3 Short Paragraphs: Captive State

2019, Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) -- download

Paranoia & Totalitarian State are one flavour of the Alien Invasion trope, one that more than a little hints of our current condition. And by our, I really only mean the American experience and I only really lay some claim to it, because no matter how much we Canadians are removed from what is going on down there, it affects us on a daily basis, influencing and corrupting. In Captive State the alien invasion was quick, deadly and led to complete surrender, by the entire world. Nine years later, all pretense of rebellion has been crushed and the planet lives under a fictional benevolent condition, while much of the world suffers.

We get a pair of characters through which to experience this world: Gabriel (Ashton Sanders, Moonlight), brother of the leader of the failed insurrection and Mulligan (John Goodman), once a police officer, but now an investigator for the aliens, referred to as The Legislators. He is not convinced the insurrection is dead, and continues to investigate its existence, even when warned off by his fellow collaborators. Meanwhile, Gabriel hunts for meaning and gets drawn back into his brother's legacy.

This was not a hot action movie, but it did not shy away from action. If anything, this reminded me of a Cold War movie, one set behind the Berlin Wall, where insurrectionists plan actions and try to outrun and foil the police forces staffed by their own fellow citizens. The rundown nature of a world where collaborators are the elite and the rest of us make do, just adds to this feel. I thought about piles of garbage everywhere, the empty shelves in stores and the humiliating jobs people have to take in order to live, and of course, the continuous surveillance by the police. We are told that the only way to end this, is to stand up, to light a match and ignite the fire that will inspire the world to fight against their unjust masters. I only hope the American people understand the metaphor and take it to  the heart.

Triple Dose: Marvelous Things

Captain Marvel - 2019, d. Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck - in theatre
Avengers: Endgame - 2019, d. Joe and Anthony Russo - in theatre
Venom - 2018, d. Ruben Fleischer - on demand

Normally I would write a long (very, very long) screed dissecting almost any latest superhero movie (like, I had plenty to say about Shazam!) but for some reason I let both Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame slip past me.  Maybe it's the Letterboxd effect (eg. the fact that last year I was tracking and commenting on movies there, rather than doing so more in depth here.  I seem to be at more of a balance between both right now)?  Or maybe it was the DIY bedroom renovation and new puppy that sucked all the time and energy out of me for doing said reviews (which is kind of BS since Captain Marvel came out before all that, and, yeah, I did that Shazam! review)?  In the meantime I talked so much about both movies (you know, in person, in face-to-face conversations) that I kind of exhausted all I had to say about them multiple times over, that to sit down and write the same thoughts out seemed redundant.

We're now well past the point where these two films are dominating the cultural conversation (what is it currently?  Toronto Raptors winning a championship, usual political bullshit, our environmental nightmare, the bland mediocrity of the new Godzilla and X-Men movies [haven't seen them myself, but will eventually]...) so it's time to reapproach the dialogue and throw in an outlier in the superhero genre, the ugly little film that could, Venom.

Captain Marvel has two different entries in my Letterboxd diary ... the first with a 2 1/2 star rating, the second bumped up a full star after rewatching.  The reason for the disparity?  I had let expectations get the better of me.  It happens, perhaps too often, where I see the film for what I want it to be, versus seeing it for what it actually delivers.  I honestly think most movies fall into this category.  We enter a film with some exposure, whether it be having read the book/comic, having seen the trailer (or multiple trailers, sometimes multiple times), followed the filmmakers/cast members on social media, read advanced reviews, got caught up in hype, or just like a creator on the film... with any exposure come expectations.  I can't honestly say what my expectations were for Captain Marvel, I had little exposure to the character, and I wasn't paying attention to all the trailer scrubbers on youtube.  Yet my brain was obviously distracted because I wasn't getting the message.

Upon second viewing it was evident that I clearly missed something the first time around, and that something was the resonant themes of female empowerment and embracing one's self. Our protagonist is told time again that she can't do something, that she should be doing something else, that she's not strong enough to do what the boys do. But she tries. She fails, but still, she tries. And she picks herself back up after failing. She's told she needs to control herself, to contain her emotion, think with her head, not her heart ,as if emotion is weakness. She's told she needs to prove herself, prove to men -- men who are fearful of her abilities -- that she needs to prove herself on their level, when they know their level is so far below her own actual potential. They want to keep this powerful woman down, out of fear and envy, and for their own manipulative gain.

This isn't a message that all men are bad, but a message to everyone to not let others hold you back.
I caught this message the first time around but I was too busy looking for what I wanted out of the film, what I expected. I was being Yon-Rogg. I didn't want to approach the film on anything but my own terms and it came up lacking against my own expectations. But reading and hearing what others got out of it (my own daughter included) and I decided I needed to give it another chance.

In just two viewings I already have favorite sequences, starting with the masterful memory exploration sequence in the first act, following through to Carol's escape from the Skrulls. Likewise, the quiet moments of just two people talking, Carol and Fury (is Samuel L Jackson the world's greatest scene partner or what?) or Carol and Maria or Carol and Monica, they're some of the best two-hander scenes in the MCU.

It's not a perfect film... it's still too dark and muddy at times and the action escalates too unbelievably and I feel like that one soundtrack queue is just not good.  Likewise, it still feels more like a Marvel "Phase 1" origin movie, but with better effects.  Yet, I'm still quite in and want more Carol (I worry about Goose overexposure though... there's, like, a Minions level fervor around that cat).

[Avengers Endgame spoilers follow if you're still worried about such things]

We got more Carol Danvers in Avengers: Endgame, but it was in a fairly limited capacity.  She arrives to join the team in the opening act which picks up immediately following the end of Infinity War, but then disappears until late in the third act.  It's one of a few disappointments in an otherwise satisfying "season finale" to the 10-year MCU 3-act arc that started with Iron Man.

Endgame makes some very bold moves for a massive, multi-billion dollar franchise/series-of-franchises, starting with that opening act in which the heroes, having failed to stop Thanos from wiping out half of the living beings in existence with a snap in the last movie, "avenge" those lost souls.  Their avenging, though, serves little purpose and provides little satisfaction.  As a result, in a tremendously ballsy move, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, plus directors Joe and Anthony Russo, jump five years into the future.

This time jump changes the view of the MCU rather dramatically.  What is otherwise a bright, colorful, exciting, daring, adventurous reality is now a gray, sombre, joyless existence.  Everyone has lost someone, (or if you're Hawkeye, everyone).   For a glorious half hour, the MCU feels like it's the HBO series The Leftovers (reviews for Season 1, Season 2, Season 3).  The inspiration is obvious.

The film makes a case that Thanos was right, that reality where populations are halved are much more capable of managing their resources, that traumatized environments can recover from the plague of civilized societies.  And yet, actually living in such a reality, traumatized by tremendous loss, it's difficult to accept and move on. 

This is the crux of the Avengers mission here.  Rather than moving on and just protecting and bettering what's left of society, they exhaust all avenues in finding a way to return what was lost.  The first sign is the sudden re-emergence of Scott Lang, the Ant-Man, who was lost in the quantum realm for 5 years...only, for him it was mere minutes.  Time moves and flows differently in the quantum realm, and if the Avengers can harness it, they may just find the answer to stopping Thanos before he's able to complete his quest.  Of course, playing with time may also result in spawning alternate realities and other disastrous effects to avoid, which of course are going to happen because comic books are like that.

Just like Captain America: Civil War wasn't really a sequel to Captain America: Winter Soldier and yet, it still was, so too is Endgame to Infinity War.  The focus has shifted, and yet it still builds upon what came before.  Where Infinity War had Thanos as its focal figure, this one returns the focus back to the Avengers, most specifically the original roster from the 2011 film - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and the Hulk.

Hawkeye, absent from the last film, returns in the opening moments of the film, teaching his daughter archery while his son plays and his wife sets the picnic table for lunch.  Knowing how Infinity War ends makes the weight of this scene immediately obvious, and it's heartbreaking.  Clint descends into darkness as a murderous vigilante, killing crime lords around the globe, deeming them unworthy of surviving Thanos' random selection.  His best friend Nat now leads a global (perhaps even Galactic) Avengers, but Clint's health and well being have weighed heavily on her since the original film.  If only she should find him.  Bruce, meanwhile, has accepted the Hulk as a part of himself, and has found a happy medium between brains and brawn.

Having appeared in more movies than almost any other MCU character, yet without ever starring in her own feature, Black Widow's arc over the past decade has let her down.  It's evident Natasha is a great fighter, an incredible warrior, and intelligent and caring leader (making her head of the 5-years-later Avengers makes perfect sense), but we don't know what makes her tick, what drives her beyond her training as a Russian spy.  As such, when she exits the film, her loss is evident but it's not truly felt. The team has Cap, Tony and Thor all as capable alternate leaders should they need them (although by the end of the film that's all changed too).

The time-travel shenanigans are all about getting the Infinity Gems before Thanos does and destroying them before he can use them.  This involves the team breaking up into pairings (like classic team comics would always do) and retread ground from previous movies (like 2011 Avengers, Thor: The Dark World and the first Guardians of the Galaxy), but from a different point of view.  I love timey-wimey goofballs like this, and the movie has some definite fun with it, while also always aware of what the objective is and what's on the line.

Though perhaps not crystal clear, the rules of time travel are laid down for "Professor Hulk" in a surprise returning cameo, and, with a little help from the internet (or perhaps revisiting the film), do make sense.  To be sure, branching realities are made (and in some cases the writers and directors disagree on which branching realities actually exist) and provide enough dangling threads for future fodder (including the upcoming Loki TV mini-series on Disney's new streaming service).

It's perhaps less of the dazzling high-wire act than they did with Infinity War, since the cast roster has shrunk considerably thanks to "the snap", and yet Marcus and McFeely with the Russos still make a dense and impeccably entertaining feature.  It doesn't stand on its own, as it's got the structure of almost 2 dozen features from 10 years prior as foundation under its feet, yet, they have a satisfying experience overall that pays off the whole idea of the shared universe concept that only Marvel so far has been able to successfully create on screen.  It's an epic 3 hours of cinema that would baffle any newbie (but who is going into the fourth Avengers movie [like, the 7th Captain America movie, the 9th Iron Man movie] as their first entry into the MCU) but this is truly a love letter for the fans who have joined the ride along the way, die hards and casuals alike.

It's hard to see a path forward from here, 11 years of epic slowly building towards one huge climax, and it would be a satiating close to stop here.  Yet, there's no sign of it stopping and there's no reason to.  The quality of the MCU features is really damn high, so high that they're taking up 10 of the top 15 best superhero movies of all-time in my ranking of all superhero movies, and every MCU but one is in the top 50.  There's an attention to both craft and character in the making of an MCU.  It's spectacle but with a mind to making what works on the page also work on the screen.  Every MCU film has been good, if not great, watchable, if not infinitely rewatchable, and, most importantly, entertaining.

Sony, holders of the Spider-Man license for two decades now, have been less capable of creating a consistently entertaining product, less able to balance world building with character, and less able to keep their meddling fingers out of the pot.  They managed two better-than-good Spider-Man movies with Sam Raimi before studio interference damned the third one.  The relaunch from Marc Webb in 2011 saw the studio trying too hard to capture the same magic the MCU had created, with little awareness of the formula (and none of the patience) to copy.  This led to Sony practically begging Marvel to pair up on relaunching Spidey again for a third iteration in less than 20 years... with much improved results.

So chuffed by their success, Sony decided to capitalize upon Spider-man: Homecoming with a Spidey-less Venom feature, bringing the villain-turned-antihero to the big screen for a second time (after the disastrous Spider-Man 3).  Of course, in the comics the symbiotic alien that gives Eddie Brock his "venom" powers first possessed Peter Parker (in Spider-Man's classic black costume period of the 1980's), and it was Peter's realization that the symbiote was nefarious (and controlling) that caused Peter to abandon the creature.  It's union with Peter's newspaper rival Eddie created almost a natural opposite for Spider-Man, and Venom is now perhaps his most infamous nemesis.

But Venom's popularity as a villain skyrocketed in the grimdark/bad girl era of comics, where a lot of pubescent boys were getting fanserviced with busty/leggy women in skimpy costumes and extremely, grotesquely muscled violent vigilantes.  Once they introduced Carnage, another of Venom's alien symbiote species who paired with a human serial killer, suddenly Spider-Man was teaming up with his nemesis, making Venom look like a good guy by comparison.  Since then it's been a steady road to making Venom a casual bad guy, like the Punisher, except with a penchant for biting off heads rather than shooting them off.

I seriously underestimated the mass audience appeal for a character like Venom.  I certainly wasn't expecting the film to pull in almost 900 million worldwide.  Superman could barely do those numbers, and he needed to fight Batman to do so.  Something is seriously wrong with our planet.

Venom, as a film, is pretty nonsensical. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a Vice Magazine-type edgy reporter, who is kept on a leash by the people who pay his salary.  But his bag is extreme "gotcha" journalism, exposing corporate greed and elite corruption... except his latest story, trying to drag prominent technology magnate Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) down in the mud.  Except Drake is teflon and Brock's story gets scuttled.  He hacks his lawyer fiancee's computer to dig up some files on Drake for a case she's working on, his life collapses.  He gets fired and his relationship ends.

We're supposed to believe Hardy as Brock gets down on his luck, but he never seems down, and he seems like a pretty resourceful guy.  Eddie's drawn back into Drake's story when one of his key scientists tells Eddie about the experiments Drake is doing on homeless people (who, of course, Eddie is friends with) trying to pair them with alien symbiotes that reject and kill the hosts.  Naturally Eddie get paired with Venom and hijinks ensue.

It's a tenuous partnership but eventually it balances out.  Venom has its own personality and the two have conversations which are marginally amusing but don't really make a lick of sense.  Eddie's motivations and Venom's motivations seem like two separate and distinct things and not all that complimentary.  Of course, there are other symbiotes out there and Venom, dubbed the loser outcast of the prospective alien invasion of Earth, has decided to help stop them.  Drake pairs up with Riot (yes all the symbiots have edgy "cool" Earth nicknames which they call each other for some bizarre reason...it's very comic-booky but I don't buy into it) and the big gloopy final act begins.

Director Ruben Fleischer is best known for his horror-comedy Zombieland, and with Venom he's really striving for a similar slapstick-action-horror vibe.  It kind of works, except that it's utterly ridiculous.  There are trope subverting things, like Eddie's ex-fiancee, Anne (Michelle Williams) finding a new relationship with a guy who is much better for her, a nice guy to her AND Eddie, and helps out when needed.  It becomes clear by the third act that there's no reunion for Anne and Eddie in the offing, especially when it becomes somewhat insinuated that Eddie and Venom are kind of a thing (not really, but the queer coding is there) and there's no room for anything else (except that Anne becomes Venom for a short bit and that's really weird).

The story structure and pacing of Venom feels completely off, such that the progression of relationships doesn't flow properly, and the intent of characters from one moment to the next never seems certain.  Why is anyone really doing what they're doing?  The movie doesn't seem to care, why should we?

The action in the film ranges from utterly generic to unappealingly ugly.  Venom as a creation looks somewhat like his comic book counterpart, but he's a shiny goopy mess most of the time, and can shoot more shiny goopy messes off himself when fighting.  It looks pretty terrible, like unfinished VFX from the mid 2000's.  Once the film comes to a head and Venom and Riot are gooping all around stuff, it's tedious and kind of gross.  It's just an unpleasant effect...less because it's a CGI blob, and more because it's a terrible and unreal looking CGI blob.

I honestly don't understand how this movie made the pile of cash it did.  It's not altogether unwatchable, but it's barely any better than the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies.  It's Hardy, Williams, Ahmed, and Jenny Slate making this anything close to palatable viewing, but they're all far too good for this.  Perhaps it's just conditioning now.  A superhero movie is released, so people go see it.  Hell, Aquaman made a billion dollars (sounds hyperbolic but it's true).  Then again, X-Men: Dark Phoenix just came out and tanked, so....

John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum

2019, Chad Stahelski (John Wick) -- cinema

I am extremely conflicted about this movie. Enough that I started assuming I would only have Three Short Paragraphs (never short) and deleted that titling immediately after. There is too much to process.

As you know, I am an Uber Fan of the first movie, as uber as I can get with my apathetic brain (also uber hurt that Hayley Atwell doesn't like apathetic people, but who can blame her #randomsegue). And Kent's view of the movie is actually more of a selling point, as a man who doesn't care for Keanu. You see, of late, I am one of the Internet Many's who would likely be labelled Keanu's BF. Or at least BFF ? He is, of Internet Legend, just an uber (at this point, maybe the company should give me some beer money) nice guy and I am of a mind-state of late where Nice Guys are currently just needed. People acknowledge he is nice, confirm he is nice, and even make up stories to expand a legend of how much of a nice guy he is. His Nice has become a meme.

But putting that aside, putting aside why I will return to this franchise, despite my mild disappointment with the last, I am still a Big Fan. You don't get my disappointment from the emotion scraped words I put in that post, but you get the disenfranchised feeling I was left with. The movies depart from Wick himself, and float into the ether that is his world. This one pretty much leaves all reality behind and John becomes even more a caricature of who he was set up to be.

Baba Yaga cannot escape the consequences of what he has done. He killed a connected man's son in the first, he kills a Connected Man in the second. The escalation picks up, again, hours after the first but now John is ExCommunicado, removed from the privileged few (???) of killers for the High Table. The problem, the extreme problem with this movie is that there seems to no longer exist any world outside This World. There are no people other than The Killers. Its as if Neo was tossed into another Matrix, one that he tries to escape from via his actions. That, is probably Head Canon worth exploring.

But fuck, once again, this movie is so beautiful. The opening sequence, of John and a number of chasing assassins through a warehouse / museum of vintage weaponry is so cringe worthy, I pretty much broke my physical response to the thuds, thunks and squelches of John's attacks on his opponents. At this point, I realized that Keanu may get a resurrection of his movies in some distant version of a rep theatre, as interactive movies where people shout out their emotional responses, like we did with John Woo's The Killer.

The beauty carries throughout. From NYC to Casablanca (no, real Casablanca, not some metaphoric location) and back to NY. But story and character are dispensed with for the sake of Whoah. Along with a few hints of sequel-itis, the movie just ends up feeling familiar. We are expected to go along for the ride and not pay attention, but to just revel. And I might be able to do that, if not for the fact that the first movie chose to raise itself above Generic Action movie and make something substantial.

That said, so many elements continue to impress. Halle Berry's dogs are as incredible as John himself. Mark Dacascos's Japanese-not-Japanese character is so spot on, you cannot but mourn his ending. Even the nod to Blade Runner or kiosk sushi, which I doubt exists in Manhattan is so... world building. And every combat sequence is delightful, as it should have been. I just wish I could sit back and think about the movie and just revel, as I did in the first.

p.s. that poster is INCREDIBLE !!! So many are...

Double Dose: Netflix original sci-fi, but with kids

See You Yesterday - 2019, d. Stefon Bristol
Rim of the World - 2019, d. McG

Back in the mid-1980s, there was a tremendous boom in science fiction-adventure films starring kids and young adults.  The Explorers, Flight of the Navigator, The Last Starfighter, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Back to the Future.... Post-Star Wars there was a void that needed filling and Stephen Spielberg showed the way to box office and critical success with E.T.  By the mid-90's, however, these live-action movies with a kid/teen focus were deemed too narrow for mass appeal.  Jurassic Park had proven that you could make big budget entertainment for the whole family... and then Toy Story came along, making CGI-animation pretty much the only successful source of family entertainment for the next 20 years.  Sci-fi adventure that is tailored towards a younger audience has been largely relegated to Disney TV movies in recent years (and even then mainly low-budg live-action adaptations of their popular cartoons).

In the past year, though, there seems to be a resurgence of live action sci-fi adventure (and fantasy) films that try to return to the high-spirited template of the 1980's.  A Wrinkle in Time last spring, Bumblebee in December, The Kid Who Would Be King in February, and these two recent stealth drops on Netflix: See You Yesterday and Rim of the World.

See You Yesterday is based off the award-winning short of the same name.  It's the story of two Brooklyn Academy of Science students -- CJ and her best friend Sebastian -- who develop time-travel technology but wrestle with the ethics of using it.  This comes even further into question when CJ's brother is murdered by a police officer.  CJ's grief leads to plotting to save her brother, only the attempts become more and more complicated.



It's a delicate balancing act writer-director Stefon Bristol (with co-writer Fredrica Bailey) have to negotiate in making a high-spirited sci-fi story with such a grounded, painful, real-world tragedy that is the characters' call-to-adventure. They largely accomplish it, using the first half of the film to set up CJ and Sebastian's trials, and setting the rules for their time travel (how they avoid paradoxes and the fact that they can only be back in time for roughly 10 minutes).  The first half also sets up CJ's relationship with her brother, Calvin, and the supporting cast of friends, family and adversaries.  This time spent is meaningful and purposeful world building, to show family and social life in a predominantly black neighbourhood as something other than what we so often see in mass media.  But from the first pointed moment of police harassment about 20 minutes in, the current of tranquil normalcy is completely undercut by the threat of unintended violence from a public service that doesn't serve the entire public.

That simmering threat eventually explodes when Calvin is killed by trigger-happy cops mistaking him and his friend for the two black youth who just robbed a bodega. CJ convinces Sebastian they're smart enough to jump back in time and save him without causing any negative repercussions but she is wrong.  The first jump is clumsy, the second disasterous.  More jumps are needed to correct the second jump but it's all mucked up, but CJ is undeterred from her initial goal.

See You Yesterday does tread a very fine balance between entertainment and social commentary.  The cast of characters (and performers) are fantastic, and the events of the film have real emotional heft.  There are Ghostbusters and Back To The Future nods (in the form of funky backpacks and a Michael J. Fox cameo, respectively) but the purpose isn't to replicate or reimagine 80's young-adult genre films but to establish a new baseline of what they can be.  The score by Michael Abels recalls the wist and bombast of 80's cinema and does an subtly huge amount of the legwork in making the film feel adventurous and not life-and-death dramatic.  Likewise Eden Duncan-Smith as CJ navigates the balance between grief, determination and hopefulness to make her time travel adventures more fun than intense.  CJ is a strong willed, determined character who owns herself and for better or worse is undeterred from her objective, no matter what mistakes she makes along the way.  Learning and growing from mistakes, and endeavoring to try again, these are heroic qualities, while sometimes her inability to collaborate or heed advice  over her single mindedness are traits that challenge her in her quest for success.

The film is quite successful at everything it sets out to do, and yet, it fails somewhat to structurally tell a fully satisfying story on a few different fronts.  The scope of the film remains intentionally small.  It focuses on CJ and Sebastian and their Brooklyn pocket.  The potentially catastrophic effects of time travel stay very intentionally in this pocket of the world.   Any fallout from this reality-changing technology still remains mostly character focused, centered on CJ and the community around her.  There's no wormholes threatening to suck up reality, no government agents after their technology, and time travel paradox workarounds are provided.  It's not necessarily a bad thing keeping the cause-and-effect so small (the threat is almost always the police and gun violence here, not anything time/space or extra-governmental) but it does keep the film relatively small by relation.  I'm not sure if having larger consequences would make for a better film, or only distract from the indented message.

(:::SOME SPOILERS BELOW:::)

The thrust of the film is the death of CJ's brother, leading to her time travel journeys to save him.  This is what every article on the movie reveals almost immediately, but these events happen so deep in the film that it winds up with a lack of satisfaction to the amount of time travel that happens as a result, especially when the film ends on such an uncertain note as it does.  Which is my biggest issue with the film... it just ends.  It doesn't feel like it should end where it does, with CJ making yet another trip (and 10 minutes left on the running time), and yet that's where it ends.  I was expecting a 10-minute real-time sequence of CJ expertly navigating the past to accomplish her goal, but it just ends with her jumping and a cut to credits.  It's not like Back to the Future -- which ends with Doc and Marty heading off on the promise of another adventure -- this ends with CJ's mission unfulfilled and the question as to whether she's ever successful at it?  The film's final moments posit that she essentially has one more chance to get it right but it denies us the opportunity to see it.

It's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too type ending, whereby the filmmakers get to still have the social resonance of a black youth murdered by the police but with the hopefulness of a personal victory for CJ in undoing it.  It's part of the problem with dealing with such heavy real-world issues in a light science fiction story, anything the characters do isn't going to solve the larger societal problem, it's just going to fix one outcome from it.  As satisfying as that might be for the character and the family, it still leaves the lingering dissatisfaction of the societal problem still existing and having no direct answers for it.  By leaving both the personal victory uncertain, it creates less of a disparity against the quite entrenched social issue.  There's really no way for a satisfying conclusion here, but they could have tried to give us the personal with the awareness that the other still exists (with Spike Lee as producer, he knows how to give a happy ending but counter that with a gutpunch of reality, per BlacKKKlansman).  Calvin could be saved, with CJ returning to today only to see that a day later another black youth is killed by the cops.  Personal victory but not a social one.

(:::END SPOILERS:::)

Rim of the World doesn't have any high minded goals beyond telling a retro kids sci-fi adventure film.  This one takes pains to be inclusive, with a multicultural leading cast, but it has trouble breaking out of stereotypes and cliches.  I'm sure it could be argued it's playing into them, but we'll get to that.



The film opens almost exactly the same way as Rampage, as we pan in on a modern-day space station in distress in orbit above Earth, everyone inside is dead with only one female astronaut surviving.  It's very strange the parallels between this and Rampage.  We then meet three kids on their way to first day of camp (which shares the same name as the movie's title).  There's Zach, the timid, loner, NASA nerd whose dad died in a fire.  There's ZhenZhen, the quiet, aggressive, resourceful one who seems to have made her way from China on her own (the thinness of ZhenZhen's backstory [reduced to basically one line: "Let's just say dad wanted a boy"]- as well as making her into a love interest is doubly problematic).  And there's Dariush, a loud-mouthed rich kid with attitude (whose foul-mouthed, sexually charged dialogue is delivered with Nickelodeon-style sit-com rhythm by  Benjamin Flores Jr., who is, unsurprisingly, a Nickelodeon staple).  Camp's not going particularly well for any of them when they take a divergent path where they encounter tuff kid with a heart of gold and a learning disability, Gabriel, just as they witness the first signs of an alien invasion.  They see EMP bombs go off in the sky, they see jets dogfighting alien spacecraft, and they find the crash landed scientist from the space station who gives them the key to possibly stopping the whole thing.  Plus they meet an unstoppable alien, and its less-unstoppable dog-thing.

Effects technology is better, and foul language is more permissible, but otherwise this film runs pretty much on the same template as most 80's adventure films.  The kids are from different background, with different anxieties, and are forced to confront their fears in the process forming a close-knit bond by going on a journey to save the world.  It's not without its charms, but at the same time it also finds itself resting too comfortably with well worn tropes and character archetypes.  At one point as a scene transitions away, two black side characters ask why they're talking like black men from the '80's.  This little meta inflection is meant to hammer home how aware the film is of its cliches, but beyond that one moment it just seems to rest on them, rather than confront them.  Also, it literally sticks a 90-second Adidas commercial smack in the middle of the film.

The young performers are all good, relaxing comfortably into roles that don't challenge them too much.  McG, as a director, is action oriented and does put them (or their body doubles) through their paces.  There's some well composed shots that show how small and out of their depth the kids are, against the backdrop of aerial dogfights or a devastated Los Angeles.  Likewise, McG drops some pretty impressive, and impactful, explosions and crashes involving these kids that are very convincing (and concerning).  But at the same time there's a couple alien creatures prominently on display and they are ugly, goopy, first-generation CGI multi-legged messes that look like they're trying to replicate stop-motion animation and vintage bluescreen effects.  I'm not sure why they wouldn't create something cleaner, more appealing, or take the Attack The Block route and hide the creatures as much as possible (it's very much like this film wants to be Attack the Block, but can never figure out the line between homage and formulaic).

I didn't hate Rim of the World... it feels comfortable, but within that familiarity one only wishes for something new, and it provides very little newness.  People reference how this film is trying to be Stranger Things but that (and It) are very successful at recreating the horror-suspense genre for an adult audience that yanks hard at nostalgia strings while also not making it they're raison-d'etre.  Making this type of adventure for a pre-teen/teen audience but with an all-ages accessibility in mind is much trickier, when there's no nostalgia buttons to trigger. See You Yesterday does dare to do something different, but unfortunately it miscalculates its final moments disastrously, taking the film's reputation down with it.

Looking back on the recent entries of live-action young-adult entertainment, both A Wrinkle in Time and Bumblebee underperformed at the box office and The Kid Who Would Be King tanked.  With these two have barely made a scratch in the realm of online film conversation, I'm guessing these types of films are going to disappear for a while again, which is too bad.  The formula is an enjoyable one, it just requires a willingness to do something creative with it. 

3 Short Paragraphs: Io

2019, Jonathan Helpert (House of Time) -- Netflix

My friend David is writing a novel about an exodus from Earth, or at least a major plot element will be about the leaving. One of my favourite space opera writers, Becky Chambers (really, I cannot recommend her writing highly enough!) writes about a vast galaxy of space faring races where the humans left earth ages ago, and now live as Exodans, a vast fleet of star hips circling a sun that was provided for them by a friendly alien race. Seveneves, a novel by Neal Stephenson, is about the moon breaking up and the coming rain of fragments will destroy the earth, thus everyone has to leave. Exodus is a thing right now, and I rather enjoy it.

Io takes place on Earth after pretty much everyone has already left. Sam (Margaret Qualley, The Leftovers) lives in one of few survivable places on the planet, continuing her father's research into the poisonous atmosphere. She tells everyone on Io Station, where everyone has flown to, that she still assists her father, when in truth he has died. Micah (Anthony Mackie, The Avengers: Infinity War) appears in a makeshift dirigible seeking to reach the last remaining space shuttle, and due to complications has to land at Sam's home. He tries to convince her to leave, she rails against it focused on how important her research is, in that the planet will recover and someone has to be here to prove that.

The movie is not really about the exodus or the apocalyptic planet they live on, but more about isolation and obligation. The commentary on what we are doing to the planet is expectedly heavy handed but the movie has a dreamy, hazy look and feel that matches the smoke & haze of the poisons all around them. In another time, produced by another source, we would not have dealt at all with the outside, having kept the moody movie indoors and only referenced what it was like outside. But Netflix definitely wants their atmospheric (pun intended) scifi flicks to capture a certain audience. The movie is thus only mostly satisfying, not really committing itself to the adventure nor the message.

American Soldiering: Hunter Killer & Triple Frontier

2018, Donovan Marsh (Spud) -- Netflix
2019, J.C. Chandor (All is Lost) -- Netflix


Hollywood is the reflection in the American mirror, with what is being represented reflecting back upon itself ad infinitum. While one side sees what is coming out of the collective film making brain as commentary on what is going on down there, others might see it as the mouthpiece. Its both.

Take the American military. They have been in continuous action in some place over there, since... forever. But when I was a kid, these actions were defined, they were wars, they were things with beginnings and ends. But now, it just goes on and on and the ideal that they are defending themselves from someone seems to have escaped. Its more like these actions represent America stating it is still a power, against anyone.

These movies don't intentionally, at least not entirely, comment on that. But really, they do. Was that unclear enough for you? I think that is how the American heart feels about soldiers these days; entirely conflicted.

In Triple Frontier we have a squad of elite soldiers, all post-deployment. Some are working, some less so. But all are influenced and corrupted by the days when they killed people for a living. Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam) runs classes where he convinces soldiers to redeploy. Redfly (Ben Affleck) is broke and desperate and more than a little lost. Pope (Oscar Isaac) is running consultant on police ops in Mexico. Catfish (Pedro Pascal) is fighting drug charges. And Pope comes along to convince them to help him with a recon mission against a cartel boss. What he pitches is basic recon, a few days and some easy cash, where his old buddies protect him. What he really wants is to kill the druglord and take his massive amount of money. This is the elevator pitch of the movie, the basis for the trailer, but that little conflict of interest (are they now hired killers?) is only a small bit of the movie.

I have been reading a lot about plot these days, as I try to apply some sort of structure to my writing bug. I generally never see structure in anything fiction, but here I saw the "heap some trouble on the main character, and then heap even more" concept from pulp adventures. The recon become robbery/murder goes expectedly south once they see exactly how much money they are taking; greed takes over the time they had allotted. And the rest of the movie is about them escaping, hopefully with all the money.

Now we are in a road movie, an escape movie and the real plot comes out -- the conflict, external and internal, of who they were and who they are now, and what THIS instance in their lives says. They argue, they accuse and they deal with terrible situations. The problem is that most of the actual cruz of that dialogue must have been cut to just deal with the action and tension, because every time these stressor points come up, they seem to fall flat. Nothing really rings true, the characters are more the cutout figures of Tough Soldiers than they are Thoughtful Killers. The movie wants to be more than it is, and despite some great scenes with Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck, there really is nothing deep here.

Meanwhile in Hunter Killer all we have is cardboard. There is nothing here but a desire to depict American soldiers as the action heroes many must believe they all are. This movie is about moral choices and tough choices and the Right Thing always working out. Gerard Butler, who is not even American, comes along as the new captain on a submarine, the sailor who worked himself up through the ranks and not just assigned because of what school he went to, and who his family is. And his first act is to lead his crew into Arctic waters near Russia, to recover another American sub, now missing.

A coup is taking place in Russia and they get mixed up in it. This movie is by the books, so unbelievably straight forward that I was surprised they didn't do a scene where the sub gets damaged and the captain has to allow some sailors to drown, to save the rest of the boat. But no, this movie is about the soldiers (are military sailors soldiers or just guys on a boat?) getting it done. The American government decides to help the Russian Prime Minister survive his coup and send Butler and boat to bring him, and the American special forces team (led by Toby Stephens, also not American) sent to rescue said Prime Minister.

The only really thing I found of interest in this movie was looking at how newer subs must look on the interior. Back in the old days of sub warfare movies, everything was fuzzy green and blurry white screens and lots of buttons & dials. But now, we are digital, so the presence of active screens makes sense. I have been reading a lot of space opera, so what I saw mirrored a lot of spaceship interiors. Except ping, subs always have ping and guys on headphones concentrating.

What did strike me, as I watched the first one night in the hotel (Sault Ste-Marie for work) and the other, the next night following, was how different they presented Americans doing soldier work. And yet both wanted us to feel pretty much the same way about the brave boys -- that they are brave, daring and sacrifice a lot. But is that the current feel of the American public? Or are these movies recruitment drives. The first movie doesn't actually present what they end up dealing with, post deployment, in a positive light but you still get the idea of them Doing the Right Thing and how that is a Good Thing. Both movies are supposed to be just entertainment and NOT social commentary, but I cannot help but feel everything ends up being so even if it doesn't intend on it.

Double Dose: lady spies

Atomic Blonde - 2017, d. David Leitch

Red Sparrow - 2018

The idea of an ass-kicking female spy is not a new one.  The James Bond franchise has been serving up that archetype for most of its existence, although too often as sexual conquests, love interests or damsels in distress and not enough as equals.  Beyond that, however, there haven't been many espionage or spy-action features headlined by women.  Hell, next to James Bond the most popular spy on the planet is Black Widow, and she's only now getting her own solo feature 10+ years after her big screen debut.  The only other female-led spy movies I can think of right now are comedies: Melissa McCarthy in Spy and Mila Kunis/Kate McKinnon in The Spy Who Dumped Me  (and they do not play spies, but rather accidental spies).  A quick google search reminds me that there was also La Femme Nikita, Harriet The Spy, and Salt.  That's not a deep roster.  The spy genre seems tailor made for mid-budget action movies of the Resident Evil/Underworld sort, so it's any wonder why we haven't seen a franchise player as yet.

Television has been kinder, with The Avengers pairing John Steed with no less than three amazing, ass-kicking agents (Emma Peel, Tara King, Cathy Gale), Agent 99 in Get Smart was obviously the superior agent, Alias and Nikita both ran in the early aughts with action/melodrama focus, while Keri Russel in the Americans and Claire Danes in Homeland provided deep critical success for the female-led espionage drama. Killing Eve has reaped the reward for all this groundwork being one of the best reviewed series currently on TV.

Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow are both concerted efforts at providing meaty, dramatic, and thrilling looks at espionage with women in the focal roles in cinema.  Atomic Blonde is a forthright pinch on the female James Bond model, while Red Sparrow is a more winding, character-focused story.  Both are not original creations, however, with Atomic Blonde originating as the graphic novel, The Coldest City by Anthony Johnston and Sam Hart while Red Sparrow is based on the book of the same name by ex CIA agent Jason Matthews.  Both films also have a Cold War vibe, with Atomic Blonde being set at the end of the era, while Red Sparrow is set in modern times but feels wholly of the era.

Atomic Blonde takes place largely in East Berlin just prior to the fall of the Berlin wall.  Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), a top agent for MI6, is dispatched to recover a list that contains the name of every intelligence agent active in the city, as well as discover the identity of Satchel, a double agent who has been causing problems for the agency for years. She quickly finds herself in a labyrinth of deceptions and partnerships she cannot trust, where her enemies at time can seem more forthright and civil than her allies.

Theron is amazing in the role, filled with steely determination, confidence, composure, shifting between glamour and gritty physicality, and sometimes both (after one fight Broughton proclaims "If I knew, I would have worn a different outfit".  She commits to the role's intense physicality and carries the cumulative weight of each fight with her in following scenes.  The necessity to do anything for queen and country lands her in an intimate affair with a French agent (Sofia Boutella) that starts off as just business but, in spite of herself, is actually something more.

The narrative is problematic however.  The film utilizes a framing sequence, with Broughton debriefing her MI6 superior (Toby Jones) and a visiting CIA agent (John Goodman) about the mission. The film is interrupted frequently by this framing sequence, robbing it of much of the climbing tension. The tone of these framing sequences is largely expository, helping to provide context to the events as they're happening, but it's superfluous.  As well, this robs the film of any mortal danger Broughton is in, knowing that she survives the mission.  The story is a dense and winding one, difficult to follow with a plethora of thinly developed and sporadically seen characters, but that can be said of many a Bond picture as well.

There's a lot of style to Atomic Blond, director David Leitch utilizing the neon-lit shadows of John Wick (which he co-directed) to give a real visual pop, why composing scenes around Berlin using its art deco as the backdrop for many visual feasts.  Likewise the wardrobes of the film define the characters so well, particularly giving Broughton, as centerpiece, standout looks that work so well with both the neon and deco.

The film's biggest detraction is its overwhelmingly, almost omnipresent 80's soundtrack.  So rarely is the soundtrack ambient in the scene, it's just blaring, familiar 80's jams laid over top of the scene.  When the third act begins with an intensely long and winding sequence where Broughton tries to help a defecting agent escape the city and it devolves into a brutal fight for survival and transforms into a car chase, there's a merciful absence of soundtrack.  It lets the physicality shine without interference.   The brutality of the fight and how it wears the combatants down is inspired, Leitch's action choreography experience shining once again.  It's the highlight of the film and well worth spending time in this world getting there.

Word is there is sequel plans, given that Theron is producer and pushed to get the film made (in order to have an action vehicle for her to star in) it's a welcome franchise.  There's also the possibility of connecting the franchise with John Wick which would be a little unusual give that Wick is modern day and Broughton is 30 years behind him.

Where Atomic Blonde is clearly focused on turning Lorraine Broughton into an cinematic action hero in the Bond vein, Red Sparrow seems to want its protagonist, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), to be more of a spy in the Le Carre model, less action and more intrigue.

Though set in modern day, Red Sparrow feels very deeply like a cold war hold out.  Cel phones are now part of the set, but there's very little else that would differentiate this from a story set in the 1960's, '70's or '80's. Red Sparrow could also be mistaken as a reimagining of the Black Widow story, as Dominika is a ballet dancer who's conscripted into service and trained to use her body as a weapon in a secret Russian spy training school. (Rather than coincidence or copying, it's more likely share their origins in stories of Russian kompromat training schools).

Red Sparrow takes a very unfavorable look at Russian society, effectively damning it as a prison state, where everyone is under the thumb of the ruling elite, where you only have value if you can serve the mother country, otherwise you're just waste.  After an accident ends Dominika's career as a ballerina, her uncle, the head of the SVR, asks for her service in entraping a prominent Russian businessman. She agrees only to be traumatized by being raped and witness to his garroting in short order.  Her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), needing her discretion, gives her a choice of execution or a future as an SVR agent, a Red Sparrow, trained in the art of seduction for the purposes of extracting intelligence or gaining leverage by compromising their target.

Dominika submits to the humiliation of the training, ecercises designed to force out any sense of self, sense of modesty, or sense of pride.  The goal is to be a tool, a weapon, a body to be exploited in service of mother Russia. Yet she never loses sight of what is really at play, power and control.  She sees the power others strive for, and the control they seek to have (over her and anything or anyone else) and she sees the strings to pull to manipulate that.  The powers that be think it's her training, but it's self-preservation and a big middle finger to everything she's been tought.

She's sent out on a mission to Budapest, to seduce Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), an American agent who has connections to a mole within Russian intelligence.  She's to find out who the mole is.  Along the way she has altercations with her roommate and the Russian station agent in the city.  As she engages with these sources (as well as her uncle and his handlers - Ciaran Hinds and Jeremy Irons) the film plays with the audience's perception of Dominika.  Is she in over her head?  Is she in complete control?  Is she deceiving Nash when she seduces him, or is she actually vulnerable (and is he really falling for it or does he understand the deception?)? When Nash recruits her as a double agent, and she agrees, is this part of the ploy or is it in earnest?  Is she a patriot or a traitor?  Can she be both?

Unlike Atomic Blonde, the intrigue of Red Sparrow is far more personal and intimate, thus much easier to follow, if end result is only clear at the end.  Spy games are just that, games, which play with lives, careers, politics, and balances of power, and there are good players and bad in these games (both in terms of intent and skill).  Dominika, by the end, proves she is a good player but concerned only with her own outcome.

Like Theron, Lawrence gives plenty to the role, a lot of physicality and nudity was requested of them, yet where Theron's sexuality culminated in a steamy same-sex sex scene, Lawrence's portrayal of sexuality is terse, absent and cold, like the training provided to her character intones.  There's an unpleasantness to sexuality, as one would expect when it's used as a weapon.

Likewise with both characters, I find the accents shaky.  Theron's British accent sounds put upon at times, while Lawrence's Russian brogue never rings true (it drops out entirely at times).  In a more action-oriented setting a loose accent is more forgivable, but with such a heavy character piece like Red Sparrow I question the need for accents at all.  They're in Russia, they should be speaking Russian.  If they're not speaking Russian, why bother with accents (it gives the impression they're speaking in English instead of Russian, which would be weird).  See The Death Of Stalin, another Russian-set film, but all the performers speak with their native affectations.

Red Sparrow is good, but not great.  It's a tad overlong at 2h14m but it's always engaging.  It's deeply unpleasant at times, the horrors of violence and violent actions are not shied away from, making for uncomfortable viewing.  Matthews has follow-up novels featuring Dominika which, given the film's modest success, may actually wind up with another franchise for Lawrence to play in.  As with Lorraine Broughton, there's definitely room for more stories with these characters.  I was more visually engaged (and impressed) with Atomic Blonde but more emotionally engaged with Red Sparrow.  Neither needs to compete, as there's more than enough space in cinema for multiple badass female spies (afterall, nobody ever complained about how many male-led spy movies there were).

3 Short Paragraphs: Prospect

2018, Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl (the short Prospect) -- download

I grabbed this movie a few weeks before it showed up on Netflix, primarily because I like gritty space movies. Not just gritty in tone, but dirty, grimy and the opposite of Star Trek's pristine white. Conversely, I also love that look. Anywayz, I loved the low budget look and feel of this movie that I saw in the trailers, from the contained space vehicle the main characters arrive on, to the pollen overloaded planet they go prospecting on, to the cobbled together space suits that made me feel the whole point of this movie was because a bunch of props guys had a competition as to who could create the coolest space suit, and decided they needed a movie to showcase their work.

Gritty. Wow. We are given nothing of detail to this space opera world but what we see. The ship that dad (Jay Duplass, Transparent) and daughter (Sophie Thatcher, The Exorcist) arrive on is cramped and dirty, like an Apollo craft that they have been living in for the weeks, while their ship, tethered to a larger interplanetary vessel, was carried to their destination planet. They are prospectors of a future gold rush type commodity, some sort of alien by-product, and pretty down on their luck. If dad doesn't do this right, or as he really wants to do, find the motherload, the Queen's Lair.

The planet is pollen laden and absolute poison, not just atmosphere but also with seedy characters all looking for this lair. Almost immediately daughter loses dad to seedy Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones) but the two become tethered to each other, sometimes literally, as they have to find a way off the planet. This is what the movie is really about, how daughter has to dispense with the connections she had with her not-too-fatherly dad and Pedro has to learn how to care for another human being. All this gets wrapped up in a weird and wonderful scifi flick that was perfect for my schtick. The plot is light, but the actors are superb and the practical effects are just perfect.

NOTE: I have to see the original short, to see if the pure aesthetic I detected in this movie is better without the claptrap of a full movie, like with Kin vs Bagman.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: The Silence

2019, John R. Leonetti (Annabelle) -- Netflix

If there are so many movies popping up that are part of  the Great Chinese Film Industry, Skyscraper and  The Meg for example, that are built to provide American style actioners to the Chinese audience, but with an over-arching influence of the backing producers, then what the heck is Constantin Films from Germany trying to do? You cannot say this movie, or many of their movies old and new, are "German movies" despite wikipedia's description as such. There is no agenda here, no desire for German culture to be part of the movie, nor any aspect of its creation about creating a movie for a German after market. No, this is just a straight Hollywood movie, a horror-light flick made quickly and unremarkably to draw in the Netflix audience. Unless, as we cannot forget Uwe Boll and his desire to create movies solely for the inflight experience, that is the German influence -- expediency, thrift and unadorned focus.

The Silence may be called the rip-off of the The Quiet Place, but like the other Netflix based horror-light movie (or monster flick) Bird Box it was based on a book. And where The Quiet Place was about setting a tone, a mood, a world where the characters have to stay silent to fend off the mysterious monsters, this movie has no such conceit. This movie is about showing you the monster immediately, tossing the main characters into the fray right away and then just moving them along.

The problem is that it never really moves them along to any particular direction or reason. This is like a chapter in someone else's story. The Andrews, primarily dad Stanley Tucci (Easy A) and daughter Kiernan Shipka (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) are escaping the introduction of flying lizard like monsters that are attracted to sound and are basically pop culture piranha on wings. There is no attempt by the movie to explain why the military, or even some inventive good old boys in riot gear & flame throwers, cannot deal with this catastrophe. Sure, they breed quickly but come on, even a bear suit and a pitchfork would do. Anywayz, they escape on their way... somewhere and are confronted by a cult that has only taken days to form, one that cuts out their tongues (you know, you can still make a lot of noise without tongues) and sacrifices people for The Greater Silence. Let's toss in a requisite, they are trying to Make America Quiet Again. Anywayz, the Andrews meet them, lose some family and then... well, are on their way again.

And that's it. That is IT. Sure the acting is decent, as Tucci can be in anything these days. And the movie looks good, nothing special but capable. And... oh yeah, that was my first point. German production: capable and entertaining, just lacking any real substance.

Happy Death Day

2017, d. Christopher Landon - crave

Toasty just wrote a review for the sequel which I'm now really keen on seeing.  It actually was the advertising for the sequel that spurred my interest in this series.  The trailers looked tremendously entertaining, to the point I was ready to go into seeing the sequel cold.  Conversely, the trailers for this first entry made the film look so generic, like 90% of all the big screen horror movie trailers put out there.  It really emphasized how brutally cliche the film's college kids are (but doesn't really get across that they're comedically cliche).  Plus "In Da Club"? Really? That's the song you're going with.  It's a wonder this was a success at all that it could spawn a sequel.


We've had a few different takes now on the live-die-repeat time/life loop in movies (Groundhog Day [obviously], Edge Of Tomorrow, Arq, among others) and TV (Russian Doll, recent episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and Legends of Tomorrow, among others) and quite frankly most (if not all) have been tremendously fun. But what Happy Death Day has that others do not is Jessica Rothe. How is she not a much bigger star already? Is the initial (and mistaken) impression I had of this film - that of being a schlocky also-ran in the endless, tedious parade of modern slasher flicks - keeping the powers that be in filmmaking away from this film, being unexposed to this incredible talent thus casting her in...well, anything. Come on people! At the very least she should be paired up in a sister comedy with Anna Faris.  Make it happen!!

As noted, the sequel was marketed so much better (and yet fared poorly at the box office comparatively).  As Toasty wrote, it's sold as more of a sci-fi/time travel comedy.  I was very surprised by this since the marketing had this pegged as tedious final girl serial killer pablum when it's actually a witty dark comedy that has only the slightest of horror elements imbued. As far as these kinds of things go, it's pretty tame, a PG-13 styled thriller (but seriously, it's a comedy) with no real gore and most of the kills happen with a cutaway back to Tree (Rothe) waking up on her birthday again.  Perhaps it was this bait-and-switch that kept the ticket buyers of the first one away from the second one?  Is it possible that the duplicitous shaping of the film into a straightforward horror movie is what drew the teen horror audiences in, and subsequently disappointed them (rather than surprised them) with lack of bloody payoffs?  Perhaps the desires of this middle-aged man, to be entertained with clever plotting, genre twists and delightful acting, are much different than the desires of the youthful slasher-going crowd who want nothing more to be titillated by blood and gore rather than cerebral delights and charming performances.

I don't know what it is about this story-now-genre of complicated (or awful) people living a single day over and over again only to become a better person ... I love it very very much and am here for it over and over again. It's a superficial character growth movie almost exactly in the vein of Groundhog Day, not nearly as resonant or deep as Russian Doll (philosophic ponderings here are pretty much non-existant), but Rothe keeps the attention on her at all times, and her performance has a lived-in feel.  Tree is emotionally distant from pretty much everyone at the start, making her way through life in a relative fugue state, not connecting to the guys she's dated, her sorority sisters or even her roommate who clearly makes an effort to be a friend.  She not stuck up, or pompous, there's clearly something deeper to her disaffection and that does come out, and she does achieve self-awareness.  But unlike Groundhog Day, that's not the end goal.  Instead, she needs to figure out who keeps killing her.  It doesn't have a metaphysical karmic purpose, and I was hoping for some minor left field explanation like her father or mother was a quantum physicist or something that might tease why Tree is having this episode, but it doesn't really matter when it's all so much fun, right?

 I need to watch that sequel immediately.

Double Dose: get a piece of The Rock

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle - 2017, d. Jake Kasdan - crave
Rampage - 2018, d. Brad Peyton - crave

I have little connection to the original Jumanji.  I was almost 20 when it came out, and it seemed, quite clearly, a kids movie, plus Robin Williams was always more miss than hit with me .  It was with my daughter that I finally watched it around the time the marketing engine for this sequel/reboot came out, and it was fine.  It hasn't really stayed with me at all and Welcome to the Jungle hits home why: there's no real mythology to Jumanji.  The whole thing is people get sucked into the game, and they have to win it to get out.  Were this a horror movie, there would be a series of well established rules by which the participants have to play, firm canon or lore that should carry and build from one film to the next.  ...Jungle  pays a brief nod to Williams' character from the first, but that's about its only connection.

The loose connection aside, ...Jungle is a fun watch, if slightly overlong.  The main cast, Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillen and Jack Black commit well to portraying teenagers with their dueling insecurities and self-absorption.  Johnson playing scared or emotionally vulnerable is a side we don't see from him very often, and it's put to both comedic and dramatic effect, pulled off well in both cases.  Black does a lot of the comedic heavy lifting, playing a pretty, popular girl stuck in Jack Black's body, but with an earnest effort at depth, not just a shallow caricature.   Gillen is the awkward outcast thrust into an ass-kicking video game female form, complete with short shorts and a crop top.  Gillen nails the insecure mannerisms, folding her arms most of the time to hide her midriff, the film commenting on how absurdly underdressed she is for the environment, but it should go further.   Hart is the most like a Kevin Hart persona, and his character's journey seems the slightest (never truly addressing the meaning behind the fractured friendship that is brought up).

The execution of Jumanji-as-a-video-game is decent but minimal, as if the screenwriters only applied the basest of cliches and weren't experienced gamers themselves.  There's so much room for commentary on video game culture and how youth culture interacts with it, but it's largely sidestepped for some decently entertaining action set pieces.  Truly this is a kids action-adventure film (with a few dick jokes thrown in for the older kids) that is all-ages palatable.  If the action falls flat its because the villain of the piece, played by Bobby Cannivale, is just a menacing void with no real personality or motivation.  There's a sharper, smarter movie to be made here, hopefully with the next one.

While Jumanji 2 is about putting an action movie story into a video game structure, Rampage is actually taking a video game and making it into an action movie.  Rampage has lived a few different lives since its mid-1980's origin, but it's almost uniformly been the same game.  You play one of three monsters (Ralph is a giant wolf thing, Lizzie is a giant lizard thing, and George is a giant ape), you wreck buildings, eat people, smush tanks and bash helicopters to gain points (and you can also beat up the other monster).  It's quite simple, frankly, and was mind-numbing fun for bored youth.

Turning that rather unassuming premise into a big action movie may seem like a bit of a chore but really it's a blank slate.  There's no real mythology or lore to capture from Rampage the video game, so the writer, director, producers could basically take the property and do with it as they will, as long as it winds up at some point with the monsters wrecking buildings, eating people, smushing tanks, bashing helicopters and beating on each other.

Now I know I literally *just* said there was no real lore or mythology to the Rampage games, but the one main detail the game has that the movie ignores is that George, Lizzie and Ralph are people who mutate into these giant creatures.  The film basically mutates an albino gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator into these giant creatures.  So, you know, adaptation fail right there.  When the source has so little to work with, how do you ignore one of its main components?

If, like most people, you have no connection to the video game, the story is fine.  It's not ingenious but they have fun with it.  A nefarious corporation run by siblings - one an evil genius, the other a bit of a blundering dolt - has been playing with CRISPR gene re-coding to try and create essentially a super soldier serum.  They were testing it on rats in a space station when shit went wrong, and the serum ultimately rains down upon the Earth.  Three creatures get infected, including George who is basically best friends with ex-marine The Rock.  Ex-marine The Rock says he likes animals better than people but to be honest he's pretty damn good with people too.  The man is full of charm.  That's why he's so swoll.

When George gets gigantic, ex-marine The Rock tries to keep him calm, but the evil genius has flipped a homing beacon switch calling all the monsters to cross vast distances to convene on their headquarters in Chicago (what is this plan??!!??) and they are mindlessly compelled to do so.  Along the way the army tries to take them out to no avail, so it's up to ex-marine The Rock and gene scientist Naomi Harris to go there and try and cancel the homing beacon and hopefully convince George to fight the wolf and lizard.  Also, Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays a government guy who seems like an asshole at first but is totally charming with his weird accent and is actually mostly a decent guy trying to do the right thing.  But he's generally extraneous.  Oh and Joe Manganiello is in here as a cocky-as-shit military guy who tries to take out the wolf and loses big time.  I think this was supposed to be a big Deep Blue Sea style twist but my surprise equated to a meager "huh".

The film is kind of goofy but mostly in the right ways.  Malin Akerman's evil corporate person is all cliche and she plays right into all of them.  It's not quite a comedic performance but almost.  Her brother, played by Jake Lacy, meanwhile, is really quite damn funny in his semi-clueless, incompetent, pompous shitbag role.  Playing a dumb guy who thinks he's smart is tricky and he nails it.

But really what are people there for?  To watch giant monsters destroy Chicago (oh Chi-town, a favourite target for destruction, second only to San Fran).  And yeah, they trash it but good.  It's not ugly CGI madness like Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but also not much different.  There's a really great building falling over sequence which should come with a 9-11 trigger warning.  Also George the albino gorilla is pretty awesome, and has a great rapport with The Rock. 

In all both are not great movies but have charm to spare and are decent time passers.  Jumanji 2 has a great cast that keeps it afloat, while Rampage has just enough little likeable bits to keep one interested as long as you don't think too much about it.  And The Rock is never not watchable or likeable in these.  I should also note I watched both of these with my 9-year-old daughter and they both seemed ok for this age.  A bit of language in the former and violence in the latter but nothing she hasn't seen in a Marvel movie.  Kids these days, grow up so fast.

3 Short Paragraphs: Happy Death Day 2U

2019, Christopher Landon (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) -- download

Like, the last movie, this one was an absolute joy to watch. Bleah, what a fuddy duddy term to use. But that is how I feel these days, getting all gray and pudgy and out of touch. Not that I was ever in touch. But looking at all these pretty college kids I cannot help but think I am not supposed to enjoy this movie as much as I do.

Following up on the last movie, which was basically Groundhog Day Horror Movie (wait, what? why can't I find that movie on the blog? what alternate world did I not watch and rave about this movie??!?!) but oh, so much better than just that comparison, Landon just ... well, does his horror movie all over again but as a scifi time travel flick. He goes from taking the time loop mystical story (she has to find out who she has harmed to end the loop) to actually EXPLAINING the time loop, while keeping the charm and wit of the original movie.

Again, Jessica Rothe as main character Tree (yes, tree) is the best thing about this movie. She is a typical vacuous blonde popular girl (at least those didn't change as I aged) who grows because of the loop(s) she is stuck in. In the first one she just learns to find love and break the loop via understanding, here she gathers the bunch from the first movie (along with additional nerds) and determines (via SCIENCE) why she is looping and solves a riddle. And she gets to grow even more, while not really dispensing being a beautiful, young blonde girl, but becoming a real girl.

ReWatch: Olympus has Fallen vs White House Down

This blog is as much about blogging as it is about movies and other aspects of pop culture, especially when it basically has an audience of one (me) or maybe two, when Kent isn't tearing down walls or raising up puppies.

I guess that makes it also as much about writing as it is about the other topics, because we hit 1000 published posts, have been around for eight years or so, but I don't believe I have improved. And I have been thinking a lot about writing of late, having moved from my notebooks full of vignettes (flash fiction?) to an actual intent on completing something whether it be short story or novella or even great white whale novels. And since this is my usual outlet, that aspect of my writerly brain seeps in. That is the obtuse way of explaining the man on the bicycle posts here and there -- a brief and odd attempt to reboot my creative brain, because if I am not improving then I am at least changing.

ReWatches may seem lazy. But to me, the blog is more about consuming pop culture than it is writing movie reviews. And sometimes consuming means absorbing what you already like (The Shelf) or just watching something easy, because fully paying attention is a challenge. I took to these two movies mainly because in today's Age of Trump, we need to be reminded that there are still those out there that still revere the Presidency and the White House.

Think about it. We are in an era where the entire world is watching the USA and the buffoon in charge, and not with a fond glance but more with the gaze at a car wreck. No longer is he the "Leader of the Free World", no longer can even the American people look to their leader with misplaced adoration and even possible worship. Both of these movies take the topic of an attack not only on American soil, but a brazen attack on a symbol of her power -- the President in his own house. Can that even be taken seriously these days?

I saw Olympus has Fallen when it came out, and I admit I am still surprised I really like Antoine Fuqua's movies. They are middle of the road actioners, but they are straight forward Heroic Movies. His heroes are classically damaged but once the movie begins, they are unfettered and just get the job done. The protagonist & plot is straight forward but the movie affected me in ways I didn't expect. The casualty rate was so high, so blatant and spread across the innocent victim range, it staggered me. That didn't change in second viewing.

Conversely, White House Down contains its mayhem. The former was all about us really REALLY hating on the bad guys because of what we saw them do, while the latter has us frowning at the baddies for daring to touch their precious White House. This movie really worships the palace of the American royalty, even giving us a vehicle to experience this adoration, with Channing Tatum's daughter desperate to see inside the walls, and because she does. Interesting that while the former movie's main focus is having ex-Secret Service Banning desperate to rescue his friend and President, Tatum is more concerned with rescuing his daughter. Comment on family over duty?

Some side characters of note. Both movies have pretty, young, brunette background characters who get to die tragically during one of the plots misdirections. They are accessible, attractive and sympathetic characters, the girls next door whom we can mourn. Meanwhile, both movies also have an inside man, a character originally presented as one of the inner circle but whom betrays them for personal reasons or gain. James Woods plays the disgruntled head of the Secret Service who hates his soft, black President. I like that he pretty much played himself, based on what we know about him IRL these days.

Jamie Foxx is obviously playing the Obama analog, and the motivation behind the attack is basically the MAGA elite deciding to take him down. It has a chilling comment on current USA with maybe them realising the best way to take down the government was from within? Meanwhile, Aaron Eckart is the idealized white President, more than a little naive as to what his government actually represents. Or maybe, just maybe, he is from that alternate reality where they really, truly are a force of Good in the world.

So, we come to these movies with Hero Worship, directed at the President and the people who will risk anything to protect them. Compare this to the current culture where the people who would apply the same fervour would be considered absolute wingnuts. The white men in these movies, the ones who we call the Bad Guys, are more reflective of current American presidential culture. I don't know about you, but I find this rather chilling.