KWIF: stunts meet concrete

We interrupt the 31 days of halloween for a temporary respite into non-spooky, non-scary territory. 
KWIF=Kent's Week(ish) in Film. I tend to write these things on weekends, but I also watch most films on weekends and sometimes time doesn't allow for both. There was appointment viewings in theatres this past week, movies that I suspect would come and go rather briskly that I really wanted to see, so I made a point of getting to them before some of the bigger films of the fall (eg. Primetime, Digger), and also getting Lady Kent out to them as well (a rare but enjoyable treat). And then I did a bit of companion watching.

This Week:
The History of Concrete (2026, d. John Wilson - in theatres)
The Stunt Driver (2026, d. Michael Dowse - in theatres)
The Stunt Man (1980, d. Richard Rush - tubi)
Stunt Rock (1978, d. Brian Trenchard-Smith - tubi)

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I really, really enjoyed the HBO series How To With John Wilson (Season 1 | 2 | 3) and it's still so sad to me that we've been without more John Wilson for three years now.

If you didn't watch the show, well... how to describe? Wilson is an avid videographer, travelling with his camera running capturing unique details and keeping meticulous notes on what he's captured. In How To... Wilson would explore (sort of) a "how to" topic (kind of) through an array of edited-together images from his vast library of footage, to punctuate (or counter-punch) a point, while pontificating on the topic at hand in voice-over in his uniquely dry, humorous, stammering fashion (his episode on scaffolding has resulted in Mayor Mamdani taking action). He would also have interviews set-up to discuss the subject matter at hand, but would also talk to strangers he encountered on the streets and wind up deviating from the topic at hand into these curious and unique tangents, which he would then attempt to bring back around to the topic at hand. How To... was a wholly unique and neurodivergent lens (I'm not even certain Wilson is neurodivergent, but his storytelling style very much is) with which to view our world.

With only a few Wealthsimple ads to tide us over in the years since, Wilson finally returns with a full length feature (101 minutes) that isn't a How To... movie but, you know, basically is.  

The History of Concrete, technically, is a documentary, but what it's documenting isn't really what it says on the label, and how it's documenting it is pretty singular (unless taken in the context of Wilson's prior work, at which point, it's more of the same...and that's not a negative, far from it).

Every episode of How To... would open with Wilson's voice over welcoming us by way of images of the city he loves: "Hey New York" is bascially Wilson's catch phrase at this point. This film opens with Wilson delightfully playing with such. For the familiar and the fans, it's like a door being opened and welcomed into a friend's house. They may have redecorated and moved things around, added an extension on back and slapped on a coat of paint, but it's still familiar, and inviting.

Wilson's entry point into thinking about and exploring concrete comes from his pitiful attempt to self-patch some concrete outside his house in hopes of preventing so much basement flooding during heavy rains. His poor patch job, critiqued harshly by a neighbour, sparks the idea for a film project...and then he has to pitch to get funding. There's no tension here...it's clear that we're watching a film that's been made, but it does start the narrative that even Wilson's ambling camera is still answerable to someone.

Exploring the cement thread, both its strength and frailty, takes Wilson to Rome to look at ancient concrete structures and ask strangers who don't speak English as to the secret of how the structures have lasted so long to futile effect. Returning home, he encounters in Queens a "spiritual" 52-day, 3100 mile marathon run on the cement sidewalk around a high school and returns throughout the film to check in on its progress. He visits a concrete convention in Vegas, and ponders New York concrete structures that are coming apart. 

Wilson's approach to the topic is both humorous and informative, but also hardly being hard-hitting investigative journalism. His interest takes him deep into industry as well as onto the surface, including the only sidewalk-gum-removal business in the city, and then tangentially, like into tattoo preservation (unless you're already familiar with this practice, you're not ready for it when you see it).

The History of Concrete returns Wilson to the more personal nature of How To...'s first season. Wilson's gateway into the world of concrete, but he's also documenting his career successes and failures, like being at a celebrity dinner hosted by GQ as one of their "Men of the year" and also losing a Depends advertisement gig. The decision to make a documentary feature, in the current environment, finds purse strings clutched tight unless it's about murder or a musician... and so Wilson goes out in search of a musician to document, a tangent that gets simultaneously dark and hopeful, presented with both humour and empathy.

It doesn't matter if you've seen How To... to enjoy The History of Concrete. Sure there are a few nods in the early minutes to, well, Wilson's life as presented previously in How To... that will get knowing "ahhhhs" out of fans but really, just like any episode of How To... it stands as a singular document that works just fine on its own, but also better as part of the whole.

Does The History of Concrete truly elevate itself to "cinematic" status, does it truly differentiate itself from from what we've seen on HBO or Vimeo? No, not in any major way, but that's the sign of Wilson making his art authentically. While some AI may have stolen his voice, I don't think there's any way to truly emulate Wilson's collages, or his ability to connect (or disconnect) with people, and to go where the vibes take him and his camera. There will no doubt be emulators, weirdo kids who grew up on Wilson's style and try to replicate that, but I don't know if Wilson's work will ever not feel unique.

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The trailer for The Stunt Driver plays like it's a "Heritage Minute", which, if you're not Canadian you're probably not familiar with. "Heritage Minutes" are 60-second full-cast productions that present snapshots of Canadian history, like Jacques Cartier misunderstanding what the natives were saying and thinking the land was called Canada, or Joe Shuster handing off a drawing of a man in tights to his friend Lois as he boards a train.  

"Heritage Minutes" have never really gone away, but they hit sporadically, and they've been cropping up in theatres lately, both classics and newer ones. There were little tip-offs in The Stunt Driver trailer that this wasn't legit...mainly because there was so many scenes edited together. 

I thought The Stunt Driver, based on the trailer, would be a retro-styled mockumentary, following a very hoser-accented Canadian in the late-1970s as he dares to be daring, and aspires for a big jump over the St. Lawrence River. It seemed so heightened and silly and embracing the era with all the hair and polyester and wood panelling and stubby beer bottles... and, Jay Baruchel in the lead... like, this had to be a comedy right?

But it turns out The Stunt Driver is based on a very real person, stunt driver Ken Carter (Kenneth Gordon Poleschuk), and his big idea to jump the St. Lawrence was very, very real.

It also turns out I had some memory of Ken Carter sitting deep in the recesses of my brain. I don't remember much, but little pieces of trivia were sitting there that kept smacking me upside the head as I watched this dramatic-but-with-a-light-touch film about this specific period of time in his life.

Carter (Jay Baruchel), "The Mad Canadian", performed his stunts around the world, and like pro-wrestlers and football players, put his body and his life on the line for entertainment. In his late 30's, hobbled by injuries but undeterred, he scoffed at cross-border rival Evel Knievel's attempt to "jump" the Snake River Canyon in a rocket, and was determined to have his own, more inspirational (and successful) jump.

He gets rocket car designer Dick Keller (Ed Helms) to help him on his crazy quest, and enlists sports agent Bill Wilkins (Dan Bakkedahl) to sell the TV rights to ABC's Wide World of Sports. Carter's wife, Gloria, is fully supportive, though they both dream that the success of such a stunt will be enough for a comfortable retirement.

What follows is a string of setbacks that start to sink Carter into a hole, both financially and emotionally.  Time twists on and Carter can't seem to quite get off the ground. Literal years pass, but the dream never dies... that is until his first successful test of the rocket car shakes him to his core and he never quite recovers.

Presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio with, most likely digital cameras with a digital grain process added to make the film look like TV of the era (with actual footage of Carter's jumps, and crashes, judiciously cut in), the film feels incredibly Canadian, as it should. It's not a film that's mythmaking or putting an idol on a pedestal, it's a film about a very human man, and I found Carter's motivations and fears very touching.  

It's also a film about failure, and about having to live with the spectre of failure, something that Carter really couldn't shake. A couple of points in the movie, Carter states that he does what he does to be remembered... but he was forgotten anyway. Director Dowse and Baruchel -in his first really transformative role- do a really great job at resurrecting his memory, but, unfortunately, there were only 7 people at my screening. Hopefully its jump to streaming gets more eyes on it.

While Evel Knievel has cemented his place in American pop-culture history, Ken Carter didn't ever reach the same place of notoriety in Canada. In some respects films like The Stunt Driver, just pure Canadiana, are essential to our entertainment ecosystem. I have yet to watch the NFB documentary The Devil At Your Heels from which much of this film was derived, but I imagine that there were more than a few elements added or excised for dramatic and comedic effect.  This is a truly solid, stoic, entertaining piece of Canadian cinema that respects its subject when it could have pushed the comedy to real extremes, perhaps to bigger success, but less authenticity.

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The Stunt Man was given three Oscar nods at the 1981 Academy Awards. Richard Rush was tipped for best director, Peter O'Toole as best actor, and best writing (adapted) for Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus. I wasn't aware of this film until six or seven years ago. I had added it to my watchlist in letterboxd very early on in using that app, though I don't remember exactly when I did so or what triggered it.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paul Brodeur, it finds Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam veteran, on the run from the law. We don't really learn why until deep into the third act. He narrowly escapes arrest and, while running, finds himself on a bridge facing a car that's seemingly trying to run him down. He lobs a piece of scrap at the windshield and dives out of the way. The car disappears into the river below... but it's not long before people and vehicles and helicopters start appearing...Cameron's on a film set and he sort of just killed the stunt driver.

But not to worry, for auteur director Eli Cross (O'Toole), the show must go on. It cannot afford the shut-down time of a police investigation nor any other delay.  The only reasonable answer is for Cameron to pose as the now deceased stunt man, with promises of excellent pay and a ticket out of country when the shoot is all said and done.

But it's hard to hide something like a car going off a bridge, and the local police are already agitated about the film shoot's disruptions to the community. For Cameron, it feels like the walls are closing in. And Cross, well, his intentions start to seem more and more suspect. He seems to be intentionally torturing Cameron, dangling hope and security in front of him. It's been so long since Cameron has had good things in his life, he doesn't know how to relax.

And then there's Nina (Barbara Hershey), the starlet of the film, who for some reason takes a liking to Cameron, despite his outbursts and wild eyes. He's a bit of a wounded puppy, and a bit of a rabid dog. He's out of his depth with her, but she doesn't mind, at least for now.

The Stunt Man is a satire about filmmaking while also offering a commentary on the mistreatment of America's soldiers during and after the war, as well as examining the effects of PTSD (though, somewhat naively). It flirts with being a drama and a comedy, and the film-within-a-film is a war film and so there are elaborate WWII sequences requiring extensive stunts that are shot both from the view of the camera within the film and our external POV. There's a bit of a mystery to Cameron's backstory, and intrigue and suspense around Cross' true intentions (is he really intent on making snuff fillms?).

The Stunt Man tries to do it all and only succeeds at some. It seems to know intimately how films are made (as an experience filmmaker like Rush should) but also shorthands some things (like shooting full action sequences in one take), deceives the audience in many ways, and sometimes portrays a reality that is so obviously false that it's hard sometimes to buy into the reality of the film.

Railsback as Cameron is an uncomfortable fit. As the film shifts -- sometimes frantically -- through its genres, Cameron is meant to as well, and I'm just not sure if it's Railsback who isn't up to the task of navigating them, or if anyone really could. Hershey, likewise, has a hard time finding consistency in this picture. She doesn't have as much heavy lifting to do as Railsback, nor does Nina face as much whiplash, but for a 1980's woman, she seems decades behind.

It's O'Toole who steals the show (but definitely not the lead). As Cross he gets to be shifty and playful and confounding and melodramatic and mysterious and dangerous, and does so with easy consistency. It's a terrific performance, in an ambitious, but messy film.

It feels like The Stunt Man could not be remade today, not without being a period piece. It seems so impossible for someone to disappear if they wanted to. But also if The Stunt Man were to be remade, it would be the rare instance where it would be better suited as a TV show than a movie. The depths of the characters could be better explored, the themes of reality versus fiction could be given greater weight, as could the exploration of trauma and even a proper reckoning with post-Vietnam America. There's also an extensive cast on the periphery here that is given so little screentime, there's room for an ensemble to develop out of this.  But would I actually watch it...?

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As we conclude this impromptu "stunt week" (I had plans on rewatching The Fall Guy and Hot Rod but didn't get to them) the "Ozploitation" mock-doc Stunt Rock no doubt got added to my watchlist during a lazy Sunday afternoon scrolling through Tubi and watching its preview clips.  

Stunt Rock is not a documentary, nor is it a mockumentary, but somewhere in between. It's honestly not too dissimilar in tone to the prior year's Australia-set ABBA: The Movie, where it was sort of a concert film that was totally disinterested in being a concert film.  Stunt Rock is disinterested in really being a stunt film, and instead wants to be a concert film, but all these stunts just keep getting in the way.

It's a truly bizarre hybrid, where Australian stunt performer Grant Page makes his way to America to perform on a totally made up TV show starring Dutch actress Monique van de Ven. When he gets Stateside, he meets up with his cousin, Curtis Hyde who performs with the band Sorcery. Sorcery's schtick is mediocre hard rock whose stage show includes Hyde and Paul Haynes performing as duelling sides of darkness and light in a display of pyrotechnics and stage magic.  Honestly, it's not a bad sight, but is stage magic stunts?

The moments where we see Page stunt performing, there's some pretty big set-ups, but almost all the stunts he's performing are done so simply for the sake of being stunts. There's no narrative here, there's no plot objective, just a "can we do it?" attitude. And so, with stunts being performed with no direct intention, it's not that they're not impressive, but they're also kind of boring, and lacking theatricality. Perhaps that's why Page felt the need to cede half the movie to a rock band and a magic show... the devil-vs-wizard magic show is somehow far more enticing and entertaining.

There's no story to Stunt Rock. There's little threads about a reporter following Page and they hook up, or van de Ven nagging Page to let her do stunts, or Page trying to contribute to the Sorcery stage show... but that's not a plot, those are just events.

Stunt Rock is not unentertaining but it also feels somewhat quaint, which I hate typing because it really undermines the talent and professionalism of everyone involved. But it's not even close to the thrill of watching, say Jackie Chan outtakes, or parkour videos.

KWIF: constant Crave-ings

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie of which he writes a longer, thinkier piece, and then whatever else he watched that week he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts (and fails...in the "quick" part).

This Week:
Incendies (2010, d. Denis Villeneuve - Crave)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987, d. George Miller - Crave)
Total Recall (2012, d. Len Weisman - Crave)
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009, d. Garreth Carrivick - Crave)

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Denis Villeneuve made four films in his native Quebec before he transitioned into Hollywood fare with the star-studded Prisoners in 2013 and evolving into the preeminent director of science fiction over the past 8 years (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, the Dunes).  Though I've yet to see it, I've heard Prisoners it's a bit of a rough watch. The Academy Awards-nominated Incendies, I can with confidence proclaim is an even rougher one.

The story of Incendies is an adaptation of the stage play of the same name by Wajdi Mouawad, partially based on the life story of Lebanese dissident Souha Bechara but with extensive liberties taken. It tells the story of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) who, upon her death, reveals in her will to her twin children, Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) that they have a brother.  The will provides a letter to each of them one for their father whom they always presumed dead, one for the brother. Once they deliver the letters, a third letter will be provided. Simon wants nothing to do with this game, clearly he has some resentment towards his mother, while Jeanne immediately ventures to her mother's homeland (unnamed in the film) where she starts to investigate both the whereabouts and identity of her father and brother.

The film cuts between Jeanne's steps through her investigation and each new location triggers another flashback to her mother's past. The bulk of the film is actually told in these flashbacks, with just enough of Jeanne and Simon (and their dutiful lawyer, played by Rémy Girard) to be invested in their response to their discoveries of their mother's history.

Needless to say, for Nawal to have hid her past from her children, it must have been full of trauma, and, indeed it is, starting with her brothers murdering her refugee lover, her grandmother forcing her to give up her love child and getting ostracized from the village. The latter is both the fortunate and unfortunate turn, as Nawal is forced to go to university and receive an education, but there she becomes further involved in fighting the nationalist discord that has erupted into violence, and she takes on the role of assassin, attempting to kill the leader of the anti-refugee government.

And that's just the starting point. Where it moves from there is deeper into a well of both survival and almost utter despair. I was reminded a lot of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy though vengeance is in very short supply in Incendies. 

Villeneuve's direction, along with André Turpin's cinematography, show distinct signs of what is to come in the director's career. Impeccably composed shots, grounded performances in even the most phenomenal of circumstances, and being able to deliver a heavy, weighted tone while still being compelling and entertaining.  There is minimal score outside of the use of two Radiohead songs, "You and Whose Army?" and "Like Spinning Plates" -- both used to tremendous effect.

I have to contemplate representation with this film, as it's a curious issue. Nawal's home country, left explicitly unidentified, allows some wiggle room in the storytelling to play with details, history and culture. It doesn't have to answer explicitly to any particular gaffes in presentation. But would it be more potent if it were trading in very specific historical details, or would that just be even more problematic to base a fiction around it, especially given the dramatic extremes occurring. As well, it would seem none of our three leads, Azabal, Désormeaux-Poulin, and Gaudette, are of middle-eastern decent despite the film taking place in the aforementioned unnamed middle eastern country.  I'm not sure what the crossover is in French-speaking actors of middle eastern origin but, excellent performers all, I doubt that Villeneuve would make the same casting choices today with Hollywood money behind him.

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I have to admit I've spent most of my life not engaging with Cher... her music, her acting, her stabs at middle-aged sex symbol status...none of it I found appealing in my younger years, and everything she did in the 80's and beyond seemed to me to be trying too hard.

Now, in my very middle-age, I have to admit I was perhaps foolish to be so dismissive. I believe this viewing of The Witches of Eastwick will lead me to more peak-80's actress Cher: Moonstruck, Mermaids, Mask, MSilkwood and MSuspect (did you know that Cher voiced a role in 2020's Bobbleheads: The Movie, and did you also know that in 2020 there was a fucking Bobbleheads movie!?!). Cher is so compelling in this role, and stunning. I'm seeing her through much different eyes and I'm completely entranced. I've had crushes on her co-stars Pfeiffer and Sarandon for ages (duh, who hasn't) and yet I found myself captivated by Cher so much more.

The film, in general, perplexed me. From a gender politics angle I'm not at all sure what it's trying to say. Is it a feminist movie, or is it retrograde anti-feminist? It's based on a John Updike novel and I don't think anyone has ever confused him for a feminist. Jack Nicholson's devilishly horny Daryl van Horne is seemingly summoned to Eastwick by two divorcees and a widow who collectively want the perfect imperfect man, which describes Daryl to a T. He is a louse and a letch, but has a gift of saying exactly what each woman wants to hear as he sets out to seduce them all, and succeeds. His playbook is faux humility, negging, flattery and bribery, plus he's stinking rich. It's not long before the three women are ostensibly his harem, though clearly of their own choice.  It doesn't bode well for the town, or them, especially once they start rejecting him.

From a metaphysical angle it's a film that feels like it has no roots, no rules, no guiding principles. It's called "The Witches of Eastwick" and yet, Cher, Sarandon and Pfeiffer are barely witches at all. They certainly wouldn't describe themselves as witches in-film.  And who Daryl exactly is never is made clear. The actual devil, or just a devil? A demon? What?

George Miller, of Mad Max and Happy Feet and Babe fame has a gift for irreverently told stories with a different sense of timing. But with those films, Miller had the utmost creative control.  This being his first (and really, only) studio film, it didn't seem like he had full control over the story being told.  I think this should feel more Beetlejuice-like, but the pacing of the film just felt so off with so many takes seemingly lasting a couple seconds longer than they should, or shots that seem to imply something more worth looking at only for nothing more to appear.

It is a horny movie with questionable tastes. It didn't fully work for me, but it didn't not work for me either.

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I had dismissed Total Recall (2012) as a real "who asked for this?" movie, with the presumption of it being tired Hollywood remake garbage from a that b-movie action franchise director. But, when I spied Kurt Wimmer on the screenplay credit, I though maybe there might be some fun to be had. Not that Wimmer has the most stellar track record, and not that I've seen all of them (I have prejudged the Point Break and Children of the Corn remakes just as I have judged this Total Recall remake) but I think many of his B-movie scripts as elevated B-movies. And yeah, damn, it's a pretty fun sci-fi action movie with some big, big set pieces and Kate Beckinsale being a doggedly fierce antagonist. I think had this film just used a different title and character names, most people wouldn't have even noticed it was *that* similar to the 1990 Total Recall (though the three titty'd lady would have totally tipped it off).

The future tech on display in the film is pretty great. In one scene a security force breaks a small hole in the door and fires a small projectile in the room. The projectile explodes with dozens of self-adhering cameras affixing to every surface at all angles. The leader of the squad then rips down a flap off the back of one of his men revealing a monitor which projects every camera's view, each one selectible for a better view. This sequence later transitions into a foot chase through a very surreal and confounding cityscape that I would love to just sit and admire all the design work gone into it. This then transitions into a car chase which tries to one-up Minority Report and maybe doesn't succeed, but it also doesn't suck.  Even most of the fight sequences are quite entertaining. In the long pantheon of elevator fights, this one's not at the top of the top ten list but could easily be in the middle.

It's not a groundbreaking plot, of a man, discovering he has been living a false life, and that he has a greater destiny before him, and a hot girlfriend from another life, while his hot wife from his false life is on the warpath to kill him.  You know, that old story.

By no means is it a great movie, and no it is not as thoroughly entertaining or adventurous as the 1990 film (which, yes, had a sense of humour this one doesn't), but as a sci-fi action spectacle it delivered the goods very, very well and far better than its reputation would imply.

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Three British lads go to pub after work. Two of them are nerds, one of them's a jock, but they're all pals. One of 'em (let's call him Nerd 1, because I can't be arsed to look it up, as played by Chris O'Dowd) got fired from his job at the start of the film, but that's pretty irrelevant to the rest of the film. Nerd 1 goes to buy the next round and winds up having a chat with a pretty girl from the future. The other lads don't believe him until the Jock goes to the bathroom and comes out at a later time and everyone's dead in the pub. He goes back into the bathroom and returns to his regular time. Then all the lads go to the bathroom together and start time traveling to other times in the pub's future, sometimes running into time travel girl (Anna Farris). Over time (ha) the boys find them looping back around on the other times they've already seen until they solve the thing that they need to solve and save their own future. Or something like that. You know the drill.

Maybe if I'd never seen a time travel film before, I'd find this clever. As well versed as I am in the milieu, I found it utterly predictable. 

I love Chris O'Dowd but his character here has no character, and even O'Dowd's considerable charms brought almost nothing to make the character more interesting or appealing. The other leads too are similarly lacking in anything of interest in their individual journeys. Just three lads caught up in something, yet there's no weight to any of it. And for a comedy, not much levity either, maybe the odd chuckle here or there, but little to stick out in memory long term.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): You Were Never Really Here

2017 Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) -- Amazon

Kent's post. 

Some mornings (I watch most movies on weekend mornings, before the Peanut Gallery awakens) I want something dumb, some mornings I want something familiar, and some mornings I want something violent. I am sure my Future Therapist has something to say about that.

This is a Small Movie, an extremely narrow focus on trauma and surviving it, through the lense of violence. Its been called a very violent movie, and it is, but amazingly most of the violence happens just off camera, as if it was taking a PG approach. But no, its not PG, for the onscreen material is so very not PG. We don't need to see the ball-pean hammer smashing skulls to understand what's going on.

What's going on is this. Joe (Joaquin Phoenix, Joker) is an ex-soldier, an ex-FBI agent who now works a seedy job for a seedy guy recovering trafficked kids. Joe does not bring a gun, Joe brings a hammer. You see, Joe has a lot, a LOT, of rage to work out on these evil men. Joe is haunted, haunted by the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, and the horrible things he saw in his past careers. We all have those moments where some embarrassing memory creeps in and we internally cringe at ourselves. Joe sees his worst moments over and over: locking himself in the closet with a bag over his head to drown out the beatings his mother was taking,  opening a cargo container full of dead girls, seeing a child shoot another child over a candy bar. Joe never escaped it, so he lives in squalor with his mother and takes Jobs where he can unleash his demons.

And then Joe is given the job that unravels everything. The pedophile ring is connected to a man in power, a connected man, one able to influence police and other agencies to do his bidding. In the end, Joe has to kill a LOT of people to save Nina.

There isn't a message in all this violence. Its just anger and retribution played out on the screen. This is a character study in trauma. But at the end, for just a brief moment, both Joe and Nina are given a reprieve, as she states, "Its a beautiful day," and Joe agrees. 

KWIF: Poor Things (+5)

KWIF = Kent's week in film.

With the Amazon original The Black Demon, Toasty mentioned needing a post-Christmas palate cleanser. Even though I didn't go very hard into Christmas at all this year, just doing the requisite half of our Advent calendar, I too needed such a cleanser, moreso because the yoke of Godzilla has been weighing me down a bit (world's tiniest violin, I get it. I do these things to myself, folks). 

I wanted to spend my post New Years' time off work at the movie theatres, shaking off the shackles of the COVID years, and getting out of the habit of only going for the latest spectacle. The "best of 2023" lists were hitting and I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and into challenge mode. But now, as I look at my 5 selections from the week, with only one exception, these are all auteur directors who I am quite familiar with, so I'm not sure I stepped that far out of my comfort zone after all. Let's get into it.

This week:
Poor Things (2023, d. Yorgos Lanthimos - in theatre)
Anatomy of a Fall (2023, d. Justine Triet - in theatre)
The Boy and the Heron (2023, d. Hayao Miyazaki - in theatre)
The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer - in theatre)
Ferrari (2023, d. Michael Mann - in theatre)
Ikarie XB-1 (1963, d. Jindřich Polák - Criterion Channel)

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Is Yorgos Lanthimos a provocateur? Of course he is. He enjoys pushing the tolerances of his audience, especially when he's scripting his features. Dogtooth, the Lobster, and Killing of a Sacred Deer are each uniquely disquieting films.  In those films, it's the way in which Lantimos' lens observes everything and everyone, with a cold, clinical detachment, which only makes the injection of the surreal or fantastical even more of a challenge to the audience.

With writer Tony McNamara on The Favourite, and now Poor Things, he's found a partner whose scripts push buttons and boundaries but in a less-distancing way. The humour is still dark, but not nearly as faint or dry as Lanthimos' scripts (if his even offer any humour at all).

Poor Things is the pair moving to the next level. Where there was an opulence to The Favourite, it still felt...traditional, I suppose, for a period piece. Here, creativity is unleashed in a way I get the feeling Lanthimos has been wanting it to be his entire career. He's got a budget, and he uses every cent of it.

Best described either as beautifully grotesque (or, better yet, grotesquely beautiful) in art, design, make-up, effects, sound, score -- the whole creative spectrum -- everything is bold, ornately constructed, and just captivating to behold. The first act is in black and white, and even that doesn't mute its life and vibrancy (Lady Kent asked afterwards, "when did it switch to colour?").

Poor Things is a fantasy film that is Barbie for grown-ups only. I'm sure someone will draw out all the parallels in a youtube essay (if it hasn't been done already), but to paraphrase critic Alonso Duralde, both films find their lead characters go on a journey only to discover who they already know themselves to be.

Here Emma Stone, in her boldest performance to date, is Bella, a new take on Frankenstein's creature. I'll leave her origins to be teased out by the film, but where we meet her she is but an infant in a woman's body. Her creator, her father figure, the mad scientist/Doctor Frankenstein of the piece, Godwin (Willem Dafoe) she calls "God" for short, which was no doubt his idea. As in many a Frankenstein tale, it's the doctor, not the creature who is the monster, but here we meet a man who has been horribly scarred (both physically and emotionally) by his own father, and processes his trauma through his hilariously horrifying scientific feats (the English bull terrier with its head swapped with a duck was just one of many dark delights).

Bella starts out a mono-syllabic infant in our first meeting with her, but, as observed by Max (Ramy Youssef) her vocabulary, capacity for reason and intellect grow dramatically every day. Max, hired by Godwin, to be Bella's observer, is captivated by her ("what a beautiful ["r"word]", he says). It's the first of many uncomfortable thoughts the film brings out, and for about 15, maybe 20 minutes, the film wrestles with whether it's leaning into the "born sexy yesterday" trope. But it shifts the leering gaze away from objectifying Bella, instead looking sternly, eyebrow arched, at the men who would objectify her. 

Bella starts exploring her adult body, her sexuality, and when the men in her life try to control that side of her, she starts to distance herself from the men in her life. She sees the control they wish to yield, and she understandably doesn't want that. Eventually, as her intellectual curiosity grows, she wishes to be free of Godfrey's confines within the beautiful manor, but like an overprotective father, he wants to know she's safe by keeping her contained. When lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), a roguish Lothario, is brought onto the compound he becomes captivated by just the thought of Bella, and then, on her own volition, is whisked away on a Mediterranean journey of discovery, much of it sexual, but cultural and culinary as well.

Stone's performance as Bella, is an ever evolving one, and she handles the role masterfully. It's a very physical performance, that requires her to show a slow and gradual increase of control and ownership over her body. It's the entire metaphor of the film and so an essential element. But it's Stone's ability to show the intellectual growth, and not just through words, but through her eyes, that is outstanding.  The role requires a lot of sex and nudity which, both credit to Stone and Lanthimos, are never objectifying, and always empowered. Bella is not sexy, she's sexual. 

Ruffalo, meanwhile, brilliantly plays a cartoon of a man so out of control of his own desires that his own caddish game backfires upon him. He is the Ken to Bella's Barbie, just a husk of a person lacking inner depth or sense of identity outside of elitism and sexual conquest. He's used to a society where men have control, and has no concept of what to do with a woman who won't follow the patriarchal rules of "polite society". It's a wildly comedic performance, teetering on campy but just restrained enough as to be welcome instead of out of place.

If Barbie was "Feminism 101", Poor Things is at the very least a second year class. It's a fantasy setting, yes, but it reflects the fight still being fought today for women to have liberty over their minds, body and sexuality. It can be blunt about it but even outside of the theme, it's still an amazing adventure of self-discovery.

It's also been proffered that Poor Things is about an autistic character's sexual awakening and journey of self discovery, and from what I've seen on letterboxd, many people identify as on the spectrum have found a pretty deep connection with Bella, and the way she engages with the world. I look forward to deeper analysis on that front.  

This was the last movie I saw in 2023, and it's also, quite possibly, the best in a pretty great year for film.

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There's the "whodunnit", and the "howdunnit". Anatomy of a Fall ("Anatomie d'une Chute") is a "diddunnit", as it presents us with a scenario, the death of a husband and father in a remote mountainside chalet home, and then tries to parse out, given all the evidence it chooses to present us with, whether the wife killed him or not.

If it sounds Hitchcockian, it has that kind of a conceit, but director Triet tells the film almost entirely from the perspective of Sandra (Sandra Hüller, in an incredible performance) with an lens that presents such intense compassion while also managing to retain enough distance as to not betray the "diddunnit" conceit.

The first half of the film finds Sandra, a very cerebral and composed woman, working on her defence with her lawyer, an ex-flame Vincent (Swann Arlaud, who is going to have to live with the shorthand moniker of "sexy French lawyer" for some time), while the second half of the film is the trial (and French trials are intriguingly different from the American trial process we have seen a thousand times over).

Where American trial films are largely very much about "the story" (usually based on true-life or novel adaptation), with maybe some character driven elements, Anatomy of a Fall is about perceptions, about examining how we see someone based on the information given, and the judgements we make thereof. 

The opening scene, for example, has Sandra, an accomplished writer, being interviewed by a college aged female student. The scene, which takes place maybe an hour before the death of Sandra's husband, finds the two women already in conversation, but still at early stages. The student hasn't yet been able to segue into their interview, and any questions she asks, Sandra doesn't quite deflect so much as steer back towards the student as she almost counter-interviews...but casually. Knowing what the film is about, I'm already questioning Sandra, is she being cagey, or friendly? Is she controlling this situation intentionally or is she, maybe, just a little tipsy from wine? 

In the back half of the movie, the prosecuting attorney tries to re-contextualize this opening scene as flirtatious. The prosecutor knows that Sandra is bisexual and had cheated on her husband in the past. He's trying to build a narrative of who Sandra is for the judicial bench, just as he tries to build a narrative around the death of her husband.

But so too must Sandra and sexy French lawyer build a narrative. And so too does Triet build a third narrative that lies closer to the middle (but if it falls on one side or the other of the middle is up to the audience). All these narratives are a part of a whole, and it's a brilliant examination of what we know versus what we perceive. The trial is not one of of facts, it's one of perception. If you build the narrative one way, she's guilty. Another way she's innocent. The two are very hard to reconcile. Is Sandra cold and calculating? Or is she just German?

Language has a lot to do with it. The film is French-made, but is largely in English. Hüller is German, but never speaks it in the film, only speaking English and French. How does language play a role in our perceptions of someone? How does language play a role in controlling a conversation, a relationship? It's subtext in the film, but also a huge part of what it's trying to say about how we view and understand someone.

This was a fascinatingly thoughtful film while also being a gripping trial drama. It has things to say about the court system, about relationships, about parenting, about mental health. It's not offering answers, but it's keen to explore.

I didn't even talk about the huge role Sandra's son, Daniel, a pre-teen with low vision, plays in the film as a key witness. Young Milo Machado-Graner gives an outstanding performance that shows wisdom beyond his years, and taps into an emotionality most adult actors can't authentically reach.

Of all the films I watched this week, this is the one I immediately wanted to watch again.

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Anime and I do not get along great (much to my teen's chagrin). It's something I need to explore with a pop culture therapist who can help me unpack the reasons why. I haven't figured it out. But, of course, there's "anime" and then there's Studio Ghibli. There's Studio Ghibli, and then there's the auteur of auteurs of animation Hayao Miyazaki.  

Ghibli is held up on this other level from the term anime (just like, at least for a time, Pixar was distinguished from other "animated" movies), and Miyazaki is put on an even higher pedestal. I've watched over half of Miyazaki's oeuvre, and while I find his movies gorgeous, I still don't connect with most of them.

The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki's latest "final" film. I forget how many times he's retired and come back (maybe only twice) but he is an "event" director, so it's no surprise that the film has been doing some great numbers at the North American box office, and receiving heaps of critical attention. I was, once again, dazzled, but left feeling a sense of uncertainty over what I'd seen and how I felt about it.  It's happened with every Miyazaki film I've seen (save for Ponyo).  

Perhaps it's because Miyazaki intends for his films to be watched and rewatched, explored for meaning. There's obviously what Miyazaki is bringing to the film, but also what the audience is getting out of it, and the director is notoriously cagey about expressing what his films mean. In reading about The Boy and the Heron since watching it this past week, others have unpacked some of its inspirations, being Miyazaki's relationship with his Ghibli co-founders and his own relationship with animation. The denouement of the film has been interpreted as a relinquishing of the torch to the young animators of today, perhaps.  If you don't go into The Boy and the Heron as a Miyazaki scholar, are you going to grok any of that?

Re-titled from the Japanese name "How Do You Live?", it's a film that begins pretty stone sober, with the death of young Mahito's mother during a Pacific War bombing of Tokyo. Mahito and his father relocate to a rural estate to live with his aunt (his mother's sister whom his father is now married to) and the grannies. Mahito is traumatized over the loss of his mother, and is distant and angry. He's not particularly fond of his aunty stepmother either, even though she shows him only kindness and sympathy. 

On the estate, he has regular encounters with a blue heron, whom, over these encounters starts to reveal that it speaks, and is in fact, a horrendous toad of a man in disguise. Mahito's mother and aunt and some of the grannies are of a lineage that are attuned to the magic of the world, in particular a silo with a strong family lore and magical properties. When Mahito's aunt goes missing, he's drawn into the silo, Alice in Wonderland style, and goes down the rabbit hole.

Within this world within worlds (or world between worlds, as its a gateway outside of time) Mahito discovers his family history as well as younger versions of his one granny and his mother, who along with a reluctant heron, aide him in his journey to find his aunt.

A lot of Miyazaki's films feature the fantastical for fantastical sake. At least that's always been my perception. There could be deeper meaning in all of it, but if there is, Miyazaki's never telling. I think there are aspects to his work that have meaning to him, for sure, and sometimes in the fantasy there is meaning for the character, but I also think the director has a bold ability to bring stream-of-consciousness to the screen, and so a lot of his fantasy is just that, for pure imagination's sake.

Fantasy isn't my genre. There's often an absence of logic to it, an absence of rules. So The Boy and the Heron, while striking, left me perplexed, and not in a good way.  I think I'll have to do a full Miyazaki run at some point and try to engage with his repertoire, and thus this film, in a more metatextual sense.

I should note that I saw the film in its English dubbed version, which I initially bristled at upon realizing it, but turns out may be one of the best dubs I've ever heard. There's often a sense of disconnect between the animation and the vocal performance in a translation dub, but this one felt almost seemless, natural even, although I did get distracted trying to figure out who some of the voice cast was (best to leave it as a surprise for the credits, methinks).

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Jonathan Glazer's previous film, Under the Skin was a potent a non-narrative drama about an alien's exploration of humanity through sexual temptation? I referred to it as  "a moody (or perhaps moodless) art-piece that isn't so much a story as a concept, a 2-hour art installation about male sexuality in its various forms - primal, tender, brutal - masquerading as entertainment".

Where Under The Skin explored humanity through the lens of an alien, The Zone of Interest takes the same dispassionate lens and explores inhumanity instead. Call it "the mundane existence of evil". The film spends most of its time in and around the home of a Nazi Commandant. We witness Herr Hoss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller again, having a real moment), two boys, infant daughter (always crying) and the Jewish servants as they entertain guests, celebrate birthdays, play, clean, cook and serve. It would all seem very banal, if it weren't for all the fucking Nazi's about, and for the fact that, just on the other side of the wall of the yard is the Auschwitz concentration camp which Hoss is in charge of.

There's not really a narrative to the film. It's experiential. As we witness this family living their life, buoyed by their privileges and receiving tainted spoils of the murdered people from the other side of the wall, we are all too aware of the sounds of the trains, the gunfire, the screams, shrieks and yells, and the sounds of the furnaces, not to mention the gushing red flames coming out of the smokestack.

Herr Hoss takes meetings where the deplorable plans of evil men to make the eradication of a people more efficient are discussed with the casualness of a board room meeting about a new marketing ploy for, I dunno, salsa. Hedwig shows her visiting mother her home for the first time, and her mother wonders if the woman whose house she used to clean is on the other side of the wall. The boys play, and other children play with them, in the backyard while mass murder happens on the other side of the wall. The boys have a teeth collection. The infant is never in the arms of its mother, always with a servant.

The closest we get to drama in the film is news that Hoss is being relocated. Hedwig refuses to transfer and sends Hoss to his new assignment on his own. Her speech about having built a home for their family that is too precious to leave makes the bile in one's stomach rise.  There is a moment there where Hoss, facing being separated from his family, elicits just the smallest twinge of compassion, before one remembers that Nazi's deserve as much compassion as they showed the Jewish people.

It's a scoreless film, leaving the sound design to do all the heavy lifting. There is a near 3-minute overture performed to a black screen, a briefer interlude composition against a red screen, and the final end credits track. These Mica Levy constructs of sound aren't exactly musical. I almost dread learning what these sound collages are composed of.

The film's final 5 minutes or so, for me, were its most potent. It takes a time jump to the furnaces of Auschwitz today, now a memorial site, as it prepares to open. The cleaners come in and start wiping everything down with efficiency and dispassion.  It's swept up, as if any speck of dust is not allowed.  A memorial displays thousands upon thousands of pares of shoes are piled up, pressing against the window as the glass is cleaned. The floor is vacuumed. We cut back to Hoss, last seen retching in a stairwell, as if he just captured this glimpse of his legacy. 

There's much to be unpacked, in what is shown, what isn't shown, and how it was all constructed from a filmmaking standpoint. It's very deliberate in so many ways (editing most of all) but rarely feels staged in its (nonexistent) story and performances (which barely seem performative).

It is not a comfortable film, and as heavy and burdensome as I was expecting it to be, it wasn't. It's a film that settles you into its mundanity, and dares you to ignore, as this family does, the events on the other side of the wall that so often deign to call attention to themselves. We never see what goes on there, but we don't have to in order to feel the impact.

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The most recent of Michael Mann's films I've seen is Miami Vice which was released in 2006. I'd seen all his films that preceded that but have rewatched watched only a few of them in recent years. Between 2006 and the release of Ferrari in late 2023, he's only made 2 films: Public Enemies and Blackhat. The former I skipped due to Johnny Depp fatigue (I was already done with him by 2009) and the latter because of poor critical reception (though it's become something of a reassessed cult darling in recent years).  I like his movies, but I'm not a die hard.

I wondered going into Ferrari if I actually knew what a Michael Mann film was, beyond neon lights, heavy shadows and pulsating soundtracks. Partway through the film, I realized that what makes a Mann film is how he observes his characters. A lot of that is framing, and how people move within the frame, his direction on where he wants someone on the screen seems pretty precise, while still giving actors the leeway to perform. At this late stage, it looks pretty collaborative, if the performances Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz give in the film are any indication.

I'm not a car guy, nor am I a racing guy, so I had to ask, going into this film, what the point of it was. We meet a 50's-ish Enzo Ferrari, as he moves from the rural Italian abode of his mistress, Lina (Shaeline Woodley), to his city-side manor, pushing his car to its limits, his old racing instincts undying inside him. At home his wife Laura (Cruz) has been fielding calls from his people, reporting on their adversary's new arrivals to town, and she's pissed. When he arrives she reminds him, he can fuck who he wants, he just needs to be home before the calls start.  She then pulls a gun on him, and fires wide. He's shook momentarily, but unfazed. Their dynamic is set. They are honest with each other and spare each other no emotions.

The worries at the Ferrarri factory (as a Saudi prince picks up his new vehicle) are many. Maserati is going to break their speed record, and the company is spending money faster than they can make it. They need a financier, a partner, who can invest in increasing production. They need to keep on with their focus, improving their racing performance which sells the cars to the market, and not selling the cars to market to pay for the racing. Enzo is always a racer at heart, and not a car dealer.

The film is the B-side of the Hollywood biopic. Where the A-side is the attempt to summarized a whole life or career, the B-side is the "most turbulent year" biopic. Here, it takes place in the span of a week. Enzo faces a personal crisis as his two family situations collide, and his professional interests in racing and car manufacturing threaten to go belly up.

It's enough to build something out of, and Mann hammers away at it until it takes shape. It's not a boring process though, Driver's performance as Enzo is a sheer delight, as he portrays the Italian as charming, dry, and sardonic, revealing his heart only in private, and only to the dead (who sit heavily upon him). The first half of this film, while not an outright comedy, is damn funny, largely from Driver's delivery, but Mann is leaning into it just enough. With Cruz, he has a very gentle touch, allowing her the large comedic beats and a big melodramatic performance that still has room to be reigned in when she need to hit those real devastating emotional marks. She's magnificent. (Between Stone in Poor Things, Huller in Anatomy of a Fall, Cruz her and Da'Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers I'm having a hard time choosing the best performance, though Cruz and Randolph could probably push to slug it out for best supporting).

It's not a grounded film. Nobody should mistake this for real life. The film builds around the Mille Miglia an endurance race along the Italian highways and through the towns and cities along the way that is unlike any other race I've seen outside of maybe Death Race 2000 (which was maybe inspired by the Mille Miglia?) or The Great Race. But Mann's shooting of it is breathtaking, the gorgeous countryside, but also those beautiful Italian machines (this film doesn't thrust the beauty of its cars upon you, it lets you come to their beauty on your own). But, with beauty there is also danger, and we see that multiple times. Mann reiterates time and again that racing is a kamikaze pursuit, and that racers know what they're signing up for. And we learn why the Mille Miglia has not been seen since 1957.

It's not a flawless film, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the performances, the production, Mann's stylistic flourishes, the cars, the racing, the melodrama, all of it was pretty fun, until, at its moment of spectacle, it's not fun anymore. It can't recover from it, and it doesn't try. It knows there's no recovery. We only spend a few minutes more before the summary text of the next few decades fills us in briefly on who does what and when. 

I can see people being particular about the accent work here, especially when there aren't many Italians actually in major parts. It doesn't hold back my ability to appreciate it though.

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I must have caught wind of the Czech sci-fi drama Ikarie XB-1, or "Voyage to the End of the Universe" as it's been known in its heavily edited and dubbed form for decades, at some point in my life, but I've never really known anything about it, nor have I ever taken note of it as something to seek out.

But it popped up this January on the Criterion Channel in its restored, digitally archived form, and it drew my eye like a signal flare. Amidst all the films from "best of 2023" lists, I knew this 60 year old film was mandatory watching.

Based off a novel from Polish sci-fi legend Stanislaw Lem, here we have a film made years before Star Trek, presenting a humanist future and a space journey done for the betterment of mankind. It's set 200 years from when it was made (2163) but has still-potent things to say about the events of the first half of the 20th Century, while optimistically dreaming for a more ideal future.

The set design, sound design, sound effects, visual effects are all quite far above par for the early 60's. The film's influence on sci-fi for the subsequent 15 years (up to and including Star Wars) is tangible, sometimes it's just a little thing, an image, or the way the ships move through space, and sometimes it's a whole swath of the film feels like it's been completely copped by filmmakers who thought we would never notice. At the same time it's clearly aware of the popular sci-fi that came before it, most notable in Peter, this film's version of Robbie the Robot.

The restoration is gorgeous. The blacks are crisp, the whites are vibrant, it looks incredible. I was worried that this would wind up being Solaris  (another Lem novel turned into a notable sci-fi film), which is a monumental production but also monumentally boring. This is much pulpier than that, while still retaining some sense of science in its fiction (it's largely "hey, that's not bad science for 1963").  What perked me up when I was starting to drowse was a "future dance" number which was clearly copped by both Buck Rodgers and Logan's Run, yet somehow manages to (narrowly) escape campiness, I think primarily from a perplexing-but-intriguing score by Zdeněk Liška, and visually curious, simplified dance moves.  It's like future line dancing.

It's a surprisingly satisfying production, but even more potent as an artifact of sci-fi.  Anyone who's a Star Trek fan (or sci-fi in general) who has not seen this really should.

3 Short Paragraphs: Kimi

2022, Steven Soderbergh (Haywire) -- download

Kent wrote about it here.

Sitting in an airport, killing the 3+ hours before my connecting flight. Might as well watch some of the movies I brought with me, on USB, to watch in NS while on vacation, because I knew there would be down-times when I was not able to amuse myself with the dearth of anything to do in rural / semi-rural NS. While I was there for a family reunion, there could be only so many times of chatting with cousins upon cousins upon cousins while sitting around campfires on my ninth beer. Sometimes I just had to escape back into technology. Too many people drain me quickly.

Plot wise, its a very straight forward crime thriller, but isn't that what story telling is all about? If you can tell a familiar story from a new angle with just enough creativity, it all feels new? Kimi is the movie's Alexa analog, from an emerging company just about to go public. It flaunts its difference as using humans to supplement its AI interpolation of requests -- if Kimi doesn't understand something, its shunted to a human operator to research and correct. Angela (Zoë Kravitz, High Fidelity) is one such operator, an obviously VERY wealthy (can't be the operator salary, but her apartment is one of those astoundingly opulent Hollywood industrial lofts) young woman stricken with agoraphobia and anxiety, stuck inside her place after an assault and the pandemic. Stuck inside, and in her routines (one such thing that stuck with me, is how she waves her hands after putting on hand sanitizer, a sort of vertical flightless bird action), it is all interrupted when she overhears an assault happening via a Kimi recording, and has to weigh her social responsibility vs her fears. It doesn't help that the company wants to cover it up, cuz that's what Big Evil Corps do when they are about to be sold for billions.

I really enjoyed this movie. Elements of this movie still stick with me, such as the aforementioned detailed of her hand waving, but also little, creative character elements, such as the rather nerdy looking hit men or the eastern European hacker/sysadmin. Sure, these are stock & trade characters, but Soderbergh does something... extra with them. I honestly think that is the sign of a damn fine director, and I have never really pondered whether I liked Soderbergh enough to think a whole lot about his style, but that he can turn something pedestrian into something that just smacks of style and substance. That said, it could come from my lack of watching things with substance that would make me say this, when people steeped in being That Guy might just think Soderbergh was wasted on this.

Yellowjackets Season 1

 2021 - Showtime - 10 episodes
Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson

The trailer, I have to admit, was enticing. A high-school girl's soccer team's plane crashes in remote wilderness, location unknown, and they're forced to survive. But also, that was in 1996.  In the modern day, a few of the remaining survivors, including Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis are having their past probed by a reporter, and nobody's talking...yet.

Great casting, an intriguing spin on Lord of the Flies, and the images from the trailer looked impressive (with director like Karyn Kusama, Deepa Mehta and Billie Woodruff on board, it's bound to be shot well), but I didn't sign on right away.  I hesitated.  Why? Because I thought I had it all figured out.  I thought for sure it was just going to be updated Lord of the Flies (as that what we expect when kids are left to survive on their own) but with cannibalism (as that's what we expect when sports teams crash in remote locations).  I didn't expect the modern day with its bigger name stars to be much more than a framing sequence.

Yellowjackets debuted to a little acclaim in its initial release in November, but as the series went on, it picked up more and more viewers and critical attention.  The buzz (pun intended) was good, real good.  I didn't pick up on anything specific from the buzz, except to say that people were surprised, and enthralled.  It became a week-to-week show that generated much noise on the internet.  Somewhere in the early days of January, just as the penultimate episode aired, we started watching (after a recommendation from friend and regular reader Shaun), and binged the first season over a few days.  It's good, real good.

It opens strong, with a young woman (her face never clearly seen, I tried real hard to look) running through wintery woods, completely inappropriately dressed.  Too much exposed flesh, no shoes.  Clearly panicked, she runs, only to fall into a disguised spike pit.  A fur-wearing masked individual looks down upon them.  That's the first 2 minutes.

We're introduced to the soccer team in 1996, regional champions going to the National Finals in DC.  We get a rapid sense of their dynamics, though there are a lot of girls, so it's hard to know which ones exactly will be come important.  We meet the 2021 (non-pandemic reality) version of Shauna (Lynskey) who is a housewife, completely dissatisfied with life.  Her husband appears to be having an affair, her daughter is an entitled asshole, and that rabbit keeps eating her plants in the garden (she later kills, cooks and makes stew of the rabbit). Tawny Cypress plays the adult Taissa, who is running for state senate with the support of her wife, but is distracted by her troubled son, and her opponent keeps insinuating things about her survivalist times.  Adult Natalie (Lewis) is just getting out of rehab, again, and instantly jumps off the wagon.  She's getting harder and harder the older she gets, but also more self destructive. And then there's Misty (Ricci) who was an outcast in high school and is still an outcast in adult life.  She's perpetually perky to an unappealing degree, which hides her psychopathic tendencies. 

As reported in the commercial, a reporter starts digging around, looking for the story that 25 years later still remains untold.  But there's more to the reporter than she seems.  And a mysterious invitation sent to some of the survivors leads to a possible murder of yet another survivor.  And then there's the charming and mysterious artist/mechanic who "accidentally" rear ends Shauna and pulls her out of her suburban funk.  Taissa's revelations start to strain both her campaign and her marriage. Natalie and Misty become a reluctant duo (mostly due to Misty's intervention) and things get warped.

But back in 1996, the first episode ends with the plane crashing.  Before that we learn that Shauna was sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend, and this relationship between Shauna and Jackie is one of the key focal points of the season.  In the woods over the next four or five months of survival (of an 18 month stint) thing fracture and fray between them until it reaches a breaking point.

Taissa in the past also has a best friend/girlfriend, Van, but Taissa's proactive nature winds up putting them, and a few of the other girls in danger.  And then there's the problem of her sleepwalking...

Misty in the past is the only one with any sort of first aid training, and reveals her competence quickly.  As appreciated as her skills are (and as necessary as they are) she just makes everything weird and awkward at every turn... especially with Coach Ben, the only adult survivor whom she's infatuated with (and starts to Phantom Thread him).

Natalie's past was traumatic enough, and it seems like more trauma just piles on top of her.  But when she proves herself to be the best marksman of the group, she's paired with Travis and they form a thin, yet unbreakable bond.  Travis and his brother Javi both survived the crash, but their father was killed.  Their brotherly bond is a rough one, but it's clear Travis knows he needs to look out for his timid younger sibling.  

Other key players include Laura Lee, the deeply Christian one and Lottie whose medication runs out and starts having "visions" which just weird everyone out.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about Yellowjackets was not just it's two-tiered approach to storytelling (which, yeah, acts like Lost in reverse) but also how it didn't choose the expected path.  Though the young women may have individual bones to pick with each other, they never threaten to fracture into two warring tribes.  Tensions may rise within the group, but also many of them are dispelled through sympathy and conversation.  It really does take into account that these are women, and not boys, and that there's a much different tone to how they interact.  Women use words (and silence, and emotions) to hurt each other, rather than physical violence.  The injection as well of two boys and an adult also really change up the dynamic nature of the entire group.  Very, very little of this played out as I would expect.  And if you were thinking, like I was, that there would just be high-school girls getting picked off every episode or two, well, beyond the first episode there's only, I think, two deaths in the woods, and not how you would think.

The present day is absolutely sodden with the traumas of the past that each of the four women we follow are saddled with.  They each cope in their own way - Shauna avoids the world, Taissa just keeps moving forward like a freight train, Natalie is deep into self-medicating, and Misty kind of seems to be having a good time in spite of everyone being totally weirded out by her.

The show hints as a bit of paranormal or mystical, but almost every instance has a pretty grounded truth to it, save for Lottie's visions.  It could have easily went into very specific horror tropes of having found a malevolent, infectious force in the woods that they then brought home with them, but no, it's all really just about survival, the horrors experienced along the way (wolves and bears and oh my), and the trauma that follows.  Even the insinuated cannibalism...still isn't exactly confirmed.  It's all but confirmed.  But the modern day survivors were definitely responsible, even if indirectly, for some deaths.

Season one gives us a lot to chew on, and really just hits home the characters and their dynamics both in the past and present.  What it doesn't give us is any answers to what ultimately happened.  The two deaths this season were accidental, so we're left to ponder what happened to the rest of them?  I can't wait to find out.

I should also note it has the best opening credits of 2021 (2022's best opening credits award is already locked down by Peacemaker).  Even after the full first season, it's a dizzying display of warped and haunting imagery, accompanied by the Hole-esque growl.  The song "No Return" is by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker,  from the rock bands Shudder to Think and That Dog, respectively. They also composed the score for the season.

3ish Shortish Paragraphs: Black Widow

Cate Shortland (Lore) -- download

Second viewing now complete, and I am still of two minds about this movie. One, I still pretty much prefer all the non-mega-action aspects of the movie, and two, despite having no key issues with the movie, it just doesn't leave much of an impression on me. 

That last point disappoints me, because while this is an outlier on the MCU movie stream -- set in "the past", pre-Snappening and not being an origin story or sequel -- she is a beloved character by many MCU fans, and I was hoping this would be the first in a series of stand-alone non-origin stories about the characters; that were not sequels. Alas, it this won't encourage that path.

The movie is set just after the Avengers all head in different directions, the fallout from the Civil War Sokovia Accords. Natasha Romanov is on the run, hiding out in Europe but becomes embroiled in a conspiracy from her past. Unbeknownst to her, the espionage  organization she was part of (the Red Room) was not destroyed, but has been active since she defected. And her sister Yelena was deep within it, until recently released from its control (actual mind control) by a chemical counter-agent. She seeks Natasha's help in freeing the rest of the Black Widows from the control of Dreykov, leader of the Red Room.

This plot gave the movie an opportunity to resurrect the style and tone that made the Winter Soldier so popular, even with non-MCU fans. Alas, the movie shifts continually between hints of that tone, and that of a standard action-packed MCU movie. These tonal shifts are likely mandated now, and behind the scenes talk about how these movies are made, tell a story that the directors / screen-writers are often presented with these action set-pieces as required parts. They are created, controlled and inserted by the MCU studio heads, almost as independent components. It must be a challenge making the pure centres of the director's artistic vision come together with the MCU bits. In this case, I am not sure it worked.

But still, I enjoyed Shortland's vision when I could see it. This is a movie about trauma, and the ramifications of not dealing with it. Natasha and Yelena began their young lives in a lie, a lie where they were inserted as a family in Ohio, to infiltrate a SHIELD base. The girls were there to just provide backstory for the infil family. And when the mission was accomplished, they were extracted in the most harsh way, torn from their lives, torn from each other and sent to become tools of the Red Room. Years later, Natasha has extracted herself from that past, and found a new family in the Avengers. But Yelena literally is just released from the Red Room's control at the beginning of the movie, and probably is having the first free thoughts of her adult life. That old trauma, and the awareness of what she has been for more than a decade is still new and raw and overwhelming. Shortland handles it gently and succinctly, peppering it with some of the ludicrous aspects of being in a superhero world.

And yeah, Yelena is the best thing about this movie, even ignoring my very blatant fondness of Florence Pugh (this October, Kent, finally I will see Midsommar). Even while under the control of the Red Room she must have been using humour to deal with her trauma. Her quips, said in that low not-bad-not-great Russian accented drawl, are the observations of someone seeing the world for the first time, or at least in a very new light, and having an opinion on everything.

Meanwhile, Natasha doesn't really seem to be starring in her own movie. Nothing really stands out in any of her actions or reactions, she isn't given anything solid to truly define her. And considering this is the last movie they can do with her, its a real disservice to the character. Sure, she kicks ass and is her usual extremely competent self, but its all by-the-comic-book and almost nothing in the movie expands her character. There was this brief hint at the beginning, which I wish had gone on longer, where she is isolated in the Scandinavian wilderness, where she intends on hiding until the Civil War works itself out. I would have liked seeing this go so far as to give us Natasha without goals, without the Avengers, without that camaraderie with Hawkeye. What would she do with her time? Who would she be? But no, we are literally tossed back into the MCU via the immediate introduction of Taskmaster, the toss away Marvel comics foe assigned to this movie.

In the end, I have nothing against this movie, and nothing about it bothers me in any particular way. Its a competent MCU movie. But given the source character, it should have been so much more.

T&K's XMas (2020) Advent Calendar: Day 10 - Happiest Season

 2020, Clea DuVall (The Intervention) -- Amazon

We... agree?

*re-reads*

Yeah, we agree. So, for the recap of the movie and most of our shared touchpoints, go read Kent's post.

So, Kent is very aware of my dislike for tense situations and cringey interactions. I dislike it when it is the basis of a comedy, and when it becomes the focal point of someone's trauma, I almost turned it off. But then Aubrey Plaza would show up, or Dan Levy would appear on screen, and I was enjoying myself again. Alas, even the very sweet ending, did not save this movie for me. This was a traumatic movie about horrible people being horrible to other people who did not deserve it.

So, my brief is that Abby and Harper are ... a year into a relationship, unless you want to go with the lesbian cliche of moving in together after one date, then they are six months in. Abby wants to propose, but Harper just wants to bring her home. But half way between Pittsburgh and the PST where Harper is from, she gets cold feet and admits she never came out. Abby is the roommate.

From there it gets only worse, much worse. This movie makes Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber into horrible people who pit two of their daughters against each other, like gladiators for affection, while pretty putting the third in the servant's quarters. The latter is obviously so broken, I was all for their depiction of her being an awkward writer of terrible YA fantasy, and I would probably love the books. Once Harper is mixed back up in all this disfunction, she falls back into who she was there, which is, frankly, also a horrible person.

And yet, there are a few scenes that shine through this morass of reprehensible people. Abby starts escaping out into the PST with Harper's ex Rylie, played by Plaza. One night they end up at the local dive bar, a hole in the wall with relaxed young folk and comedic drag queens singing offbeat Xmas songs. It is suuuuch a comfortable looking place. Conversely, Harper is the local sports bar "Fratty's", which probably only has shitty beer. The place is wretched, and this dichotomy says a lot.

When Abby has finally had enough of all this bullshit, Dan Levy reminds her of the spectrum of experiences in coming out. Some are wonderful, some are traumatically shitty and many somewhere in between. But for me, this wonderfully poignant point of the movie was not enough. They try and railroad a sweet ending, where the family instantly understands they are shitty people and reconcile, but all the terrible terrible behaviour, and the destruction of Jane's lovely painting was more than enough. Like Abby had had enough, I had enough. Like Kent, I like that this movie happened, I just didn't like the movie. I cannot accept they would stay together.