KWIF(2): The Running Man (+3)

KWIF=Kent's "Week" in Film. I realized this past weekend that I had watched almost a film a day this August, so the goal has become to cram the last bunch of films in on the final couple of days. These are numbers 24 through 28.

This Week:
The Running Man (2025, d. Edgar Wright - crave)
Zodiac Killer Project (2024, d. Charlie Shackleton - hollywoodsuite)
City Hunter (1993, d. Wong Jing - tubi)
Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970, d. Mario Bava - tubi)

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The Running Man falls into my beloved "most dangerous game" subgenre. The man-hunts-man-for-sport (and/or entertainment) never gets tired for me, although its entries are frequently not very well done. The Running Man, like The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, is kind of a brand in the subgenre, or at least notorious enough to be a name big enough to check-point (as in "Oh, it's like The Running Man").

While I've read the Stephen King-as-Richard Bachman novella three and a half decades ago, I don't recall it very specifically, and likewise it's been quite some time since I watched the 1987 Arnold Schwartzenegger-starring adaptation. From memory, that film was definitely a product of Reagan-era economics, and was concerned about wealth disparity and social order, to a degree. It was concerned with crime, totalitarianism, and classism. 

We're now in an age where the wealth gaps are far more dramatically pronounced and we have government institutions that seem to only be serving to perpetuate that trend. We've given too much power to corporations, non-corporeal entities that have their own rights but seemingly no responsibilities. The people in charge of corporations seem to have free reign to influence government policy, and are not held liable for their actions and decisions made while running such organizations. Lands and waters are polluted and poised, people get sick or are killed, minds are manipulated and tainted by increasingly clever propaganda, and a token sum is only ever paid when they corporations are caught...and the execs still get paid.

Edgar Wright's new adaptation of The Running Man finds its protagonist, the angry and righteous Ben Richards (Glen Powell), blacklisted from the Network, which, in this dystopian future, pretty much controls all of America. They are the primary source of employment and entertainment in the country, and though they are not the government, their sheer economic power means they pretty much dictate policy. With a sick daughter at home and no income, Ben turns to his last-ditch option: Reality TV. Looking to get on any of the Network's many programmes except the brutal, life-threatening "The Running Man" program (the Network's most popular show), he, of course, is chosen for "The Running Man" because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

He's sweet-talked by the Network's head honcho into signing the deal to join the show. Surviving 30 days wins Ben and his family a cool 1 billion New Dollars, while he also receives a daily survival bonus, plus a bonus for killing any of the Network's security goons or the show's elite "hunters".  But from the jump, Ben sees that the Network doesn't play fair. They introduce him (and two other runners) with lies about being career criminals, disparaging their name, and denigrating their families, going so far as to have doctored clips (the use of deep fakes is central to this movie but it doesn't ever reckon with the general public's awareness of them).

Needless to say, Ben survives with the help of some activists and supporters, but it's never easy, and (once again) the Network cheats, tracking his location (duh) and manipulating the narrative of the show by coaching the hunters when, and when not to go in for the kill. The audience is also invited to participate, with the Network offering a hundreds/thousands of New Dollars for anyone who rats out a Runner and leads to a kill. It takes the audience out of being passive observers with, maybe, some moral responsibility for the perpetuation of this barbaric program, and turns them in to active participants in murder. And, of course, it's all propaganda, fuelling The Network's ideology of keeping the teeming masses stupid and hungry, and distracting them from the real cause of the problems in their lives.  It's up to Ben, who's really just doing this all for his family, to realize he's the catalyst for waking people up as to who the real enemy is.

The opening scenes of The Running Man are, to be blunt, really clumsy in how they set Ben Richards up. These scenes are meant to establish Ben as a rage-filled man, a man who fights injustice, and a man who desperately loves his family, but the writing and performances lack nuance, to the point that I was concerned that Powell was decisively the wrong guy for this part. He turns out to be fine, in the end, but Edgar Wright's script pushes and/or pulls Ben through the plot, without him doing much to instigate things on his own. He's a passenger in his own story, and through to the third act he's not consistently written. 

He's established as a man who does the right thing and then turns him into a murderer. He's established as a man who defies the order of things, but he denies being a revolutionary. He's a good person, and, for the most part, remains a good person...but Wright's script never quite finds the right balance for shifting between his anger and his kindness, and Powell seems to only be following direction. A likeable enough lead, but not clearly defined enough.

Similarly, the dystopia we find Ben running around in is fleshed out only so much. We don't get enough establishment between the different, disparate class hierarchies, but the film is very clear that the propaganda machine the Network employs is very effective across the class spectrum.

As a "most dangerous game" story, it's not unexciting or entertaining, and the film is asking people to hold the persons in charge of nefarious corporations accountable, but even still it's not the clearest message. It's still a retrograde story where T.V., and not the internet, or social media, is the primary form of audience engagement and how organizations manipulate the masses. As much as it's trying to represent modern concerns, the atmosphere of the story doesn't reflect our modern society enough.

I'm a fan of Wright's work, but couldn't exactly pin down the man's style (much of it is married to music or toying with genre tropes, neither of which is l'objet du jour here). In the piles of effects and craftsmanship needed to realize the dystopian future, I think maybe Wright's particular cinematic flair gets lost. As Toasty said in his toastypost "the movie is not over-the-top enough or biting enough to be a fun, corny romp. Neither is it dark & grim enough to reflect the Dark Urban Future it wants to rail against". We certainly agree.

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Zodiac Killer Project sounds like a cheapo Tubi-original slasher movie or possibly a Tubi-original pseudo-documentary with some weird right-wing bent (as befits the service's Fox Corp ownership). Turns out it's neither of these, though it's clear it's still a very modestly budgeted production.

Over a decade ago filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was prepping for a documentary based on the 2012 book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge" by Lyndon E. Lafferty, a former California highway patrol officer whose maybe-encounter with the Zodiac Killer sent him on a decades long crusade to bring the man he considered to be responsible to justice. It was unsuccessful and Lafferty, and his suspect, are little more than a footnote in the Zodiac Killer conversation. But as Shackleton was ramping up production on his doc, he lost the rights to the book, and all his investment in the documentary was for naught.

He couldn't escape it though. In the intervening years, true crime podcasts and documentaries have proliferated on every channel and streaming service, and with them a visual language all its own has developed. In Zodiac Killer Project, Shackleton relays what he would have done, how he would have shot the b-roll footage, the "backtors" (actors in true crime reenactments whose backs are all we see), the locations, and how it all would have been to serve an entertaining narrative far more than the truth.

Because Lafferty's accusations and investigations were not limited to his book, Shackleton has some clearance to discuss Lafferty's prime suspect and the situations that led him to believe his suspect was the killer as well as many of the details around his investigation in to the suspect (what he can only touch upon is why Lafferty suspects there was a cover-up to dismiss and not investigate his suspect, which leaves a big cloud over the whole proceedings here).

In detailing how he would have made what sounds like a pretty bog standard true-crime documentary, Shackleton drolly takes apart all the tropes we know from most other true crime docs... specific types of footage or editing style, the presentation of certain information, the cheats the productions do to condense the story or make it more entertaining that may be stretching or warping the truth.  What Shackleton doesn't really do is account for the ethics of it all, of making entertainment out of these real-life horrors, and his capacity for examining why the public is so enthralled by such media isn't very deep.

The Bay area location imagery that Shackleton and his team shot, mostly of empty or vast spaces takes on a slightly meditative nature, with Shackleton's voice over occasionally calling out whether the footage we're seeing is at all relevant to the point in the narrative he's discussing.

Dryly funny with a slight intensity and more than a little reserved playfulness, Zodiac Killer Project doesn't get us anywhere new with the whole Zodiac Killer thing, but it brushes back the fur on a genre and exposes its soft, and kind of ugly, underbelly.  

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City Hunter was a manga that ran from 1985 through 1991, while near-simultaneously an animate tv series ran parallel, between 1987 and 1991. I have a vague recollection of having watched some of this anime on Canadian TV, but I may be wrong.

Jackie Chan's starred in the 1993 Hong Kong adaptation, which I think is pulling more from the anime than the manga. Chan's City Hunter is a very, very broad comedy that's trying to be a live action cartoon, one of the most difficult cinematic challenges ever. 

"City Hunter" is the nickname of infamous private investigator Ryo Saeba (Chan) an affable, womanizing, and semi-capable man-of-action. He is assisted by his deceased former partner's little sister, Kaori, who he sort of had a hand in raising and now, as an adult, she's in love with him, and he has to resist his own libido and keep her at arms length. It's a gross dynamic that, for the most part Ryo is on the right side of, but not always.

Ryo and Kaori, through separate misadventures, wind up on the same maiden voyage of a cruise ship which gets taken hostage by a ruthless white American pirate, Col. "Big Mac" MacDonald (Richard Norton). The plan is to kill all the lower-deckers and hold the richest hostage for their money. Unfortunately for them, not only is City Hunter aboard, but so too is undercover officer Saeko Nogami (Chingmy Yau) and gentleman thief Kao Ta (Leon Lai) to aid in liberating the boat.

City Hunter is a goofy movie, one that is really leaning into comedy far more than action or adventure. This is no Speed, more of a Speed 2, if Patrick Muldoon stared at Sandra Bullock's boobs and imagined them as hamburgers.  Ryo is very charming but also a known cad, so women are as apt to bat him upside the head as to fawn over him or give him a kiss. Chan isn't really known for playing much of a romantic hero, and certainly not known for playing a sexual one, so here Ryo's horniness is tempered by the fact that the character spends much of the film starving and just hoping to eat something...anything.

The usual Chan flair for action and physical stunts seems to be scaled back pretty dramatically from his more infamous efforts, I think out of service to the situational comedy. There's less physical comedy overall for Chan to perform as well. He may be a bit of a goofball but we also have to believe he can turn on the charm as well and that ladies will not only fall for it, but actively pursue it (the who Kaori side-plot depends on it).

There are some very regressive (and, at one point, brutally offensive) jokes in this film, which shouldn't be surprising for any '90's comedy. The sexism or gay-bashing aren't persistent, but they are there. On the plus side, the women of the film are largely pretty strong, capable, independent and a diverse (personality-wise) group, and central to the film. I liked them all.

Trying to do animation-style gags in physical reality is very, very challenging and doesn't often work because, well, real world physics get in the way of having these things really happen, so special effects making them happen can look really awkward and corny.  As much as this type of gag in City Hunter doesn't work, through Chan's immense charms and a remarkably game cast of performers, it winds up being a fairly fun, if not fully successful production.  The extended set piece where Chan and his opponents become Street Fighter characters after getting electrocuted by an arcade machine is a highlight of the film though (lowlight, the painfully prolongued musical number at the midway point, made worse by the fact that it wasn't subtitled ... also, if I'm not mistaken, much of the film was performed in English then dubbed and subtitled...curious).

I had fun, but this isn't essential Chan by any means.

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Five Dolls for an August Moon is a last gasp of beatnik free-love-era filmmaking and sitting just outside of the Italian giallo wave. It's a murder mystery of sorts, but a film full of characters that seem pretty disinterested in the murders, and even more disinterested in the mystery.

Industrialist George Stark (Teodoro Corrà) has invited four associates and their partners to his remote island home for a weekend holiday, but really it was all a ruse to get the men facetime with Professor Garry Farrell (William Berger) and try to convince him to sell them a secret, revolutionary new formula for a resin that will redefine...something. Whatever.  

The next morning, the houseboy winds up dead, and you know what, nobody really seems to care. They wrap the man up in plastic and put him in the meat locker. They discover that Stark's boat has gone missing and the radio has been tampered with rendering it useless. Typically this would start sending people into a panic, a murderer loose on an isolated island, nowhere to go, no one to call. But, these upperclass twits keep on partying as if nothing is happening. Except, there's plenty happening, including each of the men propositioning Farrell to obtain the formulae alone, and two of the wives having a secret affair with each other, and another of the wives having affairs with, well, everyone else. And what's up with the island girl in the mini-skirt (Justine Gall) watching everything from afar?

The bodies start piling up in an almost comical fashion, new additions to the meat locker in pretty rapid fashion, along with a couple disappeared bodies that are even more puzzling. In a typical giallo, someone would be trying to figure things out. In a typical suspense thriller, everyone would be pointing fingers at each other and things would get tense.  Here, everyone's still just drinking and trying to figure out how to get that damn formula.

The ending reveals/twists are ... to be blunt... silly. But then the fact that no tension has built up around these reveals means there's little sense of stakes here. There's an organ-led jazzy soundtrack to the film from Piero Umiliani that is far too bouncy and upbeat for the events of the film.  And that the film is largely shot with gorgeous Italian seaside daylight and perhaps a slight overexposure, there's a vibrancy to the proceedings that leaves little hidden in shadows.  I'm really not sure what exact tone was trying to be set.

Bava's an incredible director, though, so his films, even the lesser ones, still have style and impact. Here he uses a lot of split fore and background shots with a character very close in the front of frame and other characters deep in back of frame all in focus. As well, he's exceptionally focussed on the eyes and letting the eyes tell the characters' stories of lust, love, suspicion, betrayal, intrigue, etc. And with such focus on eyes, also is point of view, most highlighted by the many whip-pans the camera does to shift our point of view... not in a first-person sense but a third-person. We will see a character staring off and the camera will whip across to see what they are looking at, and if someone else is looking back we'll whip back to see their perspective. It's a curious but effective technique, even if it's not perfectly deployed here.

Had maybe the island girl been investigating these murders from the outside, and her life put at risk for doing so, this would really feel like a true giallo. As is it's a mystery that barely lifts the eyebrow, and tepidly sexy. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Play Dirty

2025, Shane Black (The Predator) -- Amazon

Oh. I didn't know that this was a Richard Stark / Donald Westlake Parker adaptation. Hmm. I guess this will eventually end up in Kent's project?

Anyhoo, this is a somewhat complicated, somewhat over-stuffed crime/heist movie where things just never go as planned, but that ends up being sort of the point of the movie, definitely part of the fun. I expect people to have been very confused by the plot, despite me following along rather easily, but that may be because not long after watching it, the A to B to C to D has now all escaped my memory. But I was still rather delighted by it, as I am with all Black movies.

Shane Black movies, not "Black movies". Also, is over-stuffed and somewhat overly-complicated the Black style? I think back to "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and wonder if I would have described it as such when I initially saw it. I really should do a rewatch post.

It starts with the intro heist. Parker (Mark Wahlberg, Spenser Confidential), who is Not Supposed to Be in NYC, has a small crew robbing the count room of a racetrack, interrupted by an employee going back after his shift. That gets one of the gang killed, someone Parker did not like but who was someone's cousin, so he protected the stupid kid until he was dead. Aaaand just as they are hiding out in the safe house, the new girl on the gang kills the rest, shooting Parker a few times and he falls into a deep ravine with a raging river.

This whole opener was a quick bite, meant to establish Parker as a quick & tactical thinker, not adverse to killing, and a tenacious survivor. Also, there aren't any deep ravines with raging rivers near NYC but this was all shot in Australia so we can pretend nobody knows that.

So, normally, the movie would be about Parker returning, recovered but still hurting, taking the long painful route to finding her, exacting his revenge, while finding out why she betrayed them all. Instead, in a quick jump & a quip, he does find her, but just as she is about to eat a bullet, she offers him a better deal, which is the reason she killed the crew and stole their money -- to fund a BIGGER heist, in the billions, and the why is ... well, oddly political. And again, she is going to rob the robbers, but this time she wants Parker in on it, and since the robbers they will rob are his Arch-Nemeses, the crime gang that decided he should Not Be in NYC, he is in. Oh, and because its a lot of money.

You can see already why its starting to sound complicated, all layered and challenging. I am sure the "Explained" videos are in the multitude.

So, she is Zen (Rosa Salazar, Alita: Battle Angel), and in her "home country" (unnamed South American country) she was a member of a death-squad, but recently a literal treasure was lifted from the sea off the shores of their country and her corrupt leader intends on stealing that treasure and absconding with it, effectively bankrupting his own country and leaving it to rot. The gang he has hired, called The Outfit, is a gang that Parker betrayed and who still want his head. Zen is working with the military leaders to steal the treasure and set themselves up as leaders of the country.

Nothing about Zen and her compatriots says "revolutionary heroes" -- while she claims she is doing it for her country, the fact that she was a member of a death-squad meant she's part of a political system that only cares for their ideal of the country, and not the people itself. Sound familiar? And yet, Zen is played as charismatic, and yes, Sexy as Hell, setting up a pseudo sexual tension between Parker and her.

But nothing goes as planned, nothing goes as expected. The heists continually go awry forcing Parker to constantly pivot and adjust his plans. Given he is constantly in danger from The Outfit, who are also their adversaries, his only accomplices are Old Friends, people from his old life whom he trusts and who trust him. They include Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield, Knives Out), a thief who sinks his money into a failing theatre, which he seems quite happy with running absolutely terribly. And married couple Ed (Keegan-Michael Key, The Predator) & Brenda Mackey (Claire Lovering, Gold Diggers) who are all about the con & the costumes. They bring driver Stan (Chai Hansen, The New Legends of Monkey) along with them; a young but capable wheel man. 

So, as I was saying, Things Go Awry. They actually lose the bulk of the treasure when The Outfit outsmarts them, actually stealing the treasure from The UN before Parker and his team can initiate their own outrageous plan, which involves stealing a MTA "trash train". This plan derails, figuratively and literally, causing untold amount of collateral damage -- this Parker really has no qualms about who he hurts. BUT he has one last ace card up his sleeve -- the figurehead to the legendary treasure ship, which is probably one of the biggest MacGuffins in movies of late, is being purchased illicitly by an Asshole Billionaire (Chukwudi Iwuji, Peacemaker). The final act of the movie is about them conning it out of him. Almost.

Annoyingly, like most of these movies, they Don't Get the Treasure, but Parker gets enough of it to make his team happy if not "live on a beach for the rest of your life" rich, as was originally intended. And Not Like Most of These Movies, just when we think Zen and Parker might hook-up, Black reminds us he doesn't care for typical. Remember, she killed Parker's original crew, including his old friend Phily (Thomas Jane, The Expanse) and, for that, there is only one punishment.

Yup, loved the movie.

KWIF: Blood Simple (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week: 
Blood Simple (1983, d. Joel Coen - dvd)
Slayground (1983, d. Terry Bedford - dvd)
Bank Shot (1974, d. Gower Champion - Tubi)
Brick (2025, d. Phillip Koch - netflix)

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My favourite podcast, Blank Check with Griffin and David, has started covering the works of the Coen brothers, and I am so here for it. I will be watching every film Joel and Ethan Coen have directed before each episode of the podcast drops, so buckle in for 18 weeks of Coen Bros. content. 

The trick for me then is to get my reviews written before I cave and listen to the podcast, because, undoubtedly, the podcast will shape maybe what I have to say about a movie, if not necessarily my opinion of it. Although, over time, with the amount of history and information the podcast drops about their subject, it's bound to influence what I have to say anyway. Knowledge is like that. It changes how you think. Who knew?

The Coen's catalogue of films is not the easiest to access. Only a handful of their films are currently available on any streaming service, and most of them are out of print on physical media. I've been waiting for nearly 20 years for some form of complete boxed set of the films of the Coens to get released, but I understand why it's never happened. Nearly every film was released by a different distributor than the previous (not entirely true, but if we look at their 18 films together*, they were released by 12 different distributors) which makes it hard for any physical media manufacturer to coordinate with all those different companies to form a comprehensive set. And so I've made a concerted effort to hunt for the Coens on DVD and/or Blu-ray, which after visiting a dozen different shops selling used and/or new, I'm still six films down from the set.

Blood Simple I knew was going to be one of the easy ones to get. It's part of the Criterion Collection, and thus readily available. Did I get a criterion edition? No I did not, since I found a used version of the original DVD release, and decided to save myself some cash. I had watched Blood Simple for the first time two decades ago and I had been rather enamoured with it. I've always intended to watch it again, to get a copy of it for myself, and it never happened. Over time I began to doubt if my reaction to it was legit, mostly because I forgot anything about the film entirely, except how I felt after watching it. 

This happens to me a lot, which is reason #1 for this blog's continued existence, so I can write about my experience with a film to remind me later of what I actually thought about it and why. I have to say, I think I had the exact same experience for a second time, and I kind of regret not buying the Criterion edition (it's an easy regret to correct).

Looking at Raising Arizona last week, I commented on how it felt like the prototype for the Coen Brothers to come, that everything is rudimentary, and unhoned. All the pieces seem very Coen-esque but they don't quite sing (or yodel) in harmony quite as sweetly. 

But Raising Arizona is one side of the Coen Bros. repertoire, the lighter, more humourous side that seems to be what is most memorable about them. But if you look at their greatest successes, what has garnered them the most acclaim and awards, it's their darker instincts, the noir the percolates inside them. Half their output swings one way or the other, but when that weirdness they infuse in their films becomes disturbing instead of funny, it's so damn gripping. And it's in Blood Simple fully formed. 

It's so rare that a first effort is this definitive, this strong and singular in voice or tone or style. This is a Coen Bros. film through and through (*even though Joel is the only credited director of most of their early films, up to Intolerable Cruelty), but the brothers got lucky in the people they partnered up with. Barry Sonnenfeld is their director of photography, and Carter Burwell's score is just the first of many incredible collaborations between them.  Of course, Joel's life partner Frances McDormand is the co-lead which is an absolute stroke of luck that she turned out to be one of the most talented actors of her generation.

The film opens with Abby (McDormand) on the road with Ray (John Getz). They wind up at a motel together. The phone rings. Ray picks up. It's Abby's husband, Julian (Dan Hedaya) who Ray also happens to tend bar for. They've been followed by a sleazy private eye Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) who brings Julian some tawdry photos of the couple.  

Julian tries to take matters into his own hands, but, in Coen Bros. fashion, he's not some grand crime lord, he's just a sleazy guy with an ill temper. He hires Visser to kill the pair. Visser fakes the murders to get paid, but then shoots Julian but with Abby's gun he stole. What happens after that is about an hour of pure Coens at work and play.

It's a series of assumptions, of missed clues, of mistaken identities that leads to an intense climax and an exasperated sigh of relief that is also as darkly hilarious as anything the Coens would put to film afterwards. This film ends on an absolute high watermark for the Coens careers, a note which they somehow match over and over again, if not always consistently.

The mood is perfectly set throughout and at just over 90 minutes, this film is tight as hell, and really no wasted space (the film was even edited down from the theatrical and early home video cuts by the Coens to tighten it up even more). Like how Raising Arizona is the harbinger of the Coens' comedies to come, Blood Simple establishes what it looks like when they strip away their more cartoonish impulses.  

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One of my active long-term viewing projects is to watch and write about all the various adaptations of the Parker series of novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). I've never even read any of the books in the series directly, only the brilliant comic book adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke. Those graphic novels are incredible and instilled a deep affection for the character and the series...or at least Cooke's envisioning of it.

To date I've seen the terrible Jason Statham-starring Parker, the rock solid Mel Gibson Payback (at least one version of them at least), and the nearly note-perfect Lee Marvin in Point Blank,which are the three most readily available adaptations. The rest are all going to take a bit of hunting and keeping an eagle eye out for, like Slayground, which I found on a used DVD rack (while hunting for Coen Brothers films) and *yoinked* off the rack with the utmost gusto.

According to star Peter Coyote in an interview in the bonus features, the film is the product of British ad men who decided to try their hand at filmmaking. And it shows. It's not a bad looking film, but pacing, character, editing and story logic all suffer throughout.

I haven't read Westlake's Slayground, and Cooke didn't get to Slayground before his passing, so the plot was unfamiliar to me. In it, Stone (Coyote's Parker substitute) and a professional acquaintance meet up to enact a planned job, but their driver (unbeknownst to them) has been murdered in an unrelated incident. Rather than abandon the job, they hire a plucky young kid who likes to spin his wheels. The job goes off as planned but in the getaway their driver gets panicked and unnecessarily reckless and causes another car to flip, killing the passengers inside, including a young girl.

The girl's grieving father is a man of means and hires a professional to find the people responsible for killing his little girl... which he does. The driver is his first victim, Stone's acquaintance is next, and after a two close calls, one putting him in the hospital, Stone needs to get not just out of town or state, but the country altogether. He heads to London where a man owes him a favour, but it's not long before trouble finds him, and things come to a dark, dangerous head.

The story is definitely not the issue. There's a skeleton here that is very well engineered and moves pretty elegantly. The heist itself is pretty clever, and the set-up for the story of a bad man running from the consequences of his actions makes for a good crime film.  The majority of the issues are in the muscle tissue over top of the skeleton, they're all gnarled and knotted up. We're talking about Stone. Stone is not Parker, and that's fundamentally wrecks the character's journey.

The thing about Parker is that he's pretty much dead inside. He's a survivor, but he almost doesn't care if he lives or dies. He plots his jobs, gets his cash, lives his life like he wants to and washes, rinses and repeats. When things get complicated, Parker deals with the complications. He has his own code of conduct he adheres to which has little room for morals. Parker has had women in his life, a wife, and girlfriends, who he seems to be able to detach from with only a little difficulty (I imagine some of the tragedies in his life are responsible for his inner deadening). Stone is really none of these things, and it fundamentally breaks the story.

To start, when the substitute driver causes the wreck, Stone insists with violence that he stop the car, and Stone goes to investigate if anyone has survived. When he finds the little girl, he's devastated and mournful. Once he learns of the hitman after him, he sends his wife away to Mexico while he jets off to England because she shouldn't be around him (and when he tries to play it off coolly in a very Parker-esque fashion that she will only get in the way of his survival, she calls bullshit and sees right through him (which would not be the case for the real Parker). In evading this hitman and finding his way out of country, Stone winds up getting associate after associate killed. Parker wouldn't care, but the way Stone is portrayed, he really should.  It's all mixed up and backwards (Coyote talks about how little the writers and director wanted his input on crafting the character) and it cuts the feet out under the picture. It's trying to paint Stone as at least a noble criminal, but he's not. He's a coward, running from the consequences of his actions, and continually getting better people killed. There's something to that idea, but this film doesn't really know what to do with it nor how to reinforce it.

I do love a continent-jumping production, and there's something about watching an '80's crime drama/thriller that originates from an American, is produced by Brits, but starring an American and shot on both sides of the pond. It's a real melange of the two in largely a positive way. As much as it doesn't hold together, I was still fascinated watching it crumble apart.

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Speaking of Westlake, in searching the streamings for more Parker fuel, I expanded my search to other Westlake novel adaptations and happened upon the 1974 heist comedy, Bank Shot. Not only is Bank Shot a film I've never, ever heard of before, it's ostensibly a sequel to the 1972 Robert Redford vehicle The Hot Rock...which I've also never, ever heard of before. Both films are adaptations of Westlake's "Dortmunder" series, which by all accounts seems to be "Parker, but funny".

Bank Shot stars George C. Scott as Walter Ballantine, a master heist planner. When we meet Ballantine he's in a hard labour prison camp under Warden Streiger (Clifton James). An accomplice of his, Al G. Karp (Sorrell Brook) poses as Ballantine's lawyer and informs him of a particular job that only he can score. He's hesitant but intrigued, so he busts out of prison...with style. He's met by vivacious El (Joanna Cassidy melting the screen) who helps him elude the cops, and they're on a private plane to Los Angeles. (It turns out El is the "money man" backing the job, but it is never explained where El gets the money from, nor is it truly clear why she is backing the job. She's conspicuously fixated on Ballantine, sexually if not romantically, but we're never given any sense why. Ballantine for his part seems to want nothing to do with her, which is both perplexing and pretty funny).

In L.A. they meet up with Karp and Karp's ex-FBI nephew Victor (Bob Balaban), who's into old, old cars, and paranoia. They don't really know that hot on their tail is Warden Streiger and his FBI attached Andrew Constable (G. Wood) although they're just as good at chasing their own tail as following any leads.

The job is a bank heist, but one of serious opportunity. See as a local bank is in the process of building their new facility, they have a temporary trailer that acts as the bank, and once a week the deposits have to be held overnight for plot reasons. The heist, as Karp and team have planned is garbage, but Ballantine figures out the solution: don't rob the bank, steal the trailer.

They set about their preparation and planning and it's tense, but comically so. By the time the big day comes they set out their distractions and off they go with their prize. But Warden Streiger knows how Ballantine thinks and he's often only one step behind, but that's all Ballantine really needs. The only problem is, the safe in the bank is no easy nut to crack, so time in a stolen trailer isn't on their side. All roads lead to...well, the ocean, really.

Bank Shot isn't a lost classic, but it ages surprisingly well compared to other comedies of its era. It's not really punching down on anyone, which most comedies were prone to doing at the time. The script is fun, with a bevvy of unique and eccentric characters, each portrayed by game actors with a real take on the role. Scott is a gifted comedic actor, able to sell sincerity within being straight-laced while still making it funny. He's just shy of being hammy but never goes over the line, he's an intuitive performer an knows the limit. 

The story has many set pieces which all range from competent to well-shot, though perhaps limited by budget and practical effects. The story itself relies upon the ineptness of the police and FBI, which is never not funny even if it's not realistic. 

There's a little bit of slapstick, plenty of visual gags, wacky one-liners, and some straight up character-based comedy. It's striving real hard to be a good time, and it mostly is.

The major drawback is a score that seems to have been inspired by turn of the century circus music, and it's pretty grating. It's striving for whimsy but the film calls for something a lot less obvious.

The tone director Gower Champion establishes is a comedic one, and though his experience as a film director was limited to this and a TV movie, he was a celebrated stage director, which shows in the way he gets his ensemble moving in the frame. His use of foreground/midground/background is often a very strong contributor to the fun of the movie. It's at times halfway to Airplane or The Naked Gun-style comedy. But it never reaches it because the script and the execution are at odds with each other.

The script wants to be a lighthearted romp, while the director wants it to be a full-out farce, and it toggles between the two in a somewhat dissatisfying manner. They both contribute to the levity, but they're at odds with each other. Overall it was a good time but somehow unsatisfying. The payoff didn't quite pay off. 

---

Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) is a video game developer who has been putting his all into his work, to the point of shutting out his wife, Olivia (Ruby O. Fee). She miscarried and it's depressed them both, but rather than bring them closer in their grief it's put up walls. Olivia quits her job and wants to head out on a dream vacation and a head start, Tim's work seems to be nothing but pressure and misery but he can't imagine following suit. So Olivia packs up, ready to leave with or without him, and if she goes alone, she's not coming back... except, without them noticing, literal walls have gone up containing them in their second floor multiplex home.  

It's the strangest material that seems unaffected by any form of impact... hammering, drilling, fire, nothing phases it. It's covered the door, the windows, and even drilling through the exterior walls reveals that it's there too.  But the inner walls, to the neighbouring apartment are fair game. And so Olivia and Tim start connecting with the drug-loving, and most in-love Air BnB couple next door, and then make their way beneath them, encountering more neighbours they barely know (if at all) and discovering a little more about what happened. Of course, one of the neighbours is an unhinged crackpot conspiracy theorist and will go to extremes to stop the gang from attempting to escape their prison, which he's convinced is there to keep him safe.

It's a low-budget, high-concept film that is completely boilerplate sci-fi, that delivers all the expected complications and resolutions, both to the plot and the character conflict. It's got a very watchable sense of discovery even if it all feels so A-to-B-to-C-to-D in its execution. There's some comfort in the familiarity of execution, but very little satisfaction. It's all competently produced and well acted, but it doesn't have any real...zing to it. There's no magic and no surprises. It even ends exactly how I thought it would, because I've seen enough of these to know that every single one of these types of movies owes a debt to The Twilight Zone. Whether the bricks are alien, extradimetional or experimental(/experiment-gone-wrong), the ending was all but assured. No matter what, the story outside was bound to be more interesting than what we followed inside.

If a story is going to be this route one, it needs some real visual pinache to elevate it and it doesn't. I most enjoyed the idea of tearing through walls and floors connecting people together, but it doesn't use that to its fullest advantage, nor really revels in how distinct a conceit it actually is.  

KWIF: Furiosa (+4)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he just does a "quick" (ha! ahahaha! ha!) little summary of his thoughts. 

This week:
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, d. George Miller - in theatre)
Point Blank (1967, d. John Boorman - Criterion Channel)
Purple Noon (or Plein Soleil, 1960, d. René Clément - Criterion Channel)
The American Friend (or Der amerikanische Freund, 1977, d. Wim Wenders - Criterion Channel)
Paprika (2006, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)

and, go!

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Following Mad Max: Fury Road, about as beautifully artistic and mentally and viscerally stimulating a post-apocalyptic action movie as we're ever to get, I was keen to say that Warner Bros. should just cut George Miller a blank check and make another one, whatever way he wants.  I believe it was during the press junket for Fury Road that Miller intoned he had written a full backstory script for Furiosa, the character played by Charlize Theron in the film.  I was more than ready for that.

As time passed, the realization dawned on me that Furiosa's back story would have to be a pretty bleak one, given how in Fury Road she was headed to The Green Place from which she was abducted as a child. Was that something we really wanted to see? The abuses set upon a young girl in a very toxic and masculine society?  We're aware of Immortan Joe and his harem of "wives" (barely more than breeding livestock as far as he's concerned) so it could get real, real dark. Did we want that?

What we really wanted was more Fury Road.

And you know what? That's almost exactly what Miller delivers with his new entry in the "Mad Max Saga".

In this nearly two-and-a-half hour extravaganza, told in five parts, we first meet Furiosa (Alyla Browne) in the fabled Green Place, a beautiful crevasse in the dead center of Australia (for the first time in the "Saga" were given an actual birds eye view, confirming, yes, this is Australia). A couple of marauders from the wastelands have found the place, and Furiosa, along with a younger sibling or friend raises the alarm. She attempts to sabotage the marauder while help comes but finds that, more than anything else in this lush refuge, she is the most valuable prize.  Our first chase begins as Furiosa's fierce mother (Charlee Fraser) pursues the kidnappers through the desert, and yeah, it's relatively bare bones, but also completely intense. Furiosa is no hapless victim and finds her own ways of sabotaging the marauders.  

Furiosa's story is one of tragedy, so things don't go so well against the vast forces of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call). Furiosa is charged with protecting the location of the Green Place, while she is lobbed between Dementus and Immortan Joe.  Realizing what fate has in store for her in Immortan Joe and his creepy family's care, Furiosa (now Anya Taylor Joy, The New Mutants) hides herself, disguised as a mute boy and a mechanic, she listens and learns. She observes the creation of Immortan Joe's first war rig, and sees the glory of its driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, The Lazarus Project [@Toasty...where's that review?]).  Through a series of events, Jack becomes her new mentor. He's a hard, but kind man who wants nothing more than to help Furiosa be fully capable of surviving their horrid reality.  As the two plot their long-term plan for escape from Immortan Joe, the two get swept into an increasingly urgent and brutal war between Immortan Joe and Dementus, which leads to more and more loss for Furiosa, but gaining an all-consuming thirst for vengeance.

If we look at the prior films in the overall Mad Max "saga" they are all structured differently. The original film is pretty much a series of vignettes, while the second film attempts a more conventional three-act structure (that I can recall). Beyond Thunderdome is more two distinct stories, and Fury Road is basically one long act. I like how Miller keeps you guessing with this series and the only thing you can really expect is to have an epic time with some crazy stunts.

While there was some themes to Thunderdome and Fury Road, Furiosa is pretty much a straightforward action movie. It maybe juxtaposes how different people deal with tragedy differently, but it's certainly not the driving force of the movie. Each of its five acts captures a day or so in Furiosa's life that shows her resolve and willpower in the face of intense combat and overwhelming odds against.

The acting is all exactly what it needs to be. Browne playing young Furiosa for the first hour of the film was unexpected but she was incredible. By the time we meet Joy's Furiosa she's been keeping herself hidden for years so her toughness is very quiet and reserved, until it shows itself in a very raw, emotional form. Praetorian Jack teaches her to control her rage and enhances her skill set, with Burke making Jack a very welcome reprieve from all the letcherous, vainglorious, egocentric and ugly men of the various worlds she's forced to inhabit. 

Furiosa has about as much dialogue in this as Max did in Fury Road, which isn't much at all, so both Bowne and Joy's performance of the character is all in the physicality and the eyes. Conversely, Hemsworth is all words. While Dementus is a dangerous man, he's also a charismatic fool. He leads his people to ruin, but he has the distinct capability to always sucker in more people under him. Hemsworth's charm factor is so high, even when playing this despicable man. He has more dialogue than I think every other character combined, including a riveting monologue in the final act that is the flailing desperation of a thoroughly defeated egomaniac.

I liked how Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris side-stepped a lot of the world building. Rather than shift its lens off Furiosa, it held tight with her throughout the film. It didn't spend more time with the society of the war boys, and didn't provide an origin story for "Witness Me" or even recycle any of the catchphrases from the prior film. Certainly they are a part of the story, but there is no character there to explore their culture through like Nux from the last film. Been there, done that. We really don't spend time with Dementus' crew as well because, as we learn, Dementus' crew is mercurial.

I found Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to be a highly invigorating experience. I wanted to throw my arms up and cheers so many times, and I clapped with glee to see the war rig manufacturing process. It's a worthy prequel to Fury Road even if it is not quite its equal. I doubt anything can be.

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One of my ongoing viewing projects is to watch all the various adaptations of Donald E. Westlake's Parker novels (written under the "Richard Stark" pseudonym). Though I've never read any of the novels, I became a rather immediate fan upon reading Darwyn Cooke's loving graphic novel adaptations.  To date I've only managed to catch the awful Jason Statham-starring Parker and the director's cut of 1999's Payback, starring Mel Gibson.  Of the eight adaptations of various Parker stories, arguably the most famous is the 1967 crime thriller, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin.

Based off the first Parker novel The Hunter, it finds Marvin's "Walker" (as Westlake notoriously refused anyone using the name without committing to multiple pictures) trying to come to grips with how he wound up in a prison cell with two bullet holes in his abdomen. The answer: betrayal. He got pulled into a job by Reese, a man in desperate need of money to pay off his debts, but the job wasn't a big enough score to pay Walker the split he was promised. Reese, having seduced Walker's wife, Lynn, sets him up for the fall. His only mistake was in making sure Walker was dead. Walker pulls through his injuries and sets out to not so much get revenge as collect what he is owed by any means necessary.

"The Hunter" is the same story Payback was based off of, and the rhythms of the story are almost exactly the same. Some of the characters shift in their personality and story, but inconsequentially. The real difference is in style. Payback is a very 1990's production, Cooke's comic adaptation is very firmly in the 1950's, while here it's so very 1960's Los Angeles, and it's glorious. I have to think everything Quentin Tarantino was trying to achieve visually in Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood stems from this film. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but the aesthetic of this film, from the streets of Hollywood, to every hotel room, office and mansion homestead are so exquisitely of the era, and it all just sings beautifully.

If I had to place the aesthetic it's that in the 1960's technology was just starting it's advancement into commercial sales, hi-fi stereos and phone intercoms, and doors that open and close with the press of a button. The ostentatiousness of the 1960's resulted in such heavy investment in electronics and mechanized devices that there wasn't the same sense of investment in making everything gold or highly ornate. Environments were very much wood framed with the brushed chrome of technology as an accent. Colours were pastel bases, muted, yet still vibrant.  The buttoned down suits of the 1950s gave way to more mod suits in the 60's and the women adopted patterns and colours galore.  There are times when I watch the film and wish I could tour around the setting more. This is a film where I wish I could just dive right in and live there.  

I was about to say Lee Marvin as Walker was maybe a decade too old to play the character, but I just looked it up and he was 43! Five years younger than I am now. And he looks like he's cresting 60 in the film.  Man that era of sunbathing, heavy drinking and smoking was hard on one's looks.  That said, he's almost perfect for the vision of Walker, a big, broad man who can stop you dead in your tracks with just a look.  There's a weird flashback where Lynn talks about when she met Walker, and it shows Marvin being playful and smiling with her, and oh, it threatens to undermine the entire image of the character. It's early enough on in the picture that Marvin has time to rebuild his image, but it takes a bit.  The most immediate thing about Marvin's Walker that seems to deviate from Parker is his code of ethics. It seems at first like Walker is really trying to get revenge, it's not for a while where he really starts hammering it in that he's actually just after his money.

Angie Dickinson (Police Woman) is in the film as Lynn's sister, Chris, and she is everything to this film. She is a love interest for Walker, but definitely not the conventional "love interest" role. She is versed in working hard and doing what must be done, and as much as she wants to resent Walker for asking her to do so, she can't help but see a guy who very much does the same...only he's kind of an emotionless automaton. He frustrates her so much (as witnessed by the incredible scene where Dickinson goes full ham on Marvin until she's utterly exhausted and collapse to the floor) and yet it's clear she's got an incurable thing for him in spite of herself. She plays it so well. Her roles seems beefed up from other versions of this story, but maybe it's just that Dickinson does more with it. She has presence, and her character feels lived in, in a way maybe no other character does.

Boorman and his editor (Henry Berman) do weird collages throughout the film, mostly as flashbacks, which are not unwelcome but seem so ...primitive as a storytelling vehicle. Sometimes they work very well, acting as Walker's inner conscience or a dreamscape, but sometimes they feel like too much.  There's a magnificent scene of Walker walking down a hallway, his ADRed footsteps "clop-clopping" away, setting the rhythm for Johnny Mandel's score to kick in, paired with some of that collage editing and it's just an masterful senses-grabbing scene that has been cribbed so much since, but probably never bettered.

---

Another kick I've been on is watching any adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley series. I just did an obscenely long look at the 1999 version of The Talented Mr. Ripley in comparison with the new Netflix series, and this drew me to re-subscribing to the Criterion Channel so that I could catch up on two earlier adaptations of Ripley stories.

1960's Purple Noon (not Purple Moon as I keep wanting to say) is a very French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring notoriously handsome actor Alain Delon (Le Samourai) in the title role of Thomas Ripley. I could go into a very detailed list of "differences" between this and the other adaptations of the novel, but I'll spare that in favour of just the broadest strokes.

The first big shift is how the film begins in media res, with Tom and Philippe Greenleaf (changed from Dickie) already best buds and hanging out in Rome. Philippe  is already aware that Tom was sent by his father and Tom seemingly doesn't hide the fact from Philippe his criminal ways. The two are very boys' boys as they horse and pal around and fuck with other people for their fun. They pick up a woman and both make out with her (well it's more Philippe making out and Tom trying to get in on the action). Did I mention this film is so French. Marge likes Tom just fine but her relationship with Philippe seems strained by his cladding about with Tom. Tom covets everything about Philippe, his wardrobe, his carefree lifestyle, and his women.

Obviously this is the second big change. Tom's intoned homosexuality is completely absent from Delon's performance (and the script). When he kills Philippe, takes over his life, kills Freddie and returns to being Tom, he heads back to Marge and they start a relationship, and Tom seems genuinely happy. He has Dickie's life and he doesn't have to pretend to be him.

But as much as the story and performance are absent of any gay undertones, the lens in which we view the film is very queer indeed. The camera isn't in love with Delon, it is obsessed with him. Where in other productions the camera provides us largely Tom's point of view of events, lets us understand the story through his very warped eyes, here the camera is very disengaged from Tom's point of view and instead just ogles him. Though Tom is clearly covetous of Philippe's life, through the lens we see Tom as the ideal. He's much more attractive than anyone else on screen (and Maurice Ronet is not a bad looking guy, but pales compared to Delon) and we can never forget it.

Remember that old Late Night with Conan O'Brien bit "If they mated" where they would take two celebrities and show us what an adult offspring would look like if they shared their DNA? In Delon's case, he would be the "If They Mated" of Zach Efron and Jared Leto in their primes. Just the most piercing blue eyes and carefree floppy hair and fit-but-not-buff body. Just total ah-ooh-gah.  I don't know what makes the lens gay male gaze as opposed to female gaze, but it's definitely feels like one and not the other.

The final big distinction of the various versions is the ending, in which Tom doesn't get away with it. And it's kind of clever and unexpected how they did it. Innocuous, sudden, and yet logical. I understand why in such an era they needed crime to be punished on films, but it does lessen the story, but so does the removal of the homosexual undertones.  It's a very good production overall, but of course it is. As I stated before, the source material is one of the greatest, sure to be adapted over and over.  Yet, it's the lesser of the three productions for not even daring to challenge the norms of the time.

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I like the story behind The American Friend (not My American Friend, as I keep wanting to say) - the late 70's German-French production from noted auteur director Wim Wenders - almost as much as I like the film. As Wenders tells it, after his first few films were road stories largely improvised from loose scripts, he was looking for a fully scripted story for his next film. He became obsessed with Patricia Highsmith's novels and attempted to option every one of them, only to find they were all unavailable. This caught Highsmith's attention and she met with Wenders and clearly, as he says it, he "passed the test", and she offered him her new manuscript for her third Ripley novel before she had even sent it to the publishers. This was Ripley's Game.

A coup for Wenders, in a way, but also a consolation prize of sorts. Wenders had approached actor-director John Cassavetes for playing the role of Tom Ripley, but he was busy. Cassavetes suggested Dennis Hopper (Super Mario Bros.) to Wenders, and Wenders came to like the idea. But when the time came to shoot the picture Hopper was still sidelined shooting Apocalypse Now. Hopper came off the set of that feature a practical zombie, drinked and drugged out of his mind, barely able to engage with the material and his co-stars.  Bruno Ganz (The Boys From Brazil) was a popular stage actor who had only one screen credit, but Wenders convinced him to take the role. Ganz prepped endlessly and was very invested in the part. A few days into working with Hopper, who was very laissez-faire and freewheeled his lines, the men came to blows. Wenders let them fight it out, which led to an evening of drinking and a mutual understanding with Ganz softening his over-prepared stance and Hopper committing to starting each day prepping with the director.  

It's a wonderful story in a way, I just wish it paid off on screen. Hopper's Ripley, wearing a stetson and cowboy boots most of the time, is certainly not the mind's eye view of Thomas Ripley, not akin to any other interpretation we've seen on screen. But aesthetics aren't everything.  My chief complaint is that Hopper's performance just feels like he's in a completely different movie every time he's on screen. 

Thankfully (I guess) in the first hour of the film, Ripley only has two or three short scenes which seem quite outside the main plot. Ganz plays Jonathan Zimmerman, a framemaker whose wife works at an auction house where Ripley peddles his illicit art wares. When the two are introduces Jon slights Ripley which causes him to spread a rumour that Zimmerman's rare blood disorder is terminal and that he's having money problems. 

This catches the attention of some criminal types who are in a feud with other criminal types. They start to gaslight Jon into believing his disorder is terminal, and convincing him that he should be doing what he can to ensure the stability of his wife and son after his passing.  All he needs to do is kill someone.  It's very Highsmith in a Strangers on a Train but in a fun house mirror sort of way.

The job is done, and it's an intense set pieces that is wonderfully shot (no pun intended). There's a dangling thread of Jon having been caught fleeing the scene on camera but it's never picked up (and I'm not sure why). Ripley later encounters Jon at his frame shop, perhaps to taunt him, but Jon apologizes for his behaviour in their initial meeting and is very friendly. Ripley feels guilty. When he finds out the goons are trying to force Jon into another hit, Ripley tries to stop it before it starts, but ultimately can only intervene and help out. It's a very clumsy, blackly comedic, and similarly intense sequence on a high speed train.

Jon's secrecy with his wife and the weight of his deeds starts fracturing his marriage, but Jon thinks it's all too late. Ripley notes that the bad guys will try to clean up any loose ends, and they're going to have to go on the offensive. The film's final big piece once again plays out unexpectedly, with some irreverent turns that carry just as many nerves.

If not for Hopper, this is otherwise an really great film.  It's not a terrific Ripley story, as the character is largely absent from the first half, but at the same time, given what we see of Ripley in the various adaptations of the first of Highsmith's novels, the character profile of an art dealer with criminal connections seems absolutely fitting. I just wish almost anyone else was playing him, but I think a 15-years-later Delon would have been perfect, as the film ventured between Hamburg and Paris.

---

Paprika is the final film made by Satoshi Kon, and what many regard to be his masterpiece. Having just seen all four in the past month, it's hard to not say they are all his masterpieces.  He was such a thoughtful, incredibly curious and inventive storyteller, and as very much a latecomer to his career, it's still resonates as a huge tragedy that he died still quite evidently in his storytelling prime.

That all said, at least in first watch, Paprika is my least favourite of the quartet. It is so primarily because of my typical reaction to typical anime, which is a flinching revulsion.  Where Kon's prior films seemed to defiantly break from typical anime styles and forms, Paprika seemed to be a sudden dive right into them, as if Kon just caught up on the prior ten years of anime that he had missed.

It's probably an unfair assessment.

And yet I kept wincing as I watched this. It started very simply with the character Paprika's haircut. Something about it screamed so loudly in my face, the way the curl of the hair covers over the cheekbones to both accentuate the jaw and highlight the eyes...almost more helmet than hair. It was the visual equivalent of chewing tinfoil or fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Just set me on edge.

A lot of anime (not a genre, I know, but...) has this thing where its action scenes or often entire stories operate in a stream-of-consciousness manner, because you can do anything in animation. But should you? The stream-of-consciousness side of this entertainment shouldn't bother me (I like Twin Peaks after all) but it's often just nonsense.  Of course, I have limited exposure and so limited experience, but that is my experience and it does not appeal to me.

So when Kon's movie opens with a very intentional stream of consciousness-style dream sequence I was getting itchy, despite being obviously wowed by the director's continued masterful control over transitions, here rapidly transitioning between different dream realms.  I basically bought into the film by the end of the incredible opening credit sequence, but my seatbelt wasn't securely fastened the entire journey.

Paprika doesn't really hold your hand. It may grab you by the shirt sleeve and give you a little tug from time to time, but it's not laying it all out for you, and it never establishes any sort of rules to what you are seeing. It's all very mercurial, dream logic.

Yet the story is nearly quite straightforward. In a near-future world, a company has invented a technology that can record people's dreams, but there's an exploit where people can actually enter those dreams using the technology.  Paprika is Dr. Atsuko Chiba's alias when she enters the dreamscape, her very superheroic alter ego. Except someone else has stolen the technology, entered the dreamscape and is doing some real harm.

As Atsuko and the other heads of the project work with a police detective to try to suss out who is poisoning people's dreams, people start losing their minds in the real worlds and killing themselves.  The news is bad, and the chairman wants to shut the project down, which would leave anyone using the dream recorder exposed to the psychopath.

This is a generalized summary and definitely not 100% accurate...as I said, it's a film that doesn't hold your hand.  I found it difficult to embrace this world without understanding it first. The film talks about the newly developed "DC Mini" but doesn't really set us up for understanding the world as changed by the dream therapy technology that seems more widespread. Maybe they're both the same thing but it doesn't make sense that they are. I dunno, I probably need to watch it again.

The film toys with dreamscape logic, which means that often characters seem to wake up but are still in a dream, and then wake up from that dream to still be in a dream etc. It is a trick dream-based movies have been using for decades before and since. It's as effective as it is annoying.

There's this whole angle to Paprika that's about filmmaking and storytelling and camera perspective and collaboration and regret that seems very personal and personally appealing to Kon, but also is verrrry inside baseball for animators and cinematic storytellers. It's a side trip that ultimately has some leanings into one of the character's back stories but it also feels like an unnecessary tangent that stalls the mid-point of the film.

The character designs in this film in general feel more animated archetypes than in Kon's previous films (as Griffin Newman pointed out, it seems like three of the main doctors were visually designed after Professor X, Toad and the Blob from X-Men, something I picked up on as well, but was likely in mind after a binge of over 100 issues of X-Men comics and the 13 episodes of X-Men '97).  I don't feel like I understood our main protagonist, Atsuko and her altar ego Paprika all that well. I don't really understand why Atsuko was doing call girl-style illicit meetings with patients where Paprika invaded their dreams. It somehow made more sense when the dream world was invading the real world and Paprika became an independent being from Atsuko, but I'm not sure why that made sense.

This wasn't a mind-twist, so much as a mind hurt. Again, maybe upon rewatch it will reveal itself more, and repulse less. I mean, there's an abundance of fat jokes and denigrating of an obese character in this so, cultural biases, along with my own anime biases, all got in the way.

KWIF: Decision to Leave (+4)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. All watched this past Saturday. It wasn't even a sick day.

This Week.
Decision To Leave (2022, d. Park Chan-wook - Crave)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999, d. John McTiernan - AmazonPrime)
The Brood (1979, d. David Cronenberg - AmazonPrime)
The Double (2013, d. Richard Ayoade - Tubi)
Payback: Straight Up (2006, d. Brian Helgeland - AmazonPrime)

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I have recently come to describe myself as a "pop culture tourist". After a few months of adopting this moniker, I realized that some might think it to mean I go out into the world, traveling to places to visit sets and locations from movies or going to theme parks or whatnot. While that sounds lovely and all, I'm not that adventurous, nor do I have the liberty or finances to do so at this time.

Instead it means I like to visit pop culture domains, spend some time there, see the sights, hear the sounds, and then move on to somewhere else. I resist becoming part of any particular community of fandom, and while I might gain more knowledge or awareness on a particular popular culture aspect, I am by no means an expert. I adopted the "pop culture tourist" ideology as a way to absolve myself of not having to know everything on a topic, of being up to the level of a lifelong or die hard fan.

I write this all to denote that I'm not nearly well-versed enough in Park Chan-wook's filmography to comment on how this film deviates from his previous efforts, nor can I really say I went into it with any particular expectations.

Looking back on my recent reviews of older Director Park films watched about a year ago, I recall had intended to tour his entire filmography along with the Blank Check podcast, but I fell off their pacing and couldn't catch up. So I come into Director Park's latest film pretty cold. Like, I'm not even expecting his "Vengeance Trilogy" level of violence or uncomfortableness. I literally had no expectations.

Within minutes of the film starting, I had a big smile on my face. Director Park (I use this honorific as a result of the various Oscar wins for Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, where cast and crew, upon accepting their award, would refer to him as "Director Bong". It seems fitting to do the same for Park Chan-wook) is an incredible visual stylist, both very playful and intentional. Insomniac Busan police detective Jang Hae-jung (Park Hae-il)  and his partner are on the case of a death that appears to be accidental, a rock climber found at the base of a mountain. Among the many different, unusual shots Director Park cycles through, one is of ants crawling over the dead man's face, including across his eyeball. Then the camera cuts to the POV of that eyeball, and the underbelly of the ant as it crawls across. 

If it's even a two-second-long shot I'll be amazed, but it's just one of dozens in the first ten minutes, and one of hundreds throughout the film. Before we even know what the film is, Director Park is setting a tone that tells you this isn't going to be your standard murder mystery, and to expect the unexpected.

A few minutes later, the dead man's widow is in the police interrogation room and Director Park delivers a shot with the woman, Song Seo Rae (Tang Wei), in the foreground, her face in profile obscuring two-fifths of the frame, with Hae-jung partially obscured in the the middle, and his partner in the background. Only Hae-jung is in focus. It's a striking image, and I'm sure other directors have produced such shots before, but it's a striking image that I could have just stared at like a photo hanging at a gallery for a very long time.

The pacing of the opening act of the film is pretty breakneck, and even when it slows down, it's still dispensing an incredible amount of information that is kind of hard to process, and would probably be just as intense even without having to read subtitles. Even though he's dispensing information at such a rapid clip, he does so with intention, such that every bit of information appears relevant to what we're watching. And every bit of information is relevant. Even if you didn't catch it, or don't retain it, when the information does become relevant again, Director Park gives you a prompt without making it feel like he's spoonfeeding you the film or insulting your intelligence. It's usually through conversation and the character understanding the context of something he or she saw earlier in the film, such that the audience is realizing something the same time as a character. It's so impressively savvy in its storytelling.

At it's heart, Decision to Leave is a romantic noir. Hae-jung is married, but he works in Busan while his wife lives and works in Ipo. They mainly see each other on weekends. They have conversations about how their arrangement works for them, and in some ways make them a better couple than others. They are familiar with each other, contented in their own way. But with this latest investigation, with the widow Seo-rae, he is immediately fascinated by her, and his interest in her as potential murder suspect begins to turn into something else altogether.

Seo-rae is a femme fatale in this rather vibrant noir, and while her backstory may read like a textbook femme fatale, Tang Wei's performance sidesteps all the cliches. She has a harrowing backstory as a Chinese immigrant, permitted to stay because of Korean heritage. She has a career taking care of the elderly, as she did with her grandmother, whom she helped commit suicide in the late stages of her illness (which is why she had to emigrate). Her husband, the dead man, was an immigration officer, and her hero knight in shining armor, ensuring she didn't get deported, except he was also abusive and marked her as his property, having his monogram tattooed upon her as it was stencilled on so much of his property. It's pretty clear where the detectives would see a motive, but her alibi is rock solid. 

Hae-jung isn't convinced that she is what she presents herself to be and blurs the line between investigating and stalking her, however unlike The Dual (see later in this post), it's absolutely clear in Park Hae-il's incredible performance that his sleep-deprived mind is so addled that he's not even really that clear on his own motivations for tracking Seo-rae so persistently. But Seo-rae is very aware of the attention he gives her, and, takes a strange comfort in his attention, rather than offence. It's clear from Tang Wei's performance that she understands this isn't the proper response she should have, but she can't help it.

The film twists, it time jumps, then twists and twists again, but not in a Shyamalan-style. The transitions are much, much smoother. While there is a detective bit to this noir, it's really all about the relationship between this man and woman. The chemistry is electric, but it remains unfulfilled until deep into the movie, and is ever the sexier for it. There are sex scenes with Hae-jung and his wife, but they are perhaps the most staid and unerotic moments of the film. They are scenes that tell us much about Hae-jung and his wife as a couple, as well as provide some curious (and funny) insight into how his mind is constantly working.

At 139 minutes, it is a fairly long film for a noir, but it's never boring and earns its runtime bolstered by two incredible lead performances. It's like the film has its own built-in sequel where the time jump midway is a natural break point if you need it, but the two sides of the film make for a tremendously fulfilling whole. The ending is a real all-timer, wickedly potent in concept and visual execution.

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What spurs me on to watch the films I watch? What prompts this tourist to visit these cinematic locales? Sometimes it's a stupid boy project, like my Go-Go-Godzilla series where I watched all the Godzilla series (soon to be a Ga-Ga-Gamera series), sometimes it's just pattern programming - whether it's films from the same actor, director, composer etc or similiar titles or themes or original+remake - and often, since I discovered it, it's following along with the Blank Check podcast as they go through a director's filmography film-by-film.

I've not been great about following along consistently, as witnessed with Director Park above, and with their follow-up series I only got through the first phase of David Fincher's career before I hit a stumbling block that I've yet to get back to. They're currently on John McTiernan, a director who has the greatest action movie of all time under his belt (that'd be Die Hard) and a few other incredible classics (Predator, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard With A Vengeance) and more than a few massive swings and misses (The Last Action Hero, Medicine Man, Rollerball).  

The Thomas Crown Affair I recall in 1999 was a pretty big, buzzy hit, featuring Pierce Brosnan as an art thief and Rene Russo as an insurance investigator out to prove he did it. It was the steaminess between the two that had audiences flustered and nodding and winking at each other as they exited the theatre.

But, it was 1999, and I was all about The Matrix and The Phantom Menace and Fight Club and Toy Story 2 and The Sixth Sense and Austin Powers and Galaxy Quest and Go and Three Kings and and and.... The Thomas Crown Affair seemed to me a film for the Boomers and not a nerdy kid who was leaning heavily into this new school of filmmakers.

But as a middle aged person, I'm now in the target demographic for The Thomas Crown Affair, and, well, is not aping Brosnan's James Bond in any way, which is the thought I've long held about the film. But that's neither a positive nor negative sentiment.

The story is largely told with Catherine (Russo) as our POV character but it is overloaded with the male gaze. Russo and Brosnan are hottt tttogether, with some mega-sttteamy scenes, but the movie never seemed to know what, tonally, it wanted to be. I could never tell what the film wanted us to think about this couple, if they were playing each other or falling for each other or both. And what were we supposed to get from Leary and Russo's dynamic? The film doesn't seem to know what it wants the audience or the characters to feel about what's going on, and that would works so well if the intention were to put us in Catherine's confused emotional mindstate, but it's too busy ogling her to do so. I mean, yes it was kind of a revolutionary thing for a Hollywood picture to ogle a 45 year old woman in the 90's, but it loses its focal clarity every time it does so.

A large part of the blame on the film's nebulous tone is the Bill Conti score. It's too playful and at times total grated Parmesan, confusing the intention of scenes more than it enhances them, and rarely locking into any particular emotion.

The Dunaway therapy sequences seem like they're from another movie altogether, especially considering the POV is so heavily leaning to Catherine's. These are the only real attempts to get in Thomas's head and each one felt jarring. I'm assuming they were late-stage additions to accommodate the stunt-casting of the female lead from the original 60's version.

While liking parts, I didn't really enjoy this as a whole. As Denis Leary's police detective points out in the end, it's all kind of Rich People BullShit and I think our collective tolerance for RPBS has gone down dramatically in the 25 years since the film came out.

I found myself often wondering about Thomas' manservant Paul (James Saito) and what his life was like outside of Thomas Crown's household. What does he get up to in his days? Does he know about Thomas' illicit activities? Does he like Thomas or is he just hired help and is resentful of this uber entitled prick? Paul is such a non-character, yet such a presence, it was odd we get no sense of who this guy is.

I also wanted much more Frankie Faison. Is there a warmer presence on screen than Franke Faison. Every time he left a room the temperature went down. But there were other thing going on here putting the temperature back up, if ya know what I mean.

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The Blank Check crew have not done David Cronenberg yet, but it's only a matter of time. Cronenberg's films are purposefully lurid and uncomfortable, making them simultaneously attractive and off-putting. I have seen many (but not all) of his films over the years, and there are those that I like, a couple that I really like, a few that disturb me, and maybe one or two that don't work at all.  I would love to step through them all chronologically, but that's a pretty heavy investment that would likely take a dramatic toll on anyone's brain to watch too much Cronenberg in concentrated doses.

I saw C-berg's first two films, Shivers and Rabid, back in the late 90's on cable TV. I was weirded out by both of them and have been meaning to watch them both again ever since. I hadn't seen The Brood before, and to be honest, between these three titles, I keep forgetting which story applies to which title.

The tale here finds a single father, Frank (Art Hindle) picking up his daughter from the wife Nola (Samantha Eggers) he is separated from.  She lives in an experimental psychiatric clinic where the chief psychiatrist, Dr Hal (Oliver Reed) a fully accredited doctor, runs experimental "psychoplasmic" treatment on his patient. When Frank discovers bruises all over his daughter's body he blames the wife and the clinic, and prepares for a legal battle.

It's the 70's so taking a child away from their mother is a tough road to hoe, so Frank starts reaching out to former patients, where he learns that psychoplasmosis turns negative emotions into tumorous lesions which the body tries to expel, but some patients are left hideously deformed. While Frank is away Nola's mother and later her father are killed by a snow-suited child-sized troll-like creature, but when Frank is attacked it kind of "runs out of gas" and dies. The autopsy scene is sans the Cronenbergian gore, but the sheer delight on the medical examiner's face as he dispenses all the weird inhuman details of the creature is so in the director's wheelhouse.

I'm sure in the 1970's the shocking revelation in the final act would have been truly horrifying, but for a modern audience, we see what Cronenberg is telegraphing by the end of the first act. And yet...when it gets to that actual reveal... well it's still shocking. For everything you might have been expecting (and you're probably pretty close to being right) you still weren't prepared for the visuals.

On its surface, it's a pretty silly movie, especially when it comes to the murder sequences, which are anything but intense or scary. It doesn't help that Howard Shore, very early in his scoring career, apes elements of the Psycho soundtrack so blatantly as to feel pale and derivative. 

And yet, it's not a picture so easily dismissable, despite the kind of cheesiness it has. Cronenberg is poking at and peeling away scabs with this one. He's talking about childhood trauma, about parental abuse and an early conception of its cyclical nature. He's talking about mental health and in its nascent years how it is perhaps exploitative (he will come back to the subject again). It is dealing with the intensity of having a partner who is having psychological issues, and what that does to one's own mental well being.  It's not exactly saying anything concrete, but it's opening up the topic for conversation in the midst of a very odd horror film.

The Brood feels entirely a part of Cronenberg's early efforts (or what I recall of them), as if is a member of a loose quartet with Shivers, Rabid, and Scanners. He goes Hollywood after Scanners with Videodrome and The Dead Zone, the Fly and Dead Ringers, which, along with Naked Lunch again feel like a different age of Cronenberg, a bolder, more audacious, still steeped in genre yet less pulpy, more psychological. He's a director that continues to evolve in different phases, and I really need Blank Check to give me the impetus for that start-to-finish watch of his filmography.

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At some point I need to do a stupid boy project watch/rewatch of doppleganger movies. Enemy, Us, Dual, and The Double being the ones that come immediately to mind. I love stories where people discover an alternate version of themself.

British comedian/panel show guest/travel show host/actor/writer/director Richard Ayoade's The Double is less about the discovery another version of themselves than the alternate version descending upon them as a better, more confident, more outgoing, attractive and successful version of them. 

Jesse Eisenberg is an actor I traditionally dislike quite a bit, but I've been finding of late I've been appreciating him much more. He definitely has tendencies in his performances, twitches and quirks and a general way of being that, in larger-scale movies, drives me up the wall. But in a smaller picture like this, or the Art of Self Defense, or Vivarium, I've been pretty comfortable with his performances, maybe even positive towards them.

Here he plays Simon James, the ultimate of ultimate sad sacks. Charlie Brown as a 20-something in the working world, only less self aware and even more depressed, insular and isolated. Everything that can go wrong will when he's around, and he's completely incapable of expressing himself, so he just accepts it. He may be bothered by the world around himself, and his inability to affect change in his own life, but the only regret he seems to have is being unable to talk to the girl at work, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). And then James Simon shows up at work, wearing his face, taking credit for his work, drawing all the attention and respect and admiration, he's the complete opposite of Simon, and yet everything he wishes he could be...until he spends time with James and realizes that James is the worst version of himself, not the best. Like a huge overcorrection, confidence-gone-nuclear.

Aesthetically, this film is 100% my thing. Every frame of it. With the inspiration of Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, this turns to brutalist interiors, severely cold and sterile environments full of archaic-looking technology with limited use, scant buttons, and lots of oversized cabling protruding from it.  It's retro-futuristic but as if Russia won the Cold War in the 1970s and left it to the oligarchs to keep society running.

My biggest hang-up with the film is the trop of the socially awkward introvert obsessing over, stalking and creating a narrative in his head about a girl, and then winning over that girl? It's problematic wish fulfillment. Ayoade seems aware of this problem, even has Hannah call it out explicitly, yet Simon doesn't really achieve any self-awareness of his behaviour or express genuine remorse for it. I get that Simon thinks he sees in Hannah, through his telescope, someone sad and lonely like him that he can relate to- another ghost of a person- but that's the fantasy a socially awkward introvert does build within their mind when they start obsessing over someone else they don't truly know because they've never truly interacted with them in any meaningful way. I've been that guy (to a much lesser and creepier degree) so I understand Simon pretty well. But here, in presenting Simon's illicit observations of Hannah's persona as truth, and it becomes a dangerous cliche to uphold, validating the idea that obsession from a demure introvert is harmless or comes from a place of good intentions. The film denies Simon a lesson in how his behaviour, as innocent and innocuous he believes it to be, should have actual consequences.

I liked it a lot but with complex reservations.

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I talked about reading Darwyn Cooke's adaptations of certain volumes of Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)'s Parker series of novels when I reviewed the most recent adaptation of the character into an ill-fitted Jason Statham vehicle. Payback, written and directed by Brian Helgeland, imagines Mel Gibson as Westlake's tough guy with a moral code.

The film was originally released in 1999, but in a heavily compromised form. A simple search of it all finds that Gibson, an Oscar-winning director, was asserting his then mega-watt starpower over Helgeland and ultimately had the writer-director removed once principle shooting was completed. Rewrites were made and reshoots were done, and a compromised film was released that much less resembled Westlake's The Hunter. It was still a modestly successful film at the box office, but I don't know that it left a lasting impact on anyone.

But Helgeland somehow managed to get control back a half decade later, with a re-edit and tightening of the picture getting it close to his original intent and much, much closer to Parker as a character and The Hunter as a story.

This "Straight Up" edition is actually fairly remarkable in its faithfulness to the rhythms of the story (as I know it at least through the Cooke graphic novel adapataion). There may be some tweaks for it's setting 40 years in the future of the late-1990s but it feels in spirit with the story.

It finds Gibson's Porter (not "Parker" as Westlake notoriously refused anyone using the name without committing to multiple pictures, something his family should have posthumously kept true to for the awful Statham picture) having just returned to New York after 5 months away. He was betrayed by his wife and his partner after a job, shot in the back twice and left to bleed out and die. 

Hale and healthy, he's back for his cut of the money his partner stole, but the man used it to pay his way into The Outfit, the top tier of organized crime in NYC. It doesn't matter to Porter who has his money, he's going to collect it from someone. The film finds him weaving his way through his past life and the networks of New York, with one singular goal in mind.

It's a very brisk and enjoyable production. I read up on the differences between the "Straight Up" edition and the 1999 cut, and it seems worlds apart. Parker is a man of a very specific code of conduct, and he's also a man of little emotion. Porter is the same, only a bit more emotional. Where Parker is very cunning, tough-as-nails, and a bit of a hulking brute (and a total prick), Gibson's Porter is a bit more of a stumbler, less cunning, tough, but not hulking (Gibson is not a big man). Gibson strives for the emotionlessness of the character from the page, but can't help but emote. It's in his nature as a performer, so he reveals more of a softer side to Porter, but in facial expression only.Porter is also less of the tank that Parker is, and he feels more like a loose cannon than a man fully in control. It's just what Gibson brings to the role.  It does get pretty uncomfortable watching Gibson slap his wife in the film around. Very uncomfortable. It's true to Parker, but also true to Gibson, so, ick.

But, stepping out of that meta-aspect, good movie. I would love a stupid boy project marathon of all the other Parker adaptations from the 60s and 70s but none are readily available to stream or rent, except maybe Gross Point with Lee Marvin (who seems like a total Parker to me).