Notes for the End of the World: a quartet of fatalism

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World -  2012, Lorene Scafaria - netflix
It's A Disaster - 2012, Todd Berger - netflix
These Final Hours - 2013, Zak Hilditch - netflix
Melancholia - 2011, Lars Von Trier - netflix

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We may not always agree, as the title of our little website says, but one thing David and I can always agree on is we're fascinated by end of the world-type movies. I don't know what it is about watching characters face their impending doom, but based on premise alone it's going to be a deep, possibly philosophical, probably emotional journey.  Though these types of movies by conceit alone must end with the end of the world (Spoiler Alert), they aren't necessarily completely depressing or bleak, as the main characters' journeys invariably end with them finding some sense of peace and acceptance. Sure, there's a hopelessness and inevitability that pervades the proceedings, but the fantasy of it is in going out feeling satisfied.  Another draw to these types of stories is, in part, the feeding feeding of that nihilistic bit of us that sometimes would just like it all to be over with, and knowing that we're not missing out on anything.  The end of the world is the ultimate in shared experiences.

There's a difference between impending apocalypse movies where there's no potential salvation, and possible apocalypse movies like Armageddon or Deep Impact or 2012 or any zombie movie, where the main theme of the movie is hope and survival.   Often those type of movies -- particularly the bigger, Hollywood mainstream vehicles -- seem to think that most of humanity perishing (save for a few main characters) is better than all of humanity perishing, whereas I think that having a main character face not just his or her own mortality, but the end of everything, can be a much more interesting, unique and individualistic journey.  Given the rise of zombies in pop culture, and the ongoing prevalence of post-apocalyptic stories (can't wait for Mad Max: Fury Road) it seems en masse we're more interested in the survival angle than with finality, and like fantasy/nightmare worlds that result more than no world at all.  As such, I find films like these are little gems, affecting and effective.

Here are four films I found on Netflix that deal with the end.  (A couple other recommendations: Don McKellar's Last Night (1998), The Rapture (1991) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961))

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Watching Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was a shocking experience, moreso than any of the other of the films I'll discuss here, since this was a major Hollywood motion picture starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightly that was sold as either a comedy romp or a romantic comedy (depending on the trailer or commercial) rather than a fairly bleak tale about the actual end of the world.  I mean, "the end of the world" is actually telegraphed in the title, so why didn't I expect the actual world to end?

The opening minutes of this film are as cold and sobering as any on this list.  Relationships fall apart, people commit suicide, riots break out, desperation and depression reign.  Carell's Dodge (that's his character's name, I'm not referring to his truck) had his wife literally jump out of the car when word was given of the failure of a rocket meant to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.  He's pretty bummed out thereafter, but still making the slow journey into work only to have a coworker's body smash into the hood of his car.  A party held by friends raises his spirits none, and the thought of meeting anyone new just to be with someone at the end seems meaningless.  When he formally meets his flighty British ex-pat neighbour Penny (Knightly) for the first time, she's just looking for an escape from her ex, and Dodge offers her the couch.  They make friendly but it's little more than that, until she gives Dodge 3 years' worth of mail that got mis-sorted into her box.  Among the letters is one from his high-school sweetheart whom he never got over requesting reconciliation. With his journey set before him, Penny is dragged along since a riot is approaching their building.  An unusual road trip ensues.

At every turn I was expecting the film to turn into the comedy it was promoted as, yet by the halfway point, it was obvious this was never intended to be a straight up comedy (despite the stunt casting of many comedic actors like Rob Coddry, Rob Huebel, Patton Oswalt, T.J.Miller, as Gillian Jacobs), but rather a drama with the odd moment of comedy.  And even when it is aiming for levity there's an undercurrent of unease.  The film never finds a stable tone.  It wants to be funny but it won't commit to the levity, and it wants to be a drama but it wasn't cast to be such.  It doesn't aim to be romantic, at least not until the third act where it's evident that these two characters share a connection, but even though it kind of works, the romance doesn't ring true (I'm still trying to decide if the movie is saying they connect so deeply because it's the last connection they will make in their lives, or if it's truly something deeper... I think it wants to be the latter but I have a hard time buying it for real).

It's actually a quite potent movie, but not a consistent movie and certainly not the movie that was originally sold.

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Of the four films here, It's A Disaster is the odd one out because it's not actually an end-of-the-world scenario.  It's an end-of-their-world scenario, but the world as a whole isn't ending.  It hits a lot of the same notes as an end-of-the-world story does, hence why it fits.  Like Seeking a Friend..., this film was sold as a comedy.  Unlike Seeking a Friend..., this one is actually a comedy.  A dark comedy, but funny nonetheless.

The film finds a group of friends gathering for a couples brunch in a suburban home.  Tracy (Julia Stiles) is bringing her new boyfriend Glenn (David Cross) to meet her friends for the first time, finally confident she hasn't found one that's crazy.  Famous for their brunches, their hosts, Shane (Jeff Grace) and Emma (Erinn Hayes) are hiding that they're getting a divorce.  Drug addled musicians Buck (Kevin Brennan) and Lexi (Rachel Boston) are very freewheeling and flirtatious, while Hedy (America Ferrera) and Pete (Jeff Grace) have been engaged for five years with no actual plans to get married.

Cross starts as the audience surrogate as he attempts to navigate the awkward dynamics of the group, but the film quickly and smartly establishes each of the characters and their individual interpersonal dynamics.  Very soon we get a sense of who each of these characters are, with no real surprises (save one) added on, just more depth.  I like the low-stakes dynamics of the group's interpersonal conflicts (it feels very much like a long-lived group of friends, complete with longstanding issues and tensions that have to be carefully traversed) measured against the very large threat outside their doors.

The imposition of the terrorist attack on their lives provides a very interesting vehicle for these characters to explore their relationships with each other, while at the same time never forgetting to address the problem outside.  A lot of the conversation, for instance, happens when they all search the house for a working battery operated radio.  When one of the characters mentions they remembered taking a shower and seeing a shower radio, the briefly celebrate, until one of the homeowners says "Wait, when did you take a shower here?"

It's a pretty note-perfect dark comedy through to its not-quite conclusion.  And it's really quite refreshing to see Cross playing a nice, normal guy (well,,,,) for a change.  He's surprisingly good at it.

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These Final Hours is an Australian feature about the looming end of the world and one detached young man's desire to avoid it.  James (Nathan Phillips) leaves the woman he loves behind at an oceanfront home to head inland for an end-of-the-world blowout party.  He doesn't want to feel a thing.  But the journey inland is interrupted by a crazed machete wielding maniac, forcing him from his car.  After successfully fleeing, he searches for a vehicle to continue his journey only to witness two men carrying a screaming young girl from their van into their home.  He wrestles with stealing their van and leaving and saving the girl, but ultimately saves the girl.  Rose wants desperately to reunite with her dad for the end of the world and James at first wants to off-load her, to find someone else who will help her, but ultimately decides it's his mission, not anyone else's.

James' life has been anything but a virtuous one, so to take care of this child, to help her find her peace when he can't seem to find his own, gives him some meaning.  The story is a redemption tale, not for any one thing James did, but making up for a life wasted seeking escape instead of actually living it the way that meant anything.


Like Seeking a Friend..., it's largely framed around a road trip, that finds strange and unsettling encounters with people and how they're dealing with the end of the world.  James makes it to the party, with Rose in tow, and the moment he arrives you can tell he's unsure why he's there.  Where this was his objective, his mission, he now looks upon this celebration with disgust, more in regards to his once-strong desire to be there than the people who seem more than content to be there.

It's not a flawless movie, but it's got a strong arc and it's quite well acted.  There's a few pained cliches, such as the radio narrator's updates on when the annihilation wave will hit (in this scenario, the meteor has already hit North America and it's some hours before the wave of fire crawls its way to Australia), even when the radio isn't on (total shades of Vanishing Point), and James' last minute reunion.  Yet, even the cliches are used well.  I liked the meeting of James and his mother the best.  Quite obvious that these two had an exceptionally strained relationship, and even though it's the end of the world the bad blood doesn't totally come clean.  Yet, they still get their moment, and it's absolutely beautiful.

Where most of these movies blink out with a blinding white light, this one ends facing the wave of fire, the heat searing before the wave even hits.  It's such a different visual, impressively rendered.

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Finally, there's Melancholia, the big one in this group.  It's the one from the biggest-name director, Lars Von Trier, and the one backed with the most acclaim, making plenty of best-of lists, including the Dissolve's best of the decade (so far). It's easy to see why this has garnered such attention during the opening minutes, a lengthy montage of breathtakingly staged, slow motion photos that foreshadow the events of the film, set to Wagner. These disparate yet kinetically charged visuals slowly reveal their meaning as the film progresses, but the film can't quite sustain the sad glory that this prologue delivers.

What follows is a remarkable film indeed, but not necessarily a likable one.  The film is divided into two arcs, one centered on Justine (Kirsten Dunst in easily her career-best performance) on her wedding day, the other her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the days that follow.  The story opens with Justine and her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) in the back of a limosine stuck in a tight turn on a road in the back country.  At times Justine looks utterly miserable, at times she laughs, at times it seems she's putting on a smile because she should.  They're late for their reception, which is at the  immense family estate of her brother-in-law, John (Keifer Sutherland).  An elaborate and intricate evening has been planned and Claire, John and the wedding planner (a curiously delightful Udo Kier) are excessively stressed an annoyed.  Her boss (Stellan Skarsgard), in his toast, has both promoted her and requested a new tagline for a campaign by the evening's end, dangling his nephew's career in front of her if she fails.

Justine tries to keep a brave face as much as she tries to keep interest in the whole affair but her mindstate won't let her.  Her sister tries to coax her through but just sees Justine's depression as a thing she does.  Michael meanwhile offers her the promise of a tranquil apple orchard to help her be happy.  In both cases, their intentions are good, but obvious that neither truly understands what is happening.  Justine's apathy starts into self-destructive behavior, her mother is cold and detached as ever and her father seeks party and escaping from reality.  Justine desperately wants the compassion, solace and care of her parents and receives nothing despite her pleas.  What inevitably results is one of the most cataclysmic of all wedding receptions.

Meanwhile, when dusk broke, a new star had appeared in the sky.  John cites it as Antares. By the end of the evening Antares was gone.

When Claire's segment begins, the world is preparing for a rogue planet, named Melancholia, to pass by Earth in a couple days' time.  Claire feels a heavy sense of foreboding but John constantly reassures her that it's just a fly-by, that it will be the greatest astrological event in history, but everything is fine.  Clare reads doomsday sites and doesn't know how to prepare herself.  Meanwhile, they take Justine in, who has become practically crippled with melancholy, barely able to move.

As the planet moves closer, Justine seems ever more at ease; not happy, just accepting.  Meanwhile Claire's angst accelerates and she doesn't understand Justine's calm, perhaps even envious of it.

The film is a potent look at depression, conveying very well (for the most part) the difficulty of carrying on when the hold gets so strong.  It's not just apathy, or sadness, or lack of concern for others or one's self, and it's not that those are all happening at once, but they are all part of it, and Dunst expertly portrays faking one's way through life because of what's expected of them.  Justine's depression obviously reaches greater depths, but Clare's anxieties, and the portrayal of her attempts to deny them, assuage them, or accept them are equally grounded, despite the surreal trigger.

Yet, for as good as the film does at creating these immensely complex portrayals of depression and anxiety, and doing so while manufacturing an absolutely wondrous event to frame them around, Von Trier laces his film with more than a few moments of upper class bullshit that makes it hard to fully enjoy.  These characters witness the event of Melancholy's arrival but without a single radio or television broadcast or phone call or text to precede it (only Clare's internet search shows signs of a world outside of John's family estate).  It's all very quaint, riding around on horses to a bridge they won't cross (the same bridge which the golf cart won't cross later), as if there's some perimeter to these events that isn't affecting the rest of society.  The rich get a beautiful cataclysm all their own.

It's not just the setting, the lack of any reality outside the estate, but the lame moments of rich people behaving badly.  These mostly involving the elder Skarsgard's influence on Justine's evening, like his "toast", Justine having sex with his nephew on the golf course, his tirade after Justine tells him off, or his nephew's "proposal" after Michael storms out on her.  It's all rather broad for a film otherwise laced with more subtlety.  There's a pretentiousness in any filmmaking that thinks it can get away with such overt ham-fistedness within its story.  John Hurt and Udo Kier are great in comic relief roles that, in hindsight, are dangerously out of place in a stone cold serious film about depression and the end of the world, particularly since Claire's half of the film features nothing close to it, so there's no consistent levity throughout.

I think the opening sequence is an absolute marvel, and there's moments of absolute drop dead gorgeous cinematography (and special effects) laced throughout.  Dunst is fantastic and looks incredible wearing one the greatest on-screen wedding dresses of all time.  As an exploration of melancholy, it does better than almost any film before it, but as an end-of-the-world movie it's utterly up its own ass.

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Besides It's A Disaster, I like to think that Melancholia, Seeking a Friend.. and These Final Hours all share the same catastrophe, that they're all stories from the same end of the world scenario (throw Last Night in there as well).  There's no real reason they couldn't be save for the miniscule differences in the descriptions of what's happened.  When films are this dark, you need to find your own fun sometimes...

I Saw This!!: TV, but not TV

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies (or stuff) they watched (or played) some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Now they they have to strain to say anything meaningful lest they just not say anything at all. And they can't do that, can they?
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In this edition, television shows, of a sort:
Parallels - double pilot, Netflix (complete)
Ascension - six episodes, CBC (complete)
Last Man on Earth - eight episodes, Fox (Sundays @ 9/9:30)
Danger 5 - one episode, Netflix
Family Tree - four episodes, DVD
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - three episodes, Netflix
Space Riders: Division Earth - 13 webisodes, CTV Extend/Hulu
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Parallels caught me unawares, showing up in the "What's New on Netflix Canada" feed with an intriguing synopsis that basically mentioned exploring parallel worlds.  If there's anything keyword that will get me to check it out, parallel earths is one of them.  By all means I expected it to be a low-budget, direct-to-video movie, the likes of which are generally barely watchable, but this very quickly seemed like something different, starting with the "Fox Digital" logo at the start (which I thought originally was a BS photoshopped logo to try and make it seem like a genuine production, but it turns out it's a legitimate early effort in the Fox Digital lineup).

It's about a couple 20-something siblings who get a strange call from their dad only to find him missing and a mystery in their wake.  A strange satchel, an unusual orb, and an address taking them to a building that they learn the hard way jumps between dimensions.  It's basically Sliders but with a bunch of mysteries seeded in, and it's really, really good.  Turns out it's a product of Christopher Leone, one of the creators of The Lost Room, a SyFy mini-series from around 2006 which I absolutely loved and worth seeking.  What's on Netflix is essentially a double-length pilot, or rather two episodes, put together as a film.

Petitions have launched to bring it to series and I definitely want more.  Even before all the weird cryptic stuff at the end of the "movie" (plus a tantalizing reveal about one of the characters) that makes you want to know more, it had me hooked.  The first ten minutes start off a little slow, but it doesn't take long before the mystery kicks in and propels the show forward.  The actors are all unknowns, but they settle into their roles rather quickly.  The lead actor, Mark Hapka, is CW-level handsome, like a cross between Mark Whalberg and Matt Damon, as good an actor as the former but not quite the same charisma as the latter.

Watch the "movie" on Netflix, rate it highly and show your support on the change.org petition...


 

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Ascension is the SyFy network's first attempt to reclaim some semblance of respectability.  After years of supporting Sharknado and Mansquito-like ironically bad low-budget movies, all the lustre the network gained from Battlestar Galactica was gone.  In those years other networks had started gaining serious traction with genre TV shows that once would have only been housed on their channel.  Ascension was presented as a 3-part mini-series of 2-hour movies in December. Co-funded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it aired in Canada as a 6-episode season in February.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

The first episode lays out an intriguing concept for the series.  Set aboard a "generational starship" that was launched in secret by the Kennedy administration in the 1960, it's 50 years later and we're catching up with the second generation of ship-runners, learning about this micro-society as they struggle with class issues and the ennui resulting from knowing they'll never see land.  Things take a dramatic turn when a young woman turns up dead, apparently the ship's first murder.  Like a killing in a small town, it rocks the shaky societal foundation of the ship, but even more troubling is that she was shot, and no guns were believed to have been on board.

The first episode is remarkably well put together.  The ship, its design, the wardrobe, and the society in general embrace their 1960's origins.  Though racism isn't really prevalent (the ship's XO is black) sexism is still an integrated part of the ship's daily life.  The "stewardesses" of the ship regularly entertain the ship's crew, and while it's not explicit, the undertones are that this is an institutionalized form of prostitution.  Tricia Helfer (formerly of Battlestar Galactica) playing the chief steward and the captain's wife, is a master manipulator, having a high level of unofficial power, but the reality is women can have very little official power.

The first episode features an unusual aside taking place in modern day on Earth between an eager college student and Gil Bellows' character, the son of founder of Project Orion.  The scene is meant to highlight the secrecy which the project has maintained for 50 years, but it feels decidedly out of place with the rest of the show.  The second episode reveals that Bellows is more that aware of the Project, and it ends with the revelation that he's in charge of it now, that, in fact, the ship is not in space at all but a practical simulation which none of the crew are aware.

This is a remarkable and surprising twist (executed exceptionally well as one of the crew is accidentally blown out of the airlock and onto a mattress below) but the show devolves quite a bit from there.  The star-faring adventures of this 1960's space rocket, and it's society that's gestated differently in the 50 years since was more than enough of a concept to hold a show.  It's a new take on Lost in Space, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.  A "back on Earth" conspiracy certainly could have a place, but is largely an unnecessary complication for what was already a great premise.  As the remaining four episodes progressed, the outside influence upon the interior of the ship increased, and Ascension was the poorer for it.

In the final two episodes the show, this government conspiracy plot revealed its purpose, which was to force the evolution of humanity, thrusting paranormal powers into the mix and virtually derailing the entire show.  It ends at episode six with a series of cliffhangers that apparently will never be resolved, since SyFy has stated it's not commissioning another season.  There was a lot of promise early one, and throughout there was some entertaining elements but it was overly-ambitious and in the end failed as a result.  And I hope to never hear the phrase "Going full Snowden" ever again, thank you very much.

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What a remarkable accomplishment The Last Man on Earth is.  The pilot episode of this new series from 21 Jump Street and Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller and ex-SNL cast member Will Forte, opens in 2020 with a montage of Forte (playing "Phil Miller") crisscrossing the country in a bus, loaded with art gallery and museum pieces alongside pop culture and sport paraphernalia.  Every city he leaves he spraypaints "Alive in Tuscon" on their welcome sign.  Back in Tuscon, six months later with no sign of any other survivors, Phil has lost almost any semblance of his civility.  He roams around in the same shirt and underwear, spending most of his days drunk, sometimes bathing in his Margarita Pool (a margarita-filled kiddie pool, complete with salted rim), sometimes hanging at a bar with his assorted ball-friends (one-upping Castaway's Wilson a dozen times over).  He flirts with a window display mannequin when he's not engulfed in pornography, and after a while life has no meaning.  The whole pilot episode features only Forte's character on-screen.  That this made it to Fox, or really any channel for that matter, is remarkable, but the end result is so captivating (not to mention funny) that it should be no surprise.


The pilot captures what a solitary life in a modern city would be like (as a result of a clean apocalypse, at least.  The buildings are still standing and there's no dead bodies anywhere to speak of).  There's no threats, save maybe boredom or alcohol poisoning.  There's fun to be had when you're the only person around, but eventually the loneliness, the desire for human contact will start to crush you.

So, in the second episode, when Phil meets Carol (played by the amazing Kristen Schaal) he should be more than elated, he should be jubilant and celebratory.  Not only is there another person, but a woman.  Unfortunately, Carol and Phil's personalities, they discover almost instantly, couldn't clash more.  Carol seeks to make lemonade out of the lemon that is Phil, while Phil has no other choice but to accept Carol as his companion for lack of any alternatives.

The show takes form of a relationship satire (as opposed to a post-apocalyptic spoof) almost instantly once Carol arrives.  The writers (with Forte in charge as showrunner) still play around to great effect with the setting of the show, but the relationship between its two leads becomes very complex very quickly.  Carol, rightly, suggests that they need to repopulate the Earth, but she won't have any bastard babies running around.  Phil doesn't see how any of the standard rules of the old world (stop signs or marriage) have any bearing on where they are now, and the battle of wills commences.  It would be easy for the show to turn Carol into a dude-wrecking, nagging, controlling, over-sensitive, harpy, but she's not the bad guy for trying to make Phil into a better man, into someone who cares about life again.  Phil is kind of the bad guy for resisting it just because Carol isn't even close to his ideal.  It's a play on the cliches of men afraid of losing their freedom or individuality to a relationship (as if so much of one's identity is invested in pornography or poor hygene).   There's a lot of fear, but the quick counter is what was life like before, alone and desperate?

From there, each episode gets a little more surprising (for enjoyment purposes I've avoided a bunch, not that they aren't predictable, but they are fun), and at times uncomfortable as Phil starts becoming less of the hero, and merely the protagonist of the story.  Phil's nature is selfishness and that leads to all manner of unflattering moments for the character.  But Forte is capable, both in performance and in scripting, of injecting moments of redemption, sometimes as a result of Phil's actions and sometimes in spite of him.

I hope in the closing episodes of the show it actually explores some of Phil's mental health issues, which are clearly present, if ill defined.  I'm sure there's a lot of trauma to thinking one is the sole survivor of a cataclysm for a prolonged period of time, and surely self-centered thinking is a result of existing primarily in one's own mind for so long.  Of course, this is a comedy series, and a damn funny one at that.

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When I pulled up Danger 5 on Netflix, I had no concept of what it was.  The "cover" image used gave the appearance of low-budget 1980's direct-to-video exploitation flick, with a heavily shadowed headshot of Hitler wearing sunglasses and holding up his gun.  The chrome logo of Danger 5 emulating Robocop's logo was just as telling.  But what was it?

Watching the show I quickly discovered a that it was a mock-1960's action-adventure serial, set in WWII-era 1940's, about an international team of superagents whose sole objective is to kill Hitler.  The aesthetic is very much like a live action parody of Gerry Anderson's "supermarionation" shows like Thunderbirds and Stingray.  Using heavy overdubbing, intentionally campy acting, and a barrage of bizarre, nonsensical elements (like their commander having an Eagle's head), as well as utilizing pointedly obvious miniatures for every action sequence, Danger 5 puts in a lot of effort to make it look like not a lot of effort was put in.

I generally love this kind of stuff.  Bizarre nonsense is totally my thing, having developed formatively on Ambush Bug comics and watching Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.  Films like Black Dynamite and Kung-Fu Hustle are obvious predecessors to this, which then is strange given that those feature-length movies left me wanting more, whereas I felt the first episode of Danger 5 overstayed its welcome.

The product of Australian television  (from the makers of Italian Spiderman), if Danger 5 falters it's perhaps because they aren't aware of the "Adult Swim" style of programming that has revolutionized comedy television in North America in the past 20 years.  Scaled back to 11 or 12 minutes, this type of deranged weirdness-for-weirdness sake is a lot more entertaining, more easy to ingest.  Running to a full half hour, the show has more time to breathe which means that characters need to be developed and better realized (South Park and Archer, for instance).  When it comes down to it, though, the first episode of Danger 5 is more weird than thoroughly funny.  Whereas Black Dynamite was loaded with as many sight gags as clever and countless repeatable lines, Danger 5 seems to rest more on aesthetic than wit.

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From Christopher Guest. Starring Chris O'Dowd. No two statements could have me more ready to invest in a TV show.

Sure, Guest hasn't been a flawless maker of comedy (does anyone remember For Your Consideration?), and yet, he is the absolute top name in loosely scripted comedy productions.  His trifecta of Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind have cemented him in that role for the rest of his life. His comedies are muted, sometimes a little dry, sometimes a little quiet, but Guest always seems more interested in exploring a character rather than seeing comedy. He trusts his performers to make something funny, but he doesn't demand it from them all the time.  He still wants soul and compassion.  His gift, as much as he is a talented director and actor, is assembling a cast.

Chris O'Dowd may be my favourite comedic performer of this decade, and the decade before that.  He's able to be schlubby and hapless, like in the IT Crowd, or, just as easily, effortlessly charming but still hilarious like in Bridesmaids.  His brief appearance in Thor 2 still has me hoping they can somehow translate his nervous and sweet, but ultimately rejected date into a feature-starring superhero.  Here, O'Dowd plays Tom Chadwick, a man between jobs, recently dumped, who inherits a chest of objects from a recently deceased aunt.  This sends Tom on a journey of discovery about his family.  It's a delightful framework for many of Guest's usual cadre of performers to craft some wonderfully entertaining and bizarre back stories for the Chadwick family, but it's London setting allows Guest to take advantage of the myriad of talented comedic performers the UK has to offer.

Very obviously and foremost, this is a Guest production.  It has all the hallmarks, loaded with goodwill and charm, but the influence of British humour is a new and refreshing thing for him.  It shares the same air as a Peep Show or Pulling, but where British comedy wrings a lot of anxiety out of its characters in the name of comedy, Guest dials it back.  There's a sereneness to the story, a sense that even if characters don't get along in a scene, Guest the director, and the actors in the roles still like the characters and aren't choosing sides.  It's a production where people play nice, and that kind of comedy is both rare and a bit of a hard sell, which is probably why Family Tree isn't getting a second season, unfortunately).

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The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is Netflix's first original comedy production, taking the Tina Fey/Robert Carlock show under its wing after NBC passed on it.  Netflix seems like a good home for any respected but perhaps marginalized talent.  Realizing that creative comedy has drawing power (hence their heavy investment in stand-up and resurrection of Arrested Development), it's a more than appropriate home for Kimmy Schmidt to land.

The show is centered around 29-year-old Kimmy, who was recently unearthed from a cult's doomsday bunker with her sister wives after 15 years, brought to New York to run the talk show circuit, and decided to stay, instead of going back to Indiana.  With a permanently smile and a hearty can-do attitude, she may have been a victim but she's not going to let her trauma define her.  She is out of place, out of touch, and her maturity is stunted, but nevertheless she finds a home (sharing an apartment with a sheltered gay black man whose dreams of Broadway stardom have all but died) and landing a job as nanny for a repugnant upscale family (led by Jane Krakowski as the matriarch, in a role that manages to somehow tops Jenna from 30 Rock in self-centeredness)

Thrust into completely alien environments, Kimmy Schmidt could easily be a searingly-painful-to-watch comedy about a girl getting mixed up in things she has no awareness of, but it manages to assuage those anxious moments by centering on a character who's more than capable of rolling with it, and strives constantly to make it work.  It's Ellie Kemper's teeth-filled performance and seemingly boundless enthusiasm that makes this otherwise tremendously bizarre and wholly unrelateable show work.

The first few episodes I've watched are obviously still finding their feet, the tone of the characters seems to shift slightly each episode as the actors ease into the roles and the writers define the situation a little more.  Even though it's not, the world still feels like Tina Fey's New York from 30 Rock,  a place where the bizarre is commonplace.  The sub-plot of the third episode, focusing on Krakowski's character's Native American roots (quite literally at one point) is the first sign outside of the premise of the show going for broke with sheer lunacy.  I'm keen to keep watching, but also hoping it finds the right groove quickly.

Plus, Carol Kane.  Come on!

---

Referring back to what I was saying above about Danger 5, the web series Space Riders: Division Earth get is right where Danger 5 got it wrong.  Like Danger 5, Space Riders is a parody of a once-popular style kids show built for adults, with severe language, sexual overtones, and violence in the name of comedy.  In this case, it's a spoof of The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers-style action-adventure.  Where Space Riders succeeds is in worrying less about style, and more about twisting the expected format and creating an emotional investment in the characters (no matter how ridiculous they may be).

Created by Canadian comedic actor Dan Beirne and comedian Mark Little, the show takes two unlikely individuals, scrawny, barely-employed roommates Philip and Ken, and by happenstance puts them in the position of becoming Earth's official Space Riders.  Entrusted with the transformation crystals (the "Zoid pack") that give Philip incredible intellectual powers, and Ken unbelievable strength and fighting prowess, the new gig still can't help either of them in their regular life.  Philip's unabashedly in love with his boss at the coffee shop.  Of course she doesn't notice him, instead having eyes only for an utterly disinterested Ken.  Ken, meanwhile, can't find a job.

Instead of focusing primarily on their adventures as Space Riders, instead it looks at how being Space Riders interferes with having a regular life, something which Ken doesn't seem to mind at all, but a responsibility Philip is still far too timid to accept.  One of the arcs deals with the taboo of using their power for personal gain, as Ken pushes Philip into a back-alley brawl, then transforms and power punches a guy in the face when Philip falters.  "Ken! I think you caved his face in," Philip cries.  "I didn't think I'd punch him so haaard," Ken replies with a mincing whine.

Their chief nemesis is Orson Ooze, who just escaped from space jail, and seeks to kill Earth's Space Riders to reclaim his place as a supreme evil in the universe.  Ken describes Orson as "I think he's trans".  "Is that self-identifying" Philip asks at an inappropriate moment.  I'm not certain if there's intent to make fun of a trans individual with Orson, as it's not really brought up again, but  Kayla Lorette is amazing in the role, making Orson appropriately cartoonishly evil (a sort of Rita Repulsa/Skeletor hybrid) while also being genuinely entertaining character who has such trouble with his henchman, Moon Monster ("Did you mess with my settings?"), that at one point he kicks him out and Moon Monster goes to live with Philip and Ken..

The concepts are entertaining (such as Orson Ooze's portal cat teleporting the baby Ken is sitting when he isn't looking) and it's evident how much fun the everyone involved is having (each transformation sequence is entertaining because each is done unique with variant lyrics of the rockin' transformation song).  It's a well-made show, obviously low budget, but embracing and using it to even better parody the source material.  Each episode about 6 or 7 minutes in length which is perfect for this type of material, and it tends to run in about three episode arcs (so it could effectively be a 1/2 hour series, with each episode hitting a commercial break, but it works well with an arc occurring for every 6 minutes.

Given that this was made in 2014 and I hadn't heard about it before (despite being a fan of Mark Little's) I'm guessing this didn't make a big enough splash for a second series, which is too bad because it's very entertaining.

xBox One: Sunset Overdrive

Sunset Overdrive was the primary reason I wanted the xBox One first, first as opposed to the Playstation 4, other than the reasons outlined in the previous Far Cry 4 post. I love the idea of third-person, open world games with weird super powers. InFamous and Prototype are a pair of my favourite games. This one comes with a sense of humor and smacks of familiarity, harkening back to  Jet Set (Grind) Radio from the Dreamcast days. Bright, colourful and cheerfully irreverent, as a followup game, it was a nice change of pace from the grimdark nature of Far Cry 4.

Premise. You are a janitor pushing a garbage bin while some big corporation releases a new energy drink to a bunch of meathead frat kids. Suddenly, said energy drink turns them into mutants - big pulsating, orange pus-y mutants who try to kill you. The entire tutorial is you attempting to get home to your apartment while the city goes to hell; very fast. Oh and I should mention, a badass old man gives you a gun that looks like a blunderbuss with a pair of *cough* balls attached. Its called the Flaming Compensator. And thus, the irreverent, juvenile comedic tone for the game is set.

This game is all about its humor. You are constantly breaking the fourth wall. You are constantly being reminded that you are in a video game. No better example than when you respawn -- animations of aliens dropping your body, or you emerging from a grave like a zombie, or sliding in from left stage, like a boss, or ... oh, just go look for yourself. They always made me crack a grin. All of the dialogue, most of the missions are just plain silly and setup to make you giggle. The game never takes itself seriously, even when you transition from the Hero's Journey from self-important to selflessness.

And the play is just plain fun. Like these other games, InFamous in particular, you are able to move fast along rails, i.e. telephone wires, railings, edges of just about anything. You skate along on your sneakers, boots or whatever jumping up higher points of vantage or hanging from them via a crowbar. What self-referential video game would not have a crowbar. You also bounce like a platformer cartoon, off cafe umbrellas, awnings and off the hoods of cars. Boing boing boing, you can go just about anywhere. Initially its a bit troublesome as the camera swings about you all willy nilly, but once you get the hang of it, and add in the ability to woosh (dash) over air or water, you are speedily jumping from spot to spot. This is one of those games where fast travel is almost never used, because normal travel can be such fun.

As expected, the weapons are going to be Ratchet and Clank outrageous and fun. Not much to be said there.

But then there is character customization. Of course, race, gender and hair colour are there but the fact you can change these ANYTIME you want is hilarious. Yes, you can swamp gender and body shape any time you drop by the change room. I started as a shaved punk kid, swapped into a gaudily dressed, bearded hipster and finished the game as a lil punk girl with quite the attitude. There are hats, weapons, outfits, accessories and general clothing all focused on making you look outrageous. These are street alterna-kids, one moment gothy, one moment punk and finally, once in a few missions, nerdy -- yep, you can dress as a LARPer. I never got tired of swapping out clothes every few missions.

The base enemies are the ODs, the kids who morphed into squishy orange zombies. They attack you, they ooze and when they die, they explode into the energy drink that you can use to upgrade. Then there are the big versions of them, 20' massive ones that you keep a distance from and just lob exploding teddy bears at.  Later on, you fight flashy fascist robots or gun toting gang kids. There is enough variety to keep things fresh. And after a few comments about ever-spawn, it seems completely normal that these things keep on climbing out the sewers.

Yeah, I loved this game. There were a few elements that I actively avoided, mostly the multi-player and the annoying 100%-er ideas of collecting. Collecting stinky sneakers, toilet paper and floating mascots was useful to a certain degree but only really appeal to the collectors. That and the achievements. If they had more clothing unlocked, I would have never stopped collecting. I need more than bragging points in my games.

I realize that after a handful of video game reviews, I will have to stop relating the usual things I have trouble with in games. Achievements will never be my thing, and in the more serious games, the never ending amount of murder you commit will be a normal reference. In this game, there was no sense of murder as they are completely post-human. OK, there are those gang kids, but the level of the game makes it more cartoony than reality, so no guilt. Even cyber-guilt.

I am not sure if I will return to the game once the DLCs come out, but if they have some new duds for my girl, then maybe.

3 Short Paragraphs: Texas Killing Fields

2011, Ami Canaan Mann (Morning) -- Netflix

I didn't realize I was merging Eric Bana and Sam Worthington together in my head, until I started thinking about this movie and was picturing scenes from Deliver Us From Evil, Bana's latest cop movie, reviewed in this post. If I recall correctly, they are both Australian imports, but both carry that frowny, growly persona that lends itself well to beleaguered cops. In this case, Worthington is the younger frowny cop to Jeffrey Dean Morgan's older, more frowny cop. It would have been interesting if Bana had been in Morgan's role.

Texas Killing Fields takes a very real, very chilling instance of crime from recent American history and tries to build up a dark, muddy, eerie crime drama much in the vein of True Detective. It only somewhat succeeds. It's set against the Calder Field, a moorish tract of land dubbed Killing Fields, in Texas City, Texas. Since the 70s, numerous bodies have been pulled from the field; most of the murders remain unsolved. In reality, the field is not very big but in the myth of movie making, its a massive expanse of swampy, bracken covered land too far from anywhere for anyone to be heard. Its not just a place where people can be taken and murdered without notice, but the murderers can hide and not expect to be found.

Morgan and Worthington are cops in the neighbouring jurisdiction where Jessica Chastain finds the latest body. She wants Morgan's help because he is the seasoned NYC detective, where Worthington is her ex and he is happy to focus on murders in his own county. I liked Chastain here, enjoying her in these smaller roles, where she doesn't do anything extraordinary but is a hard-working, capable actor. Unfortunately, the movie is not much above a mid-level TV series, with the investigation of the murders being sloppy, tainted by emotion and personal attachments, like in all standard crime fiction. Everyone is solidly acting, but there is no range in the story. And that it sums up a daunting case so quickly, and easily, is kind of emasculating to all the police forces involved.

Absentia

2011, Mike Flanagan (Oculus) -- Netflix

Ohhhhh, he did Oculus. Now I know why he got the budget and casting for that movie. Here it is just over 2 weeks later, and I am still thinking about Absentia, a very basic, low-budget horror movie with no faces at all. But it stuck with me.

Absentia is about a man who has disappeared, reported missing, and seven years later, his wife Tricia is having him declared death in absentia. She is not dealing well, still walking the neighbourhood replacing the posters and still has their room filled with his possessions. Her sister Callie arrives to help out, a sister who has been missing on her own terms for much of the past seven years, as a runaway and drug addict. But Callie has come to support her sister with the declaration and the coming baby. Baby? How did that happen? No, nothing spooky seven year conception, just normal mistakes (or not) made in the chaos of her husband's disappearance.

The movie focuses its horror specs on something mundane, a pedestrian tunnel that goes under the highway to a nearby park. It immediately made me think of Let Me In (the remake of Let The Right One In) and the vampire child hiding in its shadows, as well as another horror movie where hoodied thugs crouch at its entrance intimidating everyone who comes by, but whose title escapes me right now. Citadel ? In their purest form, even during the day, those tunnels always make people hesitate. Could there be someone in the shadows at the far end? If not someone, something?

Yes.

At first, we think the movie may be running the path of ghosts. The husband's eerie phantom appears to Tricia, seen only by her, in dreams and eventually during the waking hours. Stress? Probably. Ghost? Maybe. Meanwhile Callie is seeing her own ghosts, the homeless man (Doug Jones) found in the tunnel who we recognize immediately is not homeless at all, but someone returned from... somewhere. And the trinkets and traded items that appear out of nowhere. I loved, just loved, how the movie took a horror trope -- where something weird happens to someone and they keep it to themselves -- and turned it over. Callie calls the police, after finding the trinkets in her bed. The police investigate, but at the same time are trying to connect it to the husband's disappearance. Stress upon stress, and Tricia is seeing more phantoms until, one is not. Husband Daniel has returned.

Its been seven years. He is in the same clothes as when he left. He is battered, abused and malnutritioned. He is pale, deathly pale. Where has he been? Who had him? The cops are suspicious, but strangely don't ask the right questions. One is more suspicious than he has the right to be. And more protective of Tricia then he should. Daniel is traumatized, muttering to himself and withholding ... reasons. After finding he is basically healthy, they send him home.

Callie is even more suspicious, as she has been doing some research. Many many people have gone missing in this area. Some have returned, others are just gone. She does the full investigation trope on the Internet finding unrelated stories, global stories, but connecting them through... a nearby tunnel. And she adds in some myths and we get the origin stories behind trolls under bridges, as well as many other, "there are scary things in the dark crawlspaces". Of course, she is a drug addict so who would believe her?

This was the part that connected for me, that spun my brain off in so many directions. My go-to imagining for most horror stories, is to envision the RPG heroic side of things. What if someone came in at the last second, hunting down the serial killer, banishing the demon or tracking and killing the monster, because they are aware of such things. I imagined an organization that is tracking these events, has been for years, seeking out those weak spots in certain tunnels that allow the monsters to steal people and for some people to return, given the right circumstances. They have all the lore, all the needed weapons and have delved into the real dark tunnels beyond the ones connected to on our side. In a world where monsters are real, we need monster hunters.

Now for the even geekier part.

If we have always had a fear of tunnels, investing it into tales and myths of monsters in caves, mines and under bridges, what if we invested as much mythos in conquering those monsters? What if Beowulf and its lasting popularity is an attempt to solidify it in our collective minds, so the things beyond don't have as much ability to use tunnels against us? Without the fear, we are stronger. And what if someone in the 1960s decided it needed to be even wider established, and began working on a game where bold heroes would go into tunnels to defeat monsters? He wanted it so embedded in our psyches that the tunnel creatures would be weakened worldwide.  I think you know where I am going. D&D was a tool against a very real dark, and also, maybe a bit of a recruiting forum.

Yeah, thats the way my brain goes.

The movie itself takes a darker, blood tinted stance. There are no (successful) heroes. But it doesn't diminish Callie's heroic attempt. She faces the monsters, trying to bargain with them. Alas, all we get are more missing persons posters. The monsters are never revealed, the world beyond the tunnels never explored. The mystery and emptiness are all we are left with. Questions. Fears.

3 Short Paragraphs: Beasts of the Southern Wild

2012, Benh Zeitlin -- Netflix

There is a fault in waiting so long to see movies I was anticipating, but never got around to watching. It is a deflation of expectations, expectations that likely inflated with time, as actual memory of why I was anticipating it was supplanted by a simple, vague recollection. That was a rather wordy way of saying I wasn't as intrigued and impressed by this very very indie movie, as I hoped I would be.

Its a fairy tale in the near future where the oceans rise. Its the American south, called The Bathtub. Hushpuppy lives there with her dad Wink, in a subsistence lifestyle that most would view as extreme, utter poverty, the kind we see on TV depicting poor Africans. But they don't live a hopeless life, as there is plenty of food and there must be some money, as Wink never seems to be without booze. Hushpuppy is the innocent, very in tune with her existence and all the lives and creatures around her. She is aware the waters are going to rise, but like her dad, she lives a happy go lucky life. When it happens, it happens.

And it happens. Even in this fairy tale of innocence, there is darkness. The rising oceans kill the land. The rich people behind walls want to forcibly relocate the people of The Bathtub. And really, she doesn't live in an idyllic place -- its all garbage and Wink & his friends are almost always drunk. They aren't the most responsible protagonists. But despite all this crassness, this unseemly characterizing, this movie is incredibly novel and new. The actors are almost entirely non-actors, real people acting as real people do. You will never see a setting so intricate and authentic. I guess I just wanted the story to be more subtle, more intriguing. And for the beasts to play more than allegory come to life.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Dracula Untold

2014, Gary Shore -- download

Dracula Untold is the Dracula movie for D&D players. Its a prequel exploring the origins of Vlad Tepes, or as they call him in the movie, Draculovich or something like that. Basically, that opening sequence from the Gary Oldman movie? Yes, its made into an entire movie. Luke Evans armor is almost as cool. Its also a superhero origin movie, with the creators amping up the vampire powers to the Nth degree. I never knew bats could be such a destructive force.

Vlad is the Prince of Transylvania, sometime in the Middle Ages. He was one of a thousand children given by the King, to the Turks, in exchange for not wiping out his people. Each of these kids are trained in the art of killing, likely being dwindled down to a ruthless few, one of which is Vlad himself, by way of the The Impaler reputation he gains while killing for the Turks. As reward he is allowed to return to Transylvania to take up the throne from his father. Years later, the Turks return to take another thousand sons. Vlad refuses.

Vlad enacts his secret weapon -- a deal made with the ghastly vampire lord who lives in the mountain. The ancient creature gives Vlad a taste of his blood, but as long as he kills no man before the end of three days, he will return to life as a human. Vlad has three days to defeat the army of the Turks. And wow, does he do so. Vlad not only has sunlight aversion and blood drain, but he can turn into a swarm of bats, clothes and all, superhero change style. And he can control bats, BIG  bats that while in their own swarm, seem to act as a single, massive force. Their impact on the battlefield sends soldiers flying. But can Vlad do it before the end of the third day? No, of course he can't. Not without a sacrifice, that of his family and that of his mortality. Thus the vampire lord wins the bargain and Vlad becomes Dracula.

*spoilerific schtuff*

Its a very formula actioner.  There is nothing novel or overly exciting about the movie but it fills a niche, an Avengers style tragic heroism. And of course, superhero style, its only an origin story. The real movie is being setup where we see Vlad in our time running into the reincarnation of  his wife, now a lovely young lady named Mina. And that vampire lord, the one from the cave? Now he is suit wearing, suave Charles Dance, ready to play more games with Vlady, the totally not-villain of a movie I doubt will ever be made.

3 Short Paragraphs: Vice

2015, Brian A Miller (nothing anyone heard of) -- download

Wow, again I am astounded by the genre of Straight to X being alive and well. I bring this up rather a lot. In the video store days, I guess I was able to avoid them knowing the style and substance from the back of their video boxes. In today's world of movie blog snippets and trailers and downloads, I guess I let a few slip past. Some are definitely worth it, as they fit more into the indie movie, where a director or writer passionate about their material produces something less than polished but still enjoyable. But then there are these -- done solely to pander to a genre and a paycheck. This is about overseas distribution & on-demand sales and nothing else. The number of production companies attached to the opening credits should have been my warning.

Vice is a movie about AI, but you would never really guess it. There are a few off-handed references about it having been invented but frightened the populace, and therefore made illegal. Then the rich guy who was funding the research came up with a brilliant idea -- turn self aware artificial intelligence into fuck and murder toys. Steal a bit from Westworld and a bit from Fantasy Island and a whole lot from the GTA video game series, and you get the business model in Vice. Its a city populated almost entirely by "artificials", where real humans can act out every fantasy, with no repercussions. And apparently, almost everyone wants to rape, murder and torture. But as long as they keep their sadism to the non-humans, its OK. But Thomas Jane, the badly dressed, terribly groomed cop believes they get amped up by their fake-crimes and go into the real world, to cause real havoc. Because, you know, video games cause people to commit crimes.

This is just a save-the-pretty-girl movie. Nobody seems at all astounded, that she has full self-awareness. Nope, they are just more concerned that the pretty, demure blonde girl needs help. Her creator wants to run away to a tropical island with her, having already abandoned her to that fuck city run by Bruce Willis. And Thomas Jane just wants that place to fall, thus abandoning all pretense at actually investigating a crime. He spends the latter half of the movie just shooting down security guards. No, not the black clad homicidal paramilitary force from earlier in the movie, but run of the mill gray clad rent-a-cops. They probably see some nutcase shooting up the place, but that doesn't matter, he kills them all. Meanwhile "got an upgrade" robo-blonde does exactly nothing with her upgrades, other than slick back her hair and put on more eyeliner. She still has to be saved by Jane. So we ignore the fact she cannot really die, as that is one of the purposes of these bloody machines !! Oh, this was infuriating, even more so that it was done with a decent budget.

xBox One: Far Cry 4

This falls under the "...and other stuff" category that sub-titles this blog.

Just around the Canadian Black Friday of last year, I acquired an xBox One after noticing I had a bit of excess in my bank account. That doesn't often happen and I haven't treated myself to anything for a couple of years, so I took the opportunity. Who am I to deny myself the never ending cycle of living paycheck to paycheck? Now, I was a bit frugal as I made use of a great sale they were promoting, and after a bit of back-and-forthing with Microsoft Store managers, I got the version of the console I wanted -- the Sunset Overdrive Edition, white with the include game of its namesake. Combine that with a $100 trade-in of my dust gathering xBox 360, and a free copy of Far Cry 4, and I was a happy gamer.

In case you are one of those few readers who are in the other camp, wondering, "Why not a PS4 ?" One simple answer. No media centre. My PS3 is my media centre, even more so since I cut the cable years ago. We pump all media through it -- music, TV and movies. From the legal uses of Netflix and disk media, to the *cough* less  than legal download TV and movies. I want my consoles to be more than just games and the while media capabilities of the xBox One may be curtailed by me not having digital TV, at least its possible. I am not having a PS3 sitting next to a PS4.

Far Cry 4 is the latest in the series which, so far, have been entirely unrelated to each other. In fact, the only real thing that has connected the games, other than FPS genre, has been a revolutionary use of foliage. The engine behind these games is impressive, even looking back at the first 11 years ago, I remember marvelling as my crouched character moved through the tropical undergrowth, fern fronds moving separately and hiding me, as I snuck up on bad guys. Far Cry 2 abandoned the story of genetic monsters and tropical island bad guys for the African savanna. But it introduced an open world style that set the tone for the rest. Far Cry 3 expanded upon the game play style but was back on an island -- no genetically enhanced super soldiers though, just red bandannaed bad guys who oppressed the countryside. But still, throughout them all, I was marvelling as I crept through the underbrush.

The new game looks remarkably like the previous one. It runs on the "if it ain't broke..." mantra. The game play and look & feel are very familiar, but we toss Ajay Ghale into a remote mountain Tibet analog called Kyrat. Ajay is returning home to deliver his mother's ashes when he gets mixed up in the civil war between Kyrat's usurper, Pagan Min and the rebel Golden Path. We are exposed to Min's leadership in the opening sequence when he stabs someone to death with a gold pen. And then we are rescued by the rebels, and asked to become one of them. Ajay's father was a founding member of the Golden Path and they expect his son to take the mantle.

Like the previous game, this one wants us to take on the role of a protagonist not familiar with warfare and its moral dilemmas. Like with most FPS games, you start off rather weak and progress into a killing machine. This is entwined into the story that you are to be the rebirth of a mystical figure from Kyrat's past.

The game loves its moral gray zones. The rebels are led by two people, each with their own idealistic views and immense failings. You are expected to choose sides. Meanwhile Pagan Min, ever cheerful and maniacal, continues overtures to you while seeking to eradicate the rebels. But he is very honest that things are not quite what they seem. As the story progresses, you trust your allies less and less and you might just be charmed by Min's antics.

But its a game. You are molded into a ruthless killer. And like all  these games, you slaughter hundreds if not thousands of enemy soldiers. And animals. And the occasional peasant. You move from hesitant American uncomfortable with the guns in his hands, to an expert with heavy weapons and the skinning of countless rare animals. Even so, I never felt comfortable shooting rhinos, even after they constantly tossed me into the air in a fit of rage -- rhinos were easily enraged. But not honey badgers; no remorse there, the goddamn motherfucking honey badgers can all die. Yes, the game was liberally sprinkled with meme references.

The play does become a bit repetitive as you get deeper in, being that it has tons of side quests and collectibles. That is sort of intentional, not only for a full game feel but also to impress upon you what you are becoming -- a bored killer of men and beasts.

In the end, you are left with the decision of which side to take. Do you kill Pagan Min or do you accept the truth in what he is saying, that you were just a pawn in many people's hands. There are no good choices here -- Pagan as the psychopathic usurper? One Golden Path leader who wants to become a drug lord? Or the other, who believes in the old Kyrat, but that also means oppressing women and slaying anyone who disagrees with him. But I committed to my perceived path and slew Min. I doubt I left my father's country in good hands.

I really enjoyed this game, as much as the previous. I would have preferred a bit more radio content (as you drive around, you listen to a loon of a radio DJ) as that became 4th wall breaking repetitive. There was almost too much to do, and after I finished the main story, I realized I had some lingering questions with the side stories. But by then, I was over it. I will have to return and find out what the mask wearing killer was up to, and see the rest of the mystical otherworldly stories. And I was disappointed with Pagan's lieutenants, as their interaction was very minimal until you hit the cut scenes. Still, a solid game that looked great on the "next gen" hardware.

We Agree: Jupiter Ascending

2015, The Wachowskis (Speed Racer) -- cinema

"Remember when I said I couldn't quite define what kind of Space Opera I enjoy, if Guardians of the Galaxy was not it?  Well, this is it. This is my kind of Space Opera," I said, basically, to Kent as we exited the movie.

Yes, we still do occasionally see movies together.

And I hate to do it, but I am going to have to start with a comparison to my other favourite Space Opera, Star Wars. What I remember the most from originally seeing Star Wars, was that there was a big big world (which was far far away) behind the simple story in A New Hope. It was alluded to in barely scratched minimums, in references and comments by characters and then never expanded upon again, in the names of things, in backgrounds and locations. Combined with the awe striking visuals and 11 year old me was overwhelmed, filled to the brim with possibilities and stories happening off screen. This is what I felt when I watched Jupiter Ascending. Its big, and likely too big for most people. I cannot help but think of much of the current commentary on Jupiter as mirroring Pauline Kael's review of A New Hope.

'“Star Wars” is like getting a box of Cracker Jack which is all prizes. '

While she was intimating that it was all candy, no substance, I think it was also an unintentional praising of how much of the movie was a sugar rush. This is what Space Opera should be, to me, a big world, a big universe, full of unanswered questions and fleeting details. The story has to weave around the world, through it, sometimes being lost to the background. It should be overwhelming, it should be high inducing.

Even said, Jupiter Ascending starts with a quiet, small, bittersweet sequence, meeting the Jones family Max & Aleksa, star crossed lovers torn apart by violence. Jupiter is born crossing the Atlantic, hidden in containers of illegal immigrants. She is of no country, no real homeland.

I love the name Jupiter Jones. It smacks of 70s super heroines and space action movies. Its prophetic and grand and electric. Jupiter hates her life, scrubbing toilets for people with more money than she ever can have. Her family is just her family, a little bit condescending, a little bit manipulative but caring in their own dysfunctional way.

And then, boom, we meet Mr. Caine with his pew-pew laser guns and space skates, squaring off against Grays (you know, greys), evil aliens out to do Jupiter harm. We jump right into the action, dragging Jupiter out of her boring, monotonous world into one with aliens, spaceships and laser guns! Once safe, Caine tells her that there is a bounty on her head and he has been hired by a member of a royal family to save her. He soon finds out it is because she is also royalty.

Royalty? No, not ruling family royalty but just genetic royalty. This is a family so wealthy, so powerful, they are basically considered the rulers of the universe. There are still laws, and still rules they have to follow, but you know how it is when you have more money than God. But bureaucracy seems to trump even that. Mr. Caine and Stinger (Sean Bean in a familiar, yet non-lethal role) discover that Jupiter is the genetic descendant of this Abrasax (which I kept on hearing as a mispronunciation of abraxas) family, in fact, their matriarch. In a world where they extend their lives for tens of eons, genetic reincarnation is a possible thing and has cultural and legal impacts. Hers in particular? She owns Earth.

The rest of the movie is about keeping Jupiter out of the hands of the Abrasax family while attempting to validate her claim on Earth, which will not only give her some more control over her life but also protect the planet. From what, you ask? From harvesting. The word, when applied to an entire planet, is icky to an n-th degree, even if you don't know what it inevitably means. That is big, almost too big for Jupiter, so in the pop culture outre connection, it ends up coming down to not focusing on saving the world, but just saving her family.

The plot is pretty basic, but that is what is needed. Its because everything else is so so big! We connect to her namesake, being used as a refinery, protected by gravity repelling generators so everyone and everything is crushed by the gases. Crushed by gases? Such a simple sentence but so science fiction illuminating! And the supporting cast is almost entirely made up of uplifted species, not just weird alien ones. There are dogs and lizards and mice and Terry Gilliam. OK, the last is not as uplifted, but so exquisitely added --- Terry Gilliam in a Terry Gilliam sequence. Brilliant!

I was overwhelmed. Enthralled. Absorbed. And also a little lost in Mila Kunis's anime eyes.

Kent agrees here.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: In Your Eyes

2014, Brin Hill -- download

In Your Eyes is the relatively unknown romantic flick written by Joss Whedon and released entirely, and solely, online.  I am not sure if it ever hit any cinema chains. Its part of a new generation of movies & TV that launche via new media, and kind of doesn't care much about the old media. No, don't include it in the Straight to X bucket of eras past -- these are people producing A Grade product but just releasing it via different means.  It was also produced by Whedon's company Bellwether, known for the great Much Ado About Nothing.

The movie is about Rebecca and Dylan, who have a connection. She's a upper crust young woman from New Hampshire; he's an ex-con from New Mexico. They can see through each other's eyes and hear through each other's ears. They can feel what each other feels. They misunderstood this connection almost all their lives but now, at a point of importance in their lives, they make the connection and actually begin communicating. Its not Romeo & Juliet, but more than geography is keeping them apart.

This is a love story seen not only through strangers' eyes but through a soft focus lense. They fall for each other when nothing about the two would ever connect them in real life. He lives in a trailer, she in a McMansion. He cannot keep a job and she's a socialite, married to a doctor. But connect they do, like penpals but with a supreme amount of intimacy. And yes, it leads to that kind of intimacy. They can share like no two strangers can.

It is very possible the story could have severed their connection or explored the whys and hows. But no, this was about the intimacy and tenderness shared. They meet, they learn about each other and they fall in love, but with a hint of magic not needing explanation. It was lovely.

I Saw This!! OK, Bloody OK

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Now they they have to strain to say anything meaningful lest they just not say anything at all. And they can't do that, can they?

Arthur Christmas, 2011, Sarah Smith, Barry Cook (Mulan) -- download
The Equalizer, 2014, Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, King Arthur) -- download
White House Down, 2013, Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) -- download
The Boxtrolls, 2014, Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi -- download
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) -- rental
Savages, 2012, Oliver Stone -- Netflix
Deliver Us From Evil, 2014, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) -- download

Its about time I cleaned out some of these, because I am again using it as an excuse to just not enjoy movies. Besides, I have to cover the movies seen recently, so I can blather on about some video games I recently finished on the xBox One.

That said, I am thinking of trying an experiment for one month. Watch all the movies I want, but only review the ones that strike me enough to actually say something about them. I can say something about any movie I see, even if it is only "yawn" but some I actually have something tangible to say. And some I just enjoy with little thought one way or the other. Those usually end up here.

Now that said, you would think, "Its your blog (yours and Kent's), why do you feel compelled to write about every movie? You make the rules don't ya?"  Yes, I do. But there is something productive in setting guidelines to follow. Hell, I have already re-written those guidelines by reducing most of my 'reviews' down to 3 (Not So) Short Paragraphs.  And then there is this format.

OK, that is said. Onto the actual post.

Arthur Christmas should be a proper X Days of Xmas post but again, we attempted, we failed, we only saw a couple. But this is a good Xmas movie! So it deserves some commentary. Also, see above. The movie is done by Aardman Animations, so I am rather surprised we didn't see it out of simple loyalty. We were huge fans of Wallace & Gromit. But honestly, we haven't been all that loyal if you check the catalog --- the only thing we had seen recently in the cinemas, was The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists which I have no clue as to why there is no post here on this blog. I loved it, I am kind of surprised I didn't write about it.

Arthur is one of Santa's sons. The whole Christmas Santa concept is represented as a family deal, a massive expedition done each year full of hundreds of support elves and high technology, currently run by the other son, the useful son Steve. His dad does the deliveries but Steve runs the night in the command centre at the North Pole. Its a precision exercise that compensates for his dad's doddering mistakes. Meanwhile Arthur is just assigned to answering the Letters to Santa.

Essentially, its a wonderful tale of saving Christmas, finding the real meaning of the commercialized version of the holiday (as opposed to the Christian one) and recognizing that Arthur is the best choice all along. Its hilarious, incredibly wonderfully animated and even visits Toronto for a misinterpreted flyby in an old broken down sled. Grandpa Santa has some issues. I might even add it to our repeat watching next year.

Next up, we have The Equalizer, a rather forgotten actioner from last year that was pretty much ignored in the cinemas but I still consider as rather enjoyable!

Full disclosure, I was a big big big fan of the TV show, The Equalizer. The idea of a retired CIA shadow man placing an ad in a local newspaper saying he can help with things that the police cannot was the perfect premise to my heroic Mary Sue mind. It was procedural, villain of the week and spy mystery wrapped up in one. I would easily compare Person of Interest to the feel I got from it then.

I was not part of the Outrage Culture cliq that our angry internet has devolved into, upon learning they chose to cast Robert McCall as a black man (Denzel Washington), which is weird considering they had cast the original man with a British actor, only later retconning it to explain why this obvious very British man was a top agent in the CIA. Fuck the morons who felt it was a wrong choice. I thought it was brilliant, as Denzel Washington is hitting that stage of his acting career where he is beginning to be defined by his age. Not quite yet a Liam Neeson, Washington shows a bit of aging around the gills and easily falls into the role of a quiet older man working a menial job, competently and unremarkably.

This rendition of the story has him working a local Home Depot analog, doing simple things, bonding with his coworkers and leading a simple life. He is kind of OCD, doing things repeatedly, placing his flatware and books very specifically for his every night visit to the diner to eat, and read and chat with the young prostitute who stops by on occasion. He is friendly but outside everyone's lives, until... he is dragged into it.

This is not the premise of the TV show, so if for any reason, this is why I was not sure I was going to enjoy their depiction. But it is so exquisite in those quiet first-and-a-bit acts. He is precise, as I mentioned, rather OCD. He is mysterious about his past but does not rebuff people. And that mood, that tone carries itself into the action, once it starts. The young prostitute is being abused by her pimps, the Russian mafia of this area of Boston. McCall attempts to buy her contract, assuming a few thousand dollars can cover it, not really knowing how much she is worth. He is mocked, threatened and makes to leave. But in a very precision ballet of violence, that John Wick reminded me of, McCall kills all the mafiosos.

Enter Martin Tsokas as a fixer for the Russian mob, who arrives in the US to find out what happened to his key pimp. Martin Tsokas is the best of the best when it comes to playing suave, scary, evil men. And this is a prime example. He and McCall come together as fixer plays investigator, putting the details together until he finds the man who works at the Home Depot but who must be much much more.  The latter acts of the movie sort of fall into a less enjoyable, familiar pattern of blowing things up and taking down bad guys. Creative use of the tool section.

But the ending of the movie gave me quite the grin. Robert has dismantled the Russian mob, saved the young prostitute but can never go back to his job at the Home Depot. We find him at his laptop filling out a Craig's List posting:

Got a problem?

Odds against you?

Call the Equalizer

Enter squee.  Sequel please.

White House Down. You already know I saw the other Attack the White House movie -- Olympus Has Fallen.  This was visibly the lighter of the two, comedic and with brighter stars in the leads: Channing Tatum as the hero and Jamie Fox as The President. Does anyone else matter? Not really, in a Roland Emmerich vehicle, where the trauma is the main star. But it was nice to see Lance Reddick, Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Woods in supporting roles.

Its all about the take over and rescue of America's centre of royalty - the White House and its President. They are rather a package deal in the mythology of the US. The hero worship around the American President has always fascinated me. We openly loathe our own Prime Minister, and while the current American public has their "Thanks Obama" meme, that doesn't reduce the reverence they have for the White House and the Presidential office. Its no joke they consider the job as their own version of a royal family. Both the movies play on the fear of reprisals on their own soil, harkening back to 2001, but amping up the trauma.

I saw Gerard Butler as a respectable, seasoned professional doing what experience had taught him. His President was pretty much a figure head to be rescued, no matter how much I enjoyed Aaron Eckhart in the role. Jamie Fox is better here, as much comedic (less so than I expected) as a competent leader. He represents a sobre but healthy respect for the job he represents, while Channing Tatum is just the right guy in the wrong place, shooting things and wise cracking. It was enjoyable, only because I enjoy the rah-rah American ideal presented by Roland Emmerich.

This is weird. I do these to quickly sum up what I wouldn't do in three normal paragraphs but often end up writing more.

The Boxtrolls was something I enjoyed a lot but wanted to enjoy even more.  The trolls in question, named so because they wear cardboard boxes as clothes (whatever the box is adorned with is their name, i.e. box that held shoes means he is Shoe), are little pesky thieves that live beneath the city of Cheeseburg. They "kidnap" a baby and raise him as one of their own, deep in their Rube Goldberg lair.

Meanwhile, topside an exterminator has promised to kill off all the trolls should he be given the white hat of station. He believes respectability, and access to the finest cheese in Cheeseburg, comes with just bearing the hat. He ignores the fact he is horribly allergic to cheese.

While the trolls themselves were charming and funny, the rest was run of the mill cute. I guess too many of these animations are cut from the same cheesecloth. Watching the trolls clap their boxes when happy made me giggle and the revolting nature of Snatcher's allergic reaction were definitely memorable, but overall the movie was just cute.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was one of those movies that actually forced me to download a properly rented version.  Yes, I actually paid for it. OK, I did attempt to pirate it but my current setup of movie transferral does not easily allow for English movies with subtitles. You have to find the right subtitle file, which is generally not easy. And I wanted to see how the rent a download on the Sony Store, was going these days, so I tossed some funds into my wallet and rented the movie.  8 gigabytes and an overnight download later, I was able to actually watch.  Yeah, the concept of renting a decent quality movie and watching it on the same night is not possible unless you have the highest speed of fibre as your ISP.  And they wonder why people pirate 1 GB versions.

In case you are wondering, it is the apes that are subtitled, as the movies picks up from the first one years later, and they all share a sign language between them.

So, yeah, years later. Caesar and his ape buddies all escaped across the Golden Gate Bridge in the first movie into the woods beyond. I kind of suspect that there is more than a giant forest on the other side of the bridge, but it made a point. Meanwhile, the (further) genetically engineered virus that made Caesar smart jumps to humans with horrible consequences -- the Simian Flu. The opening sequence is straight out of the pandemic game Plague Inc.  -- quite literally. There was a partnership between the movie makers and the game makers. It shows the spread of the disease with overdubbed news dialogue about the end of the world.  Its now ten years laters with the few survivors of the world eking out an existence next door to the apes themselves.

Unfortunately, again, this felt more like an establishing movie. Origin story times two. The apes in the woods come into conflict with the humans in the city and only war will resolve it. We all know where it has to go, so they do their best to dramatically direct us to that ending/beginning. But its kind of limiting and really only lends itself to conflict, both emotionally and violently.

Jason Clarke is our male lead, who wants to reestablish use of a hydroelectric dam in ape territory. Its nice to see Clarke doing a non-badguy role, but all of the characters, including his, are pretty thin. I will chime in with the rest of the internet in saying the lack of female roles in this movie is pretty obvious. Keri Russell is there to just fill a quota.  Meanwhile Serkis (and CGI makeup) as Caesar carries this movie. Everyone else, ape and human alike, is divided between idealistic and self-serving asshole. Humans betray the apes, apes betray the humans and war breaks out. Insert the final movie which has a chance to do something original, in an even further future, ape controlled world.

Graig's review.

Savages really has nothing going for it but a bunch of pretty people and Oliver Stone's name. Its a crime sex drama with Blake Lively (Green Lantern), Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Godzilla). On the bad guy side is John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek. The good guy bunch run their own naive marijuana cartel in southern California, practicing fair employment, chemical analysis and generally and a good vibe in all aspects of their selling of the MJ. They buy completely into their own hype. Meanwhile Salma runs the current blend of head-chopping nasty Mexican cartel who want to buy into the pretty boys business. Things don't go well, as we would expect.

The sex comes in the fact that the three are in a love triangle. Not the jealousy and hidden agendas kind but in the fact that she loves the boys both, equally, and they share her. Its an amiable relationship. It smacks of open relationships, bisexuality and just a little of how addled years of Mj use has made them. We don't quite trust their love & peace judgement.

Stone movies are usually intricate and compelling. This attempted at intricacy but it was all TV level of crime drama and the only thing that even remotely redeemed it was decent acting on the major's parts. But entirely forgettable. And Stone has got to drop the narrator thing he loves so much.

 End of Days (he was never convincing as a grizzled cop) and we have it again with Eric Bana as one who gets mixed up with a demon possessed soldier.

New York cops and Satanist agendas. We saw it in the Arnie movie

I like Bana in generic cop roles. He just has that weighed-down, tired persona well established. The movie plays into that having him balanced on screen against Joel McHale as his ToTheExtreme Redbull-slamming partner. McHale is hilarious, a little more buff than I can accept him as but great with the levity against Bana's growl. All New York cops have a growl in them.

This is your typical possession movie that really relies on a certain amount of acceptance of Judeo Christian mythos. Unlike Constantine and his constantly mixing of mythos and magic, this movie dabbles in older cultures but traces everything back to God and Demons. The movie draws upon a "real story" to base its plot but really, who cares. That won't help us accept or dismiss any of the drama.

It solid enough for these types of movies but nothing grand, and kind of disappointing considering how Derrickson's first foray into horror was pretty spectacular, even for revisiting the evil spirit genre.

There. Done.  Some cleaned out.