I Saw This!! What I have been watching - 2025 edition (Part B)

(Part A here)

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

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me (usually Toast, but Kent this time) spending too much time in front of the TV and not writing about it. Bad Kent! Bad! But it's in part because Kent is tired and busy can't review everything.

---

Slow Horses Season 5 - 6/6 episodes
created by Will Smith (no, not *that* one)
Season 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

I've written a fair bit about Slow Horses over the past few years, and although I have not went back and reread what I wrote, I imagine my statements about the show are pretty repetitive at this point. It's probably my favourite show on TV right now and each season is just as gorge-inducing as the last.

Of course Gary Oldman's performance as head of these MI-5 rejects at Slough House was, is and will remain the biggest draw of the show, in no small part to how Oldman balances being absolutely rude and disgusting with being exceptionally hyper-competent. You want to hate him but can't help but be impressed and entertained by him. You never want to be stuck in a room with that guy though.

This latest season to a very big step forward in balancing the time and attention the main cast of characters is given. For much of the first for seasons River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) has been central focus with Lamb and Kristen Scott Thomas' MI-5 head Diana Taverner being the backbone of the whole thing, but this season steps back from the three and spotlights the Diana's incompetent boss Claude Whelan (James Callas), a political appointee, as well as Slough House's resident intolerable egotist incel Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) and agent-with-an-addiction Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards).

The House is still reeling from the previous season's very personal attack which claimed the life of Shirley's partner Marcus, and Shirley's either going to fall off the wagon or kill someone, and she seems exceptionally paranoid. But Lamb knows they're in the paranoia business and when it looks like an Agent might have been attacked (such as when Ho was almost run over if not for Shirley's intervention) there's maybe more going on than it appears. That it happens just after a courtyard massacre also seems more than coincidental.

Ho, who improbably finds himself with an incredibly attractive girlfriend, winds up in deep, deep trouble when his blind desperation for female affection maybe compromises the entirety of MI-5. And Whelan faces pressure from a ultra-right wing mayoral candidate who has blackmailing dirt on him. 

These all seem like kind of disparate threads, but the way they are woven together pull tighter and tighter over its six episodes and it's deliciously intense and quite satisfying by the end of it as the Slow Horses board seems to get completely reset.

While the bad guys of the season are virtually paper thin, with only the hint of a meaningful journey presented around them, this winds up being one of the most rollicking and propulsive of the series. And as always I got to the end and just wanted more.

A series rewatch might be called for 2026 (or maybe time to dive into Mick Herron's novels?).

---

Man on the Inside Season 2 - 8/8 episodes
created by Michael Schur
season 1

It seems a few months and a few cases have passed with Charles (Ted Danson) working for Julie's (Lilah Rich creek) detective agency. The notoriously stand-offish private investigator seems to have warmed a little bit to Charles' accompaniment, and though it's never ever uttered in the show, it just may be he's kind of the annoying father figure she never had.

But Charles has been kind of bored by the usual cases that pass through a P.I.'s office, so when the opportunity comes for Charles to go back undercover, he excitedly leaps for it. This time he needs to go inside a local, beloved community college as a guest professor (his former vocation) to help the administration suss out who is threatening them as they look to close a spurious deal with a billionaire graduate.

Almost immediately upon entering the campus, Charles meets-cute with Mona, a former pop-rock chanteuse who's now the music teacher at the College. Mona is flighty but also extremely forward and she takes as much of a shine to Charles as he does to her. Mary Steenburgen, to who Danson is married to in real life, plays Mona, and their chemistry is undeniable. It's super charming and even a quite hot, as far as septuagenarian romance goes. 

Where last season had the focus of Charles still coping with the loss of his wife and his retirement from teaching by meeting people of a similar age in a retirement home, and learning how to live and be vital again, this season circles around Charles' troubles with entering and navigating a new relationship, a new personality in his life. It's a little less meaty, but a lot more cute.

Meanwhile Julie's mom, Vanessa (Constance Marie) enters the picture, and we both learn more about why Julie is the no-nonsense woman she is, but also about the very challenging mother-daughter relationship they have. Also Jason Mantzoukas plays Vanessa's lover with that typical manic Mantzoukas energy to hilarious effect.

The cast at the college isn't quite as robust as the seniors home in season 1, although David Strathairn, Sam Huntington, Jill Talley, and Michaela Conlin all are good in their roles, it's super sweet to see that Charles has maintained contact with everyone at the retirement home and so Stephanie Beatrix, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sally Struthers and John Getz all make welcome returns. So too does Charles amusing family of dunderheaded grandsons and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as his daughter Emily and Eugene Cordero as her supportive husband Joel.

It's a comedy with a bit of a P.I./mystery twist, that ultimately becomes about family and found family. Like other Schur projects, it abounds with heart as much as humour and reminds us that constantly reminds us that even when we differ it's still possible to get along.

It's such a lovely and gentle show, teeming with big laughs and great performances. I hope we get more for years to come.

---

Down Cemetery Road Season 1 - 8/8 episodes
created by Morwenna Banks

There have been a lot of good series that have come and gone starring actors I like quite a bit that I haven't watched a second of, so it would be disingenuous of me to tell you that I was immediately drawn to Down Cemetary Road based on the pairing of Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson. I mean, it did seem an alluring idea, but the fact that it was based on a Mick Herron novels, so it may carry some of that Slow Horses juice was all the kick I needed to make it a must watch.

The plot finds Wilson's character, art restorer Sarah Tucker, getting in over her head when she starts investigating an explosion that happened in her friend's neighborhood. A man and woman were killed and a young girl, a friend of her friend's child, was hospitalized. Sarah, for reasons she can hardly explain, is utterly invested in the well being of this suddenly orphaned girl, and she hires a private investigator to look into it. Joe Silverman (Adam Godley) looks into it, and for his efforts he is killed, but made to look like a suicide. His short-tempered, vintage punk-styled wife Zoe (Thompson) can't help how astute she is and she knows somethings up.

Each begins their own investigation that crosses each other's paths more than once, that leads them to instant danger and a government cover-up led by Hamza, a highly incompetent individual (Adeel Akhtar). We spend a fair bit of time inside the government operations, what Hamza is up to, what his superiors are up to and the episodes start to unfurl a bleak tale of weapons testing and the attempts to cover it up.

The show is at its best when Wilson and Thompson are together, which they aren't much for much of the season. The second half, once the background is all pretty much revealed, moves at a pretty cracking pace as the characters start to narrow down their objective to rescuing the little girl, and nothing else matters.

It's a show that stretches credulity at times but never fully breaks it, as these two women take on powerful agencies and face ruthless killers. But the journey is a satisfying one, and the connection between Sarah and Zoe, while not solid as steel, feels weirdly open ended. A quick peek and it seems Zoe Boehm is the center of Herron's novel series but it does look like Sarah is a part of her journey going forward.

Yes, more of Wilson and Thompson together, please.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Black Bag

2025,  Steven Soderbergh Contagion) -- download

Wait, was that it? What? No, did she didn't she constant cat & mouse game between the two main characters? No cute quippy scene as they shoot at each other with silenced pistols? Just a quick conclusion to the story punctuated by a metric ton of tight dialogue? OK, wow.

In the movie the use of the term "black bag" is a reference to work-related stuff they cannot talk about, even with each other. In the British spy business, you might be married, but that doesn't mean you can just blab on about everything at work. "Why are you going to Zurich?" - black bag, "What did you and Steiglitz talk about?" - black bag. Its the opposite of Rebecca and Ted's (Ted Lasso) ultimate honesty term "Oklahoma". 

And yet, despite this requirement, power couple George (Michael Fassbender, Assassin's Creed) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett, Borderlands) are utterly dedicated to each other. Buuuut, as the movie opens, we are not so sure, as George has been tasked with finding out who betrayed the agency, who disappeared with the thumbdrive of secrets called Severus. Maybe its his wife? And if it is, what will George value more, his marriage or his loyalty to the agency?

George begins his investigation with a dinner, inviting his closest work friends. Two couples, two agents and their partners, also agency staff. Its a tense "party" as they play one of George's games, one his wife knows is more about interrogation than party fun, and the attendees catch on pretty quickly, but also fall into his trap, revealing hereto unknown secrets about each other, and ending with George's close friend Freddie (Tom Burke, The Musketeers) getting his hand pinned to the table with a steak knife by the girlfriend he is cheating on. George does not like liars.

Do we learn anything? Who knows, I surely didn't know. I am sure George learned some things. That same evening, the connection that alerted George to an internal leak dies of a heart attack. And soon after, George finds a movie ticket in his wife's waste basket, to a movie she claims to have not seen. Yes, George suspects his wife, we can see that, and he proceeds down this path of inquiry, at first by breaking into her office, followed by conning Freddie's GF, yes the one who put a hole in George's dining room table, into using her surveillance satellite access to spy on his wife. We are learning... something.

And from there, my memory serves me a chess game happening. Pawns are moved around, as are the more valuable pieces. A lot is going on, but subtly. And surprisingly, before I knew it, the game was over. This was never going to be a movie with high action scenes, with Bond-ian chase scenes or Atomic Blonde hallway fights. Its all resolved in offices and rooms in the Soderbergh style; OMG does he love his particular architecture and set decorating. Those rooms themselves are almost distinct characters, from George and Kathryn's flat, to the bars they visit to the style of offices used for the agents. There is nothing better than a seasoned director who knows exactly what his internal vision should look like. I cannot wait to watch his take on a "haunted house" with Presence -- and yet, wait I do continue to do.

I also very much like how when we think we are being directed down a path of George investigating Kathryn, we learn he is just filling in blanks. He knows very well he is being played, being misdirected into believing she is the villain, and he just plays along to see where it is supposed to lead him. Once he reaches a point, he reveals what is going on, to her, and together they end the plot, via a fatal second dinner party. We should have seen their dedication via Kathryn's required psychology session with Dr. Vaughn, another of the original dinner party attendees -- she is unflappable. And George's dedication to Kathryn is not to be tested or trifled with.

Kent's view; we agree.

Of note, I should return to and grab the entire season of  "The Agency", the Fassbender led CIA thriller drama, that came on the heels of his assassin movie "The Killer". No, not that "The Killer".

KWEIF: Will & Harper (+the Bounty Hunter Trilogy)

KWEIF=Kent's Weekend in Film, because I did a Kent's Week in Film already this week (twice!). I took a couple days off work to decompress an watched a pile of movies, and that continued over the weekend.

This Weekend:
Will & Harper (2024, d. Josh Greenbaum - Netflix)

Killer's Mission (1969, d. Shigehiro Ozawa - bluray)

The Fort of Death (1969, d. Eiichi Kudo - bluray)

Eight Men to Kill (1972, d. Shigehiro Ozawa- bluray)

---

Tactic number 1 of the conservative political playbook is to make the people afraid. Make them fearful, make them hate. Give them an enemy as the root cause of all their problems. Distract them from the real and exceeding complex issues of sustaining a democracy. Distract them from the glad-handing  deals, from the dissolving of social infrastructure, from the capitalism-run-wild that favours the few at the expense of the many. Keep them pointing fingers at anyone but the (primarily, but not exclusively) conservative political powers that are the true root of the problems.

Conservative politicians, and their public mouthpieces (from talk radio, to social media feeds, to 24 hour cable news channels) keep a large swath of populace under their sway through tactic number 1, and have been doing so for generations. They do so because it works. People want easy answers in a complex world. Explaining global economics or spelling out the complex chain of events that lead to a small town falling into ruin or understanding how a prosperous country slides into negative population growth and thus needs immigration to bolster it's economic infrastructure...well, the average person doesn't want to sit through that lecture. They just want to know who they should be angry at, and most conservative politicians have no moral compunction about pointing a finger. At any given time it's been Blacks or Mexicans or Asians or Muslims or gays or all of the above. It's only been recently that it's been trans people, and more specifically it seems to be pointing a finger at trans women.

The largely patriarchal world is a dangerous place for women. It always has been. Men have objectified and othered women as something less-than for centuries. Objects of desire, prizes, possessions, muses, tools, toys. When men don't see women as human, as equals they can do horrendous things. 

So imagine how scary it is when you've got politicians and political mouthpieces shouting to a massive and receptive population that you, as a trans woman are not even worthy of being an object of desire, a prize, possession, muse, tool or toy. That if you are not a man than you are nothing. It says a lot about how these men not only perceive trans women, but women in general.  But it's not that politicians and political mouthpieces are saying that trans women are nothing, they are actively saying trans women are predators, they are perverts, they are the root of leftist blabbetyblah (and these are the nicer things they say). They are making a populating dehumanize, hate and be angry towards a population that just want to be free, to have the liberty to live in a skin the is comfortable, to be who they feel they are inside on the outside rather than be trapped in a construct, in the confined definition that the patriarchal society has determined they should be.

Most trans people go through a period of deep depression and suicidal ideation before they come out. Most of us cannot truly understand this struggle, to feel so trapped by one's own skin by societal expectations that death seems like the most straightforward answer to it all.  And then imagine when a whole political segment is saying they would rather you kill yourself than wear the clothing of the opposite gender to what you were born with. It's frankly repulsive.

I have trans people in my life. I love, support and accept them unconditionally. Radical empathy should be mandatory teaching, not just in school but at work and throughout everyone's life. It's a health and safety issue. Not everyone has trans people in their life, or has encountered trans people socially, and so if you don't have exposure, it's easy to other, to give any credence to the inane ramblings of those political mouthpieces.  

Will Ferrell has made many movies which play well in conservative spaces. His comedies have rarely been political or exclusionary, they're usually pretty silly and play pretty broadly. He knows films like Step Brothers, Anchorman and Talladega Nights have earned him a wide audience of fans, and now he wants to attempt to engage that audience and introduce them to a trans woman, his dear friend Harper Steele.

Harper was, in her masculine disguise, a writer for Saturday Night Live when she met Will and they became fast friends, and remained very close over the decades. During the pandemic, Harper came out to everyone in her life as a trans woman, no longer able to tolerate living the lie she was living. Post-pandemic ("post"), the friends decided upon a road trip for the two of them to get reacquainted, for Will to meet Harper properly as the friend he's always known but now could truly know.

But the film is only half about Will meeting his friend in total, the other half is Harper coming to terms with being a trans woman in America, of exploring the spaces she used to freely engage with as a man...spaces that, by all accounts from news reports and political discourse, would be dangerous for her to enter.

With Will's celebrity presence acting as buffer, they set forth on a New York to L.A. trip that takes them to some of the most gorgeous vistas the world has to offer, and to some formative spaces in Harper's life, and to those rural red state places where she gets those leering looks that, if not for Will or the camera crew, could spell danger for her.

There are genuine moments of connections with people that Harper has that surprise her, but there are fresh wounds made by daring to even enter a space where she knows she's not wanted. I'm sure Will okayed it with Harper, but every time he announced her publicly as his friend who transitioned, I cringed. But it came from both a place of pride, and from of place of hope, that simply by stating he, Will Ferrell is an ally, he might get others to be so as well. It's bold, perhaps brave, but also naive. 

This is a funny, sweet, heartwarming film about friendship, but also intense, painful, and, at times, dispiriting film about Western society and its constructs, and the pain its very arbitrary and imaginary boundaries inflict upon much of the population.  

There were few times where I felt Harper was safe.  When she was among friends or family or alone with Will, I felt she felt at ease, and it was lovely to see. Every other public space felt extremely loaded, just bracing for someone to say something, to incite.  It makes me sad. I am worried for the trans people in my life, but also for those that I don't know. I'm most empathetic towards those who witness the discourse about them and decide not to come out, to stay trapped. I wish society wasn't so primitive, that it would evolve enough to see through patriarchal  rhetoric and conservative dogma, and see the spectrum of humanity for the beautiful thing it is.

I hope this film is effective, that cisgender people engage with it (I think it's much less vital for trans people, as it's not presenting them with much they don't already live or know), and learn and grow and become more open and empathetic. It's truly lovely.

---

I had never heard of The Bounty Hunter Trilogy before, a trio of films in Japanese genres of jedaigeki and chambara from the late-60's early '70s starring Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama.  (If you don't know these terms, that's okay, because I don't really either.  "Jedaigeki" are basically period dramas, where "chambara" are the subgenre of sword fighting films. Both are kind of used, maybe inaccurately (?) as a general term to reference samurai movies.) I'm not well versed in these genres largely because they weren't very accessible when I was younger. Outside of Kurosawa and Godzilla, there wasn't a lot of access to Japanese cinema until the double-boom of Power Rangers and Pokemon started a whole mass wave of interest in Japanese entertainment, primarily manga and anime.

The chambara I started with were the Kurosawa movies, mainly through the references to them in my readings about Star Wars (if you look at the genre terms above, you see where Lucas got "Jedi" from). Kurosawa's samurai films are gorgeous, intelligent, and masterful cinema. But what I glommed onto most immediately was the pulpier, more violent, more stripped-down Lone Wolf and Cub. I watched most of the films and some of the TV series in the early 2000s thanks to an incredible local video store when I moved to Toronto (no longer exists sadly).  I coveted the collection for years, and finally acquired the six-film series on blu-ray last year. I really need to review it. I got halfway through before I got distracted. 

Outside of Kurosawa and Lone Wolf and Cub I haven't explored the jedaigeki much, in part because there's just so much of it out there, and also because it's still not extremely accessible. Unlike Chinese martial arts films, the jedaigeki and chambara films haven't been Sunday afternoon cable classics, video store hallmarks, or Tubi essentials. If you want to watch them, you have to seek them out, and if you don't really know what you're looking for it can be difficult (and expensive) to traverse.

I only learned about The Bounty Hunter Trilogy by visiting one of my local video stores (we have a few in Toronto, thank the gods - Bay Street Video, Eyesore Cinema, and Vinegar Syndrome, to name three) and spying the boxed set on the shelf. Released by Radiance and limited to 3000 copies, it features a quarter-sleeve on the box that tells you what this is: "Tomisaburo Wakayama [stars] in this triptych of violent samurai spectacles inspired by James Bond and spaghetti westerns." 

Films blending the genres of samurai, British super spy and Italian westerns...plus Wakayama in the lead? I had to see these.

Killer's Mission most fully realizes this promise of genre-blending. Wakayama plays Shikoro Ichibei, a doctor who moonlights as a "bounty hunter" (we'll get to that), taking missions to help fund his medical practice. The premise of this first in the series seems to stem from the same historical incident as James Clavell's story for Shogun. A Dutch ship is possibly selling firearms to a rogue state that could give them the potential power to overthrow the Shogun.  Ichibei is hired to prevent the sale from happening by any means necessary.

Ichibei suits up, assembling his armory of transforming weapons and hidden gadgets like an 18th century Japanese super-spy. It could only have been better if there was actually a quartermaster there who were devised these gadgets and explained their use to him.  He sets out on his mission using disguises, lies, and trickery, as well as lightning fast reflexes, expert swordsmanship, and a butt load of super-spy testosterone to make his way to his destinations.

Much like Sean Connery's Bond, Ichibei is a lustful being who thinks he's god's gift to women. In this same movie he tricks one woman into sympathy fucking him by pretending to be a blind man, and fights a female ninja who he'd rather be kissing.  There's a lot of that "the lady doth protest too much" attitude here where Ichibei forcefully kisses someone but though they initially resist, they ultimately cannot resist his manly manliness (and what a man, as a clowning, Don Knotts-esque sidekick catches a look at Ichibei's dick in the lavatory and is beyond impressed and effusively complimentary). This film, and the series, is not the best at serving its female characters, though Ichibei is less handsy in the subsequent films. It's one of the unfortunate ways in which it's in fitting with the Bond-ian stereotype.

Also like Bond films, Killer's Mission gets pretty convoluted plot-wise, as the political side of things weaves its way through multiple double-crosses and some shifting of allegiances where the motivation isn't entirely clear.

What the film lacks in plot clarity and respect for women, it almost makes up for in style. It's score is so 60's espionage with emphatic, propulsive guitars and horns (with just a little bit of surf energy), that it sets the vibe. The character, the swagger, the "romance" and even the almost free-flowing nature of the mission all have that 60's super-spy tinge to it, but in the guise of Japanese samurai tropes.

It's the staging though that evokes Westerns. The fights all have a dusty showdown nature to them, the camera closing in on Wakayama's eyes like he's Clint Eastwood, he will quickdraw his sword and return it to his sheath like a sheriff will his six-shooter in a showdown shootout.  It's hard not to be charmed by the mishmash.

The subsequent films in the series, then, are that much more a disappointment in their abandoning or the spy genre. While the music cues remain very brassy, the second, and especially the third in the series lean more into to the samurai-meets-western.

Of the three, I think The Fort of Death is my least favourite, primarily because it is effectively a lower budget, more primitive riff on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the knock-off version, like Orca to Jaws, or Battle Beyond the Stars to Star Wars. It seems cheaper, more exploitative, and yet it's also not without its excitement or charms. While it mostly abandons the super spy element it adopts the 50's/60's British-esque war movie into its repertoire.

A coalition of farmers is being taxed literally to death by its regional lordship. They've protested and pleaded but their lordship has his own political aspirations, and whatever he achieves will be on the backs of the working class. They either fall in line, or get shut down. Though it doesn't pay much, and Ichibei is not a man to interfere in politics, he cannot dismiss the suffering of others, nor can he abide bullies.

He gathers a team, including his ninja love interest from last film (though their relationship has seemingly gone largely platonic since then) and they descend upon the fortified wall. Ichibei takes command and organizes the people, their few fighters, and the unruly ronin who have gathered.  They would be overwhelmed by the lord's forces if not for the gatling gun Ichibei has brought with him (possibly recovered from those Dutch traders he defeated in the prior film?)

There's something about gunplay in a samurai film I really, really don't like. Obviously guns were a game changer after ages of swords and arrows, and this ugly progression naturally would hit Japan's shores, but there's something so much more elegant and tangible to swordplay and arrows that is lost when you have people falling over after being hit with invisible bullets. The special spray of arterial blood is lost as hammy extras overplay their falling-over-after-being-shot moments.

That said, it's still pretty exciting, and has kind of a first-person-shooter feel to it when the forces are just so overwhelming that they're pretty much flooding the frame of the camera and being shot by Ichibei's gun at point blank range.  It does feel effectively overwhelming.

In terms of Ichibei being the number-one-lover-man-in-Japan, the film turns the tables. A widow in the village assaults Ichibei, taking his pants off while he sleeps and tries to force herself upon him repeatedly as he attempts to flee. It's played semi-comedically, but assault is assault. It's not right when Ichibei was doing it in the prior film and it's not fair play to have the tables reversed.  Another widow, who has gone mad following the deaths of her husband and baby, also assails Ichibei, and literally throws him around, mirroring his first encounter with his ninja love in Killer's Mission.

The film ends with a field of dead and the ruins of a community. An inspector from the Shogunate finally arrives to assess the conflict, but obviously too late to do anything about it. It's a dark note, left with the little promise of the children of the village emerging and being embraced by the farmers of neighboring communities.

These films do not shy away from being critical of government, and the corruption that lies within. Ichibei is often an agent for the government but he is not of the government.

Eight Men to Kill opens with a gold heist, which makes its way to Ichibei doubly so. First the government implores his assistance in recovering the gold as it's crucial to staving off an economic collapse. Second, a witness to the heist found a gold piece and swallowed it, but it's causing severe intestinal issues and Ichibei needs to operate on him.  Operations on screen before sterile environments really wig me out.

So Ichibei suits up and heads out to discover the whereabouts of the gold. He meets and kills and helps many people along the way. Unlike the first film, which establishes Ichibei as a sort of solitary badass, and the second film where he's like a military general, here he's a man for the people. His mission to recover the gold is so he can get a cut of it to fund more medical outposts in the region, something he criticizes his government contacts for not doing.

Eight Men to Kill is framed almost entirely as a western. The score still retains its super-spy tenor, but mixes in a lot more Morricone influence than before. The visuals are exceptionally dusty, and even the Japanese villages seem to be staged more in a way like Western towns, ready for a showdown.

There's also a lot more gunplay. While The Fort of Death was wartime gunplay, along with swords and arrows, there's more gunplay than swordplay here, a lot of horse chases as well. It's more American/spaghetti western than jedaigeki. Even Ichibei's outfit looks more gunslinger than samurai (he actually looks more like the Friendly Giant, if I'm being honest.) The mustard coloured outfit and the shaggy near-afro screams early 1970's.

While the first film was complicated by its political intrigue, here's its complicated by the ever-shifting allegiances of the characters. Everyone's shifting who they are aiding and it's not like they're double-agents, they just keep shifting sides. In the end I really lost track of who was supporting whom and what individual motivations were.

On the women front, again, not great. Ichibei threatens a sex worker who has info about the gold. She refuses to give up her knowledge and offers herself to him basically as a distraction. About the only Bond-ian element remaining in this film is the fact he fucks the villainess so good she immediately falls in love with him and leads him to the man with the gold, and she starts acting irrationally out of her uncontrollable affection for Ichibei.

The end of the film is very dark, and once again reiterates this films seemingly connective tissue about governments needing to be for the people and not exist for power, wealth and control.

Despite being the most misogynistic of the three films, Killer's Mission was the most successful at what it promised on the box (and honestly the misogyny of the film is absolutely aping James Bond, in an almost child-like, they-don't-really-know-what-they're-doing fashion) and the one I liked the most. I wished they had stuck with the super-spy genre and leaned into its tropes more. Period-specific super-spies may not be all that accurate but it's pretty goddamn fun. 

Chambara films already have a western feel to them as is, so leaning more into the Sergio Leone of it all isn't really redefining the boundaries of samurai movies... or maybe it's that I just care less about westerns than I do about spy movies.

These three films aren't great cinema, they aren't giving Kurosawa any challenges. They're pulp, their entertainment, and much like Ichibei himself they get the job done pretty efficiently (all of them clocking in around 90 minutes).  Yet, I really would like there to be more of these. It's surprising there weren't more of these, or that they didn't go on to be a TV series like Lone WOlf and Cub or Zatoichi. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): My Spy: The Eternal City

2024, Peter Segel (Ken Jeong Made Me Do It) -- Amazon

Wow, that sucked.

You would think the original writing & directing team could do something at least interesting again with the characters they established in the last movie. Instead, they squander a greater budget with a "European Vacation". I am not saying they made box office magic with the first movie but at least they made use of the precocious interaction between giant Dave Bautista and tiny little Chloe Coleman. Here, they decide to mine the tiresome conflict between (step) father and teen daughter.

No disrespect to a Dad raising a young teen; Kent is doing it admirably !

Some years later JJ (Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galazy) is now married to Sophie's mom (Lara Babalola, The Island). First mistake -- they changed the actor, and have the character entirely absent but for a phone call and a wrap-up shot. JJ has taken on a more advisory role in his TLA agency, because he wants to be there for Sophie. When Sophie's choir is invited to sing in Vienna, JJ comes along as chaperone. Insert all the cliche rambunctious teens and losing control over them. Of course, he gets embroiled in some farcical villain plot, this time to Blow Up the Vatican, and he has to get Sophie's well-trained help to foil the plot. 

Wasted, all wasted. The relatively streamlined plot of the last movie is replaced by hijinks galore, cartoon villains and the cringe of teen love triangles. Fuck, they even waste Flula Borg as a moustache twirling villain -- he's just not weird enough, and really... he's all muscled up? Ken Jeong, who is always weird but should be used in small doses in movies like this, is turned up to 11 and paired up with Schaal. And they even go down a dark path by killing one of JJ's coworkers. Like, dead dead. Isn't this a family friendly comedy? The fact they shoot the movie in lovely Venice and Rome is ... shrug... useless? Maybe they wanted to be compared to recent spy movies and their European romps, but... why? Probably just to distract us from how lazy everything is about this movie. But at least JJ makes scones.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): My Spy

2020, Peter Segal (Get Smart) -- Amazon

I knew Kent had seen this movie, but TBH I recall him being more favourable. We only ended up watching this because we saw the trailer for the second, and it got a few chuckles out of us.  

JJ (Dave Bautista, Bladerunner 2049) is a spy, but not the subtle kind. It's almost as if the elevator pitch was just, "Imagine you have a spy, but it's Dave Bautista." There is nothing subtle about Bautista. Anyway, the character is the kind that usually ends up killing all the henchmen during an operation, and that pisses his boss (Ken Jeong, Avengers: Endgame) off. As punishment, he is assigned a babysitting mission, watching over the relatives of a arms dealer who hid the plans for a nuclear weapon before he was murdered, by his own brother. Nine year old Sophie (Chloe Coleman, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) catches onto their game almost immediately, and blackmails JJ, and his tech Bobbi (Kristen Schaal, All Nighter), into ... well, being her friend. They all become fast friends, with JJ attracted to Sophie's mom. But that doesn't sit too well with his boss, who tries to pull him off the mission, until the evil uncle shows up, and we get to have a final boss battle.

In these kinds of movie, i.e. the incredibly light, accessible, action comedy, the actual plot is hand-wavey thin. The "meat" of the movie comes in the charming centre, where JJ and Sophie bond via hijinx. I was kind of surprised that Bautista pulled it off, but it worked for me and elicited more than a few chuckles, that is, when I wasn't playing "spot Toronto". He balances well against Coleman. But as usual, Schaal just irritated the fuck out of me in every scene she was in. 

Yeah yeah, sure, you still are capable of not-saying-much and actually doing 3 relatively short paragraphs. And no this one doesn't count.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Heart of Stone

2023, Tom Harper (The Aeronauts) -- Netflix

This might be my death knell with espionage type thrillers, for while I was compelled enough to pay attention, I was not stirred at all by the characters, the world it was building nor any of the elements. And it wasn't fun enough to be considered a popcorn romp. But, no I cannot say I disliked, in fact there were many elements about it I rather enjoyed, but... only mildly. I might go so far as to say this was a ... Ryan Reynolds style vehicle like Red Notice or 6 Underground ? But it wasn't; it stands alone.

We begin with a spy operation in a casino atop the Italian Alps. A team of MI6 agents are there to extract an arms dealer but the op goes sideways and Stone (Gal Gadot, Knight & Day) has to emerge, secretly, from her role as operational support ("stay in the van") to move things along. She is, in truth, a member of The Charter who through ear pieces, a fancy quantum computer, and a holographic system, are able to assist Stone in ways other agencies can only presumably dream of. Think of it this way - she is masquerading as the real MI6 while The Charter is more akin to the Bond-ian MI6 with toys & gadgets and such. No matter, as the op fails anyway and the arms dealer dies. 

Soon after, the team finds itself in Lisbon tracking down the hacker who interfered with their Italy operation when they are attacked and Stone has to fully reveal herself in order to save the team. And then one of the team, Parker (Jamie Dornan, Fifty Shades of Grey), reveals himself as a Bad Guy and murders the rest of them; well, not Stone. His end goal had always been to find The Charter -- more specifically, The Charter's AI/Quantum Computer called The Heart. Getting Stone to reveal herself was his real objective. 

Of note, the Charter likes to label things like they were part of a deck of cards. Stone was The Joker. Not sure of the whole point of it.

Parker leaves Stone alive, and she is not really suspicious about it, she doesn't know he has implanted her with ... something. Once she returns to base, it activates, hacking The Charter computer system before she can tear it out. But not before the Bad Guys learn of the location of The Heart, in an airship which constantly moves in the lower atmosphere. Meanwhile, The Charter's command structure (four "Kings"; why not eight, Kings and Queens?) reveals they know who Parker is, someone who they left for dead in their own botched op in Chechnya. Parker is out for REVENGE ! (yawn)

At this point, I am just along for the ride. The notes and beats of this movie are classic second-rate spy-thriller. I was intrigued by the non-governmental agency of The Charter, but that has been used before as well, usually in cartoony level TV and movies. But they seem just as prone to deception and misdirection as the agencies they claim to be better than. I mean, Parker doesn't hide his appearance, so when Stone was embedded into that MI6 team, shouldn't have someone recognized him from his dossier? 

There is some rather unnecessary mass destruction, taking its notes from the (other) MI movies, which all boils down to whiney Bad Guy revenge shit. I get that this is one of the tropes of the genre, but I guess that cements my fatigue with it. Of course, Stone saves (most of) the day and The Charter rises from the rubble to fight again.

Migawds, I hate single-faces dominating the poster without any hint as to the movie they are promoting style posters.

KWIF: Oppenheimer + M:I-DR Pt. 1

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (maybe) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts. KWIF is not a fart from the front butt.

This Week:
Oppenheimer (2023, d. Christopher Nolan - in 70mm)
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt. 1 (2023, d. Christopher McQuarrie - in theatre)

---

For Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan's storytelling construct - in which the film's scattershot narrative jumps back and forth across 3 different timelines in a non-linear fashion - is his conceptualization of the process of an atomic explosion -particles bouncing off of each other (to my rudimentary understanding)- but as cinema.  

Truth is, I went into a 10am 70mm screening of a 3 hour historical drama on 5 hours sleep and no caffeine expecting (not wanting, but expecting) sleep to take me over. It was quite the opposite experience.

The structural choices were riveting, and required my brain to be on alert. I was engaged in surprising ways, even though the crux of the film delivers a message I'd long reached on my own. It's a little blunt (not talking Emily here) on its message about Oppenheimer's legacy, his reputation, and what we should think of the man, especially in its third act's late stages, but it earns the right to say such things...mostly.

It's not hard to follow the storylines, really, but then Nolan had long ago mastered the non-linear narrative and this is an even more impressive feat than Tenet in that regards because there's not a single action sequence to speak of. I may be confused on the timeline of the specific events, but a pretty whole picture is revealed in spite of it.

Ludwig Goransson, next to Nolan and lead Cilian Murphy, is the third key to this project playing out. Certainly tasked by Nolan to never stop, the music can be overwhelming at times, as there's to be no quiet in this film, until the one moment quiet is needed. Fans of The Last Jedi already know where this is going. It's strong, often powerful work otherwise.

Nolan attempts to inject some sex into this brainy bio-drama but the effort comes off as Nolan's films often do in this regard, clinical, cerebral, certainly not alluring or arousing.

It's a sobering film, and I dislike the decision not to show the aftereffects of what a detonation on a populace actually looks like. It may be graphic, exploitative, and unpleasant, sure, but I think it'd a necessary punch to remind us this isn't just a fiction.

It's not my favourite Nolan movie, not by a long shot, but it is his most potent and sobering, and just maybe his greatest accomplishment.

The Flash Scale: So much better than The Flash. Like if Oppenheimer is an atomic explosion, The Flash is a wet fart in comparison.

---

Because of the Tom Cruise-ness of it all, I was pretty resistant to embracing the Mission:Impossible series until, one week of rewatching, I discovered that, hey, I actually like all these (mostly).  It's still not a series I obsess over nor do I revisit them with any regularity, and unlike Bond films which distinguish themselves from one another pretty comfortably, most of the M:I films (particularly the McQuarrie ones) tend to blur with each other.

That said, I was still pretty enthused to go see Dead Reckoning Part One (the latest entry in the Year of Two-Parters). More crazy TC stunts, more Becky Fergs, more Vanessa Kirby, and the addition of Hayley Atwell...that's maybe too many of my on-screen crushes together at once (it's like Gunpowder Milkshake all over again).  Just my luck, though, I missed the scene where the three of them all get to act against one another. Stupid 1/2 litre iced tea I drank at lunch.

The plot of M:I-DRpt1 finds Ethan (once again having gone rogue within minutes of the film starting) squaring off against an artificial intelligence who sees him as its only threat to its total dominion over humanity. Because, you know, Ethan Hunt is just so altruistic, pro-humanity, such an outside-the-box thinker, and the ultimate moralist. He's become increasingly fashioned in Cruise's own image of himself, and I think Dead Reckoning (part 1, lest we forget) is the tipping point where it starts to become too much wish fulfillment for the 60-year-old megastar.  Especially in the wake of the Boomer power-fantasy of Top Gun: Maverick, it seems like the moral of every Tom Cruise movie is "still vital, still relevant, better than ever".

But I can get past that part, especially given how simultaneously silly and thrilling McQuarrie's Missions:Impossible have gotten over the past few series. This one is pretty crackin' big corker of a superspy action film (I mean, obviously...it's in TWO PARTS!) that should electrify any audience.

Unfortunately, it's also a film that has a particularly sour turning point which just gets worse, at least for me, the more it rolls around in my mind.

[SPOILERS]

They fridge Ilsa.  Her death, particularly after an earlier-in-the-movie fake-out, is really freaking annoying. I want Ilsa to be Ethan's better as a super-spy, but it's clear the filmmakers don't want it that way.  Ethan Hunt has to be, not just the best spy ever, but the best person ever.  Ilsa's death is then used additional motivation for Ethan's mission, and revenge.  

It's not just that, though, as the filmmakers then seed in some heretofore unknown backstory about Ethan's motivation for joining IMF originally...which involved another woman being fridged by the same guy who kills Ilsa. 

Two fridgings in one movie? What fucking year are we living in?!? If this were, say, a Scream movie which satirizes Hollywood tropes, I could see it, but there's not a metatext bone in this film's body. Subtext, sure, metatext, nossaemuch. 

Truth told, it would have been 1000 times more interesting killing Ethan and having Ilsa pick up the pieces. Or kill Benji or Luther if you want to really pack an emotional wallop. This just stinks.

There's also been this longstanding trope in M:I of Ethan showing a moment of kindness to a gorgeous female assassin or spy and turning them to his side at just the moment when he needs them. He does so again here, in egregious fashion with Pom Klementieff's painted killer, a fun, one-note role stepped right out of a Roger Moore Bond flick.  The trope does actually get called out here, but it's still maddening as it functions solely as ego flattery for the film's lead.

[END SPOILERS]

Cruise is fine, here. I won't say he's in top form, because he's not. Throughout (likely because the shoot was delayed due to COVID) he looks different from one scene to the next.  At times, he looks like he's wearing an ill-fitting Ethan Hunt mask throughout the film. Yes I being petty, insulting the man's precious moneymaker, but the reality is, age is finally starting to catch up with him in ways he can't avoid. It's not too distracting, except when he's hitting on women 15-20 years (or more) younger than he is.  Then it just feels like sad, handsome grandpa.

Upon the first meeting between Ethan Hunt and Haley Atwell's Grace, she looks like she's just come face to face with international movie star and famous handsome man Tom Cruise, and not some rando of whom she has no prior knowledge. She seems dazzled for a minute, and it's an odd choice, and their dynamic continues to be weird throughout. Atwell is superb, but the intent of the dynamic between Ethan and Grace never seems clear (especially complicated by the Ilsa situation). 

If you aren't bothered by the hoary comic book tropes that should have died in the 90's and ego-driven story decisions, then you will be wildly entertained. If you are bothered by such things, you'll still be wildly entertained while also pretty frustrated.

The Flash Scale: better than The Flash, but maybe just as aggravating?

As far as this year's 2-parters go, marginally better than Fast X (less silly, but surprisingly not that much less silly... I could see Fast X part 2 and Dead Reckoning part 2 actually being a crossover and still working somehow), not even close to as good as Across the Spideverse.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Lou

2022, Anna Foerster (lots of TV including Westworld) -- Netflix

This is how you do a Women with Guns movie about being a mother, exploring both the familial bond and the lack thereof that comes with being a violent sociopath. As opposed to, the other. 

But apparently, the New Hot Place for assassin women to hide is Alaska. Also, retro timelines are FUN! Ok ok, I start off with the snark, but to be honest, I rather enjoyed this one, and maybe it will be a jumping off point for Allison Janney's aging action star career? Can't let Neeson have all the fun. OK, enough snark.

Again, Alaska, the 80s. Lou (Janney, Mom) lives in the woods with her dog Jax. Her next door neighbour, and tenant, Hannah (Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country) is a single mom of daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman, Shattered). Lou is a cranky old lady, constantly harassing struggling Hannah. It doesn't help, as Hannah is still dealing with the abuse from her ex-husband, a man she assumes is now dead. Buuuuut...

Big storm coming, and Lou is making preparations.... well, not for the storm, but her own ending. Obviously she has a past she hasn't quite escaped from, much like Hannah. The storm, or ... someone, cuts the power to Hannah's place, and while she is outside, takes Vee. In desperation, she runs to Lou's place, interrupting a shotgun in the mouth. Instead of explaining, Lou immediately kicks into action, and the two go off into the woods to track the kidnapper, who must be Hannah's ex, despite her being told of his death.

Spoilers?

Surprisingly, as in I was actually surprised by it, things are not as they seem. Lou's past is CIA and that is one thing, but she is also tied to Hannah in ways the young woman could not be aware of. As the two trek through the woods, that Lou is a badass becomes very apparent, but also the details of their connection trickles out. You see, while Lou was in Iran doing Reagan era CIA things (Google it) she became pregnant. To retain her cover, she kept the boy, but motherhood never really... took. So, Phillip grew up... wrong. Lou knows she was responsible so she turned him in, and he instead faked his death. But Lou protected her daughter-in-law and granddaughter secretly, until... well, all this came about.

This is a by-the-numbers thriller but Janney is just steely! That only she, and her character, could have been in a better movie, as despite me enjoying it, I know there was a better... movie there, if only it had the guts to pursue something other than a simple pursuit and revenge movie.

Rewatch: Atomic Blonde

2017, David Leitch (Bullet Train) -- Netflix

Weird, I didn't write about this one. And even though I generally "rewatch" things so I don't have to write about it (i know i know, self imposed baggage & rules about writing something that is supposed to be fun, and not to be avoided) I feel I have to. One, because it was inspired by another rewatch -- Extraction, because the entirely expected sequel comes out this week, and it has an absolutely spectacular chase-fight scene shot to look like a single take but built with from transitions, all handled by the director himself (Sam Hargrave) with a camera strapped to his chest. In watching a little YouTube about these/this scene(s), I learned he also did it once before in Atomic Blonde which I did remember, despite not writing about it, being a spectacular fight. And Two, because I felt the need to include it in the tag "women with guns" after writing about The Mother. 

Of note, I have been gravitating to the extreme end of violence in my rewatches of late. As long as there are guns blazing, I am calmed, as my mind off-screen has been anything but.

Atomic Blonde is a spy thriller set at the end of the Cold War in Berlin, mostly East. British agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron, The Old Guard) is relating to a pair of superiors (Toby Jones, The Detectorists), one an American (John Goodman, Treme), about an op gone wrong in Berlin. She bears the barely healed marks of the failure literally on her face. An agent she knew, but denies, was killed before he could get the classic "operative list" MacGuffin out of East Berlin. She is sent there to connect with the station chief David Percival (James McAvoy, Wanted), who has gone mostly native, buried deep in the black market. From the moment she arrives, she is under siege, having to navigate the twists and turns and double-backs between Russia and the Allies, as Berlin builds to a powder keg, which we in the 21st century know ends with the fall of the Wall.

The movie shifts from convoluted spy games, to sexy 80s-music-pumped intrigue to bone crunching violence. Percival is obviously playing his own game, but she still has to work with him, as he is the connection to the defector (Eddie Marsan, Wrath of Man) who supposedly has the MacGuffin list memorized. Lorraine is playing her own game, the way she wants to play it, but weighed down by the exhausting fights & betrayals. 

I want to like this movie more than I do. I probably didn't write about it the first time because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. Still not really sure. But it is beautifully designed & shot, Theron is phenomenal and in the long run, I am there for the Hargrave fight scenes. The scene in question is up and down stairs, through doors and walls, using guns, knives and the environment as a weapon; Broughton is tall but lighter than the men she is fighting and they allow that to play through. And you can see why she immerses herself in baths full of ice cubes, barely hiding the bruises and cuts under makeup.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

2023, Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man) -- download

In my current state of Finally Having Proper Internet (1.5GB FTTH), I am starting to download 4K copies of movies. The problem is that the PC that powers our piratical media sharing is aging, and therefore only certain formats will transcode to the TV properly. Watching this movie required 4 attempts at finding the Right Copy before actually sitting, and watching the movie. And as it ended, we noticed it sitting, legally and free, on Amazon.

Sigh.

That said, I always commented that I would continue to Pirate until the days it became easier to buy/rent than to find the pirate sources. I don't pirate games anymore, not for more than a decade, because just waiting for them to drop in price is easier. I have lessened my movie & TV piracy because I have subscribed to a bunch of services that provide me more than enough content to watch legally. The only thing that was stopping me from Renting first-run movies via one of the many services was speed -- who wants to wait an hour for a Rented Movie to actually download. Now they can just zip along happily. We shall have to see if I make the transition.

Movie? Oh yeah, the movie. 

If you thought it was strange that Guy Ritchie has two movies coming out consecutively (Jake Gyllenhaal's actioner The Covenant is right around the corner) you are not wrong. This movie was done in 2021, and the distributers considered it rather crass to release a movie (in 2022) featuring Ukrainian Bad Guys, so they shelved it until now. But the movie seemed to have suffered other issues in its delays, in that it feels like editing & interference had it abandoning some plots and glossing over other aspects, giving it an unfinished, unpolished feel.

That said, a Guy Ritchie spy caper is still kind of fun, and fun was to be had.

Orson Fortune (Jason Statham playing Jason Statham, Spy) is an adventurer for hire, brought into the game by his handler Nathan (Cary Elwes, Stranger Things) at the behest of the British government, to get a MacGuffin called "the handle", an AI thingy-ma-jiggy that we have seen before (usually stored on a thumb drive or small SSD in a brief case), but this one takes down financial markets. Other such devices, in other movies, have shut down power grids (The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard) or had the ability to launch nuclear missiles anywhere, everywhere (Citadel). It doesn't matter what they do, only that it is Bad, and that they can be easily transported, usually in a secure brief-case.

The movie begins with a focus on Fortune building his team, not being able to get John, because John is currently working for Fortune's rival Mike, so Orson ends up with American Sarah (Aubrey Plaza, Legion). John is the best, so Fortune has to be convinced she is a good substitute.

"Save my wife," intones the courier of The Handle, just before he dies, at the hands of Mike's team. They don't. In fact, the movie forgets there was a wife at all. Is Orson really all that good-er than Mike, if he just lets her die? I think the editor was probably the real villain here.

Anywayz, The Handle is on its way to Cannes, to a charity auction hosted by Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, D&D: Honor Among Thieves) playing pretty much the same character he did in Ritchie's The Gentleman, albeit with more money. Its not that Grant is being type-cast, more that he enjoys playing up to his aging status, being these leathery, pompous, arrogant villains. Anywayz, to get into Cannes, they recruit Simmonds fav movie star, Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett, Wrath of Man).

What happens after becomes a blur of all caper, espionage and spy flicks: fancy places, fancy clothes, fancy parties, fancy cars, Bad Guys fancying femme fatales. Its surprising it took this long for Ritchie to do one of these flicks, as he is the master of ensemble casts and colourful characters, and this genre meshes well with that ideal. Alas, it struck me as a victim of production foibles, for as it is fun to behold, there really isn't much behind it. Oh, you could say that for a lot of Ritchie flicks, but most of his stories are full of twists & turns, secrets and masks that eventually reveal themselves. Being a spy flick, there is not much Reveal to be had, so the fun to be had is in the ... fun. It felt like it needed to be amped up a bit, Sarah being even more Aubrey Plaza, and Fortune being even more Jason Statham.

Alas those production foibles just felt too ever present, leaving gaps. For example, at the beginning of the movie, it was all John John John. Once Sarah is onboard, we forget about John until, "Oh, hey! That's John! Ooops, John is dead." It felt like the movie wanted to be quippy about how essential John was and then... forgot. 

Double Dose: The Chrises Go Netflix

(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple.  Today:  Chrises Evans and Hemsworth do Netflix [the lesser Chrises, Pine and Pratt are Amazon bound])

Spiderhead - 2022, d. Joseph Kosinski - Netflix
The Gray Man - 2022, d. Anthony and Joe Russo - Netflix

Director Joseph Kosinski made a big, bold splash for me with Tron: Legacy, a film that's far, far from flawless, but I have enjoyed a half dozen times over and will probably enjoy it at least as many times more.  It's a sumptuous visual feast, absolutely striking, with one of the best soundtracks of all time.  Kosinski followed it up in 2013 with the Tom Cruise-starring sci-fi vehicle Oblivion, another visually striking movie that I quite liked (but have yet to rewatch).  And since then...nothing.  This incredibly impressive visual stylist just sort of disappeared under a pile of films that just didn't get off the ground.

This year (thanks to a multi-year delay on one) we're treated to two new films from Kosinski.  The first, the mega-blockbuster of the year, Top Gun: Maverick, which would have secured Kosinski blank check status had he not also come out with Spiderhead mere weeks after.

I didn't really care for Maverick, but that film wasn't really Kosinski's vision...when you're working on a Tom Cruise vehicle, Cruise is in control.  I liked a little better Spiderhead, which finds Chris Hemsworth starring in his second Netflix movie, with Miles Teller giving Hemsworth a beef-show rivalry after getting shockingly jacked for his Maverick co-starring role.   The plot has Hemsworth, Steve, a tech billionaire, operating a legal, remote prison, where the prisoners are treated and fed very well but are subjects in a test of chemical control.  With a surgically installed unit in their spine, their handlers put the inmates in controlled room experiments, sometimes paired up, sometimes solo, where they mess with their emotions.

There's a level of amusement and (sometimes great) discomfort (and sometimes great discomfort at being amused), as we watch the subjects get pushed into traumatic depression, or heightened into states of orgasmic amour with an person they're otherwise not attracted to.  It seems to be that much of this is not necessarily science, but voyeurism and power tripping on Steve's part.  But the deeper we get into the film, the more we learn Steve has his own bag of secrets, some fascinating vulnerabilities (I wish the film had explored more) and also strange delusions as to what his place in this prison is.  Steve takes a real liking, and feels a strong sense of kinship with Teller's Jeff, who he starts trusting more and more, though never truly letting go of the warden/prisoner control.   It's a fun role for Hemsworth who gets to be charming, gregarious, but also menacing and sinister, and flip through those regularly.

The sets are right in my wheelhouse, a lot of concrete and wood panelling that feels retro-futuristic, very 70's but also beyond, and Kosinski really leans into all the angles this architecture presents.  Still a good visual stylist, the film looks good, but it feels a very contained movie.  

There's something a little obvious about the story, most of its rhythms feel completely expected.  There's not really any true surprises.  As much as I found both things to be intrigued with and generally enjoy, the final act, literally and figuratively, doesn't stick the landing and ultimately sinks the film for me. I was expecting it to end with something more in the dystopian chaos range of a j.g. ballard (see High Rise) -- the film operates mostly in that sphere for the first two acts (albeit a bit neutered with it's yacht rock soundtrack) -- the last 15 minutes or so don't adequately escalate in a way that makes sense for the conceit. It should have been an orgy of chaotic drug freakouts in that prison, and gotten very wild, but it doesn't really at all.  It feels safe when it shouldn't be at all.  It's downtempo finale honestly feels like a side effect of COVID-era filmmaking, keeping people apart and things small.

The Gray Man is the opposite of small.  The most expensive film Netflix has produced yet, the streamer I think felt that somehow the Russo's success with billions-earnings of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers:Endgame was a full credit to them, and not a confluence of dozens upon dozens of things going just right.  Yes, they can take some of the credit, but at best their take of the success of their MCU entries is 49%...not even a controlling share.

AppleTV+ found out with the critically maligned Cherry (with Tom Holland) that maybe the Russos need a producer behind them that knows exactly what they want to keep them on track.  I imagine The Gray Man was already deep in production by the time Cherry was released, and by then the genie ..err.. money couldn't be put back in the bottle.

Based off the bestselling novel of the same name (film studios love to tout "based off the bestselling novel" but at this stage a bestseller can be, like, 20,000 copies, a mere fraction of a fraction of Netflix's massive (though declining) global audience, so it means nothing) The Grey Man reteams the Russos with their MCU screenwriting collaborators Stephen McFeeley and Christopher Marcus, and former Captain America Chris Evans, so one would thing bringing that whole gang together for a globetrotting spy vs. spy action movie would been nothing but gold.

Gold sure isn't Gray. BAM! ZING! Got'em! (Ahem.)

The film puts Ryan Gosling in the role of an CIA operative who is the best at what he does.  He's a troubled man, whose proclivities for violence were put to "good use".  But when he discovers that his latest mission was a job meant to cover up his handler's misdeeds, he is cut loose by the agency and goes on the run.  The agency knows he's basically their best guy, so they send the only one they're sure can get him, a free-market mercenary maniac played by Evans, with a funny lil mustache.

The two chase each other across Europe, with Evans pulling zero punches in leveling buildings and destroying all manner of vehicles and possibly causing dozens of collateral damage deaths in the process, and Gosling spending little effort to stop the destruction. (The amount of people in this movie who have no problem with all the destruction and unseen death as a result but then get all upset to learn that Evans has kidnapped a preteen girl who Gosling is like the godfather of, well, then for some reason that just too far for them...it's absurd logic.  All that collateral damage, again, unseen, likely killed a half dozen girls).

The movie's cast is stacked.  Ana de Armis being a colleague of Gosling's who winds up helping him despite her reservations (despite the massive budget, de Armis doesn't get an action scene remotely as good as her role in No Time To Die).  Rege-Jean Page seems kind of wasted as the desk-bound CIA bad guy, and Jessica Henwick is definitely wasted as his lackey.  Billy Bob Thornton is Gosling's mentor, and is fine, while Alfre Woodard gets an all too brief cameo that seems over almost as soon as it starts.

There's a pretty huge action scene on a streetcar in Vienna, which is the only sequence in the film that implies how expensive the film was, and also the only one that really sticks out to my memory of the entire production.  The rest of the film sees a lot of action for action sake that hasn't stuck in my brain. 

Taking away the 200 million dollar price tag, and it's a slightly above average action film that feels kind of like an old school 80's superstar actioneer, the kind of perfectly fine movie you would find Schwartzenegger or Stallone in back in the day. But you slap that price tag on it and it needs to deliver a LOT more than it does.  It doesn't live up to the expectations of a film costing that much, and it's hard not to think about, or have it influence one's opinions on the movie.  I think had this been theatrically released first, and bombed with critics (and probably the mass audience) it would have found a second life in streaming as a "hey, that's not that bad" reclaimed sleeper hit.

I would watch another in this series (as it totally leaves it hanging) should it ever materialize, but reign the budget in folks.  

n Paragraphs: The Gray Man

2022, Anthony & Joe Russo (You, Me and Dupree) -- Netflix

I have been suffering a dearth of watched movies. Not for a lack of movies worth watching, nor for a lack of movies-started (at least 5 in some state of "resume"), but for the lack of focus & desire. Blame work, blame video games (Animal Crossing) but more so blame my brain. I am currently in another bout of "why am I writing this?" and still not sure if I have an answer. The other symptom of this state is that I barely remembering what I just watched. Blame work, blame COVID, blame focus, blame alcohol, but I have a great inability to retain what I just watched.

But let's give it a go, as I currently in Vacation Mode, had a few days of constant rest and even my anxiety is diminishing. And we polished off a few blockbusterish flicks.

The latest not-a-superhero-movie from the Russo Bros, is pretty much the crime-spy-thriller style that Captain America: Winter Soldier was framed around, right down to the over the top action and massive destructive set pieces, collateral damage out the wazoo. Its Bourne meets Bond meets Summer Blockbuster. And its good, for its genre; I might even go as far as a Very Good.

Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton, Armageddon) recruits Ryan Gosling (Young Hercules [*snicker*]) out of prison for his CIA funded off-the-books wet work group called Sierra; Gosling will be Sierra Six, or just Six. Years later her is tasked to take out someone, botches it because he doesn't want to kill a kid (number 4 in the disruptive assassin playbook) and ends up discovering that since Fitz retired, Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page, Dungeons & Dragons), the new guy in charge of Sierra, has been doing his own thing with it, i.e. killing people for money with Six as the weapon. Six goes on the run. Carmichael sends his other best off-the-books assassin, Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans,  Knives Out), after him. On the run, Six romps around Europe, trying to find Fitz's niece, who Hansen is using as leverage. Along the way, they blow up stuff good and shoot lots of people, mostly bad guys.

This is the movie that the Other Ryan (Reynolds) wants in his action adventure romps around Europe blowing stuff up and shooting bad guys, Six Underground or Red Notice, to be. It does a great job of welding on light humour with big, bombastic action scenes. And its all wrapped up in a very good Bad Guy vs Good Guy story where we hate (but laugh at/with Hansen) while smirking along with Six while rooting for him non-stop. But not the heavy handed humour which bleeds into farce. 

And the supporting cast! Fellow CIA agents Miranda (Ana de Armas, Knives Out) and Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick, The Matrix: Resurrections)  rock amazing outfits & action scenes (Miranda) or bad suits & worse haircuts (Brewer). I liked to think of this movie as Paloma's next gig, just with another name, after her success with Bond in No Time to Die. Henwick's Brewer is such the opposite, suit wearing and following the boss down illegal rabbit holes while absorbing his abuse. Billy Bob is surprisingly less than sleazy, while Page is bureaucratic evil at its height, the true BBEG despite Hansen's outrageous homicidal proclivities. 

They are supposed to be franchise-ing this movie, but while I will watch each, I am not sure every flick needs to be done so, unless they watch to do the old school cross-over and have Six bump into the new Bond?

3 Short Paragraphs: The King's Man

2021, Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class) -- download

Rather surprised that Vaughn came along to direct the third installment in his Kingsmen movies, adaptations of the Mark Millar comic. Given this is a prequel, apparently, he was supposed to be filming the third "normal" sequel to the other two movies right after this movie, but that seems to have died on the vine. I am also rather surprised I watched  this, as I am not that big of a fan of the other two movies. One viewing should have been enough, but after a bit of clicky clickism, I rewatched the second and then downloaded this. Again, strongly seated in the meh field.

The first two movies had their tongues securely in cheeks, but this one seemed... overly serious? Its a period piece set just before the first World War, centered around the intelligence group setup by Orlando, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes, Spectre) that uses servants and household staff to keep him appraised of the goings on within families of import. Nobody ever notices the servants just doing their job. Meanwhile an organization calling itself The Flock is trying to orchestrate a controlled war in Europe. Their base of operations is rather improbable tor only accessed by a long manual elevator ride, and is covered in sheep. Their leader in the shadows has the most impressive cartoon Scottish accent. Meanwhile, Orlando is doing his best to keep his son out of harm's way, yet still brings him along on a mission to assassinate Rasputin (Rhys Ifans, Notting Hill). Despite their success, The Flock gets the War going which leads to Orlando's son's death, forcing him to take on the leader of The Flock directly.

The movie wants to be a convoluted look into the political events of the early 20th century while also being the rollicking adventure the other movies were. It does have some fun with the historical facts, such as the insular (inbred?) nature of the royal families of Britain, Germany and Russia, by having Tom Hollander (About Time) play all three rulers: King George, Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas. I had thought Rasputin to be at the centre of things, but his bit was rather short, while being overly comically dramatic. In the end, it kind of captures the nature of the other films but wasn't very memorable, and I was rather disappointed by the secret reveal of The Flock Shepherd which served no purpose being hidden at all. And the creation of the Kingsmen tailor shop / spy service out of Orlando's servant organization is... meh.

3 Short Paragraphs: The 355

2022, Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) -- download

Are we surprised that the director of X-Men: Dark Phoenix directed had a movie flop at the box office? I am surprised that this very mediocre Women With Guns thriller actioner even made it to the theatre. But considering how utterly bland the X-Men movie was, I am not surprised that this one was very much by the books, which means, I was not all that put out by it. Again, just confused that it actually made it to the cinema when it felt more along the Straight To vibe of flicks like MI-5 which had being a spin-off of a TV series to blame.

Jessica Chastain (Ava) is a Mace, a CIA agent who loses her partner Nick (Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy) in an op gone wrong, right after she breaks her no-emotional-connection rule and and has smoochy smoochy with Nick.  The op was to recover a McGuffin, some sort of magical HDD that contains a program (with appropriately flash interface) that can interface with any network, any! Now its on the loose. Mace then travels around gathering a crew of other Women With Guns to hunt down the McGuffin and exact revenge for Nick's death. They include Diane Kruger (The Bridge), Penelope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express), Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther) and eventually Bing Bing Fan (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

So yeah, by the books. So that means we have some tense chase scenes in exotic European locales, at least one fancy dress party that needs to be infiltrated assisted by fancy tech (pretty much exactly like a recent episode of Picard) and eventually a twisty reveal (which wasn't much of a surprise) and confrontation in another exotic locale. The acting and production values are all pretty tight, if uneventful, but there was not enough of the stuff around the edges (as I mentioned when writing about Ava) to make it... interesting. A better version of this would be gathering women, with guns, from other existing movies and doing an Expendables style flick.

P.S. Are we wondering why it's called The 355 ? No, yeah and the incredibly boring reason is not worth explaining, in the worst (failed) attempt to create a franchise.