KWIF: The End of Oak Street (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. 

This Week:
The End of Oak Street (2026, d. David Robert Mitchell - in theatre)
Your Name. (2016, d. Makoto Shinaki - in theatre)

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Youtube essayist Patrick H. Willems, in a recent video asked "why aren't there more dinosaur movies?" If the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World films can continually make upwards of a billion dollars with each release, despite being of questionable quality, why are there not more films with dinos in them?

While David Robert Mitchell, director of It Follows and Under The Silver Lake, hasn't exactly decided to address Willems directly with The End of Oak Street (this film would have been in post-production by the time Willems released his video), it will for certain be an answer to that question.  In its first weekend, the film was still surpassed by summer juggernauts The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It's looking like it will at least break even, but it's not even coming close to Jurassic Park numbers.

Mitchell's film finds the Platt family struggling to survive when their neighbourhood is mysteriously transported form 1982 to an age of dinosaurs. Up until this moment, mom Denise (Anne Hathaway in her fourth film role) has been plugging away at a novel which hints at her dissatisfaction with her home life. Dad Greg (Ewan McGregor) is struggling with alcohol consumption and employment, and works delivering pizza. Their eldest, Audrey (Maisy Stella) faces graduation and the realization that her interest in astronomy will likely go unfulfilled as community college seems the only post-secondary in reach. While the youngest, Brian (Christian Convey), worries about getting beaten up by his bully's older brother, and crushes on the new neighbour girl. 

Once teleported to an entirely different time, it seems a time for the family to come together. Will they bond as a unit or will Greg's perpetual optimism and Denise's pragmatism in the situation only serve to pull them further apart?

The most unfortunate part of The End of Oak Street is that the premise was given away in the marketing. The first teaser didn't give away much, and it was tremendously intriguing. The second trailer kind of gave it all away. So, if you know, you come into The End of Oak Street without the mystery. And so when the Platt's grumpy neighbour complains about the "prank" the kids pulled on him which turns out to be a massive pile of dino-poop, we already know exactly what it is. And when Denise is visiting her elderly friend who is helping edit her book, she's shown a prehistoric plant in her back yard, but they're utterly confounded by what it is. And then there's the lights at night, which may have a mysterious origin, but we know what the effect is the lights are going to have long before the characters do.

These sequences are all handled in quite the Spielberg-ian fashion, but the film spends time pondering these mysteries when we, the audience, are already a few steps ahead. It's not painful to sit through, but it doesn't feel like a satisfying tee-up for what's to come. It might as well have been a single flash with no lead in for pretty much the same effect. It's not like these mysteries weigh on the characters for any significant amount of time or impact their life all that much.

Once the Platts are sent back in time, though, the film kicks off into high gear immediately. Mitchell, for the next 15-20 minutes keeps the creatures hidden, barely glimpses of shadows or tails or spinal plates in the distance or behind buildings or fences. It's cheeky and fun toying with the audience until the reveal of the first full creature, a feathered dinosaur with a sharp beak that is beautiful and terrifying. These feathered creatures seem freshly untethered, like the big open space of suburbia is the ideal hunting grounds they've just been waiting for, and...it gets grisly. They're fast and vicious.

The family have their reasons for coming and going from their home, including searching for their lost dog Starbuck (someone's a Battlestar Galactica fan in the house). The world outside is oppressive and violent, and survival seems impossible. Mitchell's film gives us quiet moments to contemplate how utterly fucked we would be if we were suddenly cast down a few rungs on the food chain. Human weapons, our capacity for violence, aren't at all up to the challenge of what nature had in store millions of years past.

This isn't the Jurassic franchise, for which my own enjoyment ran out a long time ago (but I'm clearly in the minority). It's better. There was the capability to build a franchise out of this but Mitchell chooses to keep it self-contained, to provide an ending that is mostly satisfying if, perhaps, everything works out a little too nicely for this slightly troubled family. The effects work here, for a modestly budgeted picture, is pretty incredible. Even ignoring the creatures (and can you really ignore the brontos having sex or pooping...no, no you cannot) the setting of 1982 homesteads surrounding by vibrant prehistoric flora is incredible. 

Hathaway is having a banner year, and while this is a film that casts equal weight to all the members of the family, Denise is the richest character in the picture, and that's in large part thanks to what Hathaway brings to her performance. She is a woman torn by love for her family, disappointment in her partner, and a desire for something more, something of her own. The move in time demolishes the pathway to being someone else, and instead keeps her at home with her family, and she has to grapple both with resentment and with her instinctual desire to protect her family. So little of what is going on within Denise is said explicitly on screen, and instead resides in the movement of Hathaway's eyes and the lines on her face. She's always been a really tremendous actor, but it seems she's leveled up.

Somehow the Jurassic movies have been deemed "family" movies (this perception is part of their success), despite having a nasty streak within them. The End of Oak Street, in dipping its toe into an Amblin-esque production, has this same bent to it. It is ostensibly a family picture (in that it is a movie about a family) but it's got a bit of menace to it, a severity which will disarm and upset and surprise and thrill. I know I let out more than a few uncontrollable chortles as the events on screen. 

The End of Oak Street doesn't look like it will be setting any new trends. The next big dinosaur movie will be a Jurassic one and we won't be likely to see others in the meantime. But its good we have this, it's good we have options.

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In my younger years, I used to be virulently anti-anime. I lumped a whole culture of films into one simplified basked because, basically, I hated Akira. Loud, flashy, somewhat impenetrable, somewhat nonsensical. Style over substance. This seemed to be anime to me. It took me a long time and many Studio Ghibli films to get over that perception. And, to tell the truth, I'm still not over it. Not fully.

My youngest, now almost of voting age, is big into anime and manga. Given the physical media I have -- thousands of comics and graphic novels and hundreds of movies and tv shows -- yeah it's kind of disappointing that they turned to basically the one area of entertainment I had basically written off and had virtually nothing of in my collections. But we all find our own paths and interests and rebel against our parents in our own ways.

They were really psyched that Your Name. was getting a limited theatrical run, and they asked if I wanted to go see it with them. Since I have shifted my opinions on anime (somewhat) yeah, I was game. They had seen it before, and obviously it meant something to them to go see it on the big screen (unfortunately we had to see it in the local closet cinema, since the bigger venue showings were in the 19+ VIP theatres). I had asked them what the film was, genre wise (besides "anime"), and they couldn't tell me. Was it romance? Drama? Comedy? Sci-fi? Sort of yes-ish to all. They just couldn't pin it down. Having seen it, I get it now.

Your Name. is a body switch comedy, at least to start. Mitsuha wakes up and is somewhat astonished to find she's in her own body. She feels like she's been living in a dream world, and as she goes about her day in her small village - going to school, hanging with friends, nothing much to do - she's told over and over again that she was behaving differently the day before.  And then she goes to sleep and wakes up in the body of Taki, fumbling her way through his life in Tokyo, going to school, hanging with friends, going to his job waiting tables. It's a delirious dream that Mitsuha enjoys at first, the big city life she's always dreamed of, but working so hard is unfamiliar to her.

And then we see the flipside as Taki lives a day in his life after having acting very different the day before when Mitsuha was in charge, followed by a day in his life in Mitsuha's body (and naturally he just can't stop fondling her breasts, which Mitsuha's younger sister catches him doing... every. time. Funny!)

My initial thought, upon watching the plot play out in this first act was how fantastic a premise this is for a complex exploration of gender and sexual identity. Immediately the finale was playing out in my head where Mitsuha and Taki either are trapped in each other's bodies, willingly, and return to their proper homes living as the other gender...or they return to their own bodies but decide to transition.... And then I remembered that Japan isn't the most progressive of nations about these things, certainly not in 2016, and that it would never happen, even if that's the most exciting and impactful this story could possibly get. There is hints though that Mitsuha is a bit gender questioning (before she's even aware of body switching, she does wish she was a boy living in Tokyo, and she also seems pretty into the fetching Ms. Okudera from Taki's work...but neither of these thoughts are explored in any depth).

There's also perfect romantic comedy in this set-up, one which I was not expecting and was excited to see play out. But that's not the film director Shinaki was making, and he lets you know by montaging (montage-ing?) the hell out of what seems like weeks of instances of Mitsuha and Taki switching bodies and living each others' lives. We get voice over from Mitsuha telling us the rules they set up for each other and how they communicate with each other. But it robs us of all the comedic set ups, and building out the supporting cast, as well as inhibits the growth of romantic tension. At the end of a montage, we learn Mitsuha has set Taki up on a date with Ms. Okudera - a woman in her mid-20s to Taki's 17(!) and then both Mitsuha and Taki have conflicted feelings about said date. This is how we learn the body-switchers like each other, but there's only been like 5 minutes of communication between them as presented through montage. It's not satisfying in the slightest (plus "voice-over over a montage of scenes" always gives the perception of a troubled production and extensive reshoots).

The reason Taki and Mitsuha are body switching is as a result of a passing comet. And when the comet passes, neither Taki nor Mitsuha are switching bodies anymore...but they both have fallen for each other. Taki tries to call Mitsuha but cannot seem to locate her. And, like a dream, their memories of each other start fading. This is the "romance" part of a rom com. The "meet-cute" of Taki and Mitsuha was basically looking in a mirror and seeing each other's lives from inside. Now they need to find each other but so many complications get in the way (far too many).

Taki becomes obsessed with finding Mitsuha, sketching everything he can remember of her town. His friend Tsukasa  joins him on a trip to try and find the town where Mitsuha lives (he never learned that while he was pretending to be her?!? Or is it just the fading dreamlike memories...this movie is very inconsistent with how their memories work). Ms. Okudera joins them (which, given that they're teens and she's a full fledged adult, seems wildly inappropriate. There's like an Y Tu Mama Tambien set-up here that doesn't happen at all). 

And now ***SPOILERS***

Taki does find the village...but it was decimated by a meteorite that fell off the comet 3 years ago! Not only were Mitsuha and Taki body switching, but they were time traveling and never realized it. I guess they don't have calendars or write down dates in school? This film asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief, which is fine for the higher-concept stuff, but then they push you to believe that neither one would have, I dunno, put their details into each other's phone or notebook. Or learn where their exact address is. And then, when the comet passes all the little notes Mitsuha had been leaving in Taki's diary on his phone just spontaneously delete themselves? I have to call bullshit on that one. It's like the film is saying that all evidence of Mitsuha didn't exist, except the fact that Mitsuha went to visit Taki 3 years earlier (he hadn't body switched with her yet, so their meeting meant nothing to him) and she gave him a woven ribbon that he's been wearing as a bracelet every day since. Director Shinaki cheats, and he really didn't have to.

Through drinking some spit-sake (is this a real tradition? Yup... kuchikamizake) Mitsuha made and some mystical shenanigans, Taki transcends time and space and reconnects with Mitsuha, and the third act then becomes Taki-as-Mitsuha trying to save her and her town from the looming disaster.

There is some beautiful animation in these sequences, particularly in the wild trip Taki takes upon drinking the saki, and all the visuals of the comet.  Also director Shinaki manages to effectively cross cut between the Taki-as-Mitsuha and oblivious-Taki-from-three-years earlier to create a grand sense of time and scale and the weight that rests on the shoulders of Taki-as-Mitsuha. But in spite of its scale and beauty, it is a complete distraction from what is central to the story, which is the connection between the characters and the romance that has erupted between them. When the climax of the story should be effort to bring these two characters together, it's overly focused on one huge obstacle in their way.

In a grand moment of cosmic collision, Taki and Mitsuha have a moment where space and time allow them to physically connect and it's proposed they write their names on each others hands so that when the dream state starts to rob them of their memories, they never forget each other's names. Taki writes first, and in a cosmic joke, Mitsuha barely gets to draw a line.  And stupid-ass Taki writes "I love you" instead of his name. The town is saved but they both forget each other.

In an exceptionally effective coda, five years later (from Taki's time, 8 years for Mitsuha) Taki has been searching for something that he can't explain. He knows he was obsessed by this town that got struck by a comet but he can't remember why, and in more cheats from the storyteller, neither can Ms. Okuder or Tsukasa.  The reunion of Taki and Mitsuha is quite satisfying with a sweeping era-appropriate rock ballad (which is in stark contrast to the horrible early 2000's alt-rock stylings of the songs and score earlier in the film, which undermine the film and make it feel like we're watching a sub-par CW teen soap opera).

***End Spoilers***

As I was discussing these critiques of the story my kid was explaining to me various tropes of anime, and how this falls in line with them.  This is not a badly made movie, but it's also not a well-told story. The director manipulates the characters and manipulates the edit thus manipulating the audience, hoping you won't notice. Just like with Hallmark movies where I can grade them on a curve because I've seen so many of them, I'm sure if I were more well versed in anime I might hold this in higher regard (or maybe not, I dunno) but as just a stand-alone movie going experience, it had its moments, but mostly left me wishing it were something other than what it is.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: Before I Fall

 2017, d.  Ry Russo Young - amazonprime

Preamble
[Toasty] Yes, intentionally, I am editing Kent's existing post, to add in some typical rambling on my part. This Loopty Loo project started out as something we were hunting down, but as all of our "Projects" do, it ambled off into... squirrel !! But I have to say, I actually like being surprised by one popping up on the radar.

"You realize the reader did not see the draft of this, the moment in time when there wasn't a Preamble?"

And yes, I finally got around to seeing this Teen Drama rendition of a Loopty Loo, as Kent put in the stub many weeks ago.

Its a decent example of the trope while actually striving to be slightly different from the norm.

How did the Loop Begin?

[Kent] Sam (Zoey Deutch, The Threesome) wakes up to music playing on her phone at 6:52 AM. Apparently she's been sleeping in? (Why do American kids go to school so early?!?). Her adorable little sister is bouncing on her bed. Sam is annoyed. She gets ready for the day, skips breakfast, gets further frustrated at her little sister, then hops in her friend Lindsay's SUV (Halston Sage, The Orville) and they pick up their other friends Ally (Cynthy Wu, For All Mankind) and Elody (Medalion Rahimi, NCIS: Los Angeles). Today is apparently "Cupid's day" at school, when people (mainly guys) buy roses to signify their affection for someone. (This isn't the first time I've seen this tradition on screen, but is it a real thing? Never at my school).

[Toasty] Geez, these people have money. Usually, in these Pacific North West set movies, when we get "small Vancouver suburbia" setting we see those lovely Queen Anne's and other vintage houses, but this entire neighbourhood seems West Coast Modern all piled on immaculate terraces.

Tangent Note: For about 10 minutes, I thought Cynthy Wu was the actress who played Knives Chau, and then suddenly realized I was a decade off timeline. Also, "Cynthy" ???

[Kent] Today is also the day Sam has decided she's going to go all the way with her boyfriend, the hottest guy in school. He sends her a rose, but she also receives a decidedly different rose from Kent (no, not me; Logan Miller, Escape Room), a boy she's was friends with when they were kids, but hasn't really paid any attention to him in years. (Kent basically looks like Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber and doesn't give off good vibes, but he's, apparently. the true love interest of this teen fable...ick). At lunch, Lindsay leads the girls in a rousing spate of taunting unkempt Juliet (Elena Kampouris, Jupiter's Legacy) who, clearly, is not having a good time in high school. (I mean, I didn't have a good feeling about these girls from the car ride into school, but now I really, really despise them. They're Mean Girls.)

[Toasty] Yes, this is most definitely the clique of Popular Girls, with Sam filling the role of Most Likeable. But like all cliques, even if she has reservations about their behaviour, she piles on anyway. I imagine the setup of them as characters, as I don't watch many of this demographic of film, is that they are simultaneously the "I hate them" and the "I wanna be them" girls?

[Kent] Kent's having a party (still not me), so that's where everyone will be. The girls get dressed up and Sam's nervous about her first time with the hottest guy in school. When they arrive at (not me) Kent's, THGIS is drunk off his ass already and Sam is turned right off. Then Juliet turns up and Lindsay goes full on demon on her. They get into a pushing match before everyone starts ganging up on Juliet and tossing their drinks on her. The night is heated, and, frustrated, the girls leave, only to get into an accident at 12:39 AM. 

[Toasty] THGIS... ?? ohhhhh.... yeah. Juliet and Lindsay have some history; she seems to instantly know Lindsay's trigger points. But WHY did she even show up to the party?

[Kent] I had assumed at first that maybe Juliet was Kent's sister and lived there? But then that was quickly disproven. Given what we know about what Juliet is bound to do, she was going there to provoke the mean girls.

[Toasty] Did you hear the "bump" just before they crashed? I wondered if this was going to be a "I Know What You Did Last Summer" vibe, but the Peanut Gallery said a tired popped. Did angry Juliet sabotage their vehicle? 

[Kent] I did, and given how the second time loop winds up, I was wondering if, somehow, the loops all kinda looped back on each other, and the "bump" in the first instance was connected to the same "bump" in the second last instance.

[Toasty] I am assuming they all died.

[Kent] Let's hope!  Sam wakes up in bed, and today is yesterday again. What'd I miss?

[Toasty] OK, classic setup. Introduce the mains, add in a "pining for love" Nice Guy, and even have a few core "repeatable events": the origami bird on the bed, the bouncing sister, a pile of books fall from the locker, etc. I also love that it begins with an alarm going off and all new Loopty-Loo's will involve the time displayed on someone's phone (as opposed to a red digital clock on the night stand); at least until we get past that paradigm.

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

[Kent] There's a voiceover at the start of the film and sometimes at the start of each loop. Here Sam opines that she's maybe dead already. She's not sure what's going on. The familiarity of the day as is, just waking up to the same song, the same texts, the same little sister jumping on her bed. She's moving slower. Lindsay doesn't meet her in the driveway, she comes to her room.  It's the same but it's not. Deja-fucking-vu much? But this time, seeing everything again, she's not participating, she's almost an outside observer, and as sort of freaked out by the same-sameness of it all, she's also kind of in disbelief. She wonders if she just dreamed the prior day, and all the similarities are just...eerie coincidences. But standing as an outside observer to one's own life, they perhaps see things one might not see when they are actively participating.

[Toasty] Was she hung over? She got mid-level drunk the night before. Is this one of the loops where they retain the physical effects of the previous loop? Even if not, she is emotionally spent over that whole party thing, Demon Lindsay, drunk-as-fuck THGIS, etc.

[Kent] Oooh, I like that reasoning. Either one of them, heehee.

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

[Kent] It's pretty evident that, from the onset, Sam is being a total b-hole and not a good person, but that she has the capacity for change. It's clear THGIS is a terrible boyfriend, and that this Kent kid (still not me, and not even jealous), I guess, is the guy she should be with (I guess?) as well as trying to figure out the Juliet situation. Of course in loop #3, Sam and friends avoid the party, they stay up past the time of the car crash the past two nights, and Sam relaxes. "I did everything right" she says. But the girls are all woken up by text bings at, like, 3am saying Juliet committed suicide. Everyone's upset, and Lindsay is putting up a wall, sloughing off any blame. She's kinda the worst. When Sam wakes up the next morning, back in the loop, we all know it's something to do with Juliet, but it takes Sam a few more tries to figure that out.

[Toasty] Isn't it fascinating that we grew up with Nice Guy fiction, in that we were supposed to identify with the awkward, nice kid who was "supposed to get" the female protagonist BUT that code has been flipped on its head so much so that we cannot HELP but expect him to turn out to be some sort of incel fuckhead? I mean, we weren't ALL incel fuckheads, were we? Not All Nice Guys?

[Kent] There's been some interesting reassessments of Xander from Buffy in this regard (especially as Joss' avatar in the show)...but I/we digress....

[Toasty] Of note, all  those wee hours of the morning bings. HOW did all these high school kids learn of Juliet's death so quickly, and if they were all partying, how did one get out to the highway to witness it? Talk about Doom Scrolling...

[Kent] The highway seemed to be an access point to Kent's house, so someone must have driven by and saw what's up....

[Toasty] And, assuming Juliet went to the party to confront her tormentors, primarily Lindsay, and they weren't at the party, what triggered Juliet this time?

[Kent] I really think she was already long triggered, and that going to the party was maybe the last gasp at trying to find some reason no to, to find someone or something to convince her not to (and even then, as we see, someone does try and she's still already got her mind made up).

[Toasty] But, to address the question. Was it as simple as the car crash and her subsequent death led the loop to begin? The usual "Groundhog Day" educational punishment but an unseen and unknown force? Or, was she dead. She died in the crash, and this is her Purgatory. Sam has to stay there, living that same fateful night over and over until.... she learns something? And this being her purgatory, nobody else can become involved. Buuut for the briefest of moments, I thought Juliet might actually be in her own loop, explaining the craziness. And the only way to get out of the loop was to pass it on.

[Kent] Ugh. Why this time loop actually happens... what forces are at play? Deus Ex Machina, plain and simple. It happens because it has to happen otherwise there's no story. There's no logical in-world explanation. Points for trying to concoct something tho *wink*

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

[Kent] The loop starts at 6:52 am, and ends...whenever Sam dies or falls asleep...except that, breaking with the convention of the time loop genre, she does fall asleep about 1am and then is woken up a few hours later with the news of Juliet's death, and then falls asleep again waking up back in the loop. I don't know how that works! Sam never does try to force a reset though.

[Toasty] I liked to think the loop was exactly 24 hrs long. If she's dead, she doesn't experience the remaining hours. If she sleeps, she would sleep through to the next loop-back. If she stayed awake, she would just find herself in bed, in the blink of an eye.

[Kent] I like it. Change approved!

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

[Kent] I think I counted about 9 loops in total. There's the first loop which is most the same as the day before, the second loop where they avoid the "big thing" then a montage of loops where Sam just can't cope with being in a time loop,  and completely disconnects from everyone and everything, of which I count 3 unique loops intoned there. There's the loop where, per convention, Sam goes full "scorched earth" and dresses in her baddest bad-girl outfit, burns her friendships to the ground and has awful rage sex with THGIS and winds up having a nice(/creepy?) heart to heart with her old friend Kent (still not me) before falling asleep in his bed. The seventh loop she bunks off school for the day and spends the day with her little sister, and then has a dinner out with her family, reconnecting with them. The eight loop she starts to see that changes need to be made, that Juliet is in crisis and nobody else is noticing, but it doesn't end well. It's the ninth loop where she knows exactly what she needs to do, and how to make the perfect day.

There is a conversation Sam has with her mom, asking her mom if she think's Sam's a good person. Anyone who asks that usually wants to do good but are aware that they've been caught in a loop of selfishness but maybe don't know how to get out of it. They might be capable of being a good person, but they're not currently a good person. The time loop, yes, it changes her personality, and she becomes a "good person" (I guess, she still seems kind of selfish in this final loop, frankly, especially that mindfuck she pulls on Kent).

[Toasty] Based on all her voice overs, I liked to think there were countless (COUNTLESS !!) other loops we didn't get to experience, thus her commentary on thousands of hours. She talks about doing good for the sake of doing good, of doing it for others because that is what matters. This movie definitely did not want to nerd out over Time Loops, so it did not have her perfecting the loop -- no wiping up of the nail polish, no finding the exact amount of time to squeeze in a BDay dinner with her parents, no perfect amount of sister bonding... in fact, it kind of abandons all of that in the final loop. She just ... focuses on Juliet.

[Kent] I didn't catch that VO line of dialogue, but there is nothing in what happens in the subsequent loops that even remotely indicates that she's been through dozens or hundreds of loops. I only trust what I see with this one. Even the montage seems concretely like three distinct loops, as opposed to so many Loopty Loos which have montages that convey the fact that someone is stuck in their loop a very long time.

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

[Kent] Nobody ever learns that Sam is in a time loop, she never shares it with anyone. We also never really learn what causes the time loop. Kent makes a crack about some experiment gone wrong when he's late to class the first day, but it's not highlighted and there's no way a high school kid is doing that level of experiments to fracture space-time.

[Toasty] I guess it would have just been too cliche to have her share it with Kent and the nerding-out elements of other loopties are an aspect I don't think the demographic for this movie would appreciate. It would have been nice if she had confided with Anna (the "bull dyke"; Liv Hewson, "Dramaworld") about something more than boots. 

[Kent] Oh yeah, the Shannon Purser  Liv Hewson cameo. I thought it was a good moment in the film, actually, but also felt like a nothingburger in the grander scheme?

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

[Kent] It's a rollercoaster of a ride for Sam. She has one day where basically everyone can fuck right off but after that she realizes that she needs to connect with the people she loves more, rather than push them away. So inevitably they matter more, not less as the loop crescendos.

[Toasty] As there is no real "deep thought" about being caught in a time loop, there is no metaphysical thoughts in Sam's head about what is real and who is not real. This is all real to her, everyone is real, even when she is being a bitch to them. The "lashing out" loop was out of character for her.

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

[Kent] This is a YA novel adaptation and, as such, its so utterly bogged down in heightened teen emotions, and everything largely revolves around these big feelings that, by the story's own admission, are just a blip and won't mean much to these people a year or two down the road.  High school is a Petri dish of hormones and selfishness, it's a wonder any of us survive it. The best parts of the loop are Sam connecting with her kid sister. Just a genuine, meaning, lasting sweetness.

The most surprising was the fact that Sam fell asleep and then was woken up by texts hours later and the loop hadn't reset yet.  Mindblowing deviation from convention. Were you as surprised by this as I was, Toasty?

[Toasty] I was surprised. But not overly so; it just had to reset my idea that the loop might have been contained to Juliet's final day in a more tangible way... i.e. it resets on her death. This showed otherwise. I guess the biggest surprise was that Sam sought out a way to end the loop by "saving someone else's life" so very early in the series. Of course, being a selfish teen, she didn't realize that the catalyst at the party was not the only reason Juliet would seek to take her own life. Can you have Main Character Syndrome even if you are the Main Character?

For me, the loop that stood out was when she told Kent she loved him. Yes, I realize this was the source material's attempt to show that after a long long long series of loops where she reconnects with Kent and begins to care for him, but for me, it still felt out of the blue. I get the "I just [re]met you but I love you" aspect of teenagers, but that confession seems... odd.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?

[Kent] One of my least favourites, because it's basically not interested in the time loop at all. Sam has zero curiosity about it, why it may be happening, what it means, what could have caused it. She inherently knows that there's a code to crack, a right answer to get out of this escape room, and it seems from the voiceover she provides that she knows it's only ever going to end one way.  And that ending is the biggest fart of the movie. Just that sort of a stinky poo-poo "ain't I so clever and important and meaningful" kind of finale that writers write because they think so highly of themselves and think their story that's nominally about teen suicide is going to matter.

The movie is a decent production, generally, but clearly meant for teenage girls, not 50-year-old men. A central message of learning kindness and empathy and connection is not a bad one. What'd you think Toasty?

[Toast] Yup. Wrong demographic fer shure. I liked and didn't like the ending. In my mind of "this being purgatory" it was fine and dandy -- after figgering things out, she gets to Move On. But in the loopty convention of "learn a bunch of stuff, live life as a better person" it diminishes everything done. This is only about Sam, not about the other people. Sam gets her reward, and sure Juliet lives, but no one else really is bettered for what Sam learned. Part of me likens this to the mind of a vacuous teenage girl, in that she doesn't have any inherent curiosity into her situation. She is only "oh woe is me, how do I get out of this?" which is not absent from "Groundhog Day" either -- only after the convention of loopties established itself, did people start wondering why. We never do understand why Phil is there, nor what or who created it. Maybe its time we (re)watched and wrote that one up, so we can explore how it, the originator, stacks up against its progeny.

And yes, its a very pretty movie with very pretty people, likening to "Twilight" but with time loop tropes instead of vampire tropes.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): This Is Not a Test

2025, Adam MacDonald (Pyewacket) -- download

This is a Canadian teen zombie movie, set in the 90s, based on a novel of the same name. It uses the zombie apocalypse as a platform to explore familial abuse, depression, desperation and suicide, i.e. familiar dark teen shit, which I state with no desire to diminish their impact on young lives.

Sloane (Olivia Holt, Cloak & Dagger) is about to commit suicide, reading back her own note where she states she cannot do it all on her own, when her father yells for her to get down there for breakfast. The interruption is what she needs but she comes down to immediate verbal abuse. That is interrupted by a screaming woman banging on their door, begging for help. Dad investigates, and immediately yells at Sloane that they have to leave, NOW. A confused Sloane looks out the door to see the suburban neighborhood in zombie chaos, bloody figures chasing down others. One comes through their front window, her father fights it off but is bitten. Chase flees into the street running and running.

Sloane crosses paths with some classmates, and the mother of two, and they all try hiding in a house but eventually agree they have to find a more secure place to go -- their school. The escape, through backyards & streets filled with idling zombies (when they have no one to attack, they just amble about) but eventually make it to the school, but not before losing Mrs. Chase (Krista Bridges, 19-2). Barricading all the doors, the students rally in the gym: Sloane, Cary the jock (Corteon Moore, From), Trace (Carson MacCormac, Locke & Key) & Grace Casper (Chloe Avakian, Locke & Key), and Rhys (Froy Gutierrez, Cruel Summer). 

At its core, this is a Bottle Episode, in that the primary parts of the story are all told within the school with the limited cast. Part of my hindsight brain is saying, "It could have been better, the interpersonal conflicts between the characters never really rose above middling," but as I was watching, I was thinking, this is teen drama. And no, not from a disparaging stand on "teen dramas" but more the idea that these are just kids. They are scared, they don't know what to do, and emotions rule everything at that age. And nobody trusts anyone. They respond as irrationally and chaotically as I would expect them to. 

Also at its core, there is the exploration of Sloane's desperation. If she wanted to die, why is she trying so hard to survive? Its a simplistic question but its what the story wants to explore. We can easily see, "she really didn't want to die, she just wanted out" but it takes this horrible situation for Sloane to figure it out. She saw her anchor as her sister, and without her, she was lost. In the end, all she has is herself, and she decides, it is more than enough to warrant life.

From a film making point of view, this goes into the "hard working creator" bucket. As the core mythology of film making wanes and evolves into something (even) less pedestal worthy, you can admire people who just want to tell stories, just want to use the structure in their own ways. It seems condescending to say that I admire them for working so hard on the movie, instead of the movie they made (which is, as I am wont to say, OK) but I have so so many examples of "not OK" in this blog, where millions of dollars and A-celebrities were tossed at the machine and only dross was spit out. This was a solid exploration of a genre I enjoy (that deserves its own exploration) and actually worth my time.

Now I wonder whether the same young folk who, for a number of years, left disparaging comments on this blog for me slagging on "Tomorrow, When the War Began" will emerge for this post, as I imagine the source material has its ardent followers.

KWIF: Project Hail Mary (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. Why was I burping so much last week? Something I ate? A stress-induced ucler? A lack of movies in my diet?

This week:
Project Hail Mary (2026, d. Phil Lord and Chris Miller - in theatre, 70mm screening)
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (2026, d. BenDavid Grabinski - Disney+)
The Clean Machine ("Tales for all #12", aka "Tirelire, combines & Cie", 1992, d. Jean Beaudry - Crave)

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I am a pretty big fan of the Lord & Miller duo, starting with Clone High, and I regularly cite Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs as my all-time favourite film (...maybe only half jokingly). I enjoy their work tremendously, their sense of humour, their storytelling sensibilities, their subversion of tropes, their pop culture sensibilities, their fearless ability to be silly and sincere... these sensibilities all mesh so well with my own. 

But something about the trailers for Project Hail Mary had me worried that what may be their most ambitious outing to date. While they've made miracles out of franchises with the Jump Street, Lego and Spider-Verse films, this was obviously different. Primarily a one-man-show with an amnesiac scientist played by Ryan Gosling alone on a far-reaching mission to save the earth, only to encounter - and make friends with - a spider alien made of rocks.

The trailers made the premise seem quite thin. The risk of getting bored with Gosling whether alone or hanging out with an alien seemed high (especially at a 2.5 hour runtime). And frankly, the humour witnessed in the trailer seemed pretty groan-inducing, certainly not what I expect from L&M.

I shouldn't have worried so much. Project Hail Mary opens with a series of stunning if confusing visuals, which we quickly understand are the POV of Gosling's Ryland Grace as he awakens from his induced-coma. A robotic arm attempts to aiding in his withdrawal from his sleeping casing (really has a sausage casing feel to it, but with a zipper), but a panicked Grace just starts floundering and flopping around on his own. A preprogrammed message delivers him some helpful information about his arousal from his sleeping state.

Gosling, in these opening minutes, reminds us what a movie star is. He commands the screen from the first second we see his face, and he delivers a tour-de-force performance of physical comedy, without going too broad, leaning too hard into the comedy. This is a Lord & Miller special, walking the tightrope between what's funny, but still smacks of reality, versus, say, slapstick. Within the first five minutes, any reticence or doubt I had about the film was blown out of the water. The visual acumen and Gosling's performance showed that both the actor and the directors were in the pocket on this one. They know what they are doing and know the tone they are going for. This isn't Lord & Miller reaching for their 2001: A Spaced Odyssey epic, it's perhaps more their entry into...what did Toasty just call it?... "the new weird"? (Maybe not...I'm not quite clear on what that is yet...I added a tag).

We understand where Grace is, in these opening moments, stranded in space, far, far away from home, but we have yet need to understand why, and it's clear almost immediately that Grace doesn't really want to be there. That's what the flashbacks help to flesh out.

If Project Hail Mary is a keyboard, the scenes in space are the white keys and the flashbacks are the black keys. Both are necessary to play the tune, but there's more dominance to the present time. And yet, neither is greater or lesser in importance. The revelations for Grace as his memories trickle back (prompting the flashback sequences, without being at all corny about it stylistically) are just as engrossing as Grace's space adventure.  

This is more The Martian than Interstellar in terms of tone, which, makes sense since veteran tv and screenwriter Drew Goddard wrote both this film and The Martian. Project Hail Mary has just as much fealty to science, astrophysics and theoretical physics as both these aforementioned films (it's a great triple-bill, frankly), and it manages to get the gist of the science-y aspects across without necessarily Walter Bishop-ing them all the time (it surprises me to learn that Goddard was somehow not at all involved with Fringe?)

The film's centerpiece is the relationship between Grace and his new alien friend, whom he dubs Rocky. I wince at this very American trait of giving persons with non-America names nicknames because they can't be arsed to learn to pronounce their actual name, but when the human tongue is completely incapable of producing the trilling sounds of Rocky's native language, you gotta give him a bit of a pass.

The moment of Grace and Rocky's first meeting brought me close to tears. There's some shenanigans prior to their direct meeting, but this is all about anticipation without being boring about it. The ships jockeying for position, and Rocky's ship aping Grace's ship's movements only foretells Rocky's aping of Grace.

There's something magical to the idea of the first encounter with an alien intelligence, and this film captures that magic. It's not as epic as, say Arrival, but it's just as emotionally effective, if not moreso specifically because there's no military presence, there's no agression, there's no call to arms or real threats of violence in this encounter... and it's such a relief.  My chief concern throughout this whole film was that Rocky would for some reason want to link his people with humanity. The conversation never does happen but you can certainly imagine that off screen Grace told Rocky that two-thirds of humanity are decent people, but the other third are the ugliest, most fearful, greedy, war-mongering, selfish, sociopathic assholes and it's better to never meet the nice side of Earth than to have to encounter the ugliest side of it.

The mission is simple. There's a bacteria that eats light and uses it to travel and reproduce throughout the cosmos. The bacteria is consuming stars, everywhere, and there seems to be only one star that is unaffected. It's at this junction where Rocky and Grace meet, their mission is mutual, to learn why this one star is unaffected, and if possible, send the solution to save their solar systems back home.  Grace knows it's a one-way trip, but isn't very excited about it. (As an aside, I like how this story manages to sidestep all our immediate real-world crises, and instead introduce one that is actually doing quite the opposite, creating a global cooling effect. It's a savvy way to keep the audiences' minds focused on the film).

The tightrope that Gosling expertly walks is being both a bit of a goof while also regularly reminding us that he is exceptionally intelligent and capable. For all his nervous, rambling energy, his awkward handsomeness, when it comes time to science, he sciences. 

It's a film about finding what matters, finding purpose and reason. Grace, in flashbacks, is seen as the reluctant participant, being conscripted into service rather than volunteering. He doesn't have much in his life, no great friendships or romances to speak of. Ostracized from the scientific community, he finds value in teaching, molding young minds, engaging them with his knowledge, watching them flourish as a result. But it's a lonely life, and even with the end of the world staring him down, he can't find motivation. Eva Stratt is the head of the international task force that brings him onto the project, and she, similarly, seems lonely, and we start to wonder, is this the connection he seeks?

But likewise, once he meets Rocky, there's is a bond unlike any he's ever experienced. It's a friendship romance (a bro-mance, I guess, ugh) between them as they go through this epic adventure together. Perhaps the most meaningful encounter in the history of either of their species. If Grace goes on fighting, goes on living, it's because of Rocky and no one else.

In many ways, Grace might be our first major on-screen asexual (ace) protagonist. When all the other Project teammembers are partying and hooking up, Grace seems outside of it, not that it's entirely alien to him, but it's not something he's itching or longing to join in. The ending kind of backs that up.

While Project Hail Mary doesn't break any real new ground in terms of sci-fi or spacefaring adventure films, it is, from start to finish, an absolutely delightful, sweet and charming film that lacks not for excitement but isn't driven by the need to put its protagonists in peril over and over again. It trusts that it's built a compelling narrative and enjoyable characters and enticing environments that it will fuel an audience for 255 minutes like a fuel tank full of astrophage.

I'm dying to get Toasty's reaction.

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Though Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a sci-fi action comedy that features both mobsters and time travel, there's a distinct possibility that writer-director BenDavid Grabinski's decision to open the film with a prolonged sequence of improv legend Ben Schwartz (Sonic the Hedgehog, Parks and Recreation) singing over top of Billy Joel's vocals to Why Should I Worry, a track from the largely forgotten 80's non-Disney animated feature Oliver and Company. It is decisions upon decisions as Schwartz adeptly belts out the tune with near accuracy and some nice harmonies, while clearly in the process of working on something exceptionally technical in a basement lab-type situation.  

Schwartz, we later learn is Symon, a rogue physicist who has sought out...independent financing for this little project of his, which he's about to learn, actually works, unfortunately for him.

Symon is not the focus of the film, and in fact is rather peripheral to the whole thing. He's a necessary element, but he contributes what he contributes and is at best a punchline as the film progresses. Our focus is, well, the titular Mike (James Marsden, Enchanted), Nick (Vince Vaughn, Bad Monkey), Nick (also Vince Vaughn, Dodgeball) and Alice (Eiza González, Baby Driver). Alice is unhappily married to Nick, a loan shark. Mike is Nick's best friend, and also an enforcer. Mike and Alice are having an affair, which Nick may or may not already know about. Mike and Nick work for Sosa (Keith David, They Live) but Nick wants out...he's lost the stomach for killing people.

Sosa's son, Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro, American Vandal) has just gotten out of prison after a 6 year stint, and it's party time, with no less than 3 after-parties. But Mike and Nick and Alice all bow out of the proceedings, with Nick disappearing and Mike and Alice planning a rendez-vous. Except Nick gets in the way of the rendez-vous, conscripting Mike into a new adventure, which involves kidnapping...another Nick.

See, there's a Nick from the future that saw Mike die, because he's been pinned as the rat that sent Jimmy Boy up the river, and now Sosa knows and Mike is as good as dead... unless Future Nick intervenes. But the only one who can really get in the way of Future Nick's plan to save Mike is past Nick. And so the farce and the fighting begin.

It's a really weird thing that mobsters get mixed up in time travel. It's like coffee and peanut butter...you wouldn't think they would work together...but you also might be surprised if mixed together with the right ingredients. A major ingredient is the humour, a lot of it falling on Vaughn's broad shoulders, as ever pulling the motormouth act, but tempered by having to distinguish between two emotionally distinct versions of Nick. He pulls it off quite adeptly. Future Nick is penitent and considerate, while Past Nick is a wild card, bristling with a simmering cynicism and maybe even something sinister. But both have a snark that Vaughn delivers very well, often playing off himself.

There's also a lot of comedy to the cut-aways, to the After Party, and the After After Party, and the After After After Party, where Jimmy Boy isn't having quite the time of his life, in no small part because he keeps somehow hanging out Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro, Tron Ares) whose dumbassery keeps putting a wet blanket on the fun.  Grabinski didn't really need to keep cutting back to these situations, but it's clear he was having a blast coming up with these characters, and there's an evident mix of scripted and off-script improv to the silliness here.

There are quite a few fistfights and gunfights which Grabinski handles with aplomb. If anything they stand out from the rest of the film because they are so frenetic and fast paced and...dare I say...Wick-ian in their energy and execution. I wasn't expecting to see either Vaughn or Marsden in such finely choreographed melees but they acquit themselves admirably. Grabinski does, however, frequently use slow-mos (more outside of fight sequences than within) and they're jarring...it's a very '80's coke-fuelled cinema technique and it doesn't quite feel the same without the grittiness of film (it doesn't work so well on digital).

The needledrops in M&N&N&A are, frankly, bonkers. A real gonzo array of songs that are intentionally antithetical to the scenes they are playing in, such as the strippers dancing to "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band (nothing less sexy), Steve Winwood's "Valerie" being the ironically emotional touchpoint of the film, and a somehow genuinely emotional climax set to "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis.

Given some of the tertiary players in this, it's evident the film was shot in Canada (Shitt's Creek alum Emily Hampshire has a nice guest spot, while Letterkenny's Dylan Playfair is at the center of maybe the funniest sequence of the film). My guess was Winnipeg (I was right). It doesn't really make a difference, interiors are more important than exteriors here.

I was just commenting on how Project Hail Mary is a surprise film from the Lord & Miller duo, especially when Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice feels much more in their wheelhouse ala the Jump Street films. Maybe Lord & Miller are leveling up to our next great blockbuster filmmakers, and Grabinski is poised to step into their mid-level comedy action shoes? I'll be watching this one again...while nothing groundbreaking, it's tremendous fun.

Another I'm eagerly anticipating Toasty's response to.

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I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on my adventure into Quebec producer Rock Demers' "Tales for all" series.  While there's still over a half a dozen that Demers had a direct hand in, my only access to them, the Canadian streaming service Crave, only has one more in the series on tap, and two remakes.  I'll be glad to move on to another viewing project (heading back to Dario Argento's filmography most likely) but I'll also miss these tremendously weird and often thrillingly inept product. (As a side note, Almost every "Tales for all" features the title card for Demers' "La Fete" production company, and it's only now that I notice the animated sequence, which features a string of characters walking along a stark green background into a carnival tent with rollicking carney music zinging and zipping and hooting and honking in the background...well, the characters are all representative of past "Tales for all" films! Who knew?)

Lucky entry #13 in "Tales for all" is The Clean Machine, or, in Quebec, Tirelire, combines & Cie  (which translates to "Piggy banks, schemes & Co."). It finds young Ben/Benoit learning about the harsh realities of capitalism as he witnesses a neighbouring family having their belongings reposessed. Benoit, panicked about his single dad's ability to find work as a translator, decides to start his own business doing what he loves most...cleaning. His best friend Charles joins him in the endeavour, stationed out of someone's storage garage, but they need capital to get supplies.  Benoit sells his posessions for around $100, while Charles hawks his mother's pearls to a pawn shop and takes a loan from local toughie Chloe. 

Benoit's object d'amour Marie, an aspiring director and videographer, agrees to make them a commercial which she can air on the local cable access channel (her dad runs it) if she's taken on as an equal partner, and is able to shoot a documentary on the business.

The commercial works, and business is booming, but it's also honing in on Chloe and her lads' side hustle mowing lawns, so they start enacting some sabotage. At the same time Charles dodges Chloe, unable to yet pay back the loan, and he's finding his deal with the pawn shop owner for his mother's pearls getting worse all the time. Meanwhile, Benoit tries wooing Marie, but she discovers someone's been pinching from the bank account and a rift forms between the best friends.  It's all kind of downhill from there in a loose comedic fashion, but also primed for teaching life lessons to its young viewers.

In most instances I've noted what kind of film a "Tales for all" entry is emulating, and in this case, surprisingly it's an 80's highschool teen romcom (I was going to say sex comedy, sans sex, but it's not really that. But there is an extended sequence where Chloe and Marie catch Benoit in his underwear, and it plays so different them being so young versus were this a teen comedy where hot 20-somethings are acting as teenagers). This is Can't Buy Me Love or a half dozen other "I need money" teen comedies of eras past, but with 12 year olds.... 

...And that the deal breaker here. The stakes are so low when the kids are so young. You can't really get wild with the comedy (the kid performers here are fine, but they don't have exceptional comedic chops), the romance has no weight (because young, pre-pubescent romance doesn't have the same emotional investment), and the threat of Chloe and her two dumb galoots are barely a threat at all.  

I do have to say that, unlike many of the previous "Tales for all" (especially the last two), there is some real drama here. The disollution of friendships, the fear of getting found out to be a liar, the inflation and deflation of one's ego, they are all I'm sure pretty powerful things for younger viewers. And that's my problem with The Clean Machine.  It, unlike other "Tales for all", really doesn't feel "for all". This is not a film meant for the whole family, it's not really something anyone but a younger viewer is going to get much out of. Not to mention grating soundrack of jaunty clarinets and doofy sound effects set my teeth on edge.

KWIF: KPop Demon Hunters (+4)

 KWIF= Kent's Week in Film. So much this week. Like, almost a Toasty-paced week of film watching. And a lot of pulling from the binder.

This Week:
KPop Demon Hunters (2025, d.Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang - netflix)
O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000, d. Ethan (and Joel) Coen - dvd)
Marathon Man (1976, d. John Schlesinger - dvd)
Superbad (2007, d. Greg Mottola - dvd)
Sorcerer (1977, d. William Friedkin - dvd)

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As a lifelong "outsider", I'm intrinsically suspicious of anything that's popular. Suspicious, and sometimes dismissive, perhaps even resentful, and often curious.

KPop, as a genre, is not designed for me, and as music, it is most definitely designed. Like girl and boy bands the world around, it's taking sounds that are popular, hollowing them out, and ramping up the feel goods in multi-part harmonies, unique hairstyles and choreographed dance moves. It's as much about aesthetics and performance as it is about music. It's as much about commodifying images as it is about meaningful sounds. It's just pop. It's for the populace, of which I so rarely feel (or desire to be) a part of.

KPop Demon Hunters is most definitely not designed for me, as it's so designed around the conventions of KPop and KPop celebrities, and yet it is a film that, if you give it half a chance, challenges you, and challenges you hard to not be charmed by it, at least a little.

It is the product of North American writers and directors, based off a story originated by Korean-Canadian Maggie Kang, with Korean-American and Korean-Canadian voice actors as well as Korean and American singers. It's firmly set in Korea, with Seoul being its primary backdrop. Aesthetically it's vibrant and full of life, and its rhythms feel one-part anime, one-part music video, and one-part Nickelodeon comedy.  I went into the film, unintentionally, with walls up, and the humour knocked the first brick out.

The story tells of the the history of demons preying upon the people of earth, and of the legacy of women with golden voices who hold those demons at bay. Now, because of the popularity of KPop, the trio known as Huntr/x -- consisting of brash Mira, peppy Zoey, and leader Rumi -  is so very close to turning the Hunmoon (a protective magic barrier) golden and permanently disconnecting the demons from this world. But Rumi's secret is she's half demon, and the closer she reaches to her goal to cutting her demon half off, the more she loses her confidence.

Meanwhile their adversary, the demon god Gwi-ma, senses his defeat impending, and agrees to let one of his most adversarial demons, Jinu, fight fire with fire by starting a boy band to steal some of the glory of Huntr/x and stop the golden Hunmoon.  Naturally Jinu finds out Rumi's secret, and she sees something in him he hasn't seen in himself in 400 years, and they crush hard on each other. But can they really trust each other, especially when Zoey and Mira are beginning to have doubts about Rumi.

This is a movie full of songs, but it's hard to call it a musical, given that the characters don't bust out into song and dance, except for when giving performances, and they seem to always be giving performances. There is, seemingly, an album worth of songs here, most of them derived/appropriating their style and swagger from modern popular hip-hop and R&B, again with the edges sanded off and the whole thing polished into something shiny and reflective. The songs are mercifully well-crafted (this wouldn't work at all if they werent) and deviously infectious (if you're of a certain mindset, you'll find them aggravatingly catchy, and hate yourself for admitting that you like it, if only a little).

There's potentially some culturally Korean aspects that I didn't pick up on, like its main theme around shame and guilt are relatable to a certain degree, but I wonder if there's deeper cultural context to the struggles the lead characters are facing. For all the soda pop-iness of the picture, there is aspects that dive deeper than just the saccharine sweetness and empty calories that it could have subsisted on at the surface.

By the film's finale, which climaxes in a big song that is at once a reunion, a declaration of self-love and respect, and of a promise to not blindly follow the path that's always been taken when one can see a different way forward... it's powerful and had me swelling with emotion. 

There's been talk of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot, but Buffy had her time and KPop Demon Hunters is clearly the heir apparent to this kind of story. 

It's a well-earned phenomenon. Not intended for me, but I liked it all the same.

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The power of film is often to transport us into another reality. It could be another place, another time, another world, or another mindset or perspective than our own. Movies are an escape, but not all movies are escapist movies. Some are reflective, mirrors of the world we live in or of the self, and some will stir up traumas, intentionally or not.

O Brother, Where Art Thou is intended as an escapist film. Loosely based off Homer's The Odyssey, it follows three convicts of varying intellects and educations as they escape off the chain gang and into a series of vignettes in late-Depression Era Mississippi. It is, at its core, a comedy - full of old timey slapstick and farce - subcategorized as a musical and an adventure.

There are some great visual gags and physical performances in this film, a lot of it from Clooney who really does lead the film with every watt of star power he has within him. Save for some little moments I don't find the film very amusing as I actively resist being transported into the world the Coens are trying to drag me into.

The Depression Era is, like, a total bummer, man, and the deep south is so, so, so very racist (even more so than the film lets on, and it lets on a fair deal...there's an extended Klan sequence that I have a real hard time with). These are not places I particularly want to spend time in, and I can't ever help but question the motivations of characters and the authenticity of how scenes play out. I know it's fiction and it can push and pull and twist its characters how it wants, but I have a real hard time relaxing and letting the Coens push and pull and twist me along with it.

Music plays a very big part in the film overall, with a key moment in the film finding the trio (made up of Ulysses, Pete and Delmar, played by George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, respectively) stumbling into a radio station/recording studio with Tommy, a bluesman they picked up at a crossroads in a stolen car. They record a very uptempo, impromptu rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow", which, unbeknownst to them when they continue on their travels, becomes a massive success.  

The music of the film, produced by T Bone Burnett, ripples through gospel, blues, bluegrass, swing, folk and country. It all owes a complete debt to the Black musicians of the south but is largely performed by white vocalists, and the movie is, by and large, excessively pale. I have a hard time spending this much time with culturally appropriated music that really seems like "Black music for white people"... which is exactly what it wound up being. The soundtrack won "Album of the Year" at the Grammys in 2002, and it has sold over 8 million copies since its release, but much of it really sets my teeth on edge.

Like the film, the songs are exceptionally well crafted. The film looks great (thanks Roger Deakins) and the sounds are exceptionally well-produced, but for me I just cannot get into it. When the soundtrack blew up in the early 2000s and indie music bloggers were raving about it, I really didn't know what the hell was happening in the world. The film was a slow burn success but I didn't wind up seeing it for years because it didn't look like something that would appeal to me (and when I did watch it the first time around, I was most definitely right about my assumption).

I've said many times now that Coen Brothers films can take time and repeat viewings to get into. I really had no memory and basically an absence of an impression of how I felt about the film from my first viewing between 15 and 20 years ago, so in essence this rewatch felt like a first viewing all over again. It may truly just be that I need to give it another watch, and soon, to see if I can move through the film with maybe anticipation of certain moments that I liked, but for now it's truly sitting at the bottom of my rankings list.

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I had never seen Marathon Man before, but the dental torture scene, with its "Is it safe?" refrain was unavoidable piece of cinema history. (Did the Simpsons parody it? Probably.) It was a reference I've been meaning to put into context for decades, to wit, I've had a dvd copy of the film since the mid-2000s and have only now gotten around to watching it.

The film opens so damn curiously with a road rage incident in New York that finds a Jewish driver aggressively confronting a German driver, before an intervening tanker truck filled with gasoline calms the whole situation down with fiery death.

The connection at first is obtuse. The film takes its time setting its players up. There's the graduate student, Babe (Dustin Hoffman) practising to be a marathon runner. There's Doc (Roy Scheider), a spook practicing his craft in Paris, who turns out to be Hoffman's brother (have there been two more distinct noses in a film that are playing kin?). There's Christian Szell (Lawrence Olivier), a Nazi scientist who has escaped to South America, but whose brother was the German who died in the New York car crash.

How these three come into engagement with one another is convoluted, and involves Babe's new girlfriend Elsa (Marthe Keller). It is the process of discovery as director Schlesigner pulls on the individual threads that starts binding them into a tighter and tighter knot.

I was never exactly certain where Marathon Man was going, and it's surprising how many genuine surprises it retains even 50 years after its debut. The "Is it safe?" sequence, while memorable, is actually of so little consequence in the film. It's a scene of futility, of a man trying to extract information out of someone who has no information to give him.

I would flat out love this film if not for Dustin Hoffman. I've never been much of a Hoffman fan, even as I admit that his sort of nerdy, naive presence in this film is so close to being exactly what this role needs (he's sort of the Jesse Eisenberg of his generation). But Hoffman goes large too often. Too often the ego of the actor appears in his character and he falls out of servicing the role and instead services himself.

I'm also left with the question (no, not "Is it safe?") of ...how old is Babe supposed to be. Hoffman was in his late 30s shooting this film, and he looks every bit his age. It's clear the film is trying to age him down, but he looks like a middle aged man attending college. If he's supposed to be a college-aged student, then Marthe Keller (who looks like a grown-ass woman) seems way too old for him, but if he's supposed to be his own age, then it's like, she's far too attractive to be interested in a nearly 40-year-old man who is still going to college.

---

By the time Superbad debuted in 2007, the majority of crass teen sex comedies of the 1980s had already aged poorly. The "gotta get laid" urgency mixed with the ogling male gaze meant that the gender and sexual politics of the film were beyond juvenile and often criminal.

Going back to Superbad for the first time in quite some time was met with a little trepidation. I mean, in the intervening years, somehow, Seth Rogen has become the busiest man in Hollywood, starring in multiple award-nominated TV shows, appearing in goofy comedies and prestigious auteur-driven movies alike, producing a plethora of successful TV shows in both animated and live action formats, and being a highly accomplished writer and director himself, alongside his partner Evan Goldberg. All this to say, he's gotten to where he is for a reason, so in that I had some trust that Superbad was maybe not going to completely disintegrate with age. 

Rogen and Goldberg started writing Superbad even before they had a career in Hollywood, but when they were given the opportunity, this was the script they knew could be their calling card, the script was very personal to them, an embellishment of their time at the end of high school in Vancouver. The characters played by Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are not coincidentally named Evan and Seth.

As the film begins, Grade 12 is winding down. Evan and Seth are seemingly attached at the hip, best friends for life, but college is going to tear them apart as they're attending different schools. Evan seems eager for change, though not as a slight to Seth, but Seth feels like Evan is going to move on without him. As school winds down, they both have girls they've been crushing on, but have been too awkward to really make a move. They sort of make a pact that they'll both make moves, especially when one of their crushes throws a party and invites them. Their friend, Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), has just gotten a fake ID, and so they promise to bring the booze. Of course, nothing in the transaction goes smoothly, and what results is a wild and crazy night for these outsider kids as they try to make it to the party and impress the girls they like.

Seth, in Hill's hands, is an abrasive motormouth with no off switch. He seems incapable of over sharing, and has no filter. He's a lot, and, although it takes a while, the film shows us he knows it. For it's many hilarious scenes and the McLovin of it all, the film's greatest accomplishment was casting Emma Stone as Jules, who seems to see through the coarse surface and finds something charming in Seth, something which Jules seems to match and feed off of. Likewise, the pairing of HIll with Cera, who is still in full George-Michael in Arrested Development mode at the time, is spot on. Cera plays the awkward nerd who clearly gets frustrated with his loudmouth friend because he approaches the world so differently, but also he just as clearly admires him for moving through the world in a way in which he never could.

The film's finale, which finds Seth rescuing a passed-out Evan by carrying him from the house party being raided by the cops, is the sweetest damn thing. It ends with the boys having the easiest of reconciliations after a fight earlier and drunkenly dozing off in sleeping bags on the floor of Evan's basement professing their platonic love for each other. It's freaking adorable and warms my jaded heart. If only every story were so open as to show two men sharing honest emotions with each other so as to provide men with both exposure and the roadmap how to.

Also, the cops in this film, played by Rogen and Bill Hader, who take McLovin under their wing, are an absolutely brilliant construct of two guys who abuse their every power, and are representative of cops kind of being the worst (ACAB), and yet, as supporting characters for Fogel, they're fantastic.

Any worries I had about the film not holding up are non existent after the rewatch. If anything, it's the precursor to Netflix's Big Mouth which would debut a decade later, but feels so indebted to Superbad. It's a hilarious movie, with richly formed central characters, an incredible supporting cast, and it executes one of the best in "one crazy night" subgenre of comedy.

---

William Friedkin's Sorcerer - a remake of the French thriller The Wages of Fear, itself an adaptation of the French novel Le Salaire de la Peur - has been sitting on my "to watch" list since the 1990s when Tarantino cited it as one of his favourite films and called it one of the best films ever made.

It was a film that came out in 1977, up against some garbage called Star Wars which consumed all the air on the planet and choked it to death. Sorcerer has developed a cult following, in large part thanks to the Tarantino citation, but it has never quite dug itself out of the grave Star Wars put it in.

I found a copy of Sorcerer in the used DVD bins last year and snapped it up. I imagine there has been a more prestigious release (yup, in fact Criterion just released a new edition in June), and I have to imagine a new 4K restoration probably adds something to this film. The old DVD is a "fullscreen" version that is muddy as hell (but then it is literally a muddy pictures... so much wet dirt).

Like Marathon Man the film opens obtusely, with a series of disconnected events. The first shows the murder of a man in Veracruz, Mexico, the next a Palestinian bombing in Jerusalem and very brief manhunt. The third jumps to Paris with a very Fargo-esque vignette about a man deep in debt and desperate to find a way out (without trying to appear desperate), and finally a heist gone very wrong in New Jersey.

All of this leads to a character from each of these segments having fled to a remote village in South America. There's an operation taking place, setting up an oil pipeline, and there is need for a lot of manual labour. The village is largely local, but with no shortage of international players, all who seem in the same escaping-from-something position. When an accident occurs and the well catches fire, the only means the company can find to put it out, given their remote destination, is an old supply of highly volatile TNT.  They need to teams to venture thought the jungle in refashioned, Mad Max-style trucks to transport the dynamite to the site so they can smother the fire.  The journey is, quite literally, killer.

There are certainly political and sociological subtext to examine in this film but it works so remarkably well just on the surface as a riveting and intense procedural, where the procedure is delicately navigating harsh jungle paths and the craziest of bridges while transporting cargo that seems ready to explode at the slightest provocation. There's not really much need to dig deeper even though you can.

There are remarkable "how'd they do that" sequences that feature no indoor sets and no miniatures, just crazy preparation and a little on screen magic. In modern cinema, they wouldn't take on the expense or the discomfort and variability of remote shooting, they would just CGI it all, and it's a gazillion times more impressive in all being practical. As well, the film never oversteps its peril, it shows you the stakes and it lets its scenarios play out those stakes without adding complication upon complication. It's tense enough thank you without having to overtax the audience.

It is, at its core, a dark story about desperate men, and not, say, two evil wizards throwing fireballs at each other in the jungle as I originally surmised it to be. But don't hold that against it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Becky

2020, Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion (Bushwick) -- Netflix

This one has been on my radar for a while, a small, violent, indie movie about a teenage girl fighting back against home invaders. Its not an innovative plot or something done with grandeur and style, but simply a director exploring a trope in their own way. And its pretty successful in just that.

Becky (Lulu Wilson, The Haunting of Hill House) is your typically surly teen, a bit more heightened by her grief for her mother and Dad's (Joel McHale, Community) seemingly quick moving-on only a year or so later. They make a trip to the family lakehouse, where she is delighted they are not selling it, but made even more angry that he has chosen this trip to forcibly connect Becky to his new girlfriend, and her son.

Meanwhile, a neo-nazi at a nearby prison has engineered his violent escape bringing him and his crew to the lakehouse. While Becky hides out in her woodsy treehouse with one of the family dogs, the criminals take control of the house. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Dad's new GF is black; we the viewer expect the worst of a terrible situation. 

There are not great revelations in the movie, no plot twists or incredible character turn-abouts. What you have is a MacGuffin, a key, that Dominick (Kevin James, Paul Blart: Mall Cop), the neo-nazi leader, left behind in the house before Jeff, Becky's father, bought it (I guess? Its never explained.) that Becky keeps from the Bad Guys, and you have Becky's shocking propensity for violence. In all home invader movies, the Survivor has to use violence to ... survive. But the driver for this movie is how easily Becky adapts to violently, horribly, so very very angrily killing each of the mooks that work for Dominick. The movie wants you to question who is the real "monster" in the movie.

Final Girl syndrome begs you to cheer on Becky, to hoot and holler as she kills each aggressor, but I didn't feel that way. Sure, each of them deserve it, but does Becky? Not only does she lose her remaining parent, and one of the family dogs, but she also loses any hint of innocence left to her. She is not going to have a good life hereafter. Her anger will only sustain her so long. I guess that's why there had to be a sequel.

Tangent. Movies like this, horror and thrillers, often create iconic props, totems you might say. Often they are held by the monster: Jason's goalie mask, Michael's William Shatner mask, etc. But in this movie, Becky, the "heroine", wears a knitted fox cap that she pulls on in the "gearing up" scene. It became iconic enough to get a thousand Etsy stores.

1-1-1: K.E.T.C.H.U.P.

Kent's Erratic TV Critiquing Has Unveiled a Problem.
He just can't catch up.

This time:

Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]

What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]

How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]

Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes] 

Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]

Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]

Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

---

Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]

The What 100:  The Big Mouth kids are about to graduate from grade 8 and go to high school... except maybe Jay, who's too preoccupied with Lola dating his brother. Coach Steve suffers separation anxiety and teaches summer school. Andrew hurts his nuts and can't do his favourite thing, much to Maury's dismay, but his personality turns around, and he finally receives his father's love. Nick does drugs in New York and is sent to private school. Jesse gets a bully, and becomes part of the in crowd. Matthew has to up his gay-A-game.

1 Great: The hormone monsters never fail to yield big laughs, but it's absolutely Thandiwe Newton's season as Mona, Missy's hormone mistress that leaves the biggest impression...even in a season when Megan Thee Stallion makes a multi-episode appearance.  Newton's commitment and enthusiasm is just next level and delivers every time.

1 Good: I love the show's commitment to diversity, in every form. Sexuality, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, neurodiversity, it doesn't pick any lane, it keeps crossing over. Putting a spotlight episode on on-the-spectrum Caleb, is done with thoughtfulness, sensitivity and humour. You can tell they go to great depths to both get things right and still find humour that is inclusive.  The stab at an international episode finds 3-5 minute vignettes of horny pre-teens around the world and seems pretty authentic, but the very short stories run the risk of painting whole cultures with a single brush.

1 Bad: If the show is starting to lag anywhere, it's actually in its two lead characters. Nicky, Nick Krolls primary character, is, at this point, the most drab character on the show, running through the usual heteronormative dating scenarios and emotions.  With everything else going on around him, his escapades just seem so route one.  John Mulaney's Andrew, meanwhile, is probably the most prominent character on the show, but he's also the most difficult to watch. He is the show's bottom rung, the one place where, in a show that accepts and celebrates peoples sexual desires, and seems to go to great lengths to not kink shame anyone, it can just point and say "not that, though". After 7 seasons of "not that though" one would hope for some growth, but with Andrew, every step forward is a stumble that winds up five steps sideways. 

To be clear, Nick and Andrew aren't really bad, but if I'm to point at my least favourite thing in a show that has, season after season, made me laugh so freaking hard and challenged me with my own hang-ups with limits pushing, it's really these two that don't enthuse me as much anymore.

---

What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]

The What 100: Much of the season revolves around Guillermo hiding the fact that he got turned from Nandor, for the embarrassment of a familiar being turned by someone other than his vampire master would be so great that the vampire would have to kill both the familiar and himself.  But the vampirism isn't taking like it normally should, so Laszlo conducts experiments to try and science it out. Nadja connects with the local Antipaxos society on Long Island.  Colin Robinson runs for local office, and reconnects with Evie. 

1 Great: I thought putting Harvey Guillen as the center of the season was a brilliant move, as Guillermo was often the straight man in the prior seasons, but he's the most suited to be audience surrogate. Everyone else is just too weird. Guillen more than steps up, he crushes it, bringing his performance to another level without materially changing his character's nature.

1 Good: The visceral shock of Laszlo's experiments gone awry: the Guillermo clones. 

1 Bad: Kristen Schaal is promoted to cast member in the opening credits this season and is barely used at all. Likewise, it seemed like Matt Berry was taking a back seat most of the season.

---

How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]

The What 100:  John learns us how to: find a public restroom, clean our ears, work out, watch "the game", watch birds, and track our packages. It's another brilliant 6 episodes of video collage, surreal visual poetry, and thematic ideas juxtaposed with the serious oddness of reality.

1 Great: John's exploration of how things get from one destination to another takes him from the doorsteps of New York, exposing the massive problem of package theft, to learning how a piano is packed up and shipped, to learning how people are packed up and shipped to the future via cryogenics. It's a wild, upsetting ride. 

1 Good: (but also great) John looks to take up the art of birdwatching, which leads him to explore the idea of surveillance, which sends him down a rabbit hole of what is "truth" in video, exposing his own role in deceiving the audience. This leads him down a couple of conspiracy wells, to spending time with a Titanic conspiracy theorist/ex-cop, and ultimately...attempted murder?

1 Bad: This is the last season of How To... and it makes me very, very sad. This is one of the most unique shows ever made, looking at and venturing out into the world from such a different perspective. It's a show (and a guy) that's both awkward and curious about what's just outside our peripheral vision...what aren't we looking at?  It's not trying to provide answers (it's just a comedy show) but in just raising the questions, exploring it in the way that he does, it's pretty illuminating.  I'm going to miss it, but Wilson is on the radar.

---

Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The What 100:  Oliver finally is directing a play again only for his lead, a huge superhero franchise star (played by Paul Rudd) to be murdered, dying on stage. The stress of trying to solve another murder while save his dream is too much and Oliver suffers a heart attack. Charles, meanwhile, has to sing on stage and gets engaged,  the stress of either sends him to the white room. Mabel is about to be evicted from the titular building, and finds with her septuagenarian besties so preoccupied with their lives she's left to running the podcast on her own...only she finds a new partner.

1 Great:  Despite not believing that Oliver is capable of writing a musical on his own, Death Rattle The Musical seems at once utterly inane and absolutely something I would enjoy seeing.  The patter song that Charles has to sing, which features prominently in the season, is pretty damn catchy and earwormy. As well the whole stage/backstage setting is a great place for a murder mystery (and the show connects it back to "the building" in pretty shocking and hilarious fashion. The mystery this season really worked well.

1 Good: I find myself transfixed by Selena Gomez every time she's on screen. I sometimes can't tell if she's acting badly or beautifully, but regardless, whatever it is she does, it's captivating.  She's such a specific performer, and acts and moves in such a specific manner that any role she does she has to make her own, but I think it may be hard for writers to play into her persona, because it's so hard to pin down. She's dry and reserved, but bright and charismatic.  She's very internalized, but also open.  Gomez sells us on a millennial who is best friends with a couple of boomers.

1 Bad: This season was very bad at exploring the impact of the show's events on the character. Mabel, particularly seemed unmoored, without a true storyline to call her own.  She was the primary investigator in the murder, sure, but with the talk of moving out, with the podcast shenanigans, with the new boyfriend, none of it seemed to have focus for her.  For Charles, he gets engaged and then something happens and it's over and it seems to have almost no impact on him. Similarly, the show seemed to forget that Oliver's heart attack had any meaningful impact on him.  The story of the season was really intriguing but it kind of let the characters down.  Bringing in big name distractions (Meryl Streep was good, but she can't NOT be good, but she's also distracting;  Matthew Broderick was only distracting; Paul Rudd was maybe TOO Paul Rudd for the role that perhaps needed a bit more of a straight man).

---

The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The What 100: This is one of the most incredible seasons of television ever. As the crew toil on renovating the restaurant, the stakes escalating for each of them, they must also develop new skills and new attitudes if they're going to make it work.

1 Great: "Forks". Cousin Richie goes off to train at another restaurant for a month where he has to start at the bottom polishing forks. Richie has been the most difficult and antagonistic character of the series. He's an obstacle that every character in the show has to navigate because it seems he's always trying to stop things from changing. This episode is the Richie spotlight, where we get insight into who he is as a person (with little hints at his life dropped earlier in the season). This is the episode where Richie finds himself, and finds purpose, and decides to no longer be the obstacle, but the conveyor, the path that helps keep things moving, and it's freaking beautiful to see such transformation happen. Gorgeous work from Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and a magnificent surprise Olivia Coleman appearance.  

1 Great: "Fishes". Heading back a half dozen years or so to Christmas dinner at the Berzatto family home, where Carmy makes an appearance after having effectively disappeared from their lives for some time. It's a frantic 66 minutes of too many cooks, family tension, and some deep, deep insight into why the siblings (Carmy, Natalie and Michael) are the way they are, and by extension, why the kitchen of Chicago Original Beef that Michael established was so unruly when Carmy came along. 

It all comes back to mom. 

And holy shit, if people didn't think Jamie Lee Curtis deserved that Oscar before (I don't know who those people are, but if they exist...), well, she smashes scalding hot yam in their face with this one.  It's one of the best performances ever.  I don't know Curtis' exposure to bipolar disorder but she seems to have a keen understanding of what it looks like and how to convey it. She's an absolute juggernaut, but it's not a selfish performance at all... it's the performance of selfishness, sure, but she's is fuelling every scene, giving the other performers everything they need, creating an energy that fills the whole household, and it's as toxic as carbon monoxide.  It's beautiful chaos. It's like within minutes of being with Curtis' Donna, suddenly the whole world of The Bear comes in to clear focus. I get it now.

1 Great: Good gravy, this cast is awesome, and much credit to the showrunner Christopher Storer for recognizing that each of these characters deserves a spotlight. Of course Jeremy Allen White's Carmy and Ayo Edibiri's Sydney are the duelling forces of the show, fighting one another yet seemingly needlessly as they're trying to reach the same objective. But it's giving Richie, or Liza Colón-Zayas's Tina or Lionel Boyce's Marcus their own side journey in culinary education that provides both insight into that world but also fantastic character growth.  So many shows want to keep their characters  contained in a box, because the reality is that if characters grow, then they grow apart, and that's death for a situational tv programme. This show dares to grow their characters, and to show the dangers of what not growing can mean, (talking to you Carm).

---

The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes] 

The What 100: Aniq accompanies Zoe to her sister's wedding at the groom's family estate, meeting her parents for the first time, looking to gain their blessing in asking her to marry him. But Aniq's plans are interrupted when the groom winds up dead in bed the morning after the ceremony.  The groom's mother locks down the estate but refuses to call the police, so Aniq calls ex-detective Danner in to help solve the case.

1 Great: The pastiches were so on point, from the rom com sequel, to the Austin-esque period romantic drama, to hard-boiled noir, to the series high point of a mock Wes Anderson production. Nobody does Wes Anderson like Wes Anderson. And people who try to do Wes Anderson generally fail at doing Wes Anderson. It's hard to do. That's what having a singular specific vision gets you.  But the episode "Hannah" gets the closest to Anderson in style that I've seen, and it's because they balance the framing and colour palette so beautifully with Anderson's sense of humour but also pathos.  After this, the heist movie, the erotic thriller, the epic romantic drama just can't quite hold up to the same heights of ambition, but they still fare pretty excellently.  Episode 9's Hitchcock-esque neo-noir thriller with Christopher Miller in the director seat does come close to being as inspired. 

1 Good: This second season actually improved upon the first season, still adhering to the conceit of each episode being a pastiche of a specific genre or style, but in having a cast of characters that are so intimately bonded (as opposed to last season's high school reunion of characters who don't really know each other at all) it creates an intimacy and familiarity that's far more engaging to explore, and makes secrets that much more shocking when they come to light.  We binged this season voraciously.

1 Bad: As the season goes on, there becomes a burden of storytelling  that -- as with the first series -- starts interrupting the pastiche and breaks the sort of visual narrative. It's not awful, but I'm always kind of sad when we cut away from the homage and into what the rest of the cast is doing.  I don't think they've perfected the conceit of the show by any means but you can see the growth.

---

Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

The What 100: With the death of He Who Remains last season, the timelines are branching out of control, and if the TVA can't contain the branching, everything...literally everything... could be destroyed. Loki, who has manifested "timeslipping" powers that he can't control, is doing everything he can to save the one place and the people who gave him a chance to be something other than what was expected of him.

1 Great: The first four episodes of this six-episode season kind of put the titular character to the side. Loki was there, but he was part of the gang. The show seemed to be focussed on the situation that Loki season one created, and not the character of Loki so much. Sure, Sylvie and Mobius and Renslayer were getting some new dimension to them, but it seemed at the expense of developing Loki, beyond turning him into a Doctor Who-esque rallyer of doing the right thing in timey-wimey adventures.  

Episodes 5 & 6, though... it was ALL Loki. Everything that came before, not just this season, but the prior season as well, was building to these two episodes of exploring this Loki variant: who he was, who he is, and what he wants to become. Head writer Eric Martin has his name on every script, and this singular driving voice creates a consistency and focus in this season that other 6-episode Marvel series are missing. All of what happens isn't to build to some future Marvel event (at least not obviously) but instead to a rather monumental change in the character of Loki from when we first met him in Thor over a decade ago.  Martin drops little nuggets hinting as to where he's going with it all throughout the season and then goes there. It's so satisfying to see a Marvel thing build to something and finally stick the landing again. It feels like most of the Disney+ series have failed in this regard.

[Also great: Natalie Holt's compositions for this series have been phenomenal. She's produced, I think, the best soundtrack to an MCU production besides Black Panther. Just outstanding, memorable work.]

1 Good: Loki season 2 seems to have been granted permission to disconnect itself from the MCU at large and just do its own thing. It's not setting anything (obvious) up, and it's not taking detours and sidetracks into spaces just for fan service.  This season establishes a tone and it persists for 6 episodes in a row. It knows the kind of story it wants to tell, it know the journey it wants to take its characters, and it delivers.  With a consistent voice on the script and Benson and Moorehead directing 4 of the 6 episodes, there's a stability to this season that makes it feel pretty grand in scope.  And also, as a fan of Benson and Moorehead's films, this series seems so utterly in their wheelhouse, a true part of their filmography that carries their signature and not just work-for-hire like their Moon Knight episodes.

1 Bad: Sigh. Jonathan Majors. He's a great actor. He's acting great here. Why can't he act great in his real life. Such a bummer.

---

Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]

The What 100: When last we left Steed (the Gentleman Pirate) and Ed (Blackbeard), Steed had realized he made a mistake trying to return to his old life, while Ed could think of no other option but to return to his savage ways.  In fact, heartbroken, he's gotten even more violent and ruthless than before. After Ed almost kills him, Izzy joins Steeds crew. A truce is formed with Spanish Jackie. The crew face off against Zhang Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen, who takes a shining to Oluwande. Lucius and Black Pete reunite.

1 Great:  From the Thor: Ragnarok/Jojo Rabbit era, Taika Waititi got really, really overexposed. He was asked to do a lot, and he did a lot, and he became a very public figure for a time. Then he made Thor: Love and Thunder, the only Marvel movie I kind of despise, and I wondered if a 10+ year affinity for the creator had disappeared altogether.  Recently, I realized I hadn't seen much of Waititi, he'd certainly scaled back how much of himself he was putting out there.  I realized I loved, and respected that Waititi has had his hands in two very different, very remarkable series, but that his influence (despite what I've said previously) has been primarily in using his notoriety to get the shows made and hand them over to their true visionaries. For Reservation Dogs it was Sterlin Harjo's baby that Waititi was just in the delivery room for.  For Our Flag Means Death, it's definitely David Jenkins' queer pirate child, to which Waititi just plays funcle to.  

Playing Blackbeard/Ed in Our Flag, Waititi delivers a remarkable performance that wavers from maniacally bloodthirsty, to scarily unpredictable, to genuine paramour of Rhys Darby's Steed Bonnett. I'm not sure I always buy Darby's romantic connection to Ed, but Waititi sells the highs and lows of romantic tumult, while the show also examines Blackbeard's psyche and why he is so broken emotionally.  It's a surprising, remarkable performance that evolves each episode.

 

1 Good: The show juggles its cast this season, dispensing with some crew members (thank god Nat Faxon's The Swede has limited screen time this season) and putting a spotlight on others. It's a pretty large cast for a series with such short seasons and it cannot do them all justice. But the addition of Rubio Qian and Anapela Polataivao as Zhang Yi Sao and Auntie were two glorious additions this season. Qian is an effortlessly charming performer and eminently likeable, even when she's being vicious and cunning. She has swagger, intelligence, and a vulnerability that she seems in complete control of. Auntie as her number one shows a very different parental relationship of a notorious pirate and their mentor than what Blackbeard and Izzy had and it's really quite sweet.

1 Bad: The show's episode order for season 2 was two less than season 1. It felt like the Ricky Banes storyline, of minor noble who becomes a pirate inspired by Blackbeard, only to be shamed and shunned by the pirate community. He unites with the British navy to utterly dismantle piracy altogether, but if there were supposed to be any lasting parallels between he and Steed, or if there was supposed to be a building of his threat leading to a big climax, it's more of a sizzle in the end.

---

Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]

The What 100: Shoresy has promised the Sudbury Bulldog's owner to "never lose again", and so he's on a mission to keep that promise. The team, however, has problems threatening to get in the way of that mission. Like all the sex they're having is tiring them out too quick on the ice. Or scoring champ JJ Frankie JJ has lost his focus because his true love caught him cheating. And the Jim's are distracted because their Reach for the Top team has been losing. And Michaels is down about some bullshit nobody cares about. And the boys do a calendar.

1 Great: Shoresy was one of, if not the most annoying side character on Letterkenny.  He was an off-screen antagonistic foil to Reilley and Jonesy on that show, and not really even a fleshed out character. To me it was a dicey proposition spinning him out into his own series, but to Jared Keeso's credit, he has really managed to create a surprisingly likeable and watchable if challenging and often out-of-line lead that I enjoy watching.  The final episode of the season gives a rather sharply written, insightful moment into Shoresy as a character, and why he plays so hard, and works so hard to support the team. The basic point being that his mindset is one that only works on the ice, and makes the real world one that's difficult for him to live in. 

1 Good: It's easy to pander to Canadians, it's hard to do it subtly. As with Letterkenny, Shoresy wears its Canadian pride on its ugly poop brown and baby blue jersey sleeve. The best extended joke was the incremental rage on Shoresy's face as the team is hosted by the American Sault Ste. Marie team and to perform the national anthem is a 10-year-old learning to play the recorder.  There's two jokes there, the first being the obvious Americans goading the Canadians, but also butchering the national anthem on a recorder is a right of passage for every Canadian in grade school.

1 Bad: I was never a jock and certainly not a hockey player, and the behind-the-scenes on masculine sports teams has never been a realm I'm comfortable with, eager to experience, nor particularly enjoy. Toxic seems like a gentle word for what goes on back there. So it shouldn't be surprising to me that I bristle, often, at the language and tone that comes out of this comedy. Like Keeso's other show, Shoresy's gender and sexual politics are kind of progressive but in a rudimentary way.  In dealing with hicks and hockey players, it is surprising when they are portrayed as open-minded, accepting even, but when shades of conservative thinking crop up, is it a result of honestly portraying the field the show is playing in, or is it the creators exposing that they're still not as far along as they'd like us to believe.  When the show regresses into leering shots of lingerie clad women, I have to wonder what relevance it has on the story at hand, or if it's just some Sudbury woman Keeso met at a bar and has convinced to take her clothes off on camera.  

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Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

The What 100: A look behind the curtain of 40+ years of Industrial Light and Magic.

1 Great: The first two episodes focus on the people behind the scenes who made the stunning visuals of Star Wars happen, and how they did it. The sheer volume of creativity on display is outstanding. As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, I thought I had seen and read all of the behind-the-scenes making-of Star Wars had to offer, and it turns out I hadn't even scratched the surface. Even this documentary seems to be constrained by the episodic structure into how much we actually get to see, but all of it is awesome.  John Dykstra, Phil Tippet, Joe Johnson, Dennis Muren and more are given celebrity documentary treatment here, glorifying their contributions to not just Star Wars, not even just cinema, but culture in general.

1 Good: The second two episodes focus on creating sequels to Star Wars, but also the start of the dissolution of the original gang. As ILM is formalized, and moves out of LA, not everyone is asked to join them. In these two episodes, which span the about a half decade from Star Wars's debut, the leaps in technology that George Lucas pushes on the team are pretty incredible. I didn't know almost anything about what ILM had innovated over the years, and it turns out it was a lot, including what eventually becomes Photoshop and Pixar, among other things. 

1 Bad: The final two episodes, step away from Star Wars, and then right back into it, as the entire culture of ILM shifts underneath the feet of the men and women who started it. Rapidly the drive is digital, and the genius creative forces behind physical props and visual effects are more and more diminished in terms of importance and contribution. What made ILM so captivating in the first two episodes -- a massive warehouse of individuals experimenting with scale, cameras, technology, and hand craftsmanship -- gives way to largely people sitting at computers clicking buttons.  The show pretends to maintain the same enthusiasm for what ILM is today, as a primarily digital company, as it had for what was done back in the 1970s, but there's just no denying that the physical stuff was far more interesting, the creative problem solving much more enriching, and the people so much livelier.