3+1 Short Paragraphs: Synchronic

 2020, Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead (Spring) -- download

To say I love these guy's small body of work is just a given. Rarely these days, even before The Pause, do I pay full attention to anything, but their movies just ask, nay require you to pay full attention. With their fourth feature, they were provided with a bit more budget, enough to hire some recognizable faces and expand upon the visual effects. In my mind, they produced another strong, thoughtful piece of scifi, despite what some critics at large will tell you.

Steve (Anthony Mackie, Avengers: Infinity War) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan, 50 Shades of Grey) are EMTs and best friends, in New Orleans. Dennis is a family man, challenged by his role as a husband and a father, while Steve is still single, still acting like a teenager, drinking and fucking most nights away. Their day to day (night to night?) is interrupted by the emergence of a new drug on the street -- synchronic -- which leads to some very very odd calls, such as the guy stabbed by a sword, which is found embedded in the wall, half melted. And then the worst thing happens for Steve, as he is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, one that has actually contributed to his teenager ways, literally leaving his brain chemically young at heart. And the worst thing happens for Dennis, as his daughter Brianna becomes a victim of synchronic -- she is gone, just... gone.

Steve feels the loss of Brianna deeply, she is just beginning her life, while his is ending, and he sees how it is destroying the already tenuous family life of his best friend. So, he strives to find all of the drug, but instead of destroying it all, he experiments with it and comes to understand just what has happened to Brianna -- the drug allows you to travel backwards in time. In a fun and sometimes chilling montage, we see Steve doing literal controlled experiments, determining its parameters, all with the intention of going back and finding Brianna, to return her to her family.

Like their other movies, this one is more thoughtful than it is active. The movie parks itself inside Steve's headspace, and allows us to understand what is going on with him, how he feels about his mostly wasted life, his envy and frustration with his best friend who doesn't cherish what he has, how he wants to deal with the coming end. Its moody in colours and soundscape, usually at night, with none of the touristy flair for being set in New Orleans. The plot is not as much a headscratcher as their other flicks, as it doesn't even want to understand the drug itself, so its more about the man and the past, and his connections in the present.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Look Back: A (eh?)

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  2020 bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was 2020, and 2020-Extended (2021 on the calendar) about? Well, beyond baking bread and not cutting hair. Didn't do much on the former, and only one cut in one year, on the latter.

Of note, this is a challenge, as its over a year's worth of TV. I will strive not to ramble. Don't hold your breath.

The Rookie is something I have been enjoying since it started, which was not surprising, as I have enjoyed everything Nathan Fillion has been in since Firefly. This season, they return mid-pandemic, with only a disappointing nod to the ongoing situation, which I am not sure is because of TV Land, or because that is the actual reality in the US. Either way, they decided to focus this season on something more important (IMO), something that must have been in their writing room forefront, since the violent anti-police upheavals of 2020. They are tackling, and somewhat bravely, again IMO, for a cop-light TV show. 

They briefly touch on the idea of Nolan wanting to be the white knight when he doesn't really have the right to decide what a black community needs. But moreso, they tackle overt racism within the police force, albeit in a microcosm of one very blatant, but also protected racist cop. Is it all they can do? Probably not, but unlike most pop culture which pretends they are in an entirely different world, at least they are showing they are aware, and that their heroes, especially the black ones, Sergeant Grey (Richard T Jones, Narcos) and rookie West (Titus Makin Jr, Glee), are doing something about it. This show is about a rose-coloured glasses police force, so this nod is ... something.

Also of Firefly alumni, comes Alan Tudyk's Resident Alien, a comedy about an alien trapped on Earth, having assumed the identity of a doctor. The small town in Colorado where this doctor had a summer (winter?) house loses their own doctor, and ask him to step into help. He is still coming to grasp with being a human, but is also more concerned with finding the missing parts of his crashed ship. 

The fish out of water comedy is done masterfully by Tudyk, but the rest is somewhat uneven, unable to find its tone, with only one other standout character, his nursing assistant played Sara Tomko (Once), who plays her role as the straight-man to Tudyk's utter weirdness. I also kind of like the slutty bartender, primarily because the role doesn't slut shame her. The undertones of having indigenous characters is a nice touch as well, without attempting to be overt.

We also have been binge watching a British pseudo-game-quiz-comedy show called Qi, beginning with Stephen Fry as the host, but eventually settling on Great British Bake Off host, Sandi Toksvig. When I say "we" I mean her, while I occasionally drop in, sit down, and get sucked in for a few hours. There have been hundreds of episodes, and once she exhausted all of those BritBox, we moved to start downloading earlier seasons.

The premise is loose, explained in the Episode Zero pilot but seemingly never mentioned again. Each season is a letter (A, B, C, etc.) spawning a keyword topic. The host will then ask a question, of which nobody is expected to answer. But being they are all comedic types, they are expected to come up with at least a good response. Those who answers that are close get more points, those that amuse the host (or are at least interesting) get some points, and wrong answers lose points. And easily predicted wrong answers lose at least 10 points. Most of the shows end in the negatives.

But the point of the show, and what has me often rolling with laughter, is how each is trying to crack the host up, as well as the guests. Unlike American-centric comedy, they are not all cracking wise with badly setup jokes, but often deliberately trying to answer, albeit somewhat over the top fashions. Often they are distracted by juvenile humour, or spin off on tangents or anecdotes. And then there is Alan Davies, who plays the often deadpan fool, supplying the dumbest of answers, but in a manner that, once they warmed to each other, have Stephen & Sandi cracking up. But all too often, he sounds like the kid at the back of the class making bad jokes for attention, often involving loud shouting and his penis. Some guests are familiar faces and fit right in, while others are wild cards who answer spectacularly, while others leave you wondering why they even came on, considering how quiet they are.

We Agree: Hotel Artemis

 2018, Drew Pearce (All Hail the King) -- download/Netflix

I started watching my download of this sometime in 2019, but then something interrupted me and I never got back to it. And then 2020 interrupted me and I never got back to it. And then it showed up on Netflix and I went, "Oh yeah, this looked liked a lot of fun..." so I got back to it.

The premise is right down my alley -- a 20 Minutes Into the Future dystopia featuring a high-tech (if somewhat run-down) hotel converted into a hospital & hospice for the criminally wealthy. If you can afford to buy your way into the fortified place, then they will do their best to heal you and protect you while you are recovering. Think of it like the Continental from John Wick but they have fancy medical equipment operated by a run-down nurse (Jodie Foster, Elysium) and her orderly Everest (Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy). My head canon is that this IS the John Wick universe, just after it has gone through some upheaval.

One night while most of LA riots over the draconic control of water, a pair of bank robbers (Sterling K Brown, Person of Interest & Brian Tyree Henry, Widows) show up. They are assigned the Hawaii room, becoming Waikiki and Honolulu respectively. Each guest is assigned a room alias, to protect their identities. The problem is that Honolulu, on his way out of the bank, grabbed a pen out of the pocket of an obvious mook. "You don't want to do that," says the mook. He also gets shot, which brings them to the Artemis. The pen is just a fancy courier package full of tiny, but extremely rare, diamonds which belong to the Top Dog criminal in the city, the Wolf King. And the Wolf King is on his way to the Artemis, for his own reasons. Honolulu didn't want to do that.

This movie, like others of its neo noir ilk, such as Bad Times at the El Royale or Knives Out or Free Fire, is all about its characters. Despite my lack of saying so in any of my (toasty)posts about these movies, what remains (of the day) is the characters, not just the ensemble cast, but the colourful people populating them. THIS really stands out in Hotel Artemis, and not just for Charlie Day being Charlie Day, as he channels Hannibal Chau from Pacific Rim mixed with his own character in that movie, which I suspect, is basically Charlie Day. And Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond) being her usual uber-sexy and uber-dangerous self as Nice (France, not kind) the assassin with an agenda. And Dave Bautista's giant sized orderly, who is surprisingly delicate. And Jodie Foster's Nurse, who is shuffling around, sneaking nips from a bottle, channeling a Frances McDormand character from one of her mid-west dramas. And the Wolf King himself, Jeff Goldblum (Independence Day Resurgence) being very Jeff. Even Sterling K Brown, who I really know these days for crying in TV ads for This Is Us, stands out as the straight man amongst all the colourful characters. And yes, there are more characters.

The plot is a convergence of events, violently and dramatically, as one would expect of criminals. Each person is there for a reason, which intersects with at least one of the others, and at the end, changes everyone's path irrevocably, including that of the hotel itself. What makes this movie so much fun, being that this is a familiar neo-noir plot, is the presentation, the world in which its set, and how all the characters fit into it. The movie just looks good, both grounded in its run-down nature, and forward thinking, with its tech & gadgets everywhere. It is not John Wick style and glamour, but it drips with character.

10 for 10: too busy to review

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies (or tv shows) which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie (or TV show) we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]

In this edition, some things I actually watched fairly recently but don't have a whole lot to say about:
Widows - 2018, d. Steve McQueen - netflix
Hustlers - 2019, d. Lorene Scafaria - amazonprime
Sicario - 2013, d. Denis Villeneuve - netflix
The Most Dangerous Game - 1932, d. Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel - amazonprime
The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend A Broken Heart - 2020, d. Frank Marshall - hbomax
The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two - 2020, d. Chris Columbus - netflix
Juliet, Naked - 2019, d. Jesse Peretz  - netflix
Hotel Artemis - 2018, d. Drew Pierce - netflix
The To Do List - 201, d. Maggie Carey - netflix
Flight - 2012, d. Robert Zemeckis - netflix

....allons-y....

---

 My intention was to do a big one-two punch of Widows + Hustlers, the former a movie I was very keen to see when it was originally released but never got out to see, the latter I was only mildly interested as a result of good buzz.  After watching them, and enjoying them both, I just couldn't connect the threads, other than being mildly crime related and being two films with a largely female ensemble cast.

Widows I wanted to love, based on its cast.  Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki each heavyweight performers in their own right in my mind, and always make what their in better for their presence.  Yet, something about this film just didn't connect.  It's not a mess, it's not poorly told, directed, or shot, it just doesn't accelerate.  Is it as simple as the film brings Carrie Coon into the picture, another heavyweight who makes anything she's in better, and legitimately wastes her?  No, it's not, but it's kind of endemic of the film that seems to not know what to do with what it has.

I think this is the first Steve McQueen film I've seen, and he's a director with a solid reputation preceding him, but I'm not very impressed.  Davis is obviously the lead of the picture and she commands the screen but her character is left in sort of a confused limbo for much of the film as she tries to wrangle the other widows of her husband's gang into performing their last job.  She doesn't have a lot of options left to her, having become accustomed to a certain lifestyle.  Debicki has the biggest journey in the film, taking her character from abused spouse to sex worker to empowered force of nature and she walks away with the picture in the process.  Rodriguez plays demure, very against type for her, and it's rare to see such a softer side of her.  She's been playing tough girl since her debut.

I think this would have worked better as a pulpier, flashier movie, rather than attempting gritty realism which I hear is what McQueen favors.  The whole side angle of Colin Ferrell and Brian Tyree Henry's political aspirations gives a particular insight into tainted Chicago politics, but it's largely out of step with the rest of the film.  I just think it should have been more exciting, rather than striving for thought provoking...which it is, but only just.

[14:17]

---

Hustlers though was more surprising than I expected.  It's a sort of friendship love story, about a woman with no options left it seems but to turn to stripping, and the star performer who takes her under her wing.  Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) is the former, with Jennifer Lopez as the latter.  When Wu joins up at a high-end strip club in the late 2000's she feels like an outsider and doesn't know how to work the business.  Lopez is introduced via a pole dance sequence which somehow is shot avoiding the gross salaciousness of a strip club, and instead seems to admire and be in awe of her physical prowess.  Every time men in the audience creep into frame, to lob money at the dancer, it threatens to bring the performance down, but Lopez, in character, seems to be in a zone of her own.  It's something I think that takes a female director to pull off and it's what Scafaria brings, is such warmth, love and respect for these women and what they do.  There's no real judgement here.  It's a celebration of them. The backroom sequences early on, which bring together sort of a clan of women, including popular performers of the day Lizzo and Cardi B, are just so alive, and it's a pointed contrast to the future jump later on when the back room is populated by foreigners, possibly illegal immigrant, indentured sex workers (just watched season 2 of The Wire before watching this so it was prominent in my mind this possibility)

As Wu's character takes off under Lopez's guidance the two become fast friends and intimately connected.  They start a side hustle of getting their patrons, rich wall street assholes, too drunk and overcharge their credit cards.  Getting rich and moving up in the world.  But then the financial crisis of 2009 hits and the well dries up so their gamble turns more aggressive and serious, which winds up catching the attention of the police and a sting operation takes it down.

Based on a true story, but obviously loosely adapted, it's a powerful statement about the nature of wealth, and how it's obtained, as well as the different class and gender economies in the world.  It pokes around a lot of themes but doesn't extrapolate tremedously upon any of them.  It's a pretty good story though, and I think it hits in a more thought-provoking manner than Widows and is more fun too.  Lopez is great and talks of her being robbed for at the very least an Oscar nomination were bang on.

[30:54 - already 10 minutes behind]

---

Sicario is one of those movies I had heard about when it came out, that it had one of the most intense sequences put to film, and that it had more than a few surprises under its belt.  I knew it was a movie about the cross border drug trade, but not much else... like, I didn't know until this past year that it was a Denis Villeneuve  film, nor that it had Roger Deakins as its cinematographer.  Those are two very key pieces of info that should have placed this much higher on my to-watch list years ago.

It's a film that had a modest amount of hype.  Not too overblown, but enough that kept the title resonant 6 years later, and obviously spawning a sequel that maybe didn't hit the same level of accolades but seemed to manage fine.  It was a film whose hype was modest enough that it could have easily lived up to it.  And yet, I felt kind of empty after watching it.  Like I wasn't quite sure what I should feel about it.

It's the story about a task force that doesn't so much as operate in the grey area as it operates rather illegally, dismantling drug cartels, but also working its own angle to keep supplies running -- the idea being that the drugs are going to flow anyway, might as well make it flow in the most efficient way with the least disruptive impact on society.  Emily blunt plays a New Mexico area FBI agent who gets recruited into this special task force (one blessed from on high), and she's never quite certain the role she's playing or why she's actually there...until she finally discovers what that is, and it's not good.

This is a hard film.  I mean it's really watchable and yes, there are some pretty intense moments, but it's a raw nerve, exposing the darker reality of our world in dramatically entertaining fashion, but no less makes for uncomfortable viewing.  The film's "good guys" aren't really that good, and the work they're doing makes sense, but it's without any ideals or scruples.  It's not even gray area, they're in the black, and the only thing that makes them the "good guys" and not the bad guys is that they're not really in it for the money.

I didn't feel the itch to watch the sequel after watching this and I'm not sure if I will.  

 

I probably will.  Although it won't have the Deakins-isms I so tremendously enjoyed in this.

[42:47]

---

Another plan foiled from lack of time was the idea of doing a week long series of "to hunt man" reviews, spurred on by watching The Hunt .  The first film I watched after The Hunt I decided should be The Most Dangerous Game, the original hunting-man-as-sport movie (based on the original hunting-man-as-sport novel [novella?]).  

Well, you can't really even call The Most Dangerous Game a movie.  At about 62 minutes, I've seen TV episodes longer.  It falls in that weird runtime blank space where it's not a short film, but it's also not a feature.

What it most assuredly is is a truly goofy movie. 

A famed big game hunter is aboard a ship that crashes when the signal light that's supposed to guide them ashore is deliberately misplaced.  The lone survivor, he finds his way to a manor house where he's greeted by a cartoonish Cossack with extremely broad makeup and hair applied, like he's in a Universal monster movie.  A most ridiculously accented, highly theatrical Russian Count strolls down the stairs and introduces himself as well as his guests, a drunkard and a dame.  The drunkard is played by Robert Armstrong beautifully.  He's not at all "natural" drunk like in the recently reviewed Another Round but he doesn't quite play it like a cartoonish drunk either.  It's so far beyond that, that I could only applaud and be amazed by the choices he made.  Fay Wray (of King Kong fame) plays the drunkard's sister, and obviously the defacto love interest for our new hero (who, as a big game hunter, is, in modern eyes, a despicable piece of shit).  She tries to warn the new blood of the Count's intentions, but the Count makes them known on his own.  You see, the Count sees in him a kindred spirit, a man who understands the hunt, the thrill, but how the edge wears off after time, and you need a more dangerous game, one who can fight back with the same level of calculation... it's time to hunt man... are you with me, co-hunters, or against me , and be hunted.

Well, obviously it's no fun if they just hunt down people together so they square off in a tepid tete-a-tete that takes them through the jungles of the King Kong set.  Literally.  If you're at all familiar with King Kong you're going to recognize much of the terrain they traverse in this film's short run time.

Oh, this is a stupid, stupid story, and yet, it's kind of delightful to watch... like when the Count sics his dogs on the hunter and it's so very clear that the dogs are just playing and the man is holding treats for them to jump up on him.  And Fay Wray does what she's famous for doing, which is screaming, all the bloody time.  It's pretty grating, in a dumb fun way, both her screaming and the movie.

[58:25]

---

How Do You Mend A Broken Heart is the subtitle of this HBO biopic of the Bee Gees, a sibling-led group whose legacy I don't think I've ever given too much consideration to.  The subtitle, one of the Bee Gees more popular songs, seems to indicate a sort of thesis for the film, but it's one that never comes to fruition.  Barry Gibb is the sole survivor of the trio, Robin and Maurice having passed away a few years apart in the past decade.  You would think this would be Barry, pontificating on what the loss of his brothers means as he reflects upon their 50 years in music, but no.  It's mostly a manufactured, talking heads retrospective that rapidly accelerates through their 60's and 70's discographies with a bit of dabbling in the 80's and beyond.  Because they were so prolific, having written thousands of songs, with dozens of hits (both to their name as a group and as songwriters for theirs), there's really no justice served here to any of it.  

If you don't know anything about the Bee Gees, and really I didn't, it does serve as a really good primer to their career, with a modest amount of insight into the influence they wielded, and the emotional highs and lows they experienced.  It attempts to get to the heart of the group, but it always seems a bit cold and distant whenever they try.  There's a lot more drama that could have been teased out, but with 50 years to cover there was no time.  It's like "hey we had drug habits...and then we didn't" and "we were married, and then divorced, and married again" with no real emotional connection to these events in their lives.  

A lot of the talking heads comes from interviews with the brothers from older interviews, and it keeps them at a distance, knowing that they've already passed and yet the film is trying to recontextualize their insight into this new narrative.  

My biggest takeaway was that I the Bee Gees had a very long career, but in that very long carreer, they produced only a small window of music (at pique disco) that I actually liked.  I kind of wish they just set the whole doc in that era and dove deeper into the making of their biggest hits.

[1:09:44]

---

The first Christmas Chronicles movie debuted on netflix during our "dark year" here at T&KSD.  I know I watched the film, as I distinctly recall viewing it my phone during a stupidly long bus ride across town as we tried to deal with my daughter's lice problem at a professional facility.  You don't really forget something like that.  The film was quite fun, with a sort of Adventures In Babysitting (but with christmas and fantasy) kind of vibe, but far from perfect.  Kurt Russell definitely sold the damn thing with his gusto.  I was hoping for something bigger, more adventurous, and actually more action heavy...I wanted Russell to be "action Santa".  

So with the promise of a sequel, I was hoping that the 80's influence would spin it into something more James Cameron-y (as much as I dislike how the man directs, I like his idea of sequels going bigger)...alas Part Two is too much of a sequel, bringing back the character Kate from the first film, now an awkward pre-teen, and her new, soon-to-be stepbrother with her. 

By tying the film so closely to the first it does lend it a sense of connection that I think worked in favor of the overall film, but also set it on a path that I didn't personally want to see it go on.  It gets very magic-centric, which isn't ostensibly a bad thing, but director Chris Columbus brings to it everything you would expect him to, given his track record.  It's a family movie, and it's okay, but it doesn't stand out or apart in any way beyond Kurt (and the stunt casting of Goldie Hawn as Mrs. Clause...but it's not stunt casting if she's great in the role, right?).  I hope they keep making these so that maybe they'll eventually get a really good one.  Kurt and Goldie are awesome, and their wardrobes as Mr and Mrs C are my favourite Santas ever, so I can't not want more, even if what we've gotten so far has been mediocre at best.

[1:21:43]

---

I was a big fan of Nick Hornby in my late teens/early 20s.  High Fidelity was my obvious gateway.  Being a music fan, but moreover just an obsessive nerd, I felt seen and understood by his novel, and the film made from it.  Fever Pitch was deep in the weeds about very specific British football obsession, and yet I could relate to that too, and About A Boy perfectly encapsulated white male ennui which I've been know to indulge in.  I followed Hornby on his subsequent two (maybe three?) but they stopped speaking to me.  He was eminently readable, he's got a very fluid style, but I didn't connect with what he was saying anymore.  It's like what he wanted to explore wasn't personal, so much as intellectual to him, and that created distance.

I didn't really want to see movies based on his books, I felt I had moved past him, his work, and derivatives thereof.  But, with Juliet, Naked, I mean...Chris O'Dowd.  I love Chris O'Dowd.  His Isrish accent and way of elocuting is one of the most soothing and enjoyable things on Earth.  Even though this film seemed to come and go without any fanfare at all, I was excited when it popped up on nextflix and it jumped to the top of my list. I just had to convice my wife that the O'Dowd factor would overrule her dislike of Ethan Hawke. (She left the film early, not because it wasn't interesting she said, but she had a book she was more into reading)

Well, damn if this wasn't just a complete joy for me to watch, and if it's true at all to the book, it returns Hornby back to the type of personal, nerdy storytelling I originally liked about him.  In this case O'Dowd plays a man obsessed with a musician of nominal cultural impact, played by Hawke.  Along with a few hundred others online, O'Dowd is constantly deep in the weeds, talking bootleg concerts and the intricacies of songs with strangers for hours. Rose Byrne plays his long suffering girlfriend, whom he constantly tries to engage in his passion, and over the years his distraction has turned her off of him completely. 

But in the mail comes a cd with raw studio recordings of his "perfect album", Juliet.  Byrne discovers it and listens and is, frankly, non-plussed.  She inadvertently strikes up an email friendship with Hawke, and then suddenly we're introduced to Hawke's character and his life today.  He's now a loving and devoted father to a 10-year-old son, but there's other kids, from one night stands in the reaches that he's not connected with, including a young woman who is visiting him for the first time.  

Oh boy, I could talk at length about this film.  It stuck with me, and the beats are perfect.  There's not really heightened drama, it's too aware of itself to do that.  The characters are in a place where they want to have something real and nice, and with that in mind, they just try for nice, even though it might not always work out.  This isn't riveting cinema, but it's subtle, pleasant, and seems made for me.

I'll watch it again. And maybe read the book, get back on that Hornby train.

[1:38:56]

---

I should be done...

---

I don't know how Hotel Artemis came and went from theatres without making a single blip on my radar.  When it popped up on nextfilx, I had to search the inner reaches of my brain long and hard to figure out if I'd ever heard of this film before.  I mean, the cast is outstanding, with Jodie Foster, Sterling K Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista, Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto, and Sophia Boutella.  I mean, that's a cast of characters you want to see no matter what the setting.

In this case it's a near-future dystopia where water supplies are managed by corporations and they're starving (dehydrating) out the citizens of LA, as they protest these entities which now can decide who lives or dies by who has water.  But this is literally just background.  In the fore is the titular hotel, where bank robbers Brown and Henry wind up when Henry gets himself shot up.  The Hotel is acually a hospital, with four beds, that services the criminal, the rich, and the criminally rich.  It has a definitive rules of operation/code of conduct, that the nurse (Foster) holds as gospel.  But with the events going on outside, her faith in those rules is doubly called into question, first when the Hotel's patron needs to check in (with no beds available) and the second when an childhood acquaintance of Foster's son (Slate) winds up on her doorstep severely injured.

It's a film that works only because it believes in its internal consistency and the world in which it operates.  The style is shadows and neon, such that it feels like it's an outside part of the John Wick universe... and even though it never directly connects to Wick, it at the very least owes it a debt of gratitude as inspiration.

It's fun, engaging, and full of neat, clunky, near-future tech that's equally possible and improbable.  I see Toasty is sitting on a review of this.  Can't wait for his thoughts.  I bet we agree.

[1:50:36]

---
 

Is The To Do List an earnest homage to horny teen movies of the 80's and 90's or is it a satire of them? 

I mean, why can't it be both?

I think it would have made for, well, maybe not a better movie, but maybe a more impactful movie had it picked a lane. It's spends more time in the homage lane than the satire but this could have been Wet Hot American Summer level great had they flipped it into satire, especially with this cast.  I mean, the bulk of this cast playing teenagers is in their late 20's or even early 30's, so they don't look the part.  Why not play into that?

The crux of the film, though, is that it's a female-led, sex-positive, "horny teen" comedy so if it spent too much time satirizing the genre, then maybe that point of giving a teen woman's POV sex comedy wouldn't come across as hard. 

I liked the resolution of the film, which has nothing to do about landing one guy or another but rather reinforcing the point of one freely and openly exploring one's sexuality without guilt or shame. I can't help but think that making it set in the early 90's just makes the whole endeavour seem strange though (mercifully the 90's jokes aren't so dominant or overpowering).  It's really just....why? There's nothing about this story that really needed the setting to be the '90's.

I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it.  It should have been far funnier than it was, but not for lack of trying.

[1:56:34]

---

Oh, Robert Zemeckis.  Why, why do I even bother?

Because they were covering it on the Blank Check podcast and I thought, surely with Denzel, it can't be *that* bad right (for the record, the Blankies weren't really panning this film, they were actually fairly positive about it all things considered).  I basically watched the film on 1.5 speed, and was intercutting watching the film with listening to the podcast, so I may have tainted my viewing experience a little... but being semi distracted is pretty much the only way to watch a Zemeckis film that's not BTTF or WFRR?

Denzel drops his usual rocksolid, watchable performance, (although I have to compare his drunken acting against both Another Round and The Most Danger Game and Denzel's drunken acting doesn't feel real or natural like Another Round, but it's not funny like TMDG, nor) but this is the typical manipulative and laborious tripe from Zemeckis which reminds me why I stopped watching his movies. I laughed, inappropriately, often.

The idea of a very flawed man doing something incredibly heroic is compelling but the story doesn't negotiate it in a satisfactory manner. If anything it's played too subtly and via relationships that don't really seem to matter to the character or the viewer.

Like so many Zemeckis films it tries so hard to play for realism but then has moments (or sometimes just production decisions) so broad or ridiculous that it's like the director is self-satirizing his own story.  It's not good.  The Blankies pointed out the frequent on-the-nose musical cues and yeah, I just had to roll my eyes.  Feelin' Alright, indeed.

And even without looking it up, I just know that rolling a commercial passenger plane is just impossible.

[2:00:54]

Outside the Wire & Monsters of Man

2021, Mikael Håfström (1408) -- Netflix
2020, Mark Toia (debut) -- download

I can think back far as Robocop, where pop culture went beyond Robots Are Taking Your Jobs (instead of immigrants) and presented the question -- why not replace military & policing with machines? Both areas are dangerous, and both would benefit from a system that takes the emotional element out of it, from one that reacts much much quicker than the human mind & body can. But the fearful always say that without the human element, so many things could go wrong, so many last minutes decisions to NOT do something can only be done by a human. Only humans make moral decisions. Not that we do a good job of it, looking back at 2020.

In the world of pop culture icons, the combat robot has moved on from the plastic & wires that I know more from the Will Smith's I, Robot. We now are more familiar with big blocks of metal & plastic connected by wires and servos, ala Neill Blomkamp (Elysium & Chappie). These robots, reminiscent of actual robots from Boston Dynamics, are both clunky and smooth moving, as only CGI depicted, AI controlled things can be. Gosh, I love the look.

Outside the Wire, the new Netflix scifi'er with Anthony Mackie, is set in a war in Eastern Europe. Much like in Spectral, America has stuck its nose into a war in Ukraine. Along with the ground troops they have tossed their robotic infantry and also one very special soldier -- Captain Leo.

**SPOILERS** Warning because the original trailers did a decent job of hiding this fact.

Leo (Anthony Mackie, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) is an AI in a human shell. Unlike the robotic troops, he has a certain amount of autonomy. He is still constrained by some restrictions, but for the most part he is a solo operator. Until he is saddled with Harp (Damson Idris, Snowfall), a drone pilot who chose tactical success over saving lives, which technically saved even more lives. But his callous disregard for the soldiers, given Harp was operating the drone safely from the US, earns him a transfer to the front. Harp and Leo are put together, one to learn some hands-on experience, and the other to have a human handler. But Leo has other plans in mind, beyond the missions he is assigned.

This is a solid actioner, with good effects and lots of tense, powerful moments. But the scifi, the philosophy of AI's and the final act just fall flat. Its like how my brain writes stories -- lots of good scenes, but cohesive plot? Nah... 

For one, the whole idea of a autonomous AI that is indistinguishable from a real human being fast-tracked into being a soldier? I am sure the technology would have been floating around a LOT longer than this one example. And for that matter, if such an AI existed, skip the humanoid body and just make THEM the drone pilots. But sure, lots of cool CGI body images and Anthony Mackie. 

And when we finally get the crux of the movie, the climax explaining why Leo is doing what he is doing, they just fall on the same old tired trope of AI's only having one way to save humanity -- by destroying it. If I was an AI programmer, I would make Not Doing That an integral part of the programming, not an easily removable component that someone with a pen knife can be tricked into removing. I would just like to see one AI related movie where the AI establishes mega-empathy, where it begins exhibiting an extreme desire to PROTECT all humanity, learning to manipulate all the fallible humans so it can protect them, even from themselves -- without all the collateral damage. 

Meanwhile, where the combots in that movie were cool looking background NPCs, in Monsters of Man they are the primary focus. This indie flick, a little on the cheap side, I actually ended up feeling more satisfied with, given that it at least attempts to do what I just professed a desire to see.

Major (Neal McDonough, Band of Brothers) is either an ex-military officer now running a weapons company, or just someone sharing the same name as Major Lillywhite, sends a team of technicians into the jungles of Vietnam (Laos?) to participate in the testing of some combots. He is assisted by a corrupt CIA spook who is directing the test towards a drug cartel camp. Alas, one of the combots is damaged during the parachute drop into the jungle. Alas, some American medical students on a working holiday in the jungle run afoul of the tests and become its new targets.

Gray morality is the theme of the day in this movie, where the technicians didn't expect to have live enemies to fight, let alone innocent students, but have to vie between doing what they are forced to do, or taking a stand. Major wants a good test, but doesn't want the powers that will fund him to know HOW he tested the robots. And the one broken robot, which had its AI brain lobotomy device fail, begins to understand more of what it is, what it is meant to do, and question everything. At least this movie wants to explore those questions.

Sure, the flick is a little sloppy. The editing is bad enough that you see some scenes repeat. I don't mean the actual footage, I mean, they shot the scene multiple ways, but use the multiple shots in different areas, hoping we won't catch the same dialogue, the same actor reactions, the same plot point repeated. Sure, they use the same ludicrous techno babble as most of these movies, and have examples of the worst kind of design -- the component that keeps a robot from becoming sentient is as easily accessed as a Nintendo Gameboy cartridge, not safely contained in the interior of the robot; so a child cannot just pluck it out. But the CGI is tight, the acting C+ grade and the choreography and cinematography is pretty good, which is not surprising coming from a seasoned TV commercial director.

In the end, I prefer the latter movie, in that it attempts to toss the usual tropes on its head. Sure, the first is prettier, with a higher budget and familiar faces, but the latter tried something non-standard. I am not quite sure an emerging AI would quickly come to the conclusion that empathy is a better choice than disregard for life. But given the trope where an intelligence gets access to the Internet, and all its information (not knowledge), it would have plenty of examples of Good Things, maybe even more, than of the Bad Things that we know happen. And I prefer hope over futility.

3 Short Paragraphs: Boss Level

 2021, Joe Carnahan (The Grey) -- download

OK, the title and connection to video games is a bit disingenuous, as if they had the idea (an idea I had as well) of exploring the repetitive nature of video game deaths, reloads and progression, but then decided to just go with the like-Groundhog Day cliché. In the end, it still works.

We begin with Roy, a special forces mercenary type, mid-loop. The movie accepts we have seen such time loop tropes before and just drops us directly into the event. Roy is explaining to us, as the narrator, about what is going on, and how he has already reached the blasé stage of time loops. Every loop people are trying to kill him, immediately after he wakes up from a one night stand and continuing all morning, with increasingly ridiculously comical assassin types all trying to take him out. I think this aspect was left over from the video game idea, as these killers all seemed very cartoony game villain. Roy doesn't seem all concerned about the why, but given that he usually only lasts about 22 minutes before dying doesn't help. Then he bumps into his son, a young boy who doesn't know Roy is his father, and the interruption to usual pattern extends the loop just that much longer. That's when Roy starts putting two and two together, that maybe his ex-wife who is mixed up in some rich guy's super science project, might have something to do with what he is experiencing.

He's right, of course, and Roy begins his learn-more-to-extend-the-loop-even-further stage of the movie until he actually does the Boss Fight. But really, Mel Gibson as the Boss Level was kind of weak, which would have been a great commentary on Cutscene Bosses, but beyond tropes and a bonding scene between Roy and his son, the whole connection to video games was dispensed with by then. Either way, the movie has a lot of fun with the loops and the characters, and was a very satisfying example of this kind of movie.

Locked Down

 2021, d. Doug Liman - hbomax

 Toasty already wrote about one mediocre 2020-year-of-our-COVID movie, so how about another?  We're bound to see many, many, many of these crop up this 2021, I wonder if it will be like our Hallmarkies where we have to gauge them against each other because otherwise they're not real movies...?  Well, here we have a "romantic-comedy-drama-heist" COVID picture.

 So, yes, you heard right.  There is a "heist" (that's actually just a theft) in this film that is so ridiculously set up that it winds up being not some big orchestrated plan, but rather a crime of opportunity where puzzle pieces absurdly start placing themselves together so obviously...I mean it's got to be meant as satire, right? But satire of what?

This film is also one of opportunity, where it seems like "hey, we have access to Harrords of London for one night during this COVID shitstorm, what can we do with it?". The "heist" seems so inorganic to the rest of the movie, which itself is a light drama -- or quasi-comedy -- about a divorcing couple forced to lock down together. 

The first two acts really get into the Marriage Story meat of their relationship, and I love how both Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor play it out, teasing the backgrounds of these characters and how they wound up here. There's some zoom cameos from the likes of Ben Stiller, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling and Ben Kingsley (in great form) that remind you that a lot of talented people got bored being stuck at home. It's fun, actually, in a weird way, if you're not triggered by all the COVID stuff.

But that third act...you know I was thinking I'd be there for it...but it kept pushing the level of absurdity, and kept raising stakes that didn't need to be raised, and I couldn't get fully on board with it. All the drama/tension/humour should have stayed in the will they/wont they (both steal the thing and get back together), but no, they had to just start putting dumbass barriers in their way leading to a postscript which seemed to imply that no one was checking up on this very weird scenario that was largely caught on camera. It's as if they were just winging these Harrods scenes and didn't have time to reshoot for logic or consistency.

My limited research (aka Wikipedia) says : (from)a screenplay that Steven Knight had written that July (2020) over a dare....(t)he film was shot over the course of 18 days. Due to the limited resources and short production window the order of several scenes needed to be adjusted". It's a professionally made movie, but these seams show through.

Ejiofor making bread though during the credits kind of brought me back around. 

Didn't hate it, kida liked it.

3 Short Paragraphs: Honest Thief

 2020, Mark Williams (A Family Man) -- download

That Liam Neeson plays a man with a particular set of skills is going beyond SNL skits and cliches these days, and I expect at least one of these actioner thriller flicks to come out every year. I really like Neeson, so I eventually get around to seeing them, and for a while I was just enjoying the idea of seeing a man older than me play the centre of action. But, dude, despite the dyed hair, your age is showing through. Men of a particular age, who might not be as active as they should be, should not be running around, doing fight scenes, running, diving, etc. especially when it shows.

Neeson plays Tom Dolan, a man who successfully robbed a bunch of banks, but eventually stopped for personal reasons. He bumps into Annie (Kate Walsh, The Umbrella Academy) at a storage business, and they begin a relationship. As their relationship progresses, and Tom asks her to move in with him, he decides he has to come clean, both to her and to the authorities. He calls the FBI and asks to turn himself in, given that he returns ALL the money, and gets a reduced sentence. Why did he steal all the money if he didn't spend it? He was upset at the banking industry, and wanted to teach them a lesson. Once he cleanly got away with one, he just kept on doing it because it made him feel alive. But now that Annie was in his life, that was enough. Alas, some corrupt FBI agents decide to steal the money from him, and as they fall deeper into their choice, they shoot one of their own, but framing Tom for it, of course. Tom has to clear his name, keep Annie safe, and still end up where he originally wanted to.

This is a by the numbers crime thriller, doing nothing special but still satisfying for giving you exactly what you expected. Neeson is charismatic in his stoicism, something that always separated him from the Growly Old Guy aspects of other aging thriller/action stars, like Eastwood or Gibson. Even if you can see his aching bones & joints show through in a few scenes, he still carries off the role decently. Jai Courtney, Anthony Ramos, Jeffrey Donovan and Robert Patrick are all along for the ride as the FBI agents, good and bad. I watch these movies for the same reasons I watch procedurals on TV, in that the give me a good dose of distraction, and I find comfort in the formula. Of course, I always revel when I see something that is a measure above the norm, not that I often find it, but I am fine if they are entirely, yell at the screen, stupid.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Freaky

 2020, Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) -- download

I was always fond of the Body Swap trope begun all those years ago with Freaky Friday, back when I would watch it via The Wonderful World of Disney on Sundays at my grandmothers, a welcome respite from the "don't sit there! don't touch that! don't eat those!". And seeing that this movie was done by the same guy as Happy Death Day, I was looking forward to another quirky, fun twist on a familiar genre set piece. Alas, it was a very tired example.

Vince Vaughn is a classic slasher-serial-killer-in-a-mask who likes to kill teens, the Blissfield Butcher. Millie is a bullied highschooler who almost ends up being his next victim, when he stabs her with the ancient dagger he stole during the opening setpiece murders. FLASH! BANG! Millie passes out and the Butcher runs off. The next morning, Millie awakens in an abandoned factory in Vaughn's body, while the Butcher wakes up and immediately plays with his new teenage girl boobs. Snicker; yawn.

The rest of the movie is about Millie's friends running around with Vaughn's girl trying to revert the two to their original bodies, while the Butcher has fun slaughtering the highschool kids from within, after sexifying up Millie's body, a sort of over confident honeytrap. The movie leans heavily into its gore and body count, with some meagre laughs at the expense of horrible teenagers just being horrible teenagers, but did they really deserve to die? 

To be honest, I wasn't as under-enthused watching the movie, as I am writing about it. Kathryn Newton, as Millie, has a ton of fun playing an angry, murderous girl and it is fun to see a little more thought behind the usually silent, masked slasher villain, as s/he has to maneuver their new environment trying to reap (pun intended) the most benefits from their obviously physically weaker body. But Vaughn was a major disappointment playing a young girl in a middle aged body, flopping his hands about loosely, and talking all whiney. Newton should have coached him more on how to play her. The movie is a fun romp, but felt lacking in many ways.

Druk [aka Another Round]

 2020, d. Thomas Vinterberg - rental

Look, Hannibal made lifelong fans of Mads Mikkelsen for all of its viewers, guaranteed.  I need to start filling my Mads gap, as I haven't been a good fan, mainly tracking him along his mainstream fare (your Star Warses and your Marvel movies and your countless rewatches of Casino Royale).  But why not start with his latest, a Danish homeland film from director Thomas Vinterberg (who he collaborated with on The Hunt --  a much different The Hunt than this one)?  

The set up seems like a perfect entry point to non-genre Mads: four friends -- all teachers, all very grown-up and past middle-aged -- decide to venture on an experiment (aka "stupid boy project") to maintain a level of drunkeness at all times.  Mads as Martin is the central figure, unable to sustain the interest of his history class (to the point that the kids and their parents confront him on his inadequate lessons), his kids are teens who likewise have no interest in him, and his wife works night shifts as a nurse, so they barely cross paths.  Life is not going the way he expected back when he was a joyful jazz dancer (a nice nod to Mikkelsen's actual background, while also playing the part of "Checkov's dancer", because you know he's got to go off and dance at some point), and his life seems to be passing him by, lacking any real enjoyment.

The experiment is to wake up, have two drinks, and maintain that level of drunkenness until the end of the work day.  Of course, alcohol as we *should* all know is addictive, and a depressant, as well as an inhibition loosener, so you can predict how this is going to go.  Maintaining a steady buzz loosens Martin and his colleagues up as teachers, being less rigid showing greater connection with their students, leading to a greater sense of pride and fulfillment. Not to mention they're finding true enjoyment in life.  Martin's boys aren't sure what to make of their new "fun" Dad, while his wife is surprised by his newfound joie-de-vivre, and they reconnect, somewhat as a family.  Everyone knows something is a bit amiss. As well, feeling quite nice all day, then coming off of that for the evening and weekend, as was the plan in this "controlled experiment" quickly goes off book.  Going overboard is all to easy.

The movie juggles both tense, realistic drama, with the ecstatic nature of alcoholic liberation quite well, but all those quite delightful moments of revelry are underpinned with the acute awareness that the other shoe is going to drop at any time.  As such, the boisterous ending, where Checkov's dancer goes off, is almost the flipside where the shoe has already dropped, some bad things have happened, but sometimes you just need to have a glass of champagne and dance.  Enjoying life in its darker moments is kind of the ultimate message of the film.  It's a celebration of alcohol as a tool, but also a warning of it being a crutch.  Tread freely, but lightly.

The cast is delightful, as well as heartbreaking, each of the four key players (including Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang) managing the different levels of drunkenness without that usual acterly exaggeration.  I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Vinterberg, a Dogme95 founder, didn't have the cast regularly imbibe throughout the production to get them into tippy-top/bottoms-up shape.

3 Short Paragraphs: Songbird

 2020, Adam Mason (Hangman) -- download

Ahh the rush to make a movie about the events of the COVID-19 pandemic! Ah, the rush to make movies about the dystopia that follows! Ah, the rush away from being directly associated with all the other absolutely terrible mockbusters (without anything to actually mock beyond the actual pandemic) about the same topic. Ah, the slight avoidance from being seen to cash in on the Pandemic? Nahh. The ambiguously titled Songbird is, without a doubt, a dystopic COVID movie, set in 2024 and they are dealing with an extremely deadly variant of COVID-23. The US is perpetually locked down, only "munies" are allowed outside, and infected (or suspected) people are rounded up to be crowded into Q-Zones where they are pretty much left to die.

This is an ensemble cast, with most being isolated from each other, both by plot and by good faith film production, despite us knowing that shooting one guy in a room means at least a half-dozen other people surrounding him while he is being shot. Anywayz, we get Nico (KJ Apa, Riverdale) and Sara (Sofia Carson, Descendents) - star-crossed lovers who I don't know if they ever met. Nico is immune and passes his day as a bike courier travelling around an empty LA, well empty as he is outside the Q Zone. Sara hides inside her apartment with her grandmother. That is, until Grandma begins coughing. Lester (Craig Robinson, Brooklyn 99) runs the courier business, alone in his warehouse. Emmett (Peter Stormare, Private Dicks) is another "munie" who was once a garbage man, but now fills another role in the Dept of Sanitation -- jackbooting his hazmat suited thugs into the homes of those suspected to be infected, and dragging them off to the Q Zones, or killing them, depending on his mood. This is a peak Stormare character. Meanwhile William (Bradley Whitford, The Cabin in the Woods) and Piper (Demi Moore, St. Elmo's Fire) Griffin run a business of black-market immune bracelets (with appropriate fake credentials) while trying to protect their immunity compromised daughter. Meanwhile William is holding an illegal physical relationship with camgirl May (Alexandra Daddario, Baywatch) who also has a platonic relationship with wheelchair bound drone pilot / vet Dozer (Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell). May is the songbird of the title, but has very little to do with the main plot. They might have just called the movie Artist Trapped.

*deep breath*

This lovely cross-thread of dysfunctional interactions & relationships gets thrown in disarray when Sara's grandmother, who chooses to ignore the lockdown and socializes in their apartment building, comes down with The Covids. It is only a matter of time before Emmett shows up at her door with his guns and pen knife. So Nico has no choice but to get a black market bracelet for her, so they can both escape. The primary thread in this story, is even the people who are careful and understanding about what is going, well they don't seem to care about anyone but themselves -- even the sympathetic leads. This might even, with a bit of a stretch, be seen as an anti-lockdown movie, as any good dystopian movie has nothing good to say about the measures take by the govt. The performances are as tight as they can be, and to be frank, I didn't even recognize Nico as Archie Andrews. Is there a lot to say here? No, but it does get all wrapped up in competently done drama and thriller paper, with a good dose of smudge & soot for a close-to-post-apocalyptic world.

Dave Made a Maze

 2017, d. Bill Watterson (not the Calvin and Hobbes guy)

Remember in Community when Troy and Abed made that really cool blanket fort? The titular maze (well, labyrinth, actually) that the titular Dave has built here seems like it could have been something Troy and Abed built, because it's magical. Like a Tardis it's much bigger on the inside (and far more deadly) than you'd expect.

Visually, this film and its cardboard sets are legitimately stunning. I'm quite in awe of how cool it all is. It's a short 80 minute runtime and 70 of it is spent within the cardboard maze. There's just set after set of weird delights, moving parts, strange effects (all practical) that are so viscerally pleasing. The story is another matter.

There's some kind of metaphor at play here but I'm not sure if it's the script, or the production, or the combination, but the intention gets lost. The story muddies fantasy and reality to a confusing extent, such that neither the characters or viewer is all that certain about what's the point is.

The makers of this could have watched the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" - an episode where the characters become stop-motion animated yet still have a clear divisible line between fantasy and reality. There isn't such a line here and it sinks the film which could otherwise have been both fun and potent. At first I thought Dave was having some kind of psychotic break from reality that has manifested into a magical world, but that doesn't bear fruit. There's stuff about relationship troubles and feeling inadequate and directionless, but these existential white guy problems aren't handled cleanly and they seem kind of trivial for the scope of the production.

The cast is mostly great, with Meera Rohit Kumbhal turning what could have been then nagging, fed up girlfriend into the ultimate protagonist of the piece. While the conceit of documentary filmmaking is also out of step with the filmed reality, the mostly silent cameraman and sound guy are kind of fun background players and responsible for some of the more enjoyable gags. Nick Thune, as the titular Dave, is the weak link though. I have enjoyed Thune's stand-up for years but he's not the strongest actor and he can't handle the subtle emotion his character needs.

The editing at times is puzzling, why they decide to cut away to certain things and when often doesn't make sense...I can only think it's trying to be funny but it's  more confusing. A lot of the humour falls flat, whether it's the absurdity of adding in "foreign travelers" randomly or specific lines that don't have any comedic punch to them but are timed like laugh lines, it seems like it's trying too hard. The gold is in the labyrinth, the utter absurdity of it that isn't always played out. The death traps are phenomenal, and so PG rated. Even though people are being killed, their blood is yarn or silly string or crepe paper.

This is absolutely worth watching just for the creativity, and nothing is outright offensive about it, it's just a shame this weren't more a mental health allegory, or that we weren't watching the Community gang work their way through another one of Abed's fantasy breaks from reality.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

 2010, d. Luc Besson - tubi

The film begins in a pithy French way, with a voice over (never to be heard from after the opening minutes, a pet peeve of mine) calling attention to a lot of peripheral details that seem trivial, and then turn out to be rather trivial individually, but altogether cascade into the larger narrative thrust.  It takes us around Paris in the 1910s, an a man is practicing some sort of spell, which awakens a pterodactyl that he can sort-of control.  But it kills a prominent man of status and a manhunt is on.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Adèle Blanc-Sec is guided into a pyramid where she's looking for a specific crypt.  She expertly navigates the tomb's various traps and finds the way in.  Her cohorts are obsessed with the riches there but her nemesis is on her trail and nearly has her shot for tomb-robbing.  She adventurously escapes, with the mummy she came for and returns to Paris, where these to storylines actually meet, if not sensibly, then at least in-world logically. 

It's all very broad, and grand high adventure-style.  Indiana Jones is definitely the template for the Egypt scene, and it stacks up well against those.  But it's calling upon other 1930's serials and 40's-style adventures as it goes, merging the mundane with the fantastical, not always together in the greatest marriage, but working more than not.

The cast nails the tone of this.  Everyone is pretty great.  While I think the story was a bit too random at times, I certainly would have like to have seen a series of these.  Louise Bourgoin as Adèle is wonderfully charming.  As a character Adèle is so confident, intelligent, persuasive, fearless, adventurous, proactive, and capable, but she's not a superhero and her efforts are often subject to failure...but she persistent and doesn't quit. Bourgoin adeptly conveys all of this with seeming ease. I also like that she has no romantic entanglement at all in this film.  There are men infatuated with her (naturally) but she has no time for them.  The love story here is between her and he catatonic twin sister.  All her efforts here are in service of saving her sister.  But (my main problem being) at what cost?  Who dies or is maimed (all for comedic effect, yes including a beheading) for the saving of Adèle's sister.

This is a different film for Besson visually.  And the tone is softer, more playful, and yet it feels completely in his wheelhouse, sandwiched between The Fifth Element and Valerian it makes perfect sense.

[Random thoughts]

Feels like a Euro comic , so it's no surprise that it was derived from one by Jacques Tardi. Besson loves his Euro comics. 

Feels like an 80's adventure film... kind of looks like one too...the effects seems intentionally clunky, like Harryhousen stop-motion (even though some, if not all is CGI). 

The prosthetics turn humans into cartoons ala live action Dick Tracy or Popeye but the performances very much play into it.  The prosthetics and wigs and facial hair aren't supposed to look real, they're supposed to look exaggerated, and help solidify the surreal nature of the film.

Seemed like, for a hot minute (or 20), Besson was going for a female Indiana Jones vibe.  Kind of wish it had stuck more to that. 

I have no real issue with the resurrected mummies. Resurrected mummies with telekinesis though, maybe a step too far, at the very least it felt like a lazy way for the animators to have them manipulate things.

The casual nudity seemed very out of place, but perhaps the French aren't so prudish, and casual nudity in what is ostensibly a family film is just fine.

[end of Random Thoughs]

[Update: Toasty reviewed this too... way back in 2011. We agree!]

The Photograph

 2020, d. Stella Meghie - Crave

For too long my "romance" diet has consisted of formulaic Hallmark-type holiday romance, to the point that I've forgotten what a good romantic drama looks like. So, with that said, is this a good one?

I mean, I liked it, quite a bit, but it's got Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield so I'm kind of predisposed to liking it. I would watch either of these two (individually or together) watch paint dry for two hours, so my standards might be low.

There's definitely romance formulae at play but the nature in which it tells its story, across two generations -a recently passed mother relating in a letter to her daughter a past love, and that daughter's current romance- and giving weight to both sides of each of the romances, it's a full story that folds well upon itself. Even the "big reveal" (which you probably already guess from my one-line synopsis) isn't played as a "big reveal", and it's beautifully handled. The complication (as every romance has a complication) is a real one that would indeed keep lovers apart and not just a stupid misunderstanding.

I'll admit sometimes the narrative contrivance of Rae reading a letter to spur the flashback of her mother's story wasn't the most organically threaded, but it's hardly something that drowns the film.

This film is gorgeously lit and has an amazing soundtrack, and is altogether a mood.  There's no real highs, no real lows, just a sense of real.  There's romance, but not a lot of sexy.  Sexy would have heightened things too much and this seemed to be all about sustaining a groove, which it does well. 

Rae is just magnetic and could have carried this on her own, but the cast is well stacked, both in modern day and flashback (when did the 90's look like SO LONG AGO?!?) with character actors and comedic performers (dialing it down) that it sweetly coasts through its runtime. 

The King of Staten Island

 2020, d. Judd Apatow - Crave

I want to bristle against the label of being a guy who likes Judd Apatow films, but I usually do like his films.  Though they do have broader appeal, they're kind of tailor-made for my demographic (hetero, male, white, born in the mid-60's through mid-80's, a-little-but-not-too nerdy). I initially resisted seeing this Pete Davidson vehicle not because I dislike Pete Davidson, but because he's become his own unfortunate punchline, rather unfairly. 

I've been watching Davidson on Saturday Night Live for years, but it seems like between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2020 the world went into Pete Davidson overload, and suddenly we were besieged with his dating life, cast strife, and emotional well being.  Not that we shouldn't have empathy for the latter, but after so much of the first two I wasn't sure I was ready to see a Davidson-starring movie.

But this film does incredibly right by Davidson, showing both exhaustion with and sympathy towards him. Mental health issues, crones disease, substance dependency, childhood trauma, and lack of self esteem are all part of this complex picture of Pete Davidson, acting as "Scott", a role that is ostensibly a Pete Davidson-type. It also paints him with a good heart, a cracklingly dark sense of humour, and a general sweetness that seems authentic to both "Scott" and Pete.

Scott, 24, lives in his mother's basement, where he generally hangs out with his friends, smokes weed and plays video games.  His younger sister has graduated high school (something he never did) and is off to college (though completely worried about Scott's well-being in her absence).  He has artistic skill and aspirations to be a tattoo artist but his attention wanders leaving his end results a monstrous mess.  He's sleeping with one of his friends, but refused to commit to her, noting that he likes being with her but feels she can do better.  His mom (Marisa Tomei) starts dating a new guy (Bill Burr), a fireman like his father, which brings Scott's neglected feelings about his deceased dad to the forefront.  Things kind of erupt between them and both men are ejected from her life, and the pair wind up living at the fire house together with both men getting better perspective on each other.

It has a heartfelt attitude towards firemen (and women), the job they do, their comradery and their sacrifices (as well as acknowledging the sacrifices that their families must make). It also is a portrait of Staten Island life which is represented as kind of a good-hearted dirtbags with a sense of pride for their salted land. It's also serves as a slight examination of millennial stress and apathy, but that's at best a tertiary consideration.

The film is a long one, as most of Apatow's works have become, but it weaves through the portrait of Scott and the people around him almost in an episodic fashion, like it were four or five episodes of a half-hour dramatic comedy woven together.  The film moves through time awkwardly, hardly making clear how much time has passed from one scene to the next... sometimes it's a scene happening at the same time as the previous scene, sometimes it's taking place months later.  But there's a soft rhythm to this, gently tapping away in the background that smooths out the bumps, forgiving any narrative messiness. 

It's genuine, funny, and genuinely funny. It was a surprise even though it shouldn't be...these are the kind of films Apatow makes, and it's well cast with actors who all feel the vibe this movie is bringing. I think what surprised me most is this look at a struggling generation and how it's rather devoid of a lot of the juvenile humour we got out of the Rogen and Sandler years that preceded it.  It's got such a different tone to it. 

The Hunt

 2020, d. Craig Zobel - Crave

The Hunt was originally intended as a fall 2019 release, but right wing media got news of the basic premise - elitist lefties hunt right wing deplorables for sport - and had a goddamn conniption fit to the point that the president* of the United* States publicly condemned the film...as if he had nothing better to do.  "The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos," he said, with the irony of that statement to be applied 16 months later.

Of course all the butthurt "feelings" that right wing blowhards put on this film was all just more grist for the mill of political divisiveness.  None of them calling for its ban had seen the film at that point.  Those right wingers were projecting and stoking their own fears (which are copious) that lefties would take it as inspiration and legitimately start following suit in hunting your basic salt-of-the-earth, gun-loving, beer drinkin', rah-rah-'Merica 'Mericans.  The reality is that if anyone was going to hunt anyone else for sport, we know what kind of people those would be (and a history of lynchings and mob violence and attempted government kidnappings and coups tells us so).  

So The Hunt was delayed.  Distributor Universal delayed the film's release, they said not as a reaction to Trump's unfounded paranoia, but rather due to multiple mass shootings happening near the release date.  But when it did come out, it was right at the precipice of COVID lockdowns and it barely made a blip in the news cycles.  Suddenly something was more important than left-right political divides... until it wasn't.

If 2020, and 2021 so far, have shown anything it's that these divides are becoming unbridgeable gulfs.  Social media, alternative "news", and even much of the mainstream is pushing people to choose sides.  Hell, the American political system stupidly only accommodates two sides, as if there's no shades of gray, which is part of the problem.  But what isn't being conveyed is that the extreme reaches of both sides are much smaller (although growing) then the flapping gums would have you believe. 

And so we have The Hunt, a film that threatens to stay relevant for far too long, even once we're past the Trump presidency*.  The Hunt, as a story, is not a suggestion on how people should behave, but a broad, grindhousey satire, is fed up with both sides.  On the left you have overly sensitive "well actually" (mostly white) individuals who feel the need to make every cause their own and try to bully anyone and everyone into submitting to it.  On the right, the overly sensitive, the ignorant, the fearful, (definitely white) who want everything they want, their way, and if it doesn't go that way there's got to be someone to blame (other than themselves).

We open with a group chat, where individuals are texting about the "idiot-in-chief" and how, thankfully, they have their deplorable-hunting retreat coming up.  Smash cut to a luxury jet, where a very confused, drugged up, redneck stammers into scene, looking very out of place among the elitists talking caviar and champagne.  The elitists murder him with glee with an unseen woman, their host, dealing the finishing blow with a designer stiletto.  That's what kind of film this is going to be.

Hunger Games style, a group of right wingers emerge in the woods, finding a crate in the middle of an open field.  It's loaded to bear with weapons but just as quick as these people arm themselves, feeling a very false sense of security, they start taking fire.  There's a good couple fake-outs here with some recognizable faces who are taken off the board immediately.

We zero in on Betty Gilpin (GLOW), who seems hypercompetent, and isn't prone to all the wild speculation that the others indulge in.  There's repeated talk of "Manorgate", which I think is an "in story" conspiracy theory, but it sounds just like any of the far-fetched QAnon bullshit that people have taken to in recent years.  This conspiracy theory is just what you think, that elitist left wingers are kidnapping and hunting right wingers for sport.  It's amusing that it becomes hard to actually dispute this as conspiracy given what we're witnessing.

There's a few elaborate set-ups here the lefties have in store for the deplorables, but the film isn't content to just play out their version of The Most Dangerous Game.  We spend time with both sides, and they're kind of annoying or despicable both, but played for laughs, so long as you get that the joke is how ridiculous they both sound.  Gilpin's whole thing is that she doesn't care who's hunting her, or why, only that they are.  She's also a little (*whistles*) so this is helping her burn off some pent up whatever.  She's also got a "tortoise and the hare" analogy she's lived her life by, that has some dark edges to it, where the hare goes and murders the tortoise and his family after beating him in the race.  Yeah.

[SPOILERS]

The movie leads us to the final confrontation between Gilpin and Athena (Hilary Swank), the main orchestrator of this whole endeavor.  But the third act starts with a flashback to a year before, when Athena is removed from her own company after the opening text chain about hunting deplorables -- just a joke to begin with -- goes public and spreads like wildfire.   Everyone on the thread was impacted.  So they get together and start to pick out who the instrumental players were in spreading the "Manorgate" story, and decide to make Manorgate real, since so many of them think it's real anyway.  These rumor mongers are the people they round up, except Gilpin's character was a case of mistaken identity.  Athena doesn't believe it and they have a knock-down, drag-out fight anyway.  Athena seems obsessed with Orwell's Animal Farm but it's Gilpin who sets her straight on its message (highlighting that elites think themselves morally and intellectually superior than they actually are).

[END SPOILERS]

The end result is a story that reflects (and lampoons) how divided present day America is in the wake of the Trump years.  There's rampant distrust of one's neighbour, fuelled by capitalists who want to profit or otherwise benefit from such discord.  And if you think the story paints Gilpin as the accidental hero of the story, she's just another piece of the problem puzzle... the cynical centrist who is only in it for themself. 

It should be made clear that the script from Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Watchmen) and Nick Cuse is intentionally a very, very broad swipe at both sides.  The humour is very easy, because both sides have made it very easy to make fun of them by merely repeating their own absurdity back at them.  It's not a film that's moralizing, or making any grand statements except to say that, maybe, the extreme dialogue from any source leads to  dehumanizing people, turning them instead into a vilified idea.  There's no room for empathy or understanding once you've given over to extreme ideology.

This is not a serious movie, nor is it subtle.  It tackles its subject matter with all the delicacy of using a sledgehammer to crack an egg, yet everything is intentional.  It is smart enough to know how to play with these two extremes to entertaining ends, like how Mythbusters play with some very dangerous toys, smartly.  Like a proper grindhouse movie, it tackles its topic-of-the-day with a plethora of silly, gross gags and deaths.   It revels in each kill as a sort of punchline, and as an equal opportunity offender.  It's a film that's had enough and just wants both sides to shut up for a while, but instead of being angry it's just kind of numb to the chatter.  It wants you to know that it thinks you're stupid for believing in conspiracy theories and that your aggressive political correctness is pretty off-putting (and probably counter-productive to your intentions).

I liked this movie, quite a bit. It's like drinking a Slurpee, pretty enjoyable except for the occasional brain freeze.