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.
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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.
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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.
