3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Jackpot!

2024, Paul Feig (Ghostbusters) -- Amazon

Maybe I need a tag "it was cute" for comedies that were OK, but just OK ? Honestly the best thing about this was the reel of cut ad-libs at the end of the movie. This is a Paul Feig thing? The less tight script, opting for choosing the best of a bunch of improv scenes? Yeah yeah #lazyweb.

And yeah yeah, this is not my usual fare for comedy, but it was stated out loud that we both rather enjoy Awkwafina (especially, typing out her name) and John Cena and needed something light for the evening (do we ever need something dark anymore? there was a time we embraced the heavy & compelling) so we chose this.

So, Katie (Awkwafina, Shang-Chi) was a child actor who also had some middling success in doing commercials until she had to step away to take care of her dying mother. She returns to LA in 2030 (yes, this is a "20 minutes into the future" movie) aware there is a recession on (isn't there always a recession on these years?) but not aware of what the California government has done to distract the populace. She finds out during a disastrous audition when she accidentally places her thumbprint on the winning lottery ticket. Yay! She won almost $4 billion dollar jackpot. Boo! She doesn't know people are entitled to try to kill her in order to claim the win. Instantly she is on the slapstick run. Everyone at the audition and all the adjacent businesses pull weapons out of their asses and attack her.

But in drops (literally) Noel (John Cena, Freelance), a security agent tasked with protecting her. Well, sorry, not tasked, but he offers to protect her, for a cut of the winnings. In this new California, its a legit business to protect lottery winners. Noel's rather an amateur, competing with the likes of the Lewis Protection Agency, a highly funded company. Either way, he is there, Katie is being chased and followed and livestreamed, and he ends up protecting her. She just wants to opt out but even that is not an option.

Chase chase chase, they end up in the panic room of a celebrity (Machine Gun Kelly; I am only peripherally aware of who he is) and Noel is forced to call in LPA for assistance. Briefly Katie feels safe in the hands of the charismatic Louis Lewis (Simu Liu, Shang-Chi), and his all-white (design choice, not skin colour) organization. Until he turns out to be the real Bad Guy. Apparently his company has been quietly killing the winners and claiming their funds. All I can say is that the lottery company is doing a shit job of investigating the wins. Anywayz, Noel continues to protect her and Lewis gets all blowed up.

Epilogue. Katie is a great and nice and wonderful person and has shared her winnings with Noel, and setup a bunch of benevolent organizations. Yawn.

This is the lightest of the light comedies. As Kent said, the state of the world satire is just the elevator pitch for the movie, but not the movie in play. And its cheap looking and cheaply played, all the comedy, the violent action scenes, the supporting cast, the laughs. Sure, Cena and Awkwafina are carrying the movie, and that was why we came here, but... yawn.

Of note, I am hoping that John Cena continues to play ex-military people who lose their entire team due to betrayal. Do a third "My Spy" movie, replacing Bautista's character with Cena, but this backstory! Do a new "The Union" movie but bring in Cena as a retired military guy with that backstory! Have Shawn Levy do another lazy Ryan Reynolds movie and have Cena as a Bad Guy, with that backstory!

Watching: A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

2024, Netflix

Generic British investigatorial shows are sort of our bag, albeit with a desire for something different, something more creative. Subbing the whole sub-genre into a highschool environment was supposed to do that. Not sure it succeeded but we persevered with middling satisfaction.

What 100.  Based on YA mystery novels, Pip Fitz-Amobi (quite the name) focuses her EPQ (some project thingy UK high-schoolers do) on the unsatisfactorily solved murder of a classmate five years prior. Unsatisfactory because Pip liked the guy accused of the murder, who then confessed and committed suicide. Nobody wants her dredging up the painful past, as in her small village almost everyone had personal ties to the murder. But against common sense, considering she is receiving threats almost immediately, she runs down every rabbit hole investigating the crime, and eventually uncovers some rather unsavoury aspects to her pastoral village life.

1 Great. Pip Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers, Wednesday) herself. As a high-school kid, Pip floats somewhere on the spectrum of known, popular kid to quirky introvert, but is definitely seen as the titular "good girl". She's likeable, smart, but not Sherlockian, as she gets lots wrong, and more so solves the crime through tenacity even when dealing with heartbreak and tragedy. Myers does an impressive job as a young Brit despite being from Florida.

1 Good. Its a serviceable example of the genre, one I more enjoyed in retrospect than in actual viewing. We in fact, almost gave up on it, as we were a bit bored. While being British, I think they structured it more for the Netflix generation, as the usual 3 or 4 long episodes were formatted to six "one hour" episodes. I think it could have been tightened up.

1 Bad. The dark turn the series takes in the last few episodes turns out to have less of an impact than it should have. Maybe I am more used to these series have dark sides, but one dark thing leads to another and its just not as shocking as I felt it should be? The show, probably from its YA source, was walking a fine line between light high-school drama to the Evils That Men Do, and I am not sure if it balanced it well.

Man, this format really lends itself to "meh, it was alright."

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

2017, Mouly Surya (Trigger Warning) -- download

I said during my write-up of Trigger Warning that I wanted to reach back to Mouly Surya's groundbreaking and critically acclaimed (I need another way to say that catch phrase) film. I wanted to see if there was something the director brought from this movie to that Hollywood movie that was.... well, rather uninspired (another common film writing phrase I need to replace). But there were elements, as I mentioned, in the quiet moment where I suspected I saw the director at play, untampered. I think I was right for this movie, also about a woman wronged and taking matters into her own hands, is best during its quiet moments with the lead.

I need to write about this movie with less of the snark I usually use. This writeup needs to be a sobre, mature post considering the topic and the attention/intent used to make this movie. I harken back to Kent's commenting about intentionality in movie making, and I don't always agree this holds true, but in this movie EVERYTHING is done with intent, there is nothing added for the sake of a producer, this is a proper creator's vision movie, and for that at least, it deserves my respect.

I know nothing about the Indonesian film industry; I have probably only seen a handful of horror movies from there. I am saying this because I don't know whether this movie is courageous in their film world, but it definitely is from a general film making experience. Dealing head on with the cultural views of rape and a woman's status in one's own society has to be courageous. And at the same time Surya makes a movie with art and intent that resonates with the rest of the film viewing world.

A bit of the snark floats to the top with me thinking many of the critics gave it high marks just because of the subject matter, and not whether they "liked" the film or not. It did well at film festivals around the world, real well, but I still think most film critics would be... "it was fine."

Marlina (Marsha Timothy, The Raid 2) is a widow who lives in the dry hills of the island of Sumba. Her house is far from even the middle of nowhere, from our western perspective. Sumba has an interesting death ritual which plays a quiet part in the movie, as Marlina's husband sits in her house's main room, posed in a crouch, wrapped in many colourful blankets. People of Sumba often cannot afford "proper" burial rituals and will leave family members in the dry air, essentially mummifying them, until they can complete the funeral rites. In this movie, he is a prop, a reminder that Marlina is alone, entirely. She is now subject to whatever other men want to do with her.

Thieves come to her house, claiming her husband owed them money, and they will take everything, including her. More arrive, with a truck, and load all her livestock into the back. They demand her make them something to eat, they want chicken soup (waingapu) after which they will all ... take her, starting with leader Markus (Egy Fedly, Satan's Slaves). But not before he takes a nap.

She makes the soup with small green & red berries, and from they way she handles them, we know what they must do. Markus is oblivious as each of his fellow thieves die from the poison, and chooses rape over soup. In the act, Marlina grabs his golok, a sword or machete carried by all the men, and beheads him.

This was the first act, called The Robbery.

The next act is The Journey and has Marlina on her way to the police station with Markus's head. She is not hiding the fact she murdered him. Along the way, at the "bus stop", she meets "neighbour" Novi (Dea Panendra, Gundala) who is "10 months pregnant". She is heading to town to find her husband, who has run away because of her constant need for sex. Her mother tells her sex will encourage the baby to come, but the act, and her constant desire for it, disturbs him. Novi is blunt, talkative and... well, not really shocked at what Marlina has done.

Along the way, on the bus, a truck really, into which everyone piles, including two small horses and a family on their way to deliver a dowry, they are hijacked by a pair of surviving thieves. These two men had gone off in the truck with as much livestock as they could steal, and were returning for the rest when they discovered the bodies. They gave chase. But Marlina is able to escape on one of the horses, and she continues her journey, followed by the headless apparition of Markus, playing his small, roughly made wooden instrument, a jungaa.

In The Confession, Marlina arrives at the police station and is told a familiar story. She has no evidence, only her word, and they don't have the funding for rape kits, and they know she won't have funds to go to the hospital for such. It doesn't matter much to them, not even the robbery. Marlina doesn't seem surprised. But its been a long, hot journey and she is just tired. Back to her house.

In The Birth, one of the thieves has forced Novi to come back to Marlina's house, and coax Marlina to return, with Markus's head as well. Novi found her husband but he yelled at her and hit her, convinced she must be sleeping around and that is the reason the baby hasn't come yet. At Marlina's house, again the women are asked to cook for the men who are assaulting them. Novi makes food, while Franz, the youngest of the thieves retrieves the head from Marlina and poses Markus's body in much the same as Marlina's husband, resting his head upon its shoulders, and wrapping it in the blankets he steals from her husbands body. He has much more tenderness and caring for the body of his fellow criminal then for any of the women in the movie. When he attempts to rape Marlina, Novi comes rushing in with his golok and beheads him. In the wash of blood on the floor, the excitement and trauma, Marlina helps her deliver the baby, rather easily, a healthy baby boy.

The movie is a rather matter of fact presentation of what Surya must see women dealing with in Indonesia. Is it rural life? Is it all Indonesia? Its not a stretch to think it could happen everywhere, anywhere, for such things happen here in North America. The movie labels Marlina a murderer, without any doubt that is what she will be seen as in everyone's eyes. What the men did, or intended to do, doesn't matter. There are no "extenuating circumstances". But nothing in the movie is done with any pondering -- they have done what they had to do. It is life, and death.

It is said by many, including Surya herself, that the movie styles itself a Western. From the dry wide-shots of the landscape, to the ever present Sergio Leone style (actually Ennio Morricone but associating it with Leone and his movies makes more sense) music, she knew what she wanted it tone and look. But for me, it was the locked off shots of rooms, the geometry squared, that looked grand. We are left feeling like we are looking in on events, unable to intervene, silent collaborators with the abuse.

I still feel its kind of a shame her next movie would be the easily dismissed Hollywood/Netflix revenge flick Trigger Warning but its important she got the chance, the chance to work in the industry, be exposed to the morass of how things are "done over here". I am curious what she will do next.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Union

2024, Julian Farino (Florida Man) -- Netflix

Part of me wonders whether I should be posting these ... posts closer to the time when the movie hits the shelf / screen and I watch it. I mean, its not like I have an audience rearing to read about something new that just came out, it just seems more .... relevant?

We watched Florida Man; I didn't write about it. It was during the recent period where I wasn't writing about TV; I didn't feel the need to fill it in. It was less than satisfying.

I honestly don't think this could have been any more than that -- not satisfying. There have always been films that are purely products of the industry, i.e. they are nothing more than a calculation of investment versus return, effort versus reward. I will never claim to be an expert on the industry, but you don't have to be to see these kinds of signs. But again, I have said before, that is not necessarily a bad thing, a director gets work, writers get work, stunt coordinators get work, and a lot of people get their next job. In the end, all you get is a serviceable movie, but sometimes that's OK.

But is it? What if, and its entirely fantasy, the money shoved into these pablum actioners were funneled towards a dozen other indie-level flicks? the investment would be the same and I cannot help but think the return might be equal, but with the added bonus of there likely being a gem or two from those dozen. Again, fantasy.

Ten minutes of Googling tells me this movie was a "pitch", something originally called Our Man from Jersey. Basically Wahlberg and producer Stephen Levinson pitching an idea to a various shades of purple boardroom. I guess that is the industry these days? Maybe I have half a dozen movie ideas in my notebooks?

Anywayz, what was the pitch? Probably something along the line of "a secret non-governmental espionage organization has to recruit a nobody blue collar worker from New Jersey because they have no choice."

The "no choice" is because one of the current MacGuffins of espionage movies -- a list of all the spies and contacts in the espionage world is out there on the market, so they need someone not on the record to help them find it. Who is the them? Another current staple of the espionage film industry -- a spy agency not tied to any particular government or country, but who does Good Work for all. There is some hint that they pretend to be blue collar workers so they can hide in the shadows, blend in, accomplish what they need to do without being noticed. But other than an opening sequence, that never comes into play and Wahlberg's character is barely ever "under cover".

Anywayz, Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg, Father Stu) is recruited into The Union by his highschool GF Roxanne (Halle Berry, Moonfall)) who broke his heart when she left New Jersey to see the world. By recruited, I mean she gets him drunk, sedates him and takes him to the UK where The Union has its headquarters in the BT (British Telecom) Tower. There, he is explained the situation and asked to help. Not everyone is convinced he is the appropriate choice, Mike being one of them. But after an extended training montage they seem to have some confidence in him.

Their plan is to have Mike attend an auction where they can buy the MacGuffin. But first they have to get a proper invite to the auction. So, its about Mike being a lone not-on-the-list agent, and yet, they send a team, including Roxanne, with him at all times. I know they are nameless NPC agents, well most of them, but ... aren't they all a liability? Isn't that the point of the movie? Handwavey time! Anywayz, the mission to get the sub-MacGuffin, a device that acts as "invite" to the auction is screwed up because Mike drops it into a sink of dish water. You'd think they would make those fancy schmancy things at least at the level of a Samsung phone that can go for a swim, but whatever... now Mike has to regain their confidence by stealing another sub-MacGuffin from "the Koreans" who are represented by... eastern Europeans.

In case you haven't caught on yet, the movie is not set in New Jersey, but in UK/Europe and its one of those espionage movies of late that believes exotic (aka non-American) locales make for better espionage movies, and probably also gets the production lots of funding from different country's buckets of film money. This movie is slightly more effective in using the locales than say... My Spy: The Eternal City.

While stealing the sub-MacGuffin one of their agents is killed and their base in the tower is All Blowed Up. So, they are "on the run" convinced they must have a mole in their ranks, I guess not having any memory that there is a List out there (the original MacGuffin) that is supposed to have the locations of all espionage agencies in the world? I mean, that would include them, no? Anywayz, whatever.

Another part I don't get is that they get money for the auction from a Dick CIA Agent (Stephen Campbell Moore, War of the Worlds; playing an American but with the worst accent) but they don't have any intention on going through with the auction so... why do they even need money. One would assume that because they have the sub-MacGuffin that already implies they have the trust of The Auctioneer to be able to pay whatever bid they submit. And if they are only using that sub-MacGuffin to track ("triangulate!!") down The Auctioneer (Jessica De Goux, Pennnyworth) herself, then.... ? Also, if they do have the money, why not just actually BUY the MacGuffin (prime MacGuffin; The List) and take it off the market. Seems easy and low risk to me. Also (lots of also's there, buddy) why do they assume that once they track The Auctioneer down she would have the MacGuffin on her body or would lead them to it? But whatever, that's what they do.

And The Auctioneer has the MacGuffin in her fridge.

Buuuut the (un)expected happens. You see, I never mentioned how the movie opened, with the typical "Everyone Gets Killed" scenario. Roxanne's original team is all killed just after they got hold of the MacGuffin. So, she lost her entire team and the target of the operation. Fast forward to now and there is a knock at the door and (eye roll) its one of her "dead" team, Nick Faraday (Mike Colter, Plane), who also happens to turn out to be Roxanne's husband. Nick betrayed the team, his wife and his honour. He also tells them that their boss Brennan (JK Simmons, The Tomorrow War) is the mole who betrayed The Union. And then there is a bit of a standoff, and Nick escapes. Anywayz, they have the MacGuffin and will hand it over to the US via the CIA. Doesn't strike me as the smartest move, but whatever, rah rah USA. 

Exceeept its a double (triple?) betrayal. Nick and The Auctioneer switched out the actual case and also framed Roxanne and Mike and the Union as a whole. At this point I am thinking The Union sucks pretty bad at its job, but whatever, they have to pull an Ethan Hunt and go on the run to recover the REAL MacGuffin, capture/kill Nick and clear their name. They run off to the Istria Penninsula, tracking Nick.

Chase scene, chase scene, chase scene, Nick further betrays his buyers the Iranians, chase scene, chase scene, they finally shoot Nick and get the MacGuffin back. If anything, I am a bit tired by this act of the movie but the locale is pretty and I get to Google Istria, a peninsula shared by Italy, Croatia and Slovenia. The town is not called Istria, as the movie would have, but the region is. They get the case, clear their name and... kill Nick, making Roxanne properly single to unashamedly flirt with her highschool boyfriend Mike.

Pro's. Two people over 50 as the leads. Cons, at least when you watch John Wick there is a reason for his character to be barely hobbling in the action scenes -- he's been shot, punched, stabbed and probably hit by a car at least twice. You can see Halle Berry is not even comfortable running.  But whatever, its fantasy. Funny how I am not considering this part of my "aging action stars" unlabelled set of movies as they characters are not portrayed as such. Also con, they just don't have any chemistry. They come off more as two buddies more likely to make fun of each other's genitalia than become romantically involved, which would be fine if that was not the setup. Pro; I just like these action oriented, exotic locale romps. Con, all the fucking continuity bullshit; they should have reduced the amount of "complexity" they wanted in the plot and just let it play through. But at least it wasn't Red Notice boring.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): For a Few Dollars More

1965, Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West) - Amazon

The Man With No Name is now called Manco (Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry) and he's a bounty hunter, not some itinerate wanderer. Grab a poster off the sheriff's office wall, track down the criminal, shoot him and drag the body back to claim the reward. That is the way of the Old West.

This one was alright. If the last one surprised me by having more plot than I expected, this one had ... less? If it did anything, it allowed the villain to be more than a dummy who is foiled by our daring & clever Good Guys.

So, El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè, Hercules and the Captive Women) has broken himself from jail and reconnected with his notorious gang. He has exited the jail with a plan to rob the bank in El Paso, Texas, This bank's vault is said to be unbreakable, with lots of armed guards and many layers of barred rooms within the bank itself. Also, the real vault, as in the place that has all the gold, is not a vault at all, but a single safe hidden behind a pretty wooden cabinet. Indio got this knowledge from his cellmate.

After some initial rivalry, Manco and fellow bounty hunter Col Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, Escape from New York) decide to team up to get Indio and his gang. Rough looking Manco will insinuate himself into Indio's gang while pristine & precise Mortimer sets himself up in the hotel across from the bank. The plan goes decently enough but Indio is smarter than both of them -- he doesn't go in the front door as they expected, but just blows up the wall at the back of the bank, roping and dragging off the safe/cabinet.

The gangsters  run away with their loot, and Mortimer gives chase, anticipating their destination. He shows Indio how to get into the safe without blowing it up. Indio promises the cash will be divvied up after the dust, the ever present dust, settles in a month. Manco and Mortimer both have the idea they can steal the money under Indio's nose but are caught, but not before they actually do steal it, and hide it... by tossing it into a tree. Good thing it wasn't actually gold, but... promissory notes? Anywayz, Indio reveals he knew that both of them were bounty hunters.

Indio is a sly little fucker who has even further plans, including the betrayal of his own gang, framing one for freeing the bounty hunters and setting others against each other. And he knows the bunch he sends after the bounty hunters will just die at their hands. It all ends with the inevitable stand-off, but primarily between Mortimer and Indio, where its revealed that "you killed my sister, prepare to die!"

If anything, this movie suffered from trying to be more. The greater budget is very apparent in the number of extras, the full taverns, the number of characters with speaking parts. And the construction of the El Paso town, a full town that is apparently now a tourist attraction in the wilds of Spain. But in trying to be more, it seemed to have lost some of its focus, on the characters, on the styles that made the first so compelling. 

I realize I am not taking to these "spaghetti westerns" as much as I thought I would, and its primarily the loss of the majestic landscapes of the "proper" America westerns. In my mind, a good Western is about the journeys as much as the action and gun play. The overseas films are distilling some pretty specific stylistic choices which do make for great characters but maybe are not my interest. But still, my long meandering way, I am still interested in exploring the sub-genre.

Watching: The Acolyte S1

2024, Disney

I really should have more thoughts about this series, but... I don't. I even ended up delaying the watch-through for a few weeks. I guess I am just not as Star War-sian as Kent is, these days. Or maybe its just that I continue to really not give a flying fuck about Jedi. That said, my delay in watching was reflective of the general audience, so even if you ignore the toxic fanboy outcry, the show still didn't draw in a lot.

What 100.  In a galaxy long long ago, approximately 100 years before the start of the prequels, a young woman is killing Jedi. After a brief investigation they arrest ... her twin sister. But wasn't her sister dead, killed as a child when a small group of Jedi came to their planet to save them from Witches? Also, who is the mysterious darthy guy in the helmet with a red light sabre? What really happened on the witch planet? What exactly did the Jedi do that makes her want them all dead?

1 Great. Not Dark, not Light but gray, so very very gray. Even if you didn't enjoy the characters, the actors, the setting or ... anything (?) you can at least appreciate that the entire season (now entire series) was about things not being cut & dry, not being just Light and Dark. Osha begins as our heroine, our nice twin, our good twin but as truths are revealed, as options and choices are offered, she ... changes. 

1 Good. Its Star Wars, so any bit of world building on the screen is fine by me. I love the idea that despite there being fewer visible droids in the series, they state loudly that jobs such as Osha's are generally not done by living beings but legally relegated to droids. Also, her name is Osha, a long running joke about how "their" presence is lacking in the Star Wars universe, and considering she's doing a job considered unsafe for the living... snicker. Also, chair droid pilots ! 

1 Bad. You know, there wasn't anything in particular I didn't enjoy about it. I found everything to be just serviceable. It was fine. The performances were fine. The story was fine. But nothing grabbed me, nothing wow-ed me, nothing made me go "ooooo".

3 Short Paragraphs (Yeah, Not Likely): Deadpool & Wolverine

2024, Shawn Levy (Free Guy) -- Cinema

Why didn't David Leitch do this movie? Just because of The Fall Guy ? 

Also, I know why I only liked this one, and not loved it like the other two -- it was Shawn Levy. This movie is more a vehicle for Ryan Reynolds indulgences than either of the two before. Look at his two previous Ryan Reynolds movies, Free Guy and The Adam Project; one was a lot of fun but I have never felt the need to rewatch, and the other was ... ______ (????)

Sorry, I just don't remember what snarky, quippy or actually plot-based reason I chose to put that underscore into the latter write-up.

Also, speaking of indulgences, Levy also did the inestimable Real Steel.

Also, I should begin with Kent's exhaustian.

So, when we last left our "hero" he was using his time watch to wander around the timelines/multiverse to set some things right, basically make his own life better. That was the last movie.  But when we pick up in this movie we are not in the exact same universe. This one is kind of sucky. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, IF) has lost his way, broken up with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, Gotham; like really, WTF dudes) and has saved Shatterstar (Lewis Tan, Mortal Combat; like REALLY, WTF !?!). They are now besties. Suckier Deadpool has a pity dick in his mouth after having tried to do as Vanessa asked, and Do More, and... failed? He even auditioned to be in The Avengers, which didn't go well. But I am still not sure why he didn't keep on trying.

But diiiiiid he really try out for the Avengers? I mean they even label that scene as Earth 616 which is the MCUniverse. Deadpool has never had his universe labelled, but when he is rejected by Happy, he returns to a universe with a different label. So, I consider that scene a toss away for fun scene, representing another Deadpool being rejected, not our one. But then again, as I said above, this is probably not even our Deadpool but a suckier one. That's the multiverse for ya.

And that's when the TVA shows up, like literally during his birthday party, to tell him he sucks that his universe is fading away because it lost its Anchor Being. And that Anchor Being was Logan, the Wolverine who died in the movie called Logan. So, Deadpool steals one of those cool TVA (remember, pronounced Teh-Veh-Ahh) mobile phones and hops through a glowy door to dig up said mentioned Wolverine. He doesn't believe he could be dead as they both have unlimited regeneration, right?

Also, another confirmation This Is Not Our Deadpool -- the movie "Logan" takes place In The Future (2029) after all the X-Men when kaflooey and Wolverine has discovered the adamantium is poisoning his blood letting him finally age. We will also ignore that our Deadpool has a musical box piece of merchandise from "Logan" implying it is a movie in his universe. 

Yeah, Wolvie is definitely dead. But the TVA still shows to take out Deadpool, and we get our "classic" Deadpool movie combat scene, and opening credits, to the sounds of a boy band. And apparently the antics of Dancepool, some pseudo-celebrity-influencer who dresses like Deadpool and .... dances. I am not sure I am on board with a dozen or more TVA agents being murdered so horrifically, as we have not yet determined they are Bad Guys yet, just playing a part in alignment on how the universe works. Also, Deadpool doesn't care if they are Bad Guys so I should remember he is a sociopath.

Anywayz, he survives and decides to again travel the multiverse in search of a Wolverine he can steal as a replacement Anchor Being for his universe. Insert Montage Scene of alternate Wolverines from around pop culture. My favourite is Patch. He ends up finding Sad Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, Chappie), one from a world not unlike the original scene from the X-Men movie (surly Wolverine just wanting to drink) but probably more emotionally connected to the cameo scene in X-Men: First Class. Anywayz, this is the one he goes with.

Exceeeept Bad Guy Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen, Pride & Prejudice) explains you can't just replace an Anchor Being with another person from another timeline. That's not how things work. No matter, they get zapped by the not-disintegrating TVA wands and sent to The Void. Cue a bunch of scenes of Wolverine and Deadpool fighting each other because .... well, just because. 

The Void is that extra-dimensional space outside the timelines and multiverse where "pruned" timelines are sent. That timelines are still being pruned by someone makes me wonder if there are alternates TVAs for alternate universes because multiverse continuity is meant to give you headaches. I mean, if the blobs of paint universe as shown in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness makes use of the TVA from the TV show Loki, wouldn't they all be confused? I mean, when you are talking about infinity, infinite versions of infinite things means the potential for LOTS of cross-overs that just never happen. Anywayz, lets assume this is The Void for this Deadpool's infinity of pruned timelines, which includes the Fox Universe laid waste. 

In a way, this movie is meant as the death knell for the Fox Universe? Was there ever any official tie-in between the "Fantastic Four" movies and the "X-Men" movies?

So, yeah The Void, ruled over by Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin,  Murder at the End of the World) from her Thunderdome-ish base inside the dead corpse of Giant Man. In The Void there are two types of people: those that work for her, and those she feeds to The Purple Smoke Monster (which in my head canon is related to cloud monster Galactus, cloud monster Parallax, and possibly the smaller cloud monster from Lost). There are not many "rebels" left to fight against Cassandra.

After the fight, after the confrontation with Cassandra, after the escape from Cassandra, the pair meets NicePool, the most annoying of the Deadpools and his disgusting dog DogPool (sorry, just not into the 'ugly is cute' thing). They are directed where to find the rebels, but instead fight again, inside a compact car. Again, just because (cue Kent's exhaustion). But at least we get to meet Blade (Wesley Snipes, Blade), Electra (Jennifer Garner, Elektra), X-23 (Dafne Keen, The Acolyte) and Gambit (Channing Tatum, GI Joe: Retaliation). Apparently one of the Punishers was also there. I really hope it was the Dolph Lundgren one.

You are being a bit facetious -- they always do provide the minimum plot required in order for Wolvy and Deadie to jab each other's naughty bits with weaponry.

So, yeah after a bit of soul searching, they all agree to attack Cassandra's lair. Her army is made up of a small handful of B and C grade villains but mostly just Mad Max castoffs with guns. You would think that many guns fired into a barrel would take out all but X-23 rather quickly, but its a superhero movie. Meanwhile, Wolvy and Deadie are attacking Cassandra so they can place Fox Juggernaut's helmet on her head, which will turn her to the OFF position. It works but they retract that statement so she can send them back to the TVA, to undo everything that Mr. Paradox has been trying to accomplish, leaving her to her Void playground.

The movie ends with Deadpool and Wolverine sacrificing themselves to destroy Mr. Paradox's ultimate nullifier type machine. There is a another "let's fucking go" battle scene, but this time against a bunch of other variant Deadpools, buuut .... well, I am tired already now. Sure, its fun, sure its hilarious seeing all those variant mercs doing Cassandra's dirty Deadpool work for her, but I guess I am also exhausted by now. 

Peter's balls !! Peter's balls !!

So, its a romp. Its a hoot. Maybe I need another viewing to determine if I will add this to The Shelf? I do think once I have divested myself of my nitpicking over continuity, something I should even be considering during this franchise, I will be .... more entertained?

In the end, I still prefer Ryan Reynolds being LESS indulged, and less pandered to, as much as I don't think The Fans should be pandered to. As a concept, this one was almost in the works as long as Ryan Reynolds original desire to be The Merc with the Mouth. And as a nod to the X-Men movies that spawned the idea of Hugh Jackman as the on-screen icon, it was brilliant. But do we really need #snyderverse versions of these characters?

ReWatch-ish: Rebel Moon: Director's Cuts: Pt 1 & Pt 2

2024, Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) -- Netflix

Also called:

Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood
Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness

Full disclosure. It took me from the release date on Aug 2 to now (draft: Aug 16th) to watch all six hours and eleven minutes of these new versions. And I don't intend on doing any sort of recap; I just did those. 

So, this is the world we are in now? This is the new product of the #snydercut now? All Zack's movies will get re-presented in ever longer lengths? What I want now is the theatre release that combines both extended cuts plus some more stuff, but comes with a meal voucher and a proper intermission (with cartoon) so you can make a day of it.

Anywayz, I am not going to have as much fun ripping these apart as I did the previous MegaIndulgence of Zack. I just don't have the energy.

So, there are three themes to the extended versions: blood, splodey-heads, and sex. Lots of the first two, a wee bit of the latter. I was sort of surprised at the PG-13 level of sex in the initial releases, as Snyder is known for loving his sex scenes.

"Yeah, I don’t know. I’m a huge advocate. I like erotic content in motion pictures. I don’t understand, frankly, what would be the why of that. We’re sexual creatures, and that’s what we do."

That said, the scenes are rather toss-away which makes them more gratuitous than all the exploding head (music?) scenes.

Yeah, so blood and brains. In the universe of the Rebel Moon all of our bodies are more blood-filled sacks than bone & meat we traditionally think of ourselves as. Every punch, stab, magma-bullet shot and lazer-sword slice causes a massive burst/flow of digital blood, more akin to those horror movies where in one scene, the heroine is drenched from head to toe in blood, and in the next scene, she has a slight smudge on her cheek. The decks of the spaceships must have been deadly slip zones.

And brains. The movies open with an entire new scene where we are introduced to the Bad Guys invading a planet, the populace fighting back (and losing), and Admiral Atticus Noble convincing a young prince to cave in the head of his father in return for the lives of his mother & sisters. We are subjected to an incredibly detailed scene of the kid slamming that bone-cane thing into his father-king's skull, and then Noble reaching into the crushed bone & brain matter to make very very evil comments about memories. The young prince is then dragged off to become a soldier in the Motherworld forces. And then Noble kills the rest of the family, because we all, and the queen, knew he would. And then they raze the planet.

And teeth. A repeating small detail is that those weird masked priest guys that follow Noble around like to fish out a tooth from the ruined remains of a head and shove it into a molar-mosaic portrait of the Fallen Princess they are making. If anything, the Motherworld has an appreciation for fine art.

This prince turns out to be the young soldier Aris who protects pretty-young-thing Sam when his squad is left on the Rebel Moon at the beginning of Part One.

That sets the tone for people getting their heads destroyed. Sindri, the leader of the Rebel Moon village, is not just struck down by the bone-cane thing, but his head also caved-in. And when someone is shot with those magma-bullets from the Motherworld weaponry, either most-of or all-of the victim's head disappears. Or later, during the battle scenes, with bigger guns, entire upper torsos or entire bodies just explode. 

Now, beyond the gore indulgence, does the longer lengths add to the movie? Nope, not one bit. I did some research and it can take 120 days for a grain to grow. That's assuming standard Earth rotation. So, when Gunnar tells Noble how long it will be until the crop is ready (nine weeks I believe he says), let's assume their week is longer than ours. The original cuts made it out as if Gunnar and Kora had been flying around with Kai for a handful of days, but since we have no idea how space travel works in this universe, beyond a brief scene of the dreadnoughts using big lady-shaped generators to open rifts in space, we can assume there is lots of down time between the pickup of the space weirdoes. That more believably could add up to the nine weeks, this time.

Speaking of, the giant generator lady is show to be also an enslaved being... maybe? Its shown more as a vision than reality but "she" forgives Kora for blowing her up. I had just assumed it was just symbolic Motherworld design in using a female form as the centre of the ship.

There are also some additional scenes of Aris pretending to send in reports about what is happening on the rebel moon. What Aris doesn't know is that the Space Orcs, the mercenary aliens that Noble makes use, have been surveilling the village the whole time... that is until Jimmy the Space Robot Knight smooshes their heads.

The second movie ends up not as irritating to me as much as it did the first time round. Is that the additional footage? The additional "plot" ? I doubt it. I think I am just past it all now. There is a lot more confirmed death (exploding villagers) in this cut so it does have more weight to it -- the fight comes with losses beyond the symbolic loss of a few recognizable faces. But again, the movie pair is ending with a very open ending, as if all is a prelude to something more -- a greater battle against the Motherworld, the return of the young princess (is she Sam? is she? is she?), the Rise of the Jimmies. But will Snyder get anything more? Or will he just end up relegating it to spin-off novels and comic books? 

Answers will appear in slowmo.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Twisters

2024, Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) -- download

I like disaster movies. The original movie of which this is only kinda sorta not really a sequel to was before the words Climate Change were shouted in derision by midwesterners, when tornado ratings were only one letter and the emergence of F5 tornados (at that time) were rare and almost fictional. It wasn't even really a disaster movie, as those usually are on greater scales, but more a tense thriller in the face of real human tragedy. 

This movie does pretty much the exact same thing but with YouTube stars, the Internet and the idea that bigger, nastier tornadoes are a thing, and it will only get worse.

Maybe you should give a spoiler warning?

The movie opens with a group of friends chasing a tornado: Kate, Javi, Kate's boyfriend Jeb, Addy and really nervous Praveen. They want to deliver a compound into a tornado, something Kate came up with, that is supposed to dissipate it. They also have a load of the little Xmas bulbs from the original movie. Wink wink, nod nod. Now, if you are like me, you are now thinking, "I don't remember seeing recognizable face Kiernan Shipka in any of the trailers." 

<cue your favourite Impending Doom musical piece>

Kate's tornado whispering lets her down, her magical compound doesn't work and everyone but her, and Javi from the safety of his monitoring station (the Xmas bulbs give his a great view of how terrible the tornado is), is sucked up by the tornado.

Five Years Later. Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing) is now a boring weather person... weather scientist? She lives in NYC far away from any seasonal tornado activity. She has lost contact with Javi (Anthony Ramos, Transformers: Rise of the Beast) and even sends her mom to voicemail. But then he comes asking for help. He has a new science plan, one based around placing a triad of sensors which will allow him to 3D map a tornado in action. He still just wants to save lives, or so he claims. In these movies when people have flashy investors you are meant not to trust them. He needs Kate and her ability to sniff out tornados. Despite her PTSD, she agrees.

The first disaster she encounters is not a tornado but a YouTube-r. Following the beat of the other movie, but kind of flipping the table, Kate is with the maligned corporate storm chasers, but there is a new version of the home-sy group --- the Tornado Wrangler (Glen Powell, Hit Man) and his fully equipped team of Good Ol Boys & Girls. Pumping out yee-haws and non-stop country music, they chase down twisters for the Likes.

Of course, they end up at odds with Kate and her new team, but Kate has her magical ability, a gut feeling, an innate understanding of tornadoes, her.... tornado whispering.

The beat of a movie like this has to be Tornado > Character Development > Tornado > Character Development, as the tornadoes cannot just keep happening randomly or there would be no chasing. So, as things develop we get to learn a few things about Javi's company (they are bad guys) and a few things about the Tornado Wranglers -- they are not such bad guys, and Tyler, the oh so pretty face of the Wranglers, is smarter and more empathetic than expected. Both of them take a side quest together which pisses of everyone but does allow Kate to make things better with her mom. Also, figures out why the magic tornado wrangling pixie dust never worked.

With a guy like Glen Powell playing the ultra-macho, tornado wrangler you expect romance to be the main thing on the table. But no, apparently they chose a fan-frustrating no-kiss aspect for the movie, but at least they get to play all flirty-dismissive throughout the movie. His cowboy hat big teeth country music charm does not work on her. Well, it kind of does, but only once he skips past the YouTube camera and works to save people.

Its a fine movie, not great, but for its genre it does a decent job. Powell is the stand-out here, and since the movie doubled its budget in returns, another successfully stepping stone on him becoming the new Leading Man of the Hour?

The Dark Year: A Quiet Place

2018, John Krasinski (The Hollars) -- Netflix

Because we never have enough projects in this Blog, I am creating one of my own, wherein I indulge my desire to rewatch a movie (because sometimes a rewatch is easier than absorbing a new movie) but also fill in a blank left by the Great Hiatus of 2018. It will be more interesting to me to see what I will be willing to rewatch, than see what I missed writing about.

This was pre-pandemic, pre John Krasinski providing us a much needed "Some Good News". Instead he provides the world some really bad news in the form of monsters. IIRC this was the first of a handful of "mysterious monsters end the world" movies, most recent being Arcadian. Others included The Silence and ...Bird Box, also eaten by the Great Hiatus. I can guess there were a few more riding the coattails but I didn't see them.

Also, we watch a LOT of "monster" tagged movies.

It begins "in media res" on Day 89. A family is surviving together on a rural farm with three children. The daughter (Millicent Simmons, Wonderstruck) is deaf, the oldest son (Noah Jupe, Ford v Ferrari) is ill (do we ever learn what his condition is?) and their youngest is just a toddler. They all know to stay quiet, for even the slightest sound will draw ... the creatures. But toddlers only know their next sensation and a battery operated toy proves his doom. 

When it picks up almost a year later the family is still dealing with the loss, but they have survived. Everyone but the oldest son blames themselves to some degree. But they are trying to move on, and mom (Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train) is even pregnant again, and preparing herself for rearing a crying baby by devising a box, lined with padding, and hidden under a further padded place in the barn, provided air by bottle. I am not even sure the family is named, despite having credits, but what does it matter, there is only The Family and the ever present silence.

Krasinski excels with the small moments & elements of this movie. Even the way he holds his finger to his bearded face to shush a despondent old man in the woods is so very very ... tangible. The soft sand they have poured in paths around the farm and out to their common destinations, for example the path leading to the nearby town, provides a quieted path. The steps of their old house is painted with the places where boards will not creak. They even have a place where the deafening roar of a waterfall allows them to utter without fear, a single place of safety. 

The rest of the movie is just tension. Being a movie of silence, music is all but absent, and we the viewer are probably holding our breaths as much as the characters. The opening act established that anyone can perish, no character is safe. And when we are provided a possible weapon against the creatures, perhaps we can even breathe a sigh of relief.

I found myself asking the same questions I did the first time round: what's up with the rest of the world, even what is up in the rest of the landscape they live in? We do see signs there are other survivors, in the lighting of fires atop high places, but there is no way the rest of the world just went ... quiet. We see the monsters are vulnerable, just well armoured. Armies would have been able to fight them. Someone must have.

The second movie doesn't answer any questions and the third is a Day One. I wonder if it will provide any hint as to the future.

ReWatch: Fantastic Four + Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

2005, Tim Story (The Blackening) -- Disney
2007, Tim Story (Barbershop) -- Disney

OK, these movies are from one of the many pre-MCU eras of superhero movies; this era gave us a bunch of middling attempts at & sequels of Marvel movies (Spider-Man's, Ghost Rider, Elektra, etc.) and pretty much the same at DC (Batman Begins, Superman Returns), albeit smaller numbers. There were even a few non-publisher movies (Sky High, Jumper, Push, Hancock) which played with the genre. They all scratched an itch for comic book lovers, but few were satisfying and even fewer were successful. Oh, there are always anomalies, but... 

And in some ways, we are back to that era, except the competing movies are all MCU. Or it one long sub-par era interrupted by a brief decade of quality, popular Marvel movies?

These are terrible movies.

But I remember that, at least, when I originally saw Fantastic Four I was not entirely disappointed. Afterall, its an origin story, so they get a lot of leeway. The casting was acceptable with Ioan Gruffud (King Arthur) as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba (Sin City) as Sue Storm, Captain America (Chris Evans, Cellular) as Johnny, and the ever confusingly aged Michael Chiklis (The Shield) as Benn Grimmm. I was not against Alba being a blonde, and not in black & white. Oh, and Julian McMahon (Charmed) as Victor Von Doom (sing the doom song!).

Chiklis was 40ish playing the Ben Grimm role, which is the age he was likely supposed to be when he played "The Commish", when he was only 28.

OK, so Reed Richards, not yet so fantastic, wants to expose some biology to a cloud of cosmic energy, but in order to do so, he will need to get onto Vic VD's spacestation. Reed and Vic are old college buddies, and Vic agrees to allow Reed and his (astronaut?) buddy Ben Grimm come on board as long as his chief researcher Sue Storm gets to help -- she's also Reed's ex. Also her brother is up there as well. I don't remember why. Anywayz, things go wrong and they are all exposed to the energy from the fast moving cloud (???) of cosmic.... stuff.

If Reed was dating Sue Storm in college, let's say six years ago when Reed was mid-twenties? Jessica Alba is six years younger than Gruffud, and McMahon equally older than Gruffud. I suppose if you do the the typical waffling of ages in Hollywood, Sue was entering university while these guys were there?

Back on Earth they discover they have powers, while things go very wrong for Victor, as I guess he was walking a thin line with his Board of Directors, and his spacestation going kaflooey has made things worse? Meh, he should have just gone all Musk on them and did whatever the fuck he wanted.... well, maybe he did? Anywayz, yeah, superpowers and Ben puts them in the spotlight by saving someone on a bridge.

I forget, is the flustered not-quite-remembering things supposed to be casual charming? Yeah yeah, I know, "shaddup you."

So, I guess if Elon Musk was cursed with superpowers, he would turn out to be Vic VD ? While Reed is scrambling to find a way to "cure" them, cuz his best friend is a big orange rock, Johnny is all jazzed at being as hot as he thinks he is in real life. Meanwhile Sue is mainly tortured because there was a reason she broke up with Reed in the first place. But Reed actually does invent a way to cure them, it just needs an awful lot of power, of which, Von Doom has at his finger tips -- literally. He briefly makes Ben human, just so he can piss off the others, and then they have to duke it out with him, as he goes all.... well, literally supervillain. Through the Power of Working Together (Ben rocks out again) they stop Von Doom dooming (pun intended) to being a solid hunk of metal.

Its a serviceable superhero origin movie with the requisite amount of shoe-horned in comic book behaviour, and minimal attempts to be all Hollywoody. I mean, Von Doom is hand-wringing Evil just because (again, Elon anyone?) and despite Reed actually understanding what he has to do to revert them back to being human, they decide to stay Super. But is fun and charismatic.

And while the same director did the next movie, oh wow, it is terrible, like proper terrible.

It starts with a "oh woe is us, we are celebrity superheroes who just cannot catch a break and have normal lives". I mean, they obviously decided to be superheroes, so Y B Normal? Sue wants a proper wedding, Ben and Johnny argue like 10 year olds, and Reed doesn't want to take a break from science in order to actually get married. That is until the Silver Surfer crashes their wedding. 

Reed had already broken his "no science-y stuff until married" promise to Sue by building something for an Angry General (with a Hot Adjunct [Beau Garrett, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce], who rebuffs Johnny) to track something causing Climate Change around the world. Angry General (Andre Braugher, Brooklyn 99) doesn't really want to work with Reed, but, y'know, you need to track the Bad Thing in order to shoot at it. But it doesn't really go well, and the wedding is ruined, so Angry General just goes to his second choice -- Victor Von Doom, who is no longer a solid hunk.

Sorry, getting ahead of myself. 

They have discovered that if they touch, their powers exchange, leading to annoying Hijinx: Sue gets Johnny's and burns her clothes off (cue the construction worker wolf-whistling), Ben gets Johnny's powers and Johnny becomes an orange rock, etc. Except for scenes when they don't exchange their powers, because hijinx were not important to the scene. 

Also, they track the surfboard based cosmic energy to Deep Space, where there is a trail of destroyed planets, and to England where a run-in with the Surfer (the aforementioned Bad Thing) damages the big ferriswheel and drains the Thames. Technically the river is still flowing so I am not sure how they drained the entire that quickly. Sorry, but this kind of stuff in shitty movies bugs me -- if anything, we should be seeing some sort of diminished flow for a good long time.

Anywayz, it is THIS sort of "doesn't go well" that has Angry General switch over to Doom. That said, he doesn't really do anything and Reed's cosmic energy sucker really does the work. Not sure why, but Angry General still acts like Doom did it. I think he just prefers to be angry.

Anywayz, they store the Surfer (voice of Laurence Fishburne, Hannibal) in a facility in Siberia. Wait, what? Why Siberia? Isn't that on Russian Federation soil? Despite the cold war being mostly over in the early 2000s, don't we still not trust Russia at that time? I mean, at least they could have said "Northern Canada" ? But the Fantastic Four are not jazzed with the idea of imprisoning the Surfer, even though they know he is connected to the destruction of a bunch of planets. But Sue bonds with him, so they free him.

Meanwhile Doom-y has stolen the Surfboard of Power and flies to... China? I guess that is why they had it be in Siberia so they could do a quick flyby of the Great Wall, so Doom could shoot at it with his new surfboard based powers. 

Note, every time he writes "surfboard" a voice (not me) says "whoah man" in a surfbum sort of California accent.

No matter, again they fight Doom in a street (Shang-hai this time) and kind of easily defeat him, but (doom song) Sue is mortally wounded. No matter, Surfy is there to infuse her with cosmic mojo and revive her. 

Oh yeah, Galactus has arrived. The whole point of the movie is supposed to be the arrival of Galactus but "he" plays such second fiddle to everything else in the movie, and BTW, he is just a big cloud of energy. Anywayz, SS sees the Power of Family and decides to sacrifice himself to defeat Galactus.

The End. Well, no quite yet. They finally get married in Japan, only to be interrupted again because "Venice is sinking into the sea". Uh, folks, I hate to break it to you but Venice has been sinking for years. Its a big issue, it makes the news regularly.

The End. Well, not quite -- mid-credit scene shows Surfy is still alive. Why do we care? No seriously, maybe Kent can tell us why we care? Let's live in a fantasy world and assume there was going to be a third movie -- how would the Silver Surfer play into it? What would be the classic FF villain of the week this time?

KWIF: Alien: Romulus (+2)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film, in other words (or the same words, just more of them) these are the films Kent watched this week.

This Week:
Alien: Romulus (2024, d. Fede Alvarez - in theatres)
Jackpot! (2024, d. Paul Feig - AmazonPrime)
The Five Deadly Venoms (197x, d. Chang Cheh  - youtube)

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I've expressed my opinions about the Alien franchise many times on this blog already, so I won't retread that ground, so let's just say I'm a fan, but not a fanatic.

For some, the apex of the franchise is 1986's Aliens, but I don't think any entry in the series has been more potent, scarier or effective than Ridley Scott's 1979 original. Aliens, by turning the Xenomorph into an action-movie villain effectively demystified the creature, showed it off too much for it to remain scary. The creature is an effective and efficient killing machine, and it's definitely intimidating, but it ceased being scary.

In Alien3, the idea was to put the franchise's central figure into a situation where the dangers of an alien are almost secondary to the prisoners Ripley is stuck with. Alien:Resurrection was almost horror by way of the French whimsy in the Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro style. Prometheus was less an "Alien" movie and more of an "origin of the species" story, while Covenant was a hot mess of religious subtext. (The Aliens vs Predator movies are dumb fanfic movies and best left ignored).

Romulus then, by placing Fede Alvarez behind the camera, is intent on injecting the horror back into the series by ostensibly turning the latest Alien entry into a sort of conventional horror exercise of young hot people getting picked off by a murder monster.

If it sounds like I'm being dismissive, perhaps I am, so let's start out on the other side. What I primarily liked about this movie is what I like about most Alien movies: the world/universe- building around the Wayland-Utani Corporation. The quiet-but-present undercurrent of anti-capitalism has been steady throughout these films, and it's very much the trigger for not just character motivation but the reason behind the events in the entire film.

What never happens in an Alien(s) story is the Wayladn-Utani Corporation's comeuppance. It is never held responsible for the part they play in the deaths of many.  Ripley and pretty much every other character in the franchise is just one of the workers whose backs the giant company rests easy (and profitably). Too big to fail. Too powerful to be held accountable.

Here, our lead is Rain (Cailee Spaeny, Civil War), a late-teen and an orphan living on a Wayland-Utani mining settlement planet, working off her conscripted number of hours. She had completed the original hours she was consigned and was looking to book her pass off the dreary, perpetually dark planet, but her hours were effectively doubled by the corporation without notice. The indentured servitude, she immediately realizes, is for life. 

She meets up with friends around her own age who have a plan. As low-orbit space freighter scavengers, they picked up the signal of something big on their last mission which is sure to have the hypersleep pods they would need to traverse any distance from this miserable planet to another, sunnier, seemingly mystical utopia. They don't really need Rain so much as they need her "brother", Andy (David Jonsson, Rye Lane) -- a hacked, glitchy, second-gen Wayland-Utani Android who Rain's father had programmed to be her protector and best friend. His latent ability to access Company systems is integral.

So up to space they go, Rain seeing the sun for the first time, the promise of a brighter future ahead, and they discover their target is not a freighter, but a space station... that is slowly descending into the planet's orbital rings where it will be destroyed. They will have less than a day and an half to get in and out with what they need.

Of course what they don't realize until too late is it was a research station, and what it was researching is still on board.  From there, if you've seen an Alien film, or a horror film, you know what is going to happen. But, the fun of these types of horror franchises is in how it happens and how differently it happens.

Alvarez has a couple set-pieces in this utilizing the facehuggers in a way none of the other movies have before. They skitter around the station like coconut crabs, flinging themselves at their victims faces, trying to wrap their tails around their necks and stick their intubating tube down their throats (it's never explicitly stated in any of the films, but they must be attracted to the carbon dioxide as we exhale, or the warmth of our breath... at one point Alvarez pays homage to his own film, Don't Breathe, as he has our protagonist navigate quietly through a room of these things). It's effectively creepy, made all the more so by the largely practical effects and sets.

In following the rhythms of a horror film where a band of teens or early 20-somethings are picked off one by one over the course of a night, it unfortunately destroys the known gestation period of the xenomorph from its incubation to chest-bursting to rapid growth into a full-fledged creature. What used to be a lengthy period of worrying about a comrade for hours on end instead finds a baby xeno bursting from someone's chest mere minutes after it was implanted and seemingly minutes later it's emerging fully formed from its secondary cocoon. That's my minor quibble.

The larger quibble is just how fatigued I was by the often two or three threats at once that Rain or her companions were facing. If they weren't layered then they were contiguous, one-after-another with no time for the character(s) or audience to really rest. I had such high hopes when the opening sequence of the film featured a slow pan around a space ship, devoid of any sound in the vaccum of space (where no one can hear you scream). I had wondered -- as the camera pushed in through a window, slowly, to a computer console awakening, the analog switches-and-knobs fetishized to the n'th degree -- was a slow, tense feature in store for us? Alas, no. Not at all. It's pretty frantic and at times exceeded my very flexible suspension of disbelief.

David Jonsson's Andy is the best part of the feature. I loved him in Rye Lane and he's doing so much of the dramatic heavy lifting here. He's asked to shift his personality a couple of times in this and the transitions are so well done. You need a damn good actor to manage those types of switches that change the audience's perceptions from sympathetic to fearful and back again, which Jonsson does masterfully. It helps that Andy is the most developed character in the film.  Seriously, I didn't feel like I really got to know the rest of the cast outside of Rain, and I didn't really care for any of them. They were all consummate horror movie fodder. When we look at the team building of almost any prior film, they all way exceed Romulus' cadre of blank fresh meat.

There is a returning character from the original film (well, ish), who returns by way of CGI, and it's utterly ghoulish, and completely unnecessary. That role could have been anyone playing the character and it wouldn't have mattered a lick to the plot. As is, together with including the opening scene referencing the Nostromo and this CGI zombie, both I found very distracting, pulling me out of the film rather than enhancing the experience by tying it to films past. The production did have the family's blessing in resurrecting the character, which is not nothing, but it remained unnecessary fan service.

Romulus, like so many legasequels, retreads familiar ground, at times feeling like it's cribbing from every Alien film that's come before, sometimes tonally, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in references, and sometimes just lifting enire sequences and concepts from the past. Some of it works well in tying Romulus to the series overall (there are some surprising nods to Prometheus even), but some of it just feels too *winky winky* fanservice. 

It's a pretty glossy movie. It looks good overall. I wish it had taken its time more, slower, more lingering shots. I wish it felt more like a 1970's movie than a 2020's movie, but it seems purposefully designed to draw in the teenage crowd looking for air conditioning and a few cheap scares with some nostalgia triggers for the olds in the audience, and I think it succeeds, despite my not liking it as much.

My rankings below. To note, of all the Alien(s) films, the only one I think is outright bad is Covenant.

Ranking Alien(s):
1) Alien
2) Prometheus
3) Alien3
4 - Tie) Aliens | Alien Resurrection
6) Alien: Romulus
7) Alien: Covenant

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Jackpot! is an action-comedy set in Los Angeles circa 2030. Back in the day it was common to say that any movie set in the future was science fiction, but really a lot of near future set movies are more speculative fiction. There's nothing really speculative about the premise here. Unlike, say, Idiocracy which mined and extrapolated and exaggerated fear of a nation getting dumb and dumber, Jackpot! is pure conceit with no relevant commentary or even satire.

In the world of Jackpot!, if you win the state lottery (with massive payouts akin to the Powerball Lottery) then legally anyone can kill you within the first 24 hours and claim your prize, the only rules are you're not allowed to kill anyone else in the process, and no guns.

It's a stupid, unrealistic premise. If you're not going to go the route of satire (which it teases in its intro then abandons almost completely), then  only way to make a premise like this work is to go big...very, very big. 

Unfortunately, director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) didn't go big enough to sell the ridiculousness of the premise. There is a decently produced sequence when Awkwafina's Katy (wasn't she also Katy in Shang-Chi?) is announced as the winner of the 3.2 billion dollar lottery while on a casting call, and the other actresses immediately start gunning for her. The fight spills into a martial arts class which then busts its way through the wall into a yoga studio, when John Cena's Noel arrives on the scene soliciting himself as an independent contractor who will serve and protect the winner for a percentage of the earnings. 

The scene has some energy to it, feeling like a brawl but with wacky makeshift weapons.  It immediately brought to mind Jackie Chan, and for the rest of the movie I couldn't shake the idea that the only way this works is if it's a Jackie Chan stunt show. It is unfortunately not.

It's standard for a genre film to have a lead character who is new to the conceit, it gives the other characters the opportunity to exposition dump for the them and the audience. But here it's absolutely far fetched that after four years of chaos and murder that Katy has never heard of the lottery, and it hurts the story, stretching further one's already fraying suspension of disbelief. 

The remainder of the movie feels direly cheap. Like TV movie-budget cheap. The other action setpieces have little charm and show their limitations circling around the same locations for five minutes. The final sequence where a mob of people descend upon Katy...it's almost all the same cast we've seen throughout the film, as if to say L.A. is made up of a few dozen people, and not a sprawling metropolis.

I enjoy both John Cena and Awkwafina, they are generally likeable, funny and charming, and they are quite affable together, and when Simu Liu emerges, there's residual "Shang Chi buddies" chemistry between him and Awkwafina, but it all doesn't add up to much. The comedy of the film lacks punch, the action of the film is weak, the premise is absurd, the satire is nonexistant, and it just looks terrible.

This is not a winning ticket.

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Considered a classic from the heyday of 70's kung-fu cinema and the Shaw Bros. catalogue, The Five Deadly Venoms (aka The Five Venoms) retains a delightful playfulness that still resonates even to a new audience.

A master, nearing the end of his life, wonders the fate of five of his students, each of whom he taught a specific discipline of kung-fu: centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad. They have all long departed from him and changed their identities, but he worries given the potency of their power that they may have turned to evil. Hi final student, Yang Tieh who has learned each of the disciplines but is by no means a master, is tasked with discovering the identities of these former pupils and, if necessary, stopping thier criminal behaviour at all costs.

Yang, venturing into the city, becomes embroiled in a conspiracy of crime and corruption among the law enforcement and judiciary. At the heart of it is the Five Venoms, but learning who is who, and who is involved proves twisty and complicated.

It's not masterful intrigue by any stretch, but it is a fun bit of puzzle solving and mystery that brings the audience along for the ride. And when the action starts, it's all about how each of the Venom styles is portrayed in combat.  The overblown sound-effects only enhance the delightful camp of it all.

The fights are well-structured but not the most tightly choreographed, but it doesn't matter. The unique styles and "venom strikes" each are very evocative of their respective creature make for entertaining viewing, and the revelations, as they emerge lead to some pretty surprising plot turns.

I think with any kung-fu feature, if it can engage an audience beyond just the martial arts display then it's a good one. This is a good one.

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Watching: The Umbrella Academy S4

2024, Netflix

We find this show charming enough that we continue to watch even though it usually ends up disappointing us entirely. I stated it in the Season 3 post, and I will state it now -- they always end up losing steam, fucking their own continuity and appearing to get bored with writing their own show. 

Never wrote about season 1 or 2.... wonder why.

What 100. They've returned from another apocalypse to another, different, timeline, but without powers. Dad (Colm Feore, Face/Off) runs a megacorp, but no matter, they all go their own, usual, dysfunctional directions. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Beekeeper) is (barely) an actor, sober Klaus (Robert Sheehan, Mortal Engines) lives in her basement, Five (Aidan Gallagher, Nicky, Ricky, Dick & Dawn) is in the CIA, Diego (David Castañeda, The Tax Collector) delivers packages, Lila (Ritu Arya, Barbie) is a housewife, Viktor (Elliot Page, Close to You) runs a bar in Nova Scotia and Luther (Tom Hopper, Black Sails) is a stripper. But then, five years later, another Impending Doom draws them together for more weirdo hijinx, more and more dysfunctional sibling disputes, the deaths of countless henchfolk and eventually the end of the world... again. But for good this time?

1 Great. For me, the best things about the show have always been the whackadoodle characters and situations. This season we get Jean and Gene Thibodeau, played by IRL couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly. I am not entirely convinced they are a couple but maybe the same person from alternate timelines. All the hijinx of the previous seasons is jamming in alternate timelines into this one. In fact, they run an organization/conspiracy/cult that researches and finds examples of it, such as books, movies and music that are two entirely different copies of the same thing. Think of finding a copy of Bladerunner where William Hurt played Deckard instead of Harrison Ford. These two characters are out there, a little extreme, but ... onto something.

2 Good. The characters. The mains are what always have me forget how dissatisfied I was with each season and still come back for more. They are so utterly broken and dysfunctional, you would think the cringe factor would turn me off, but there is a caring between them even when they hate each other. And all the actors pull it off so very very well. My fav is still Five, the non-named perpetual youth. Actor Aidan Gallagher is 21 and probably, finally, playing something akin to Five's body age. In actual lived aged, the character is in his... 70s? And the acceptance of Elliot Page as Elliot Page, and therefore Victor, is wonderful -- they had their chats about it last season, and have moved on, while not discounting that Victor was Vanya in season one. Probably a rare example of tight continuity in this showed being acknowledged.

3 Bad. Said general lack of continuity. This show has me constantly yelling at the screen, as each season (except the first; I remember that being tighter) just loses steam before they reach the final few episodes, losing focus, cutting plot elements to the wind and generally just being bad writing. Now that Kent has revealed, to me, how much of a shitshow the writing room was on this show, and how it basically torpedoed the season cutting it down to almost nothing, it explains things but doesn't get my forgiveness. No more than in any other season does this one's last few episodes shit the bed, story telling wise. Five and Lilah go on a time journey through the multiverse TTC with intent to find their original timeline where their Ben was killed. After one upset that thread is ignored entirely and while its a beautiful standalone plotline, where the two spend years and years together lost on the TTC (note, that is actually a recurring thread in my own dreams; maybe I will bump into them someday), its forgetting the point of it being introduced in the first place. And Daddy Hargreaves. He did not create an Umbrella Academy in this timeline, there not even seemingly any example of these kids here at all, and yet he interacts with them as if he is aware of it all. And BTW isn't he supposed to be an alien or something? I could go on and on about my frustration but I will just some it up with a loud, "aaaaaargh !!"

Ken't spake. 

Watching: Will Trent S2

2024, Disney

Wrote about Season 1 in the old TV format. I cannot recall if we didn't bother watching this week-to-week for a reason or just forgot about it until it appeared, in full, on Disney. Most of the shows we write about here have a seasonal continuity, but in procedural police shows, everything after season one, and the background being set, the season often ends being mostly a "and this happened" and "that happened" tied together by some tenuous threads or theme.

What 100. Will researches his mother's family, while also dealing with the vision of his younger self and the guilt of not being able to save one of his foster moms. Ormewood deals with the consequences of being an asshole to his entire family. Angie deals with the consequences of getting too involved with a victim. Amanda's past comes back to haunt, shaking Faith's ... faith in her. Its a mixed bag season focused on family and not an easy thing to summarize, as character based procedurals tend to be.

1 Great. Honestly, its the theme of the season -- making family from the people you love. Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez, Battle Los Angeles) was the product of a serial rapist/killer, rescued by a cop but lost to the state foster system. In there, as a child, he connected with Angie (Erika Christensen, Parenthood), and they dealt with life's worst. She's a recovering addict, in an on and off again relationship with Will. They are both each other's greatest strengths and weaknesses. Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin, Quantico) is a classic overt-machismo cop who cheats on his wife and is distant from his kids, until his wife has a breakdown and leaves him. Faith (Iantha Richardson, This Is Us) is Will's single mom partner raising an adult son she had as a teen. Her surrogate mother is also her boss Amanda (Sonja Sohn, The Wire), a harsh but loyal woman. They are all damaged goods to one degree or another, but make a tight knit family, also adding in Nico (Cora Lu Tran, Paradise), once a crime suspect, but now mainly house & dog sits for Will. Said dog Betty is also a stray from a crime scene that Will adopted. 

2 Good. The episode to episode procedural crime investigations are usually solid independent stories, always leaving enough breathing room to allow for full season threads to run between them. As Will investigates his past he finds an uncle from Puerto Rico, and begins to learn Spanish -- must be fun for an actual Puerto Rican actor to pretend he's terrible at Spanish. Angie deals with the fallout for claiming to have killed an abusive father, letting the daughter go free, and it could unravel her entire life. 

3 Bad. The shows desire to tie up loose ends from Season 1 leads to some... well, filler episodes so we can dispense with a few side characters. Also, the season opener is supposed to be a heart-wrenching episode, but ended up leaving me asking, "Why the fuck did you fridge what could have been a cool add-on character?"

Further to what I started saying above... its hard to write about a show like this, beyond "I liked it as I was watching it, but it does not leave anything impactful beyond that I like the characters."

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Poolman

2023, Chris Pine (directorial debut) -- download

I have a thing for LA based on pop culture depictions, but not the big usual ones you would expect. Sure, the Griffith Observatory is cool looking, and Venice Beach is probably an experience, but I have always had a fondness for those long commercial strips with run down motels, usually depicted in washed out pastel colours, usually with more people living in them than staying the night. I am sure there is some movie(s) or TV from my deep youth that is the source of this fondness but my memory is of an age where it is more a vibe than it is anything.

Vibe. You are using that word a lot lately. What does it mean to you? When something feels right without an ability to articulate it, this is a "vibe" ?

Darren Barrenman (Chris Pine, Star Trek) lives in such a motel, more precisely he lives in a small trailer on the lot of such a motel. He is the pool man for a postage stamp sized pool that, based on its positioning, adjacent to his trailer, only he and his friends are likely to benefit from his constant care. Darren is one of those LA weirdoes also common in these movies, likely based on real life LA weirdoes. He's mostly in his own headspace, fancies himself a social activist trying to stomp on gentrification and save the iconic spots whatever his grotty part of LA / Hollywood is losing, even going so far as to send daily type-writer written letters to Erin Brocovich. He knows she is not Julia Roberts, that she is a real person, but he still has a picture of Julia Roberts, and not Erin Brocovich. 

Of note, it is also indicative of your pop culture education of LA in that you have no idea of the actual geography of LA, where anything is, in relation to anything else.

Darren makes regular trips to present in front of city council, usually with an entourage of other LA weirdoes, including his friends (a little ditty about) Jack (Danny DeVito, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Diane (Annette Benning, Being Julia), Diane being Darren's therapist and Jack trying to do a documentary about Darren. Darren is just a pain in the ass to city council. They also live in the motel. He never makes much of an impression, beyond annoyance.

Then Darren meets June Del Rey (DeWanda Wise, The Harder They Fall). She displays herself like a femme fatale and plays the part of a "dame with a case" to Darren, and in the movie, which fashions itself a film noir. She even dresses the part. Its not very noir, but I am sure Darren thinks it is. In fact, he keeps on hoping there will be Chinatown parallels for his "case". No one is more surprised than us that there are, kind of. Anywayz, her boss, Councilman Stephen Toronkowski (#snort; Stephen Tobolowsky, Groundhog Day), has a secret, he's corrupt, she claims. This is Darren's chance -- unveil the conspiracy and save... well, save whatever "iconic landmark" he's trying to save this week.

Now Darren fashions himself (phrase re-used intentionally? yes? ok, you go with that) a detective. He thinks that by donning a brimmed hat, an ill-fitting double-breasted jacket, along with his usual sandals, he looks the part. He doesn't. He even does stake-outs (hiding in the bushes) and tails cars (he runs after them, hiding in the bushes) and interrogates people with his mixed personality of confrontational and exudingly polite. And he does uncover a conspiracy, just not the film noir one he thought it was. And yet.... it kind of was? We are left intentionally confused and surprised as Darren is.

Its a fine movie, if a little under proofed. The number of A and B listers partaking shows that Pine has a good relationship in the industry and everyone is really putting in their all. Unlike a lot of movies I watch, where its clear few people are truly engaged with the lackadaisical script and cardboard characters, this one has a cast fully invested. I think it just needed longer in the oven. 

OK, enough GBBO binging for you; terrible mixed metaphors.