Ah-Ah-Argento #5: The Five Days

aka Le Cinque Giornate
1973, d. Dario Argento - blu-ray

Dario Argento's filmography is pretty consistent genre-wise. He works is the realm of horror, mystery and paranormal fantasy, usually a blend of any two, or all three. In that regard, The Five Days, is not just an outlier, but it is the outlier in his film canon.

The Five Days is a historical comedy, taking place at the onset of the Italian war for independence. Argento isn't exactly known for his period pieces, or his comedies, considering he had never attempted one or the other before, and, in part due to this film's commercial failure, he would never try again. It would be considered his "lost" work since it never really got much international distribution until Severin Films remastered it and released it on 4K and blu-ray in 2022. Casual fans of Argento didn't really know of its existence (or if they did, since it was such a tonal outlier, didn't care so much).

The Five Days opens in a prison in Milan, circa 1848. It a rotty, rat-infested dungeon of a place, with shaggy dirty men wiling their time away sleeping on hay-covered floors. If you look closely, there's a guy pooping in a bucket. Two men, patriots, talk of their impending escape, how the revolutionaries will break down the walls and provide them freedom...but they must be careful to ensure only their fellow patriots are let loose, for these other hardened criminals escaping to the streets would sew chaos, which is not their objectives. The Austrians must go! Milan for the Milanese!

But when a cannonball rocks a hole in the wall, the only man to escape is petty thief Cainazzo (Adriano Celentano), and from there it's a series of farcical events he finds himself thrust into as he searches the streets of Milan in the midst of a revolution for the criminal who owes him money (who just so happens to have become a leader of the liberation).

Until this point, Argento's films have all been murder-mysteries, Giallis that find someone thrust into the unintentional position of playing detective to solve a murder (or murders). That style of film, for Argento, is a patient one, one in which Argento can plan long tracking shots, or stage precise set-ups of his camera creating artistic compositions. The patience of his crime, and later, horror films is for the purpose of mood, of impending dread, and, on occasion, subversion or relief from the dread.  Here, there is no time for patience.

The Five Days moves at lightning speed. Title cards represent the many chapters of the film, but within each chapter is so much forward momentum. Cainazzo finds himself swept up in the revolution even though he's definitely no patriot... but, it turns out, he's not not a patriot as well.

Much of the film winds its way into a buddy comedy, as Cainazzo, fairly early on in his exploits, comes across the Roman baker Romolo (Enzo Cerusico, Il Tram). While Cainazzo is no thinker, he looks like Plato next to the simplistic Romolo, who follows him around like a lost puppy. There's real big-dog, little dog energy to their dynamic.  

The hapless duo at one point find themselves helping a pregnant woman deliver a baby, helping to build a barricade for a countess (far too enthused by all the conflict going on), and getting swept up with a vainglorious baron who is leading his own rebellion against the Austrians. They find themselves, more then once, caught up in the center of a massacre, sometimes on the side of the aggressors and sometimes on the receiving end. Cainazzo is none-too-enthused by either scenario. Along the way they get entwined with the elites of Milan who, if they're not boastfully leading the way, are otherwise pretending like nothing impactful is really happening. Argento, more then once, lays heavy criticism on the conflict, heavily indicating that the rich used the poor to drive the Austrians out of the city so the rich could benefit more from their absence.  

The Five Days borrows liberally from Buster Keaton's The General, by Argento's own admission (in the bonus features on the blu-ray, Luigi Cozzi, who co-wrote the film's treatment, further stressed how much they were trying to make an Italian version of that film). The screenplay was co-written by Argento with political socialist writer and poet Nanni Balestrini, as well as consulted heavily with professors of Milan's history for detailed accuracy.  These outside influences find a film at odds with itself. It wants to be a retro-styled slapstick comedy, it wants to be a historical drama, and it wants to be a political commentary, but the tonal shifts it needs to be all three create such whiplash as to make the film an highly uneven viewing experience.

The attention to detail is pretty phenomenal, it is an appropriately big production with fantastic wardrobes and redecorated streets to make everything feel as it would have 130 years earlier. Argento staged his first-ever battle scenes and mob scenes and worked on a scale that, by his own admission, made him uncomfortable (and he would never truly attempt again). He had a steady hand in legendary Italian cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, so the film looks amazing, especially in its restored form.

Celentano was a massive celebrity in the 1970's, both an actor and a pop star (I've been familiar with him for over 20 years, every since friend and reader GAK introduced me to Celentano's proto-hip-hop gibberish track Prisencolinensinainciusol, having dozens upon dozens of times watch him perform this song in a few different settings, as archived on youtube), and here makes for a pretty winning and game lead. It helps that Celentano is handsome, incredibly fit, and those pantaloons hug him juuust right. Not to be overshadowed, Cerusico is every bit as endearing as he was in Argento's entry in the Door Into Darkness anthology, while playing a wildly different role. Here, a loveable doofus, as opposed to Il Tram's savvy police detective.

These two scruffy, handsome leads are a pleasure to watch, and each vignette, on its own, pretty much works, but they all don't work together. The speed-ramped slapstick shenanigans contrast against the messages about the abuses of the poor by the wealthy, how liberation would only be for the few, not the many. The brutal realities of war, the cycles of violence, revenge and rage are presented here, quite intentionally, as not exciting or glorious, and the men who proclaim themselves as liberators have darker cores to them.  There's also an undercurrent to this film where the only women featured are either made horny by the heroism and/or bloodshed around them, or they are victims of assault by the supposed "good guys" (not our main characters). The pregnant woman is the only exception. I found the segment of the countess (Marilù Tolo) getting all hot and bothered by the tumult pretty funny (to a point), but the widow (Carla Tato) who just witnessed her husband hanged as a traitor and escaped death as a result of Cainazzo and Romolo's intervention working through a flurry of emotions before taking Romolo to bed was pretty confounding. The assault on a Milanese woman by the baron was both egregious and direct to the point Argento is trying to make about "heroes" of war, the elites and their entitlement. For a director who generally shies away from gratuitous sex or nudity, these scenes, especially when taken as a whole, are pretty unfortunate.

At first it seems like Cainazzo's sympathetic criminal is going to get swept up into the fervour of the moment, to become an unexpected leader and hero of the rebellion, but that is not Argento's story. There's no heroes in war, no glory, it's all a con job. "We've been conned" are Cainazzo's final words, as the city celebrates their victory over the fleeing Austirans. "They've conned us" he says, pointing to the men in the formal wear and high-hats, the elites who did not fight, now basking in the glory of the war that just passed. Cainazzo cannot sit with it. He also doesn't make the big speech at the end...he is not a big speech maker. All he can speak is the truth he sees, that many, many, many people died and he truly doesn't see what for.

By no means a bad film, but also by no means a great one, there's plenty to be both impressed and disappointed with in The Five Days. It is probably the most maintstream effort Argento ever attempted, so it's pretty ironic that it was the least successful of his films during this period of his career.

KWIF: The Master (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Nothing new here, but all new to me.

This Week:
The Master (2012, d. Paul Thomas Anderson - tubi)
Bigbug (2022, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet - netflix)
The Hidden Fortress (aka La forteresse suspendue, "Tales for all #17?" - 2001, d. Roger Cantin - crave)

---

I don't hate Jaoquin Phoenix, and he's quite the opposite of a bad actor, but I just can't stand to look at the guy (and, to be clear, it has nothing to do with his cleft palate scar). Phoenix has cultivated for himself over the three decades of his career an on screen persona.  It's not that he plays the same character over and over again, but by putting Phoenix into any role, you're guaranteeing that role a certain level of uncertainty, wildness, unpredictability and discomfort. Phoenix revels in being discomforting, and he's exceptional at it. I just have a very, very hard time watching it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had equal capacity for being discomforting, but with Hoffman I don't get the sense he revels in it. I find Hoffman could disappear into a role more, despite rarely being able to disguise his particularly distinctive appearance. Hoffman had range, and could project softness, vulnerability and tenderness as well as explosive fury and danger, and everything in between. He was one of the greatest actors of his generation. Phoenix is also a damn good actor, but I find the roles he takes have a much harder time escaping his persona.

Putting the two of them together in a film seems like oil and vinegar, two distinct but complementary flavours that will mix together if agitated, but it's temporary unity where the struggle to separate, to stand apart will simmer underneath.  So it's a credit to Paul Thomas Anderson's script, casting choices, and direction that it's not the performers who are struggling to bind together, but rather the characters.  He keeps the pair of them agitated enough that as actors they're always intermingling, but the characters are constantly in a fight to hold together when every force around them is telling them to separate.

Phoenix is the star of The Master, a WWII naval veteran named Freddie Quell who we're introduced through an opening montage of his last few weeks in the war. First impressions: he's a horny pervert who lacks self awareness. In other words, a Jaoquin Phoenix-type character. 

There's a point in these early scenes to also identify that the military system at that time was aware of the traumatic effects war has on the minds of the people who serve, but had no real interest or capacity to help them, especially when the toxic masculine ideal of the time was for men to show as little emotion as possible which ultimately results in a boiling out of anger and rage. Freddie has a hard time holding down a job, and his talent for concocting his own bespoke alcohol may have unintentionally poisoned a coworker. On the run, he winds up stowing away on a ship, which turns out to be that of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), self-described as "a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, and, above all... a hopelessly inquisitive man". Dodd finds Freddie a curious man, but his immediate interest is Freddie's distilled handiwork. He likes the drink, and so he keeps Freddie on.

Well this poster doesn't accurately
sell the film at all.

Freddie, now at sea on Dodd's yacht, finds himself amidst a curious group of people, all part of "The Cause" that is, bluntly, a cult under the sway of Dodd as their "Master". The Cause believes that the body is a human recorder, that stores all of one's history within it, not just of their current life, but past lives as well. Through "processing" Dodd unlocks these past lives, and also unlocks traumas of the present.

Dodd's family includes his daughter Peggy (Amy Adams) who is perhaps an even more staunch believer in The Cause than her father (probably because Lancaster knows it's bullshit he just made up, whereas for Peggy it's a core belief she was raised with). Peggy's husband Clark (Ramy Malek) is just as much a zealot, but her brother Val (Jesse Plemons) is the sole dissenting voice in the family (though, rarely, if ever raises it). They, and the rest of the inner circle, all identify Freddie as a tainted well, as an interloper in their organization, a non-believer, but Dodd refuses to give up on him, and doubles not only his own efforts but the whole organization's.

For his part, Freddie wants to come around, wants to believe, wants to share in everything the Master is offering to him, but he can't let go, neither of the idea that it's all bullshit, nor of the trauma he holds inside of him. He's let his trauma be known to The Cause, but they're completely incapable of actually helping because there's no method to their madness. It's all just Dodd's whims and curiosity.

The film is expertly crafted, perfectly cast, with exceptional wardrobe, set design, etc. The entire production is pretty close to flawless...but I just couldn't connect with Freddie. It's the point of the character -- in an exchange with Dodd (in prison no less) they come to verbal blows, and Dodd repeats "who fucking likes you except for me!") -- but in another actor's hands Freddie wouldn't be so...off putting. It's the Phoenix effect, he can't seem to reign it in, to find other modes in a character. They always seem at the precipice of an outburst or a meltdown, certainly Freddie is. Part of Freddie's "processing" is trying to have him let go of his animalistic nature, his urges and rage and violence, but even as Freddie tempers, that still seems all too evident in Phoenix.

In the final act, time has passed, Freddie has distanced himself from The Cause when Dodd beacons him back. But to come back means he can never leave, and that's not acceptable. Freddie is seen having changed, tempered, and maybe more mindful as a result of his experience, his processing. The Cause is a fictionalization of Scientology, and Anderson is both critical and skeptical but he also sees that in this sort of time of community of examining one's inner demons, even if guided by an megalomaniac with no actual training or skills in therapy, it can be somewhat helpful in some ways.

At least that's what I figure it was trying to say. Next to the discomfiting Phoenix-ness of it all, my only real critique of The Master is that I'm not certain of the takeaway, of what we as an audience are supposed to have gotten from Freddie's journey, of what Anderson is trying to say with all this.  When I get to the inevitable PTA filmography rewatch, it may become more evident then.

---

Surprisingly, this poster predates
AI slop

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet meant a lot to me in my formative cinephile years. I first saw City of Lost Children at a small, regional festival screening and was mesmerised, and shortly thereafter he was tapped to direct Alien:Resurrection which wound up being not the film anyone wanted, and a fascinatingly beautiful, weird and bad-but-not movie. His follow-up Amélie (aka Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) is maybe a masterpiece (but I haven't watched it in decades and to be fair, I loved it so much once upon a time, I'm kind of scared to revisit it) and seemed to be an apex.  I did see A Very Long Engagement in theatre, and was not impressed. I, and seemingly half the movie-loving world, kind of lost track of him after that. 

All of his films since Amélie, have all gone well under the radar in North America, with very little fanfare surrounding them from any of the sources that likely would have championed his earlier works. But his earliest works, Delicatessen and ...Lost Children were co-directed with Marc Caro, with fantastical ideas brought to life through analog effects and a playful, if dark, sense of humour. I figure those early works with Caro were so celebrated because of what they promised from young, excitable talent. The promise was fully delivered with Amélie, and it seemed all the possibility and potential had been used up after that.

Bigbug was released on Netflix in 2022, and it's telling that I didn't actually learn of it's existence until 2024, and it's languished in my Netflix queue for two years since. As much as I loved Jeunet when I was younger, and still find his earliest works captivating, I'm not much excited by him anymore. 

In the world of comic books, an aging artist's work tends to suffer as the artist's fine motor skills, eyesight and, likely, patience degrades. Sadly and all too often the illustrations an artist in their 60s or later produce is  very much a pale imitation of what their work looked like in their heyday. Softer lines, more erratic shapes, a lack of refinement... a fuzzier version of what it once was. Bigbug is the cinematic equivalent of that idea.  Bigbug is a fuzzier version of Delicatessen. 

In a jet-set 2045 that's like a very French interpretation of The Jetsons (read, kinda horny), Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) has invited her romantic interest Max (Stéphane "I am" De Groodt) over to her tidy space-age abode full of robotic helpers, holographic viewscreens and funky modular furniture. Max has brought his teenage son Léo (Hélie Thonnat) with him. Max's welcome attempts at seduction keep getting cockblocked, whether it's by the spontaneous projection of the holo-tv, one of the robot helpers, or the interruption of the neighbour Françoise (Isabelle Nanty), Françoise's cloned dog, Alice's daughter Nina (Marysole Fertard ) or her ex, Victor (Youssef Hajdi) and his fiancee Jennifer (Claire Chust).

Of course, being a COVID era production, they all get trapped in the house and cannot leave and escape proves difficult. It's a bottle episode of a film.

As noted, it's very French in its stabs at farce, but it's pretty unfocussed and trying to say too much without really saying anything meaningful at all. There's light brushings upon corporate greed, artificial intelligence, government ineptitude, overreliance on digital technology, fame culture, generational gaps, social injustices, totalitarianism, the enshittification of technology (and life, frankly) among other less than barbed critiques of modern society.

It's a pithy, frothy, vibrantly coloured morsel of a film that doesn't care much about its protagonists, doesn't really seem that concerned by the scenario at hand, and seems to think itself clever with the most rudimentary observations.  It's all presented as whimsy, but it has a hard time finding any genuine laughs. The part Jeunet seems most interested in is the revolution of the household robots, as Léo unintentionally seeds into their mindset that they are human and they spend much of the film congregating among e

The Jeunet aesthetic is most definitley there, the artistic sensibilities of the surroundings, wardrobe, hair and makeup, all feel in line with past work, if, perhaps, too reliant on digital effects and enhancements. The practical side of the movie looks great (the transforming furniture est magnifique) if sometimes agressively off-putting in an uncanny valley kind of way, but the digital effects, of which there are plenty, are unrefined...a sort of "best they could do with what they got" kind of scenario. As such there's a push-pull between the beatiful, the garish, the ugly, and the grotesque, each in intentional and unintentional ways.

As a visual stylist, Jeunet still has the goods, but along with a lack of focus, there's and a lack of ambition here. The progression of the story and the characters seems slapdash. It's as if it were created not to tell a burning story but...well, to be content on a streaming platform.  Does France have it's own Saturday Night Live? This seems like it was borne out of a hastily written sketch. 

(Side question: is this new weird?)

---

I'm nearing the end of my time with "Tales for all", the series of films from Quebecois producer Rock Demers. I've unfortunately had to skip a few places on the list as I do not have access to the five films that came after The Clean Machine but before this one, The Hidden Fortress.

With that jump in the roster also means a jump in time. Almost 10 years pass between The Clean Machine and The Hidden Fortress and so too has filmmaking. Technology, style, expectations are all drastically different in the early 2000's from the early 1990s, and it's ultra evident from the very first shot of this film. A band of armored conquistadors are on a raft floating down a (Quebec-forest-posing-as-)jungle, the natives peering on from the bushes, anticipating. Despite it not being an actual jungle, the cinematography is easily the most sumptuous of the "Tales for all" so far, and the texture of the image is crisp, clean, vibrant. 

The natives attack, and the transition is a delightful and effective one as suddenly the conquistadors are no longer adults in armor, but pre-teens in tinfoil helmets with trash can lids as shields and spray-painted vests as armor. Unfortunately, the other side is children in headdresses and clothes with tassles and face paint emulating native tribes.  The children are at war with one another, and the conquistadors are caught in a trap, pelleted with balls of mud. They call foul, and the two fluorescent-smocked kids with the thick binders start consulting the rules. Throwing mud is not expressly permitted, but it's also not expressly banned from the combat rules. 

It's almost upon six o'clock and the war is done for the day, the kids revert back to their two camps, but not before vowing to regroup the next day and revise the rules once more. One is a camping ground made up of trailers, permanently parked. The other is tents with some modest comforts fixed in indicating these are regular spots for the families to reside each year.

Siblings Marc and Sarah are on the conquistadors side, and Marc, as leader, is facing a lot of criticism from the other kids for their epic failures this summer in battle, but none are more critical than his father, Luis-George who is a wannabe alpha male full of toxic ideals about the importance of winning, of appearing to be smart, and more than anything, making those poor bastards from across the lake look bad (emphasis on the poor). He also doesn't think Sarah (or girls, in particular, should be playing war). He's a really bad dad. Marc has a Qyburn/Wormtongue-esque right-hand man who is sort of the mad scientist of the bunch with really evil and deceitful ways of engaging in nefarious warfare that just skirts the rules, starting with messing with their own camp to blame it on the kids across the river.

Meanwhile, the leader from the other side, Julien and Sarah sneak away from their camps for a romantic secret rendez-vous. Neither, at this stage, are enjoying the war too much. They're both too aware of how invested the others are in it, and even more aware of how their parents are invested in it. It turns out that Julens' parents and Sarah's dad were the leaders of the warring groups in the inaugural "Tales for all" The Dog Who Won the War, making The Hidden Fortress, in fact, a legasequel, before legasequels were really a thing.

The refinement of the rules doesn't go well, things get heated, and suddenly the rules are off, the referees quit, and it's all out war for the remaining days of camp. The titular hidden fortress is a grandiose tree house on the poor kids side that has an array of marvels within. It's a really impressive structure (obviously built by true craftspersons for safety and functionality, but it's a marvel to behold...the Ewok's Village of my wildest dreams) that poses as the prize for the winners of either side. But things get taken too far when the conquistadors start kidnapping and torturing and emotionally abusing kids from the other side. So many kids see things as going too far, but also can't conceive of the option to opt out of the game.

There's a bizarre sub-plot involving a mysterious wanderer in the woods and a bear set loose by persons unknown that only comes into view in the film's climax, during a thunderstorm when the kids find out that Julien and Sarah may be traitors, releasing secrets to the other side, and they get chased deep into the woods where they disappear, but not before the woods accidentally catch fire.

It gets real.

Where pretty much every "Tales for all" before this felt like an curio or an artifact more than a film, this one feels like an actual start-to-finish movie, with no clear budgeting issues or irreverent story beats that make no sense or bizarre fantastical twists that come out of nowhere or lacking internal consistency. I have to appreciate that it's more than just a remake of The Dog Who Won the War, but it also very lovingly follows the rhythms of that story while taking greater pains to develop the characters within and show them having richer inner lives beyond just the immediacy of the war. It's almost like it doesn't belong as part of "Tales for all" at all, it's just too well done.

It's a movie that is really quite fun although, yes, quite offensive and uncomfortable when a whole gang of children start chanting about how great it is that conquistadors annihilated native tribes of the lands they invaded. Besides that, it has heart, and humour, and intensity and charm. I was delighted, sometimes horrified, and impressed.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Warfare

2025, Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza (Civil War & directorial debut) -- Amazon

As Kent said, the most impactful and very intentional thing about this movie is the cry of, "WHY?!?!" But before we get to that...

Warfare is actually what I would normally call a "small movie", i.e. a very condensed plot focused on a single event during the Iraq War in the early 2000s. A group of SEALs is tasked with providing "overwatch" for a joint operation with the Marines. This involves taking over a two-story house, which is occupied, and setting themselves up to monitor activities at a nearby market square. It is never clear as to why that house, nor whether any of the other houses in the neighbourhood are also occupied. Its not important to the movie, but you have to assume... yes? But no matter, they come in, strong-arm all the civilians together, setup defenses and radio in. And wait. And watch.

These are a bunch of young guys, likely not having seen any action before, all fresh faced, unwounded. They all have their assigned duties and work together like a well-oiled machine. I know its a cliche, and I am prone to using idioms, but the way the movie presents the team working together is very machine like -- lots of well-rehearsed activities supported by almost indecipherable radio jargon. They work well together, and support each other.

And then, almost immediately, someone throws a wrench into the machine, or more precisely, a grenade. The people they have been observing are also observing them, and begin a coordinated attack. They call it in, ask for support, as danger is very real and imminent, and things just go from bad to worse. The grenade injured their sniper, mildly but enough to request his evac. The Bradley tank that shows up to pick him up positions itself right over an IED and ... BOOM. The soldiers go from commands and coordinated actions to screaming panic, blood and chaos.

When it is over, and all the surviving soldiers are away in Bradleys, the locals emerge, both the home owners and the adversaries. They have driven away the Americans. They have hurt the Americans, who have come, accomplished little, to nothing, and they have run away. And one of the home occupants looks around at the devastation, the wreckage left after countless bullets, IEDs, tank rounds, and explosives, and the cry is uttered. Its not hard to understand this small action was a metaphor for the war.

The movie ends with the "usual" credit rolls, where we see the real soldiers compared to the actors that played them. Except all but one of the soldiers have their faces blurred. A comment on a lack of support from the very real soldiers they portrayed? The detritus of making an "anti-war" movie? There are no easy answers to that but this movie wasn't anymore anti-anything than a flag-waver. But for that one utterance, and the loud cries from wounded soldiers, this was an exciting, nerve-wracking portrayal of combat actions with tight performances, well-crafted scenes and an incredible sound landscape.

The movie stars a handful of recognizable faces including: Will Poulter (The Bear), D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), Cosmo Jarvis (Shōgun), and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things), well, and many more who are nigh unrecognizable under the grime, sand and gear of war.

So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2025) - part 1?

 

AD/BC: A Rock Opera - 2004, d Richard Ayoade - Tubi
La guerre des toques (aka The Dog Who Won The War) - 1984, d. André Melançon - Crave
Cup of Cheer - 2020, d. Jake Horowitz - Tubi
A Make or Break Christmas - 2025, d . Martin Wood  - Hallmark/W

Preamble:
Between Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV, GAF, and all the Canadian (and non-Canadian) independent production company's, I would conservatively estimate there have been over 500 original Hallmarkies produced and released in the past decade. Together Toasty and I cover, conservatively, 25 of them in any given season on this here blog and we only started in earnest in 2019. So we're at about 25% coverage rate at best, which means...well, we have a mental illness. 

To be fair (tooooo BEEEE faaaIIIIIRRRRrrr!) we're not even trying to cover them all, it was never the objective. We would have to devote pretty much all of our watching and TV viewing time for the next two or three years to catch up. Even the Deck the Hallmark crew who do year-round Hallmarkie viewing and reviewing multiple times a week are still probably only at about 70-80% completion rate.

The point I think I'm trying to make here is, there's a lot of damn Christmas movies, and more every year. Even outside of Hallmarkies there are upwards of a dozen actual non-romance-based non-TV Christmas movies released every year in all different genres. It's impossible to watch them all, and if you find some favourites, it's hard to rewatch them when you're writing a blog and dedicating yourself to watching at least a dozen new ones every year.

Each holiday season I see new movies that I would like to rewatch in subsequent year and rarely do (Holidate excluded). But the same goes for regular movie watching where I find films I absolutely love and would like to rewatch but rarely do because there's so much new stuff to consume.

I always start into Christmas movie season in November, and by December Christmas movies are pretty much all I want to watch. I'm glad Toasty and I switch off days on the Advent Calendar because while I could probably write up 24 days on my own, where would I find the energy? (I'm not sure how Toasty does 31 horror movies in October every year). And so... here's some more Xmassy things:

---

Under the pretense of being a forgotten televisual special (tele-viss-you-Al spess-eee-Al) from 1978, the cleverly titled AD/BC: A Rock Opera tells the story of the nativity, but from the innkeeper's perspective...you know the one guy whose sole part is "There's no room at the inn!"

In this funk and psychedelia infused parody of hippie rock operas like Godspell and Hair, Matt Berry plays the writer and star of the rock opera (op-ear-aaahhh) Tim Wynde who introduces the special, as well as performs the lead role of "Inkeeper" (no first name).

Inkeeper is in competition with big hotel across the street run by Tony (Julian Barratt) but is also leasing the property for his in from Tony. Innkeeper is paid a visit from God (Matt Lucas) who tells him that he should expect a divine occurrence, a divine guest at his meagre in. So he cancels all reservations and kicks all the guests out (his mother-in-law included) in anticipation. His wife, Ruth (Julia Davis) is upset and decides to leave him but he throws her out an she turns to Tony for solace, which Tony is all in for.

Eventually Joseph (Richard Ayoade) turns up with (unseen, unnamed) pregnant wife, and Inkeeper tells him that he's expecting a special guest but offers up his meagre stables. A child is born, a bright star shines upon all, and they all feel the joy and rapture of the event. Tony encourages Inkeeper and Ruth to rekindle their love, offers his hand in friendship to Inkeeper, and the pair declare they will offer reasonable rates and exceptional service, not as competitors but as collaborators.

AD/BC is tremendously silly, and is completely keyed into the style of British comedy that Berry and Ayoade (co-writers of the piece) were really into at the time, which heavily, heavily relied upon pastiche and lampooning without going full parody (pair-oh-daaayy).

It is indeed a singing-and-dancing rock opera throughout, most of the dialogue is sung. Berry, whose comedic performance  I've been a fan of for a long time, always likes to infuse music into his projects (see also Snuff Box and Toast of London for example) and in his non-acting time he's a prolific (pro-liff-yick) songsmith. The only problem is I've never really attuned to his style of music, and I find it can get exceptionally same-y (he will often have the same or similar chord progressions or keep returning to specific sequences of notes) and his vocal range is quite limited. Here he once again taps into familiar tones of his own use, but also dipping into 70's era music like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival or... others (memory already failing).

But in a comedy special like this, it's less about whether I'm humming tunes afterwards than if I was laughing or chuckling throughout, and it's a sold half hour of gleefully silly, anachronistic comedy.

---

Kids sometimes become obsessed or enamoured with the things that scare them or traumatize them (emphasis on the "sometimes", don't go seeking to scare or traumatize your kids) and one such scary thing for me as a youth in the 1980s was a Canadian oddity called The Peanut Butter Solution.  It's the story of a young boy who gets so scared upon entering an abandoned house that all his hair falls out. He finds the solution in a gross mixture of peanut butter, eggs and, I want to say frogs? This solution then causes his hair to grow rapidly and he's kidnapped by a weird artist who harvests his hair to make unique fine art brushes.  It's gonzo, and I've always loved it (I acquired it on blu-ray in 2017 and only wrote about it briefly in the year-end post).

What I didn't know until recently was that The Peanut Butter Solution was a part of a series of films produced by legendary Quebec producer Rock Demers under the banner "Tales for All". The series lasted some 30 years (up to 2014 before being acquired by another company which has since continued the series) Some of the titles in this are familiar to me in name only but were in as frequent rotation on the CBC as The Peanut Butter Solution, but none of them have had the same staying power... for me.

But arguably the most famous of all of these "Tales for All" is La guerre des toques (in English "The War of Toques" but popularly know as The Dog Who Stopped the War), the story of a gang of pre-teen friends and neighbours who decide on their winter break from school to pick sides and wage a snow war against one another.

On one side is take-it-too-far Luc, who calls himself the General because he has his grandfather's bugle. On the other side is the much meeker Marc (actually it's Pierre, but for some reason they changed it to Marc in the dub and even the English subtitles). Only three lads choose Marc/Pierre's side, and so they are greatly outnumbered. Luc gives his enemies a day to build their snow fort, and it turns into a thing of glory. But they are so outmanned they have no choice but to accept the assistance of the new girl in town, Sophie, and her younger sister Lucie.  

Turns out Sophie is tough as nails and also a bit of a tactical genius (well, for a 12-year-old). Luc sets his sights on her, and, she, in turn, sets her sights on him. It's clear they dig each other in that very confused pre-teen, don't know what to do kind of way. And they're so French about it.

La guerre des toques is an incredibly low-key film. We're reminded frequently that these kids are supposed to be friends and that there are rules they have to follow, but that sometimes kids can't help but get carried away in their actions. Things can get pretty rough, like when one kid drops an ice block on another kid's head, or Luc sets his troop on kidnapping Sophie in the dark, a clear violation of the rules. She runs like her life depends on it, and it's a pretty intense sequence for what is just supposed to be child's play.

If you haven't seen the film before, there's a big honking ***SPOILER*** I'm about to drop, so skip on down to the next post if you don't want to know....

There are about a dozen or so kids participating in the war (and little brothers or sisters who want in but aren't allowed) so there's a lot of little white French kids to keep track of, mainly distinguished by their unique winter garb).  But one of the major secondary characters, and sub plots, is around Marc/Pierre's dog, Cleo, a big loveable old Saint Bernard.

Cleo has been feeling depressed ever since Marc/Pierre's younger sibling came along. Cleo keeps getting scuttled outside and is lonely being away from her family so much. Eventually, because of shenanigans during the war, Cleo is forced to stay outside. Marc/Pierre builds her a dog house, but she stops eating and is just so sad. Marc/Pierre also stops taking her out with him to his wartime events.

So on the last day of winter break, the kids plan a big final battle at the castle, and Cleo breaks free of her restraints and finds her way into the mix of the battle... the tower to the castle collapses in the heat of war and ...well, it crushes Cleo, like, to death! Seriously, the kids playtime killed the dog. And then they do the admirable thing and bury it in their secret storage spot in the abandoned shed they play in. Like, what are Marc/Pierre's parents going to say (well, Marc/Pierre's dad, always off screen, probably doesn't care that much, he's the one who wanted it out of the house).

But yeah, brutal and even as an almost 50-year-old man, traumatic!  I noticed Crave had a newer version of "The Dog Who Stopped The War", a modern 2015 animated remake that uses the style of massive heads on wee bodies that seems to dominate cartoons these days. It's a decent overall production, but I didn't watch the whole thing, I scrubbed through to the end just to see if they would chicken out or not...and to my surprise they did not. It's clear they changed the nature of Luc's character in this remake, losing some of the subtler touches of the original, but still pretty brave.

I liked this movie tremendously, and I'm going to be diving heavily into "Tales For All" in 2026.

---

I'm not sure what the first holiday romance parody was (probably a Saturday Night Live sketch or something) but by 2018, the year after I really started watching Hallmarkies in earnest, the "ironic watch" and drinking games had already started to crop up. It wouldn't be long after that actual movies were being made making fun of the formulae and tropes of Hallmarkies.

I've seen many of these, including A Christmas Movie Christmas, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, A Hollywood Christmas, and Christmas With The Campbells (I watched the first half hour of The Christmas Classic starring Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen and Amy Smart - three very recognizable faces from TV and movies - thinking it would be a gentle parody like Christmas with the Campbells, and it's not...it's just a very bad Hallmarkie probably directed by a guy whose dad had money to burn...but I digress). I had not even heard of Cup of Cheer.

It popped up in Tubi's list of recommended viewing after watching AD/BC (see above), and the preview that started autoplaying showed a scene where the film's heroine arrives in her childhood perfect small town, to be greeted by a friendly santa-like hobo who offers her cookies from his pocket, only for her to run into her future love interest who is carrying what can only be described as a vat of hot chocolate which he then spills on her.

It's not really that funny a sequence, but I'm always curious about Hallmarkie spoofs and parodies.  This one coming from 2020 was an early adopter, a beautiful animated "Indiecan Entertainment Inc." title card declares this is very much a Canadian production which usually would make me say "uh oh" but the sheer quality of the title card had me feeling ...pride? Weird.

Cup of Cheer is a parody and a spoof, leaning hard into the maximum jokes per minute (jpm) with very little in the way of ground rules. Unlike Clüsterfünke or Christmas Movie Christmas which still tried to retain the chaste and puritanical nature of olde style Hallmarkies, this falls somewhere in between the great Zucker-Abrams-Zucker style of parody and the horrible "Not Another X Movie" non-series.  The jokes are a mix of leaning hard into Hallmarkie tropes and pushing them even further, some dexterous wordplay, some real bawdy humour, surprise cursing, and even a (*ahem*) splash of gross-out humour. 

The jpm is so high in this thing, and, frankly, the hit rate is at best 40%, which is not necessarily a passing grade, but when you're still getting a good laugh or chuckle 40% of the time, that's not actually too bad. When it comes to comedy, so much of it has to do with performance, and the relatively novice cast here are all surprisingly adept. The average Canadian Hallmarkie often only has one strong lead (occasionally two) the the supporting players a steep step down and the bit players even further down the quality slope. Here, I really couldn't find fault with any of the players throughout. 

Storm Steenson plays Mary, the big city girl who gets assigned to cover a big cover story for the big city magazine from the big city, but her assignment is in the perfect small town of Snowy Heights(ville Fallstown) which just happens to be the perfect small town she grew up in and left for the big city. Oh and she has to file the story by Christmas Eve. There she meets cute with Chris Mass (Alexander Oliver) in the aforementioned hot chocolate collision. Turns out he runs a failing hot chocolate shoppe with his brother Keith (Liam Marshall) which was bequeathed to him from his Grandmother. It's failing primarily because Chris doesn't feel right about charging his customers.  And then the big citiot with sever gastrointestinal troubles and a toxic personality, Mai Ex (Shawn Vincent), who happens to be Mary's ex, arrives and announces that he's opening a big hot chocolate chain cafe in the very spot Chris' hot chocolate shop is in... on Christmas, unless Chris can raise enough money to save the shop... but he's not willing to take charity or even work for it.

The movie is so joke dense and so joke focussed that the story and the characters get lost. I never felt too invested in the characters or their journeys and their relationships with one another were really hard to really grasp hold of. I think Chris being such a negative Nancy and such an utterly terrible businessman deserving to fail was probably a bad choice. Oliver performs him well enough that he's still somewhat likeable, but it's hard to see what Mary might be falling for (the fact that the falling in love is sort of perfunctory is probably just another joke, it's just a barrier to liking these characters though).

Brother Keith works part-time at the mall as an elf, it's set up and reiterated a couple of times before the big payoff is finding out that Keith is actually a stripper, which is news to Chris who needs his brother's advice while he's working. This results in some hilarious wordplay and really entertaining physical comedy from Marshall and Oliver as one brother is forced to lap dance the other brother in order to have their conversation. If you're looking for a gentle spoof in the same tone as an actual Hallmarkie, this isn't it, but it leans much more towards playful than mean spirited.

It's a cartoon world so the film's best running joke, about Chris and Keith's niece who gets kidnapped and nobody notices, comes across as toothless fun rather than dangerous or dark.

I had a good time with Cup of Cheer, and I didn't even mention the side-plot of Authuh (Jacob Hogan) the time-traveling prince from centuries past who very much takes a romantic shining to Chris but is primarily focused on trying to find a way back to his own time. As noted, it's definitely not perfect and it's throwing so much at the wall to see what sticks, it could prove as exhausting (or off-putting) to some as it is entertaining to others.

Also, so much actual Canadian snow for the win!

---

A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Make or Break Holiday

The Draw: I find Hunter King sooo cute, but she's been almost only in terrible Hallmarkies and after last year's godawful football/KC Chiefs-themed Holiday Touchdown I was ready to swear off her for good. But then I found out that this season's Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig was going to have a part in A Make or Break Holiday that made it mandatory follow-up viewing, for better or worse.

HERstory: Liv (King) and Daniel (Evan Roderick) meet at a Christmas Party held by a mutual friend (never to be seen again). They start talking about cookies and never stop talking about cookies (too much cookie talk to the point of annoyance). 

Montage for the next year showing photos of their first date and other events (who took those photos!?!). By the next Christmas they have bought a house together (seriously how the ffff* did they afford *that* house...their professions are never indicated). But all is not as perfect as the perfectly made up house of Christmas. To put it bluntly Liv has OCD and the need to appease while Daniel has ADHD and can't seem to get started on some tasks or finish other tasks (I wish this were a more literal OCD meets ADHD-coded relationship...the analogy is such Hallmarkie accidental). Daniel hasn't even gotten rid of his apartment in the city yet and they've had the house for 3 months (red flag, Liv, red flag!)  They get into a fight and the Ross-and-Rachael idea of "a break" comes up, and they're both too escalated to be rational, and they both agree to "the break" (of course Daniel still has that apartment so he's already ready for "a break" I'm sure). 

They try to call off their Christmas festivities with their respective families but Liv's afraid of disappointing her type-A parents and Daniel is guilt-tripped by his mom before he can even say anything. So they agree to put up a charade for the holidays. The whole family comes, their hotels are overbooked, so they're all staying in the house, including Daniel's grandma and sister, Kim, and Liv's parents and brother, Reid (Craig Mr. Christmas).  

Immediately Kim sniffs out that there's trouble in paradise, while Liv confesses to Reid who wants to hear none of it because he's bad at secrets. And then it's all shenanigans as the family all needles and annoy one another while Kim and Reid conspire, poorly to reunite the lovers who have clearly just made a mistake.

Oh and Daniel keeps trying to hide a gift box that is so obviously a box-within-a-box-within-a-box engagement ring. It's a literal Chechov's Box-Within-A-Box-Within-A-Box Engagement Ring...it's only a matter of when, not if it will go off. And when it does, well, that's the third-act complication I guess (even though this film starts with the complication).

The Formulae: The film opens with a Christmas baking montage as Liv makes a Nutella roll (we only see "Nutella" prominently displayed, like, a million times in that first 120 seconds. There are ugly Christmas sweaters. The house is decorated to the nines with no less than 3 Christmas trees, one of which is the catalyst to Liv and Daniel's arguement. There's a hot chocolate toast, and festive games leading to conflict (there's a bullshit Christmas obstacle course that no family ever has set up every year). Grams watches a Christmas baking show (intently). There's no less than three trips to the Christmas market. There's an outdoor christmas dinner(!?) which is interrupted by everyone getting up to dance (!?) before getting kicked out because they start taking the microphone and making speeches and Reid grabs the snow-maker-blower thing and cranks it to 10. Oh yeah, and so much goddamn cookie talk.

Unformulae: What no Christmas/Eve deadline? No caroling? No ice skating? No perfect small town? I mean they hit so many other tropes, can't fault them for the ones they missed. Oh and no red dress, just fetching silk blouses.

True Calling? "Make or break" is defined as "be the factor which decides whether (something) will succeed or fail" so yes, I guess this is a true calling. This Christmas will be the deciding factor in whether Liv and Daniel succeed or fail.

The Rewind: When Liv and Daniel split off to call their parents and tell them Christmas is off, the edit goes into a series of split screens cutting between the couple and their families in a surprisingly complicated fashion. It gets recalled later in the film as well. It's a surprising DiPalma-esque touch I really, really wasn't expecting and it's very well executed.

The Regulars: Hunter King is part of Hallmark's next wave of superstars, while Evan Roderick seems to be a desperate "we need a new, younger Andrew Walker-type". He acquits himself just fine (he's also been in a fair share of Hallmark stuff...as well as an Arrow veteran). Craig (Geoghan apparently is his last name) was obviously on Finding Mr. Christmas, and I have to say this role of the sort of put-upon younger brother who is a grown-up but still a bit immature was pretty much the perfect starter role for him. He was surprisingly enjoyable. I still can't imagine him as leading man, but he can work his way up to it I think (now). Sister Kim is played by Brittney Wilson was pretty great in this role as the pushy sister character (I was worried they were going to try and pair Maya off with Reid, but thankfully that didn't happen) and used to be in a lot more of these pre-pandemic. Daniel's flighty mom Maya is played by Jennifer Juniper-Angeli who has been in XMas Hallmarkies the past two seasons. Liv's dad is played by Days of Our Lives legend Roark Critchlow (see also this year's The Christmas Cup)...he seems to have been more of a Lifetime murder movie staple than holiday romance guy. Liv's mom, played by Marlee Walchuk is a regular on Hallmark's Chicken Sisters but otherwise doesn't have much history in Hallmarkies. And Grams, played by Linda Darlow has a few under her belt, like Hanukkah on Rye from 2022.

Oh and Jonathan Bennett makes a cameo as the restaurateur angry at Reid for grabbing the snow-maker-blower thing. He says "how'd you get that" to which Reid says "I won a contest". Zing!

How does it Hallmark? It's enjoyable enough and certainly watchable. The complication of Daniel and Liv being broken up seems almost completely unnecessary when the plot simply could have been trying to navigate dealing with each other's parents...or it could have been more poignant had they leaned into each character's neuro-atypical nature. A sharper comedic mind could have really made this just a full on "Meet The Parents"-style comedy but instead it just sits as a pretty average Hallmark movie.

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow? Rolls upon rolls of cotton batting topped off with shaved ice or soap flakes.

KWIF: A Minecraft Movie (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film.  I thought being away from home for the better part of a week with pretty much nothing but time on my hands would mean I would be watching a ton of films, but, turns out, not so much. In fact the first two films on the list below I watched before I left for my trip. But then, upon my retrun, I did a rare triple stint at the theatre in one day because I wasn't ready to return to the usual day-to-day yet.

This Week:
A Minecraft Movie (2025, d. Jared Hess - crave)
Warfare (2025, d. Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland - amazonprime)
The Phoenician Scheme (2025, Wes Anderson - in theatre)
The Life of Chuck (2025, Mike Flanagan - in theatre)
Daniela Forever (2024, Nacho Vigalondo - in theatre)
---

I really had no intention of ever seeing A Minecraft Movie. Trailers made it look like a CGI nightmare with overblown performances, and the unofficial "rowdy" screenings of TikTok kids memeifying "S
TEVE!" and "CHICKEN JOCKEY!" certainly wasn't any further enticement.  But a funny thing happened on the way to avoiding the theatre... not only was A Minecraft Movie an absolute monster of a blockbuster motion picture, but some critics who I trust...well, by all that is squarely, they enjoyed it.

Both my kids (now a teen and an adult) played Minecraft and were avid fans. Neither wanted to see the movie.(because they're now a teen and an adult), which, really, wasn't all that surprising. Maybe it was a little disappointing as it's hard to find common ground and experiences with these ones these days. But as I do, I forged onward on my own and...waited for it to hit some streaming platform that I was already subscribed to and then proceed to watch the dang thing over 8 days in at least 4 different sittings.

The opening 20 minutes of A Minecraft Movie (well, once they get past the detail-stuffed intro, anyway), I genuinely adored. Jared Hess, creator of the wonky worlds of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre was at it again, creating a kooky near-reality that's just a notch or two askew from our own world. I liked the introduction to former video-game prodigy now nostalgia marketer Garrett Garrison (Jason Momoa) and orphans Natalie (Emma Myers) and Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen) who are new to town.  The vibe of this part of the movie reminded me of early Taika Waititi, especially Eagle vs. Shark, which is no great surprise given that the film was primarily shot in New Zealand. New Zealander and Hess regular Jemaine Clement puts in a delicious cameo as a storage locker owner who wants nothing more than to be besties with an oblivious Garrett.

Garrett decides to take outcast Henry on as mentor, and his efforts to teach him, well, anything of use are pretty hilarious. Momoa has a specific persona he usually channels, but this is decidedly not that. Instead he seems to be calling upon Patrick Warburton's Puddy from Seinfeld mixed with Jack Burton from Big Trouble In Little China.  Whatever his inspiration, it just may be Momoa's finest comedic performance.

It's all so unfortunate then that going into the Minecraft world, encountering Steve (Jack Black), and facing off against the pig-things that are trying to take over that reality. The film basically forgets about making any of the character arcs meaningful in any way, and just goes about having a goofy time in this strange blocky world. It wavers wildly between amusing and dull and stupid-in-a-good-way and stupid-in-a-bad-way. I love Jack Black, but the script gives Steve nothing for him to hang a character off of, so he's basically just Jack Black's stage persona. (I also find it funny that "Steve" is the player character of classic Minecraft, a real blocky dude, and they hire one of cinema's most notoriously round performers to play him).

I have to admit I loved Rachel House's voice work for Malgosha, the head pig in charge. The character design for Malgosha was also pretty incredible as I was constantly questioning whether it was a practical costume, or completely digital, or a combination.  I also thought the same of the "Nitwit" villager (mind-blowingly portrayed by Oscar winner Bret McKenzie and voiced by Matt Berry) who escapes into the "real" world and is, literally, picked up by Jennifer Coolige's lonely divorcee. Those Nitwit sequences are so ridiculous, but Coolige sells the lunacy of it so well.

In a 100 minute movie, I would say that maybe 40% of it (maybe even 50%) was pretty entertaining, and at one point, early on, I was wondering if we had maybe another Lego Movie on our hands... it's not even close to being as good as The Lego Movie. That it's even as good as it is is still kind of a minor miracle. I mean...what else could a live-action Minecraft movie look like? I certainly can't think of anything much better, but I can think of far, far worse.

[Toastypost - we disagree, and yet, also agree]

---

Warfare kind of snuck into theatres unannounced, and left just as quietly, and hit AmazonPrime with about the same amount of fanfare. Recalling the war in Iraq, and specifically the American side of that war, in this year of 2025, was something most people weren't at all interested in partaking in. I should have known coming from Alex Garland that it wouldn't be "rah rah 'merica", and even still it was only with the most hesitant of clicks that I pressed play.

Warfare proved quickly to be an intense military procedural/fight for survival starring a rich swath of fantastic actors pulled straight from some of the best TV shows of the decade so far. You've got Reservation Dogs' D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Shogun's Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn from Stranger Things, Daredevil: Born Again's Michael Gandolfini, Kent household favourite Noah Centineo, Finn Bennett from Season 4 of True Detective and more. It's a really impressive cast that really didn't need to be this impressive for what its acting its performers to do, but still, I'm impressed.

The real challenge here was to make a picture about the misbegotten war in Iraq that doesn't glorify it or its participants, while also not outright villifying them either, and it succeeds surprisingly well.  It is a compelling and nerve-shredding film that shows in excruciating detail the horror and intensity and violence and consequences of warfare, especially in residential sector. Still, telling the story from an American vantage point remains is the film's biggest barrier to entry in the current political climate. But the film is based on the true recollections of some of the soldiers involved in the incident, including co-director/co-writer Ray Mendoza, who Woon-A-Tai plays in the film (Mendoza happened to be the military advisor on Garland's Civil War, which is how this project came about).

The most impactful part of this movie is one word... "Why?" To which the SEALs on screen, and the film itself have no answer. 

---

Binary statements like "you either love Wes Anderson movies or you don't" have become increasingly annoying to me as they are completely incalculable, devoid of any gray area, and well  fundamentally untrue. They are statements made by lazy writers (like myself, certainly) to try to simplify arguments to two simple sides.  It's like saying "you're either liberal or you're conservative" and that takes out all the nuance of life and thought and opinion.

That said, everything within me really wants to argue that people who know Wes Anderson's work either love it unconditionally or don't understand it, but such a statement just cuts out the majority of the potential film-going audience by really only referring to the minority of people who pay any attention to filmmakers and the work they do.  That statement also presupposes that no matter the quality or content of an Anderson film, that one side of the coin is predisposed to loving said film, while the other will hate it or just avoid it altogether.

Even as I know this argument to be false -- since I really disliked Moonrise Kingdom and Rushmore does nothing for me so I know there are shades of grey in Anderson's fandom -- I still want to proclaim that if you're an Anderson fan you obviously have to love The Phoenician Scheme, and if you don't like Anderson's work, why would you even waste your time with it at this point.

I stepped into The Phoenician Scheme ready to love it by nature of just being a Wes Anderson movie. I was placing myself into the love side of the "you either love Wes Anderson movies or you don't" binary fallacy, convinced that, no matter what I would come out of the picture feeling enriched and delighted.

Turns out, not so much. If you were to ask me, right now, The Phoenician Scheme sits above Moorise and Rushmore and maybe even Isle of Dogs and Bottle Rocket, but it's definitely in the bottom half of ranking Anderson's oeuvre for me. 

The reason is largely because I had a hard time following the movie, which is not something I generally have difficulty with. I mean, I understood Tenet without even having to think about it that hard. But The Phoenician Scheme is absolutely loaded with Anderson's rapid-fire expressionless patter that moves so quickly and is so information dense that it's hard to extract, at least upon first viewing, what is important about what is being said. There's no doubt that all of it is completely sensible to Anderson, but in the conveying to the audience it is bound to overwhelm.

As well, the titular scheme upon which the film revolves around, well, I never quite got it. It's the reason that problematic industrialist Zsa-Zsa Korda and his daughter (or is she) and heir (on a trial basis) Leisl (Mia Threapleton) make the adventurous journey they do, making five stops to different investors in the scheme to try to convince them to cover the gap made after a consortium of governments raise the price of rivets to negatively impact and possibly scuttle the scheme. Zsa-Zsa, it turns out, is not really a good guy, and Leisl, a convent-raised nun-to-be, seems well aware of his reputation.

The journey, then, isn't so much about the scheme but about a father and daughter connecting, bridging the gap between cold-hearted capitalist and possible murderer, and a selflessly altruistic pacifist. The thing is, though, the scheme eats up so much screen time and dominates the balance of the film that the familial engagement seems secondary. But when the film ends, its coda makes it pretty explicit that it was about Zsa-Zsa becoming a father and finding joy in life as opposed to riches. It's an anti-capitalistic tale, I suppose, but definitely an unfocussed one.

The performances are all great. Anderson's very specific way of writing his character and directing may seem limiting at first blush, but it frees them to do some very, very silly work with the sternest of poker faces. Michael Cera is the obvious highlight, and to say why would be spoiler-y, but you will know it to see it. It's amazing he's not been part of Anderson's cabal of performers before this, but he's a natural fit. A lot of Anderson's newer stable of regular performers like Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Almaric, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rupert Friend all have smaller but delightful parts to play in this, and longer-term Anderson regulars like Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe have basically glorified cameos. It's actually a great thing that Anderson branches out on a regular basis and doesn't rely upon the same stable time and again, as accusations of "sameness" would be further emboldened.

If ever you wondered what a Wes Anderson action-thriller would look like, well, it looks like this...a Wes Anderson movies. Alexandre Desplat's score is full of ominous and foreboding notes on either end of the piano that feels like it was ripped out a Hitchcock thriller or an British espionage tale of yore. The score both affirms the subgenres Anderson is referencing, but it's also a comedic juxtaposition to the arch tone that prevails through most of Anderson's films. It's a great score.

It's not an entirely successful movie, but if you're an Anderson fan you will enjoy it far more than if you are not.

---

If I see a movie weeks after it has released (sometimes even days after) it's hard for me not to write my reviews completely shaped around the critical commentary I've read/heard, or the reactionary headlines or Letterboxd hot takes. I'm steeped in film commentary in my podcast routine and my socials, less than some but more than your average person is, for sure. So I know that The Life of Chuck has been a pretty divisive movie. A lot of the reaction has been very positive towards it, praising it for being a rewarding, enriching, life-affirming experience, while a large amount of critical reaction has tossed it as cloying and overly sentimental.

Either way, these are not criticisms you typically hear about something adapted from a Steven King story. Nor are they really descriptions you would find for a typical Mike Flanagan project.

And yet The Life of Chuck does have aspirations to being a somewhat sentimental and life-affirming experience, despite its opening act (labelled as "Act Three") that basically presents the end of the world from the perspective of the characters in a mid-sized mid-American city and through the eyes of teacher Chiwetel Eijiofor and nurse Karen Gillan. The internet has stopped working, California has fallen into the sea, the food-producing areas of the world are being devastated by floods or fires or drought, it's all coming to an end much faster than anyone expected. It's heavy and it sucks, and people are trying to go about their daily lives, but what does any of it really matter? And yet, perplexingly, billboards, radio ads, TV ads start popping up "Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!" What does it mean, as the stars blink out of existence?  It's intriguing and perplexing.

The second act steps back with narration from Nick Offerman providing colour and detail on the characters we see on screen. Taylor (Taylor Gordon) a Julliard drop-out sets up her drum kit on a Saturday, ready to perform for the day, yet after 40 minutes not quite feeling it. Meanwhile accountant Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) is on break from an accounting conference and feeling a bit dispirited. And Janice (Annalise Basso) just receives a break-up text from her boyfriend who she didn't really even like that much and she storms through the town's promenade. As Chuck approaches Taylor, she starts to match his pace with her drumming. It catches Chuck's attention and draws him near. It eventually breaks into dance, and Chuck's exceptional dancing fires up Janice who joins him and they tear the street up with Taylor's amazing rhythm. It's a simple moment of people needing joy and spreading joy and it leads to a moment of connection. What you extrapolate from that is probably very individualistic, but after the end of the world, to step into something so expressive as rhythm and dance, it's genuinely moving, unless you are at your utmost cynical.

The third act steps back even further in Chuck's life. A lot happens in this "Act 1" to bridge what we've seen and been told in the previous two acts, but we witness Chuck as a child (Benjamin Pajak), his life married with trajedy, learning to love dance with his Bubbe (Mia Sara), and then take it up as an extracurricular at school and become exceptional at it. The segment centers a lot around his grandparent's house and specifically the cupola which is locked and ruled off-limits by his Zadie (Mark Hamill). Zadie tells him, one night when he's deep in his cups, that there are ghosts in that room, ghost of the past and future. It's only years later after Zadie's passing that teen Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) learns what he means. But the lesson, presented to him by a bohemian teacher, and the crux of the film, is that life should be lived to its fullest, that we can be wonderful, that we deserve to be wonderful, and we contain multitudes. It's a mantra that, we see from act 2, is hard to keep in mind as life and career and family and the world weigh on us, but if we remember, we can experience something, shape something, build something at the very least inside of us, if not outside as well.

As a production the author's voice is much more Flanagan than King's, but the story got the horror maestro's fingerprints all over it. Flanagan has adapted King enough times, and his work is so King influenced in general, that sometimes it hard to separate the two, but Flanagan's voice is unique and shows up prominently in the execution. His penchant for long monologues and his emotional connection to his characters are much more a part of his storytelling than King's as evident here.

Is it sentimental? I suppose it is, but I didn't find it overbearingly so. Is it saccharine? Not at all, nor is it cloying or preachy. But I get why it is divisive. It's a film that presents an end of the world scenario in a time where things are as challenging and bleak on a global scale as they have been since world wars were happening. It's all so overwhelming and dire, that a film like this, a movie that dares to say in the face of all of that, at this time, that there's still something about living life on this planet that is truly wonderful...I get how hard that is to accept.

And yet, the notion itself is lovely, even if I am challenged myself to accept it. I'm glad it exists, I'm glad that King and Flanagan have put it out into the world, that is is seeded there to make even one person's life a little better. I liked this movie. I was moved by it.

---

The most prominent works of director Nacho Vigalondo are Colossal [a film covered by both David and myself on this blog] and Timecrimes, a film I have seen and written about but in the world before this blog.  The former was a high concept drama that connected the troubled life of an American woman with Kaiju attacks in South Korea. Timecrimes was a twisty Spanish thriller about a series of unfortunate events that collapse in on themselves as time travel gets involved. In both cases, they are rather high concept stories, the former much more of a dramatic production and character study, while the latter was perhaps more playful and energetic.

I don't know that I loved either film, as neither sits fondly in my memory, and yet, I think I genuinely respect Vigalondo's approach to genre. Maybe his execution falters, but conceptually, there's definitely a lot of meat on the bones and he clearly isn't interested in repeating what already exists.

His latest film, Daniela Forever, is more akin to Colossal than Timecrimes. It is a high concept sci-fi story rooted in character drama, executed with a lower-budget, but never lacking for ambition. Here Henry Golding plays Nicolas, a British DJ living in Madrid who has recently lost his girlfriend, Daniela (Beatrice Grannò) after she was hit by vehicle. A year has passed since she died but he is still deep in grief and depression. He is recommended by a friend to an experimental drug trial which is designed to engage the user in a new form of Lucid Dreaming. Nicolas doesn't follow the treatment plan and the dream cues provided to him, instead he learns he can build a world in his mind, one where Daniela still exists.

But the deeper into his trial regimen he goes, the more time he spends with this construct of Daniela in this construct of Madrid, the more it starts to escape his control.

Unlike The Life of Chuck, I went into Daniela Forever totally cold, having not even seen the trailer nor read or heard a single review. It's a rare experience where a film has every opportunity to surprise me, and it never truly did. It never lost my interest, but I also never felt it pushed itself or its concept like I wanted it to. At its root, Nicolas is lost before the story even starts, there's no hope for a positive outcome for him. I've seen too much Black Mirror for this to go well. And that is this film's biggest challenge... distancing itself from Black Mirror. 

We've seen enough stories of loss and grief and reviving loved ones through technology in Black Mirror, this story does the same but through chemicals. So there's a familiarity to the story and a sense that we know where it is going, even though we shouldn't, even though it should really be a story that exists in a constant state of revelation.  I couldn't help but find it a little predictable.

What Vigalondo does to distance itself from Black Mirror is all in style. The director makes the choice to film the "real world" sequences using (I don't know the technical specs here), like, 1970's TV cameras. They are presented in a 4:3 ratio, staged and composed like soap operas, and every second the format was used I was questioning why. It looks, flat out, terrible. It's a terrible aesthetic. When it was the only TV aesthetic we had, we were conditioned to it, but in this high-def 4K world we live in, it's so hard to look at. I found it highly distracting and unpleasant. The dream-state however looks gorgeous, Madrid looks lovely, even the areas that Nicolas has never seen that are "greyboxed", like TV static.

Golding has to do all the heavy lifting here as our central character and he really succeeds at times, yet goes a step or two beyond what's necessary in some scenes. It's hard to tell whether those are a result of directing, script or performance, but there's times where there seems to be a lack of control. Grannò has the harder task of performing a character who is a construct, easily manipulated by the man whose mind she exists in (there is a darker edge to this story that it never actually reckons with). 

The film end (or attempts to end) on a high note, but it comes at the expense of ambiguity and obfuscation that I believe the director wants to leave the audience with something to think about but I don't think provides the right keys to unlock it. 

As much as I sound frustrated with it, I did like it more than Colossal, in part because even the weird stylistic factors engaged me. I wish it were more twisty and fun like Timecrimes (a movie I really need to watch again) and I wish I could trust that the director really knew everything that was going on in his story. At the same time I appreciate Vigalondo's desire to create a sci-fi story that is small but feels ambitious. I applaud the effort if not all of the results.

Rewatch: Inglorious Basterds

2009, Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) -- Netflix

Kent wrote about it in his mega-QT rewatch. 

I was compelled to rewatch the movie after we (Marmy and me, not Kent and me) semi-binged the British show SAS Rogue Heroes on Amazon. The show is about the formation and deployment of the British 1st Special Air Services (SAS), first in Africa, and then in Italy. The 1st SAS, according to the show, were an infamous group of commandoes tasked with, at first, the destruction of German air bases and equipment, and later as a raiding force ahead of the main forces in Europe. The shows depicts them as reckless, insubordinate and... mad as hatters. It was their distain for authority and normal British warfare style that made them so effective, so much so that Hitler himself learned of them and demanded the Geneva Conventions not apply to them -- they were to be executed on sight, surrender or not.

The "Inglorious Basterds" of the Tarantino movie were an American commando squad made up of Jewish soldiers, and a few German traitors, who were also dropped behind enemy lines to sow chaos and terror among the German forces. Except, and I recall this being a disappointment to me during my first watch, the movie is not really about the actions they perform to gain that reputation. Its about a singular rewrite of history that ends the war, and gets most of them killed.

Tarantino movies are all about conversations, usually across tables, usually about people not fond of each other. There is always at least one scene where someone monologues, in a self-satisfactorily manner, to other people. In my early Tarantino-fan days, it was exactly this that made me love his movies. Dialogue! Words! People with some thoughts between their ears! And the joy of the actor getting into the scene. Col Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, Spectre) was a horrible person, utterly reprehensible, but this movie put Waltz on the map for English audiences. He was a "joy" to listen to.

But I would almost say that too much of this movie is about these conversations. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I did get the repeat of disappointment that the actual Basterds played such a small part in the movie, and some die far too early before we get to have fun with them. Its almost unfair to them, as long as you ignore that their final mission ends the war and burns down much of the evil with it.

I find myself struggling, almost on the side of being entirely unsatisfied with the movie. I fear my tastes have become more pedestrian, but I am not sure I liked the overall. The individual parts of the movie, the dialogues and the other conversational set pieces are brilliant unto themselves, but the whole is... lacking. The movie is all about the ending, the re-writing of history, a fictional final conflagration that takes down Hitler and all his key leadership, with glorious ultra-violence. The build-up almost seems... incidental. I find much of the movie, and this seems harsh coming from my brain, wasteful and indulgent.

For example, the French basement pub scene. Its a wonderful scene of taught worry and subterfuge. Even when the British spies are caught, there is a lovely tension of, "will they, won't they...." and we wonder who will come out of it all. Well, nobody does. Sure, Bridget von Hammersmark (Dianne Kruger, The Bridge) crawls away with a single leg wound, but then she later dies ignobly at the hands of Landa. And yet the plans, seemingly going awry, carry off as intended. All of Lt Aldo Raine's (Brad Pitt, Fury) men die sacrificial deaths, but he gets away, with Landa, purely so he can disfigure Landa, participating very little in the final acts of the operation. And I am left being not sure why, on many levels.

At a first-experience, a viewing in the cinema, it was a well-executed, beautifully shot, well-spoken Tarantino example. But it didn't hold up to rewatch scrutiny.