Stubbing Out: Samara & Karl/Kyle

Eenie Meanie, 2025, Shawn Simmons (primarily a writer; directorial debut) -- Disney+
Carolina Caroline, 2025, Adam Rehmeier (Snack Shack) -- download

Well, fuck. I had it all planned out in my mind, and I thought I had properly confirmed it, but apparently Samara Weaving was not starring in two star-crossed lovers, back-water America, crime stories with the same guy. Turns out, Karl Glusman (Eenie Meanie) and Kyle Gallner (Carolina Caroline) are not the same actor.

But, same look in each movie, same initials... there is something going on here.

My original intent was to, and I doubt it would become a new tag, but begin the write up(s) just after I started the movie(s). I often watch movies, these days, in fits & starts: with week day morning coffee, and just after I get up on weekends. Life interrupts. Occasionally, when doing so, I like to put in a "stub" post, to capture what I was thinking as I watched, even before completing the movie. Given this post was going to be about two movies, I tagged that onto the post title.

Original original intent aside, the plan will still goes, just with no comparing about how odd it was for Samara, and really she is the star power here, to be in two very similar movies with the same co-star. She is still in two very similar movies, in genre if not tone, about people on the ass-end of American life making terrible crime-ridden life choices.

Samara Weaving started her career, in my eyes, as "not Margot Robbie" but came into her own, again in my mind, in a 31 Days choice of The Babysitter -- for some reason, I did not do proper credit-ing in that post. Not long after, she stood out again in Ready or Not. She hasn't been a Margot Robbie stand-in, in my mind, for quite a long time, which makes her role in Babylon all the more amusing.

Karl Glusman will always be, to me, Sergei from Devs but that is because I never saw any of his previous projects. The Internet loved his threesome in Love, a Gaspar Noé movie --- odd note, Kent references his movie Enter the Void at least three times in other posts, but neither of us wrote about it.

Kyle Gallner doesn't really have any prevalence in my mind. He's just one of those ten million character actors that have played a single episode of all the TV crime dramas and just enough roles in movies that I recognize his face. I guess his only stand-out, to me, would be "Beaver" from Veronica Mars some 20 odd years ago, but he was a kid then.

***

Edith, or Edie, Meade (Weaving) was raised by two degenerate drug-using criminals. When she was 14, she picked them up from a bar and while attempting to escape the cops, crashes the car, killing her mother and paralysing her father. She spends the rest of her youth in the usual abusive foster system, in Cleveland. After escaping that, she ended up back in the seedy crime-ridden underbelly of her parents. The movie begins when she has escaped that, going to school, keeping a job. But what she hasn't escaped is her on-again off-again relationship with John (Glusman), who is a complete loser.

We are introduced to Edie in a nightclub; she is supposed to be the typical skanky but smart girl, wanting to go home early so she can study. I don't buy Weaving's American skank -- she's just too statuesque. But she's a bad girl wanting to go straight: school, shit car, shit boss, shit job at a bank, which gets robbed and Edie is knocked unconscious. When she awakens at the hospital, she finds she is pregnant, and that means a hard decision: should she talk to John (Glusman), her ex, the father, or should she avoid him.

She should have avoided him. She walks straight into his shit show, where he owes Nico the Mob Boss (Andy Garcia, Wrath of Man) and she has to put her legendary driving skills back into action. In the intervening years between the car crash and her going to school, Edie was a driver for Nico, a very very good driver. But John is her Achilles Heel, an entire mess of a human being, stupider than pavement, but able to charm Edie in ways she cannot control.

John had kidnapped Nico's card counter, a man who makes Nico a lot of money. Then the card counter is accidentally killed, and now John owes Nico all the money the card counter could have potentially made. Edie has two options: help John on a job for Nico that could recoup the money, or let.... John... die. We wouldn't have a movie if Edie didn't love John, trainwreck and all.

What plays out in tragi-comedy is a fun mish-mash of violence and stupidity and adrenaline, from the guy who did the YouTube / TV show Wayne, a violent little romp about a high school kid on bicycle trying to get his dad's car back. John continues to make bad decisions, Edie ends up having to make some really hard decisions.

I would do some comparisons to specific car chase and/or heist movies, but we know the tone. There are tense chase scenes, avoidances and bone-jarring crashes. There are betrayals and murders that don't sit well with Edie. Its all familiar ground, but... I rather enjoyed it. Weaving wraps herself in the role, and unlike the next one, it is not as enamoured with her statuesque body. We get most of her performance from her eyes, sad and disappointed most of the time, hard and determined when needed.

***

Caroline (Weaving) opens the movie alone, carjacking her ride, driving off into the sun. She is going to end up here, but where we really meet her first is a gas filling station in Texas where the makeup-lite Caroline (code for innocent, unworldly) observes customer Oliver (Gallner) con the gas station owner out of $20. She's annoyed he would take money out of the hands of another; he is amused she caught his con so quickly.

Later they bump into each other at a roadhouse, she is surprised he is still in "town". Why would anyone stay in her little bumpkin speck-on-the-road of a town? She, of course, is desperate to get out. Commenting leads to flirting, flirting leads to dating and dating leads to sharing -- Caroline's mother left her when she was young, and she has always wanted to go to Carolina, where she believes her mother is, to ask why. She's also mesmerized by his little con jobs, and asks him to show her how its done. They are taken with each other, but you are always left wondering how much of their interaction is him controlling the beautiful blonde in front of him, but I remember the opening scene where she is alone, and wonder whether she is manipulating him from the very start.

When they do couple-crime dramas, the go-to is Bonnie & Clyde but this is more akin to True Romance but without all the Tarantino quirkiness. Its romantic, its exciting, its tense. 

By midway through the movie, things have escalated. Simple $100 cash shuffling has become large sums of money, has become lifting wallets and emptying bank accounts, has become... robbing banks. Caroline wants more: more excitement, more cash, more slinky outfits. That is, until she sees the darker side of what they are doing: the fear they generate, the intimidation and violence they have to use to keep things going -- the harsh cruelty that keeps Oliver moving along so he can do the next job. Caroline likes it when its fun & exciting, not so much when they have to pistol whip someone. That escalation also brings real life into play, and they are on a Wanted List.

Reality has Caroline question where's she from, so the original intent of the road trip, before the con jobs, before the slinky dresses, before the bank robberies, was to find her mother in Carolina. But we all know how those visits turn out... Meeting Deborah (Kyra Sedgwick, Bad Shabbos) for 10am screw drivers is not a pleasant experience and Sedgwick is incredible in this pretty-much cameo, eliciting waves of revulsion from the way she holds her chin and the words vomiting out of her mouth. But, instead of a call to her Daddy and a wake-up call, she asks Oliver if they can rob the world.

"How do we know if we are good people pretending to be bad, or bad people pretending to be  good?"

Their world comes crashing down pretty quickly, and hard. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't provide much breathing room for neither us, nor the couple. Caroline should have just taken the time to absorb the reality of her mother, but instead it leads to the death of a state trooper and, finally, Oliver taking Death by Cop so Caroline can escape. TBH I was imagining he would abandon her, to return to his life of lone con jobs, but I guess he really did love her.

So, two stories with similar paths, similar bad decisions, both ending with Weaving's characters alone and expecting. Two entirely different tones. The first is more my thing; my days of being charmed by violence-crossed lovers out against the world are gone. Like Edie, I have grown out of that. But the latter was a competently done story and I cannot fault it for anything, including the familiar story, because telling the same story over and over again is how the telling of tales is done.

KWIF(3): City Hunter (+2)

 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 29 through 31.

This Week:
City Hunter (2024, d. Yuichi Satoh - netflix)
Seven Psychopaths (2012, d. Martin McDonagh - tubi)
What's Up, Doc? (1972, d. Peter Bogdanovich - tubi)

---

After watching Jackie Chan in City Hunter, I started to inquire into what other City Hunter adaptations were out there. I had no idea there was a Netflix-produced mid-budget feature released just two years ago... but then again, why would I? Anime/manga properties are not my wheelhouse by any means, so why would I be paying attention to adaptations of them? 

Anyway, here we have a modern take on the franchise which finds Ryohei Suzuki playing horny PI Ryo Saeba.  We're introduced to him via a hero shot of him standing on a rooftop..but with binoculars ogling girls in bikinis at the bath house across the way. Acting as a sort of origin point for the City Hunter story (as so many comic or cartoon adaptations like to do, rather than, you know, just present a new adventure of this already well-established character), Ryo's partner, Makimura is killed as fallout from a case they are working on together.  Makimura asks Ryo to look out for his sister, Kaori (Misato Morita).  Makimura's death relates not just to the missing persons case they were working on, but a larger story about an experimental drug that gives its users super strength and agility, but also extreme rage, temporarily, before killing them, and it's being tested on street kids. This is all the product of an international criminal cartel called The Union, and, the story relates, improbably, to Kaori origins as Makimura's adopted sister as well (this is really a nothing thread and did not need to exist).

The film jostles back and forth between being a goofy, horny comedy, with Suzuki ably letting his freak-flag-fly (this is after all the star of Hentai Kamen: The Forbidden Superhero, look it up...or better yet, don't?) and heavy melodrama, and the two do not mesh well together.  It feels so emulative of the the last 20 years of comic book cinema, all the hoary overused tropes are there...and it would be one thing if this adaptation of City Hunter were lampooning such tropes, maintaining a consistent comedic bent throughout, but it does not. So when a depressed and angry Kaori starts following Ryo around the darker edges of Tokyo society, he winds up bringing her into his world...which involves showing him performing a "Mokkari Dance" on stage, a hyper, horny male burlesque show of sorts. While the Chan version of City Hunter may have not been the purest adaptation either, it at least found a tone and stuck to it.

Suzuki is perhaps the ideal Ryo, a very, very good looking guy with charm to spare who can easily flip the switch to salivating pervert and flip it off again to look the dashing hero and very ably perform some really fun choreographed fight sequences (one sequence finds him fighting an assassin while also fending off tranq darts fired by a sniper, all taking place at a cosplay modelling show, while having a giant stuffed horse head mounted on his crotch... it's the right tone, loaded with inventiveness and humour that most of the other fairly well-done action set-pieces lack, instead making them too straight.)

Also unlike the Chan movie, the women of this adaptation are a little less capable, a little more damsels...maybe not in distress, but also not the ass kickers we saw in the Hong Kong adaptation. It is pretty funny though that the only women in this movie that seem legit charmed by Ryo are the many, many sex workers he obviously frequents (and who are paid to be charmed). Every other woman seems somewhat put off by him, if not immediately upon meeting him then soon thereafter.

The things that work here really work, and when they're working it's quite a lot of fun. But whenever it falls into the trap of trying to be "real" it just comes undone. A sequel has been greenlit, which I hope means that they get a second chance to try harder at making this a full-on action-comedy series about a horny detective and the women who tolerate him because he's so damn capable.

---

Martin McDonagh is primarily a well-regarded Irish playwright. His turn to film -- which is almost like a hobby he's dabbled in over the past 18 years -- has been likewise pretty well-regarded.  His first short film, Six Shooter, won him an Oscar, which led to his first feature length film, In Bruges. It was a film I didn't respond to at the time but has a sizable cult following (plus I've heard at least a few film nerds cite as their favourite film, ever). His third film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a major awards contender in 2017 and a massive success despite its dark subject matter (I didn't see it, but Toasty did) . The Banshees of Inishirin was a critical darling in 2023, and I liked it quite a bit. His second film, 2012's Seven Psychopaths is kind of the outlier, a bit pulpier and more divisive.

The setup here finds L.A.-based screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell) who has literally nothing but a title for his overdue screenplay, "Seven Psychopaths". He's best friends with Billy (Sam Rockwell) whose current job is stealing dogs from parks, waiting for reward posters to go up, and his partner, Hans (Christopher Walken in prime form) returns them. Billy steals the wrong dog one day, taking the beloved shih-tzu of mobster Charlie (Woody Harrelson).

Of these characters I mentioned, only one of them is labelled as one of the seven psychopaths when we first meet them, but eventually a couple more will be a part of the seven. The remaining psychopaths are part of the stories told to Marty as he's trying to fill out his screenplay, with Billy providing a story or two and a stranger, Zachariah (Tom Waits), responding to an ad, tells his dark tale.

The script is, at times, very funny, quite punchy, but also at times too clever to the point of cutesy and annoying. I'm frankly tired of stories centred around script writers, because all too often stories about script writers start to get meta about talking about the actual scriptwriter, and get too lost in the idea that there's something laborious or glorious about the process of writing. Here, more than once, Marty talks about how he wants a certain type of pacifist psychopath protagonist or placid tone for his movie, while Billy desires much more a splashy, guns-blazing type of tale. So naturally we get both. *Wink*  

McDonagh also blurs the line between screenplay and screenplay-within-a-screenplay a few times, telling stories that are just tales that turn out to be true within the context of the film, or a story that just can't be cracked. As sharp as McDonagh can be, the agonies of a writer are not that exciting.

Farrell is sort of promoted as the lead but is a passive passenger in the film. A somewhat hapless guy with a drinking problem that he refuses to admit is a problem, he kind of lets things happen around him without intervening. Rockwell is more in charge, certainly spewing the most lines and having the most fingers in the plot pot. Walken is magnificent, and there's probably a better movie if he's just our central figure. 

It's definitely not neo-Tarantino, and we should be thankful for that. There's something more at the root of it that McDonagh is looking for with this story than just a off-brand Coen Brothers mobster picture, but I don't know that he ever finds it.

---

I have only ever seen one other Peter Bogdanovich film. It was The Last Picture Show, a "new Hollywood" classic which I watched, and neither enjoyed nor appreciated much back in 2019. I don't think I've ever seen a Barbara Streisand movie before, but, growing up, Streisand was still an important pop culture figure even if you didn't listen to her music or see her films. You just knew who she was.

I have, however, seen quite a few works of screenwriter (and also actor and director) Buck Henry. Get Smart was fundamental to the development of my sense of humour. He's one of three screenwriters credited on the Bogdanovich-directed, Streisand-starring What's Up, Doc? (with story by Bogdanovich) but you can definitely tell what Henry contributed to the film.

The story finds Ryan O'Neal's handsome but drab musicologist Howard Bannister arriving in San Francisco with his drab and dour fiance, Eunice (Madeline Kahn) to attend a special dinner party where he will lobby for a research grant. Upon checking in he's spied by Judy Maxwell (Streisand) a creature of id, who cherchez l'homme right into a drugstore where she forces a meet-cute upon them and proceeds to both attempt to woo and grift him.  We were introduced to Judy mere moments before as she followed a man carrying pizzas perhaps through San Fran traffic causing many a scene...her stomach motivating her more than common sense.

Judy and Howard just so happen to have the same plaid duffel bag, and it also just so happens that another hotel guest also has the same bag.  He's just arrived from the airport where he's collected the bag, which is revealed to be full of top secret documents. He's been followed the whole time by a man who is very poor at being discreet and yet still doesn't blow his cover (we're not sure for some time who is the good spy and who is the bad spy in this scenario). Meanwhile a fourth guest at the hotel, a posh, upperclass elderly woman also has the same overnight bag, only this one's stuffed with jewels. The hotel clerk has shady colleague who he is colluding with the steal the jewels before they're locked up in the safe.

So the thrust of the film is two-fold, Judy is almost criminally forcing herself into Harold's dull, dull existence, shaking everything up and spraying it all over the walls, floor, ceiling and anything touching them. And then there's the game of bags being played like three-card monte, as people come in and out of the hotel rooms mixing up the bags that makes it almost impossible to keep track of which one's where at any given time.

The Buck Henry influence finds a tremendous amount of quick-talking characters who have the snappiest responses, taking them out of the sphere of normal and into something quite other. And then there's the situational comedy of it all, which together with the dialogue, feels so Get Smart adjacent to me. The film escalates into a chase sequence across San Francisco which doesn't get into Blues Brothers level of chaos (nothing else really does) but still is quite chaotic and features an extended sequence within playing with the gags of smashing a pane of glass and knocking a guy off a ladder.

Streisand as Judy is iconic. Her blue eyes have such a majestic twinkle, a little devilishness that is very flirty and sexy. She is a poster child for ADHD. There's not as much chemistry between her and O'Neal as one would hope, mainly because he's meant to be fighting his attraction for the entire picture (but mid-way, when a kiss just so happens to occur, well, it's an all-time cinematic kiss, as opposed to the one at the end pales direly in comparison). 

What's Up, Doc? is straight up a zany comedy that just so happens to have a little bit of romance. It's not a romantic comedy, which is truly unfortunate. We don't ever really see the moment where Harold falls in love with Judy, just the moment where he gives in to her, mostly because they're too busy dealing with the swapped bags and angry gangsters and other sub-plots that have nothing to do with the romance. 

There's a lot to like, little to dislike, just a desire for a little more of what we don't get.

KWIF: a grab bag of film across decades

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. I suppose the big watch of this week is the long-awaited release of Kill Bill as a single feature, but, well, we'll get into it. The best watch this week was certainly The Outfit, but I think I may have been one of very few who were eager to get the new Arrow blu-ray in my grubby little hands.

This Week:

In the Blink of an Eye (2026, d. Andrew Stanton - disney+)
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2004, d. Quentin Tarantino - blu-ray)

Mars Attacks! (1996, d. Tim Burton - tubi)
Def-Con 4 (1985, d. Paul Donovan, Digby Cook - tubi)

The Outfit (1973, d. John Flynn - blu-ray)

---

Director Andrew Stanton's In the Blink of an Eye went direct to streaming on Hulu/Disney+ earlier this with absolutely no fanfare, unlike his other film Toy Story 5 whose marketing campaign was inescapable and has made over a billion dollars at the international box office (it's not quite pulling Spider-Man: Brand New Day numbers, but hey, second place and a billion-plus dollars ain't too shabby). There's no real point in comparing Stanton's two 2026 releases, as they are vastly different films with vastly different styles and intentions.

This film takes place in three different time periods. The first is in 47,000 BC, which follows the life of neanderthal Thorn (Jorge Vargas), his pregnant mate Hera (Tanaya Beatty), and his children Lark (Skywalker Hughes, real name) and Ebb. The second tracks the life of anthropology grad student Claire Robertson (Rashida Jones) and her relationship with stats major Greg (Daveed Diggs) in modern times. The third takes place aboard a space ship in the 2400s with Coakley (Kate McKinnon) making a centuries-long trip to a new planet with the fate of humanity at stake, her only companion the onboard AI Rosco (also Rashida Jones...I think?).

There's not a specific storyline being told across these three eras, but more exploring all the elements of what it means to live, to be human. There family bonds, and romantic bonds, and friendship. There's fear and anxiety, there's pain, physical and emotional.  There's sex and pleasure and awkwarness. There's birth, and death, there's disease and healing, there's community and evolution, support and trade, and so much more.

The film presents this journey through these moments of existence without any specific linear narrative to them as a whole, thought there are arcs for the characters, each whose stories span decades. Stanton and screenwriter Colby Day present parallels across the three different eras such that what one character is going through in one era, another is dealing with something similar in a different era. The point obviously being that these human conditions are eternal and not unique to any specific time or reality.

These jumps across time aren't always the cleanest or clearest (for instance, I didn't pick up on the fact that Claire and Greg were supposed to be students, not professors or researchers or whatever, basically playing about 20 years younger when we first meet them), but even if some of the nuance is lost, it's not hard to track the emotional storytelling Stanton is working towards. 

It's all underpinned by a Thomas Newmann score which is ever present and would be just as suitable for a relaxing massage or a yoga session. It's truly a vibes based movie, there's no heighted drama nor any specific action to raise the blood pressure. It's rapid journey through time across eras is meant to be reflective, not impactful, and at times I was genuinely moved by what I was feeling. That said, I was also bored at times. Both can be true.

It's so specifically constructed that it seems that Stanton achieved exactly what he wanted with this, but it's no WALL-E or Finding Nemo.

In the Blink of an Eye has not been a warmly received movie critically and it's already been buried in the Disney+ streaming catalogue to the point that it seems the only way to find it is to search for it directly. I don't know that it deserves to be so quickly dismissed, but it's also such a specific mood piece that I find it hard to recommend.

---

I've been waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair pretty much since Tarantino first mentioned it when Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out in 2004. I understood that the intention of splitting Kill Bill into two volumes was a Weinstein money move, but I always thought Kill Bill would be presented as the whole it was intended to be once it got to home video. I really didn't think it would take over two decades for that to happen. I've never owned Kill Bill on physical media solely because I was waiting, even though, at a certain point, I assumed it was just never going to happen.

And now, after a brief theatrical run (which I missed due to life's poor timing), The Whole Bloody Affair is here on 4k/Blu-ray and...it really doesn't feel that different than watching Kill Bill as two separate movies.

This home video release still breaks the film up across two discs, but instead of there being closing credits after the Bride's wintery duel with O-ren Ishii, it cuts to an intermission title card and song. Unlike back in the laserdisc days where a screen caption would instruct you to flip the disc or insert the next one, here, after the intermission ends the disc cuts back to the menu screen. Sub-optimal. Disc two then autoplays on its own jumping right into the longer portion of the film.

I've always enjoyed the first "volume" of Kill Bill more than the second. The first 110 minutes are so propulsive, energetic and dazzling, with incredible choreographed fight sequences and a flashy anime sequence exploring O-Ren's backstory (what became readily apparent in the recompiling of the two volumes is that this whole bloody affair winds up being a 4-hour-plus movie. None of the other characters get such a detailed back story as O-Ren, not even Beatrix Kiddo, so the whole anime backstory feels utterly extraneous when presented as a single unit).  

The next 140 minutes (credits are 20 minutes of that, including both end credit sequences from Volumes 1 & 2) are much, much slower paced, all leading the the final hour where The Bride finally finds Bill, spends time with the child she didn't know survived, and then, fulfills the title contract.  There are some excellent moments in this. The Bride's flashback to her 1-inch-punch training and her escape from her buried coffin, her fight with Elle Driver in that trailer home, and Thurman's excellent performance upon seeing her child for the first time. But when there's a four-hour run-time Budd's sorry life at the strip club or Bill's extended speechifying (especially his whole "Superman" speech) feels like unnecessary indulgence from the director.

I still really like Kill Bill generally, but somehow, for me, it worked better as two films than one. Two films feels like it has the appropriate room to breathe. As one, I start checking the clock and contemplating what seems unnecessary. 

I have covered Tarantino a fair amount on this blog, including a full rewatch and ranking back in 2019 (just after Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood premiered) where I ranked Vol 1&2 as a whole in second place of Tarantino's works. I'm not sure I would put it in that same position now (probably bumped down to 4th).  

I don't think I've watched a Tarantino movie since I wrote that rewatch and ranking post (though I read his books, and I did listen to his podcast until it went up behind a paywall). Part of it is I've been more focused on new experiences with my film watching this decade, and the other part is, I think, maybe my fandom has tempered in my middle age.  Perhaps Tarantino's shift from filmmaker to film critic/podcaster (aka the Kevin Smith track) lessens the allure. Perhaps his lack of new features lessens my interest to revisit the old ones. Perhaps I was sated with 25 years of fandom and I've moved on.  Perhaps I've seen roughly a thousand movies since I did that rewatch and ranking and I'm more versed in Tarantino's influences and I'm starting to see the seams. We'll see how I feel about the Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood pseudo-sequel Cliff Booth Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed this fall.

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary (!), Mars Attacks! was seen as both a bomb and a blunder upon release, but has become a cult classic in the intervening years. 

There was only so much story to tell in adapting a series of trading cards into a movie, but Burton's enthusiasm for this production seems to rival his earliest efforts like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.  

I only have a passing familiarity with the trading cards, but it seems evident by the film's lack of direct narrative coherence that Burton was using the imagery from the cards as his guide in constructing the project.

While it flirts with the idea of being a Dr. Strangelove-esque political/social satire, it doesn't commit that hard to the bit. It wants to have too much fun with the "Ack-ack"-ing aliens (watching with the subtitles on and reading along is great!) and their giddy bloodlust for the destruction of the human race, alongside their many institutions and totems.

The digital effects, still pretty new at rapidly evolving the time, have a clumsiness to them that, I'm sure in 1996 and 2006 and probably 2016 seemed kind of atrocious compared to the advances in the technology that would follow, but in 2026 the clumsiness of the digital effects is part of the charm. Just as the film itself was throwing back to the 1950's, now it feels like the effects are a part of the intentional throwback charm.

There's a rich celebrity roster here, with Jack Nicholson taking the forefront in two roles, one as the president of America, the other as a rich Texan looking to get into the casino game in Vegas. Glenn Close plays the wife of the former, while Annette Benning is the partner of the latter. Natalie Portman is the First Daughter, while Michael J Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker play a couple who are also competing news reporters. Lucas Haas is a sweet rural kid who loves his grandma with dementia, while his 'Murica-loving trailer-park parents played by Joe Don Baker and O-Lan Jones disapprove of his sweetness and wish he was more like his jarhead brother, played by very young Jack Black (Christina Applegate plays Jack Black's girlfriend in pretty much an unspeaking role). Legends Jim Brown and Pam Grier play an estranged couple, Rod Steiger is a pro-war military general, Pierce Brosnan is a peace-loving scientist, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones, Martin Short, Salma Hayak and more also appear.  It's just a ridiculously stacked cast playing characters who have no real ark, almost all serving the purpose as being laser-fire fodder for the aliens (voiced by Frank Welker).

The joy of Mars Attacks! is the unfettered glee of the ultra silly aliens joyously destroying humanity (they're proto-Minions in their comically violent antics), and then conversely the icky fun of seeing these nuisance creatures heads get squishe or splattered into a spray of green goo.

It's pure ridiculousness, right up until the notorious finale when it's discovered that Slim Whitman's warble is the alien's surprise weakness (it's a delightful play on War of the Worlds mundane fix for the invasion, and a far better turn than, say, Signs).  Don't think too hard about anything, in fact don't think at all.

This thing should be in the Criterion Collection and I should have it in the binders.

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Back in the days of video stores, many, many movies -  most of them in the sci-fi or horror genre - were sold completely by the cover art of the box on the shelf. So many incredible - usually painted - images that just struck the eye, got stuck in the mind and inspired the brain to go to wild, wild places that, inevitably, the film in the case never actually takes you to.

The box art for Def-Con 4 was a staple in every video store I can remember going to (were Canadian video shops mandated to have this as part of their Canadian Content?) That image of the downed satellite looming large in the background and a space suit with a skeleton inside in the foreground I'm sure was responsible for thousands of thousands of rentals. I never did get to it though. Perhaps the reputation that the movie didn't live up to the box art spread across playground and high school hallways?

Def-Con 4 was brought up recently in an interview with Blackberry/Nirvanna The Band The etc... director Matt Johnson and that image immediately flooded my mind. In my (unfortunately only) recent interest in Canadian film I put it on the to-watch list.

It's a garbage nonsense movie about the end of civilization as we know it. It starts in space as a crew aboard a defence satellite catch word that Libya has hijacked a US ship armed with nuke and are setting them off. Or something. They eventually respond unleashing their payload. Humanity is decaying rapidly under the fallout, or, at least, TV has gone off the air (same thing).

This opening sequence which simultaneously moves too quickly and drags on far too long, seems like its setting up the film's trio of astronaut protagonists, and trying to give us something akin to insight into their motivations for being on this mission in space and hints as to their life back home, but it's so awkwardly written, we're not ever sure what we're supposed to take from all this jumbled info. One of the crew, Commander Cecil Howe, wants to return back to his wife (even though she's been quarantined for some illness and the baby is dead and the radiation is going to kill everyone anyway). But after re-entry they crash land off-course and on a beach. One of them is taken immediately by cannibals, J.J. is left inside unconscious and concussed while Howe looks for help.

Howe is immediately captured by Vinny McKinnon (Maury Chaykin) who threatens to kill him, but he decides to make a trade for supplies on his capsule. Vinny has also kidnapped Alice (Donna King) , and now we have our trio of protagonists who... oh, nevermind. They get kidnapped by a military regime led by a petty, preppy high school student (Kevin King) who is mostly just upset his girlfiend (Alice) left him.  

This post-apocalyptic wasteland is so, so pathetic as to be far more banal than scary.  The rhythms of this are so familiar (it's somehow not all that different than, like, 28 Days Later) and yet it's so underbaked as to basically be raw elements with little to no investment in the characters. The only real drama is the tension between  teenagers Gideon Hayes and Alice and they're like the fourth and fifth leads of this film.

Its Canadianness shines through in, mostly, the worst ways possible, mostly in production value, but also scripting and performance and editing where it feels like multiple takes were just not possible within the budget so they had to deal with what one or two takes got them (I don't know this for sure, but that's sure what it seems like).

The only redeeming quality of this is one absolutely out of place scene where Howe catches some bad guys by surprise and tells them at gunpoint to get off the boat, and then the guys keep reaching for their guns and Howe keeps telling them to stop reaching for the guns. It's a silly farce that seems straight out of The Naked Gun, and I can only imagine how entertaining this would have been had they leaned into this type of humour throughout.  Alas.

That poster, though, remains incredible.

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One of my slow-burn projects on this blog of late has been to watch all the adaptations that have been made of the Parker novels.  The character, written under Donald E. Westlake's pen-name, was a relative unknown commodity to me until I read the incredible comic book adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke. Reading those lit a Parker fire under me (though, not even close to being enough to actually read the novels.... Reading?  Bleh. Who even reads anymore. Given the stats on this blog, like, a dozen people?).

There are a few adaptations that are just out there, readily available, from the two versions of Payback,  the awful Jason Statham film, to the stone cold classic Lee Marvin joint Point Blank ,to the most recent attempt I can't bring myself to watch (yet). Then there's the ones you have to deep dive for, like Slayground, Made in the USA, Pillaged, The Split and this one, The Outfit.

Robert Duvall isn't exactly the mind's eye perfect Parker (or Parker analog). The character is described as a big, broad beast of a man, shaggy and expressionless. The only actor who has portrayed him that really fits the description is Lee Marvin, but even then, he's maybe not as dangerous looking as Westlake described him. I'm not exceptionally experienced with Duvall's filmography, but everything I have seen him in, he's been incredible. I don't think he could take a wrong step if he tried. He's a true character actor, disappearing into a role. There's no specific type for Duvall, as such, despite lacking height or width or the big block fists described on the page, Duvall's Eddie Macklin kind of makes for the most screen accurate Parker in every other context.

Macklin is so, so cold in this film, but for the briefest moments of fleeting humanity, where an errant emotion flashes on his face but then disappears.  We meet Macklin coming out of jail, being picked up by a former lover, Bett (Karen Black), who informs him that his brother's been murdered. She was responsible for giving him up after being tortured. The Outfit, it turns out, was not happy with the fact that Macklin, his brother and their accomplice Cody (Joe Don Baker) hit one of their crooked banks. They're sending a message to everyone.

But Macklin has his own sense of propriety and justice. After getting the jump on some outfit goons he sends a message back. Either they pay up 250K for murdering his brother, or else he keeps hitting them, and hitting them hard, doing what no right-minded thief would do. A joint is a joint, and they all can be hit up. All's fair as far as Macklin's concerned. The heat bears down on him, Cody and Bett, but if he feels it he doesn't let on, and while Bett wants to get out, Cody is ride-or-die. It's not that he's a tactical genius or that shrewd in his calculating. He's just determined to get what he wants, his drive and motivation trump anything else.

While not the most elegantly directed movie, nor the prettiest, Duvall leads a pretty exceptional cast on a an uncommon journey. Knowing that Macklin doesn't have a plan gives the story an anything-can-happen vibe and you're never quite sure what's next on the agenda, or at times, exactly how Macklin is going to get out of a situation.  Whatever the code is that he operates by has an internal logic in the film, and it creates ample surprises and unique moments.

I've been searching for The Outfit for some time, and the new Arrow Video release, full of special features diving into Westlake's history as well as the film's history makes for a very welcome release. It's maybe not a "classic" in the strictest sense but it's certainly a forgotten gem worthy of rediscovery.

KWIF: Supergirl (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
Supergirl (2026, d. Craig Gillespie - in theatre)
They Will Kill You (2026, d. Kirill Sokolov - crave)
We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021, d. Jane Schoenbrun - blu-ray)

When it comes to a superhero movie my longtime habit has been to go in feeling totally optimistic, hopeful, and rooting for its success. I want to be entertained, I want to see the comics characters I know brought to life, and I want other's to feel inspired.  I love comics. I love movies. I want this marriage to work.

I even felt this way going into the dregs of the 1990s like the Shaquille O'Neal-starring Steel and batnippled Batman and Robin all the way to modern lumps like Vin Diesel's Bloodshot or the Rock's superhero vanity project, Black Adam, and virtually everything in-between (and outside of)...  I just want the movie to do justice in bringing these things I like (or love, or even have no emotional connection to) to the cinema. Even if a comic book movie is not financially successful, then I'm happy to take the moral victory if it's a valiant adaptation of the character or story.

This is all to say that I went into Supergirl absolutely ready to champion it, to stand behind it and prop it up, even as critical feedback at large called it middling and muddy. I'm rooting for the James Gunn-led DC universe to succeed, and absolutely loved his Superman last year, so I was ready for another surprise triumph (especially having read the source material Supergirl was being adapted from...more on that later). 

It was once true that a nerd's tolerance for nerd shit tends to be much higher than your average film critic, but these days so many film critics have their nerd bona fides to back their opinions up that it's harder to just outright dismiss their commentary. Even without external critical voices, I have my own internal critical voice now, one that I have a hard time shutting off.

Supergirl opens with a montage of a girl and her dog. Kara Zor-El (Millie Alcock) and her pup Krypto are planet-hopping and bar-hopping for Kara's 23rd birthday. Getting wasted, making messes, just whooping it up to numb the traumatic memories that haunt her. Cousin Clark calls, wishing her the best, but can't hide his concern. Meanwhile Ruthye (Eve Ridley) witnesses the senseless death of her family at the hands of ruthless (no pun intended) brigands. Ruthye picks herself up, dusts herself off, and goes looking for someone who will help her avenge the death of her family. Kara's plastered in a bar on Ruthye's red-sun-baked planet (meaning her powers are waning), dancing to Wet Leg's "Catch These Fists" (piped into the space jukebox via a vintage ipod) when Ruthye announces herself and her intentions, only to be bowled over by some unsavoury dudes, and Kara needing to step in. Ruthye starts following Kara, imploring her to help her, but it's only after Krypto is poisoned by the Brigands as they steal Kara's ship (where did she get a spaceship from anyway?) that Kara and Ruthye's objectives align and adventure awaits them.

The first act of Supergirl, for the most part, is pretty solid. There are a fair amount of needledrops, some superb alien make-up work and special effects, and a largely agreeable and unique sequence aboard a space coach bus. There's life and vitality to this first act that ebbs slowly away as the film progresses past it. It's not a James Gunn film, so it doesn't have his sensibilities, but it almost feels like Craig Gillespie wanted the first act to parrot the James Gunn thing. It's moderately successful, but it's absolutely clear from the first two fight sequences that Gillespie is not comfortable or confident with such sequences and they are neither clean nor easy to follow, and both are quite poorly lit (it's also quite possible that the theatre I was in was dimming their projector, the whole film seemed overly dark). The quality of the action sequences only diminish from there.

The story in Supergirl comes from Tom King and Bilquis Evely's comic-book mini-series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which was King's sci-fi/superhero take on True Grit, but in a episodic format. This film, then, is a copy of a copy, translated from one medium to another and back again, and the degradation in fidelity is palpable. Having watched the Coen Bros. take on True Grit recently, it's a virtual masterpiece that even a dimmed copy should still wind up being somewhat good, possibly even great. While Supergirl isn't outright bad, I struggle to call it good. It's fine. It's a movie.

What last year's Superman had was spirit and humour -- as does True Grit -- but Supergirl lacks these, abandoning much of its humour quickly into the film and never quite finding its spirit. True Grit's tale, especially in the Coens' hands, relies completely on how the characters engage one another. Kara is Rooster Cogburn here, while Ruthye is Mattie, and even though Alcock does the work to make Kara seem like she's been through the wringer and having a tough time coming out the other side, the bond between these two characters doesn't ever get satisfactorily forged, at least not on screen. In True Grit the Coens got a lot of mileage out of Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie, for her primness and eloquence and impression of maturity, that is highlighted against Rooster's inebriated brusqueness ... something that is attempted here with Ridley's Ruthie against Alcock's Kara, but, it's not the focus of the script, so many meaningful things get lost along the way. The lightness of the contrast is lost.

The third member of the True Grit team dynamic was the virtuous lawman La Bouef, and I get the in-name-only joke of substituting bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa) in here, but those are two very different archetypes, and, frankly, Lobo feels kind of shoehorned in here. There's not really any meaningful engagement between Lobo and Kara, and the relationship between Lobo and Ruthye happens largely off screen. The need for set pieces (kind of ugly and muddy setpieces at that) takes the place of having these three characters sit and talk and drink and get to know each other around a (space) campfire. (Momoa's Lobo feels like Momoa doing a Beetlejuice impression... it's fine, but there's no character definition in the script).

The film also falls into repetitive patterns that become quite tiring by the third crest and fall. Kara tells Ruthye to stay behind and be safe only for her not to listen and for Kara (or someone) to have to help her as she gets in over her head.  Or Supergirl loses her powers (instantly) only to gain them back instantly, time and time again. I get it, the Supers are so over-powered that they need such mechanisms to make them vunlerable, but it's the abruptness and repetitiveness that both bother me. The powers should diminish slowly over time, a ticking clock mechanism, while a hail mary recharge may not bring them back full throttle it should always be enough. It's the writings of someone who hasn't spent enough time with the Super-family to understand this.

The main villain is head brigand Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), and he's kind of what everyone's chasing, the maguffin of the comic book, but here they half-heartedly try to develop him into a vile killer who does so for pleasure, and Schoenaerts tries to inject life into the character, but this character, really, should be largely unseen. The less of him, the better. And then the script adds in the fact that the brigands are a men-only club, who kidnap young (it should be noted, human) women to bear them children. It's a play right out of Mad Max:Fury Road but without consulting someone like Eve Ensler to tell them whether they should or not.

As a result, the young girl slave trade casts a pretty bleak pall over an already strapped-for-joy movie. It wallows in the trauma of Kara having lost her family (conveyed in a series of flashbacks that grind the film to a dead halt -- flashbacks are in the comics but handled very differently) and Ruthye's same-but-not experience (in spite of them both having these traumas, the film still isn't able to bond them very well on screen...there's, like, one moment where Kara, silently, realizes this).  Had the film not sidelined Krypto, there would have a been a comic relief chaos agent to make this whole pill easier to swallow. I realize he's also sidelined in the comic and his sidelining is the impetus for Kara to go on this journey in the first place, but comic books have years of character history to draw on and an established universe to traverse, while this film needs to create it all from whole cloth. They could have found something else to trigger Kara and keep Krypto in the picture. 

I wanted to love Supergirl.  As is, I don't really even like it. I do really like this iteration of the character, the attitude that Alcock portrays very well, but the film doesn't serve her too well. I came out of Supergirl feeling like I barely understand this character after spending two hours with her. At the end of the film, Kara returns to Earth, to Metropolis, uncertain of her place in the universe, but ready to find out. Yeah, that's a starting point, not an ending.

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[Warning: spoilers within]

They Will Kill You starts with Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) and her little sister fleeing from an abusive stepfather. He catches up to them quickly, and Asia shoots him. The cops arrive, Asia runs, leaving her sister behind. Conceptually it's a pretty heavy, if quite brief, opening sequence that doesn't make the audience wait long to get to the point.

Asia got caught and served 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of her father, but has felt nothing but guilt over leaving her sister behind. Asia's hired a private investigator to track her sister down, he points her to the Virgil, a New York 9-storey high rise for the wealthy, where her sister was hired as a cleaner, but it has a reputation as being a place where people disappear. There is definitely insinuations of class and race disparities, and the rich being raised up on the the backs of the poor, which all sounds rather heady as subject matter.

And yet, this is just the place setting. This film really doesn't waste its time. It's only about 15 minutes before the first fight sequence happens, and it doesn't let up from there. Whatever inference of social commentary the opening few minutes might have suggested, for the most part they are pushed aside so that we can have a rollicking good time as Asia navigates the Victor's many hallways, passageways, tunnels and shafts, fending off it's blood-hungry elites.

Asia take a job with a fake ID to get into the Virgil, and instantly meets some of the fake-smile bearing residents, the head of services Mrs. Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), and getting a very short tour of the servants quarters on the first floor. She senses she's being watched, so she secures her door. A masked behemoth finds his way into her room regardless and attempts to attack her... only Asia is prepare to fight back. Four more assailants find their way in and Asia defends herself, armed with a sawed off shotgun and a sword. 

When Asia lops off Tom Felton's head, the arterial spray is like a lawn sprinkler, just all directions everywhere. The fight with the remaining assailants is heated and brutal and bloody and very creative. Asia's taking her lumps, but she's surprisingly a warrior, and ready to take everyone on.

There are definite shades of Kill Bill here, not just in the fighting, but in the style, the edits, the pastiche, the title cards and flashbacks. And yet, it's not Tarantino-esque, because this plays as an even greater ode to Sam Raimi. 

The elite of the Victor are immortal devil worshippers who can't truly be killed. They will resurrect and reform if even a flake of skin remains. In one of the film's many incredible sequences, Asia is crawling through a between-floor tunnel system and encounters Sharon (Heather Graham) whose head she lopped off earlier in the film. After a scuffle, Asia blows Sharon's head off, and, moments later the headless body starts charging towards her (just grasping, but unable to see, hear or properly sense Asia's whereabouts). Eventually Asia finds her way to an upward shaft, but doesn't notice Sharon's eyeball, using the optic nerve like a flagella to propel itself through the tunnels to track her. Somehow Sharon's headless body is still receiving the intel, and attempts to charades the information back to the other elites. It's absolutely ridiculous and obscenely delightful. Just as the whole film is.

Much like a Bruce Campbell in an Evil Dead, Zazie Beetz keeps taking her lumps, but also keeps fighting back. She fights for herself, and she fights for her sister, but mostly, she's fighting for our entertainment. The film culminates with Asia fighting Mrs. Woodhouse with a devil-possessed giant boar's head Voltron-ed her own. Just insane, but delirously entertaining.

There's not a tremendous amount of story or character development here, there's no need for it. This is just a wicked fight movie that's having a good time going to comedic extremes, and I'm here for it.

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It would be easy to mistake We're All Going to the World's Fair, which was released in 2021, as a COVID-era production. It's a small film that follows its protagonist, 16-year-old Casey, as she lives her life online, participating in "the World's Fair Challenge".  It's a social media trend that, according to other (in-world, off-brand youtube) streamers, changes you in unexpected ways. Casey films herself strolling around her town, talking to the camera about the changes she's feeling, the disconnecting from herself, the violent and or self-harmful impulses she's feeling. We see Casey dancing alone, or playing baseball by herself. We see her exploring the barn late at night, looking at her father's gun (we're talking an assault weapon here, not a hunting rifle or handgun), and eventually settling on the barn couch, watching not-youtube on the big screen, when a video autoplays a message that is directly for her. It features a still of Casey's face, distorted and melty, alternating with a hastily scribble warning that she is in trouble, and she needs to reach out. 

Jane Shoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow was my favourite film of 2024, an exploration of how media can impact one's sense of identity, and an powerful closeted trans-allegory disguised as a horror film. This, their first feature shows they definitely have a grasp, and maybe even a penchant for media-identity related storytelling (their third film, this year's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma looks to be yet another, different and provocative take on this dynamic).  We see Casey not just through her videos, but also as she's making her videos, and when she's not making her videos she's engaging with other "World's Fair" content.

Schenbrun has fun building out the online world of "the World's Fair Challenge", some disturbing content from creators describing (or showing) how the Challenge has changed them. It's almost like an infection, but the symptoms differ from person to person.

The aforementioned warning comes from "JLB", and Casey decides to Skype with this stranger. JLB expresses that they're concerned about them, and asks Casey to just keep making more videos. The film's greatest move comes following this call that ends the first act, switching us over to JLB's perspective for a period of time. He is a thin, bald middle-aged man with a very hang-dog expression, and we just don't know what his deal is. He lives in a very big house, so he's obviously successful at whatever he does, or did, but he primarily hangs out and sleeps in what looks like a teenager's bedroom. There are pictures in the house but we never clearly see them. We don't know if JLB lost a kid to this "Challenge" or if he's just an online creeper, or if he's just a lonely guy looking to platonically connect with someone who also appears lonely, or if he's a psycho who has murdered the family in this home and is now operating out of it. He does spend a lot of time disseminating Casey's content though.

Beyond Casey's video in which we see her wander through a crowd at a New Year's celebration, we never see her with people. Her father, we're only aware of him because he yelled at her once (for listening to something loudly at 3am), but there's a half insinuation that she's scared of him...or avoiding him...or both. But there's so much Schoenbrun doesn't show us here that everything is up for interpretation, right through to the finale where the rug isn't so much as pulled out from under us but the fog is lifted.  

The events of the movie are recontextualized, but the question is...does it make a difference? However we view Casey, isn't the end result that she's lonely, sad, and perhaps depressed? 

"The World's Fair Challenge" is Schoenbrun interpreting the Creepypasta realm of online horror storytelling through collaboration, the realm that bore such fruits as Backrooms and The Slender Man and Channel Zero, but through a very grounded, human, individualistic lens. It very much feels like Schoenbrun is asking "is this how I would be if this type of communal storytelling was available to me when I was a sad, awkward, lonely teenager", and I feel very much the same way, that the whole Creepypasta thing would have been totally for me had I grown up in a different time.

It's eerie how much ...World's Fair is in sync with what pandemic living felt like (according to Schonebrun, it finished filming March 1, 2020) but it's not an intentional pandemic allegory. It's message is not bound by time, as a result, it is a story of loneliness, and the horror here (if you can call it that...it's more just a slow, simmering dread), is equally grounded in sadness and the truly unknowable strangers of the internet.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Honey Don't

2025, Ethan Coen (True Grit) -- download

Yes, I love complaining about movies. I love complaining, in general. Maybe "love" is not the right word, but its my default setting. And to be entirely honest, its not a pleasant way to live. So much about so much just bothers me and I have to let others know. To them, I apologize. To you, dear readers, I guess I don't, as you already know that I am challenged about saying nice things about stuff I like.

But, I liked this movie. Maybe so far as a lot. It just felt, from the opening titles, that it was a movie meant to be enjoyed by movie people. So, for the briefest in moments, That Guy returned. I probably liked it a bit more than Kent, and I suggest that may just be because he was so immersed in Coen-ish creations that this did not stand out, at the time. 

OK, neo-noir. That means we get a private detective, one Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley, Drive-Away Dolls); I so much want to call her a "private dick" but I won't - it would be inappropriate. What we don't get are harsh shadows punctuated by flickering neon lights. This is Bakersfield, California and any shadows there are, are blasted away by never ending sunlight. This is a depiction of a place I would love to disappear into with a camera, all faded, worn pastels, all low structures and dusty flat roofs. The movie begins with car crash, where a mysterious Tarantino-ish character steals a ring from a dead woman. That woman was Honey's prospective client and the rest of the movie is about Honey trying to find out why the woman wanted to hire her, and what happened.

Except its not. As Kent pointed out, its a "shaggy dog story", a story telling technique, oft used in comedy, where a sprawling, disconnected, over-descriptive story is told only to end by entirely not getting to the point. Almost all the plot points setup in this movie are, well, not satisfyingly summed up. There is the crime that starts it, and while we find out why, its not the climax you would have expected. There is a corrupted church cum crime syndicate but... oh, that's done with. There is a sexy love story but... oh wow, was not expecting it to end that way. 

The only thing that centers the film is Honey herself, a raunchy entirely self-actualized lesbian. Margaret Qualley just envelopes the role here, sexy as hell, confident and motivated, whether she's giving unsolicited advice to her teenage niece or fending off the advances of a (mostly) harmless police detective. Honey has to put up with a lot of shit, and she knows it. Those clicky-clack heels tell a hell of a character story.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Americana

2023, Tony Tost (feature debut) -- download

I used to reference "cleaning out the cupboards" or similar idioms in reference to finally getting around to writing about movies I had recently seen. But since I now see fewer movies, and generally stub them & write about them quicker, it doesn't apply. BUT maybe it applies to those downloaded movies that I grabbed quickly, but also quickly forgot about for newer, shinier movies. This is one of those. I have many more.

[Soooo many more. I usually start at "latest" and push back, which means I eventually find something and start watching. Today, I reversed the order and I have SO MANY 'unwatched' movies downloaded, I could start my own streaming service.]

Tost is primarily a writer, of shows like Damnation, which he was creator, and Longmire, and showrunner for Poker Face. He writes about "the American experience" which is a rather sweeping comment to make, by anyone. But outsiders (including us) have a view of what "American" means and it often involves cowboys, violence and the downtrodden rising up. Too bad the current viewpoint will only leave them seen as the often violent abusers. America used to be a fictional heroic figure, and I am not sure if its pop culture image will ever recover from what we are going through now, even if that past vision was mostly through rose coloured glasses.

This is the kind of movie I would lumped into a Tarantino-wannabe bucket about twenty years ago. It has a decently large cast, a plot with lots of moving pieces and ends with a great amount of violence. 

It begins with a death. Mandy (Halsey, Sing 2) is escaping her abusive boyfriend Dillon (Eric Dane, The Last Ship). She is forced to leave her "little brother" behind,  who claims to be "the reincarnation of Sitting Bull" come back to save his people. She drives off with a priceless "Indian artifact" in the trunk and Dillon comes out to find the kid with an arrow nocked -- a few fly into the trailer, but the last catches him in the neck. Dillon and I both let out a "huh" before he falls down dead.

Air quote much?

It should be said that the movie, shot widescreen, highlights the vast empty barren landscape of the American Midwest. I would think it was somewhere Texas or Arizona, but it claims to be South Dakota.I guess I am not truly caught up on my geographical Americana, but yeah, peeking at a map confirms South Dakota is definitely "cowboy land".

The next pieces in the puzzle, and its really not a huge puzzle, are Lefty Ledbetter (right handed; Paul Walter Hauser, The Fantastic Four: First Steps) who keeps proposing to women he has been on three dates with, and Penny Jo (Sydney Sweeney, Madame Web), a stuttering waitress with a dream of becoming  a country & western singer. Penny has overheard Dillon, days before his death, plotting with a "antiquities dealer" to steal a Ghost Shirt from its owner. She conspires with the sweet but naive Lefty to steal it from Dillon and sell it herself, so she can fund herself moving to Nashville. Not long after, we see Dillon and Fun Dave (Joe Adler, Damnation) break into the house of a pompous wealthy man, brutally murder everyone at a party and steal the shirt. Dillon immediately kills Fun Dave for having feelings over the murders. And then, not long after that, Mandy steals the Shirt.

Mandy flees back to the relative safety of her family home, with Penny Jo and Lefty following. Mandy's family is a protected compound of backwater hick manosphere types where her father is the patriarch.  She just needs a place to lie low until she figures out how to sell the Shirt. Meanwhile, her little brother Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman, Spirited), who we learn is her son (duh...), has found his way onto the rez and is not endearing himself with the local militant Native American group, considering his whole Sitting Bull schtick. 

And thus begins the convergence on Mandy's father's compound. Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon, Lomgmire) and his militant group, Penny Jo & Lefty, and the original dealer in antiquities who paid Dillon to steal the Shirt. And this is where the "Tarantino" comes in, i.e. lots of violence. Lefty is shot, Mandy is shot, most of Ghost Eye's crew are killed, the male members of Mandy's "family" are killed, and the antiquities dealer is killed, leaving behind the money he was going to pay for the Shirt. The Shirt itself goes to the surviving Ghost Eye, who rejects Cal at the door to the res; he's not having any of this next-level cultural appropriation from a ten year old. The movie ends with Penny Jo driving off into the sunrise, leaving behind the corpse of Lefty, with a bag of money and proving, wow, she can actually sing.

I am not entirely sure of the proper commentary on the American experience, beyond being wrapped up in violence, but it is mostly definitely a very American indie film. Tost is adept at characters and dialogue so all of that rings true and while most in the movie are character actors, the few faces we know (and are on the poster) are doing a proper job. I wonder where Sweeney is going with her career, as she takes on more and more roles that divest her her from a just being a blonde with boobs. Halsey, who I only know as a pop star, does really well in this role, this being her second dramatic piece, outside of voice work. Apparently Paul Walter Hauser is the indie guy of the moment, or so the movie blogs say, and while this role doesn't give him much, there is something there. 

Final note. This is one of Eric Dane's final movies, before passing away from ALS this year, only a year after he announced his diagnosis. He went downhill fast. I knew him mostly for a few thriller TV shows, but he always had a very American Guy presence about him. I don't have the courage to watch his episode of Netflix's Famous Last Words but I can imagine they were powerful words.

KWIF: Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Last two weeks, actually. With the Olympics last week and all the new TV shows popping up this week, as well as fending off a bug or two, I didn't get to many movies, but the ones I did get to...well...a couple of them are real gems. I'll let you determine which of the three I maybe didn't like as much.

This Week:
Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (2025, d. Matt Johnson - in theatre)
Lady Snowblood (1973, d. Toshiya Fujita - Crave)
Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood (aka Bye Bye, Chaperon Rouge; "Tales for all #9", 1989, d. Márta Mészáros - Crave)

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What an exceptionally bizarre and niche idea to take something as exceptionally bizarre and niche as Nirvanna The Band, the bizarre and niche musical-ish duo of Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll, who had a short-lived, two-season bizarre and niche show on the bizarre and niche Viceland TV network, and turn it into a bizarre and niche movie that may well be the biggest (in ambition and scale) comedy movie of the decade.

I'm sure anyone reading this, like most of the population, have no idea what the heck Nirvanna The Band or Nirvanna The Band The Show are. Hell, I barely knew myself. If you know co-creator Matt Johnson from anywhere, it's likely from making Blackberry a few years back.

No, Nirvanna The Band is not a Nirvana cover band. McCarroll plays piano and Johnson...well, he talks a lot about what he's going to do over McCarroll's piano playing, and all the admiration and reverence he's going to receive from the audience without really having any other specific set of skills or talents put on display.Their deepest ambition is to book a gig at the famous Toronto resto-bar/performance space The Rivoli, but they don't actually attempt to book a gig at The Riv (as we locals call it) by contacting the bar. No instead they think they can somehow trick their way into performing there. The logical fallacy of all this is I don't think "Nirvanna The Band actually has any songs to perform should they get there, so what they're actually going to do with their platform should they ever achieve it remains a mystery.

Having never seen Nirvanna The Band The Show, I can infer from the story of Nirvanna The Show The Movie that each episode of the show is a Pinky and the Brain-style set-up of of Matt coming up with a scheme to get the band into The Riv that night, Jay reluctantly following along, and it all falling apart. The Show, if it's at all like The Show The Movie (and it must be) is all shot verite style, with a mix of Johnson and O'Carroll interacting with real people and actors in pre-planned if highly improvised situations. The Film just takes it to...well, not just another level, but to astonishing extremes.

It starts with Matt coming up with the plan "Seventh Inning Stretch" where the two will jump off the CN Tower and parachute into the Skydome (as it will forever be known) announcing that they have a gig at The Rivoli that night (and the stunt will be so spectacular that The Riv must give them the stage for the evening right)? 

Ambitious, but certainly there's countless things getting in the way of Matt and Jay in succeeding with this plan. Well, would you believe that the only thing that gets in the way of the plan is the Skydome's roof closing, and Matt and Jay's timing being off such that they land on the roof instead of in the stadium?

I couldn't believe it either. And yet, it looked very much like two people (though absolutely not Matt and Jay) were skydiving in downtown Toronto and landed on the roof other Skydome.

With today's level of digital and AI technologies, it's not hard to deepfake this sort of thing, and yet, there's a level of gritty craftsmanship here at play that definitely make it hard to tell what's real, what's staged, and what's trickery.

The main story of Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, however, involves a second scheme Matt comes up with, which is to pretend to be time travellers from 2008 flung into the future, using Back to the Future logic, only for things to go awry and Matt and Jay actually travel back to 2008, mess things up, and then return home to find Jay has become a massive celebrity leaving Matt behind.

It's profoundly silly and insanely entertaining. The Movie is incredibly propulsive, moving a pretty rapid clip, not giving the audience a lot of time to sit with all the questions they might be having (the movie, so self aware, is savvy enough to address many of them anyway, if only to side step). At the same time, even if you have zero investment in Matt and Jay as a duo (like me) the film slowly starts investing you into the stakes of their friendship (I mean, there's really no other characters in the film beyond the camera guys and Matt's alt-future roommates).

As one of the most Toronto films ever made, it's bizarre, sure, but maybe not so niche. It's an extremely accessible film if (like me) you've never actually engaged with Nirvanna The Band in any capacity before. But I'm now hooked, and I'm ready to dive into Nirvanna The Band The Show and their precursor web series of the same name... if only there were anywhere that I could watch them (the presumption is that Crave, who partially produced The Film, will pick up The Series for when The Film hits streaming).

Much like, say, Strange Brew or Brain Candy, other Canadian comedy films derived from TV shows that preceded it, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is also a surprise gem of a film, but much more immediately recognizably a triumph than maybe the other tv-to-film comedies that came before it. (Do I need to watch that Trailer Park Boys movie now...?)

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Lady Snowblood is a big name in classic Asian action cinema (and classic manga), one that I'm sure was jotted down on one of my many "to watch" lists decades ago but, without ever truly understanding what the movie was about, and as such was never prioritized.

How unfortunate for me.

The film is the grandmommy of revenge dramas, or "revenge-o-matics" as Quentin Tarantino likes to call them, and in fact Lady Snowblood was QT's primary (but far from only) inspiration for Kill Bill.  There's little doubt in my mind that Lady Snowblood has inspired dozens upon dozens of films in the 50+ years since its debut.  Having such an influential legacy can actually tarnish a classic film when it's watched for the first time, as one might only see story ideas, action sequences, shot framing or other such ideas that have been used and probably bettered in the years since. 

Not so with Lady Snowblood.

The opening sequence, taking place at night, the moonlit road that much brighter because of the snow, is beautifully shot and staged. It finds our titular character in her tight kimono and sandaled feet shuffling quickly into place, a carriage quickly approaching. She gets in its way and proceeds to dispatch the entourage rapidly and bloodily, before fighting the man in the carriage. His skills are not even close to competing with hers.

This visually striking, blood-and-snow-soaked extravaganza is a marvel, but also the low point of the film. The action is stilted and Lady Snowblood's portrayer, the stunning Meiko Kaji, doesn't seem very adept at wielding the utensils of her character. 

But as I said, this is the film's weakest point. From there we delve into her wild backstory, which predates her even being born. It has it's roots in Japanese history from the later-1800s where the country's troubled leadership was directing it to build a grand army and conscripting the young men of villages across the land, disrupting the labour force dramatically. Yuko's mother's husband, a teacher, was killed when it was suspected he was an army recruiter, and her older brother was also murdered. Her mother was kept and abused and enslaved, but dreamed of nothing but revenge. She managed to dispatch one of the men who killed her family and was sent to prison for murder, cutting her revenge story short. She knew the only way of continuing her revenge was to have a child who could carry her burden, and so she aggressively pursued the prison guards and managed to get pregnant. She died shortly after childbirth but made her fellow inmates promise to have her child, who she likened to a demon, trained to pursue her vengeance.

We see Yuki's training from a young age to adulthood, a brutal inhuman life, but then, as has been reinforced by her trainer, she is not to be human. She is a demon of revenge. The first act is comprised of all this history, and it is told moving forward like running water, rather than cutting back and forth between the past and modern day, with elements referencing directly the Manga in a stylish way that seems incredibly ahead of its time.  The fact that it moves through the darkness of Yuki's mother's tale and her own training without being overly sensational and distanced from making the abuse seem alluring is remarkable for the era.

When it returns to the modern day, the story moves constantly in unexpected zigzags. It never moves towards the typical narrative choice, and at the same time is not playing with expectations that it will. It so secure it its storytelling that it feels assured in its atypical manoeuvres, and it's thrilling to experience.  I very quickly learned not to anticipate where it was going, and I don't imagine I can ever have that experience again. But it just highlights that what this story does, and how Toho and the director present it, hasn't been repeated, at least not to an extent that can deny the power of this production.

What is most surprising is how the film tries to humanize one of Lady Snowblood's targets. A unwell drunken degenerate of a man, with a sweet daughter who cares for him despite what she has to do to make money so that he can drink and gamble it all away. You would think Yuki's disposing of this man would be a blessing for the poor girl, but it's not the case. The man even seems to have a death wish, until death stares him in the face. There's some rather meaty drama amidst all the arterial spray.

Yuki's gets involved with a reporter, who begins to tell her tale, sensationalizing her and spreading her story across the country, more fable or urban legend than fact, but distinguishing between the two, at that time wasn't always the case. The stories are told to draw out her prey, and it works, but it's all so much more complicated than either thought it would be.  Magnificent twists and movements abound.

The doubt I had in Kaji's physical prowess really only held away in the film's first sequence. I don't know that she ever proved herself an agile swordswoman, but subsequent scenes she's definitely more confident in her wielding of the blade, and is just as often posing with it as she is using it.

Visually, I love this era of vibrant red gushing blood samurai story, but this one stands out as special, because it doesn't approach the world with a gawking lens. It's not revealing in its nudity and abuse, it's matter-of-fact in its presentation. It's honest about how harsh the world is and the truths of the time its set it, but it also gives way to its revenge fantasy elements without letting them overshadow those truths. 

It's fantastic, and I wish I'd seen it 100 times by now.

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The 9th entry of Quebec producer Rock Demers' "Tales for all" series once again finds funding as a co-production, this time with Hungary, and filming there as well rather than in Canada. This once again leads to a release with no native soundtrack. You can watch the French or the English dub, it doesn't matter, because the entire production is dubbed as not all performers are speaking the same language.  (I don't like watching dubbed movies, and find it frustrating when the dub is so obvious, as it is here... the preferred alternative is watching the French dub with English subtitles, but I was too tired for subtitles for this viewing).

Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood, as you may have guessed, is loosely based around the classic fairy tale. Here, the film opens with five-year-old Fanny in her city apartment bedroom, decorated entirely in red, trying to fall asleep only to be roused by her parents arguing and her father walking out on her mom. We then hard cut to "Mother" (no other name given) taking Fanny through the airport and confirming that they're going to go live in the woods, near her Grandmother's.  

This hard cuts to a forest montage and Fanny is now twelve maybe (played by Fanny Lauzier, who was the young star of Tales for all #6 -  Tadpole and the Whale), and she's a free spirit roaming the woods with her pet lamb, when she comes across a wolf who, it seems, can telepathically communicate with her. It appears the wolf means her no harm, and in fact wants to be friends...but his tone of voice, sinister and sleazy, gives his intentions away.

Fanny's woodsy home with her "Mother" (who works as a meteorologist) is in a artistically brutalist construct of all odd angles and bizarre stairs to nowhere and brightly coloured nonlinear shape accents. There is no meaning to this bizarre structure, only that it's likely a building the production company found interesting and decided to use (you need some visual flair when 90 percent of the film takes place in the forest I suppose). 

Fanny's traipses through the woods aren't exactly established as "adventures" as they're poorly structured and really not edited to be framed as such, but on one journey to her grandmother's house, she encounters a magic tree, and on another, she gets lost and is rescued by a man in a grey hat and trenchcoat who she thinks might be her father. On another adventure she meets a gang of similar aged school children out on a field trip and she sparks up a friendship with a dashing young boy who is very curious about this red-clad woodland girl who doesn't go to school. 

Fanny's grandmother, despite what you might think, is not her mom's mom, but rather her father's mother, and she does not get along with Fanny's mom at all, so they don't communicate much. Also Fanny's great-grandmother is there, an old crone who never moves from her spot sitting in a carved out seat in the trunk of a tree grandmother's house seemed built around. Great-granmother has inexplicable mystical powers, including the ability to see what's going on outside her trunk-chair, as well as send telepathic communications across great distances. 

There is a general sense of the fantastical in this production, but it establishes no rules for them, so the stakes are never clear, nor are the paths to resolution. This whole production seems like it was crafted on the fly, without a tremendous amount of forethought.

Fanny seems charmed by the man in the grey ensemble, in part because he lives in a weird hovel with a tremendous amount of birds (he's an ornithologist) and he saves her in the woods more than once from getting lost or a heavy storm, but when she determines that he's not her dad and then finds out that he's hooking up with her mom, she inexplicably loses it and runs away... where she's lured into the wolf's den and he refuses to let her go, and needs to be rescued by her young male friend from the city but only after Great-Grandmother telepathically calls out to him to help her. After she's rescued, they set all the man-in-grey's birds free and steal his truck, heading into to the city where Fanny does some petty thieving.

Eventually she returns home, and Fanny is sent with a picnic basket of soup and other goodies to Grandmother's house because Grandmother is not feeling well, not realizing that the wolf has swallowed her whole and taken her place (but not before the wolf and man-in-grey have what seems like a metaphysical exchange which implies the two are connected but it's nothing the film ever elaborates upon). When Fanny arrives, we get the what big hands/eyes/mouth thing, when Fanny too is swallowed whole. The wolf is a furry TARDIS, bigger on the inside than it appears no the outside, and fanny and grandmother reunite next to the wolf's beating heart (a charming set piece to be sure).

Mother and the man-in-grey arrive, and the man-in-grey shoots the wolf, killing it and releasing Fanny and Grandmother, only Great-grandmother dies for some reason. It's sad, I guess. The story picks ups with Fanny - wearing heavy make-up and styled to look like an older teen I guess - back in a very red room in a city apartment...with no real explanation or even insinuation as to what this scene means or what the seemingly happy Fanny is going through. Are we to infer that this was all just in her head? Is that why the story seems to be so dream-like?

The story is one hundred percent nonsense, so very little of the characters' actions are explained, there's no logic to anyone's motivations, and personalities and intentions shift on a dime. It seems like there was an intentional story here, about a lonely little girl making the best out of life, and a single mother trying her best, but it all got lost when trying to film what may have been an English script but performed by a Hungarian and Quebecois cast.  

When it eventually gets to its interpretation of the classic fable, Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood seems like a completely different film. It's like if the characters of the film were performing in a play, it in no way seems organic to the story being told.

There is some really nice imagery here. The damp, lush, Hungarian forests are shot with reverence, even if the colour sense is pretty muted. Some sets are really quite impressive (Great-Grandma's tree-chair is outstanding, as is the wolf's innards, and lil' Fanny's very red bedroom), but there's not a tremendous amount of cohesion happening here.

Even dream-logic would imply a sense of logic, and there is none here. If the film's finale intends to intone that the whole film was but a dream, well, that isn't explicit, plus there's little more frustrating in storytelling than such a "twist". A deeply flawed and odd film.