KWIF: I Saw the TV Glow (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. Been busy with TV, particularly a binge watch of season 5 of Lego Masters Australia which I found all-consuming most of the week, and a Mike Flanagan series the week before. But this isn't KWIT, it's KWIF.

This Week:
I Saw the TV Glow (2024, d. Jane Schoenbrun - Crave/HBO)
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024, d. Brian Taylor - rental)
Hard Target 2 (2016, d. Roel Reiné - Netflix)

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I Saw the TV Glow is bound to perplex some people...maybe even most people who watch it. It is a highly stylized psychological horror film that acts primarily as - but not exclusively as - a Trans allegory. Actually, it's not even allegory. The text of it seemed so overt to me, but I also went into the film knowing only that it had something to do with Trans identity.  I can't imagine what most cisgender people who went into this without the Trans coding knowledge just what exactly they might make of it. 

But with the knowledge, I picked up on the subliminal very early. In the opening moments as young 11-year-old Owen is watching TV, a commercial for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer-esque program (by way of Canadian-produce kid's horror) "The Pink Opaque" provokes a reaction out of of their otherwise slack-jawed viewing. Later he's with his mother at a high school where she is voting to re-elect "the saxophone man", so that alerts us to it being around the start of Bill Clinton's second term. But in the booth, Owen's mom lets them press the voting buttons, and even though they knows who they're supposed to be pressing the button for, their finger starts trailing off for other options. "Don't ask, don't tell" is hard to ignore when his name comes up in an LGBTQ-framed context.

Milling about afterwards, Owen meets Maddy, a grade niner reading the season 1 episode guide to "The Pink Opaque". Owen is curious. Maddy, at first dismissive, senses something in Owen and engages. Owen can't watch the TV show she loves and she can sense that it will come to mean as much to Owen as it does to them. Owen fakes a sleepover at a friends in order to get to Maddy's to watch the show. It's a revelatory moment for Owen and a bonding moment for both. Two years pass and Owen is in high school and though they don't socialize together really, but Maddy leaves Owen messages and tapes of the show, and they start hanging out together to watch the show, season 5.  Late in the school year Maddy says they're skipping town, escaping it's small-minded trappings as well as an abusive stepfather. They encourage Owen to come with them, but Owen gets scared and tells on themself to get grounded so they can't be with Maddy when they leave.

Then Owen's mom dies, leaving them with their abusive, neglectful father. Shortly after that Maddy disappears, their TV set on fire in the back yard. Eventually everyone thinks Maddy is dead. And then "The Pink Opaque" is cancelled.  (The question I ask, was the burning of the TV in response to Owen's betrayal or was it in response to the cancellation, or are both, effectively, one-and-the-same...how real "The Pink Opaque" is is part of what makes this film so layered and fascinating)

This is the first half of the film, roughly, and generally. It's very much vibes...the music and the score, the neon haze and/or crackle of TV static as illumination sources. It's almost as if Owen and Maddy were floating between two worlds. Maddy says that, sometimes, "The Pink Opaque" feels more real than real life. 

The film is beautiful and atmospheric. It's patient and full of surrealism. It blurs lines between what we (and Owen) are seeing and what Owen is feeling (and therefore what we should be feeling). It's a difficult thing to really catch onto unless you understand Owen, the quiet, apologetic, mumbly kid trapped in their own head, narrating their own life from the inside. If you get the meaning it's like being sliced open and having your guts spilled out. Jaden Smith, who plays Owen, captures this hesitancy so effectively, as if Owen is this awkward bag of flesh and bone that seems to keep moving in spite of itself. 

The second half of the film jumps another 8 years ahead in time and we observe Owen's life...without Maddy, without their mother, as if there's nothing left in the world for them, but they keep going through the motions anyway. Owen is now in their early 20s, and their asthma is affecting them so direly that it's like they can barely breathe. But it's not asthma. Their skin is literally choking the life out of the not-Owen person within. Strange events keep happening to Owen, strange apparitions of TV static or pink haze that seem so alluring and yet Owen is so utterly wary.

And then Maddy, but not Maddy, returns. They return for Owen, but not Owen. They return for Isabel, the main character of "The Pink Opaque", but Owen is confused and doesn't understand. Not-Maddy tries to explain, to relate their life since they left this shitty town and its constricting mindset. Layers of analogies that should punch through only seem to make Owen dizzy, unable to accept anything they are saying.

More time passes, Owen ages faster than the rest of the world around them. They are trapped in a cage of their own making. Revisiting "The Pink Opaque" exposes to Owen an entirely different show than what they remember, something far more juvenile (much more the cheap Canadian Are You Afraid of the Dark, less of the Buffy), and containing none of the importance and meaning that it did to them for so long. They are lost in the world they've built around themselves, still apologizing for their existence.

I can tell you the broad beats of this whole movie and it won't even elicit a tiny fraction of the actual emotional wallop the film does. I was devastated throughout watching this film, tears streaming from my eyes uncontrollably. For an hour or two afterwards I just couldn't compose myself and I would still find myself sobbing in response to the intention of the film.

If you don't get it, it's not easy to explain. From a very high level, it's a film about being trapped. The Trans and non-binary messaging is the foremost intention, but the resonance, the emotion of feeling trapped, just in general, should feel at least somewhat familiar to most people. And finding escape, in television, in friendship, in shared experiences is so liberating to a point, but it's not everything if you're just not able to live life as you want to live it.

I refer to both Owen and Maddy as "they". When I call Owen "they/them" it's because there is who Owen really is and who they are pretending to be. Maddy's more subliminal story is about them understanding that they're not the lesbian everyone (including themself) though they were in high-school, but non-binary.

This definitely falls under the "horror, not horror" moniker, as there are no scares and not even really scary moments, but as a whole it is horrifying just the idea of being trapped in one's own skin, to have to wear not just an image, but an identity that is inauthentic, and to be aware of it, whether suppressing it or confronting it on a day-to-day basis. The film could have went really far into outright horror with metaphors of body dysphoria but Owen has so buried their authentic self that it's only in the films final moments that Owen is directly addressing that side of it.

After that the very end is so painful to watch if you are connecting with what you're looking at, a human in such excruciating emotional turmoil, a cage not entirely of their own making, but one they do actually have the key to escape from. It would be sad if I didn't have such empathy for Owen...instead it's heartbreaking.

The film has definitely connected with some (like me) and puzzled others, but it didn't break out into a cultural phenomenon, nor even a cult one...yet.  There's a lot of David Lynch in this, but where Lynch often doesn't seem to know where his ideas manifest from, leading to stories and scenes that are inexplicable, here Schoenbrun seems to know every intention they have in every moment, and every scene. There is not a single piece of absurdism or surrealism that doesn't have a specific purpose.  I felt a kinship between this and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Schoenbrun themself has also said Donnie Darko was a big inspiration. The inspirations are many beyond that. And it transcends them all. 

Maybe my favourite film of the year? I regret not seeing it in theatre.

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When Hellboy debuted in comics in, I want to say, 1994 (what, research?) I was very much in. I loved the artwork of his creator Mike Mignola a tremendous amount and the mythos of the world of Hellboy expanded beautifully. Very quickly Hellboy became the best original creation of the 1990s.

But Mignola wasn't content to let Hellboy remain his sole vision, and the world of Hellboy grew, the stable of writers and artist participating in telling the legacy of the character expanded, and soon I was overwhelmed. I wouldn't say it was a deluge, but it was much more than I was prepared to take in. I don't know if any of it was watered-down, but I felt my connection to the character slipping.

The first Guillermo Del Toro movie re-sparked an interest, but my re-approach of the comics only showed me how far behind I had fallen and it felt daunting to catch up. The second Del Toro movie dove into fantasy in a way I couldn't connect with and I pretty much left Hellboy behind after that. That was 16 years ago.

I tried to watch the 2019 Neill Marshall-directed, David Harbor-led Hellboy feature and I just could not get into it. It's in a very small group of film that I've started watching and never finished (like, count-on-one-hand small).  I liked Harbor as replacement for Ron Perlman, but that's about it. This new, very low-budget (about 20 million) Hellboy is at the very least much more watchable than that.

Here Hellboy and fellow Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Agent Bobby Jo Song are trying to take a demon spider back to home base, but get derailed. They're stranded in the Appalachian Mountains, coal mining territory which, they learn is besieged with witches. A World War II veteran, returning home after a long absense, seems to have much familiarity with what's happening and why. He tells the story of the Crooked Man, one of the first settlers to reach American shores, who played both sides in the Civil War, who was hanged for his treason and greed, but was given the task of collecting souls for the devil, with payment of one penny per.

Witches seem to be in vogue right now (see also Agatha All Along, Star Wars: The Acolyte for just two prominent examples) almost with a sympathetic eye towards them. Here, however, they're nasty creatures with nasty ways of dealing with things nastily, treating witches as humans-turned-creatures, less as humans transcending humanity.

Hellboy here is played by Jack Kesy, an actor I'm not all that familiar with (though I did watch some of the first season of The Strain which he was the lead in). He's seemingly emulating Ron Perlman's depiction of the character, and I'm not sure if that's for "consistency" (from the producers/director) or lack of his own definitive take. It's a good performance, even if he's not quite got the same presence as Perlman or even Harbor. 

Of the other key performers in the film  Adeline Rudolph as Bobby Jo I thought was the strongest actor in the film (and maybe got a little swooney over). She's a novice to the field, primarily an in-house researcher, and so Hellboy is quite protective of her (he's also a little swooney over her, but subtly). I also liked Jefferson White as Tom Fennell, the not-a-witch-man returning home and finding his old world in a bad state and feeling very much responsible.  Even the old, blind reverend, played by Joseph Marcell, is low-key incredible.  It's a good cast overall.

The film is, at 20 million, cheap for these kinds of things, and it feels it. In his review Toasty [we agree, almost] cites "fan flick that had been given a budget", and for sure it feels that way especially in its opening prologue where it uses a lot of unrefined cgi-effects to, well, ill-effect. I would say extract the prologue altogether and it would be a better film, but it does circle back into the story and is sort of necessary. I really wish they figured out a practical effect for that spider instead of a cheap digital render.

Most of that "fan film" feeling falls at the feet of director Brian Taylor, a filmmaker who has been in the Hollywood system since 2006's Crank, a movie I very much did not like. He made a lot of films with Crank co-director Mark Neveldine, including Crank 2: High Voltage, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Gamer, all of which I very much did not like.  I have seen some of Taylor's solo work, like some of the TV series Happy! (which I also did not like) and Mom and Dad (which I found ok). 

The feeling of a Taylor-Neveldine film was one that is frenetic, high energy, but not in a controlled way. It's ADD on acid, just out of control and I found them very unpleasant to watch. Taylor on his own is more toned down but he still doesn't seem to know how to resist constant cutting between obtuse angles and weird stylizations with little consistency or always carrying purpose. Here, with probably one of his lowest budgets, but highest demands on that low budget, his lack of stillness winds up looking quite cheap quite often. That said, he also captures some fairly stunning shots, and there are some very visually striking frames in this film. Buuuut, for every one moment framed so acutely, there are two that are not, and they can be distracting.

As Toasty opined, it "presents as a horror movie but without embracing it". And that's true. But in true Hellboy sense, at least that of what I remember of Mignola's 90's works, it was always a bit more "supernatural adventure" than "horror". This lives in a John Carpenter's Vampires vein, and in that vein it works for me. It's not a spectacular production, but I think for what Hellboy has been in film in the past, we've hit the right budget and style to be an ongoing franchise of 20 million dollar direct-to-streaming productions, especially if it's going to have Mignola and long-time collaborator Christopher Golden on scripting duties.  It's not rekindled a fervour in me to start cramming more Hellboy comics in my diet, but I really would watch more of these it they can sustain this upper-echelon-of-90's-DTV sensibility.

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I'm writing these in reverse order of what I watched them in. I watched I Saw the TV Glow immediately after watching Hellboy: The Crooked Man, and within literal seconds of Shoenbrun's film starting I said to myself, "this is what a real movie looks like". Not to diss Taylor any further, but there's an assuredness to Shoenbrun's craft that Taylor just never had. Oh, Taylor's work has often seemed cocky, but it rarely backs that cockiness up with ...well, being objectively "good".  But compared to Roel Reiné, Taylor looks like Scorsese... at least he's getting 1 out of 3 shots that are really something appealing to look at (and most of the rest at least have some level of competency even if they are erratic and sometimes ugly), watching Hard Target 2 was even like watching a fan film. At least fan films the people involved care about what they are trying to do. I think Reiné, whose credits include The Scorpion King 3, Death Race 2 & 3, SEAL Team 8: Behind Enemy Lines, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded, and seemingly a dozen other cheap-and-quick in-name-only sequels and/or paycheck vehicles for action movie has-beens and never wases.

Now, I've said it before, I inexplicably enjoy the "most dangerous game" man-hunting-man movies, so seeing a Scott Adkins sequel to the not-a-classic classic John Woo/JCVD film Hard Target pop up on Netflix's "coming soon" roster made me uncontrollably "oooh", and click that "notify me" button. You can bet I watched this dogshit as soon as possible. 

It was on a sick day. I laid in bed, not wanting to move. The only reason I finished this film is because I let myself be held captive by it. It's definitely not a so-bad-it's-good, it's just bad. Bad-bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Stupid, and bad. And cheap. Lazy. Dumb. Nonsensical at times.

There's a whole world of direct-to-video/streaming/on-demand filmmaking that's been in operation since the 80s. Before that it was sci-fi and horror B-movies, or cheap foreign knockoffs, or Spaghetti westerns as opposed to the regal American ones. There's always been a place in cinema for this type of garbage. But ever since the digital age made the "film" part of filmmaking unnecessary and the accessibility of editing and other digital tools a thing of the past, these types of movies have gotten so cheap, and churned out so lazily that I fail to see how anyone gets any joy out of watching them, nevermind making them. They're soulless product that are soon to be even further deprived of soul by being entirely AI scripted. We probably won't even know the difference.

Scott Adkins is, in this sphere of modern direct-to-whatever a well known and respected commodity. He's a fairly handsome guy, not too shabby an actor sometims, and he's fucking fit at hell and loves doing stunts. In this film, the stunts seem like an afterthought so they're as cheap and lazy as everything else in the film. 

As far as the man-hunting-man element goes, this is a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a ....well, you get it. Nothing, absolutely nothing original is happening here that has not been done in another story of this type, and any attempt to add "flavour" to this by way of some form of romance or intrigue or political message is handled, well, stupidly as to make the effort irrelevant. 

We know Adkins is going to escape his very stupidly set up predicament. We know hes going to give his ill-gotten riches to his newfound local lady friend, and we know his comidically burdensome guilt that he carries is going to be absolved by an external force rather than any internal resolution. Its climax is one of the worst boat chases I've ever seen ending in one of the stupidest standoffs I've ever seen. 

I couldn't watch 2019's Hellboy for more than 30 minutes but I watched all of this garbage? I must have been sick....

31 Days of Halloween: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

2024, Brian Taylor (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) -- download

As this movie started I had the distinct feeling I was watching a fan-flick that had been given a budget. In a fan-film there is no time for backstory or explanation, they just jump into the action, full understanding that anyone watching the movie/short understands the world into which the viewer is entering. Sure, there have been three Hellboy movies prior to this one, from two other franchises (that's being liberal with the word), but usually a movie at least tries to establish itself assuming a viewer may have not seen the previous examples. But nope, boom, Hellboy is on a train with a coworker transporting something evil when everything goes wrong and he is deposited in an Apalachian Hillbilly Themepark. 

Unlike the other examples, this one is adapted straight from an actual Mignola story. The thing about Mignola comics is that they are often contained stand-alone stories, refined examples of horror-meets-adventure. He infuses them with world building, in this case Appalachian witches, war profiteers returned from Hell and haunting the land, magic trinkets, etc. I applaud trying to turn it into a movie. Trying. 

The previous Hellboy movies were definitely all adventure, and this one wanted to embrace the horror elements, whiffs of Evil Dead in that the woods are haunted, demons and witches are everywhere in the mists and shadows, and there is a local legendary "devil" called The Crooked Man. Hellboy (Jack Kesy, Without Remorse) and his sidekick Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), a BPRD researcher out for some field work, are trying to be focused on getting back their cargo but are distracted by the local story.

The problem with this movie, which surprisingly wasn't as humdrum as the last example, presents as a horror movie but without embracing it. I have been writing stories in my head & in my notebooks for years about characters, like the brothers from Supernatural, who come into a horror movie as heroic adventurers to defeat the evil. I am saying I am fully onboard with Hellboy wandering into a horror movie and sarcastically fighting all the monsters that would frighten the average horror movie character, but you have to fully be onboard with the horror movie you are presenting. This one just seemed to jump from one example of the trappings to the next. If the last Hellboy movie jumped one mythological example to the next, this pretty much did the same with horror examples. 

In the end I still say I was surprised it did rise above feeling like a low budget fan-flick, but it did not satisfy anything for me, neither my Hellboy interest, nor my horror movie fan.

KWIF: Bullet Train (+6)

Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. I usually write this on a Sunday.  Today is Wednesday. This entry covers the past two and a half weeks minus some rewatches.

Bullet Train (2022, d. David Leitch - AmazonPrime)
The Visitor (1979, d. Giulio Paradisi - tubi)
Galaxy of Terror (1980, d. Bruce D. Clark - tubi)
Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige's Best Last Day Ever) (2012, d. Robert Sarkies - tubi)
Hercules (1983, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
The Dungeonmaster (1984, d. [x6] - tubi)
The Young Master (1980, d. Jackie Chan - Crave) 

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Sitting pretty evenly between the stylish cool of John Wick (and his world largely populated by assassins) and the overwhelmingly frenetic comedic tone of Deadpool 2 (both in which director Leitch had a hand), Bullet Train is both highly entertaining and allcaps A LOT.

A necessary bio-break meant pausing the movie, and with half the players seemingly dead or out of the picture, I thought "surely we're about to hit the endgame". But the time elapsed showing on screen read 1 hour 10 minutes with another 50+ left to go. That seemed like too much movie. And it was!

Though I was never bored in this latter half of the film, it did lose a lot of its mojo when the boss level shows up, mainly because, at this point, it started to incorrectly think we cared about the larger story it'd been attempting to weave. The problem is Brad Pitt's Ladybug is our central POV character and he's utterly circumstantial to the whole affair of this underlying story, so while the film is trying to invest us in its story from an insider's perspective, we're actually tracking it as an outsider. And given Ladybug's sort of laissez-faire attitude, the film shouldn't care as much about the story as it does. I certainly didn't.

The film does a better job at getting us to care about many of its characters, largely a lot of ruthless killers (Ladybug being the "no guns", trying-to-find-zen exception). Lemon and Tangerine are "The Twins", played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are both immensely charismatic in this, which sort of neuters their intimidation factor. They're supposed to be a couple of psychos, the dialogue keeps reminding us of this, but the performances and characterization don't really show it.

As said, a very entertaining movie, but also one that constantly thinks were too dumb to keep up with it (given the shape of the world, there may be a point there). It's continually doing visual cutaways or brief flashbacks to moments or objects or people from earlier in the film, because it thinks we've forgotten or aren't paying attention? It also takes a lot of side trips into the various characters histories, but in a very inconsistent manner (some players get extensive history sequences, others don't get any). This imbalance would be more bothersome if the film had any room to breathe, but it's pretty go-go-go from the get go.

There is a lot to drive an astute film goer nuts within Bullet Train, and I can see how the vast amount of real-world improbabilities and impossibilities, on top of the overbearing cinematic devices used in telling its story would be frustrating, annoying or maddening, if you let it be. There's a better, cleaner film within what's presented, sure, but that's not really what its striving for. Taking it just as surface level entertainment, it delivers pretty highly.

[Toasty's take (we agree)]

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Something I enjoy doing all too much is browsing the ghastly Fox-owned streaming service Tubi. It is absolutely overloaded with content with zero discretion as to quality or subject matter. It is currently the best source for 70's/80's also-ran/B-grade genre schlock, the kind that used to lure you in at the video store with a lurid tape-box/sleeve cover image (often a painting of some kind) that falsely presented intoned a film with scale and quality far beyond its means. 

The Visitor jumped out at me primarily because of cast: a young, already leathery-looking Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters....  Names like these in schlock is never a demarcation of quality, but it is a lure, as was its description that promised demonitc, telepathic children and an "intergalactic tug-of-war". My mind, as it so often did with the text on the back of the VHS box (paired with the front-of-box painting), reeled with with potential.

The film opens with that potential revealing itself via a stark, desert-like wasteland with an ever-so-alien sky, shot with all manner of low-budge effects tricks. It's very striking. An impressive soundtrack of tones and whistles and scratching strings accompanies a sudden snowfall as a haggard, cloaked old man faces off against an unknown cloaked silhouette.  It's 4 minutes of ominous, menacing, wordless visuals which falls apart the moment a talking head starts to try and fill in the eye-roling mythos for this tale, as a christ-like figure explains its good-vs-evil concept to a group of bald, white robed children in an indoor arboretum.  The film crashes and burns the moment the overwhelmingly 70's funk horns start blaring as we're transitioned to a 5 minute sequence of a basketball game (culminating in a ball exploding, no questions asked) during which any sense of the fantasy of what came before is completely lost.

The film doesn't know what direction its going it, its not at all confident in its plot. I heard tell (via a later listening to the Video Archives podcast) that this was originally scripted as a proposed sequel to a sort of demon-seed pregnancy movie then re-formed into a sci-fi horror.  The kind of confused conception is evident, and the storytelling never settles into its more fantastical plot.  It could have been the original The Orphan had it not reached too high.  It's too boring to be bonkers, ironic viewing, and it's too bonkers to even approach being good. 

BUT IS IT HORROR?
It's more genre thriller or suspense than horror, at least it's trying to be.

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Galaxy of Terror, from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, does a good job at feeling like a film ahead of its time, and by that I mean you could easily mistake it for a cheesy rip-off of sci-fi horror films from 1987 as opposed to 1980.  What works in the film's favour is its incredible set designs, it's moderately competent special effects, and some costuming that isn't outright embarrassing.  The acting is fine but the script is garbage nonsense that doesn't matter.  It's almost like it was written to employ sets, creatures, models and costumes that Corman already had sitting around, and less like they were constructed solely for the purpose of this picture.  I'm sure it's a mix of the two.

A rag-tag team on a rescue mission arrive on a strange planet and encounter the same dangers the prior crew clearly died from.  It's a film built entirely around set-pieces, gross-out gags and tentacle rape.  Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and others sleepwalk through the meaningless dialogue and tolerate the humiliating horror gags they're forced to suffer through to collect their paycheck.

It's said that James Cameron was working effects on this, when he requested to do second unit filming of the sets to give them more coverage, which got him noticed for his first directorial gig, Piranha 2.  The trivia on this film is kind of more interesting than the film itself.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
sure, barely. It's surely horrible.

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So many of the Kiwi comedy films I've seen seem to center around naive simpletons or awkward oddballs (or both), and I've generally been quite receptive to that sort of thing. There's a subtle, sly tone and balance these films have to sustain, seeing the humour in the oddities of the characters, but also retaining some sense of empathy and affection for them. We want them to succeed, or at least find some growth in their journey (although it seems a particular NZ trait for these characters to kind of learn nothing or refuse to change). 

Two Little Boys (or it's original name, Nige and Deano's Best Last Day Ever) centers its story around two nitwits who are trying to cover up the accidental killing of a Norwegian backpacker in the opening moments of the film, which makes it particularly tough to invest in these characters. I don't know that we want them to get away with it, or if we're even supposed to (Nige's guilt being what it is).

Nige and Deano are estranged best friends reunited by the accident, but very quickly the toxic nature of their relationship returns, and it's clear why Nige wanted to end the friendship in the first place. 

So, if the film doesn't really want us to want the boys to get away with manslaughter, and if it doesn't want us to hope for reconciliation than what outcome exactly are we supposed to want here?

It's not a poorly done movie. There's some interesting editing choices, some fine needledrops, and even some fun vfx and camera trickery. McKenzie, Blake and Pohatu are all really quite good, inhabiting their roles well, making me quickly forget their more prominent personas in Flight of the Conchords, Lego Masters and Wellington Paranormal where I know them each well, but it's just fundamentally flawed story with a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion (and an even more unsatisfying coda).

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I've watched a couple of Hercules movies in the past year, and they are, when in the hands of Italian filmmakers, passable escapist entertainment.  This one, though, is a spectacularly ill-conceived peplum that tries to smush together all of Hercules' 12 labors into one 90 minute story in an awkward mish-mash of fantasy, sci-fi and mythology that dares to rip-off Superman, Star Wars and Clash of the Titans at once but with a quarter of their budget.

The effects are pretty daring but done on a frugal budget, so they can be either read as really charming or really bad (or perhaps both?).  The costuming, though, is superb, and super sexy.  This is the best Hercules look, methinks, and the ladies are totally va-va-voom without being lurid about it. I was surprised to find the lip sync was totally on point, like, amazingly so. There are also some fairly amazing sets, which the Italians have been great at for some time, but there's also some that really feel the budget limitations.

This was under the Canon film group logo, so there's a sense that this was trying to capitalize upon the success of Masters of the Universe, by mixing sci-fi with fantasy and superheroes, but they would have to take another crack at it a few years later.

So, that final sequence...Hercules is warned that if he removes the sword from the stone, it will result in the awakening of the pheonix.  He needs the sword to fight the big bad guys, and so he does unsheath it.  The phoenix is awakened and the whole bloody island begins to collapse, killing thousands in the process? This is the big heroic ending??

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The Dungeonmaster basically auto-played on Tubi after Hercules. I didn't select it, and I didn't intend to watch it. It opens with a sequence that plays out like an 80's glam metal music video, of a toe-headed man in glasses following in slow motion a woman in a flowing red dress through some weird local architecture that could is weird enough to be vaguely construed as "fantastical" without any set redressing.  She strips, lays on a bed, and beacons him near, only for demonic creatures to break through the wall and capture her, leaving the man, confused. Title sequence and credits. Man wakes up from dream.  The film starts with a cold open. It's rather inane.

We later see the "real life" scenario of this couple, their existence. He's a too-handsome nerd who has made a primitive 80's computer AI assistant that makes his aerobic instructor girlfriend jealous because of how much time he spends with it. Then they seem to get sucked into another dimension, she's chained up, he's in a weird costume, and a tall, deep-voiced, sallow-looking figure tells him they're going to play a game. 

What follows is a series of vignettes, each from a different director, each in a different genre, including a Mad Max-style chase and fighting a Harryhousen-esque stop-motion animate statue. None of it is particularly well-executed, and our "hero" is armed with his AI in a wrist gauntlet that serves as a total deus ex machina in every scenario.

It is supremely goofy 80's genre trash, and yet it's not unwatchable, thanks mostly to a charming Jeffrey Byron. Like most anthologies, it's not very unified, nor is this all that satisfying in whole or in part. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously, which doesn't exactly save it, but does help elevate it somewhat above some of the other more unwatchable low-low-budg fantasy trash of the era.

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I'm not as well versed in Jackie Chan's filmography as I would like to be.  Having recently watched the Police Story trilogy (I know there are more than three, but I've only seen the first three at this point), I have to say I much prefer the fight-coordination-focused Jackie Chan pictures to the stunt-set-piece-focused Jackie Chan. I mean, yes the stunts are cool but...are they maybe only cool because of the end-credits revelations showing the behind-the-scenes attempts?  As opposed to films like Drunken Master or, here, Young Master, where the film is instead built with a simple story meant to weave through a series of fighting set pieces that showcase the performers' physical prowess, Chan's inventiveness, and humour? It's not like the Police Story films take themselves overly-serious, but they're not really comedies, and the fights definitely take second fiddle to the stunts in those films.

I like Chan's sensibilities, and the sheer cleverness and comedic timing that is built into the very balletic martial arts fights needs not just the movement skills, but comedic acting chops as well to sell it all.  In Young Master, Chan and his various scene partners can run up to 10 minutes through a mesmerizing coordinated routine that is as much dance and pantomime as it is kung-fu. It is ridiculously entertaining, and not a single fight seems redundant or repetitive, somehow Chan and crew constantly keep it fresh.  The opening Dragon dance sequence is a stunner, the coordination difficulty level cranked up to 10, as two two-man teams must react to each other team, themselves within the team, and their surroundings, as they traverse the edges of water barrels and climbing to a 10-foot-high narrow platform.  It's at once joyous and intense. 

Chan's direction with Young Master is so much clearer than his Police Story 1 & 2 work, likely because they are somewhat more involved in their shooting (being shot on city streets and active locations).  He knows exactly what needs to be focused on in any given sequence, and even at this early stage in his career, seems to have a crew of people he trusts to carry out the plan, and follow the action.  Again, I don't have a deep knowledge of his repertoire, but this is a completely clean, crisp effort that doesn't attempt anything flashy behind the camera because it has absolutely no need to. The performances are all the flash needed.  An absolute gem of a movie, that I watched twice in the same week.

3 Short Paragraphs: 21 Bridges

2019, Brian Kirk (lots of TV including Game of Thrones) -- download

The only thing I really knew Chadwick (why not just Chad?) Boseman from before the Marvel movies was Gods of Egypt, so yes, entirely forgettable. But since then, well... there is nothing else; he is just T'Challa and I have trouble seeing him as anything else. Especially when he speaks out loud. Not that I expect an African accent to come out of his mouth, but to hear him speak American just sounds... off. That said, he's doing his best to build a career in spite of Marvel, with a smattering of crime movies since he first appeared in Civil War; 21 Bridges is the latest.

The character is set in stone as the son of a murdered cop who grows up to be the detective with the reputation for not just pulling his sidearm, but putting the bad guys down. He believes in justice, he believes in just retribution. They play this like it will be a key point to the story, but its just a plot device for him to be used. When eight policemen are gunned down during what appears to be a botched robbery of a drug dealer, he is called in because every cop in NYC wants these criminals dead, and who better to do it. He is the blunt weapon for their blue rage.  That is, until he notices something was off about this whole deal and he needs the gunmen alive in order to unravel the mystery.

This movie is crafted in the shadow of cop movies of old, back in the time when the NYC was infamous for its corruption and dirty cops. Its not a spoiler, as the idea is pretty much written in neon from the beginning. But that's not the point, as it is about determining what the conspiracy was as opposed to foiling it. Boseman, like Taylor Kitsch and JK Simmons, get interesting characters to play, but not much use is made of them.  We get hints of where a much more interesting movie could have gone, such as making the criminals somewhat sympathetic, or the actual title of the movie, where Bosemen gets brief permission to close all access and egree points to Manhattan. But then they just rush to the conclusion of a Straight To crime flick.

Horror, Not Horror (Part 5): maternal horrors

mother! - 2017, d. Darren Aronofsky - netflix
The Eyes of My Mother - 2016, d. Nicolas Pesce - netflix
Mom and Dad - 2017, d. Brian Taylor - netflix

There's virtually no connective thread here.  mother! is all about metaphor and the "maternal horror" is equally metaphorical. In The Eyes of My Mother, the "maternal horror" is parental influence (both the impact of the mother and the absence of her).  In Mom and Dad the horror is the fact that parents are all going psycho trying to kill their kids.  So yeah, can't really thread these together in any form of critical narrative, so I won't try.

I should also note I had 2013's Mama (starring Jessica Chastain and Jamie Lannister) queued up in netflix for this grouping, but I ran out of time to watch it.

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So, mother!
Wow.  This film is ...well, it's a slog.  Darren Aronofsky is an incredible filmmaker who makes, at the very least, interesting films.  This one is definitely interesting, in concept at least.  In actually watching, it's pretty brutal.

If you don't know about mother!, what it's conceit is, what metaphors it's playing with, then it's probably more enticing, but if you do know what its conceit is, the metaphors at play, then it's quite a tedious slog, as you're constantly unpacking the metaphors.  If you know that Javier Bardem's character is supposed to represent God, and Jennifer Lawrence's character is Mother Nature, and their house, the only setting in the film is the Earth, then you literally cannot invest in the story.  These are not characters, they're metaphors, and the events happening don't mean anything to them really, because they are also metaphors.

God revels in his love for humanity and humanity's love for him, at the expense of nature.  The Testaments teach about respect and forgiveness for fellow man, but don't teach respect for the Earth and nature.  So we, as humanity abuse mother nature, we disregard and disrespect her.  We destroy what she gives us, we poison her and ourselves, we overstay our welcome, we battle each other in front of her, and scar her land, leaving irreparable wounds.  We overpopulate and ravage this small land recklessly, while holding belief in a higher being as reason to do so, our God-given land to do with as we please.

It's pretty obvious within the first 20 minutes how this will shake out (well, all of it isn't obvious, particularly what happens in the final 10 minutes) and the intention is clear from the get-go.  Exploring religious and ecological themes in tandem is honestly not something that happens often enough.  What is religion's responsibility to the Earth?  Yet, there's a ham-fisted nature to the way Aronofsky explores the ideas here.  It's a kind of cudgel that just beats it into you, and is exhausting in its abuse.  I had to watch the film in fits and starts because I would get so fatigued after watching 20 minutes (sometimes less).

Everything in mother! is very deliberate, but that's part of what makes it so challenging to watch. The almost constant up-close, center-frame focus on Lawrence (and occasionally Bardem) is challenging.  I remember my art teacher in high school explaining that placing a figure at center frame is off-putting, too perfect, commands too much of your attention.  Placing them a little askew, to one side or the other, lets your eye wander.  At center frame you feel held captive by the image.  You would think being held captive by J-Law wouldn't be that bad a thing, but there's a otherworldliness to her, a natural uncanny valley that makes her difficult to look at for long stretches (and the same can be said for Bardem, which makes casting seem very deliberate).

It's a film I definitely cannot recommend, as I can't even think of anyone who would enjoy this, and yet, I'm still glad I saw it.  It does leave more than a little lingering something to think about.

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The Eyes of My Mother (a name I kept getting confused with the not-so-classic John Carpenter-written The Eyes of Laura Mars) is an examination of how an isolated and traumatized child grows into a confused and murderous adult.  It's a twisted concept piece, shot in black and white, with long (and I mean loooooong) takes establishing mood and isolation.

Let's just stop there and talk about these dragged out scenes.   I get the intention, which is to really set the mood here.  The soundtrack is sparse (but not completely absent as it was in Under the Shadow), with the chilly ambiance of a remote farmhouse really grinding the lonely, isolated edge.  It reminded me greatly of David Lynch and his tendency to do long takes as characters walk towards or away from the camera, or even the highway tracking shot out front of the windshield, but director Nicolas Pesce takes it to an extreme degree, real patience tests.  If this film cut out all of it's scenes with someone walking away from the camera or moving towards the camera, it would be half the length.  I know this because I fast forwarded through all of these scenes and watched the film completely in about 40 minutes without missing a moment of dialogue.  You may say I cheated myself out of immersing in this film, and you may be right, but I also saved myself 45 minutes of watching people just walk (at regular speed) so what did I really miss?

I'm going to tell you pretty much the whole movie in one paragraph...I'm leaving out a few nuances but otherwise, this is the film:

Francisca mother was a surgeon in Portugal, and is taught about biology (as her mother butchers the cows from the farmland) at a very young age.  Still a child, she witnesses her mother murdered by a cheerful stranger, and her father, returning home, bludgeons the grinning psychopath and chains him up in the barn.  Francisca converses with the killer, to find out why he did it... "Because it feels amazing" he tells her.  To silence their captive's late-night wailing Francisca removes the man's vocal chords and eyes (a particularly fascinating piece of anatomy to her mother).  Calling him her best friend, she feeds and grooms him like a pet, and years later, now a grown woman, she seeks solace in him after her father dies.  Lonely, she picks up a woman at a bar and confidently tells her about her disturbing history and thoughts, and murders the woman.  Later, she confesses to him that he was right, and thinking that she's found kinship, she unchains him, feeds him, bathes him and lays in bed with him.   But tries clumsily to flee her, so she kills him too.  Her loneliness overbearing she kidnaps a baby and its mother, treating the mother like her former hostage (eyes and vocal cords removed), and raises the boy as her own.  Years later, the boy discovers the stranger in the barn, and sets her free, and it's only a matter of time before the police arrive.

It's not a particularly crafty film, but it's very assured in its creation.  The director knows exactly what kind of tone he wants from the story and ultimately is trying to find understanding in why Francisca is the way she is.  She's not a malevolent being, not a violent psychopath, just an isolated woman who was never taught properly how the world works or how to have a proper relationship.  Her father is such a numb, inanimate object, that her relationship isn't much different with him even after he's dead (yep, she still watches TV, dines, and sleeps next to his corpse).  Her relationship with her captives are pretty much the same, she takes care of them.  We don't see much of her relationship with her stolen son, but it's clear she has emotions, the capability of love and caring, and her son seems well-adjusted in a way she isn't.  Also, I suppose the film intones that she treats her victims like her mother treats cattle...as food, since there are plenty of shots of her packaging up the butchered meat and putting it in the refrigerator.  She's a cannibal but doesn't see humans as any different than animals grown for food.

One of the most interesting aspects of this, as a horror film, is that it cuts over the violence.  All of Francisca's misdeeds happen off screen.  We see the lead into them, and the clean-up after them, but not the actual acts, save one.  It's actually far creepier that way, leading the imagination to picture horrors and gruesomeness probably far in excess of what they would have managed to show on screen.  There is real precision here, but it's essentially an hour-long tv-show type production stretched out to feature length.

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Then there's Mom and Dad.  This one was stupid retro fun.  It's very much like an 80's soft R sci-fi horror film, the kind where something unusual just happens and suddenly people are going crazy.  In this case, suddenly parents have an uncontrollable urge to kill their kids.  Not all kids, however, only their own kids.  Actually it seemed most tonally akin to Maximum Overdrive for some reason, probably for the coked-up nature of Brian Taylor's filmmaking resembling Steven King's solitary, coked-up directorial effort. The film even opens with a sliding-panels credits sequence like a 70's cop drama.  It's totally fun, but it's a tone the film doesn't even attempt to carry through past the credits, which is unfortunate.
 

While Talyor was one half of the team that put out the Crank movies, Gamer and Ghost Rider 2, without Mark Neveldine as creative partner, Mom and Dad seems downright reserved comparatively.  In fact, unlike any of those previous movies, it actually feels like Taylor has something to say here, in this case about parenthood and middle age.

While the a teen (Anne Winters) and a precocious 8-year-old (Zackary Arthur) are the ostensible heroes of this film, the focus is more on the sure-to-go-crazy parents played by Nic Cage and Selma Blair.  Cage is in full-on Cage mode here, and it's hard to really tell if he's in tune with the character and the story or if he's just doing that Nic Cage thing that he always seems to do now.  Blair's character gets a bit of a softer touch, as she's fighting with her teen constantly and can't seem to figure out how not to be at odds with her.  Cage meanwhile is in full-on mid-life crisis.  He can't believe the man he's become and fantasizes waaaay too much about the carefree asshole pussy magnate he used to be.  Taylor gives Cage a rather sad montage of assembling and obsessing over a pool table, only to follow it up with another quick-cut Cage-rage as he destroys it with a sledgehammer when Blair questions it.  Taylor's clearly working through some things.

For the first half of the movie, the adults-attacking-of-kids percolates in the background, mentions on the radio, on tv, sirens and other small things in the distance that just are askew.  When things do happen, they're more comedic than horrifying, and in general Taylor guides this more as a romp than a scare-fest.  The focus here is on establishing the family dynamic, the relationships between the parents and children and between the parents themselves.  I don't buy Cage and Blair as a happy couple, but that's mainly because we're not supposed to.  They're not happy with their lives and not terribly happy with each other.  That doesn't come through right away because they spend so much time apart.  But once they become kill-kid happy, they're brought together in a way that unifies them once again.  Unfortunately it's because they're wanting to kill their kids.

It's a bit gross at times, but the violence here is mostly slapstick.  It's pratfalls and clumsiness, and it's genuinely quite fun... mostly.  The pacing is erratic as hell though.  As noted, it's not anywhere near as ADD as the Crank films but Taylor still seems to have difficulty resting, and sitting with a character or moment, or really letting the emotion sink in.  He's striving to get emotional performances (Blair is really great), but he's just too quick to pull away or make a cut to a different angle, distracting from a performance or building drama.  In fact the rhythms are way off everywhere in this film.  I think the script is tremendous fun and a lot of the physical comedy is well executed, but Taylor doesn't seem to be aware of how to really mess with the genres he's playing in.  The way things are revealed, not just, say, gore, but attackers jumping out from places or character backgrounds or sudden rescuers...there's no surprise, shock or jumps in them.  He telegraphs things too much for any real surprises, and even the grossest moment, where a character gets a coathanger through his cheek, seems non-committal on Taylor's part.  He doesn't sit with the characters horrified reactions, or even play into how uneasy a concept it is.  He doesn't know how to milk a moment, for dramatic or comedic or horrifying tension.

I really wish this came from a more assured director.  It's still quite enjoyable as is, but it would be a downright classic in the hands of someone who really knew what they wanted out of each scene and create a unifying sensibility for the film.  Also, it's totally like the counter-punch to Cooties (which David reviewed here and I reviewed here).

3 Short Paragraphs: End of Watch

2012, David Ayer (Street Kings) -- download

If anyone is going to pen the story of Chris Dorner, the recently killed cop-killing ex-cop, it will be David Ayer.   He is known for his cop dramas such as Training Day (writer) and Street Kings (director) normally set in South Central LA and in more than one instance, about that infamously corrupt police force.  In light of the media depiction of Dorner, as a murderous paranoid, would he be able to set a story of one cop's unsuccessful war against perceived corruption and injustice?  Hollywood has never been about the realism of "as based on" but it would be interesting to see what direction they would take.

Ayer takes this story from a found footage flick, where we have Gyllenhaal's Brian Taylor shooting with a handicam for a class project, into a multi-format movie seen through various hand held cameras as well as the traditional film camera.  This is not about the gimmick of video cameras but a choice of style, carrying some realism through real world perspectives.  And it works.  It really does, making it more personal than anything.  We are thrust into the lives of the cops and criminals, via dash cams and wedding videos, class projects and amateurs just fucking around with a camera.

Are all south central cops assholes?  Are they assholes who we grudgingly acknowledge as necessary with their bravado and in-your-face attitude?  Does it take this attitude to survive those dangerous neighbourhoods and actually make a difference?  This is what we are given when we meet Taylor and Zavala, products of their job and their world. And we also get heroes, not seasoned and corrupt veterans, but grunts driving their beat every day and seriously seeking to make it safer. We also get the tragic consequences of what happens when an unprepared police force runs into the unrepentant brutality of these new Mexican cartels.  You know those ones known for killing politicians, journalists and even bloggers who dare to write about them? Ayer does what few others do when telling stories about South Central LA, he leaves us caring about the cops we watch through the lense.

3 Short Paragraphs: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

2011, Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor (Crank, Gamer) -- download

OK, the duo nymed as Neveldine/Taylor definitely have a style and it was a style I incorrectly dubbed as a euro-style as I watched Spirit of Vengeance.  I hadn't remembered that these guys were the pair responsible for the ever-so-popular, ever-so-terrible Crank movies.  I should have recognized the pop-eyed camera-at-the-end-of-his-nose motif that they like so much.  And they definitely like the idea of characters who are always on the edge of ... something.  And in this not-quite-sequel to the original Nick Cage as Johnny Blaze, Nick is his I-am-not-quite-sure-he's-acting crazy that he carries off so well these days.  But I am not sure I like the idea of Zarathos being off his rocker instead of an embodiment of rage & retribution. But Nick does it so well, and you can assume the character would be a little unhinged, spending most of his nights pushing a demon down deep in his boots, with a little help from booze and drugs.

In this episode, we find Johnny hiding out in eastern Europe.  Why? Running away to another continent might help but I cannot think why.  It also explains why he has a new motorcyle, as shipping the old one overseas would have been a bitch.  Introduce Idris Elba as Moreau, an also rather-unhinged servant of a higher power on a motorcycle wearing worn leather.  This one serves God; I gather he is a freelancer who works for bizarre monkish orders, providing his well worn street skills, in times of trouble.  He is just spectacular, the fake golden contacts he is wearing almost made me think he might have a bit of an angel in him.  His calm yet manic bravado works well beside Blaze's manic instability.  Moreau is trying to protect the son of the particular incarnation of the Devil that chained up Johnny and Zarathos.  Moreau makes use of the Rider's desire to be free to drag Johnny into the fight.

The movie is not particularly terrible but neither is it particularly good.  Things happen just so we can have big booms of fire and even bigger crowds of mooks for the Rider to burn to ash with his chains.  We get a few brief moments of him forcing the bad guys to face their sins, but it was almost as if the CGI of the effect was missing, because he just sort of scowled (as well as a skeleton head can scowl) at them and hissed, but no soul sucking was performed.  We do get a new bad boss guy soooo much better than the bad boy band of the last movie, a risen revenant with the ability to force decay with his touch.  But honestly, if I was to compare Nick Cage's other movie about a hell-connected protagonist (Drive Angry), I would much prefer that one.

3 short paragraphs: Gamer

(aka Citizen Game)

2009, Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor -- Netflix

I was not expecting this from the directors of the Crank films.  The glib, frat-style sexism and racism? Sure, that's a given.  The hyper-ADD editing style?  The beyond comedically absurd stereotyping and inevitable moments of pretension? All here. No, what I was not expecting from Neveldine/Taylor was a film that had any kind of redeemable message at all, nevermind one that had an honest to gosh critique of media saturation and the societal dangers of a virtual existence.

Of course, these themes are presented in a broad and aggressive manner, so as to try and disguise them somewhat under heaps of blood, flash-cut nudity, and a soundtrack that is one part Throbbing Gristle and the other chewing gristle, salacious and unpleasant.  But still, somehow the message comes through: relinquishing your identity blindly to some corporation, be it for entertainment purposes, business, or whathaveyou is not so much a good thing and leads down a dark and dangerous path.

It is, like so many other stories, that of a man, wrongly imprisoned, who must fight his way to freedom via a populist survival game.  Rollerball, The Running Man, Battle Royale, Series 7, Death Race, and The Hunger Games all dabble in this realm, so it doesn't really stake a claim to any innovation or aspire to greatness, but it does do its own thing.  It differentiates itself, and if it weren't for the juvenile tendencies of Neveldine/Taylor that undermine the message, it's really would have a strong resonance.  Also, dear filmmakers, I never need to hear another rendition of Sweet Dreams in a film again, thank you.