Horror, Not Horror: the trash bin

"Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see. 

In the past few months I've been wading more and more into the underexplored depths of genre cinema.  Some of this has been on my own, at random, and some of it's been prompted by the films discussed by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery on the very fun Video Archives podcast (noted by an asterisk below).  These are, to a one, not good films, but the hope is always that, for as maybe limited in budget, or as tossed off as they may have been, they still have something going for them. Oh, but surprise, one of these is a prestige picture that was nominated for Oscars!

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Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961) dir. Vittorio Cottafavi - Tubi

(AKA Hercules and the Captive Women)

What is it? One of the many, many iterations of Hercules in the "sword'n'sandals" genre of action/adventure movies, largely made in Italy throughout the 1950's through 1980's.  In this one Hercules, played by the handsome and beefy Reg Park, is ostensibly kidnapped by his friend and taken on an adventure where he discovers Atlantis, but the place is a nefarious one, and only the might of Hercules can stop their evil plot (whatever it was).

Why watch? I had, on a whim, picked up a copy of the Mario Bava directed "sequel" film to this, Hercules in the Haunted World, so I thought I should just give this one a shot first.

The good? Bava served as a director of photography so there are some pretty nice shots in this.  Reg Park, former Mr. Universe, is really nice to look at.  Bava does this tilt-down/pan-up shot in the cave which is really sweet, and there's a high-up crane shot of.  The shot of Hercules bounding through a courtyard of dead bodies is kinda nuts as is the reveal of the Atlantian elite guard which is a little provovative.  It's impressive seeing Hercules driving a chariot of 10 horses, if only there were a Hercules movie that could sustain that sort of scale.  Hercules being a petty dick was pretty fun, as were all Reg Park's muscles.  Fay Spain's eyes are the best special effect in the movie.

The bad? The audio - dubbing, sound effects, music - is pretty awful most of the time, and seemingly mixed all at the same volume. The action sequences are incredibly clumsy. The story is flimsy nonsense with little internal consistency. The wardrobe and sets waver between spectacular and silly. The envisioning of both ancient Greece and Atlantis is pretty uninspired. The cinematography wavers between impressive and pedestrian.

The trash? Reg Park does this one-armed swimming technique which just blows my mind thinking about it.

Is it horror? No, but there's definitely some little twinges of horror that the film never thinks to exploit.

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Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) dir. Mario Bava - BluRay

What is it? Reg Park's second - and final - foray as the demigod hero.  But this one's directed by Mario Bava, and Christopher Lee co-stars.  Maintaining no continuity from the prior film (in which Hercules had a wife and son), here he must go on a quest to retrieve a specific stone in order to cure the madness of his lover.  The stone's destination? Hell!

Why watch?  Bava, of course.

The good? This is a visual feast of nonsense.  I watched it twice.  Bava's innovative craftsmanship and colour sense is so damn impressive.  The visual effects, in many instances, seem so surreal, as if they shouldn't exist.  The big finale features the raising of the dead which is a sequence that would have for sure scared the crap out of me as a kid (but is both fun and silly as an adult watching on a hi definition TV)

The bad? The story is utterly nonsensical.  The Kino blu-ray features an audio commentary from a Bava scholar who identifies that there was obviously a completely different shooting script at one time and that few pains were taken to marry the original story with what they wound up with.

The trash? Very little trash in this one.  It's a really stunning watch.  I guess, the biggest trash is that they dubbed over Christopher Lee's performance. Blasphemy!

Is it horror? No, but it does swerve that way for the climax for a bit, providing a sense of Bava's chops in the genre.

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*Demonoid: Messenger of Death (1981) dir. Alfredo Zacarias - Tubi

What is it? A Mexican (but English) horror film about a demonic hand which possesses people to kill. Samantha Eggar stars as the wife of the mining honcho who releases the hand.  It seems to be fixated on trying to get her specifically as it goes from possessing person to person and murdering along the way.

Why watch?  It was a Tarantino/Avery recommendation.

The good? Honestly, it has a pretty solid sense of its own history and the evil forces at play.  It does better than many horror films in that aspect. The acting is surprisingly decent for such a off the beaten path production.

The bad? But make no mistake, this is some cheesy-crust crazy-bread stuff.  The special effects are that special blend of late-70's/early-80's waxy gore with stark red corn syrup blood. I have to wonder if the makers of this took any of it seriously or if they knew it would eventually be considered campy fun.

The trash? They really liked to work their gross visual effects, and we've come so far in making that shit so gross that it's really quaint what they used to be able to get away with.  Oh and gratuitous nudity tied to violence in the first five minutes (seen in one of the trailers even)

Is it horror? Yeah. It's that special type of 80's low-budg horror.

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*Blind Rage (1976) dir. Efren C Pinon - YouTube

What is it? The war in Viet Nam has decimated the markets in the Asian Pacific, so the world bank (I guess?) has decided to invest 15 million dollars into the region, to be held at a bank in Manila before dispersing. A man on the inside is recruited by a Black L.A. mobster to pull off a heist of said 15mil, but he's going to do it with ... 5 blind guys!  Because who would ever suspect blind guys of robbing a bank. 

Why watch? Another Tarantino/Avery recommendation.

The good? Umm, this movie real bad, but so bad that I enjoy telling people about how bad it is. It ends with a cameo by Fred Williamson in a bright blue butterfly collared deep-V-neck jumpsuit chomping on a cigar, looking great and being a total badass.  And the line: "It's all going down right now at the International House of Pancakes".  

The bad? There's no protagonist to this film.  There's nobody we follow all throughout the movie.  Is there anyone to really care about if they succeed or fail? No, there is not.  

The trash? This movie is part Blaxploitation, part kung-fu, and part crime thriller, none of which is done particularly well.  Is "Blindsploitation" a genre?

Is it horror? No, nor is it trying to be, though people do be getting shot, tho.  And the script is a nightmare, lol.

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*Welcome to Blood City (1977) dir. Peter Sasdy - YouTube

What is it? A group of strangers find themselves in the desert with no memory of who they are, and a note each found on their person telling them that they were a killer.  Kier Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey) doesn't believe a thing.  They're escorted to Blood City by the sheriff (Jack Palance) who doesn't really want to tell them much about how the town operates, but it's basically a place where anything goes, including slavery and murder.  In fact, the more you murder, the greater your status.  But who are the people in a control booth watching all this, and why? 

Why watch? Though Avery and Tarantino didn't necessarily love this, they were generally intrigued by the premise, and cited it as one of the Westworld knock-offs of the era, which intrigued me.

The good? The premise was really, really intriguing.  A group of people with a secret past, possibly filled with murder, but without their memories, are they still the same murderers?  Just one of many questions the film poses, but never answers.  It's rather rife with ideas that don't get explored well enough, and has a mysterious backdrop that gets slowly revealed in a pleasant way (possibly cribbed by Cabin in the Woods) but ultimately doesn't pay off.  And hey, more Samantha Eggar

The bad? The film is either shot terribly, with the active actor partially or fully out of frame most of the time, or else its transfer to video/digital went horribly wrong.  It's actually pretty funny how awful it looks.

The trash? The one female "murderer" is the helpless object of affection and treated like a non-entity by everyone (content warning: off screen rape).

Is it horror? No, but it's certainly playing with dystopian themes which can be scary to some.

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*The Keep (1983) dir. Michael Mann - Criterion

What is it? The infamous/forgotten Michael Mann disaster that finds Nazi soldiers in 1941 taking over an old Romanian Citadel only to unleash a terrible, murderous being from its cage.  The being uses Jewish scholar Ian McKellen to try and get set free upon the Earth, by tempting him with revenge upon all Nazis.  Scott Glenn plays an otherworldly savior type who's arrived on earth to stop it, but not before sexing up Alberta Watson, McKellen's daughter. 

Why watch? I caught this film years and years ago on a late night TV airing, and have long been wanting to revisit it.  It's a moody piece with haunting Tangerine Dream synths, that probably was even moodier in Mann's lost original 210minute cut.  This 98 minute hack job by the studios leaves the film feeling disjointed and frequently confusing.

The good?  I love all the strange lighting, the sets, the evil creature, Mann's style is all over this, even in it's chopped up form.

The bad? I have to think that a 210minute version of this would be better as a cohesive story, but still potentially direly boring.  But then again, there are some intriguing character reveals and dynamics that I think may have played out so much better in a longer form.

The trash? Scott Glenn meets Alberta Watson for less then a minute before they start boning.  Does he have Starfox's powers?

Is it horror? I think it's trying to be.  

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Leviathan (1989) dir. George P. Cosmatos - AmazonPrime

What is it? The other, lower-budget undersea movie of 1989 (next to the Abyss), it's basically Alien (with a dash of Carpenter's The Thing) in a sealab.  Starring Robocop, a Ghostbuster, Flash's girlfriend, and Evil-Lyn, so it's 80's to the core.

Why watch? It's been on my "to watch" list since I first spied its tape cover at a video store.  It always looked like something that would be in my wheelhouse.

The good? There's some really great sets and some nice underwater sequences.  It does manage to build a decent amount of attention, but...

The bad? ...you can basically watch as the film's budget starts shrinking the longer it goes on. They try to edit around the budget limitations, but they become painfully obvious.  The budget limitations can't capitalize upon the film's buildup and it's a real wet fart of an ending.

The trash?  The creature, and not in an "oh, it's so gross" kind of way but more in a "really? That's what you're going with?" kind of way.  It's a pretty corny looking beast, and the film does an incredibly poor job with devising any sort of mythology or backstory behind it.  It's basically a perfunctory creature with little to no intrigue behind it.  It's a terrible let down to an otherwise acceptably entertaining picture.

Is it horror? It probably was at some point during production.

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Nightmare Alley (2020) dir. Guillermo del Toro - Crave

What is it? The saga of down-on-his-luck crumbum Bradley Cooper who winds up helping out at 1920's-era carnival/freakshow, learning the tricks of the trade.  He effectively steals one man's mentallist act then starts performing for New York High society, pushing the boundaries of good taste and kayfabe.  Psychologist Cate Blanchette starts working with him, if only to ultimately use him for her own purposes, then destroy him for fun.

Why watch? Generally intrigued by del Toro's films, and I share his fascination with carnivals of old.  Oh yeah, and Sid worked on it!

The good? It looks great.  It's a phenomenal looking film in every aspect.  The attention to detail in every scene -- the sets, lighting, costuming, makeup, props - all just eye catching and really attractive.  I also liked how it exposed the sham of mentallists (if only it had more fun with it)

The bad? The film is tedious. It's a long 150 minutes of watching a not great person do not great things. You never really connect with Bradley Cooper, nor with any of his relationships. There's nothing there. You know he's bad news from the beginning, and that sense of distrust never abates. It makes it very, very hard to invest in him. Were he, maybe, more charming, or perhaps if we had some insight into what his goals were, what he's actually working towards, or, mayhaps if he were even a semblance of a good person we could follow him, hoping for his success even as he makes the wrong choices and finds himself unable to stop from going deeper into the darkness. But we know he's shit from the beginning, Del Toro wants us to know that being easy on the eyes will get him far, but for this story, it's not enough. We're rooting for him to fail (and hoping, at least, that he doesn't take others undeservedly down with him)..

The trash?  The last 30 minutes finally pick up the pace but they're kind of the worst moments of the film. Just waiting for Cooper to get his comeuppance, little of which is satisfying, moreover, it all seemed kinda overblown and carny...I mean corny.

Is it horror? Meh, its toes creep over the edge of the deck, but it never really tests the waters, nevermind jumps right in.

Strap On Those Sandals

300: Rise of An Empire -- 2014, Zoam Murro -- download
Hercules -- 2014, Brett Ratner  (Red Dragon, X-Men: Last Stand) -- download

No, this isn't the beginning of yet another new recurring segment on We Disagree. Just a way to blend the commentary on two somewhat related movies, i.e. they are both of ancient Greek persuasion. Unless Kent agrees to a series review of all the Sinbad movies, there won't be enough fodder for a new category.

Well, maybe if we do Spartacus, in honour of our visit to the Kubrick exhibit.

300: Rise of an Empire is the side-quel for the Zack Snyder, Frank Miller graphic novel become green screen movie. It happens roughly at the same time as the first movie, but following different characters. This time, not owing its style to recreation of comic panels, it opens up more. The movie connects the first's Battle of Thermopylae to the battle at Marathon, where our main character Themistocles slays the King of Persia but spares his son, Xerxes. It is that event that leads to the fantastical nature of the Persian army that invades Greece ten years later, i.e. Xerxes becoming a god king.

When I mentioned not really having an internal vision of how Persia should be portrayed in fantasy fiction, this movie didn't really help. This is typical of the brown skinned exotic Evil Empire approach. But there is history, so its forgivable, I guess. What isn't history is the backstory they give to Xerxes, the god king of the Persians. Tall, golden and basically hairless, the man walks into a magic bath bearded and normal sized, but emerges as a cross between a diva and a giant. This sort of flies in the face of what the first movie wanted to portray, that he was mortal, after all. Magical transmogrification for appearances only?

His right hand man, er, woman is Artemisia, a Greek who hates Greece and is played by Eva Green channeling her usual scary, sexy goth. Not that I am complaining. She is capable, manipulative and is portrayed as the intelligence behind the whole invasion, with Xerxes as just a pretty golden puppet, albeit 10 feet high.

This is a movie for those who enjoyed the first one and for anyone who has watched the Spartacus: Boobs & Blood TV series. Every battle scene is slow-mo, digital blood spraying every which way, good guys cutting down bad guys with dramatic swipes of their swords, ignoring the armor of the Persians while they fight in speedos. But rather than just men with spears and swords, they toss in a sea battle, ships crunching against each other with a dramatic battle where numerous boats are stuck together and the Greeks and Persians fight from deck to deck. Still not sure why a horse as considered a secret weapon when they could not have predicted the configuration of the tangled decks. These movies are all about cool factor in battle with little sense behind them.

The movie was fun, stylish, well shot (decent CGI) and dramatically acted (I will always enjoy watch Eva Green hamming it up, as long as its not Camelot) but generally forgettable.

I know very little of the graphic novel Hercules is based on. Despite my pirate access to all and every comic, the lack of visits to comic shops has diminished my awareness of the hot titles.  Maybe it wasn't so hot, as the lack of Googlish data says something.  Anyways, I was not aware of it being a comic before the trailers of the movie came out, and I was not aware of the type of movie it was, based on the trailers.

The trailers do a disservice to this movie. They depict a typical, expected adaptation of the Hercules myth, showing his greatest feats, i.e. his Labours. But the movie is not so. This is Hercules, the man behind the myths, picking up years later as he leads a group of mercenaries who bank on his reputation. Whether real or myth, the name sells. Enemies and the rulers of Greek city states believe he did all the feats of heroism by himself, not knowing that this D&D party of variously skilled adventurers helped him accomplish it all. That is what this movie is about.

Even without the myth, Hercules is a dominant warrior, hired for good reason. The movie brings him to Thrace, in eastern Greece, to help a king go up against ruthless rebels. The king needs his army trained and the rebels vanquished. Hercules is not so sure about sending more young men to their deaths, but he wants the coin, so his men and he can retire. Things never go as planned in these movies, as betrayals pile up and Herc must decide who he really is.

Every time someone, usually Iolaus the storyteller, reminds us of how great Hercules was, we get a flashback to his battle with a legendary creature. But we also get hints of the truth behind the hero. These CGI monster laden scenes are what the trailer was telling us to see, but the core of the movie is how Hercules himself can both rise above his mythos and those around can learn to depend on the man. His men (and woman!) trust him, but he must learn to trust himself.

Its a fun movie, where The Rock gets to try his hand at a tortured hero trope. I doubt it had the weight the graphic novel was supposed to have, but it did a decent job of portraying something other than a big screen adaptation of familiar, typical mythos movies.

Really, that is my usual fallback to describing these movies. I don't expect great, I don't even expect good, but if I have fun, then I am usually satisfied. This one fell short of being added to my Swords & ... collection, and I would never have the intention of adding the first one, but I could not not see them. I always see them. And yes, I am the guy who will see Seventh Son with Jeff Bridges, should they actually ever get around to releasing it.

KWIF: Sisu: Road to Revenge (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Lady Kent was down with the same cold that took me out last week, so weirdly I watched more movies this week than when I was down and out last week. It's all international cinema cinema week: Finland! "Persia"! Australia! Italy!

This Week:
Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025, d.  Jalmari Helander - crave)
Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975, d. Peter Weir - xumo)
Big Guns (aka Tony Arzenta aka No Way Out - 1973, d. Duccio Tessari - tubi)

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The first Sisu was a cartoon orgy of violence, but underneath it beat the heart of Finnish pride, fortitude and resilience. If there was a message to Sisu it was to tell the world that Finns are tough motherfuckers.  

But Sisu also set itself in a time and place that it didn't really explain. If you're Finnish or familiar with it's history (particularly during World War II) there was no explanation needed. I on the other had had to do some digging. It was a complicated situation with Finland already engaged in conflict with Russia when other battles in Europe started. Sisu took place at the end of World War II, with the Germans set to return home, but attempting to take as much with them as they could before they left, including the gold grizzled veteran Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) had just found.

I don't fully understand the timelines, but Road to Revenge, takes place shortly after the end of World War II, so I assume not long after the first film, just enough time for Korpi to heal. A treaty with Russia saw the ceding of much of Karelia (on the southeastern side of the country) to the Russians, with its citizens of the area being forced to leave within ten days. Korpi's home, which he built himself, remains in the ceded terrain. He crosses the new Russian border with a massive, massive truck, where he deconstructs the home and loads the truck on his own.

His border crossing, however, raises awareness that Koschei ("The Immortal") is in the country. Korpi had infamously killed 300 Russians himself in a rageful tear following the murder of his wife an children. A KGB Officer (Richard Brake) frees the man responsible for killing Korpi's family -- the war criminal Yeagor Dragunov (Stephen Lang) -- from his prison and gives him the resources to, quote "destroy the legend you created and you will go back home a rich man".

And so Korpi and his massive truck and big pile of wood have to travel the 120 kilometers from where his home once stood back to the border...chased by trucks, motorcycles, and airplanes. It's a scaled-down Fury Road but director Jalmari Helander continues to prove he's got the action goods. A lot of wild craziness happens along the way, beyond logic but gleefully entertaining.

The last act takes place on a train, and gets Koschei back into physical action, with some fun setpieces like traversing through the two sleeping quarters without awakening the soldiers (or taking care of them should they stir). The final duel between Korpi and Dragunov is maybe too slow and unrefined to be truely Wick-ian, but it's only one small moment in this 89-minute deluge of violence and survival.

Tommila doesn't speak a word the entire film, and this lack of dialogue really strips the film down to the barest of actions and emotions. Where Brake or Lang might have more to say, there's still likely no more than two or three pages of dialogue, max in the entire film. Whereas the first Sisu felt like a nuveau western, this one feels almost more like a samurai film...but with guns and vehicles and whatnot...but the same attitudes apply.

Helander's next film will see the director's first American production, being brought aboard to helm the John Rambo prequel starring Noah Centineo in the title role. I have no idea what the story might possibly be like, but I'm excited to see what Helander can do with big hollywood franchise budget.

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One of the final releases of legendary 80's B-movie studio Cannon Film, Sinbad of the Seven Seas stars famous muscleman and former Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno as the storied Persian hero, Sinbad the Sailor. Yes, that's right, Italian-American Lou Ferrigno plays Sinbad. Seems a natural fit to me [/sarcasm].

The story is set largely in Basra, which the filmmakers seem to know as much about as I do, which is to say, nothing at all. All the characters here are played by white and/or Italian actors, nary a middle-eastern among them. If this seems like it could be offensive, it would be, if anyone, anyone at all were trying to convincingly portray this as an authentic tale. As it stands, it's one of the least egregious of its cinematic sins, afterall, Sinbad has been portrayed by white actors many times in the past (and will again...RIP Patrick Muldoon).

But Sinbad of the Seven Seas lies to its audience from the moment the film starts. Before its title card, a chunky block of text mentions how famed author Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote an additional adventure for Sinbad titled "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" and that this is an adaptation of that story. It is not. Not in the slightest.

As legend on this film goes, writer-director Luigi Cozzi (who had directed Ferrigno in two Hercules films for Cannon in the mid-1980s) had written the screenplay for Sinbad and the Seven Seas, but was (for unclear reasons) dismissed from the project and it was handed to Enzo G. Castellari. Castellari would proceed to make substantial changes to the script and then proceed to produce an unreleaseable three-hour film. The film sat on the shelf for years before Cozzi was hired back to make some sense of it, to salvage something out of the whole production.

And so, the film's story does not begin with Sinbad and crew on his boat, or in the city of Basra, or in Baghdad or anywhere fantastical, it starts in a bedroom, with a child (Cozzi's daughter) being read a story by her mother, played by Daria Nicolodi.  Nicolodi will proceed to narrato over a large portion of the film. The touchpoint might seem to be The Princess Bride for this framing sequence, but really, it's just a way of trimming down 3 hours of garbage footage into a barely, if you squint, serviceable 93 minute series of adventures.

The wicked vizier Jaffar (portrayed by English white guy John Steiner, it's a variation on Aladdin's Jafar both of which hearken back to The Thief of Baghdad films rather than One Thousand and One Nights) is fixated on the Caliph's daughter, Princess Alina [Alessandra Martines, a French-Italian white lady]. She is involved with Sinbad's ship-mate Prince Ali, but he's been away adventuring. The vizier steals the town's sacred gems of power, keeping one for himself and dispersing the rest across the seas. He then hypnotizes the Caliph into doing his bidding, including telling Alina to marry Jaffar. She refuses and thus is strapped to a fantastical chamber designed to (verrrry slooooowly) sap her of her will. She will marry him some day). When Hercules...I mean Sinbad and crew arrive in Basra, they beat up some bad guys, get captured, break free and then set out on a quest to find the four gems of power (but not before Sinbad escapes from a pit of cobras by *checks notes* making friends with the cobras and then tying them together to form a rope for him to climb out of.  You know how you make friends with wild creatures [totally normal] and then twist their bodies together, with their consent of course [nothing unusual, at all] and then climb them [all checks out, do it all the time].

The majority of the adventures of Sinbad and his crew (consisting of handsome Prince Ali [white guy], Cheropolis "the bald cook" [another white guy], Poochie the dwarf [not a rapping dog, but a white guy], Viking [played by an Italian actor, not a Scandanavian] and the Chinese mercenary Cantu [played by a Japanese-Italian actor]) are narrated over with the action or conversation or both happening silently under the narration from Nicolodi (yes, we see the characters have an exchange and our narrator explains what they are saying], all the while accompanied by the of shoddiest of synth scores.  

In the first stop, he fights a rock monster that shoots lasers from its head. Sinbad must use feats of his notorious Sinbad strength to defeat it and retrieve the gem from its head. In the second, Sinbad and most of the crew (except Bald Cook and Poochie) head to the isle of the amazons where their notorious beauty finds them immediately under their sway (except Prince Ali who seems to be psychically connected to Princess Alina for some reason). If not for Bald Cook and Poochie coming to the rescue with an magical anti-hypnosis potion...I don't know what would have happened, actually. The Amazon queen Farida was played by the stunning actress Melonee Rodgers, a Black, possibly American actress (there's not much available detail on her and seeing as she had no speaking lines left in the film - which doesn't really matter since all lines were dubbed anyway by different actors, except Steiner and one or two others) and all the Amazons were black, which I thought was fantastic...except when Queen Farida has her gem of power taken from her and she turns into an old lady...well, it's just some old Italian lady in blackface. Yeah. Woof.

During the adventures, we constantly check back in with Jaffar, and how progress is going on sapping Princess Alina of her will. The movie makes it seem like Sinbad's voyages are only taking him the better part of an afternoon in total and not days or weeks of sailing the seas. He tries to interfere from afar, but seems to only be able to do anything sometimes for some reason and most of the time looks like a sweaty guy whose going to lose his kneecaps if the team he's watching doesn't lose the match. He's also joined, bafflingly, by the witch Soukra (played by American bodybuilder Teagan, the only other actor not to be dubbed, it seems) for seemingly no reason. Jaffar sort of acts like she's the one who will break his kneecaps if his bet doesn't pay off.

The third adventures finds Jafar sending a gust of wind to send Sinbad's ship ashore (but why send them to the very island that contains the gem they're looking for Jaffar? The guy is an idiot). There they face, ghosts or something...? I dunno, I fell asleep for a bit. 

When I woke up Sinbad was having a conversation with Kira (another white lady), daughter of Nadir the wizard who speaks in gibberish. They landed on the Isle of the Dead in a balloon. They are jumped by a gang of ghouls, and while Kira puts up a good fight, which Hercules, I mean Sinbad immediately falls in love with her over, she gets kidnapped along with her father. Sinbad mounts his rescue but must face the Lord of Darkness, who is like a pot-bellied Swamp Thing who shoots lasers from his hands. Hercules uses his own gems of powers to shoot lasers and destroy the big gooey plant then head home with Kira and her goof-talkin' father in tow.

The big show-down is ...well, not so big. Hercules/Sinbad rescues Princess Alina and defeats Jaffar, but not before facing a Jaffar-controlled mirror version of himself in a match of strength and cunning. Ali and Alina are married, and so are not-Hercules and Kira, the end, go to sleep kid.

There were little glimmers that maybe the original production, under Castellari, was aiming for high camp, but the structure Cozzi rescues the picture with leaves a lot of the camp off to the side, sneaking in only occasionally. But it's obvious from the footage and dialogue left in why Castellari's first draft of this was considered unreleaseable: it's really really bad. I could never get past the idea of Ferrigno as Sinbad. As witnessed above, my brain kept defaulting to him as Hercules, and it would seem Castelli did too. Sinbad is not a legendary strongman, and yet so much of what Ferrigno does here is "feats of strength".

In the right setting, Sinbad of the Seven Seas might be a so-bad-it's-amazing cult classic, but as a tired adult just looking for a break from having to think about shit, this was just an awful 90 minutes. I had more fun recapping it above than watching it.

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I was introduced to Picnic at Hanging Rock by a friend who I met on a dating website almost exactly 20 years ago. It was an odd time. We'd both recently gotten out of long term relationships and we were trying to figure out the next phase of our lives. We really clicked, but emotionally we just weren't ready for anything other than friendship. It was a friendship that forged quickly but not strong enough to survive eventual physical distance and other life demands (babies) and, frankly, the friendship-subverting suckhole that was facebook (it gives the illusion of being in contact without being meaningful contact in any way). Strangely, Picnic at Hanging Rock was the shared experience most cemented into my mind of that friendship, watching a VHS copy borrowed from the library on a strange couch in a brightly lit room next to a new friend where we were still trying to figure out our dynamic. 

At that time I went into watching Picnic... with a pre-conceived distaste for Peter Weir, having had a high-school art teacher who was a Weir fan and would play us Dead Poets Society, Green Book and Fearless in class at least once per semester...for inspiration? These were not really inspirational films to a 14-17 year old. They were grown-up films for parents.

At that time I found Picnic... a bit confounding. The film starts by letting you know that the titular picnic would end in some sort of tragedy, just as the film's poster does. "On St. Valentines Day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls set out to picnic at Hanging Rock... some were never to return." It's an ominous, and it implies something sinister, something terrifying, something harrowing perhaps. The implication is there will be, at least, something to raise one's blood pressure in watching this film...and there is not. Not really.

It is a film that stuck with me though, left an impression. It's not just a totem but a representative point for a very specific, transitional moment of my life. My memory of the film is nothing to do with plot or characters, but images and tones.

This rewatch reaffirmed that it is a tranquil, vibes-based movie above all, loaded with melancholy (and the tranquil tones of Zamfir's pan flute) 

The girls are aflutter not for their picnic trip but for a Valentines card someone received. Where most of the kids are privileged, some are sponsored, such as Sara, an orphan who is kept behind from the trip because...well, I'm not exactly sure. We don't spend much time with any of the other girl to really get to know them, but there is focus on Miranda, the pretty and independent-minded blonde, and Edith, the cliched fat girl who whines about physical effort and is seen eating.  There at least doesn't seem to be any bullying, at least not in the traditional sense...not at this point. 

At the picnic site is already a young Englishman, Michael, who is there with his parents (grandparents?), and their driver, Albert, who Michael makes friends with. The presence of the girls is instantly exciting to them, and though Albert makes some crude comments to Michael which he finds distasteful, the girls don't even notice they are there.

Miranda, Edith and two others decide to venture up the rock (more than 500 feet high it is!), and they push themselves up until they can seemingly go no further. But they find a crevasse and venture into it, except Edith, who freaks out. She runs down the hill, the others are gone... as if purposefully taken by the rock. A teacher stays behind as the rest of the girls are sent home, and she disappears as well. End of act one.

The rest of the film covers next few hours, days and weeks that follow. There is a manhunt and an investigation. Both Albert and Michael are looked at and then dismissed. Both young men are troubled by thoughts and dreams of the missing girls, with Michael seemingly haunted by Miranda specifically. Michael takes on a dangerous solo search which he nearly dies from, and when Albert picks up the trail, he finds Irma, near death.

The school is in disarray. The teachers are having breakdowns, some kids leave school altogether, and Sara falls ill. Irma remembers nothing and has no answers. She's harassed by the other girls when she returns to visit. Everything's collapsing because nobody can process the tragedy. It's not being swept under the rug, but it's also not being addressed either.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is not a horror movie, but it is a haunting picture. It's hard not to be affected by watching others unravel in the wake of tragedy, unable to make sense of it and not having the support knowledge or infrastructure to work through it. With years in between, and some further exploration of the film and story in the meantime, I respect the picture even if I still have a hard time with its storytelling decisions and the routes it does not take.

It took some additional contemplation to realize that this is not a film about the incident, despite the title. It's not about the disappearance, but a story about the school, and the impact the incident has on it and the people within it.  That's a defined choice made by the storytellers (be it original novel author Joan Lindsay, or screenwriter Cliff Green, or director Weir) not to answer questions, not to give a resolution. It may be unsatisfying but it's most definitely intentional.  It's a film that has, in a way, haunted me for 20 years now, and I think that will never go away.

---

I have a watchlist on Letterboxd that I don't consult very often, but any time I do I'm bound to ask the question of "what the hell is that?" to about two-thirds of what's on there. My tastes and interests are mercurial to the point of self-aggravation and self-annoyance. I have to be in the right mood or zone to watch something, so just because I don't feel like watching it now doesn't mean I won't want to watch it later. But also, a lot of what is on my Letterboxd list is obscurities that, well, just won't be cropping up on any of the "mainstream" streamers I most regularly have access to.

But then there's Tubi, always full of surprises. I don't love the streamer, primarily because it's owned by Fox, but also because it has ads (which used to be all Fox News-based ads, but now just seem to be targeted Canadian market ads for dish soap and such), and no standards. You can find a lot of great stuff on Tubi, but in terrible quality streaming speed, bad digital transfers, godawful audio and frequently without closed captioning (a terrible combo for a half-deaf guy like me).

I don't know how the Italian action-thriller Big Guns (aka Tony Arzenta aka No Way Out) wound up on my Letterboxd list but I'm sure glad it did, and I'm also so happy it was among Tubi's fairly decent selection (if not decent quality) of Italian 70's crime pictures.

This one stars Alain Delon, the handsome French actor who played one of the first notable on-screen hitmen in Le Samourai, back again playing another hitman, but this time also a family man, and he wants out. He's done. No more killing for him. Except the consortium of mobsters he works for aren't willing to let him go and they know there's no talking him out of it.

And so before John Wick, before The Punisher, before Death Wish here we have an anti-hero whose wife and child are killed (accidentally mind you) and the response is basically warfare in the streets, one against one hundred.

Delon is Tony Arzenta, an astute, savvy, steely killer who has been wronged, and there's only one way to make right. He's going to dismantle multiple crime syndicates from the top down. At first Arzenta makes his plans and executes them, although not always with ruthless precision, it's a fight from the jump. The mob bosses aren't just sitting back, they have their own schemes as well, setting Tony up so that he has to improvise his escapes. The police are monitoring the situation, but they're sitting back. They're, in a way, buffering for Tony as they see him doing them a service, cleaning up all these syndicates for them.

Tony's bloodlust takes him from from Milan to Copenhagen, murdering on the street and on trains, wherever the opportunity needs to occur. He's not alone, he's aided by his pal Domenico (Marc Porel) and Sandra (Carla Gravina), as well as an ex-dom now living life as a priest who looks out for Tony's parents. 

The film isn't solely told from Tony's perspective and spends plenty of time with the various mafia dons as they start renegotiating territories as Tony picks them off one by one. But there's always one been one don, Nick Gusto (Richard Conte) who didn't want any of this and had tried numerous times to convince the consortium to push for piece. It's only when he's the last one left does he really have any sway, and it all leads to Tony's invitation to Don Gusto's daughter's wedding, and the tense, anything-can-happen environment.

Nothing about it is as straightforward. Tony seems to have ice in his veins, but family, friendships, these have meaning for him, it's where he's vulnerable and he knows it. The scenes where he brings Sandra to stay with his parents, and the awkward-yet-sweet encounters that occur there. There's no definition to what Tony and Sandra are to each other, except that they're family now.

I loved this movie. I'll be eagle eyed looking out for a physical media release. It deserves some special treatment.

KWIF: Bullet Train (+6)

Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. I usually write this on a Sunday.  Today is Wednesday. This entry covers the past two and a half weeks minus some rewatches.

Bullet Train (2022, d. David Leitch - AmazonPrime)
The Visitor (1979, d. Giulio Paradisi - tubi)
Galaxy of Terror (1980, d. Bruce D. Clark - tubi)
Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige's Best Last Day Ever) (2012, d. Robert Sarkies - tubi)
Hercules (1983, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
The Dungeonmaster (1984, d. [x6] - tubi)
The Young Master (1980, d. Jackie Chan - Crave) 

---

Sitting pretty evenly between the stylish cool of John Wick (and his world largely populated by assassins) and the overwhelmingly frenetic comedic tone of Deadpool 2 (both in which director Leitch had a hand), Bullet Train is both highly entertaining and allcaps A LOT.

A necessary bio-break meant pausing the movie, and with half the players seemingly dead or out of the picture, I thought "surely we're about to hit the endgame". But the time elapsed showing on screen read 1 hour 10 minutes with another 50+ left to go. That seemed like too much movie. And it was!

Though I was never bored in this latter half of the film, it did lose a lot of its mojo when the boss level shows up, mainly because, at this point, it started to incorrectly think we cared about the larger story it'd been attempting to weave. The problem is Brad Pitt's Ladybug is our central POV character and he's utterly circumstantial to the whole affair of this underlying story, so while the film is trying to invest us in its story from an insider's perspective, we're actually tracking it as an outsider. And given Ladybug's sort of laissez-faire attitude, the film shouldn't care as much about the story as it does. I certainly didn't.

The film does a better job at getting us to care about many of its characters, largely a lot of ruthless killers (Ladybug being the "no guns", trying-to-find-zen exception). Lemon and Tangerine are "The Twins", played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are both immensely charismatic in this, which sort of neuters their intimidation factor. They're supposed to be a couple of psychos, the dialogue keeps reminding us of this, but the performances and characterization don't really show it.

As said, a very entertaining movie, but also one that constantly thinks were too dumb to keep up with it (given the shape of the world, there may be a point there). It's continually doing visual cutaways or brief flashbacks to moments or objects or people from earlier in the film, because it thinks we've forgotten or aren't paying attention? It also takes a lot of side trips into the various characters histories, but in a very inconsistent manner (some players get extensive history sequences, others don't get any). This imbalance would be more bothersome if the film had any room to breathe, but it's pretty go-go-go from the get go.

There is a lot to drive an astute film goer nuts within Bullet Train, and I can see how the vast amount of real-world improbabilities and impossibilities, on top of the overbearing cinematic devices used in telling its story would be frustrating, annoying or maddening, if you let it be. There's a better, cleaner film within what's presented, sure, but that's not really what its striving for. Taking it just as surface level entertainment, it delivers pretty highly.

[Toasty's take (we agree)]

---

Something I enjoy doing all too much is browsing the ghastly Fox-owned streaming service Tubi. It is absolutely overloaded with content with zero discretion as to quality or subject matter. It is currently the best source for 70's/80's also-ran/B-grade genre schlock, the kind that used to lure you in at the video store with a lurid tape-box/sleeve cover image (often a painting of some kind) that falsely presented intoned a film with scale and quality far beyond its means. 

The Visitor jumped out at me primarily because of cast: a young, already leathery-looking Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters....  Names like these in schlock is never a demarcation of quality, but it is a lure, as was its description that promised demonitc, telepathic children and an "intergalactic tug-of-war". My mind, as it so often did with the text on the back of the VHS box (paired with the front-of-box painting), reeled with with potential.

The film opens with that potential revealing itself via a stark, desert-like wasteland with an ever-so-alien sky, shot with all manner of low-budge effects tricks. It's very striking. An impressive soundtrack of tones and whistles and scratching strings accompanies a sudden snowfall as a haggard, cloaked old man faces off against an unknown cloaked silhouette.  It's 4 minutes of ominous, menacing, wordless visuals which falls apart the moment a talking head starts to try and fill in the eye-roling mythos for this tale, as a christ-like figure explains its good-vs-evil concept to a group of bald, white robed children in an indoor arboretum.  The film crashes and burns the moment the overwhelmingly 70's funk horns start blaring as we're transitioned to a 5 minute sequence of a basketball game (culminating in a ball exploding, no questions asked) during which any sense of the fantasy of what came before is completely lost.

The film doesn't know what direction its going it, its not at all confident in its plot. I heard tell (via a later listening to the Video Archives podcast) that this was originally scripted as a proposed sequel to a sort of demon-seed pregnancy movie then re-formed into a sci-fi horror.  The kind of confused conception is evident, and the storytelling never settles into its more fantastical plot.  It could have been the original The Orphan had it not reached too high.  It's too boring to be bonkers, ironic viewing, and it's too bonkers to even approach being good. 

BUT IS IT HORROR?
It's more genre thriller or suspense than horror, at least it's trying to be.

---

Galaxy of Terror, from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, does a good job at feeling like a film ahead of its time, and by that I mean you could easily mistake it for a cheesy rip-off of sci-fi horror films from 1987 as opposed to 1980.  What works in the film's favour is its incredible set designs, it's moderately competent special effects, and some costuming that isn't outright embarrassing.  The acting is fine but the script is garbage nonsense that doesn't matter.  It's almost like it was written to employ sets, creatures, models and costumes that Corman already had sitting around, and less like they were constructed solely for the purpose of this picture.  I'm sure it's a mix of the two.

A rag-tag team on a rescue mission arrive on a strange planet and encounter the same dangers the prior crew clearly died from.  It's a film built entirely around set-pieces, gross-out gags and tentacle rape.  Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and others sleepwalk through the meaningless dialogue and tolerate the humiliating horror gags they're forced to suffer through to collect their paycheck.

It's said that James Cameron was working effects on this, when he requested to do second unit filming of the sets to give them more coverage, which got him noticed for his first directorial gig, Piranha 2.  The trivia on this film is kind of more interesting than the film itself.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
sure, barely. It's surely horrible.

---

So many of the Kiwi comedy films I've seen seem to center around naive simpletons or awkward oddballs (or both), and I've generally been quite receptive to that sort of thing. There's a subtle, sly tone and balance these films have to sustain, seeing the humour in the oddities of the characters, but also retaining some sense of empathy and affection for them. We want them to succeed, or at least find some growth in their journey (although it seems a particular NZ trait for these characters to kind of learn nothing or refuse to change). 

Two Little Boys (or it's original name, Nige and Deano's Best Last Day Ever) centers its story around two nitwits who are trying to cover up the accidental killing of a Norwegian backpacker in the opening moments of the film, which makes it particularly tough to invest in these characters. I don't know that we want them to get away with it, or if we're even supposed to (Nige's guilt being what it is).

Nige and Deano are estranged best friends reunited by the accident, but very quickly the toxic nature of their relationship returns, and it's clear why Nige wanted to end the friendship in the first place. 

So, if the film doesn't really want us to want the boys to get away with manslaughter, and if it doesn't want us to hope for reconciliation than what outcome exactly are we supposed to want here?

It's not a poorly done movie. There's some interesting editing choices, some fine needledrops, and even some fun vfx and camera trickery. McKenzie, Blake and Pohatu are all really quite good, inhabiting their roles well, making me quickly forget their more prominent personas in Flight of the Conchords, Lego Masters and Wellington Paranormal where I know them each well, but it's just fundamentally flawed story with a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion (and an even more unsatisfying coda).

---

I've watched a couple of Hercules movies in the past year, and they are, when in the hands of Italian filmmakers, passable escapist entertainment.  This one, though, is a spectacularly ill-conceived peplum that tries to smush together all of Hercules' 12 labors into one 90 minute story in an awkward mish-mash of fantasy, sci-fi and mythology that dares to rip-off Superman, Star Wars and Clash of the Titans at once but with a quarter of their budget.

The effects are pretty daring but done on a frugal budget, so they can be either read as really charming or really bad (or perhaps both?).  The costuming, though, is superb, and super sexy.  This is the best Hercules look, methinks, and the ladies are totally va-va-voom without being lurid about it. I was surprised to find the lip sync was totally on point, like, amazingly so. There are also some fairly amazing sets, which the Italians have been great at for some time, but there's also some that really feel the budget limitations.

This was under the Canon film group logo, so there's a sense that this was trying to capitalize upon the success of Masters of the Universe, by mixing sci-fi with fantasy and superheroes, but they would have to take another crack at it a few years later.

So, that final sequence...Hercules is warned that if he removes the sword from the stone, it will result in the awakening of the pheonix.  He needs the sword to fight the big bad guys, and so he does unsheath it.  The phoenix is awakened and the whole bloody island begins to collapse, killing thousands in the process? This is the big heroic ending??

---

The Dungeonmaster basically auto-played on Tubi after Hercules. I didn't select it, and I didn't intend to watch it. It opens with a sequence that plays out like an 80's glam metal music video, of a toe-headed man in glasses following in slow motion a woman in a flowing red dress through some weird local architecture that could is weird enough to be vaguely construed as "fantastical" without any set redressing.  She strips, lays on a bed, and beacons him near, only for demonic creatures to break through the wall and capture her, leaving the man, confused. Title sequence and credits. Man wakes up from dream.  The film starts with a cold open. It's rather inane.

We later see the "real life" scenario of this couple, their existence. He's a too-handsome nerd who has made a primitive 80's computer AI assistant that makes his aerobic instructor girlfriend jealous because of how much time he spends with it. Then they seem to get sucked into another dimension, she's chained up, he's in a weird costume, and a tall, deep-voiced, sallow-looking figure tells him they're going to play a game. 

What follows is a series of vignettes, each from a different director, each in a different genre, including a Mad Max-style chase and fighting a Harryhousen-esque stop-motion animate statue. None of it is particularly well-executed, and our "hero" is armed with his AI in a wrist gauntlet that serves as a total deus ex machina in every scenario.

It is supremely goofy 80's genre trash, and yet it's not unwatchable, thanks mostly to a charming Jeffrey Byron. Like most anthologies, it's not very unified, nor is this all that satisfying in whole or in part. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously, which doesn't exactly save it, but does help elevate it somewhat above some of the other more unwatchable low-low-budg fantasy trash of the era.

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I'm not as well versed in Jackie Chan's filmography as I would like to be.  Having recently watched the Police Story trilogy (I know there are more than three, but I've only seen the first three at this point), I have to say I much prefer the fight-coordination-focused Jackie Chan pictures to the stunt-set-piece-focused Jackie Chan. I mean, yes the stunts are cool but...are they maybe only cool because of the end-credits revelations showing the behind-the-scenes attempts?  As opposed to films like Drunken Master or, here, Young Master, where the film is instead built with a simple story meant to weave through a series of fighting set pieces that showcase the performers' physical prowess, Chan's inventiveness, and humour? It's not like the Police Story films take themselves overly-serious, but they're not really comedies, and the fights definitely take second fiddle to the stunts in those films.

I like Chan's sensibilities, and the sheer cleverness and comedic timing that is built into the very balletic martial arts fights needs not just the movement skills, but comedic acting chops as well to sell it all.  In Young Master, Chan and his various scene partners can run up to 10 minutes through a mesmerizing coordinated routine that is as much dance and pantomime as it is kung-fu. It is ridiculously entertaining, and not a single fight seems redundant or repetitive, somehow Chan and crew constantly keep it fresh.  The opening Dragon dance sequence is a stunner, the coordination difficulty level cranked up to 10, as two two-man teams must react to each other team, themselves within the team, and their surroundings, as they traverse the edges of water barrels and climbing to a 10-foot-high narrow platform.  It's at once joyous and intense. 

Chan's direction with Young Master is so much clearer than his Police Story 1 & 2 work, likely because they are somewhat more involved in their shooting (being shot on city streets and active locations).  He knows exactly what needs to be focused on in any given sequence, and even at this early stage in his career, seems to have a crew of people he trusts to carry out the plan, and follow the action.  Again, I don't have a deep knowledge of his repertoire, but this is a completely clean, crisp effort that doesn't attempt anything flashy behind the camera because it has absolutely no need to. The performances are all the flash needed.  An absolute gem of a movie, that I watched twice in the same week.

Shazam!

2019, d. David Sandberg - in theatre

When I walked into the theatre lobby with my family I asked for three tickets to Captain Marvel.  My daughter yanked hard on my arm and said "PAPA! NO!"  The thing is, I was thinking thinking "Shazam!" but I said "Captain Marvel", because, well, the character now known as "Shazam" was always "Captain Marvel" to me. 

If you're not steeped in comics lore, then perhaps this means nothing to you.  It's a long sordid tale of copyright infringement, lapsed use and corporate rivalries, not worth getting into in a movie that doesn't really deal with any of it.  Point is, the character now known as Shazam until recently bore the name Captain Marvel until DC finally conceded the name to their primary competition. 

Having done so, back in 2015 DC Comics relaunched the character in 2015, a reinvention that forms the foundation of what we see in Shazam! on screen.  With a new name comes a vast amount of changes for the character, his background, and his supporting cast, changes I've been reluctant to accept in comics, but after seeing the movie, I'm all in for. 

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.
Things are about to get very spoilery.

SPOILER WARNING

First, the basics.  Shazam! is the story of Billy Batson, an orphaned teen who is bestowed the power of Shazam (an acronym for wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury) by the ancient wizard Shazam who needs a new champion on Earth to protect it against the evils of the seven deadly sins. When Billy Batson says the wizard's name he is magically transformed into a beefy superhero in red tights, white cape and lightning bolt insignia.


Shazam! first reinvention is Dr. Sivana, who was sort of Captain Marvel's Lex Luthor figure.  Historically Sivana was a puny little wisp of a man, certainly not a physical counter to the brawn of Captain Marvel, but he was a mad scientist who would use said mad science to oppose the big red cheese (yes, seriously, the character was colloquially known as "the big red cheese"...not quite as inspired as "the caped crusader").  Here Sivana is played by Mark Strong (in his second DC supervillain role after playing Sinestro in the aptly maligned Green Lantern ), not a small or puny man by any measure.  As a boy in the 1970's he was one of many chosen to be the wizard's champion who failed the test of being able to resist the sins of greed, lust, envy, gluttony, pride, wrath and sloth.  Years have passed and he's scoured the world trying to find a path back to the wizard, to get his power, and he's successful, only instead of getting the wizard's power, he frees the seven deadly sins and gains their power (which is oddly the equal of Shazam's).

With the sins freed, Shazam is desperate and accepts Billy Batson (again an orphan here, one abandoned by his mother at age 5) as his champion.  Billy's been recently placed in a new foster home where five other children of varying ages and ethnicities live under the care of a very loving couple. Billy is bunked with Freddy Freeman, an enthusiastic kid and superhero fanboy (where in the real world we fanboy over comic book and movie heroes, in this world, Superman and Batman are real).  When Billy gets his powers, he looks to Freddy to help him figure things out, which Freddy does by documenting and sharing the power tests on youtube (they include lightning powers which is a new power set for the character, but makes sense for the power of Zeus).  This draws the attention of Sivana, again, craving the wizard's power and he begins to stalk Philadelphia's new superhero.

The changes here are plenty.  Billy historically was kind of a goody two-shoes, and a real go-getter (often as a boy reporter for a radio station, which seems more far fetched than being a kid who can magically transform into a superhero).  Here Billy is pretty singularly focused on finding his mother, ditching school and getting in trouble with the cops.  He's been looking out for himself for so long, he doesn't know what it's like to be looked out for by others, nor what it's like to look out for others, nor what it's like to be accepted.  The foster home dynamic is one of the film's greatest strengths.  A great cast of young actors fills in the roles of a very sweet cobbled-together family.  I was instantly endeared to all of them. 

Asher Angel, playing Billy, is like a younger, more charismatic Tobey Maguire, and even though he does some cheeky things, you can tell through his performance that he's a wounded soul who is trying to protect himself from further hurt.  He sometimes makes bad choices, but for good reasons.  Transforming into Shazam, he's played by Zachary Levi who brings his considerable charms to the screen, a real enthusiasm and zeal for the role he's playing.  He's tonally consistent with Asher's performance, if perhaps even more amped up by all the incredible things he can do.  Freddy is played by Jack Dylan Grazer who amazing at being very excitable, a motormouth, and representing a kid whose defenses to being disabled and an orphan are to be almost offensively extroverted.

Shazam! was produced with a modest budget as far as superhero films are concerned, and it keeps things pretty small-scale, but that's exactly what works for it.  The film really focuses in on the relationship between Billy/Shazam and Freddy, making it a buddy comedy in many regards.  But their quick friendship is tested by the fact that they really don't know each other all that well.  The story is a very personal one, and not just a showy power fantasy.  The fact that, in the third act, Billy shares his power with his new family means that the power fantasy isn't just exclusive to the white kids in the audience which maybe the thing I was most reticent to accept going into the film but most excited about coming out of it.  (I was spoiled to this happening by the action figures of the transformed foster kids that were released in the weeks coming into the film).

I could have gripes with how thinly portrayed Sivana is or how utterly nonthreatening the seven deadly sins are or just the nonsense rules of magic but the film is too much fun. The tone of the film is on-point for reinventing the DCU.  Where Wonder Woman and Aquaman still had to pull themselves out of the shadow of Zack Snyder's bleary, grimdark DCEU, Shazam is vibrant and lively, full of humour and a few little frights.  There's a bit of a Ghostbusters vibe to this, with some scary monsters, a few frightening scenes, but a lot of comedy bits and casual swearing.  So not for the little, little ones, but pre-teens and up should be wholly entertained.

3 Short Paragraphs: Treasure Planet

 2002, d. John Musker and Ron Clements - Disney+

Big ol' sailing ships in space?
Big ol'  no thank you.

Treasure Planet is one of the most notorious expensive budget turned box office disasters in cinema history...stacking up there with Cleopatra and Ishtar.  It's earned this reputation not because of its quality but because, of well, facts.  The numbers don't lie.  Plus, it was such a bomb, it was single-handedly responsible for Disney killing its hand-drawn animation department, its bread and butter for three quarters of a century, and killed the Disney renaissance period.  I remember it coming out at the time thinking, foremost "who cares about seeing "Treasure Island" but it space, like, at all" and secondly that it looked like it was trying too hard to get out of "Princess mode" and appeal to boys (if you look at what Disney was releasing beforehand - eg. Tarzan, Hercules, Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis) but it just couldn't shake appearances that it was young girl fodder. Clearly others thought as I did, particularly about not caring about yet another adaptation of Treasure Island.  I mean it would be another year before anyone would care about pirate tales again, and then Pirates of the Caribbean would be the only take, and they would run it into the ground. 

The insinuation of a box office bomb is that it's a bad movie, with a bad story, told badly.  And frankly, this is not that.  It's a beautifully animated movie with some real eye popping sequences, more than a few curious design delights, and it blends CGI and traditional hand drawn animation about as well as had ever been done at that point. The story itself is a somewhat straightforward take on Treasure Island with acceptable modifications made for the setting, so it's hard to mess up when you're working with a classic structure like that.  But therein lies the problem.  It feel old, dated, and the attempts at making it contemporary feel somewhat shoehorned or overblown (a "yahoo" surfing action sequence basically opening the film, a montage sequence of Jim bonding with Silver over the full song from Goo Goo Dolls).  Directors Musker and Clements had this on their wishlist for almost two decades, so they had time to work it through, and it's pretty tight, in terms of storytelling, and yet I really couldn't engage with it at all.

There's nothing ostensibly wrong with this movie, but it doesn't do anything daring.  I like some of the alien creature designs (and the addition of a shapeshifting ball of cuteness called Morph was just the right amount for a Disney movie) but the overall aesthetic of spaceships that look like traditional sailing ships of the 18th century and the wardrobe design also looking like space versions of 18th century costuming...well, it's just not to my taste.  I don't dig on that aesthetic, like, at. all.  I think the same tale that really steeped itself in a sci-fi aesthetic (clearly NOT what the directors wanted) would have appealed to me (and a broader 2002 audience) much more.  I did like that Silver and Jim developed a bond that wasn't really in the original story, and it made for the most interesting dynamic of the film, but it left Captain Amelia (a lively Emma Thompson) and family friend Dr. Doppler feeling completely ancillary to the story, and their "romance" very perfunctory.  But I was thinking instead Jim's mother should have joined them on the trip, there should be a romance between Jim's mother and Dr. Doppler and that Doppler should become Jim's mentor on their journey even though he's not as cool or tough as Silver who would be vying for Jim's affection but only to get the map.

n Paragraphs: The Gray Man

2022, Anthony & Joe Russo (You, Me and Dupree) -- Netflix

I have been suffering a dearth of watched movies. Not for a lack of movies worth watching, nor for a lack of movies-started (at least 5 in some state of "resume"), but for the lack of focus & desire. Blame work, blame video games (Animal Crossing) but more so blame my brain. I am currently in another bout of "why am I writing this?" and still not sure if I have an answer. The other symptom of this state is that I barely remembering what I just watched. Blame work, blame COVID, blame focus, blame alcohol, but I have a great inability to retain what I just watched.

But let's give it a go, as I currently in Vacation Mode, had a few days of constant rest and even my anxiety is diminishing. And we polished off a few blockbusterish flicks.

The latest not-a-superhero-movie from the Russo Bros, is pretty much the crime-spy-thriller style that Captain America: Winter Soldier was framed around, right down to the over the top action and massive destructive set pieces, collateral damage out the wazoo. Its Bourne meets Bond meets Summer Blockbuster. And its good, for its genre; I might even go as far as a Very Good.

Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton, Armageddon) recruits Ryan Gosling (Young Hercules [*snicker*]) out of prison for his CIA funded off-the-books wet work group called Sierra; Gosling will be Sierra Six, or just Six. Years later her is tasked to take out someone, botches it because he doesn't want to kill a kid (number 4 in the disruptive assassin playbook) and ends up discovering that since Fitz retired, Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page, Dungeons & Dragons), the new guy in charge of Sierra, has been doing his own thing with it, i.e. killing people for money with Six as the weapon. Six goes on the run. Carmichael sends his other best off-the-books assassin, Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans,  Knives Out), after him. On the run, Six romps around Europe, trying to find Fitz's niece, who Hansen is using as leverage. Along the way, they blow up stuff good and shoot lots of people, mostly bad guys.

This is the movie that the Other Ryan (Reynolds) wants in his action adventure romps around Europe blowing stuff up and shooting bad guys, Six Underground or Red Notice, to be. It does a great job of welding on light humour with big, bombastic action scenes. And its all wrapped up in a very good Bad Guy vs Good Guy story where we hate (but laugh at/with Hansen) while smirking along with Six while rooting for him non-stop. But not the heavy handed humour which bleeds into farce. 

And the supporting cast! Fellow CIA agents Miranda (Ana de Armas, Knives Out) and Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick, The Matrix: Resurrections)  rock amazing outfits & action scenes (Miranda) or bad suits & worse haircuts (Brewer). I liked to think of this movie as Paloma's next gig, just with another name, after her success with Bond in No Time to Die. Henwick's Brewer is such the opposite, suit wearing and following the boss down illegal rabbit holes while absorbing his abuse. Billy Bob is surprisingly less than sleazy, while Page is bureaucratic evil at its height, the true BBEG despite Hansen's outrageous homicidal proclivities. 

They are supposed to be franchise-ing this movie, but while I will watch each, I am not sure every flick needs to be done so, unless they watch to do the old school cross-over and have Six bump into the new Bond?

KWIF: The Fall Guy (+5)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (uh huh) Kent has a spotlight movie in which Kent writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else Kent watched that week (or maybe a month ago and forgot about) Kent does a quick little summary of my thoughts. Just not in third person.

This Week:
The Fall Guy (2024, d.  David Leitch - in theatre)
Millennium Actress (2001, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)
Witness (1985, d. Peter Wier - the binder)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023, d. Guy Ritchie - AmazonPrime)
Clear and Present Danger (1994, d. Phillip Noyce - the binder)
Blackhat (2015, d. Michael Mann - the binder)

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I don't know if I can really write a longer, thinker piece about The Fall Guy because it doesn't seem like much thought was put into the film itself. 

I'm being rude. 

The Fall Guy was a film I actually had a good time with, largely based on the explosive and almost effortless chemistry between Emily Blunt (Gnomeo and Juliet) and Ryan Gosling (Young Hercules) -- two extremely attractive people that look even more attractive together. Do Eva Mendes and John Krasinski need to be worried? Or at least extremely jealous?

This film is director, and former stuntman, David Leitch's love letter to stuntmen and stunt crews, wrapped in an action rom-com. Leitch over the years has proven his action-directing chops with Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, and Bullet Train. Each of those films may not have the greatest of stories, but the action tends to be really fun. 

And the action is fun here. There's a great "tripping balls" fight in a nightclub, and a swing arm garbage truck chase/fight sequence through the streets of Sydney that strive to stand out. I think the problem with post-John Wick action-heavy films is the action is too heavy and so nothing really stands out, and the same goes here.

What's more, I found the fact that we were watching a lot of stunts from the perspective of a film crew, seeing all the cameras and cables and tracks required, which was necessary as part of the film's narrative, but it ruins the illusion and lessens the impact of the stunts (most stunts, really, should inspire at least a bit of awe, but we've seen and know too much now, and they've become a little commonplace, undervalued).  I do appreciate that Leitch lets everyone in on the action, with the welcomed, if under-utilized Stephanie Hsu and Winston Duke each getting a sequence of their own, and Blunt reminding us she's more than capable of throwing fists when needed.

As a crime/mystery story, the more it reveals itself, the dumber it gets. It's a real nonsense plot which requires an acceptable amount of suspension of disbelief to start with (the star is missing, Colt is asked to discreetly track him down only to find a dead body and have things go even more wrong for him from there. But there's no real world logic to how wrong it gets, and the more you pick at it, the more it bleeds. There's only so much belief I could suspend and this stretched it to its breaking point.

What eventually made my suspension of disbeleif snap, though, was the film-within-a-film. A sci-fi epic called "Metalstorm" that looked, at best, like a sequel to Battlefield Earth. It looked like a mid-budget remake of the Barry Bostwick 80's b-movie Megaforce. This film would have you believe it was the next Dune or Star Wars, and it just looks like trash. The Fall Guy is a pretty good looking film. It really needed "Metalstorm" to look incredible, or play into it being B-movie action trash, not say it was an A-tier movie, but look like B-tier trash.

As a romcom, this is aces. I was in for every sleepy and/or doe-eyed stare that Colt and Judy give each other. Their dialogue was charming, funny and seemingly effortless in its delivery, and that split-screen sequence was terribly cute. Gosling and Blunt, all day, every day.

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Watching Perfect Blue last week felt like a revelation, like there was a piece of cinematic language missing from my vocabulary all these years which I now understood. Millennium Actress couldn't compete with that type of lifting of the veil.

It also didn't help that I just wanted to sleep the entire time it was on. 

I didn't fall asleep, though, which is a testament to how engaged I was with it (I did fall asleep while writing this post).

Once again director Kon proves his mastery at the transition and edit. Where Perfect Blue was a Giallo-tinged suspense thriller, Millennium Actress is a romantic drama that, all at once, tells us a character's life story and steps us through seventy years of Japan's cinematic history through which we get a staggering sense of Japanese history.  Let me tell you that as a viewer having a very limited amount of knowledge of Japanese history -cinematic or otherwise- it does this film a disservice.

The story is of a studio executive and a young cameraman visiting a famous, but long-retired, reclusive actress to interview her after the demolition of the studio of which she was a big part of building. The exec, who you would expect to be forceful and entitled, is instead a gushing fanboy with nothing but the utmost respect and reverence for the actress.  He presents her with a key which the actress thought lost years ago, and the totem unlocks a lifetime of memories.

The actress recounts her birth, how she was discovered by a producer, her first film, but also her encounter as a teen in the 1930s with a young artistic rebel whom she helps escape by shielding from the law. She is instantly smitten by him, a soulful artist, and the key was a gift from him which she was made to promise to return to him, what became her life's mission.

Her real life blurs into her acting roles as she describes them. Like Perfect Blue the transitions between real life and her acting are seamless and, at times, difficult to discern.  Her roles, or at least the ones that matter to her in retelling her life, are the ones of a young romantic longing for an unseen man who she desperately wants to find. The roles step through the eras and genres of film, from samurai to geisha to Kaiju to sci-fi.  All the while as she recounts her blurred story of life and work, the producer and cameraman are present in the story, the producer injecting himself into roles in the films he clearly knows so well. It turns out, he was a young production assistant during her later films at the studio and was, once or twice, a part of her story.

It's a surprising film in how down to earth it is. It is a film that deceptively seems like it should have been live action, but to have the actress span the ages she does is almost impossible for a single performer, and to have the scale of adventurous productions in her repertoire would make for an expensive film.  Plus, I don't know that any live action director alive has a handle on seamless transitions like Kon.

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For four years I had an art teacher in high school who loved Peter Weir films, and would play them in class while we were toiling away on our sketches. I've seen Dead Poets Society, Green Card, and Fearless numerous times. Of the three, only the latter did I actually like.  If you look at the release dates of those films, you can tell which years I went to high school (accounting for the delay between theatrical and home video release). I don't know why, if he was such a fan, we never saw The Cars that Ate Paris, Gallipoli, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Mosquito Coast, or Witness.

I have just assumed all this time that I'm not a Peter Weir fan. And I'm not. But I've spent some time thinking I'm opposed to Peter Weir, and, after watching Witness for the first time, it turns out I'm not. 

Witness is a surprisingly patient movie from an era of filmmaking where its action movies were increasingly bombastic and its thrillers were full of sex, violence and cliches. This lacks almost any bombastic action, and there's no sex, an anti-violence message, and its cliches are tossed out the side of the horse-drawn buggy. 

It's got plenty of Amish. And I thought this story of a police man protecting a young Amish boy (Lucas Haas, Mars Attacks) who witnessed a murder would be full of crude, reductive stereotyping of the community instead places Harrison Ford (Working Girl) as Captain John Book within the community where he is largely respectful of its traditions, keen to help out, and even finds a bit of peace while he's there. 

He also starts falling for Rachael (Kelly McGillis, Stake Land) the boy's mother, but also keeps his hands to himself, respectfully remembering they are people of two very different worlds.  There is an intense attraction between the two of them that just builds until, following the climactic conflict between Book and the bad guys, deflates like a balloon. The scene of Rachael looking out her window to see Book chatting up his police pals by their cop cars, smoking a cigarette, it is just an incredible moment that reinforces the gulf that separates the two of them. The thread of attraction that seemed to grow inot a bridge made out of stone turns out to just be a wispy thin thread.

Along with the film's climax -- where Weir, instead of delivering that oh-so-American release of catharsis and shooting up the bad guy instead ends with an appeal to his humanity -- proves the director isn't interested in the most satisfying ending for the audience, but the one that feels most real.

This is a pretty great movie, held down by a drone of a score that might as well not have been there at all, and one of the most awkward impassioned kissing scenes I've seen.

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One of the dumbest titles in recent cinematic history, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre finds Guy Ritchie delivering a script with plenty of charming flourishes, and leading a cast where everyone seems game (even Jason Statham (The Beekeeper), well, at least for the first 20 minutes where he flirts with the idea of adopting a character before he falls back into default Statham mode). 

Josh Hartnett (Halloween H20) does that "proof I can be funny" supporting role mid-life crisis thing that modern actors have done since Tom Cruise appeared in Tropic Thunder. He's good, and handsome, and, yes, funny playing a pompous, pampered superstar actor (if we're comparing, he does a better job than Aaron Taylor Johnson in the same role in The Fall Guy).  Aubrey Plaza (Ingrid Goes West) sometimes feels like she's in the wrong movie, but I would watch that movie. Cary Elwes (Robin Hood: Men In Tights) gets some good cracks, and Hugh Grant (Wonka) genuinely seems to be enjoying himself. 

There is that odd take in the elevator with Hartnett where Grant breaks after barely delivering his line... which speaks to one of the larger problems of this film: it feels unrefined. There's a lack of care, and certainly a lack of flair to the overall production. It doesn't look great, it looks barely a cut above, say, Burn Notice or some other action TV series. This obviously wasn't a cheap movie, so why then does Ritchie's work on Netflix's The Gentlemen TV series look so much better? The editing here proves serviceable but we've been so locked into the idea that Ritchie movies are highly stylized, that this largely doesn't feel like a Ritchie movie. 

Ritchie already did his take on Bond with Man from U.N.C.L.E., while this feels like his riff on Mission Impossible if it were done by Asylum. It's certainly inessential to his repertoire.  I think the director just likes to work, he's found a mid-range groove and he's maybe going to coast there for the rest of his career.

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The third entry in the Jack Ryan "series" (and the second with Harrison Ford [Cowboys & Aliens] in the role) finds Ryan becoming embroiled in the "War on Drugs". The PotUS's friend is found murdered alongside his whole family, the culprits being the Cali Cartel. The President wants swift retribution, under the guise of the War on Drugs, and discreetly has his national security advisor run an off-the-books operation to take out the head of the cartel.

When Ryan's friend and mentor Admiral Greer (James Earle Jones, Conan The Barbarian) falls ill, Ryan takes his place as Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA. He is dispensed to Columbia to try and find other means to cutting off the supply chains to the US.  He petitions Congress for more funds, and Congress agrees so long as no military engagement is enacted. Little does he know he is set up to be the fall guy for it.  

The film is a pretty taut political thriller that falls apart only with a jingoistic third act that finds Ryan single handedly going to Columbia to bring back the soldiers left behind by the NSA.  It turns into a ridiculously out-of-place rescue-the-POWs action sequence that neuters the political intrigue that had been the film's raison d'etre up til that point. 

The finale of the film finds Ford's Ryan dressing down the President ("How dare you, sir!") by holding the most powerful position in the land to a standards of decency and responsibility that have absolutely been abandoned in the past decade. It's perhaps the most upsetting (and unintentional) note of the film.

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In the past dozen years of massive disastrous box office performances, Blackhat still stands out as one of the biggest bombs, recouping under 20 million of its 70 million dollar budget.  

It's not just that the film tanked at the box office, but it was both critically and socially derided at the time. That beautiful brick wall of a man, Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself, playing a nerdy master computer hacker. It was laughable in its very conception.

But a funny thing happened in the years since, the Michael Mann fans have managed to drown out the knee-jerk reactionaries and get the film into a "reclaimed" status. Certainly the podcasts and socials I feed into have been saying as such for a couple years now.

Having seen the film (then forgetting to log it) I have to say, bluntly, not bad. In fact, good. Not great, certainly flawed, but good.

My biggest gripe with the film is how Mann shot it.  It's a film that puts Mann in Steven Soderbergh mode, using a lot of different types of digital cameras and lenses and I found jumping between them quite distracting.

The film begins with a nuclear power station melting down. It was hacked and the cyberwarfare arm of the People's Liberation Army want to find the culprit. Captain Chen (Leehom Wang) of the division aligns with the FBI in the US, needing genius-level hacker (and his college roommate) Nick Hathaway freed from prison in order to sniff out whomever was capable of such an attack.  A subsequent attack on the stock market only exacerbates the need to find the culprit.  

It's a pretty taut globetrotting cyber-thriller all told. It takes some tense and scary turns as it leans into just how reliant we are upon technology, and just how vulnerable that technology is to malicious interference.

I can ignore the sketchy accent, and I can even buy into Hemsworth as a hacker, but how did Hathaway get so adept at knife fighting and shooting guns? There was a lot of nonsense in the film, questions raised and never answer, but I still just rolled with it and enjoyed the ride.

I had just watched Decision to Leave the night before watching this, so I was pumped for more Tang Wei and this did not disappoint in that regard. Loved the cast which also features Holt McCallany and Viola Davis.