ReWatch: The Magnificent Seven

 2016, Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) - Amazon

Ten years ago I wrote about my first watching. A decade used to seem like such a long time ago, but I have been in Toronto for over twenty years and I had what I considered an incredibly long and diverse life before that. I remember feeling middling about this adaptation of the 1970s western which was already an adaptation of the 1954 Kurosawa movie, Seven Samurai. I guess a decade has changed me, because this felt, this time, like exactly what I would want from this remake.

In one of the many alternate realities that I come from, Fuqua started his career with The Book of Eli and not The Replacement Killers. Westerns and PoAp have always had much in common and that Hughes Brothers movie was a pure PoAp western. And it starred Denzel, who came into contact with Fuqua for Training Day, and continued their relationship for many movies after. So, alternate reality or faulty memory -- you know what I will go with.

From the very beginning of this rewatch, I was settling into the things I like about westerns, especially the nods to the classics. The framing, often from low on the ground and behind a gunfighter, so we see his opponent ahead of him. The majestic landscapes as America in its youth was beautiful. A Lone Hero, dusty and weathered, good at his job but with a moral code, but still haunted by his past. I stated in my original writing that this was "just" a capable western, but for the rewatch that was exactly was I was looking for.

I was again disappointed in the lack of character given to Haley Bennett with her Emma Cullen character, the revenge drive impetus for the gathering of capable, violent men willing to kill & die for the point, and not exactly the money. She's no longer the alt-Bryce Dallas Howard in my mind, I having seen her in many things hence, but I didn't recall exactly how little agency she has here; we never learn anything about her and the only saving of grace is not having her immediately hookup with one of the horny gunfighters, despite Faraday's leering. 

Like the original, four of the men are killed in defense of the town, and honoured as heroes. Of the gathering of killers, only Chisolm strikes me as the properly "good" character -- he fought for the North and works as a bounty hunter, not a virtuous man, but chooses the side of Law. The rest are killers through and through, with maybe only Red Harvest being so lacking in background, we don't know if he is a killer or not. 

Properly great original movies get remakes and reboots. The Seven Samurai never got a "proper" remake, as in a Japanese ronin movie, but probably has more nods than just these two westerns and ... cough... Rebel Moon. I mean, there is the "Heart of Gold" episode of Firefly but that show being a space-western, you could say, once again its a nod to the original Magnificent Seven ? Now, has the original movie passed on so much so as to become a trope? There are plenty of raid movies where a group of specialists go on a suicidal but important mission, but that's not quite the same. Violent Men Defend Defenseless Villagers... I guess I should poke around on TV Tropes and see what their listing for "The Magnificent Seven Samurai" gives me.

Rewatch: The Adjustment Bureau

2011, George Nolfi (Elevation) -- Amazon

I originally saw, and wrote about, this movie waaaay back in the early days of this blog, some 15 years ago. I am just going to "wow" that, and not psychoanalyse myself over "10,000 hours makes you an expert." 

Technically, based on how often you write, you are barely half-way there, so maybe in another 20 years, you should be objectively "good at writing". Or dead.

I have not rewatched this movie many times, if ever (memory escapes me), and it is not on The Shelf. But I have a nostalgic place for it in my mind's eye, as I do with many of the PK Dick adaptations. It is My Kind of Movie, or "Toasty coded" as Kent has said. Its romantic, plays with the idea of destiny, and it messes with religious paradigms without being offensive or dismissive. When I first saw it, and likely this was because it was a reveal, I wasn't fond of the whole Angels Messing with Us thing -- I was hoping for a more spec-fic explanation for the Bureau -- but I have definitely softened on that. I realize my original desire for it to be less-religious more-scifi was in connecting the hat & suited angels to the more nefarious figures from Dark City.

In case you don't recall, the writings in ReWatches are generally less than "reviews", unless that particular rewatch is the first post about the movie. So, they end up being just a general collection of thoughts I had during and after the movie.

In 2011, Anthony Mackie was probably just a face I recognized (from The Hurt Locker and maybe Million Dollar Baby) but he wasn't a household name. This role did put him forward more than the others in an already decade long career, and not long after this, he became Sam Wilson. Its nice he came back to a couple of Nolfi's later flicks including Elevation.

Also, we are rewatching Fringe (again) and I cannot help but do the comparison against the Angels against the similar attired Observers; I am surprised I never mentioned that in the original writing, considering it was about the same time Fringe was airing. 

My romantic notions have tempered, maybe gone so far as soured, with age. The original black-mark against David (Matt Damon, Oppenheimer) and Elise (Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer) was that their relationship was destined to derail both their lives. Instead of being utterly focused on their own lives, he as a politically ambitious senator destined for the White House, and she an emerging talent in the ballet & modern dance world, they would become subsumed with each other, with their relationship, which would degrade both paths. While I still do frown at the cultural requirements for everyone to have Peak Accomplishment, instead of just living satisfying lives, part of what the Angels were saying is that eventually at least Elise would sour on the idea that she had given up a life of greatness, for David. When the movie ends with The Director re-writing "the plan" I still wonder how much of Free Will will come into play, or was the movie just about abandoning all future potential for the jubilation of The Now. My soured romantic notions have me pondering the idea that even if their lives are not worsened for Choosing Each Other, romance eventually can simmer down, and would they both end up wondering What If in their old age.

I still rather like the way the movie is structured, the World Building and the idea that there are more people who went through this situation beyond David and Elise. They may be the Main Characters in this story, but there are many stories. It was still a satisfying movie to rewatch, but what had me stay away from it originally, stands. 

KWIF: The Sheep Detectives (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I originally had a snarky comment closing out last week's review of Mortal Kombat II where I was lamenting having seen the video game adaptation instead of seeing the one about investigative ewes. I deleted the comment because I had already heard that The Sheep Detectives was actually, surprisingly, a pretty decent film, and that neuters the joke a little bit. Plus, I was going to see The Sheep Detectives anyway, so there never really was an either/or decision in the first place.

This Week:
The Sheep Detectives (2026, d. Kyle Balda - in theatre)
Mile End Kicks (2025, d. Chandler Levack - in theatre)
Dark City (1998, d. Alexander Proyas - DVD)

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I must have seen the trailer for The Sheep Detectives about a dozen times, most of them in the form of a preview before the screening of one film or another. Every time the trailer would start, I would balk at the very concept of a live-action movie about cgi sheep attempting to solve the murder of their shepherd. And yet, by the end of the trailer, every time, I was completely sold. Well, I guess not completely since the very same cycle would start anew the next time I would see the trailer.

It is, without a doubt, an absurd concept, but absurdity doesn't innately make for a film bad, and often the very absurd nature of a story's conceit is what makes it stand out, what makes it good, different and exciting.

I've been hearing a lot of comparisons to Paddington bandied about, but The Sheep Detectives really takes a greater nod from Babe, in that it's set in the real world, but when the humans aren't around the animals are speaking to each other. Yes, there are plenty of jokes where we watch the sheep talk in English and then cut to a human POV just to see them bleating at each other...and it's never. not. funny! (Director Balda is kind of restrained in his use of this gag to be honest, maximizing it's efficacy.)

Based on a 2005 German novel, this is "cozy mystery" at its coziest... I mean, we're talking wool coats for days, right? But the real surprise is that the mystery is not the most captivating part of the film. The reason The Sheep Detectives works so well is it establishes characters and it establishes a community (mainly with the sheep, but also with the humans) and it establishes a tangible world for them to inhabit. In this world, sheep are intelligent creatures. They sit and listen to farmer George (Hugh Jackman, X-Men: Origins: Wolverine) read mystery novels in the evening, and Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jack the Bear), George's favourite sheep, always solves the mystery before the end. George has a reputation about town of being a prickly bastard, but he's a kind and gentle loner who adores his sheep above all. He opens our story by narrating the letter he's writing to, it turns out, his daughter whom he gave up for adoption three decades ago (Molly Gordon, The Bear).

The sheep, we quickly learn, have the ability to force themselves to forget, which they do as a collective. Only Mopple (Chris O'Dowd, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) can remember the past. The sheep believe that they don't die but turn into clouds. Mopple knows the truth, but lets them have their comforts. Otherwise their understanding of death is restricted only to the stories George tells them, so when George turns up dead, the sheep community is rocked.

So too is the human community of the English town of Denbrook. The kind of hapless town constable Officer Derry (Nicholas Braun, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) is completely incapable of handling any sort of death, nevermind a murder. A wayward aspiring reporter (Nicholas Galitzine, Handsome Devil) seems intent on helping him break the case for his own reasons. The suspects are all in George's will, including the town butcher, a rival shepherd, the lovelorn innkeeper, and George's estranged daughter who just happened into town the day of his death.

In a conventional story, there would be much mileage about the sheep working through each of the suspects and eliminating them as the possible murderer. Instead, The Sheep Detectives is far more interested in the sheep community, and expanding their horizons. There is the whole concept in this community of a "winter sheep". Most sheep, they say, are born in the spring, but the occasional sheep is born in the winter, and they are shunned by the herd. And so a tiny, unnamed lamb George loves dearly, but is rejected by all. Part of the story is the herd confronting their prejudices, but in a roundabout way.  Even upon learning that their greatest ram, Sebastian (Bryan Cranston, Kung Fu Panda 3), is a winter sheep, it takes a lot before the herd truly understands the harm of their prejudice.

But that's just one facet of what these sheep need to learn. They have to leave the familiar safety of their farm and venture out into the world, where they are exposed to the realities they've otherwise chosen to forget. It's a potent moment when Lily realizes that Mopple has had to live with everything they've forgotten, but Mopple presents it as something beautiful, not horrible.

I'm not doing the best job of selling The Sheep Detectives but, to be blunt, I absolutely adored it. Funny, charming, sweet, sincere with a, yes, cozy mystery at its core to keep things moving, but just a delightful cast of characters and some of the most rewarding emotional stringpulls in some time... I cried at least three times and it earned every one of those tears. I never resented the film for them.

There is no reason The Sheep Detectives should be as good as it is, but we're so lucky that it is. A large contingent of my early-evening Wednesday screening applauded at the end of the film. I joined in. There was no one there to receive the applause, but it felt like the right way of mutually socially acknowledging that we all had a genuine emotional reaction to this film, and that we appreciated it. I do not recall the last time that happened.

---

Love the pseudo-American Apparel-
style poster for this film. Perfection

Mile End Kicks first shot is inside Toronto's legendary Horseshoe tavern. The band Islands is playing a gig. I am transported back in time.

Despite the caption "2011", I am transported to 2005, to seeing Islands in their earliest incarnation, possibly at the Horseshoe, but maybe at the Rivoli or Lee's Palace or some other joint and perhaps during the North By Northeast festival. Anyway, I'm there. I'm in. It has me. It took the film all of 9 seconds to completely reel me in.

By 2011 I was out of regular "gigging", going to shows around town, and certainly out of the pretense that my photographing and reviewing of such shows (sometimes for online media outlets, most often just for personal blogging) was a career path. Grace (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria) is 22 years old and already has a foothold in journalism.  She has four hundred articles in the local newspaper she's been writing for, including investigative journalism, interviews, and writing a sex column, as well as music reviews. She ponders the idea of writing a "33 1/3" volume on Alanis Morissette's album "Jagged Little Pill". Her boss at the paper (Jay Baruchel) thinks it's a great idea, and hooks her up with the "33 1/3" publisher who likes her take and gives her a small advance to write the book, but it needs to be done quickly.

The next we see of Grace, she's on a bus to Montreal for the summer, giving the middle finger to T.dot on her way out. Her mom doesn't understand why she has this sudden impulse to move elsewhere, and her dad...well, just seems depressed. Grace has a top 5 list of what she wants her summer in Montreal to be: write her book on Alanis, have real sex, climb Mount Royal, learn French and fall in love, probably not in that order.

She's renting a room in Montreal's Mile End from Madeline (Juliette Gariépy, Red Rooms) a hot DJ whose boyfriend Hugo (Robert Naylor) plays in a rock band called Bone Patrol. Madeline is super friendly and wants to be pals, while Grace is a bit reserved and really wants to focus on her writing. But Madeline insists she come to a loft party where she is DJing and Bone Patrol is playing. At the party, unfamiliar with the Montreal scene, Grace retreats to an outdoor space where she meets Archie (Devon Bostick, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) the bassist for Bone Patrol, and they form an immediate kinship... but when the band finally plays, Grace has a rather visceral reaction to Chevy (Stanley Simons, The Iron Claw), Bone Patrol's frontman. She chats him up and he's the most up-his-own-ass pretentious, faux-ambivalent, self-involved shitheel, but Grace can't see past his stage mystique.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace's epic summer in Montreal, becoming part of it's 2010's hipster scene and getting waaay too invested in a guy who can only ever think about himself (and even then not that deeply). There's an obvious love triangle happening between Grace, Archie and Chevy, but the will-they/won't-they isn't really the thrust of the movie. It's more of a "what the fuck, Grace?" as her logic just cannot find a way to overrule her libido when it comes to Chevy, and Archie pre-emptively takes himself out of the equation.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace building up her life, but also feeling completely helpless as it starts to crash down around her. A lesser film would have spent more time and energy on making more direct connections between Grace's life and the songs of "Jagged Little Pill", but the film doesn't need to link them firmly at all. Grace's fall from grace happens for many, many reasons, (almost all her own) and her only way out of the pit she's fallen into is to find self respect and confidence, to engage the world on her own terms rather than feel like she has to be deferential to the men she finds in the circles she's in.

There's an excellent, fundamental moment early in the movie where some of the men of the paper she's working at are having a debate over a couple of bands. It's clear she's not invited to this conversation and when she interjects her own input, she is dismissed immediately and, to put a finer point on it, laughed at. Late it the film (when she's back on her upswing) she reads an insightful and incisive text at a poetry slam about not just this explicit experience but all the general outside-the-circle-of-men experiences women have everywhere. It's a terrific 1-2-3 execution (especially when Grace returns to the bullpen late in the film).  I have witnessed these types of situations so many time (even well into adulthood) and have probably been a party to them more often than I've been cognizant of or care to admit. It's institutionalized sexism that often we (meaning men) are not even aware of. I mean I was aware of it before this film, but praise it for actually making it a part of the conversation.

The film contains three (or perhaps even four) of the most awkward make-out scenes I think I've ever seen on film. Given that Grace is our POV character, she's mostly not the one being awkward so our cringe isn't a sympathetic one but more of an "oh gods, what the eff" type of cringe. It's almost all Chevy and that boy, wow, is a fucking mess.  Either Levack dated a guy just like this or knew someone who had. The hyper-specificity here is too crazy to be made up.

The film effectively uses its setting as a real "Montreal is a main character" film, and it definitely captures what the Canadian hipster "scene" was like at the time (Toronto, a few years earlier, wasn't that much different, nor likely was Vancouver a few years before that, or Halifax a few years before that...the "it" scene sort of cycles through the major Canadian centers in five-ish-year spans). It effectively seeds in the tension in Montreal's art scene that's so distinct to it (the outsiders that come in and the French-English divide between them, as well as the Toronto resentment)

Mile End Kicks is a film about being in your 20's and fucking up, but also about learning from your mistakes and growing as a person, and understanding that you'll continue to make mistakes (just hopefully new ones, and not repeating them). It's also about empowerment, and while not being so aggressively Alanis about it, it's still a pretty bold awakening.

 ---

I had not watched Dark City for a very, very long time, though I had carried the DVD of it with me to at least a dozen different residences over the years. It would have been one of the first DVDs I bought, but I have no recollection if I ever actually put it in a DVD player and watched the film it contained.

A friend recently brought up the film, noting that clips of it had been popping up in one of his feeds ... somewhere. I recall that I liked the film way back when, and it has maintained a decent if not stellar reputation in the meantime... but would it hold up? Would I still even like it? Does the disc even work or has it succumbed to disc rot?

Turns out, mostly, mostly and yes, the disc still works wonderfully.

The most unfortunate thing about Dark City is that it opens with a narration from Kiefer Sutherland's Dr. Daniel Schreiber. Schreiber exposits about an advanced alien civilization late in its decline looking for some hope of salvation, and that hope is human. Schreiber is helping them in their experiments on humanity, and this film, then, in theory, unpacks just what that experiment is.

The second most unfortunate thing about Dark City is the affectation that Sutherland imbues Schreiber with. He gives the character an out-of-breath speech pattern, speaking in short bursts (not unlike Malcolm's asthmatic friend Stevie on Malcolm in the Middle). It's really a hat-on-a-hat as Schreiber also has a scarred lazy eye and a severe limp as well. Sutherland was making choices.

A few minutes in the proper film starts as Rufus Sewell's John Murdock awakens in the bathtub of a grimy hotel, completely unaware of where or who he is. He receives a phone call from Schreiber warning him some men will be after him, and he needs to leave immediately...it's then that he notices the dead sex worker on the ground with spirals and other sigils carved into her skin.  He moves with haste, just as a quartet of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers show up and check out his freshly abandoned place.

The streets of Dark City are just that, dark, dimly lit. Every light seems like a spotlight only illuminating in a cone shape exactly what it's pointing at. Also at midnight, the society of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers use their psionic abilities (called "tuning") to cause the entire city to grind to a halt, and it's denizens to go inert and unconscious. They also reconfigure the entire city, buildings twist up out of the ground forcing other buildings to shrink or retreat without causing any true damage to speak of. Reality bends to their whims...almost.  But these creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers need Dr. Schreiber to concoct new memories for the citizens of this dark city which most citizens have had done a few times over.

But it's John Murdock who has somehow repelled the new personality application and also developed the same tuning powers as the creepy overlords. He poses a genuine threat to the order of things.

As we learn all this, there's also a mystery... is John a murderer. His estranged wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) can't conceive of it, and even John himself has to test whether indeed the impulses are there or if he's truly capable of being a psychopathic killer. The detective on the case, Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) can't see any other options, because to do so would be to admit that reality is not all that it seems.  While Sewell's efforts as Murdock are genuinely quite good, there's a case to be made that this works better if Bumstead is it's main figure trying to solve a murder and unraveling the case of John Murdock, which then leads to the revelation of where they actually are and who is actually in charge and why.

Dark City is a really decent sci-fi neo-noir that doesn't always tease its mystery in an efficient or effective manner (especially since the opening voice over gives up so much of the surprise), but the exceptional special effects (for the most part) and shadow-laden atmosphere of the picture do so much of the heavy lifting to keep things engaging when the story may falter. Even 28 years later, on one of the oldest DVD pressings in my collection, the film still looks really good, the copious practical effects, sets and miniatures and the well-masked digital effects standing up very very well.

The third most unfortunate thing about Dark City then is the climax is such utter nonsense. Murdock goes tete-a-tete with "tuning" powers against the...leader? (of a hive mind?) I guess of the creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers... and there's nothing more boring that two characters trapped in a mental battle just leering at each other while crazy cgi bullshit swirls all around them.  It's such a let down given some of the film's strengths prior to that point.

The fourth most unfortunate thing is how sleepy Jennifer Connelly is in the role of Emma Murdoch. I can hazard a guess that she's been told to play the character as if she's just had a lifetime of memories slammed into her brain only the night before, so she's effectively a new, but confused person...but for some reason that gets relayed as sedate, with most every line delivered in an unaffected monotone. She's a much better actress than this performance.

But a few unfortunates aside, Dark City holds up as a solid watch. Perhaps it's not the monumental sci-fi story of it's generation (hard to be when The Matrix comes along 13 months later) but it's got very little to be embarassed about, and despite not hiding what could have been some great surprises, still has a surprise or two under its belt.

31 Days of Halloween: Shaun of the Dead

2004, Edgar Wright (The Sparks Brothers) -- download/Blu-ray

Yes, I download movies because getting the game system setup to play a Blu-Ray when I haven't touched it in months is dusty & arduous and I am impatient & lazy.

Also, and again, "You haven't written about this in one of the many rewatches since 2004 ?!?!?"

Clever. The clever zombie movie. I love this clever zombie movie, which in case you have been under a cinematic rock, is part of Wright's tap-side-of-nose "Cornetto Trilogy". This is my movie, while Hot Fuzz is Marmy's movie, if we can claim ownership.

The season has been a bit ragged, as we have been tired and distracted, so we broke a generally unwritten rule, in adding more rewatches into the mix. I mean, traditionally watching horror movies during the Halloween season always involved your favourite and even just before this blog began this series, we had plowed through all the "classics" during Halloween of years previous. Rambling way to say, we might end the season with a handful of our previously seen favs, not yet written about.

Shaun's (Simon Pegg, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One) a bit of a cockup, working a dead-end job, living with two old friends, only one of whom is paying rent. He does the same thing every day, every weekend and his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield, Byzantium) is getting sick of it. He kind of likes his life, but is also kind of just stuck with it. So, she breaks up with him and as fate would have it, its on the night of the zombie apocalypse. Like many of the genre, its happening in the background, on the telly, but everyone is too caught up in their own drama to pay attention. Shaun doesn't even notice when the regulars in the neighbourhood are either gone or shambling.

And then he's caught up in it, with two things in mind: save Liz, save his Mum.

Some day I would like to track back and watch the movies that set the tropes for the genre. Even Night of the Living Dead had it on the television in the background, but more the idea of gearing-up and going on a quest to find a secure place. The journey through the zombi-fied London suburb is strewn with obstacles and dangers, but finally motivated Shaun has it in him to prove to Liz that he can do this even if it ends up at the last place on Earth she wanted to go -- the Winchester Pub. But still, she cannot deny, it feels like a more secure location than Shaun's flat. Myself, I would suggested Liz's second of third floor flat but... Shaun doesn't know it well. They don't actually lose anyone until they are "safe" inside the pub, and it quickly goes from a slightly-buzzed safe to a shit-show very quickly, mainly because of personal drama. And it ends with only Liz and Shaun left alive.

Clever. So many cute and witty things, from the obvious to the thin. People on the bus look like zombies long before these are coughing & sneezing. As someone who rides the TTC pretty much every day, I can attest to that. And the line from Ed (Nick Frost, Tomb Raider), "We're coming to get you Barbara!" (a nod to Night of the Living Dead) always makes me chuckle. Of course, the best gag is Shaun's rag tag sloppy crew running into a mirror image group, full of capable (and recognizable ! Martin Freeman! Reece Shearsmith! Tamsin Greig! Matt Lucas! Jessica Hynes!) survivors. 

This movie is brains comfort food.

31 Days of Halloween: Knowing

2009, Alex Proyas (Dark City) -- Tubi

I started watching this because, once again I got suckered in by The Algorithm, wherein YouTube (I have a tendency to watch it at 6am while the cats are eating) showed me clips of this old disaster movie I love. I always likened it to a scifi disaster movie but didn't realize how much of it presents like a Horror Movie. So, as filler, here we go!

Of note, I am sure so very sure I had this plugged in somewhere already on this blog, likely a post collecting previous rewatches. But I cannot find it. I suspect it may have been on a un-published post of rewatches, that I eventually deleted.

Anywayz, we start with a bunch of 50s kids collecting things to go into a Time Capsule, which will be opened in 50 years. Little Lucinda offers up her page of numbers, after acting weird all day. Yeah, just a sheet full of numbers. Later on, during the capsule entombment, she disappears, and is found in a basement closet having scratched her little nails off inscribing something on the inside of the door. "Please make them stop, make the whispering stop..." she intones.

Fifty years later little Caleb (Chandler Cantebury, The Host) gets the sheet when they open the capsule -- not sure what he was supposed to do with it, maybe do a class presentation or write an essay. Meanwhile his dad John (Nicolas Cage, Season of the Witch) is drinking and doing the single dad thing really badly. Both of them are still grieving for mom, who perished in a fire.... maybe a year ago? John is a lecturer at MIT and a bit intense; its Nick Cage after all.

While drinking heavily, as his son sleeps upstairs, John notices a very specific set of numbers on the sheet -- 9112001, and after them some digits that a bit of Googling shows is the number of people who died that day in NYC. John freaks. And then John starts finding other number sequences on the sheet. He transcribes it to his white board and spends the rest of the night circling dates, and numbers of deaths. There are other digits which he does not identify, but the dates he has circled are all definitely sequential, leading up to ... now. Well, now of 2009. 

Meanwhile Caleb is seeing weird ass guys outside, pale men in long black coats. If you saw Proyas's 1998 movie Dark City you will be wigged out by those guys, but really who wouldn't.

John takes his wiggy 50-year-old-sheet-predicting-mass-deaths idea to his best friend Phil (Ben Mendelsohn, Andor), who works in astrophysics. He does not take John's idea very well. The meeting makes him late to pick up Caleb from school and that's when he notices his truck's GPS setting, realizing what the other numbers are -- location data. And the location for the next date on the sheet is... where he is at right now. John jumps out of his truck to see what the accident is ahead, assuming its about to be a disaster, and something worse happens. Right behind him, a plane crashes, scraping across the road before exploding in a field. Its a horrific scene or roaring engines, exploding fuel tanks and vast pools of flaming jet fuel. And people dying right in front of John's eyes.

The next day the news is all about atmospheric activity causing havoc in flight navigation systems and the ground of the all planes in the US.

Just the directorial tone is what sets this aside for me. There is now a palpable air of fear, not only in John but in Caleb seeing the men outside. Maybe its just the level of tension & anxiety that this viewing season, and currently real life, sets into my bones, but the movie moved from just the tense feeling I get from disaster flicks (because, even with them, you already expect mass death is coming) to an ever present sick feeling. 

The next date, John tries to prevent. He sees the event is happening in NYC, so he calls it in anonymously. He is ignored, so he goes to the location, where there is the presence of authorities, but also crowds of people. They are there to catch a crank caller, possibly who is going to cause something to happen. John sees danger everywhere, chasing some of it down into the subway system, where... sparks fly, a train rail shorts and boom crunch, a subway train car is slamming through the platform wiping away lives. John is missed by the finest of hairs, as is the one woman & child he saves. Its a soul crushing scene of close up disaster.

There is one event left. Soon, but no "number of deaths". It just says "EE" which John sees as possibly Extinction Level Event. He's desperate and trying to trace down any idea of why and what is going on, maybe a hint of what he can do about it all. He tries to find the original writer of the sheet, and instead finds her daughter & granddaughter. Little Lucinda never really recovered and was obsessed with death, which is understandable. And then John realizes EE is "everyone else". News comes of a solar event coming, which John figures out moments before its announced, something that will burn off the atmosphere and sink solar radiation miles into the planet's crust --- killing everyone and everything. Planetary end. But what can John do? Why was his family presented this, if they cannot save anyone?

This is where the tone, and not untoward considering its Proyas, but probably why the movie got panned, the tone shifts from fearful supernatural horror & disaster to ... well, alien intervention. The scary guys in coats are aliens, who have been whispering to "chosen ones"; Caleb and Lucinda's granddaughter are such. They and other chosen ones will be taken off the planet, but... no one else. We end the movie with a wee bit of Close Encounters and then.... fire.

I still really like the movie, despite the reigned in Nick Cage craziness, maybe because of? Proyas does like his hope tinged darkness.

31 Days of Halloween: Quarantine

2008,  John Erick Dowdle (Devil) -- Netflix

This movie is a remake of the 2007 Spanish movie Rec by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, who also directed the sequel [Rec]². This movie is of the tradition of faithfully remaking a movie exactly as the first, but for American audiences, and set in the US.

I rewatched this as a filler for this year's "31 Days of Halloween" as there are always a few days we miss due to ... life. I am also tempted to rewatch the original, just because.

Found Footage movies usually have the conceit that we know everyone is dead. The footage is supposed to be recovered after they all die, or disappear. In this case, the "everyone is dead" comes preposed because the trailers had the final scene of the movie -- main character Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter) being dragged off into the darkness by an unknown assailant. 

The movie begins with her footage of the San Francisco firehall. She is one of those fluff reporters building a repertoire of feel-good stories, and this one is a ride-along with a local fire station. There is some lively banter, some flirting between her and a couple of handsome firefighters Fletcher (Jonathan Schaech, Takers) and Jake (Jay Hernandez, Magnum PI), and then the call comes. They tell her that most of their calls are paramedic in nature, and most of the firefighters are trained in medical first response. An elderly lady in an old apartment building has been making a godawful din and they have called police & paramedics. A bunch of tenants have been wakened, including the super. When the cops investigate, the aggressive old lady pounces on one of the cops and tears out his throat. Everyone panics, carrying the bleeding cop to the lobby floor. Not long after, Fletcher the firefighter comes plummeting from above, crashing into the lobby floor in a bloody, broken mess. When they try to exit the building to the waiting ambulance, they are halted by men with guns and the doors are locked. 

Remember, the entire introduction is via the camera man's viewpoint, and Angela's constant coaxing to get it all on camera. At this point, she isn't panicking, but everyone around her is. Full on chaotic panic from first responders & residents with only Jake doing his best to keep a level head. The super points out that there is an overhang with window access from his office, and maybe someone could escape from there, but before they can, spotlights and armed forces and a big plastic tarp is dropped. The are being sealed in, entirely. Soon power and phone are cut. They are trapped inside with whatever is going on. The old lady has been shot, as she has killed her housekeeper. The panic ramps up.

Some details are eked out as the movie progresses. One of the residents had a sick dog, and her husband brought it to the vet. Their daughter has a fever. Another resident shows signs of illness, frothing at the mouth. The injured cop and firefighter and both salivating really bad. A vet who lives in the building comments on that being signs of rabies, but rabies takes month to progress to that state, and by that time it is fatal. The CDC sends in bunny suited specialists to test Fletcher and the cop, but that doesn't end well. Yep, zombies or Infected, but aggressive and killers.

The movie is very very effective in keeping the tension high, like on the edge of a knife high. There are lots of people screaming at each other, emotions are ratcheted up to 11 and normally this just bugs me, but here it feels appropriate. Soon, the movie escalates from a group of people trying to figure out how to escape the building, to just fleeing and hiding, until its only Jake and Angela and Scott, the camera man. They flee to the penthouse apartment, rented by a man not seen in months. His is not an apartment, more a chaotic mess of a lab, an Angela cannot help herself but rifle through the notes, giving us hints of this man investigating some sort of ancient tribal virus, something horrific and violent. The movie ends with the camera light breaking, Scott is down, the nightvision filter is on and Angela is doing her best to hide from a gaunt creature that must be the tenant. And then, like he poster, she is dragged screaming off into the dark.

Being a faithful remake of the original, I do like this movie, but again recall liking the original better, but likely only due to it being my first exposure to the story, and my enjoyment of another country's vision of an infected zombie apocalypse emerging. The found footage nature is mostly effective, if not entirely realistic. At some point, someone would have just said "fuck this" and tosses the bulky camera, screwing the record of events.

ReWatch: Better Off Dead

1985, Savage Steve Holland (One Crazy Summer) -- download

Sometimes the things you remember from your youth, with great, and I mean vast, amounts of fondness turn out to be ... well, better left in the past, perhaps even... better off dead? Despite still getting some chuckles, this is very very not good movie. And yet, I can still understand why it would have some of that rep-cinema, rerun, yell & throw popcorn at the screen, cult following allure.

Greendale, California. Lane Meyer (John Cusack, Hot Tub Time Machine) is obsessed with Beth (Amanda Wyss, Assassin's Fury), his girlfriend of six months, a pretty, popular blonde. Obsessed. Stalker levels. Photos everywhere, comical extremes such as having her face atop every hanger in his closet so it looks like she's wearing his clothes. Moments after we are exposed to this, she dumps him for the pretty, popular, blonde jock captain of the ski team, Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier, this was his only feature; guess acting wasn't for him). As expected, Roy is also a bully, and oddly, the movie positions Lane as the counter-nerd, despite it being obvious he dated Beth and skis and has generally higher levels of confidence that most 80s nerds would not. Maybe it isn't helped that his best friend is 80s uber-nerd/stoner Charles de Mar (seminal nerd Curtis Armstrong, American Dad!).

Time doesn't lend itself well to what we are comfortable with --- this level of obsession is just creepy these days, and most plots position it as such. Even creepier is the sub-plot side-plot of Lane's neighbour having an exchange student from France who is constantly subjected to the heavy handed attentions of the fat nerd boy, entirely encouraged to do so by his overbearing mother.

The movie is entirely about Lane trying to get Beth back, amid farcical, absurdist level of weird shit happening around him. For example, his family owes the paperboy $2, so the kid stalks Lane everywhere shouting, "Two dollars !!", which I have been quoting since -- that's fourty years, folks. And his mom is a trad-wife constantly trying new recipes that are less food, more toxic experiments creating new life forms -- why is boiled bacon blue? Every time Lane stops his family car at the lights, two "Asian kids" pull up beside him, visually challenging him to a race, one spouting off like Howard Cosell (Google him kids), but as soon as they are about to pull away, Lane backs into the owner of a local burger joint. The movie is pretty much non-stop non-sequitur situations / running gags, in between the plot to get Beth back by skiing down some deadly peak near their town.

In the 80s, I loved the lunacy of this movie, the utter weirdness of it. I probably had it on VHS. And, as already mentioned, I have been quoting it for four decades. It does not hold up. I can still see the absurdist charm that might have it show up in retro rep theatres now, but... I doubt it. This is more likely one of the movies that the 75 year old owner of the local rep theatre forces on the 20sumthins of every generation, lauding its accomplishments, not understanding why most just don't get it. 

I no longer do.

Oh, in case you are wondering, the title of the movie refers to Lane's first thoughts after Beth dumps him -- suicide. The movie intersperses all the weird shit with scenes of Lane failing to kill himself, while everyone around him is oblivious to him trying to commit suicide. I am not sure anyone would do this now.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: Happy Death Day

 [Toast and Kent love time loop stories.  With this suddenly unpaused "Loopty Loo" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop. Its been on pause for quite some time. Kent did a few solo, but its time we got back to this.]

2017, Christopher Landon (Drop) -- download

Preamble-y.

[Toast] I am also using this rewatch to kill a Dark Year lapsed movie. When I saw this back in 2018, otherwise known as aforementioned Dark Year, I freaking loved it. Not only did it hit our Loopty vibe, but it was also mildly templated to the teen slasher horror movie vibe that fits well into my 31 Days of Halloween series. It was followed by a sequel, Happy Death 2U, which we liked almost as much, and an amusing thing happened while (re)watching this one -- since both movies are about the same time loop I had some of the loops mashed up in my head. End this movie with a, "Hey, what about loop x?" Does that means we also have to do a Loopty entry for the sequel -- of course it does !

[Kent] Toot-toot, back on the loopty loop train.

How did the Loop Begin?

[Toast] In this movie, I don't think we are ever really told. But we are led to believe its related to Tree's (love the details, Theresa goes by 'tree'; Jessica Rothe, Boy Kills World) current place in her life -- she wakes up on her birthday, which she shared with her mother before her mother's death. She doesn't deal well with this day. She got pretty wasted the night before and ended up in the dorm room of nice guy Carter (no caps, no quotes, no incel energy; Israel Broussard, To All the Boys I've Loved Before) who just let her sleep it off. She barely pays him any attention, while its obvious he is infatuated, and stalks off into the day, through the main quad of the university where we are treated to a bunch of random occurrences that any loopty regular viewer will know are there purely for the repeat value: a goth kid staring at her, an eco girl asking for a signature, kids studying (who studies at 9am?) who are sprayed by sprinklers, pledge kid falling unconscious, date boy she'd rather avoid, etc. She makes it back to the sorority house where she has barely disguised hostility with another girl, and with her roommate, and rests some before she is supposed to attend her own surprise birthday party. Instead she gets killed by someone wearing a mask of the school mascot -- a creepy baby -- on the way to the party.

Enter second loop. 

[Kent] That about sums it up. What is clear from the original day, and the first repeat day of the loop, is that Tree is not a nice person, a key point of the story. She's kind of disgusted that she's wound up in nice guy Carter's dorm room (whom she doesn't yet see as a nice guy, just some guy she assumes took advantage of her while she was drunk... and her lack of reaction to this seems to indicate she's been in this situation before).  She's pretty rude to everyone she encounters, she's ignoring her dad on her birthday, oh, and she's been sleeping with her professor, who is married. She seems like she's on a path with the intent of sabotaging her own life. Just a killer in a baby mask has designs on doing so first.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?

[Toast] Well, like most people who get stuck in time loops, they only just notice the second loop is happening. A major sense of deja vu. Carter, the nice guy who gave her his bed, is happy she remembered his name. Originally she didn't but..

[Kent] Yup, just the usual going through the motions of the first time but with the weird awareness that it's all happened before. Only little moments are different...like not going under the bridge where she was killed the first time and actually making it to her surprise birthday party at a frat house...where she is killed after sneaking off with a cute frat boy (also killed).

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?

[Toast] It is via subsequent loops we learn Tree is not necessarily a bad person but she has not been her best self for the last few years, being completely preoccupied with grief, shutting out everyone and everything in her life. She believes she is in the loop to learn from it, but really, she's tad bit occupied with surviving the night.

No, nobody can be brought into the loop. 

[Kent] At least until the sequel, yeah, we think she's in the loop, because, like in Groundhog Day, we think she needs to learn to be a kinder person, to deal with her trauma. Oh and also solve the mystery of her own murder.

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?

[Toast] I am thinking the loop could last days, if not weeks, as long as she survives. But she never does, and with each subsequent death, she's tossed right back into Carter's bed full of the memory of that death.

[Kent] As far as we know from what the movie shows us, only death resets the loop. I wonder if in the one loop where Tree makes amends with her roommate and survives and doesn't eat the cupcake [uh, spoilers I guess], would she, say grow old, pass away, then wake up in Carter's bed 60 years earlier?  At one point though Tree resets the day by intentionally killing herself, because Carter is accidentally killed and she really kinda likes him at that point.

[Toast] OMG now there's a time loop movie for you, one where someone thinks they have figgered it, avoids the death that triggers it, only to find out that ANY death can lead to the loop. I wonder what having an entire life inside your head could lead to, and its not likely you would remember that actual originator day that caused the loop.... or would you, being back in a body that has that day's memories fresh & clear.

[Toasty's Other Voice] Wut? What am I doing here? Oh, making a comment on how this was part of why this whole project started -- so the two of you could ponder the metaphysics of time loop movies.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any effect on them, their personality, their outlook?

[Toast] I didn't count, as I was enjoying just (re)watching the movie, but I would say about a dozen. And yes, oh yes does it have an affect on her, in both emotional and physical ways. For one, she's doing a wee bit of the Groundhog Day thing, where she strives to become a better person. But mostly she has to survive the night because there seems to be a lingering physical effect from each loop. After passing out immediately upon waking, she finds herself in the hospital with signs of numerous death defying scars in her body. Its a bit of a toss away idea, for fun, as after she blows up / is burned to death in the back of a police car, she does not wake up with a body covered in burn scars. But it does imply she will not last very many loops at this rate.

[Kent] I counted ten deaths in total so is that 10 loops, or 11? Does the first day count as a loop? The last? But yes, being in the loop does affect them greatly, and it was my big takeaway from this rewatch. Tree is aware she's not been a nice person, and she's aware that it is self-destructive behaviour, it's avoidant behaviour. She's sleeping around, backstabbing, drinking heavily all to avoid really processing any emotions. Being in the loop, though, has her confronting her selfishness, how her emotional state not only impacts herself but others. It's really that selfishness that has set her killer off, and what Tree needs to overcome in her life in order to progress.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?

[Toast] Nobody else is aware. She almost immediately (maybe loop 5 ?) tells Carter and he doesn't dismiss her immediately, but she is serious by doing the "predict the [quad] events just before they happen" to his amazement. That doesn't make him aware beyond this loop, but does allow him to provide some basic suggestions about ruling out who could be trying to kill her.

[Kent] Right, she tries a couple times to bring Carter up to speed, but for the most part she's aware she's on her own, and sees it as too much effort to explain it all over and over and over again, so she doesn't try too much.

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?

[Toast] Yes, she thinks they are all real. They do matter. In fact, when Carter dies saving her life, in one loop, she knows she has to die in order to reset and save him.

[Kent] If anything, people in the loop start to matter more and more to her. She starts to connect with them on a more human level, the walls have come down. 

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?

[Toast] Most memorable event in the loop? Or is this more favourite loop? Definitely the inevitable "fuck it" loop, where the protagonist just gives up caring about anything, cuz its all just going to be forgotten (by everyone else; and forgotten is never the right word) so... well, she parades gleefully naked through the quad. Its about the only time during the loops that we see Tree just feel free; and she deserves the break.

[Kent] I agree, her strutting naked through the quad is her liberation from the barriers she's surrounded herself with. It's an apt metaphor. The sorority has been all about keeping up appearances, about perfection, and she's done with pretending to be someone who she's not. She's freeing herself from pretentiousness.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?

[Toast] This is a perfect mash-up movie, playing on the primary structure of Groundhog Day but having fun via the teen slasher trope. But really, its more about Jessica Rothe's performance -- she just plays the pain, frustration, realization and silliness of it all, so very freaking well. I might feel a bit detracting from the genre as the "reason" is never fully explained, but that is also the centre of Groundhog Day. Does the fact the sequel does explain it, kind of ruin it, or enhance it? We shall see in that writeup.

[Kent] I do not have an official ranking but I would say it's in the top ten on the lower end. It's a pretty basic loop setup and structure (it's just Groundhog Day meets Scream), but as Toasty says, it's Rothe's show and she delivers both the character development and emotional arc so wonderfully.  I have such goodwill for Rothe that I forgot how much of a ...not nice lady she was at the start of this thing, and she had to win back that goodwill, which she does so easily.

Dragon Tattoos - a Lisbeth Salander ReWatch Post

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009, Niels Arden Oplev (Flatliners) -- Amazon
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011, David Fincher (The Killer) -- Amazon

From cozy to the bleak mysteries that the cold Scandinavian countries are known for...

I never wrote about either. The first was pre-blog and I haven't rewatched in recent memory, and the second... if Kent wrote about his cinema viewing in 2012, I would assumed I would have seen it at the same time, or not long after. Don't know why I didn't write about it.

Anywayz, rewatches as excuses to not entirely focus on a new movie. Most often rewatches are also excuses to not have to write, because not-writing requires an excuse instead of just making a choice, but when neither of the movies have been originally written about, then I any excuse would inexcusable.

Note, I just decided to do this as a double post, having only just finished watching the first. The second is yet to come.

...

All done.

Sometimes I sit down with a movie and almost immediately, I notice what I [want to get] get from movies, what I enjoy, what makes me wiggle into my seat, settling down for some good viewing. Its not something I can easily vocalize (it makes one wonder why you are writing about things, if you state you are not adept at "writing about things") but I know it when I see it.

The movies are based on Swedish novelist Stieg Larrson's books, which were published posthumously.

The movie opens with the end of the trial of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist, John Wick; Daniel Craig, Knives Out) for libel; he has lost. He had been pursuing a story of a corporate mogul with ties to arms sales when the juicy evidence he had unravelled, proven to have been false. He knows he was setup, provided easily fact-checked but too juicy to ignore details on the CEO, but he cannot prove it, and it has brought about his own downfall instead of the company head's. It is also damaging the reputation of the magazine he works for, the same magazine his girlfriend works at as editor. Their relationship is an affair. Blomkvist will be fined a sum of money that will empty his bank accounts, and he will spend six months in jail -- but he is given 3 months to get his affairs in order, and likely time to mount an appeal.

What I liked about this opening was about how much was packed into so very little time. There are so many details we are not led by the nose to see, we just get to collect them from what is presented. Blomkvist is more than a bit arrogant, having seen himself as an untouchable crusader, but he is also flawed -- sleeping with his married editor while still being friends with her husband is... odd. Mikael is not exactly a handsome man, an already divorced man, a bit aloof from even his family. Even at Xmas dinner, he steps away to take a phone call, much to their annoyance.

The call is from a handler of one of Sweden's most storied companies -- the Vanger corporation. Their family patriarch Henrik wants to hire Mikael to investigate a delicate matter, something he knows the journalist is good at. Its not quite a murder case, but it could be. In the 1960s, Henrik's favourite niece disappeared, and after a fruitless search, was assumed murdered & disposed of. But Henrik has been receiving a piece of art (pressed flowers) each birthday, something she did before she she disappeared. He believes her murderer is taunting him, and wants it sorted out before he becomes too old to do anything about it. He has vetted Blomkvist, using an investigation company the handler for Vanger has hired, one that makes use of a punk hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace, Prometheus; Rooney Mara, Her).

Lisbeth's story is very counter culture. She's all black leather, tattooed, dyed black hair, piercings, pissed-off-at-the-world attitude and socially unrepentant. She has good reasons to be. She's a ward of the state, basically a young adult who the country believes needs supervision, because of a horrible horrible past. She had a case worker, someone she cared for and who had a lenient hand in dealing with her, but the man had a stroke and now she has been assigned someone new, someone who immediately bulldozes past all boundaries. This man is a horrible human being who works such cases to manipulate & abuse vulnerable young women.

The movie begins with just a Venn diagram connecting the two main characters, but eventually Mikael brings Lisbeth actively into the investigation. She's not exactly the trusting kind, but is intrigued why this very vanilla, and also much older, man is keen on her assisting. Primarily its because she has computer skills he doesn't, but also because Vanger's handler said she is one of the best researchers he has seen, and Mikael needs someone to do the researching grunt work, especially when he finds details that lead to a series of murders, of young women, going back to the 50s. The movie ends with the two very tied together, emotionally & sexually, and invested in each other.

The general story stays the same between the two movies. I haven't read the novel so I cannot say where one or the other may diverge away from, or closer to, the original source material, but in general I like the way the original Swedish movie plays out these details. The original just seems .. less polished, and I like that here. Fincher's always seems so detached, so unemotional, except when it decides to do Lisbeth dirty, by having her fall for Mikael, become vulnerable, and get her feelings tread upon. The story always brought the two together, sexually, but Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth is where the detachment should lie -- when she sleeps with Mikael, it is for sex, for release, and ... well, just a bit of manipulation on her part. She knows what older men want, and uses it. Rooney Mara's version seeks a further connection beyond the story in the movie, and has her feelings hurt.

Then again, both movies really do her dirty, but definitely by cutting close to details from the book. Lisbeth's case worker rapes her; multiple times, the next more violent than the last. I am sure the novel, which was called "Men Who Hate Women", was unflinching about the rapes, as it is said, Laarson used the books to work through an incident in his own life, where he did not step up and stop of the rape of a woman named Lisbeth, but its been more than a decade since we decided, we don't need to rape women fictionally to find some catharsis in our male lives. These scenes are brutal and hard to watch. And to be honest, don't contribute much to the story beyond giving more weight to how horrible Lisbeth's life is, how easy it is for men to abuse women, and how she takes care of these things herself. She doesn't need no fucking white knight, and in many ways, is definitely Mikael's saviour. Just the scenes where she responds to the violence, compared to him being winged by a gun shot, show the strength in her.

I do like these stories, but its a bit exhausting how the "uncover the serial killer" genre so desperately relies upon the abuse of young women. And the even more tiring "displaying of the kill" aspect just leaves me, especially in this world today where misogyny is having a rise to power again, a little despondent. 

Maybe that's why I need my cozy who-dunnits. Or maybe I just need to find a genre where people dying isn't key?

Why did one of the Fincher posters have to be so fucking sexual, with Daniel Craig standing behind Mara's nude body, an arm wrapped about? Fucking edgelord poster designers....

ReWatch: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1977, Steven Spielberg () -- download

I quickly browsed back through the "rewatch" tag to see how I handle a first-post about something I haven't watched in forever, like maybe decades. Unfortunately, there were not enough examples to form an opinion. But I will keep the "rewatch" as I have seen it before, just not rewatched since the days of VHS probably.

Why rewatch this? Because the terrible YouTube app on my Android TV decided I should be exposed to clips of it. Every month or so, this app chooses a new keyword that barely connects to my interests & previously-watched and lambastes me with repeated examples of the keyword. Its not very good at refreshing the content, so for about a month I was exposed to the least-effort type YouTube posts that are essentially short clips of older, popular movies. I guess the algorithm worked?

I wonder what the YouTube legalities are around "clips" because as soon as a movie or TV show is available digitally, said low-effort clips will begin appearing.

When did I see this originally... I am not sure. I would have been 10 when it hit the cinemas, and while I was probably deep in my UFO phase (before D&D and fantasy took over all other interests), I likely would have been too afraid to convince someone to go see it with me (a parent, uncle, or friend's older brother) so waited the two or so years for it to appear on VHS? Production notes in Wikipedia say otherwise, but I know I saw the original cut long before I ever saw any special edition. Either way, as an adolescent, I know I would have been simultaneously enraptured and terrified out of my mind. I probably spent a few years convinced I was going to be abducted. I only realize now that the anxiety I carry with me now, ever present and constant, was present then as well; it only needed a trigger.

Three paragraphs in and they are almost entirely referential, not about the movie. I am thinking this blog does as much as a diary of All Things Toasty as it does as a "movie review" site. But that's nothing revelational. 

The movie begins with my favourite bits, actually the clips I saw on YouTube, the finding of WWII era war planes in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico. They are in pristine shape, fuel still in the tanks, old photos stuck onto the consoles. The old man sitting nearby tells the investigators how the sun came out at night, how it sang to him. He is sunburned, but I distinctly remember something about him having grown back a full head of teeth from the encounter; false memory or something buried in one of the subsequent editions perhaps. Whichever, this opening sequence still thrills me; it is chaotic and confusing and explains nothing while opening us to so so many possibilities. 

But really, who are these guys? Obviously they have resources, and are international, but they have authority to cross borders. They are led by Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut; apparently of French New Wave filmmaker fame -- didn't know anything about him then, still don't now) who needs an interpreter, and are supported by American military. This rewatch doesn't really give me any more insight, but I assume something Project Blue Book related?

The opening bit is followed by something likely inspired by those "reality reenactment" TV shows about UFOs -- an encounter between a number of commercial airplanes and... something. I love this scene, its almost-non-digital technology and the monotone just-doing-their-jobs statements & confusion between the air traffic controllers and the pilots. In the end, the UFO buzzes them and everyone refuses to make a report, and would rather just forget the encounter happened. This is exemplary director directing actors, to get a tone he wants.

Then we meet our "main characters", or at least our more relatable people. We have Barry Guiler (really, I only know his name from WP) and his mom Jillian (Melinda Dillon, Reign Over Me). In a paradigm making scene, aliens come to their remote country house, wakeup Barry and his toys, and shine bright lights everywhere. Barry almost gets abducted. This visit leads to power outages which drags Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss, Red) into work as a linesman, driving out onto a remote country road to find the source of the blackouts.

I cannot stress how iconic these scenes have become. With Barry and his mom, through the simple use of toys coming to life, Spielberg established an otherworldly intervention that would be reused over and over in coming movies. And that's just this encounter; later, when they aliens terrorize Jillian (Barry seems oblivious) and abduct the boy, the bright lights, intense coloured beams, also established something that would be mimicked in film & TV for ages to come. And let's not forget the strong light over Roy's truck, the ding ding ding of the activated railway crossing and the haunting, albeit amusing "car" pulling up behind him. So so much of these scenes were unlike anything we had every seen before, and not just that, they established so much: fear, wonder, mystery, technological advancement. And yet, even with ages of subsequent comparisons, they still work.

Roy gives chase and ends up on a bluff above the city where the UFOs are being observed by... a family of rednecks? Never understood the "mountain folk" characters, but I can only imagine its related to the idea that its usually dumb rural hicks who reported seeing strange objects in the skies, that nobody gets on camera of course. But a lot of people see these things, even a trio of police cars give chase after the "ice cream!" balls of light. What are they? Piloted vehicles? MicroMachines with tiny tiny grey men? Remote piloted drones? A few are decent single pilot fighter ships but most were small. But, as said, a lot of people see them.

How can I go about introducing the characters without mentioning Roy's family. From the get go, we are supposed to side with Roy, as his family is one big stressor. The kids are nightmares and Ronnie (Teri Garr, Mr. Mom) is shrill & nagging. How very 1970s to do such eye rolling negative stereotypes. I get that Roy's "sunburned on one side" special encounter with the ice cream spaceships was overwhelming emotionally, but his growing obsession with the encounter is annoying from the get-go. I am not sure how he thinks dragging his family back to the bluff in the middle of the night is going to bring back the aliens. Once he gets so far as tossing uprooted trees through his kitchen window, he's beyond sympathy, to me.  And yet, I do recall my younger self empathising with his obsession, the idea that having something so incredibly special happening to him deserves his full attention. I am much more easily annoyed by people these days, if reading this blog hasn't made that apparent.

Meanwhile the crew led by Lacombe are also investigating the experiences, even going so far as to bring in Roy and Jillian, and the rednecks, for interviews. The rednecks scuttle that meeting with their "theories". The crew has also done some further location hopping and found a few other "lost to history" items and received signals from space, including the to-be-played-on-childrens-xylophones-for-ages musical notes -- no seriously, while babysitting, I taught myself the tune. No aliens though. The scene (in India?) where Lacombe finds a cult that SINGS the musical notes --- that still gives me chills and I am not sure why. Today, that scene would be CG / AI generated, without the hundreds of extras -- boo.

Finally, the abandoned Roy and the childless Jillian see / hear about Devil's Tower -- a place I still cannot believe is real. Its just too fantastical looking to have not been invented for the movie. But it is real and its a national monument in the US. Lacombe, who definitely has the support of the US government, has not only been using their knowledge from the space signals to establish something but they have also convinced the state officials to fake an event, something that will scare people away from the area and allow for mandatory evacuation of the entire corner of that state. No matter, Roy and Jillian are persistent and actually break the quarantine to head to the incredible looking natural structure that Roy so accurately created in his living room (to be fair, he makes model railway dioramas, so has some skill in such) that he knows there is a ravine down one side. And it gets the pair, sans one poor fellow, to the site. But the site of what?

Having been enraptured by all this lead up, even in rewatch mode, I admit, I was somewhat disappointed as to the climax of the movie. I can faintly recall my UFO-obsessed childhood reaction (wonderment), but after having seen so so SO many other movies of alien arrivals now, this one just seems almost mundane. That said, the city-sized mothership is still impressive and awe inspiring -- it must have been seen for miles, despite the evacuation. I did note, this time round, that while the communication via music was not understood by the humans at all, they do let a computer take over and play the music for them. I wonder if they knew what the conversation was about. 

When the aliens do arrive, in all their weird, big-headed configurations (the spider legged one must be in pain, in Earth's gravity) only Lacombe and Roy are unafraid. Imagine being one of the support staff guys, hired to setup scaffolding or plug in giant mobile Moog keyboards. They have stories they will be telling their grandchildren; if they aren't locked in Black Sites afterwards. Lacombe seems a little jealous Roy gets to go with them. Not sure if the trade-off was worth it, considering all the people they let go -- Roy is a bit of a nob. 

In the end, what did aliens want? What was accomplished on that "third kind" day? How did it end up being presented to the world? What happens next? Sooooo many questions. And no sequel or bad TV series or legasequel reboot to explain anything, though I am sure there is probably a terribly bot-generated blog post out there somewhere with "Ending of Close Encounters Explained" which explains nothing.

Still an impressive movie, not just from its awesome subject matter but also from the compelling, non-standard film making. It stands out even today, and if it was made today, even by Spielberg, it would not be allowed to have the structure it does. He would have been forced down a road, maybe even by his own experiences, of more adventure, more excitement, maybe some kabooms. This somewhat disconnected experience is still by no means perfect, but it is enthralling.

ReWatch: Paddington + Paddington 2

2014, Paul King (Space Force) -- download
2017, Paul King (The Mighty Boosh) -- download

In my recent "Snippets" post, I noticed that I had <shock & awe> not ever previously written about these movies that I so adore. Not sure why. Likely in the 2018-ish dark era I had a "post in drafts mode" that I eventually just deleted. So, I felt I needed to rectify that, if for any reason but to give respect to the movies.

I don't have kids and my years of being exposed to child programming culture via the kids of friends and family, are long in the past. So, I don't know much about this loveable British bear other than his love of marmalade sandwiches and his sartorial choices.

But for ages I heard about how exactly incredible these movies were. While I don't recall exactly, I have a feeling I heard more about "the second movie is even better !!" which prompted me to want to watch both. Its also entirely possible that my viewings emerged during a desperate, grasping need for positivity during The Pause. As Kent mentions in his writeup, the advent of "kindness porn" probably allowed these movies many many rewatches during those dark years.

Paddington charms the pants off me. Sure, its a kids movie with all kinds of juvenile humour and the conceit of a talking bear from a race of bears who not only speak English (and bear) but also live in homes and wear clothing should they so choose. Plot at a nod is that the little bear from Darkest Peru comes to London seeking out the Geographer who invited his family (of bears) to visit him ages ago, but being Peruvian (and bear) he doesn't get this whole weird world of cities (and humans) until The Family Brown invites him in to live with them -- not entirely without some misgivings. And there is a Moustache Twirling Villain in the form of Nicole Kidman who wants to stuff Paddington. The charming bits come not so much from Paddington himself, though the soothing tones of Ben Whishaw and the iconic "hard stare" do make me smile, and smile, but they come from around Paddington. 

Its the world of Paddington that is so utterly charming. It is sort of Wes Anderson adjacent with a twee sensibility, and the world is so full of likeable, lovely recognizable British faces. And while the bear can definitely be slapsticky (with marmalade) he always interacts with everyone with manners and sincerity, making quick friends where ever he goes. And then there is the calypso band playing music on street corners every so often. Big Silly Grin. The flashback scenes to when Mr. Brown (Hugh Bonneville, Downton Abbey) was full of daring and bravado and a hippy-stache. Snort. The tree painted on the stairwell in the Brown's house changes with the seasons and moods. Smile. Peter Capaldi as the "don't trust those (foreigner) bears" neighbourhood watch guy is just... on the nose. There are so many more moments, it all just escapes me, as they are in-the-moment things.

And entirely worth all of it.

Paddington 2 is said to be the better of the two and startles people by sending the lovable bear to prison. Yup. There is another Moustache Twirling Villain in the form of washed-up actor Hugh Grant who frames Paddington for stealing a book from his close friend Mr. Gruber (Jim Broadbent, Cloud Atlas). Even Paddington admits that all the evidence points to him. Our wee bear ends up one of those cold stone British prisons full of ... well, charming, funny, likeable criminals including Knuckles McGinty (Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges), an irascible prison cook. As Paddington is wont to do, he messes up, initially laundering everyone's striped prison uniform to a uniform pink, but once he introduces the lot to marmalade, all is forgiven. 

The caper of the film, and these films would be wonderful even without the caper aspects, is that the Browns have to clear Paddington's name, by finding out who stole the book, and why. That leads them to Phoenix Buchanan who just needs some legendary treasure to fund his return to the glitz and glamouor of the stage. He's not as evil as Nicole Kidman's taxidermist, which is why we are not chagrinned to see him become rather successful when he himself is sent to prison, with a captive audience, pun intended. But he is delightfully unlikeable.

What made it better than the first? Full on embrace of the world and the characters. Once dispensing with the need for setup, the whole movie can just move from one charming scene to the next. Lovable bear, lovable Browns and ... well, lovable prison gang.

Kent's lttrbx'd.

ReWatch Snippets: Indulged

Literally, the same paragraph from the original snippets post applies:

"In a desire to embrace the mental state which leads me from NOT watching a movie proper, but after flicking through the "channels" for a bit, end up rewatching a movie I have seen before, and not always enjoyed that much. So, why? What drew me back? Let's see if I can put a bit of it to words."

I am not sure I will always tell the why but maybe the words I use will tell me why. 

The Accountant, 2016 Gavin O'Connor (Producer Mare of Easttown) -- Netflix

The sequel is coming out, so I thought I would remind myself of the movie. What I recalled. Christian Wolff is a hitman that works a side-gig as a forensic accountant, and he meets Dana Cummings for a bit role. He has lots of guns and kills lots of people, and yet the movie is somewhat quiet and thoughtful. What I didn't remember. Wolff is autistic, and he's not really an assassin. But he does have a massive armoury outfitted like he was an assassin. He does work for criminals, doing the accounting they need, and does the forensic accounting on the side to explain away his money. Anna Kendrick's role is kind of the love interest but not really, though there is attraction there; in the end, he gives her a painting she likes, worth millions. JK Simmons also plays a bit part, as a Treasury Agent who is fed enough information (by an anonymous source) to make him a good cop, but also keep him off Wolff's real trail. Also, Christian Wolff is not his real name, just that of a famous mathematician. Jon Bernthal comes in as Christian's brother, also violent, but a good brother in the end -- he forgives his brother for killing all the men in his employ.

Oblivion, 2013 Joseph Kosinski (Spiderhead) -- Amazon

Jack and Vic are an effective team. In a future where the world was destroyed by aliens, leaving not much but gritty ruins, the pair monitors the integrity of ocean sucking machinery which is supposed to be making fuel for the space colony that the remaining humans have escaped to. But Jack is more attached to The Earth that Was than he should be, or is allowed to be. Until he learns the truth, that he is not fighting the remaining alien invaders, but the remaining human survivors. And he's a clone, one of many protecting the ocean sucking machinery which makes fuel for the Evil AI in the Sky, from the remaining humans.

Its such a beautiful movie of greys and grit and clean white plastic, and for me is an enduring scifi movie full of things to be constantly rediscovered. Still don't like the ending which implies Jack Clone Two is going to hookup with Jack Clone One's wife, who I guess consummated their "marriage" (its complicated clone stuff) before he left to blow up the Evil AI in the Sky. I mean, yes they are very similar, but are "people" that replaceable? I don't think I would like the answer.

The Girl with All the Gifts, 2016 Colm McCarthy (Bagman) -- Amazon

Also rewatched The Last of Us TV series (still not writing about TV), based on the video game that came out around the same time as the short story from which this movie derives. Its hard to know if one spun off the other, as both deal with an apocalyptic plague after the cordyceps fugus jumps to humans turning the infected into ravening zombies, and both stories have a young girl who could be the hope for a turnaround, as long as you are OK with them being murdered ... for science. If I want to get pedantic about zombie sub-genres, and I usually do, its more "infected" than "zombie" as in both instances they are still living creatures that can die from too much traumatic force.

The first two acts of the movie really do it for me; an eerie introduction to the hungry kids who were found as newborns after eating their way out of their infected mothers, and the subsequent road story as the main characters escape from the collapse of their "safe" zone. The third act, which is properly apocalyptic, just bugs me for some reason... too nihilistic even for me? From the loss of the friendly soldier Kieran to the gnashy teeth of adolescents, to the true End of the World, I just felt depressed.

The Fall Guy, 2024 David Leitch (Bullet Train) -- Amazon

I just needed some light fare, and the movie warranted a rewatch purely for all the little fun bits and the charming cast members. I confirmed that though the movie's central plot is toss away, it is more than made up for by the wink-wink-nod-nod nature of the entire movie's construction. That the movie is based on a hammy 80s TV show and the plot is as much. That pretty much every big scene in the movie is a stunt within a stunt. That the first time I did not even know Teresa Palmer was in the movie, and this time I still did not recognize her as such. Hannah Waddingham is great, Stephanie Hsu is great, Winston Duke is great. Its a great Hollywood Hollywood movie and deserved more attention.

Casino Royale, 2006 Martin Campbell (Dirty Angels) -- Amazon
Quantum of Solace, 2008 Marc Forster (World War Z) -- Amazon
Skyfall, 2012 Sam Mendes (1917) -- Amazon
Spectre, 2015 Sam Mendes (Jarhead) -- Amazon
No Time to Die, 2021 Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation) -- Amazon

Is it OK to say I watched this run of James Bond movies for Daniel Craig's brutally violent and ruggedly macho version of Bond? And yet, at the same time, I am turned off by his callous probably way over the misogynist line treatment of women. I mean, in the first two movies he gets two women killed, and there is no fine line on that he is purely using them to reach his goals. He seems to have a wink of regret but that is about as far as it goes. This doesn't even change much when he unabashedly loves a woman. James definitely has some clinical issues with women. Its good that there are at least a few that don't fall to his wiles, my favourite being Paloma, of course. Swoon.

I liked that he died in the last one, in that it gives this Era of Bond its own continuity, even if they shared an M with earlier movies. Despite recent murmurs of an attempt to break the mould (of who could play the next Bond), I don't think the current climate would stomach it, and my favourite suggestion (Idris Elba) might age out of the possibility before we could embrace it again. 

Slither, 2006 James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) -- Amazon

"Leaving soon," the tag line on Amazon said. "Why not," I asked. Still love this gross, goofy, irreverent horror-comedy. I remember having a pang of sympathy for Grant ... Grant (yes, his name is Grant Grant) a few rewatches ago, but this time I just see a sad, controlling man who gets what's coming to him. 

Paddington, 2014 Paul King (Space Force) -- download
Paddington 2, 2017 Paul King (The Mighty Boosh) -- download

We were about to watch the new one, so we again thought, "Why not." Also, the political climate of late has added a solid lump of anxiety pain in the pit of our stomach and these movies are so full of moments to brightly smile at.

Repeatedly so. Non-stop. During the first one I just smiled and smiled and smiled. Not at the comedy meant for kids, like him cleaning out his ears with their toothbrushes, but the sweet nice stuff like the painting on the stairwell, or ... holey freholey, I never wrote about these movies when I first saw them!! So, stopping here, as these two deserve their own, must more written about post.