KWIF: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's week in film. Busy weekend plus work stress equals late reviews. 

This Week:
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026, d. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett - in theatre)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (aka "Toki o Kakeru Shōjo" - 1983, d. Nobuhiko Ōbayashi - blu-ray)
Reach for the Sky (aka "La championne","Tales for all #12" - 1991, d. Elisabeta Bostan - Crave)

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[Caution, spoilers for the first Ready or Not]

When we last saw Grace (Samara Weaving), she had just exited the mansion of the family of the man she just married, her wedding dress soaked in his blood, and the house on fire behind her. She sits down and has a cigarette as the first responders rush the scene. This sequel to Ready or Not pick up from that moment, with Grace being rushed to the hospital and passing out. When she awakens, she is immediately interrogated by a police detective, given that there were a few bodies found in the house and she was covered in blood (and perhaps some suspicion of arson).  Also, her emergency contact is her estranged sister, Hope (Kathryn Newton, Quantumania) who arrives only to continue their bitter relationship.

Meanwhile, some shenanigans with the devil-worshipping rich is happening in the background. It turns out that the deaths of the family Grace married into means that the head seat of this world-controlling cabal is now open.  The calls are made, the players are introduced, and everyone, except Grace, understands that the game is on. She will understand soon enough.

Grace (along with Hope) is kidnapped and coerced into yet another game of hide and seek at a new estate, to be hunted by the rich fucks who she's not even married into this time (at least, not yet).

Ready or Not 2 (why it's not just called Ready or Not, Here I Come without the "2" in between I really just don't understand) is not that vastly different from the first movie in terms of the events in play. Grace has just come through a traumatic experience and now is thrust right into another one. She hasn't had time to process and Weaving is really good at showing that Grace is a shaky mess. She may have found some internal strength in the first go-around, but she's not a total badass this time around, especially when she's handcuffed to her younger sister and they argue more than cooperate.

Hunting them are five different families (it was six, but one of them, played by Kevin Durand, was too eager and coked-up and tried to start the game before it was officially started, and "Mr. LeBail" blew him up but good). By the rules only one member of the family can hunt at a time, but should that member parish in the process, the next family member can step in. If any one of the seekers kills another seeker, Mr. LeBail would be displeased and their whole family lineage would be eradicated. Each of the families has to hunt Grace with a weapon of the era in which their ancestor first made the pact with Mr. LeBail.  All of this leads to some enjoyable variations in hunting styles and quirks in the game to differentiate it from the previous film. The hunters include Sarah Michelle Gellar (Cruel Intentions), Shawn Hatosay (The Pitt), Nestor Carbonell (The Tick), Olivia Cheng (Entertainment Tonight Canada) and more Canadian supporting players (gotta get that tax credit!), plus Elijah Wood as the lawyer and a cameo from David Cronenberg.

Given the stakes at play, the hunters each have the same agenda, but their appetites for the hunt all vary, and so there's more than just "I'm going to kill you" attitudes on the field. 

Much like the first film, this falls into the "horror, not horror" category. It's not really scary or intense, although there's one scene in which a character is beaten so savagely by another character (who clearly is coded a sociopathic misogynist) that it's pretty uncomfortable where the rest of the film is pretty light on its feet. It is meant to introduce stakes, and that this character, if to obtain the high seat, would mean something pretty dire for the world, so there is a point to it...but it's not a fine point, and it's not used tactfully. That savage beating is tempered by being intercut with the most whimsical fight set to Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, so you take the good, you take the bad....

Grace and Hope's strained relationship creates an additional conflict dynamic in a film whose premise is all conflict anyway, so it adds another rung on the ladder for the hero to climb. Conceptually the estrangement between them is not a bad idea, however, when the characters get into the weeds of their conflict, it's...too familiar. In fact I'm pretty sure the issues between them, and even the words they say, were almost verbatim to those between Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in Scream 6... directed by the same writer/directors of this film and co-written by Guy Busick, the same co-writer of this film. Like, really? Thought we wouldn't notice?

Anyway, it's absurd, it's violent, and there's quite a bit of fun to be had, but the one thing RON2HIC lacks is the surprises that the first one had, so in that regards, there's some diminishing returns. I'm not sure that this franchise has further legs beyond this one (when the stakes are the fate of the world, there's almost nowhere else to go, unless it's ... I dunno... Ready or Not in Space or franchise crossover like Ready or Not vs Predator, or Ready or Not Go(es) to Hell...[ok, I think I just sold myself on three viable sequels.]) But, of course, I love "the most dangerous game" stories, so this still worked for me.

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In our ongoing (if now infrequent) feature "Toast and Kent Go Loopty-Loo", we covered the 2006 anime feature The Girl Who Leapt Through Time through the lens of it being a time-loop movie. I think we made a fairly good case that it fit the bill, even if does not follow suit with the usual time loop cliches.

While we worked on that Loopty-Loo I learned in my (very limited) research on the film that it was effectively a sequel to the original prose story (originally serialized in 1967), one that it's been adapted many, many times into film, television, manga and even a stage play.  House director Nobuhiko Ōbayashi 1983 adaptation is my first encounter with a more straight adaptation of this very popular story.

But it is clearly not a time loop, far less so than the anime.

Teen Kazuko Yoshiyama (pop idol Tomoyo Harada, in her debut role) daydreams of her ideal boyfriend, while her small-bladdered friend Goro Horikawa (seriously, he mentions needing to pee a lot) and her tall, quiet, flower-loving friend Fukamachi Kazuo unknowingly become part of a her love triangle.  Nobody, including Yoshiyama herself, seems to understand the complicated feelings she has for both these boys beyond the friendships that she's known since childhood. 

At the end of a school day (on a Saturday?) the trio are cleaning up the science lab (which apparently has had mysterious instances over the past few days) when Yoshiyama enters the chemicals storage room only to find a flask has shattered on the ground and the resulting spill is smoking. She thinks someone was in the locked room, but no one is there. She passes out as a result of the fumes.

When she awakes in the nurse's office she relays what had happened, only nobody saw any broken glass or sign of spill. She said she smelled lavendar.  She walks home with her two boys, Goro's house first along the way, and then Kazuo's house where he lives with his grandparents where she is invited for tea. She fixates on the greenhouse, where she smells lavender, and inside she becomes a bit woozy and decides to skip tea and go home.

And then strange things begin to happen. Her movements through life start happening in a confusing pattern. In math class she doesn't understand the work, as if she's missed a lesson (and Goro sleeps through class) and in the evening there's an earthquake, and the place next to Goro's house catches fire. The next day, there's an impossible time on her digital alarm clock, she's late to school. She rushes and catches up with a sluggish Goro only to see the clay tiles of a roof come sliding down about to crush him. She rushes to save him, only to awaken to what she thinks was a dream.

And then she relives those two days again, aware that she's experiencing something unique and also becoming more aware of her feelings for Kazuo (less aware of her feelings for Goro)...only to learn that Kazuo is a time traveler from the future with telepathic powers of mind control, implanting false thoughts, feelings and memories in the people around him. Nothing problematic there (at least his objective is to learn about the plants of the past for there are so few in his dystopian future, and not to romance Yoshiyama...and in fact seems pretty distant from actually loving her back).

I guess you could call those two-ish days a "loop", but in the context of the film it's really time travel, as she ultimately winds up traveling through her own lifespan, witnessing events from her life from outside (but she can't stay long as two versions of herself cannot occupy the same time).

The surface of this rendition of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a melancholy journey exploring youthful yearnings for love, and how truly little we understand when we're that age. The film ends with Yoshiyama, now an adult scientist, focused solely on career and not at all on love. When Kazuo left and erased her memories, he fundamentally broke something inside her. 

There's an interesting conceptual idea here, that Kazuo interfered with the love that was supposed to bloom between Kazuko and Goro, and because of his interference it never happened. There's no "butterfly effect" to this in the film, but it's clearly what happened. And it doesn't need to have a sci-fi/fantasy trigger, it could be a normal situation where an outsider steps into a blossoming relationship and destroys the moment or moments where that relationship could have happened.

The time travel aspect of this film is fantasy nonsense, there's no true explanation for it, but it serves a purpose in exploring this moment in time in a play on the coming-of-age story. The fact that Kazuo has mental powers (most people from the future have some paranormal abilities, he explains) is pure real deus ex machina, but not far from usual for deus ex machinas to be employed in Japanese storytelling (at least from my limited exposure).

Director Ōbayashi had a fairly prolific career, but the only prior work of his I've seen is his most infamous work, House. It's a fever dream with an atomic bomb/generational trauma metaphor that I totally didn't jibe with, but perhaps need to revisit. Ōbayashi made his reputation on wild stylization and outre visual effect, which are on display here, though mostly reserved for the third act. Some of his techniques harken to the silent film era, others employing early blue screen technology. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time feels more akin to something Guy Madden would make, rather than Kurosawa (whom he would work with on documenting the making of Dreams). But it's a testament to the director's interests that the film truly focuses on the emotional journey of Kazuko Yoshiyama, placing less emphasis on the strange events affecting her life. 

While not monumentally mindblowing, this adaptation of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time still feels like a unique an important artifact both in the director's repertoire and of Japanese pop culture. (Also, the theme song is a banger, but it's not yacht rock despite that Doobie Bounce).

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A dozen films into the "Tales for all" series of Quebec-produced films for older kids/young adults, and the pattern, if there is one, is that each film plays in a different genre or story trope sandbox. In some respects it feels like the "Tales for all" films are meant to be someone's first, and perhaps only exposure to the filmic medium. 

In this case Reach for the Sky ("La championne", or "The Champion" in French) is the "Tales for all" version of a young adult sports competition movie... I'm specifically thinking the likes of The Karate Kid here. The only thing is the typical sports drama is full of tension, rivalries, and intense hormone-fuelled emotions of the youth.  But Reach for the Sky features a surprising dearth of drama.

A co-production with Romania and shot in Romania with a largely local cast (this film doesn't have the same problem so many other "Tales for all" do, which is cast members all from different regions speaking different languages and thus all voice performances, regardless of which language track you choose, are dubbed) it postulates itself in its opening moments as a peek inside the famous Deva training facility in Transylvania which produced many gymnastics champions, like Nadia Comăneci.

Young Corina (Izabela Moldovan), at 10 years old, has a deep desire to be a champion in gymnastics. She implores her local coach Mircea (Mircea Diaconu, who would go on to be a pretty big time politician) to take her to the next level, to do tryouts for Deva. Despite her father's objection, she goes. She's told she's too old, and not strong enough. She fails the audition. She's crushed. Mircea, though, seems to have a stubborn pride and commits to training her with ferocity, and when it comes time to reapply, she's not only accepted but Mircea is as well, as an assistant coach to former champion Lili Oprescu (Carmen Galin).  

Lili's approach to training is firm but full of tenderness, and the kids absolutely love her. When coach Lili accepts a new job to coach the Lichtenstein youth, Mircea takes over, and he is so the opposite:  harsh, brutal, uncompromising, full of toxic rage. He flicks the children in the head, calls them idiots, and pushes their young bodies to extremes. It is, put bluntly, abuse...but the film tries to reframe it as the champion's way, what's needed to push these kids to the next level, to international-level competitors. 

In a traditional North American-styled film, Mircea would be the villain, but he is not. He's clearly not a good guy when training these kids, but the film never specifically admonishes him for it. 

In a traditional North American-styled film, we would see Corina having a nemesis, someone she is either training with who is her rival, a mean kid who torments her...or on the international level some stuck up asshole American kid who denegrates her country and her people...something to really fan the flames...but Corina has no rival at all here, save for her own internal struggle with willpower in the face of severe abuse. 

In a traditional North American-styled film, Coach Lili leaving would be another rivalry, Coach vs. Coach, and when the third act comes to the big international competition, there is the framing that Lili is, for some reason, the bad guy, but otherwise the script never gives us a reason to dislike her (we have far more to dislike about Mircea).

In a traditional North American-styled film, it would ask if our young hero could conquer their base desires and become their respective sporting champion through training, self-control, and superhuman determination? And this film does indeed ask that, but with virtually no drama or stakes other than Corina's desire to be a winner.

Not to spoil it, but she does win, despite the film, at every turn, showing us she just doesn't have the chops. At one point she quits and runs away, tired of Mircea's abuse (go girl, get out). But like many an abuse victim, she returns to her abuser, too worried about what life would be like away from him.  So the fact that she comes up with the perfect routines when it really counts is nice an all, but even the framing of it, the editing and the shot structure, it doesn't capture the drama. At no point are we really given scores to track or any nail biting tension of "hey, this is her weakest event and she needs to do X to pull out the win, can she do it"?  

It's not entirely colourless, as the peek into the severity of Romanian gymnastics training present here is, if anything, truth (or, perhaps even less severe than reality, but far from sugar-coated), so there is a bit of flare there, but otherwise it's a pretty drab picture where the stakes (beyond the unintentional concern for the health and wellbeing of these younglings) are quite low. 

Of all the "Tales for all" I think this one is most ripe for a remake/reimagining, especially given how much has been revealed about Deva since.

Horror, Not Horror (again), pt. 1 - Ketchup-as-blood

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

The Vast of Night - 2019, d. Andrew Patterson -amazonprime

Vivarium - 2019, d.  Lorcan Finnegan  - crave

Ready or Not - 2019, d  - crave

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Modern filmmaking tends to be about quick edits, so when a film consists primarily of tracking shots, it stands out if for no other reason than how it begs the viewer to follow along with it.  The Vast of Night opens with a long tracking shot through small town New Mexico in the 1950s, following along with Everett the local radio DJ who seems like the town's key problem solver as he walks through the high school gymnasium being readied for the big basketball game.  He runs into Fay who works as a telephone switch operator, and they have a walk and talk.  They have a playful dynamic but it's clear Fay is sweet on Everett but he only has eyes for getting out of town and implores Fay to do the same. 

He goes to his radio job (even though the whole town is at the basketball game and nobody is probably listening) while Fay goes to her operator job (even though the whole town is at the basketball game and nobody is probably calling).  There, she listens to Everett on the radio, but starts experiencing some weird noise, not exactly static.  Likewise, a phone call comes in about strange lights and gets cut off by a similar noise.  Fay calls Everett and asks about the interference, which he then reaches out to the listening audience and receives a call from a retired military man who explains about some very strange things, lights, sounds, materials, things he's seen.  The camera work throughout this lingers, rarely cutting, occasionally fading out as people talk as if to say "just listen".  It's strange, but effective, lulling you into this almost meditative experience of a possible UFO sighting in progress.

It's an atmospheric movie, with space to breathe, and it tells its story through telling stories.  It's such a unique experience maintaining its own sense of tranquility while simultaneously ratcheting up the tension as Everett and Kay explore these sights and sounds and calls on their own while the town is otherwise largely oblivious to what goes on.

Patterson's direction is confident and masterful, the editing equally purposeful and meaningful.  The attention to detail here, not just the era-specific sets and clothing, but the dialogue, the language of 50's radio, the little details like statements Everett employs in talking with others before putting them on air or how he feeds a reel-to-reel tape extremely quickly, adds a tangible and engrossing believability to procedure.  The stars, Sierra McCormick as Fay and Jake Horowitz as Everett, both unknown commodities to me, nail their roles perfectly, each conveying more in what they're not saying, even though they have so much dialogue.  Just a wonderfully realized movie, astonishingly so for a 700K budget.  Nothing terribly horrifying about it, though it employs "Raimi-cam" at least once during the picture which seemed an obvious homage to me.

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Vivarium has been on my radar for a while, despite my general aversion to Jesse Eisenberg (see my Art of Self Defense review), but the concept of a couple being trapped in isolation in an endless suburbia seemed too intriguing to me to care about who was starring in it.

Paired with Imogen Poots, he's playing an ex-pat groundskeeper in the UK, while Poots is a grade school teacher.  We don't get much of a glimpse of their life but the film gives subtle displays of their playful chemistry and even hints as their rougher nature underneath.  Jesse, your American is showing.

They decide to have a look at the suburb development of Yonder, an ugly, ugly community of nothing but the same stock green house and same size fenced back yard.  Their guide, Martin, is a disturbingly false-looking person, his mannerisms odd and his smile disingenuous, and he has a nervous habit of mimicking the pair.  He indicates that this is the perfect place for them, the perfect place for their family.  They look around the bland, stale home and when they return from the back yard, Martin is gone...but in leaving the house they find they're unable to leave the community.  There's no way out, they just keep passing house number 9 with the door left open.  After hours of driving, they wind up inside, opening the gift basket in the fridge, eating the tasteless strawberries and drinking champagne.

A box arrives containing all the essentials, but in Yonder labeled packaging.  Getting up on the roof, the skyline is nothing but Yonder as far as the eye can see and the same cloud repeating over and over again, as if they're in an unimaginative simulation.  Days later another package arrives (no one is seen dropping it off) and it's a baby, and the box label notes "raise the child and you may leave".

We step through this couple's life as they raise this child, who seems to grow an a much more rapid clip than they age, but there's definitely something wrong with that boy.  In fact, he looks (and acts) a little like Martin, but also mimicing the words and traits of each of them.  As a couple they start to get more and more distanced, the more she spends time with the child, and he digs a hole in the disturbing soil out front.  Their sanity is in question, but that isn't the test.

The film is absolutely a metaphor for expectations, expectations in getting married, settling down, raising a family, and it has the bleakest of outlooks on this experience...and yet it does intrinsically understand it.  It understands how horrifying it is to see yourself reflected in your child but in a way that feels alien.  It understands how domesticity can come between a couple even though they're in it together.  It understands the desire that men have to escape their situation and understands that while women may have the same desire, they tend to have stronger nurturing instincts prevent them from outright abandoning a child.  There's a commentary on nature versus nurture, and in this reality, nature wins out.

Vivarium's opening credits is basically a montage of the progression of the Cuckoo bird that lays its egg in another birds nest, hatches with its false siblings, and then forces them out of the nest before taking all it can get from the mother.  The child, despite any nurturing, has its nature, and it follows it.  It's a grimy, ugly, film, that serves up a horrifying allegory.  It's not exactly a horror movie, but it's definitely disturbing and weird... which I like more than straight up horror.

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When I think of "Horror, Not Horror" films, Ready or Not is exactly the kind of film I'm thinking of.  It's a film that takes the tropes of horror but says "not today" and doesn't take said tropes very seriously.  Instead its gruesome gags are more for humour than frights.

In Ready or Not a new bride Grace (Samara Weaving) is compelled by her new family to play a game at midnight on their wedding night, as is tradition, something this family is very big on.  They had made their money on the back of a successful board game empire so there's a sense of logic Grace can't object to.  She's also an orphan and so delighted to have a real family that she's working hard to be accepted.  Her husband, meanwhile, had tried to leave the family behind him, but returned at Grace's request.

The selection of the game first comes with a strange story, a family legend, and a mysterious box.  You place a blank playing card in the box, and it spits out the game to play.  Grace, unfortunately, selects hide and seek, and tensions raise in the room. Grace laughs and heads out in her wedding dress to find a hiding location while the family debate whether to proceed with their ritualistic hunting game.  But of course they have to, for they believe their family to be cursed if they don't follow tradition, and the game is part of tradition. Sacrifice the bride, or they will all die.

And so the hunt begins, and it's a bit like Clue with the help all getting murdered first in shockingly absurd situations.  And not everyone is as into the game as the others, but most are willing to play along.

Ready or Not could have very easily fallen into tedium but it's darkly comedic sensibility, and its faith in the intelligence of its characters provides for more than a few surprises, and definitely some exciting and even tense moments.  But more than anything this is a playful movie, which is perfect for its backdrop.

The cast is surprisingly stacked for what I first thought was just a small little horror movie.  Andie MacDowell is great as the family patriarch, while "that guy" Henry Czerny plays incompetent zealot very, very well.  Adam Brody and Mark O'Brien are believable as brothers, with an affectionate in-it-together attitude, while Melanie Scrofano (the lead of Wynonna Earp, but also Letterkenny's Mrs. McMurry) and Kristian Bruun (Orphan Black) provide the outright comic relief as the sister and her husband (respectively).  Not very horrifying, rather just kind of fun (and a little gross).

[Toast's spoiler-y Ready or Not review: we agree]

Summer Chills: Abigail

2024, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not) -- download

We usually reserve horror-ish movies for the "31 Days of Halloween" but sometimes we are just in the mood for something Halloween-ish.

Two things. One, I am not all that bothered by spoilers any longer; after The Matrix was spoiled for me, I got over it. But Two, I really am annoyed by movies that set themselves up with a "you are not supposed to know _____" in the opening act, yet still base their entire marketing campaigns on telling your what _____ was. Like, are we still so stuck on particular formulas to screenplay writing that we have to write the "oooooo, you will never see this coming" but immediately toss it away as unnecessary? 

So, in case you are not me, and dislike being spoiled, skip reading the post now.

The little girl they kidnap is a vampire. I mean, its the fucking premise of the movie.

Again, that said, knowing didn't ruin anything to me, and waiting for the characters to get there was kind of fun. In fact, that they go quickly into the, "ok, so she's a fucking vampire, how do we deal with THAT?!?!?" is hilarious. That said, its not really a comedy, but a funny, action, horror-ish movie.

Six low-rent criminals follow the entourage of an obviously very rich little girl after her ballet practice,  back to her penthouse and kidnap her. They then drive her back to a mysterious mansion in the countryside. We have the thug Peter (Kevin Durand, Swamp Thing), the sleazebag wheelman Dean (Angus Cloud, Euphoria), punk hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton, Freaky), sniper Rickles (William Catlett, Black Lightning), boss Frank (Dan Stevens, Legion) and all-around support Joey (Melissa Barrera, Scream). Yes, those are the names of the Rat Pack; low-rent criminals use aliases.

FYI the two names you don't recognize are Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford; if you knew who they were, your Rat Pack game is bigger than mine. Congrats.

Once inside the mansion they are instructed to bide their time while the fixer who arranged this job gets the ransom money. Joey, the pretty criminal, is tasked with being the only face the little girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir, Wicked Little Letters), will see and is meant to keep the girl calm & safe. In turn Abigail fucks with Joey, telling her father doesn't care about her, and apologizes as to what is going to come next. Frank is not thrilled about this ominous comment, and violently confronts Abigail, after which she reveals her father is the notorious crimelord Kristoff Lazaar. Apparently he is scary enough to make them all shit their pants.

Then sleazebag Dean gets his head ripped off, and they all assume it has to be the notorious enforcer who works for crimeboss Lazaar. Technically they are right. They confront Abigail only to find her mouth full of fangs. Also, they cannot get out of the house -- its all locked down.

The antics of survival are fun, amidst the chaos of dealing with a monster that looks like a 10 year old girl in a ballerina outfit. They believe they only have to survive until dawn, when the fixer will arrive with the ransom money. It takes them a long time to understand this was the plan all along -- there was no kidnapping plot -- they were kidnapped and are food and the basement pool full of decaying bodies says Abigail has been doing this a long long time.

It was a romp, which is pretty much what I said for the last movie we saw from the directors (Ready or Not), which was also a step outside the "31 Days of Halloween" tradition and was also a survival horror trapped inside a house. Weird parallels.

KWIF: Obsession (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. This week's batch of films is actually last week's batch of films. At least two days of this week were spent laid up on the couch with post-Gamma Knife-related side effects (migraines, earaches, discombobulation and fatigue). They've largely tapered off, but my ability to focus has still slipped, so I need to practice getting back at this review blog writing thing. This week's theme...toxic relationships apparently.

This Week:
Obsession (2026, d. Curry Barker - in theatre)
Over Your Dead Body (2026, d. Jorma Taccone - amazonprime)
Dead Again (1991, d. Kenneth Branagh - netflix)
Roommates (2026, d. Chandler Levack)

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When films are unexpectedly successful well beyond any executive or critical projections, it's usually because they're meeting a moment in the culture. They are films for their times. This is even more true of horror films, where often the film is a metaphor or moral fable disguised under more visceral gore and/or frights. Curry Barker's theatrical debut, Obsession, has now grossed over 200 million dollars domestically, and 300 million worldwide (and was made for a paltry 750,000) with no franchise or name recognition behind it, and it's done so by meeting a moment.

If you, like most people, are inundated with headlines every time you open your browser or social media, you've heard about the loneliness epidemic, or that young men are in crisis, or that young women would rather just not date these days.  Perhaps you've heard of the manosphere, or trad wives, or the various right wing movements trying (and succeeding far too much) in stripping away the rights of women, and trying to resurrect old ideas of gender roles where women are dutiful and subservient to men.  Obsessession is borne out of these trappings without explicitly addressing any of them head-on.

Bear (Michael Johnson) is not shown as being a message-board obsessed incel, but he is hopelessly pining over his friend and coworker Nikki (Inde Navarette). They are pals, doing trivia night after work, and going to parties, but Bear wants it to be more than what it is. Desperately. But he's too shy to make a move. Even when Nikki confronts him as he drops her off at her place, asking him bluntly if he likes her, he still can't admit it.

The thing men -- especially young men -- fear the most, is being emotionally vulnerable. There's the old Seinfeld joke about people being more scared of giving the eulogy than being in the casket, but I think men are more scared of admitting their romantic feelings to someone than they are of public speaking or dying. Cowards. We're pretty much all cowards. (More times than I can recall [mainly because I'm old and don't recollect well anymore], I have been told by someone they were interested in me, and I cannot recall there ever being a situation where, over the many crushes I've had in my life, having actually admitted that to said crush without them first having opened up to me. Not even to my wife [though she said it was pretty obvious, but that's besides the point]. That's pretty shameful, if I'm being honest. Shameful, and embarassing to realize that I was basically a romantic coward, afraid of opening up and afraid I couldn't handle the rejection.)

So, sitting in his car in shame over the missed opportunity, Bear tears open the novelty gift he bought for Nikki, the "One Wish Willow", a small twig that the colourful packaging says will grant the bearer one wish after snapping it. And so he wishes Nikki would love him more than anyone. *Snap* Seconds later she's tapping at his window and coming onto him. He can't believe it, but he's going to take it. Cue the montage to perky music of their new, happy life together... although moments within the sequence show Nikki helplessly unable to resist just staring at Josh.

In perhaps Barker's best directorial moment, Bear's buddy (and coworker at Andy Richter's music shop) Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) pulls Bear aside and just has to ask...how? How is this happening? How did this happen? He knows that Nikki told their friend Sarah that she only liked Bear as a friend just days before they started going out. Bear, you can tell, has a modicum of guilt, genuinely suspecting that the One Wish Willow was legit, but at the same time still can't get over his biggest want having come true. The whole time this conversation is going on, Nikki is in the background, quite out of focus, just staring at Bear, an intense, haunting, almost spectral presence.

Nikki's obsession with Bear, continues to ratchet up, getting more and more overbearing (no pun intended...or maybe it is?) and Bear's happiness starts to dwindle under Nikki's oppressive, destructive and harmful behaviour.

If we were to step back, maybe not even 10 years ago, this would be the story of a toxic relationship, about women who control their men through emotional manipulation and illnesses (feigned or real). The hallmarks of emotional abuse are there -- violent outbursts followed by extreme moments of contrition and tenderness and sexual advances. I've definitely heard about such stories, and to a lesser degree, been there myself. Yet, despite Bear being our point-of-view character, he's not the protagonist. He's the antagonist. Nikki is the victim of this story, having been stripped of her agency, and everything her body is doing is beyond her control, serving only Bear's whims with nearly no ability to advocate for herself.

In the film's funniest scene Bear calls the service line for the One Wish Willow, only for an apathetic voice on the other end to tell him the only way to reverse the wish is for someone else to wish it so...that, or Bear dies.  And in the most haunting scenes of the film, more than once, Bear hears Nikki's real voice while the "other her" is asleep, or distracted, and he knows, he's fully aware that the Nikki who is his girlfriend is not really the woman he though he was in love with. And yet, to even attempt to undo his wish, to free this woman he said he loves, takes him weeks to come to that decision, and begrudgingly so. Only when it's at its most extreme does he even truly try.

He may not be a Jordan Peterson-watching douche, but under the nice guy persona still lies a man who thinks that, maybe, it's best if a woman is his possession.

Barker's film is not scary so much as upsetting and disturbing. Barker's "monkey's paw" tale is not in any way original (I believe I saw a Twilight Zone episode recently with much the same plot), and Barker's direction is solid even if lacking much standout style. But it's the way in which the story is told, where the camera's sympathies lay that makes this different, and that is what meets this moment. This is Nikki's tale, moreso than Bear's, and Navarette is an immediate superstar in the role, having to switch moods at the snap of a finger, and go from extreme perkiness to extreme rage while still retaining that sense of helplessness in her eyes. It's an astonishing performance, frankly.

Much like when Zach Cregger's Barbarian became a phenomenon (though still paling in comparison to what this film has earned), all eyes will be on what Barker does next. Is he a one-hit wonder, or does he have the juice to make more films that audiences and critics will respond to. The insane success of this film almost suggests that whatever he does will have a lot of expectations and pressures put upon it, hopefully he can meet the moment with his sanity intact. 

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Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip, Over Your Dead Body is a nasty dark comedy about a married couple who have such severe communication issues that they'd rather just plan each other's murder than talk it through.

Unlike Obsession, there's no moral fable here, it's really a War of the Roses(/The Ref)-type story where the unhappy couple in question need to find themselves in the most extreme circumstances in order to open up and connect with each other again.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a failed film director stuck working in commercials. Lisa (Samara Weaving) is a wanna-be actress who has been unemployed for too long for Dan's liking (and is possibly cheating on Dan with her scene partner in acting class). They take a heated road trip out to Dan's father's lakeside cottage "upstate" (this was shot in Finland, and I had an impossible time ignoring that fact...the setting here doesn't look like anywhere in North America I've seen), where they've planned for each other's murder (having ham-handedly established with colleagues and neighbours the possibility of hiking or hunting excursions going wrong over this weekend).

While they had prepped for murdering each other, which is a pretty raw taste to accept as comedy, it is humorous the reactions they both have once they discover the other's plans. There is some comedic mileage to be had in the scenario.

What they hadn't planned on was a pair of escaped murderers Pete and Todd (Timothy Olyphant and Keith Jardine) and the prison guard, Allegra (Juliette Lewis) who helped them get free (according to Allegra, her and Pete are in love... Pete's less convinced). And so it becomes a fight for survival for Dan and Lisa against hardened criminals, and their only path forward is together.

This is not a gentle movie. The violence hits hard, real hard. It's not cartoonish, it's traumatic. This isn't Looney Tunes comedy, it's serious damage, bruising, cuts and far, far worse all shown in pretty graphic detail. It's far too extreme, and far too nasty to be funny, so it's all the more impressive when the funny can creep through it all.

Segel has become a master at emotive comedy, his malleable face can represent such despair, depression, resolve, joy, whatever the case may be, while his eyes can convey something completely different. He makes Dan into an impotent man who can't seem to stand up for himself or follow-through on his decisions, but you also start to buy into his stepping up. Segel can sell that every time, and he can undercut it just as easily. Weaving has become a top notch take-no-shit lead, while also having a wryness that lends itself quite well to comedy. She does sarcasm and snark as well as she can take a hit and project her rage (which she got a lot of experience with in the Ready or Not movies). The age gap between them is addressed, but they are a pretty evenly matched pairing.  It's just then so disappointing that I really didn't like either Dan or Lisa all that much... I was sort of rooting for them, but where they wind up in the end is more scary than heartwarming or delightful. 

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The opening credits to Kenneth Branagh's 1991 neo-noir Dead Again features a montage of old timey newspaper headlines that tells the story of German composer Roman Strauss' arrival in America, his whirlwind romance with Margaret, their marriage, her death, Roman being accused of murder, his conviction, and his death sentence. You'll be forgiven if it seems like you missed a predecessor story (called Dead maybe), and it is pretty crucial setup.

The film proper then starts, in black and white, where we meet Roman Strauss (Branagh) on death row. He's getting trimmed, given his last rights and last supper, and being interviewed by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia) who wrote some (all?) of the articles we saw in the intro. Roman's cell is lined with Baker's articles as well. Baker asks Strauss if he really killed Margaret. He smiles, whispers something in his ear, then pulls out a knife from his last supper and charges forward. Quick cut to present day,in full colour. A woman (Emma Thompson) wakes up screaming. There's a chair propped under the doorknob of her room. Eventually nuns and others find their way in. 

Apparently this woman arrived at this orphanage with amnesia and was given care and a room, but the cold hearted priest who rules the place seems to have little compassion for her situation (the nuns, on the other hand, worry for her safety...women taking care of women). The priest calls in a favour from former tenant of the orphanage, now a private investigator, Mike Church (Branagh again), to help figure out this woman's origins. When they meet, there's an immediate attraction, both ways.  She winds up staying at his place because the sanitarium is just chaos.

With the help of Pete, a colleague in the media (Wayne Night, as an affable creep), they get the woman's story out, and eventually Mike and "Grace" (he gives her the name just to call her something) meet Franklyn Madison (Derek Jacobi), an antiques dealer with a hypnosis side hustle. In unrestrained sessions with Grace, Franklyn starts to reveal that her nightmares are actually past-life traumas, which we experience in brilliant black and white, seeing more to the story of Roman and Margaret Strauss' life together, and possible motivations for her murder at, presumably, Roman's hands.

Twists and turns, drama and intrigue. It's all very pulpy and, if I'm honest, a little cheesy, but at the same time so aware of what it's trying to do and having fun doing it. It's a throwback story with a throwback style set in two different time periods that's trying to marry both Hitchcock's earlier style with his later period one, strapping in an additional layer of the fantastical, and mostly succeeding.

Branagh's American accent is pretty dicey but surprisingly his Mike Church is a decent and respectful guy, very careful not to take advantage of this traumatized woman (in contrast to Pete, who, while relatively harmless, seems unable to contain his many lascivious thoughts from coming out of his mouth). Branagh and Thompson were newly married at the time, so there was a palpable chemistry between them that comes across on screen, the innate attraction being essential to the past lives plot (for the record, they divorced in '97). But Thompson is the dominant player in the movie. Yes, everything revolves around her, but she's not a passive character... well, eventually.

When the story starts, "Grace" is mute, unable to speak, barely able to communicate, and seems bewildered by everything. I was truly worried she was just going to be in neophyte mote, a spin on the "born sexy yesterday" trope where her mental state and lack of communication skills are irresistibly attractive to the men around her. But once she does start speaking, she's a total Emma Thompson character, smart, sophisticated, and challenging. As discombobulated as her life has become, once she's able to display her personality she's exactly who you want Thompson to be playing. And in playing Margaret in the flashbacks, she has to be a character of the 1940's, where there was more deference from women to the men in her life, and yet she still has such agency. I can't help but feel that Thompson did a pass on the script (credited to Scott Frank, Out of Sight) to make these two characters more...her. And yeah, it really works. I know exactly what this film would look like with Grace and Margaret in less confident hands.

Dead Again doesn't get brought up much. It's not a lost classic, and it's not totally forgotten, but it's just a tiny little blip in both Branagh and Thompson's incredible careers. It's a bit of a wisp of a film, fun but not fun enough to obsess over. Rewatching it won't reveal hidden depths, it's all on the surface, but it's really not trying to be anything else other than what it is.

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Canadian music journalist-turned-writer/director Chandler Levack has become a must-see filmmaker for me, although I can't seem to put my finger on why.  Her first film, I Like Movies, I found compelling and anxiety-inducing, and her sophomore effort, Mile End Kicks, was a level-up, doling out a big bale of Canadiana that felt incredibly cool, and both modern and retro all at once.  The alluring Canadian-ness, I guess is the pull of Levack, but there's definitely a vibe to her first two films (despite being tonally different) that seems unique.

So with Levack being called up by Adam Sandler himself, requesting that she direct this script about warring roommates in a college dorm, a script written not by Levack but by SNL staff writers, and starring Sandler's daughter as well as going straight to Netflix...well, I worried that Levack would get swallowed up by this big American machine and there would be nothing visible of her in this film.

If I'm being totally honest, there mostly wasn't, and yet, in tiny little ways there was.

The film's framing device finds the Dean of Student Life (Sarah Sherman) relaying to two warring roommates (Storm Reid and Ivy Wolk) the tale of the most epic roommate war of all.  It starts with high school outcast Devon (Sadie Sandler) making her first real friend at college bootcamp in gives-no-shits Celeste (Chloe East). She asks Devon to be her roommate and Celeste agrees, but warns Sadie that she's not looking for a fairweather friend, but a ride-or-die bestie. She's been burned before, or so she says.

But spending a few afternoons with someone who is utterly carefree can be exhilarating, living with someone like that can be exhausting, and typically a one-way exchange. As much as Celeste is wildly inconsiderate, messy, taking up space, borrowing Devon's stuff and low-key manipulating her, Celeste also pulls Devon out of her shell by dragging her out place, pushing her out of her comfort zone and cheerleading her on to do more. So while Devon rather rapidly becomes tired of Celeste's behaviour (and for good reasons), she also finds moments to appreciate what Celeste brings into her life. 

Levack's prior films have centered around selfish characters who the director has had overwhelming empathy for. When we watch Lawrence be his worst self in I Love Movies or Grace do her own thing to the detriment of everyone else in Mile End Kicks we're still on board with their journies. Roommates is Devon's story, and Celeste is the antagonist, but Levack can't help but have empathy for Celeste, and that conflicts with her purpose as chaos agent in the story.

At a certain point it seems like Devon is the one who is being selfish... she only knows about Celeste what Celeste has told her and never probes deeper, basically too worried that asking more intimate questions will push Celeste away rather than bring them closer, but also getting too self-involved in her new college life (and too used to being in solitary mode) to know how to relate to being with someone so different from her.  And the advice given to her to, you know, talk to Celeste is just ignored. (This is all not too dissimilar to the confrontation between Grace and her Montreal roommate in Mile End Kicks, which may or may not explain why certain things do or don't happen the way they do in this film....Is Levack avoiding repeating herself?)

And so things fall apart, to extremes. And in the end Celeste is truly painted as the villain, the nightmare, the bad guy, and when she gets her comeuppance, the script wants us to laugh at her, but Levack can't seem to let go of her empathy.  

The cast, outside of its young leads, is low-key stacked with comedic talent, including Nick Kroll and Natasha Lyonne as Devon's parents, Carol Kane as her grandmother, Jeanine Garofolo as her architecture professor, as well as other nepo-babies like Please Don't Destroy's Martin Herlihy and Francesca Scorsese. It's easy to be dismissive, but everyone delivers in this film, a testament to Levack's direction.  It's amusing enough and entertaining enough, but it doesn't find its core, it doesn't know where its heart is. There a pull between a script that needs to be a big dumb broad comedy and a director who just wants to be grounded in what's real about the characters and the situation. 

This was good for Levack to cut her teeth on the Hollywood machine, to try something different, prove that she can handle bigger budgets and scale, but hopefully she can continue to do things her way on a larger scale from now on.

KWIF: Supergirl (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
Supergirl (2026, d. Craig Gillespie - in theatre)
They Will Kill You (2026, d. Kirill Sokolov - crave)
We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021, d. Jane Schoenbrun - blu-ray)

When it comes to a superhero movie my longtime habit has been to go in feeling totally optimistic, hopeful, and rooting for its success. I want to be entertained, I want to see the comics characters I know brought to life, and I want other's to feel inspired.  I love comics. I love movies. I want this marriage to work.

I even felt this way going into the dregs of the 1990s like the Shaquille O'Neal-starring Steel and batnippled Batman and Robin all the way to modern lumps like Vin Diesel's Bloodshot or the Rock's superhero vanity project, Black Adam, and virtually everything in-between (and outside of)...  I just want the movie to do justice in bringing these things I like (or love, or even have no emotional connection to) to the cinema. Even if a comic book movie is not financially successful, then I'm happy to take the moral victory if it's a valiant adaptation of the character or story.

This is all to say that I went into Supergirl absolutely ready to champion it, to stand behind it and prop it up, even as critical feedback at large called it middling and muddy. I'm rooting for the James Gunn-led DC universe to succeed, and absolutely loved his Superman last year, so I was ready for another surprise triumph (especially having read the source material Supergirl was being adapted from...more on that later). 

It was once true that a nerd's tolerance for nerd shit tends to be much higher than your average film critic, but these days so many film critics have their nerd bona fides to back their opinions up that it's harder to just outright dismiss their commentary. Even without external critical voices, I have my own internal critical voice now, one that I have a hard time shutting off.

Supergirl opens with a montage of a girl and her dog. Kara Zor-El (Millie Alcock) and her pup Krypto are planet-hopping and bar-hopping for Kara's 23rd birthday. Getting wasted, making messes, just whooping it up to numb the traumatic memories that haunt her. Cousin Clark calls, wishing her the best, but can't hide his concern. Meanwhile Ruthye (Eve Ridley) witnesses the senseless death of her family at the hands of ruthless (no pun intended) brigands. Ruthye picks herself up, dusts herself off, and goes looking for someone who will help her avenge the death of her family. Kara's plastered in a bar on Ruthye's red-sun-baked planet (meaning her powers are waning), dancing to Wet Leg's "Catch These Fists" (piped into the space jukebox via a vintage ipod) when Ruthye announces herself and her intentions, only to be bowled over by some unsavoury dudes, and Kara needing to step in. Ruthye starts following Kara, imploring her to help her, but it's only after Krypto is poisoned by the Brigands as they steal Kara's ship (where did she get a spaceship from anyway?) that Kara and Ruthye's objectives align and adventure awaits them.

The first act of Supergirl, for the most part, is pretty solid. There are a fair amount of needledrops, some superb alien make-up work and special effects, and a largely agreeable and unique sequence aboard a space coach bus. There's life and vitality to this first act that ebbs slowly away as the film progresses past it. It's not a James Gunn film, so it doesn't have his sensibilities, but it almost feels like Craig Gillespie wanted the first act to parrot the James Gunn thing. It's moderately successful, but it's absolutely clear from the first two fight sequences that Gillespie is not comfortable or confident with such sequences and they are neither clean nor easy to follow, and both are quite poorly lit (it's also quite possible that the theatre I was in was dimming their projector, the whole film seemed overly dark). The quality of the action sequences only diminish from there.

The story in Supergirl comes from Tom King and Bilquis Evely's comic-book mini-series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which was King's sci-fi/superhero take on True Grit, but in a episodic format. This film, then, is a copy of a copy, translated from one medium to another and back again, and the degradation in fidelity is palpable. Having watched the Coen Bros. take on True Grit recently, it's a virtual masterpiece that even a dimmed copy should still wind up being somewhat good, possibly even great. While Supergirl isn't outright bad, I struggle to call it good. It's fine. It's a movie.

What last year's Superman had was spirit and humour -- as does True Grit -- but Supergirl lacks these, abandoning much of its humour quickly into the film and never quite finding its spirit. True Grit's tale, especially in the Coens' hands, relies completely on how the characters engage one another. Kara is Rooster Cogburn here, while Ruthye is Mattie, and even though Alcock does the work to make Kara seem like she's been through the wringer and having a tough time coming out the other side, the bond between these two characters doesn't ever get satisfactorily forged, at least not on screen. In True Grit the Coens got a lot of mileage out of Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie, for her primness and eloquence and impression of maturity, that is highlighted against Rooster's inebriated brusqueness ... something that is attempted here with Ridley's Ruthie against Alcock's Kara, but, it's not the focus of the script, so many meaningful things get lost along the way. The lightness of the contrast is lost.

The third member of the True Grit team dynamic was the virtuous lawman La Bouef, and I get the in-name-only joke of substituting bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa) in here, but those are two very different archetypes, and, frankly, Lobo feels kind of shoehorned in here. There's not really any meaningful engagement between Lobo and Kara, and the relationship between Lobo and Ruthye happens largely off screen. The need for set pieces (kind of ugly and muddy setpieces at that) takes the place of having these three characters sit and talk and drink and get to know each other around a (space) campfire. (Momoa's Lobo feels like Momoa doing a Beetlejuice impression... it's fine, but there's no character definition in the script).

The film also falls into repetitive patterns that become quite tiring by the third crest and fall. Kara tells Ruthye to stay behind and be safe only for her not to listen and for Kara (or someone) to have to help her as she gets in over her head.  Or Supergirl loses her powers (instantly) only to gain them back instantly, time and time again. I get it, the Supers are so over-powered that they need such mechanisms to make them vunlerable, but it's the abruptness and repetitiveness that both bother me. The powers should diminish slowly over time, a ticking clock mechanism, while a hail mary recharge may not bring them back full throttle it should always be enough. It's the writings of someone who hasn't spent enough time with the Super-family to understand this.

The main villain is head brigand Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), and he's kind of what everyone's chasing, the maguffin of the comic book, but here they half-heartedly try to develop him into a vile killer who does so for pleasure, and Schoenaerts tries to inject life into the character, but this character, really, should be largely unseen. The less of him, the better. And then the script adds in the fact that the brigands are a men-only club, who kidnap young (it should be noted, human) women to bear them children. It's a play right out of Mad Max:Fury Road but without consulting someone like Eve Ensler to tell them whether they should or not.

As a result, the young girl slave trade casts a pretty bleak pall over an already strapped-for-joy movie. It wallows in the trauma of Kara having lost her family (conveyed in a series of flashbacks that grind the film to a dead halt -- flashbacks are in the comics but handled very differently) and Ruthye's same-but-not experience (in spite of them both having these traumas, the film still isn't able to bond them very well on screen...there's, like, one moment where Kara, silently, realizes this).  Had the film not sidelined Krypto, there would have a been a comic relief chaos agent to make this whole pill easier to swallow. I realize he's also sidelined in the comic and his sidelining is the impetus for Kara to go on this journey in the first place, but comic books have years of character history to draw on and an established universe to traverse, while this film needs to create it all from whole cloth. They could have found something else to trigger Kara and keep Krypto in the picture. 

I wanted to love Supergirl.  As is, I don't really even like it. I do really like this iteration of the character, the attitude that Alcock portrays very well, but the film doesn't serve her too well. I came out of Supergirl feeling like I barely understand this character after spending two hours with her. At the end of the film, Kara returns to Earth, to Metropolis, uncertain of her place in the universe, but ready to find out. Yeah, that's a starting point, not an ending.

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[Warning: spoilers within]

They Will Kill You starts with Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) and her little sister fleeing from an abusive stepfather. He catches up to them quickly, and Asia shoots him. The cops arrive, Asia runs, leaving her sister behind. Conceptually it's a pretty heavy, if quite brief, opening sequence that doesn't make the audience wait long to get to the point.

Asia got caught and served 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of her father, but has felt nothing but guilt over leaving her sister behind. Asia's hired a private investigator to track her sister down, he points her to the Virgil, a New York 9-storey high rise for the wealthy, where her sister was hired as a cleaner, but it has a reputation as being a place where people disappear. There is definitely insinuations of class and race disparities, and the rich being raised up on the the backs of the poor, which all sounds rather heady as subject matter.

And yet, this is just the place setting. This film really doesn't waste its time. It's only about 15 minutes before the first fight sequence happens, and it doesn't let up from there. Whatever inference of social commentary the opening few minutes might have suggested, for the most part they are pushed aside so that we can have a rollicking good time as Asia navigates the Victor's many hallways, passageways, tunnels and shafts, fending off it's blood-hungry elites.

Asia take a job with a fake ID to get into the Virgil, and instantly meets some of the fake-smile bearing residents, the head of services Mrs. Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), and getting a very short tour of the servants quarters on the first floor. She senses she's being watched, so she secures her door. A masked behemoth finds his way into her room regardless and attempts to attack her... only Asia is prepare to fight back. Four more assailants find their way in and Asia defends herself, armed with a sawed off shotgun and a sword. 

When Asia lops off Tom Felton's head, the arterial spray is like a lawn sprinkler, just all directions everywhere. The fight with the remaining assailants is heated and brutal and bloody and very creative. Asia's taking her lumps, but she's surprisingly a warrior, and ready to take everyone on.

There are definite shades of Kill Bill here, not just in the fighting, but in the style, the edits, the pastiche, the title cards and flashbacks. And yet, it's not Tarantino-esque, because this plays as an even greater ode to Sam Raimi. 

The elite of the Victor are immortal devil worshippers who can't truly be killed. They will resurrect and reform if even a flake of skin remains. In one of the film's many incredible sequences, Asia is crawling through a between-floor tunnel system and encounters Sharon (Heather Graham) whose head she lopped off earlier in the film. After a scuffle, Asia blows Sharon's head off, and, moments later the headless body starts charging towards her (just grasping, but unable to see, hear or properly sense Asia's whereabouts). Eventually Asia finds her way to an upward shaft, but doesn't notice Sharon's eyeball, using the optic nerve like a flagella to propel itself through the tunnels to track her. Somehow Sharon's headless body is still receiving the intel, and attempts to charades the information back to the other elites. It's absolutely ridiculous and obscenely delightful. Just as the whole film is.

Much like a Bruce Campbell in an Evil Dead, Zazie Beetz keeps taking her lumps, but also keeps fighting back. She fights for herself, and she fights for her sister, but mostly, she's fighting for our entertainment. The film culminates with Asia fighting Mrs. Woodhouse with a devil-possessed giant boar's head Voltron-ed her own. Just insane, but delirously entertaining.

There's not a tremendous amount of story or character development here, there's no need for it. This is just a wicked fight movie that's having a good time going to comedic extremes, and I'm here for it.

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It would be easy to mistake We're All Going to the World's Fair, which was released in 2021, as a COVID-era production. It's a small film that follows its protagonist, 16-year-old Casey, as she lives her life online, participating in "the World's Fair Challenge".  It's a social media trend that, according to other (in-world, off-brand youtube) streamers, changes you in unexpected ways. Casey films herself strolling around her town, talking to the camera about the changes she's feeling, the disconnecting from herself, the violent and or self-harmful impulses she's feeling. We see Casey dancing alone, or playing baseball by herself. We see her exploring the barn late at night, looking at her father's gun (we're talking an assault weapon here, not a hunting rifle or handgun), and eventually settling on the barn couch, watching not-youtube on the big screen, when a video autoplays a message that is directly for her. It features a still of Casey's face, distorted and melty, alternating with a hastily scribble warning that she is in trouble, and she needs to reach out. 

Jane Shoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow was my favourite film of 2024, an exploration of how media can impact one's sense of identity, and an powerful closeted trans-allegory disguised as a horror film. This, their first feature shows they definitely have a grasp, and maybe even a penchant for media-identity related storytelling (their third film, this year's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma looks to be yet another, different and provocative take on this dynamic).  We see Casey not just through her videos, but also as she's making her videos, and when she's not making her videos she's engaging with other "World's Fair" content.

Schenbrun has fun building out the online world of "the World's Fair Challenge", some disturbing content from creators describing (or showing) how the Challenge has changed them. It's almost like an infection, but the symptoms differ from person to person.

The aforementioned warning comes from "JLB", and Casey decides to Skype with this stranger. JLB expresses that they're concerned about them, and asks Casey to just keep making more videos. The film's greatest move comes following this call that ends the first act, switching us over to JLB's perspective for a period of time. He is a thin, bald middle-aged man with a very hang-dog expression, and we just don't know what his deal is. He lives in a very big house, so he's obviously successful at whatever he does, or did, but he primarily hangs out and sleeps in what looks like a teenager's bedroom. There are pictures in the house but we never clearly see them. We don't know if JLB lost a kid to this "Challenge" or if he's just an online creeper, or if he's just a lonely guy looking to platonically connect with someone who also appears lonely, or if he's a psycho who has murdered the family in this home and is now operating out of it. He does spend a lot of time disseminating Casey's content though.

Beyond Casey's video in which we see her wander through a crowd at a New Year's celebration, we never see her with people. Her father, we're only aware of him because he yelled at her once (for listening to something loudly at 3am), but there's a half insinuation that she's scared of him...or avoiding him...or both. But there's so much Schoenbrun doesn't show us here that everything is up for interpretation, right through to the finale where the rug isn't so much as pulled out from under us but the fog is lifted.  

The events of the movie are recontextualized, but the question is...does it make a difference? However we view Casey, isn't the end result that she's lonely, sad, and perhaps depressed? 

"The World's Fair Challenge" is Schoenbrun interpreting the Creepypasta realm of online horror storytelling through collaboration, the realm that bore such fruits as Backrooms and The Slender Man and Channel Zero, but through a very grounded, human, individualistic lens. It very much feels like Schoenbrun is asking "is this how I would be if this type of communal storytelling was available to me when I was a sad, awkward, lonely teenager", and I feel very much the same way, that the whole Creepypasta thing would have been totally for me had I grown up in a different time.

It's eerie how much ...World's Fair is in sync with what pandemic living felt like (according to Schonebrun, it finished filming March 1, 2020) but it's not an intentional pandemic allegory. It's message is not bound by time, as a result, it is a story of loneliness, and the horror here (if you can call it that...it's more just a slow, simmering dread), is equally grounded in sadness and the truly unknowable strangers of the internet.

KsMIRT: August wind-up [part 2]

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (or mebbe twice each month?!?) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. 

This (half) Month:
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4 (2024, 5/5 episodes, Netflix)
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, AmazonPrime)
G.I. Joe: Renegades Season 1 (2010, 16/26 episodes, Tubi) 
Time Bandits Season 1 (2024, 2/10 episodes, Apple TV+)
Derry Girls Series 3 (2022, 7/7 episodes, Netflix)

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4

The What 100:  The big pappy of true crime series returns with five new yet-to-be-solved events of a suspicious nature. These include new looks at Jack the Ripper and the mothman (having now migrated from its usual West Virginia stomping grounds to Illinois' Chicago area), as well as a "who did it?" in Calgary, a "whose head is that" in Florida, and a cold case of a murdered college student on campus in the late 1970s.

(1 Great) Having watched many a season of the vintage Robert Stack-led Unsolved Mysteries giving myself many a night terror as a result, I have to say the new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format is pretty great. For the most part, I like how this format frequently teases out the mystery for a good while. The storytelling, the editing is exceptionally good, and as a result a lot of these stories have a stickiness to them that make them hard to easily forget or let go of. I puzzled over "The Body in the Basement", a captivating highlight (and gut wrenching tragedy) for days before my brain settled in on there being no answers to the questions it was asking. Did she fall or was she pushed? If those are her own footprints in her blood, why did she stop short of going upstairs? What happened to her phone? Was the door locked or not? Why were there no paw prints in the blood? So many questions that make no sense.

(1 Good) I like that even though it's using this new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format, it's not just going with murder/death mysteries, but still exploring the paranormal phenomena the original series did with the same documentary-style lens as the other stories. The Jack the Ripper bit was probably the least intriguing because we're no closer to answers than we were two decades ago, but this was all about dispelling myths. "The Mothman Revisted" episode, though, was neat for how it cited the classic Stack episode on the Mothman, but had something definitely new to talk about. The middle episode, as well, neither a murder/death mystery, nor a paranormal mystery, but instead, a found embalmed head and the people trying to identify it. Curious.

(1 Bad) What's missing from this series that the Stack series had was updates. It directs you online for submitting any tips or info on the subjects at hand and for updates, but the old series used to do updates on repeats or in a subsequent episode, if there were updates to be had. There was something very satisfying about them. In this host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format on Netflix, there's not the same space for updates that there was in a 20+ episode season of a weekly TV series. That said, they could drop Unsolved Mysteries updates on Netflix at any time, as part of a season or just stand alone.  I don't know why they haven't unless nothing material has come of any of the cases yet.

META: I don't really do a lot of true crime... I've dipped into a podcast or two, I watch the occasional documentary film or series, but it's not a regular part of my diet. Still, I actively look forward to each "Volume" of Unsolved Mysteries. Something about having a dose of the unresolved in my diet is very stimulating mentally, even if the subject matter is disturbing.  I can't explain it.

... Wait.... there's a podcast?!? And Volume 5 is coming... October 2nd!

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Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1

The What 100: It's a new Batman animated series from the co-creator of Batman: The Animated Series...Bruce Timm. He's backed by The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves as well as J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company. It's a more mature animated series set in a vaguely 1930's/40's noirish reality, and early in Batman's career as a vigilante. The over-arching stories are about district attorney Harvey Dent's fraught campaign for mayor, and corruption in both politics and the legal system.

(1 Great) As jarring as they may be, I absolutely love the swings this series is taking. Actually being set in the 1930's (ish) rather than the "neo-'30's deco-styled modern Gotham" of The Animated Series allows it to establish a very specific tone, that of the hardboiled, noir stories of the era. On top of that it plays fast and loose with established Batman lore. The Penguin who pops up in the first episode is not at all like any Penguin we've seen before, but I think she's incredible. Same with the divergences for Harley Quinn or Gentleman Ghost or Firebug, among others. 

(1 Good) It's a show aimed less at satisfying the comic book geek and instead scratching the pulp origins itch that clearly Timm always had and never shook.  It's aged up in terms of tone, for a cartoon it's happier with the darker corners of its world and emotions. It's not unapproachable for children, but it's not softened for them either. Batman's kind of a dickhead (every time he coldly calls Alfred "Pennyworth" I die inside just a little...but there's that moment of redemption in the finale that shows there's room for character growth in this series). They're also not afraid of finite ends to their stories or characters, so tread lightly with your expectations.

(1 Bad) As much as I understand the series is not much interested in a world of spandex, and that it's creating its villains as if they were out of 30's and 40's cinema, I still desperately want the mythology to flesh itself out. I want hints that Barbara is going to be Batgirl and Renee will become The Question. They're both agents of upholding the law, but they're both becoming more and more aware of how the system fails, and I wonder how long they can keep at it before they become disillusioned and join Batman in his style of justice?

META: If one is doing a new Batman for TV, it either needs to be a bold reset, or a near-continuation of what has come before. Rarely is it ever a near-continuation of what has come before, and bold resets can lead to disgruntled fanboys (is there any other type?). The word on the street for The Caped Crusader (despite the creatives saying otherwise) was that it was a continuation, or maybe a prequel to The Animated Series. It is not. If anything, though, because TAS was so art deco inspired and had that feel of the 1930s, it's almost like this didn't veer far enough away from that aesthetic to fully distinguish itself. I think that's what many fans who may wind up disliking this are feeling. But I dig it.

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G.I. Joe: Renegades

The What 100:  Scarlett recruits Duke, Roadblock, Tunnel Rat and Ripcord on a secret mission to infiltrate Cobra Industries and expose it for what it is, not a multinational manufacturer of diverse goods and services, but a secret military with designs on taking over the world with experimental, illegal technology. Not only do they have their hands in seemingly everyone's pockets, but they have their own 24 hour news network to spread whatever lies and disinformation they want. And so, our heroes, in trying to uncover this new world-class evil, are instead brandished as terrorists and outlaws and are on the run from their very own military employers.

(1 Great) I clued in during the initial two-parter that it seemed kind of A-Team-ish in its construction, and then the third episode rolled out its new opening credits:
"Accused of a crime they didn't commit, a ragtag band of fugitives fights a covert battle to clear their names and expose the insidious enemy that is... Cobra. Some call them outlaws. Some call them heroes. But these determined men and women think of themselves only as 'Ordinary Joes'. And this is their story."

Yah, it's the A-Team all right. Each episode is mostly just the Renegades roll into town, find the townspeople embroiled in something Cobra Industries related and they try to help out or expose it. It's formulae, and it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's pretty great.  

(1 Good) I was genuinely surprised by the episode "Homecoming Part 1" which jumps into flashbacks of the origin of Duke's rivalry with Flint which is some pretty deep character building for ostensibly a kids' cartoon. There's a lot of nuance introduced into their dynamic which then pays off in "Homecoming Part 2" where the Joes are captured by the military, with straight-laced, by-the-book Flint maybe seeing a crack in his worldview.

(1 Bad) I do get why this didn't resonate with Joe fans. Despite being exceptionally well animated, it's too divergent from the core G.I. Joe idea, that of a highly trained special mission force who are in an open battle against terrorist organization Cobra. The silent war of Renegades is so 2010, of anti-capitalism, and illicit behind-the-scenes dealings, of there being forces in the world so large that nothing will change in the way the world works unless they decide it should change... it's heavy shit, and G.I. Joe isn't really that known for its heavy shit.  Plus, like Batman: The Caped Crusader all of the characters are some type of reinvention of their previous incarnations. Snow Job, Shipwreck, Dr. Mindbender, all of them, with the exception of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (again with this ninja shit) seem pretty vastly different from how they've been portrayed elsewhere. It's hard to just sit back and enjoy it, and not want it to just get over its "on-the-run" business and become outright Joes vs. Cobra.

META: It's G.I. Joe, but the A-Team! It seems incredible to me - the me of 2024 - that any regular series would so blatantly rip off the formulae of an old TV series (uh, like Poker Face did Columbo?) but a cursory look at 2010 and yeah, the Liam Neeson-led A-Team movie had just hit, and I think this was made in parallel production. I bet that they had banked on the A-Team movie being a massive success (where the first G.I. Joe live action movie truly wasn't) and they would look like geniuses for reformulating G.I. Joe in that manner. But the A-Team failed (not dismally, but not inspiring a whole new generation of A-Team obsessed kids) and so did Renegades. Even the long-running G.I. Joe action figure line produced a wave or two of figures styled after this cartoon (pretty great looking figures) but failed to ignite much fervour (much of it went on clearance, though they've since become pretty collectible). I'm just picking off episodes here and there, but I will definitely complete it (and probably be sad there isn't more when I'm done).

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Time Bandits Season 1

The What 100: A reimagining of the 1981 Terry Gilliam film by Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris. Young, talkative, nerdy Kevin is 10 years old and not very well liked by anyone. He's bullied at school and by his sister, and his parents, obsessed with their phones, don't understand why their unusual, curious, intelligent child isn't into "normal" stuff. When a  troupe of time traveling thieves with a stolen time map use his bedroom as a passageway, he finds himself swept up in their journey, much to the chagrin of the Bandits.

(1 Great) The show, by and large, looks pretty good. There are some interesting sequences, displays of effects (both practical and digital) that are quite eye catching or stimulating.

(1 Good) Jemaine Clement plays a ruler of demons, a sort of devil, one might say, that is very interested in the bandits and their time map. The scenes of Clement in his ample prosthetic make-up and the absurd hellscape sets he's in are pretty imaginative.

(1 Bad) We only made it two episodes in.  Both episodes were written by Clement, Morris and Waititi with Waititi directing. We have ample love for Waititi and Clement, both individually and together Lady Kent and I do, and yet this did not work at all for either of us. There were a few chuckles but no real laughs, there was a twinge of interest, a glimmer of adventure, but most of it fell flat. Kevin is supposed to be annoying and young Kal-El Tuck really gets it, but there's too much of this riding on his nascent shoulders. The leaderless bandits are led by Lisa Kudrow's put-upon Penelope, but it's Kudrow's sense of smart-idiot quirk that doesn't jibe well with the sensibilities of Waititi and Clement as I know them.  Unlike Our Flag Means Death or What We Do In The Shadows, the writers and performers do not give their individual bandits enough unique character or charisma to stand out. They are a unit that all seem to behave much the same way, they're not very fun.  

META: I have only seen Gilliam's Time Bandits once as an adult, and it didn't resonate with me. At this point it's a vague memory. I more recently read the Marvel comics adaptation (like maybe last year even) and I can't remember that at all. Perhaps it's the property that doesn't work for me.  But specifically here, I look at the repartee of Our Flag... or The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin and there's a template there for these types of characters and how to make them funny and subversive and for some reason these very talented creators just couldn't figure it out.  But is it the writing, or the casting? I'm not sure any of the bandits besides Kudrow stands out, and she stands out for the wrong reason. It just doesn't work and I'm feeling completely uninspired to return to it.

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Derry Girls Series 3

The What 100: One final go for the girls from Derry, their families, and Sister George Michael. As The Troubles reach their revolutionary turning point in the mid-1990s, the girls come of age, ready to graduate and it seems all of Ireland is ready to move on to the next moments of their lives.

(1 Great) The best episode of the series is "The Reunion" which finds the moms and aunties and their friends reuniting for their high school reunion. This leads to all the old anxieties, hurt feelings, and pubescent emotions rushing back, with long buried secrets trying to crawl out of their grave and embarrass everyone. It's an episode replete with flashbacks of the women in their younger years of the late-70's with the obvious parallels to the main young cast of Derry Girls providing the most rewarding threads (especially considering that Mary used to behave exactly like Erin does and yet she comes down on her so hard for it). The whole long-buried (literally) secret is a great through line and provides a little mystery to unfold to really suck in the audience. It's a wonderfully crafted, hilarious episode.

(1 Good) After two highly, highly successful seasons, Series 3 seems to break out of its small-scale shell and go much, much bigger with every episode. It's almost like a different show, the scale of production seems that much larger, and the writing that much better at balancing the adventures of the young cast and their parents, grandparents and teachers such that it doesn't just feel like a teen comedy anymore.  In some ways it could be seen as a betrayal of what was established before, but in other ways it feels like it's finally coming into itself, somewhat unfettered by its previous limitations. Most of the episodes this season take place on location, whether it's another town, or on a train, or at a police precinct with Liam Neeson in charge.  My initial impulse is to bristle a things like appearances by Neeson or Fatboy Slim, but they're really just damn good fun.

(1 Bad)  Episode six finds the teens trying to get tickets to a Fatboy Slim concert being held in town. When they come up in the line to buy tickets, Clare has a meet-cute with the ticket girl, except they are the last tickets available. The street toughs behind them aren't pleased and accuse them of jumping the queue and then want to fight James for the tickets. Things take a turn, and later Michelle goes on a sob-story-leads-to-wish-giving TV program and lies about James getting beaten up and their tickets being stolen. This leads to the Girls being VIPs for the concert but Clare the whole time is just fixated on meeting up with the ticket girl. The Girls have another encounter with the street toughs, while Clare makes out with ticket girl, and they get thrown out, yet it's still pretty triumphant overall. A rollicking episode. Except Clare's dad dies and it ends with her big gay triumph undercut by weepy memorial for her Da.  Why? What does this serve, like, at all? Did we ever even meet Clare's dad in the series? Why decimate this triumphant moment for her like this? Even if it's something true from the creator or staff writer's lives, there's no time in this show for this rapid mood swing in the storytelling. It's the most bizarre creative moment of the series and leaves a real bad taste for the penultimate episode.

META: As I mentioned when I last wrote about this show, each series is too short. Even at 7 episodes it's not nearly enough. There's only a total of 19 episode in the entire run. There's something to be said about not milking a premise or quitting whilst one is ahead, but when you have this great of a setup there's so many possibilities for storytelling. I feel like they barely scratched the surface and we barely got to know these characters. Their growth from series to series seemed so spontaneous.  And it's not like you can just do a revival, since these performer are only getting older (Saoirse-Monica Jackson in The Decameron now looks like a grownup, no longer a viable teen), so they needed to do more when they could have. It's a shame.  Like, why not just a Sister George Michael spin-off show then?