maybe it's the horror show going on outside cinema that's proving escape mighty hard. Anyway, I forced the issue and thus is the result....

This Week:
The Bride! (2026, d. Maggie Gyllenhaal - in theatre)
2:22 (2018, d. Paul Currie - Tubi)
Vincent and Me (aka "Vincent et moi" - "Tales for all #11" - 1990, d. Michael Rubbo - Crave)

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A little over three months ago we got a luscious and epic (and multiple Academy Award-winning) Frankenstein movie from Guillermo Del Toro, but this was film that was rooted in adaptation, reverence and Gothic tragedy. It's a film that took Mary Shelley's novel, Bernie Wrightson's illustrations, and a romanticized view of Gothic style and architecture and created a delicious salmon ball of a movie that might not be to everyone's tastes, but it's not meant to be...it's 100% catering to its director's sensibilities and anyone familiar with Del Toro's past work can tell it is most definitely the film he wanted to make, and he'd been thinking about making it for a long, long time.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride is not really an adaptation. The titular "bride" in The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale's 1935 follow-up to his previous movie, is not much of a character to speak of in that film, appearing only in the climax of said film. Anyone using the Bride of the Monster in the 90 years since doubtlessly owes something to Whale's film, but any story where the Bride is a character must then be largely a construct of its writer.

Though perhaps not adapting anything particular, Gyllenhaal, writing and directing here, clearly shows her reverence for Whale's pictures, Shelley's novel, and the popular genres of the 1930's cinema... the gangster pieces and the song-and-dance films. If anything, The Bride! owes its biggest debt to Bonnie and Clyde, which I've never seen, and even I know it's the framework for everything here.

The film opens with a black screen, and a voice. In stark black and white we see the face of Mary Shelley, as played by Jessie Buckley who informs us that she's been trapped, in a void for some time, and she may have found her way out... a way out through story. Buckley speaks in a rapid fire, rambling nature as Shelley, delivering a monologue that's chaotic and somewhat nonsensical, but the gist comes through. We transition to a mid-30's Chicago restaurant where Ida (Buckley) is cavorting with a couple of mob goons, along with some other girls. She's clearly not in a good space, but then she eats an oyster and starts convulsing. Shelley starts taking control. There's a dual-brained nature to the performance, with Shelley's chaos and Ida's confusion, and it leads to her flapping her gums about the big boss-man Lupino's (Zlatko Burić) vile business. She gets pulled outside and it's...unclear if she is pushed down the stairs or if it's Shelley's influence that makes her fall.

We transition to Frank, the child of Frankenstein, a hundred year old monster in appearance only, but the manners of a gentleman and the enthusiasm of an Amish kid on Rumspringa. He loves song and dance romances, and is terribly lonely. He has made it to Chicago to meet Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning), a mad scientist type who has picked up Frankenstein's legacy in investigating life after death. Frank fascinates her endlessly, but he wants only one thing from her, to build him a companion. And so they dig up the freshest body they can find - Ida, of course - and resurrect her (Frank resists initially..."too pretty" he says, but Dr. Euphronius is too keen to see if she can do it).

She emerges with no solid memories, but a sense of self, and, also the guiding voice of Shelley in her head (and sometimes outside of it as well). This new bride for Frank is everything he's not...gregarious and outgoing, unabashed and liberated (can't help but think that Poor Things had a bit of influence on this portrayal), but Shelley's voice and mind still wrests control from time to time, and her diatribes become even more chaotic and nonsensical.

It's a choice.

In Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein, he opens his film with a metatextual scene where Mary Shelley decides to regail her husband Percy and their friend and host Lord Byron with the "what happens next" after the end of Frankenstein (though it should be noted that Shelley here is recounting what happens after the end of the previous movie and not her novel, as The Bride of Frankenstein is predominantly built out of parts of the novel unused in the earlier movie). The actress playing Mary Shelly also plays the Bride of the Monster in the film, and it seems like the metatext of that movie as well as the dual role of Shelly and the Bride sparked Gyllenhaal's imagination and informed much of her approach to the character(s) Buckley plays here.

Gyllenhaal goes for broke stylistically here, with more than a couple of dance numbers that blur the line between what's actually happening and fantasy. There's violence, with Ida facing the groping hands of assailants no less than three times, and all the assailants get their comeuppance in very quick order. The violence begets lust and romance between her and Frank, as they flee the police (including Detectives Wiles and Malloy played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz respectively) across the Northeast. The unfortunate element of all this is that Frank gaslights her the entire way (starting with naming her "Penelope... Pretty Penny"). Yes, gentlemanly and a protector, but also a liar with his own incel agenda to have a woman love him and keep her loving him forever.

It turns out that Wiles has a history with Ida, and it comes back to an investigation on Lupino who is under suspicion of having murdered dozens of missing women, and who the crooked law has been paid to overlook. 

The Bride! has character-based threads, story-based threads, and style-based threads to it which all weave together, but only loosely. It's not able to hold much weight. The performances are all pretty incredible. Buckley shows why she's a worthy Oscar-winner (she's been a powerful force in everything I've seen her in), and Bale turns in a surprisingly likeable but also frustrating performance as the Monster. Benning is in peak supporting actor form, and together Sarsgaard and Cruz make an unlikely but winning pair. And Jake Gyllenhaal's scenes are largely separate from the rest of the cast as he plays an early talkies singing-and-dancing big screen idol and you could almost swear it's straight from the era.

The stylistic choices Maggie Gyllenhall makes are bold. I mean, the mid-30's setting lends itself to a particular style, and the deviations from that style in set design, makeup and wardrobe are largely phenomenal. But it's more the choices, where music is anachronistic more often than not, and Gyllenhall doesn't shy away from huge winks to the audience (there's a big song and dance number to a thumping rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz", and the film ends with... "The Monster Mash" playing over the credits. Seriously). Ida, at one point, incites a Pussy Riot-esque meme like trend for girls and women to rebel, adopting her chaotic hairstyle, her ink-stained face and lips, and the black tongue. Women run wild on the streets, gangs of them, tired of all the shit they have to face. It's surreal, unreal, and a surprisingly delightful bit of fantasy to imagine that the patriarchy (of that era, or any era for that matter) wouldn't (or couldn't) just smack that shit down with brutal force. 

But the film, if it's trying to be inspirational and feminist, falters quite a bit, especially in the fact that it wants to have its cake and sit on it too. Gyllenhaal wants her husband playing Detective Wiles and her friend playing Frank to be seen, ultimately, as good guys.  So Wiles has his redemption, and Frank, even after Ida's found out he's been gaslighting her all this time, still gets a "but I love him" signal from his non-Bride which seemed antithetical to the whole purpose of the film. And the gangster sub-plot, the origin story of The Bride in this film, it gets resolved in a mid-credits scene.

The Bride! is not perfect, and its inconsistencies make it less than satisfying, but at the same time it is far from boring and it really has some special elements to it. I think the whole Shelley-possessing-Ida angle is what needs the most consideration upon rewatch, but I just haven't decided yet if it'll be worth rewatching.

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The idea of "burden of choice" is not new, especially when it comes to movies. In the thirty year glory period of movie rentals pre-Netflix, I could often be found roaming around a video store for upwards of an hour trying to decide upon a movie or two (or three) to take home for the night. These days, if I don't have an agenda when I sit down to relax for the evening (or on a lazy weekend morning) then I can be found spending that same almost-hour just jumping around from streaming service to streaming service looking at "cover" images and reading descriptions and maybe taking in 15-second previews. The experience of browsing can be as entertaining as actually watching something.  

Tubi really is the closest approximation to the video store experience. There are quality, big-name, titles, box office hits (and near misses), but there's also piles upon piles upon piles of low-budget, never-heard-of-it goodness that stretches back into the 1970s and maybe even before. It's a bevvy of delights for the trash aficionado.  

Low budget movies aren't the same as they used to be though. There are entire studios and/or distribution houses that fund and assemble the glut as packages to sell to streaming services or cable services internationally. If there's money to be made it's not going to the filmmakers, and a lot of them know it, producing movies where perhaps there's effort but not any care or pride. The majority of low-budget filmmaking from the past 25 years feels...soulless.

So when scroll across something like 2:22 , where it has the usual glossy highly photoshopped poster that looks like every other poster and the requisite "hey that guy (or gal)" star, regardless of the film's enticing high-concept-that-it-cannot-possibly-deliver-on-description I usually just have to turn away. But something in me decided to give this one the rare 5-minute shot... the coveted 300 seconds to impress me or I'm getting out, never to return.

Inside, I found a familiar lead (Michiel Huisman, Orphan Black, The Flight Attendant, The Haunting of Hill House) and a surprisingly creative bit of editing as well as a deft use of effects budgeting.  Huisman plays Dylan, an air traffic controller, with a gift for spotting patterns. As he makes his way to and from his apartment to Grand Central Station every day on his bicycle (it's funny how typing it out, "bicycle" seems so juvenile, but if I were to write "bike" you would probably assume motorcycle) via his train to and from the airport, he starts to see patterns, especially at the station. The movie telegraphs where this is all going with an opening flash...back? forward? sideways? to a guns-drawn standoff in the station.

Then one day at work Dylan begins having a weird...seizure maybe that causes him to sort of blip out of focus for a few seconds, and in that few seconds there's a near-collision on the runway that he manages to save the day on... but he still gets suspended. He's at a "sky-ballet" event where he finds himself transfixed by Sarah (Teresa Palmer, definitely not Kristen Stewart), an art gallery curator, and as they meet they become aware that she was on one of the flights that almost crashed. And they share the same birthday. There's kismet between them that neither can deny. They're both floating on air after just one evening of talking to each other.

But as the days go on, and the patterns become stronger, Dylan starts to become a bit more unglued. Reality is not this precise in its repetitive behaviour, and it's all a bit too intense for him. At the gallery opening Sarah's been working on for her ex-boyfriend, digital mixed-media artist Jonas, (Sam Reid, definitely not Michael C. Hall) one of the centrepieces is a digital recreation of Grand Central, and of the repeating patterns Dylan has been seeing. A fight ensues and things sour with Sarah.

Dylan tries to keep his composure but he goes slightly bonkers with what the world's telling him, only to find other clues in his apartment that lead him to understand what's going on.

It really is a pretty slickly produced movie that has the sensibilities of a 90's mid-budget thriller that would have starred, I dunno, Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts, or Bruce Willis and Andie MacDowell. It has that big-star sheen and polish to it, just without the big stars. That doesn't mean it's good, though, much like most thrillers of the mid-90's.

It's not that there's a logic flaw to the supernatural element to this movie, it all comes together, it's just that the mystery, once it really starts to get solved, is pretty pedestrian. I guess the genre nerd in me wanted more of a sci-fi explanation than a fantasy one.

It also would have helped had the film not been telegraphing its finale so prevalent throughout the film. The idea is that history is repeating itself and once we understand that there's so little drama when we understand what the finale has to be (and some of us may get there faster than others, but most of us will be ahead of the movie on this one).

There are three editors on this film (William Hoy, Sean Lahiff, Gary Woodyard) and it's easy to see why it took three people to pull this together. Not only are the sort of time-flashes pretty intensely cut, there are also the montages of repeating patterns (this was sooo close to being a time loop movie, but it isn't at all) that looked like they took a lot of work to assemble, and then there's the fact that they shot this movie in Sydney but it's set in New York and Grand Central Station is at the very core of every aspect of this film. Shooting, editing, and blending with effects the scenery and backgrounds must have been an absolute chore, and I was astonished at how well it worked. I mean, I knew it couldn't be New York City, and so I spent a lot of time trying to see where the seams were and I failed over and over (I'm also not *that* familiar with NYC).

This is a film everyone involved can be quite proud of even if it's not as successful as was likely hoped for. It's not quite a hidden gem, but it is a quality production.

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If producer Rock Demers is the literal rock of the "Tales for all" series, the solid foundation upon which this house is built, then Australian writer-director Michael Rubbo is the I-beam across the center that keeps the framework stable. He is the writer-director of The Peanut Butter Solution and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler, not just the two most ambitious of the "Tales for all" but also probably the two most memorable (I was going to say "most successful" but I really don't know what is the appropriate measure for success on these movies which are Quebecois treasures and notable for being staple viewing on CBC in the 80's and 90's).

Rubbo returns for a third outing with Demers and did not leave any ambition behind. With Vincent et moi/Vincent and Me, Rubbo was engaging with his love of art in his screenplay via the character of Jo (Nina Petronzio), a young teen who travels from her rural town to attend a Montreal arts school. She is a Van Gogh obsessive, just idolizes his work (there is a back story there). She is an exceptional artist, though all her form is in impersonating her idol, both in how she paints and sketches. 

On the train to school, a young lad, Felix, tries to make friends, but she's standoffish and just wants to read her book on Van Gogh. Arriving at art school she learns he is the director of the school play. Her teacher is excited by her arrival, as she's seen her talent, and gives the class an assignment: design a jungle backdrop for the school play. Jo is immediately taken aback... she only draws and paints real life, she has no imagination (her words). Her teacher doesn't believe her. Felix pays a visit and brings a book of Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings. The next day Jo show's off her new backdrop, which is a near-perfect replica of a Rousseau. Her teacher catches her in a lie saying it was an original work, and Jo flips the fuck out.

It seems clear that this stage setting is all about Jo having to learn and grow as an artist and as a person, to accept the friendship and input of others while also discovering her own imagination as she blossoms into womanhood. I mean, we've seen at least three other similar films like this in the "Tales for all" series so ...

wait...

To calm herself down Jo runs around Montreal on her own trying to sketch people but they keep moving. She manages to sketch one lean, elderly gentleman with a pointy beard... only when she goes to leave he grabs her by the coat and drags her through a parade to a Chinese restaurant where he demands to see the drawing she made of him. He is immediately impressed, not just impressed, but astonished. He buys the drawing off her for a crisp $50 Canadian bill and requests he meet her back there the next day with a painting of her rural farm life.  Felix has been following her, and warns her that the thin man is shifty business.

Fast forward to the end of the school year and the performance of Felix's play (really, genuinely beautiful sets...awful play with a blunt "save the rainforests" message) when Jo's teacher shows her a magazine article where her drawings have been passed off as newly discovered drawings of a 13-year-old Van Gogh. Jo tries to hide her displeasure, but when pressed, she tells what happened, and she's accused of being a liar again. She flips out and starts flipping chairs. The rage issues in this young lady.

Of course, now she has to learn lessons in humility and to accept things which are beyond her cont... nope her and Felix and a reporter are off to Amsterdam to reclaim her drawings.  There they meet Joris (Paul Klerk), a boy of their age who lives on a wee boat and knows Amsterdam inside out. He's on the hunt for the thieves who recently stole a Van Gogh painting. Jo is smitten and Joris acts like he has foreign girls swooning over him all the time. Felix is jealous.

The kids become detectives investigating some leads and they not only find the stolen painting but uncover a forgery scheme as well. It's only by narrow fortune that they manage to escape the wrath of the thin man. Unfortunately for them, the reward and glory for their discovery goes to the reporter who manages to figure out from context clues the kids mistakenly give him. Not only is Joris not getting his hard fought reward, but Jo isn't getting her drawings back.

Well, I guess this act of international intrigue can only go one place, which is teaching Jo and other kids that sometimes life is unfair and disap....

Or, Jo just literally astral projects back into 1880's Arles France where she meets her hero, Van Gogh (Tchéky Karyo, Goldeneye). He's pretty standoffish with this young intruder as he's trying to work, but they wind up having a real conversation where she tells him of his legacy (which he doesn't believe in the slightest until he starts picking up from context clues that she's truly not from this time). He gives her a lesson in his painting style (something clearly Rubbo is versed in, as he did many of the fake paintings in this film himself) and sends her back to her real time with one of his paintings.

And when she wakes up, yep, there's a Van Gogh sitting right there. She could be a millionaire, but all she wants is her sketches back. So, in voice over montage she tells of trading the painting for her drawing to the Japanese businessman that bought them, and then wraps up any other loose ends in the montage. 

Oh, lest we forget, the film opens with Jeanne Clement, the record holder for being the oldest living person ever validated, having passed away in 1997 at 122 years old. She was 115 when she appeared in this film, retelling her experience of having met Van Gogh in Arles when she was 13 or so. She said he was rude to her and probably drunk. 

I suspect the story from Clement came out probably around the time they were shooting this film in Amsterdam, or perhaps before and maybe inspired Rubbo in writing the tale? Either way, they managed to finagle an interview with Clement, which starts with her recounting her Van Gogh encounter, and ends with young Nina Petronzio talking with Clement in-character as Jo, telling Clement that she encountered Van Gogh and he was very nice. Poor Jeanne Clement seemed so damned confused by this conversation and the encounter and ...I dunno, it felt a little mean spirited, like some sort of Borat shit. I don't think she understood what was happening.

Vincent et Moi is a largely English language film (occasional French or Dutch with subtitles), and the young  cast's performances are a little choppy from the outset. The film feels weighted in its first act, likely because all the budget was spent or earmarked for shooting in Amsterdam, so the early scenes feel rushed and a bit sloppy. Amsterdam, though, is a blast. Not just for the scenery (despite this not being an very well shot film) but the performances and just the tone of the film changes to another gear. It's not until the shorter third act where Jo meets Van Gogh that the truly bonkers nature of the film and its structure are fully revealed. Karyo has been an impeccable European character actor for decades and this early appearance he's so handsome and charming, if maybe not so close to the usual portrayal of the painter. The scenery here shows Rubbo's love and care for art as he recreates through scenery or sets some of Van Gogh's works and, while not the most high-end of cameras and film printing, they're still gorgeous images.

The only disappointment I truly have with Vincent et moi is that Jo isn't more autism spectrum encoded. Here rage issues, her hyperfocusing, her lack of understanding social norms or her ability to read the emotions of others. It's all there, but it's clear it's not intentionally a "coded" performance. 

This is a delightfully bananas film. I never thought anything could dethrone The Peanut Butter Solution as my favourite "Tales for all", given my deep nostalgia for that film, but this one's making a play for it.  It's a weird, wild gem.