3 short paragraphs: Get Him To The Greek

2010, Nicholas Stoller

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of my favourite comedies of the past decade, a movie I can watch over and over and not get enough of. It's both a break-up comedy and a romantic comedy, but foremost it's just terrifically funny with great characters (main and supporting) and the setting of Hawaii at its most idyllic. Jason Segel, as writer and star, proved that being an Apatow disciple did not mean being an Apatow clone. From the same director, Get Him To The Greek, two years later, followed two of Sarah Marshall's minor characters into their own film, but in those two years, Greek's leads, Jonah Hill and Russell Brand had kind of proven themselves to be rather one-note actors. Brand's cheeky public persona had become rather annoying, while Hill's droll sarcasm had become tedious. My impulse was, without Segel's involvement, that it wouldn't prove as affecting or hilarious as Sarah Marshall, and could possibly drag the former film down with its mediocrity.

Turns out I had no reason to be concerned. Get Him To The Greek isn't as charming as its predecessor (where Sarah Marshall had a rather large and rich cast of characters filling it out, Greek is largely a two-pony show, which makes its 2 hours seem a little long) but it's still got plenty of charm. Hill is given a much richer character to divest himself in than he ever has before, providing a glimpse of his acting talent displayed later in Moneyball, while Brand's Aldus Snow is the absolute perfect character for him, a larger-than-life rock star constantly at war with his own ego. In the opening sequence alone, which is a mock entertainment tabloid report on the massive failure of Snow's latest record, the film packs in comedy from all angles. There's sharp jabs at pop music (subtle and overt), outrageous sight gags, clever turns of phrase, musical comedy, and more, in equal parts emanating from Stoller's direction and editing and from the performances, Brand specifically.

Upon our introduction to Jonah Hill's Aaron Green at his job as a record company intern, we're also introduced to the film's secret weapon: Sean Coombs. Yes, P. Diddy is this film's secret weapon. He provides a fearless and hilarious performance as the record industry mogul who's a master of the Jedi mind fuck. At a meeting Hill suggests a tenth anniversary show for Aldus Snow's best-selling Greek Theatre performance, and is tasked with getting the drug-addled party monster from London to New York for a Today Show performance, and then from NY to LA for the big show. Naturally the reluctant buddy comedy/road movie formula ensues in grandiose what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong fashion. The film is about 20 minutes too long, but it wins in both comedy and character, providing real depth to Brand's Aldus Snow, making him a surprisingly sympathetic adversary to Hill's in-over-his-head fanboy.

I Saw This!! Netflix Edition

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

In this edition of "I Saw This!!" Graig covers:

Magic Mike - 2012, Steven Soderbergh
The 5-Year Engagement - 2012, Nicholas Stoller
Frances Ha - 2013, Noah Baumbach

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - 2013, Declan Lowney


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Steven Soderbergh may just well be my all-time favourite director, and yet I've not seen all of his movies (maybe only half), and I'm not sure that any of his films crack my top ten (Out Of Sight may come close).  But Soderbergh never fails to deliver something interesting or different.  He's a definite auteur, a man of very specific vision, but he doesn't have a distinct style or milieu that he works in.  Where other favourite directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino all have a decidedly distinct voice where you can tell a film is theirs at every passing moment, Soderbergh is a man of varied tastes who likes to experiment and push the boundaries of conventional storytelling in all different sorts of genres such that his impact as a director is often unidentifiable, but present.  Magic Mike is a damn bold, intriguing, and highly entertaining film that takes the sub-sub genre of stripper movies and explores it with a gender flip.

You've got your Flashdance, your Striptease, Coyote Ugly and Showgirls, to name the most prominent examples, which are each in their own way revealing of the worlds they explore, but at the same time, are themselves highly exploitative.  This is ever more clear by the gender flip in Magic Mike which highlights just how much control the men have on stage, how freewheeling and easy-going the experience largely is, especially in comparison to the seedy, grimy worlds that other stripper films present.  It's telling that the characters in Magic Mike are never vulnerable to exploitation, at least not in the same threatening way the women in female sex-trade movies are, and that is definitely a point that Soderbergh is making.

Channing Tatum went into Magic Mike as a meathead pretty-boy actor of little note or interest, and came out the other side a genuine superstar.  Soderbergh's focus on him is a man of confidence, charisma, humour and intelligence and Tatum sells it at every turn (not to mention being a man of skill, showing of some impeccable dance moves that seem far too fluid and limber for a man of his beefiness).  Mike takes young, aimless Adam (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and brings him into the world of male exotic dancing.  Adam naturally succumbs to all the vices that being young and making money in sex entertainment would provide, and Mike struggles to keep him on the straight an narrow (fostering a crush on Adam's sister doubles his investment in the young man).  The first two acts of the film are so easygoing, they show the environment of male exotic dancing as one of craft (if not exactly artistry), and that it does have it's rewards with few drawbacks.  The third act does take an unfortunate detour into familiar drug-and-danger territory (see Boogie Nights) but the heaviness is thankfully short-lived (you can see the studio notes that these *have* to go that way, don't they?).

It's not a masterpiece by any stroke, but it presents a story and a subject that challenges its audience (particularly the hetero male audience) to appreciate it, and it definitely has its moments worth appreciating.

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A few weeks (months?!) back I was pondering how television has so unanimously trumped film's ability to make a successful comedy, pointing out that in both character-based and situation-based comedy TV has more time and ability to build one and not exhaust the other.  So it's no surprise then that a film like The 5-Year Engagement plays out less like a three-act film but rather like four or five episodes of a television series.

The plot finds Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) as a warm loving couple with a great relationship on the road to getting married, but with plenty of interference -- school, careers, deaths, weddings -- along the way.  The major impact on their relationship involves moving from San Francisco to Michigan so Violet can explore a career in academia.  The film is fragmented into sections of their life together (and apart), rather episodically.  Segel and Blunt have a charming playfulness and excellent chemistry that sells an otherwise middling script.  There's a lot of warmth but not as much comedy.  To their credit, Segel and co-writer/director Nicholas Stoller write character-based comedies that are much more interested character development than pratfalls and punchlines, so the film has a lot sympathy for and pays equal attention for both leads.  The film features a solid cast of supporting players with Chris Pratt, Alison Brie (although adopting a ridiculously awful British accent as Blunt's sister...I thought she should have played Blunt's best friend who was at school abroad and adopted the terrible accent), Rhys Ifans, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, Randall Park and Brian Posehn.  It's overall engaging and likeable, but not particularly memorable.

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Noah Baumbach established a reputation as a writer-director of heavy, dark, emotional family dramas, primarily on the backs of his back-to-back Oscar-nominated features The Squid and the Whale and Margot At The Wedding.  One can forget that he started out writing comedy/romantic comedy, and even co-wrote with Wes Anderson on The Life Acquatic and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  He's more versatile than he gets credit for, but his features typically find their humour drowning in the darkness, buried under the heavy weight of their drama such that it's difficult or uncomfortable to remember the laughs.

Francis Ha is a bit of a departure for Baumbach, working on a much smaller scale, in black and white, and cowriting with his star, Greta Gerwig, to develop a very specific character to center the film around.  Gerwig plays the titular Frances, an late-20-something aspiring dancer living in New York who leads a rather cheerful existence despite her hardships.  She's perennially broke, seemingly always between apartments, and her chances of being a professional dancer diminish by the day.  Francis is looking for love but it's not about romance necessarily, but comfort and companionship.  She makes friends easily enough, but it's her best friend Sophie whom she wants to be with the most (again not in a romantic sense), but Sophie's moving on with her life, and Frances finds the void she's left hard to cope with.

In many ways, Frances Ha feels like Baumbach's riff on a Woody Allen picture, Manhattan smushed with Annie Hall, the old love story to New York (and, briefly, Paris) minus the overwhelming neurosis and jazz score.  Frances is a complex character who deals with the world around her in a truthful way (well, truthful to her, she doesn't realize the denial she's in quite often).  In the end, Frances isn't in a better place than where she started, just a different one... she's maybe a little wiser, and made some smarter decisions, but life is ever moving forward.  It's an entertaining light drama, and I enjoyed the examination of a character defiantly pursuing their dreams, unwilling to accept any alternative, until the cold reality sets in that their dreams are perhaps unattainable, but it doesn't mean life is over. Another plus was having Frances' "romance" be more about friendship than about any actual romance.  Any story diversion away from the "need a man to complete them" is a good one.

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Given my recent assessments of big screen comedy, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is an interesting  picture thrust in that mix, as it takes an established character from television and transposes him to long-form big-screen comedy.  Oh, it's not a unique thing, since so many feature comedies are born out of television shows, sketch, or characters developed on stage in stand-up routines, but it's indicative of how a small-screen comedic success (like Eddie Murphy, Tim Allen, Will Ferrell or Sacha Baron Cohen) can make their way to big screen prominence, even if these days it's no longer an exclusive thing.

I missed out on Alan Partridge as a British cultural icon of the late 90's/early 00's, despite every intention to catch up with The Brass Eye and I'm Alan Partridge where Steve Coogan built his news anchor/talk show host, so I went into Alpha Papa with only the smallest notion as to who the character was and what he was all about.  I think prior viewers Alan Partridge have a slight advantage in knowing the character, his habits and failings from the onset, but by the end of the first act it's quite apparent that Partridge is an ageing egomaniac with faded celebrity wafting off of him.  But he's not desperate, not fully, and he's not necessarily always above his station either.  I don't know if it's character complexity or just inconsistency, but I admire the choice to have him be at once an attention seeking whore that has accepted his age and finds comfort in being at the top of the lowest rung yet will still take advantage of the opportunity to step back up to the next rung, but not at the bottom of said rung.

Alpha Papa finds the ex-national broadcaster now working as a midday disk jockey at a Northampton radio station where he's settled in for some years.  He drives a car that speaks to his shamelessness as a self-promoting, self-aggrandizing shill and makes personal appearances at small affairs for nominal tokens of appreciation ("how big is the key").  When the radio station is taken over by a new broadcasting group and brand-homogenized, jobs are on the line.  When the nighttime DJ (Colm Meany) is fired, he returns with a shotgun and takes the station hostage.  It's up to Partridge, working with the police, to negotiate their safe release, but of course the question is will all the attention allow him to do that job or will he seek to exploit the media circus opportunity before him?

It's been a long time since I've seen any comedy that isn't stand-up be so singularly focused as Alpha Papa is, in that almost all of the laughs come from Alan Partridge, whether it's his witty turns of phrases, Coogan's impeccable timing, a physical gag, or a specific set piece.  The majority of the laughs come from Partridge/Coogan, and remarkably very few of them are at his expense (and even those that are, one gets the sense Partridge feels very little to no shame, or at lease easily rebounds from embarrassment).  It's a little dark, the comedy at times, since the characters are all generally operating with the threat of violence about them, but at the same time the ability to ignore or comedically excel because of that threat is such a large part of the film's entertainment value.

Coogan commands the screen, as is probably his want, but also out of necessity.  A film with this type of story needs to have a central figure who is equal parts intelligent, compassionate, empathetic, ridiculous, and, at times, stupid while remaining completely in-character.  He owns this role totally, and there's never a moment where Alan Partridge feels like he's out of his element (well, there's that daydream he has of being the action hero, but that's intended fantasy).  It is a wholly off-beat picture, but incrementally hilarious, building as one becomes more and more familiar with the ways of Alan Partridge.

KWIF: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (+2)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where 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. KWIF is not a fart from the front butt.

This Week:
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (2023, d. James Gunn - in theatre)
Sisu (2022, d. Jalmari Helander - in theatre)
Bros (2022, d. Nicholas Stoller - rental)

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I tend to ramble a lot when talking about the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am, as they say, invested, and I find that the past half dozen years of scapegoating of all of cinema's ills put upon the MCU has been lazy, to put it kindly. 

But if one were to say there has been a knock off in quality in the post-Endgame MCU, I can't wholly disagree. I could say the introduction of the "Volume" and other "rendered backdrop" technologies has made visuals spectacles somehow less than spectacular, failing to wow viewers in the same way matte paintings did decades ago.  I could say that the pandemic productions feel more hemmed in, more limited in scale, and even maybe a little sloppy and rushed.  I could say that Marvel and Kevin Feige have over-extended themselves with a mass of additional content on Disney+ that maybe dilutes the brand as much as it expands the universe contributing to "superhero fatigue".

I could say all this, but really, I think the reality is the MCU built itself up so well in reaching Infinity War and Endgame, that it provided itself a natural stopping point, and that the idea of rebuilding to a new universe/multiverse-spanning epic seems as exhausting to the more average filmgoer than it is exciting.  Plus the constant politicized flame wars within nerd circles that seeps into public discourse just kinda wants to make you leave it all behind.

But Guardians of the Galaxy has something no other Phase 4 or Phase 5 movie has had: a singular creative vision.  James Gunn, somehow over and above Kevin Feige, has sole ownership of this franchise-within-the-franchise. Even when the Guardians came to play in Infinity War and Endgame, Gunn was consulted.  The Guardians are his children.  And with Volume 3, Gunn gets to see his children off his way.

Gunn really had carte blanche to do what he wanted on the cosmic side of the MCU, the vastness of space allowing him to intersect or avoid events elsewhere as much or as little as he liked. In bringing Volume 3 to life, he's given an epic two and a half hours to tell whatever story he wants, and he's earned the right to avoid MCU mandates.  There's a larger, multiversal story that the MCU is currently building towards, and Gunn, instead, has a very specific story of family, friendship, happiness and letting go that has nothing to do with Kang the Conqueror.

Volume 3 is a very sober movie, not lacking the humour the series has had to this point, but there's an emotional weight and urgency underpinning it that signals most of the core team's traumas.  When Rocket is gravely injured in an attack from a young Adam Warlock, it hits the team hard. Peter Quill is still mourning the loss of Gamora, and Yondu, and his mom, despite having found a sister and a new family, and Rocket's impending doom is not something he can cope with.  Nebula has only ever known pain, so she's utterly guarded all the time, except that during the Blip, her and Rocket (the sole Guardians survivors) had bonded over their shared traumas. Mantis has been treated as something inferior her whole life, and she had maybe hoped that her new family would lift her up, but, as an empathic being, finds she has to do most of the heavy lifting. Drax is just lost, the death of his family at Thanos' hands has led him on a decade-long, miserable quest for vengeance that was left thoroughly unsatisfied, and now he labels himself "the destroyer" because he only feels like tearing things down, not building things up.  Groot, now a swole and on the precipice of adulthood, has lost his angst, embraced his family, but doesn't seem to understand their traumas. Kraglin, left his identity as a Reaver behind, but is failing to live up to Yondu's legacy. And Gamora is all too aware that she is a deviant in the galaxy, that a version of her died, but lived years of a life that she never did, and cannot seem to reconcile the person that people knew her as, and how she knows herself.  

All of this shows us the ties that bind the Guardians together, but it's a loose fragile weave that threatens to come apart at any moment.

Gunn sets the Guardians off on a quest through Rocket's tortured backstory, searching for a code to remove a kill switch hardwired to his heart. We learn of the High Evolutionary, a powerful, intelligent, cruel, vile being who experiments on animals in an effort to rapidly evolve them into "perfect beings". He is a believer in eugenics and is easily the most abhorrent villain the MCU has seen yet.  In flashbacks, we witness, sometimes directly, sometimes the aftereffects of the torture he puts poor Rocket, and other creatures, through in the egocentric quest for "perfection".

Gunn is an animal lover, and the harsh, gut-wrenching scenes of animals in distress is very pointed. But it's not proselytizing, he's not hitting you over the head with a specific spelled out message, but what he is trying to say is not difficult to infer. There's a level of distance humanity likes to maintain from the animal kingdom, an heir of superiority, as well as a veil of ignorance. Is our own advancement worth the suffering of these innocent creatures?

This is as James Gunn a movie as you can get at a PG-13 rating. The themes are very mature, the images are wild, and the language would make Captain America blush.  Gunn has a fascination with the beauty in the grotesque, and there's a lot of horror-derived imagery here but presented as something other than horrific.  For example, there's a kind of inhabited satellite grown out of living tissue serves as headquarters for a research institute that the Guardians need to infiltrate. It's a pink spiral of flesh, with giant hairs protruding from the "skin" of it.  The Guardians need to cut into its hull, unleashing its gooey yellow "blood". It's all so delightfully gross, and you can practically hear Gunn's cackling behind the scenes just knowing what he's getting away with.

Rocket's flashbacks are kind of the reverse, as the sweet and innocent young Rocket shares his pen with Floor (a sweet little bunny with robotic spider legs and a giant metal mouth), Teefs (a gentle walrus grafted onto motorized wheels) and Lylla, an otter with robotic arms.  Amidst the pain and torture that these creatures are suffering through at the hands of the High Evolutionary and his minions, they find friendship. Here Gunn's using the same tactics of knowing what he's getting away with, but doing so to really get at our hearts.  Rocket's story, one which Gunn has been teeing up from the beginning, is of both tragedy and triumph.

This is a long movie, and with few exceptions, every scene is earned, especially given where it needs to end, which is in saying goodbye.  Our main crew each come to an appropriate-for-them endpoint, that also serves as a starting point.  It's a long held tradition in comics that after a good run on a series, when the creative team departs, they both provide an ending for the character or team, but also the hope of further adventures down the road. The objective is to leave the characters in a place that is different from where they started, but not close them off with any finality. Gunn nails it here in brilliant ways that I won't spoil, except to say that a lot of the expected notes (like romances or deaths) don't quite happen like you'd think.

Everyone is fabulous in this film. Any reservation that Dave Bautista would be phoning it in can be quashed. As much as he wants to get away from playing roles like Drax, he's still a damn hard working actor and he continues to find depth in this role that many other performers would not. Chris Pratt's Quill has matured a lot since we first met him, and this film he's become very self-aware. He knows his faults but he also knows his strengths. This may be Pratt's best performance ever.  It's great seeing Karen Gillen over her past few appearances, really crushing her role as Nebula. There are some real awkward moments for the character in the first film, but she came to life in the second, and now is ably leading and holding the team together. Pom Klementieff's Mantis has not had much in the way of character development in her various appearances but she really comes to life here, showing not only what she can bring to battle, but bring to the team, and forging her own independence.  Chukwudi Iwuji's High Evolutionary is drunk with power and riddled with insecurity, and how he weaves through those two sensibilities is balletic. Will Poulter's Adam Warlock is probably going to upset fans of Adam Warlock, but here' the character is basically a child in an adult body, bestowed with the knowledge that he's meant to be something important and magnificent, and not understanding that. There's really no spotlight put on the character, yet, there are layers (and we get Elizabeth Debicki back as Ayesha, Adam's "mother", which is great, even if the film doesn't really have too much time for her).

The visuals here are as vibrant and colourful as ever. If anything helps temper the heavier themes it is the eye-popping colour palette. Gunn pays homage to legends throughout the film, not just giving his old boss Roger Corman a cameo, but a not to John Carpenter here, David Lynch there, and Stanley Kubrick in between. Rather than playing easter egg hockey with Marvel Comics lore, he instead gives his cinematic sci-fi forebears loving thank-yous. 

The warning is to keep younger kids away, and I would agree with that, although there were three very young kids behind us in the theatre and I didn't hear much of a peep out of them (not a lot of talking, the usual indicator of boredom, and surprisingly no crying, though I did a lot of that myself).  I don't think people should be so concerned about exposing their kids to the darker themes of this movie. They're smarter than we think, and if it upsets them, then maybe that's okay to be upset. Because animal cruelty is upsetting. And saying goodbye is sad. These are emotions we should be fostering and allowing to exist in compassionate human beings, not try and shelter away.

Volume 3 is a great finale to a truly special, unexpected blockbuster. I can't wait to see it again. Marvel's loss is definitely DC's gain (can't wait to see what Gunn does with Superman). I think the success of Gunn's trilogy proves that Marvel sometimes should to step back and instead of trying to guide a universe into a singular linear narrative, instead let a creator, or creative team come in with a distinct goal and an investment in the characters just run with it.

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Despite having Finns in my life since childhood, I know very little about Finland itself.  It's not a populous country (around 5.5 million), and its global cultural impact is quietly reserved. I hadn't ever considered what sharing a border with Russia is like, but the film Rare Exports - a Christmas-set alt-horror about murderous Santas (plural) - surprisingly slapped this reality in my face. With Sisu, the director of Rare Exports once again slapped me in the face not just with Finland's constant need for vigilance about its Eastern neighbour, but also the previously unconsidered impact of World War II upon the country.

Sisu doesn't get too deep into the history, except to say that the Germans were forced to withdraw from Lapland, and in doing so they adopted a "scorched Earth" policy, razing cities to the ground, burning the flora, stealing what they could and burying mines.  This is the setting for an over-the-top, hyperviolent, legend-building spectacle that marries Tarantino's neo-westerns with the one-man-army subgenre, and is simultaneously as glorious as it is ridiculous.

Sisu, we're told, is an untranslatable term that defines the national character of Finland, one of stoic determination, resiliance, grittiness, bravery and the like.  Which is to say that Finns are tough, survivors, able to stick it out where others would crumble. Here we follow an old war hero, Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) a grizzled war veteran with the nickname "The Immortal"... it's not that you can't kill him, it's just that he refuses to die.

Korpi has been set free from the military since the armistice with the Russians, and he's ventured off into the northern reaches of Lapland with his horse and dog in search of gold. Which after an exhaustive search he finds a small vein, which is more than enough for him. Heading back to civilization, he comes past the retreating Germans, and uneasy crossing that eventually leads to an altercation and the revelation that he's discovered gold. Korpi must then use incredible cunning and fortitude to survive in the open tundra of Lapland.  It's certainly not easy.

Within the first 15 minutes Korpi has survived the impossible, and will continue to do so time after time after time, but we're more than ready to go along with it, because, man, we really can't help but crave for him to take them Nazis out.  As the film goes on, the legend of Korpi is built, and the Finns have their own Rambo. I don't know where they can take the character from here, or if they even need to.  We're perhaps overconcerned with the concept of franchising, of wanting more of a good thing, rather than just appreciating the good thing we've got. Fun!

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Hallmark and their ilk have, in recent years, discovered that much of their viewership for their utterly cheese-filled, holiday-fuelled tripe is not the midwestern housefraus that they thought they were catering to, and that there's actually an honest-to-gosh market for non-heterosexual romances.  

Unfortunately, much of the cheese-filled, holiday-fuelled, non-heterosexual romances play by the same heteronormative storybook just with genders swapped, and title shifts like gay uncles instead of single dads.

Bros is a romcom co-written (with director Nicholas Stoller) and starring Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street, Parks and Recreation) that follows the well-trod romcom formulae of meet-cute - romance - complication - resolution but approached with an honesty about gay relationships that the mainstream production houses generally fear, certain that it will alienate one or more of the "quandrants", whatever that means.  

Eichner plays Bobby, a successful New York-based podcaster who is on the board of the first national LGBTQ+ museum, still in pre-launch mode.  He's never been in a serious relationship but say he's never desired one either. He views his lifestyle as kind of perfect for him, though admits the random hookups become increasingly awkward or more challenging as he hits forty. At a club, he's approached by Aaron ("the meet-cute"), a seriously buff, seriously handsome Luke Macfarlane (a legendary Hallmark stud) and they hit it off, but things are both great and weird as their like-minded sensibility on gay romances sits in the way of them even contemplating a relationship.

But it's kind of inevitable and they find a groove that lasts for months ("the romance"), until a Christmas visit from Aaron's upstate, reserved parents brings out the insecurities in both of them ("the complication"). It's months before they see each other again, each having time to contemplate what was so triggering and how they can possibly get past it, which they resolve to do in a big LGBTQ+ Museum grand opening gala.

Now, there are obvious things that differentiate Bros from typical romcoms (and the cheese-filled, holiday-fuelled, non-heterosexual Hallmarkies), being a lot of sexual acts being performed just off camera (or cleverly disguised on camera), a lot of sex talk and swearing, and of course a lot of gay and LBTQ+ content (including earnest, educational, and comedic sorts). But what I appreciated the most about Eichner and Stoller's script is the maturity of the characters to have real conversations with each other. There are no stupid misunderstandings in this film. What keeps them apart, and what breaks them up are real genuine emotions based on issues that a real person would have (and that are very well conveyed in building the characters in the film), and not plot contrivances. 

It's sweet and romantic and even a little sexy. But mostly (and most importantly), it's  pretty damn funny. 

31 Days of Halloween: Goosebumps

2023, Rob Letterman, Nicholas Stoller (Monsters vs Aliens, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) -- Disney

<inserted into the timeline after the fact; which also breaks the timeline because the final episodes air in November>

Herein I adapt the Kent 100-1-1-1 format for a TV show, and fill in some of the days of watching since the return from Vegas. Also, the series is on-going, so this will be pasted into the stream to fill in the blanks the Return, and the watching of TV has caused.

What 100: Letterman returns with another re-imagining of the Scholastic Books series, but for an older audience. His last time round was a movie starring Jack Black. If the movie was about pretending Jack was RL Stine, and having the monsters from his short, little books directed at kids, come to life, then the conceit is recreated in this series by having each episode centered on a single idea or motif, almost as if you were reading a stand-alone book. And yet, it is all drawn together in the popular streaming idea of something happening to a group of teens.

1-The Great: E03: Cuckoo Clock of Doom. Each episode does at least an attempt to tell a singular story within the confines of the greater story, that of The Biddle Kid taking revenge on the kids who killed him. This one gives us a mini loopty loo element, wherein James bumps his head against a clock, during the Halloween party in The Biddle House that kicks off the Bad Stuff, and notices he is stuck in a time loop. The twist is that every time he tries to leave the house, a duplicate of him wanders out into the real time stream, ending up with just less than a dozen alternate Darker Universe versions of him wandering around causing havoc. That is, until one of the kids discovers that even the minimal of violence against the dopples causes them to explode into green slime, that smells of Watermelon Jolly Rancher. It was just a fun episode!

1-The Good: E01: Say Cheese and Die! The setup episode.

Pacific Northwest, i.e. familiar faces from the Vancouver/West Coast stable of actors, town of Port Lawrence. We get the high school kids: Isaiah (Zach) the football god, his best friend and "one of 3 gay people in town" James, his next door neighbour and tenuous friend Margot, the weird girl, and "captain of the AV Club" introvert Isabella. Isaiah is reining popular kid, going to single handedly save the football team and be recognized by scouts, and intends on hosting a Halloween party in the town haunted house, which was being renovated by his father, after being inherited by the new English teacher, Mr. Bratt. The house is the Biddle House, named for a teen who died there in a mysterious fire in the 90s.

The ensemble cast is pretty good, and eventually includes another kid, the reckless Lucas, who for the most part are not cookie cutter kids all from the same social circle. But neither is any one of them an extreme of the iconic role they are to play. 

1-The Bad: E08: The fake ending episode. They find out who the "real Bad Guy" is, give chase and defeat him in a rather blasé episode focused on running around yelling a lot. I quite expected to say this was the end of the series, but then I saw there were two yet to run.

But also the climax focused on the most popular villain of the Goosebumps franchise -- Slappy the Ventriloquist's dummy. Apparently, because I never read the books, so I have no idea who he is. He is just an evil dummy who influences people into doing terrible things. So, the Biddle Kid's ghost is not the real Bad Guy, but the stupid dummy was. And they defeat him by tossing him over a cliff, and convincing the ghost to cut ties with the dummy. It all felt rushed and anti-climactic, which should have been more of a hint of there being more episodes.

K'sMIRT: unfinished spinich

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching (or in this case, didn't complete, and may not complete).

The show/season: Platonic Season 1 - AppleTV+

Episodes Watched: 7 of 10

Why I no finish?: We were really quite enjoying the reunion of the Neighbours leads with director Nicholas Stoller (who also brought along Luke McFarlane and Guy Branum from Bros.) which finds Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen as estranged best friends rekindling their best-friendship after Rogen's recent break-up with his wife whom Byrne didn't get along with. There's absolutely no will-they/won't-they tension and it is yet another series that could so easily lean into cringe comedy but manages to smartly side step it into, well, maybe not the kindness porn of Ted Lasso, but into something much gentler and affable.

Will I return to it?: Yes, when we re-up AppleTV+ for season 2 of Severence we'll finish it off.

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The show/season: Beef Season 1 - Netflix

Episodes Watched: 3 of 10

Why I no finish?: Speaking of cringe... Beef is extreme cringe, like calling Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm out for being total pussies and doubling down by being a cringe drama instead of cringe comedy. Ali Wong and Stephen Yeun are both amazing as two people in utter despair over their daily lives, that when they start to fued over a road rage incident gone viral, it escalates in increasingly uncomfortable ways. It's fascinating, but unsettling viewing, and each half-hour episode feels like it takes a 3-hour toll.

Will I return to it?: I really want to. It seems like a smart show that, despite painting its two leads with increasingly ugly colours, still finds its sympathies lay with them, and that there's a subconscious imperative (rather than logical one) that drives them. I think it will be ultimately rewarding to finish. Lady Kent has bowed out, so I'll have to do it on my own.

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The show/season: Clone High Season 3 (?) - HBOMax

Episodes Watched: 4 of 10

Why I no finish?: I love, love, love Clone High. I'm a total fanboy of both Lord and Miller and Bill Lawrence, and this is where that venn diagram meets. The original series holds a very special place in my heart, as it seemed to be perennially on in the background of both "The Ronces" and "BOBTown", the two apartments I shared with my dear departed friend Jeremy. Clone High's return is a bittersweet one as I absolutely love that it's basically returned as a direct sequel 20 years later, as well as addressing it's now problematic past, and it's as funny as it ever was...but Jeremy isn't here to share it with me. I can hear his laugh in the background when I watch it which both fills me with warmth and also sadness.

Will I return to it?: I didn't mean to stop watching it, as it's recorded on the DVR, I just need to get back to it when I have spare 20 minutes here and there.

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The show/season: Unicorn Warriors Eternal Season 1 - Cartoon Network

Episodes Watched: 1 of 10

Why I no finish?: I didn't realize when I saw commercials for UWE that it was the latest Genndy Tartakovsky animated series. Samurai Jack is a formative animated series for me, his Clone Wars series is a fantastic bit of elseworlds, and I even really dig Primal despite missing the entire second season completely. But each of those series has that decidedly angular Tartakovsky style, while UWE is definitely not that. It makes perfect sense that the character designs are from Stephen DeStefano (who I know from way back from DC's little known 'Mazing Man comic and the short-lived ensemble humour comic called Instant Piano) as it's totally his bloopy, rounded Betty Boop-era Max Fleischer-esque style. It's just shocking, is all, when you're expecting one style and getting the seeming polar opposite. Also I caught episode 3 of the series and it made absolutely zero sense to me. It's also kind of steam-punk fantasy, which is totally not a genre I key into, so maybe that's just an insurmountable barrier.

Will I return to it?: If I can start back at episode 1, I'll definitely give it another shot.

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The show/season: White House Plumbers (mini-series) - HBOMax

Episodes Watched: 2? 3? of 5

Why I no finish?: The cast is epic, featuring Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, Lena Heady, Judy Greer, Domnhall Gleeson and dozens more recognizable faces and solid character actors, all in service of a thoroughly overwrought and self-satisfied piece of 70's political lampooning that seems too much of the era it's trying to ape. It's a smug piece of anti-Republicanism that rewards anti-Republicans with a constant pat on the back by turning every single Republican on screen into a braying buffoon or insolent idiot. Hey, not that I don't agree, but there's not an ounce of subtlety to this and none of the comedy was working for me. It was just too nail-on-the head and I like to think I'm into more sophisticated poop than that. (Heh, poop.)

Will I return to it?: Nope

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The show/season: Titans Season 4 - Netflix

Episodes Watched: 4 of 12

Why I no finish?: In the time between Season 3 and 4 of Titans we've been absolutely flooded with superhero programming, some of it ongoing, some of it net new, but most of it in the range of mediocre. I've obviously outgrown the need to "support" every mainstream product in hopes that they will give me more. At this stage, it truly is too much...too much to consume, too much to care about, and most of it doesn't really deliver the thrills that I want out of superheroes. There was a moment there where I was worried that TV and film were going to replace comics as THE market for superhero entertainment, but if anything they've proved that maybe the only place they truly work, at least in the shared-universe capacity that I enjoy them, is in comic book form. Titans season 4 is more of the same from Titans which is taking 40 years of superhero drama and doing very little intriguing with it, and frequently forgetting its a superhero show at all, getting lost in its own diversions from the source material and characters. There's a horror subplot that, were it a movie, could make for a tight, suspensful and scary production, but as a 12-episode series, even a quarter of the way through, already feels drawn out and watered down. The visual flair of the first season has now given way to the cheap Canadian-made CW-style production values. The most fun we've been having has nothing to do with story or character, and everything to do with guessing the Toronto landmark on screen.

Will I return to it?: Hard maybe.

Muppets Most Wanted

2014, d. James Bobin -- in theatre

I'm an unabashed Muppets fan.  They trigger something very deep within me such that not only do I excuse the hacky jokes, the overt sentimentality and the evermore dated nature of their very being, but I embrace it all.  That being said, I understand full well how, in our lifelike computer generated entertainment culture, the Muppets seem remarkably limited on-screen, low-tech (no tech, actually) and that their appeal outside of wonton nostalgia is a challenge for the kids who didn't grow up with Kermit and the gang on their TVs or their dinner wear or their lunchbox.

The first movie traded in on the idea of this fading nostalgia exceptionally well, and by confronting it so fully, it's afforded the Muppets (as a commodity) some renewed relevance, allowing it to move past the mustiness and shake off the cobwebs.  In the wake of the Jason Segel/Nicholas Stoller/James Bobin "relaunch" the Muppets unfortunately didn't trade in on the film's success as much as they should have.  A one hour special during the Montreal Just For Laughs comedy festival, a wickedly confusing Lady Gaga/Muppets holiday special on Netflix, and the odd appearance on late night television and awards shows.  Strangely the viral videos that had launched the Muppets into renewed relevance in the first place started to slow in the film's wake.  It's almost as if the focus was all put towards doing a sequel.

Muppets Most Wanted picks up literally at the end of the previous Muppets feature with body doubles standing in for Segel and Amy Adams shot from behind.  Embracing their ability to pierce the fourth wall without utterly destroying it, they address that the previous film had wrapped, all the "adoring fans" seen in The Muppets closing number were all extras, and their triumphant return the previous film postulated wasn't their reality.  They then notice that one camera is still trained on them, which means that they must be doing a sequel.  Cue the film's first musical number "We're Doing A Sequel".

The Muppets exist in a strange reality. Though they never break the illusion that they're puppets, or acknowledge their operators, beyond that everything else is fair game.  The "story" of the Muppets is a non-linear and equally nonsensical one, which sees them performing as characters in films like Muppet Treasure Island or A Muppet Christmas Carol, and equally performing as themselves in The Muppets Take Manhattan or Muppets From Space, but this isn't their reality either.  They acknowledge at least half a dozen times that the preceding film was indeed a film, and not their actual reality, but at the same time they carry forth that same reality into Most Wanted of the struggling group of weirdos and anthropomorphic animals performing for a society that once-but-no-longer cares for them.

This leads them under the sway of Ricky Gervais' Dominic Badguy who promises them a successful European tour, offering much and undermining Kermit at every turn.  Dominic is partners with the world's most dangerous frog, Constantine, a thief who just escaped from a Russian gulag and who happens to look  just like Kermit, but with a mole on his face.  The scheming duo manage to replace Constantine for Kermit, who gets escorted off to the Russian gulag under the watchful eye of Tina Fey's doting warden, Nadia.  Then, while on tour, Constantine and Dominic (whose criminal nom-de-plum is The Lemur) use the cover of the Muppet Show to bust into museums and vaults neighbouring the theatres they perform in.  This brings together FBI agent Sam the Eagle and Interpol Agent Jean Pierre Napoleon (Ty Burrell in a fantastic Clouseau-inspired performance) in an awkward partnership to follow their trail, the only real hurdle to solving the crime being Napoleon's excessively liberal European work schedule.

The comic conceit of the film, that this thick- and unruly-accented frog could believably replace Kermit is probably it's most delightful aspect, is a great use of the classic absurdity of mistaken identity.  Yet the script twists it wildly with the cast of the Gulag (including, prominently, Ray Liotta, Jemaine Clement and Danny Trejo) recognizing rather quickly that Kermit is not Constantine.  Meanwhile, with promises of creative freedom and sellout shows (and giving them all what they want), the Muppets buy into Constantine-as-Kermit.

Constantine is the film's biggest treasure.  Despite my affection for the previous Muppets feature, I found its new character, Walter, a bit dull, so it pleases me that this film's new Muppet is so delightful.  Constantine's butchering of the English language, his terrible Kermit impersonation (which he believes is spot on), his elaborate but passionless wooing of Piggy, and his overbearing relationship with his Number 2 are ceaselessly entertaining.  Thanks to the work of Matt Vogel, Constantine may look exactly like Kermit (with a mole) but his physicality is altogether different and it really builds a new character beyond just the voice.

Flight of the Conchord's Bret McKenzie deservedly won an Oscar for one of his original songs from the previous film ("Man or Muppet").  My daughter has played the soundtrack endlessly in the intervening years and (beyond the unfortunate placement of Starship's "We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)") it's a great soundtrack with fabulous original and Muppet-ized songs.  The new soundtrack tops it.  McKenzie's 6 new songs are each infectious gems, better in context, but great on their own.  They genre hop from ragtime to doo wop to soul culminating in the over-the-top ballad "Something So Right" featuring Celine Dion.  The songs manage to hit the irreverent humour the Conchords are known for but also carry the story of Muppets Most Wanted forward and even tossing some emotion and character development in there.  They are a feat and should likely net McKenzie another Oscar.

I should note that my four year old reacted rather negatively to the film.  There was a lot of crying and a general anxiousness as she watched the movie.  It was largely a result of Constantine, she said, and I think more than the performance of the character it was the effectively intense score from Christophe Beck (another little girl in front of us was also notably frightened by the film), leading to two restless nights.  So this one, strangely, may not be for all young viewers.

I Saw This!! (2015 Unreviewed) - the one-paragraph-rundown challenge

Blerg!
As I've mentioned pretty much every time I've written in the past year, I've been absolutely terrible about writing about movies or TV in anything resembling a timely manner.  It's gotten pretty ridiculous. Four of the movies below I'm almost at the 1 year anniversary of having watched them.  Do you really think I can pull together a viable review of a film I've seen only once almost a year ago...?
Of course I can.  
But the point is I don't have time to.
So the challenge here is can I summarize my feelings on a particular movie in just one paragraph and still have any resembling a meaningful contribution to the discussion of the film?
Let's see shall we...

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Neighbors - 2014, d. Nicholas Stoller --superchannel

Don Jon - 2013, d. Joseph Gordon-Levitt --superchannel

Space Station '76 - 2014, d. Jack Plotnick --superchannel

Mission Impossible III - 2006, d. JJ Abrams --superchannel

The Maze Runner - 2014, d. Wes Ball -- netflix
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau - 2014, David Gregory -- netflix
Hardware - 1990, d. Richard Stanley -- dvd

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Zak and Dave have a DeNiro party

After seeing Neighbors I became a Zak Efron convert.  He's handsome, beefy and honestly a surprisingly capable comedic performer.  He was quite able to nail the role in a film like this where he's tasked with being a bit of a dope, somewhat of a tool andan unrepentant frat boy party prince, all while hiding a wounded little puppy of a soul underneath.  (If you know Marvel Comics, based on this he would have been perfect for the role of Starfox, Star Lord's dad, in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  I think Kurt Russell's doing it instead, which is okay too... YOU'RE WASTING WORDS, KENT!!!) Anyway, this movie was funny as shit.  Tremendous casting all around.  Seth Rogen has stepped into his pre-mid-life crisis phase of playing 30-ish men transitioning into responsibility, and he does it better than any of his contemporaries.  Rose Byrne, for her part, is right there with him, playing a comrade-in-arm, a willing participant, rather than a nagging wife or some form of 'TskTsk'-er.  Supporting characters in the likes of Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Carla Gallo, Lisa Kudrow and Jerrod Carmichael were all bang on, but even beyond that, cameos from the Lonely Island, the Workaholics crew, Randall Park, Hannibal Buress, Jason Mantzoukas and Natasha Leggero all rounded out the film as a power-house comedy.  It seemed too simplistic and too cliche a premise to be this entertaining but, dammit if it didn't succeed.  And the trailers for the sequel look pretty damn funny.

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Don Jon is director-writer-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt's pondering of one man's internet porn addiction and how it affects his love life.  Sort of.  In the end it's more about how you shouldn't make all the compromises in a relationship (you need to make some but it has to cut both ways).  But there's a few other things going on too, dealing with various aspects of relationships, sex, sexual dynamics, power struggles, happiness, and personal betterment.  Don Jon isn't a bad movie.  It's not even an unfocussed movie.  The ideas and even their general execution are sound.  Everyone acts well and the message(s) come through.  It's unfortunate then that Levitt chose set his first major directorial effort in the thick of the New Jersey shore, making his character a wife-beater-wearing lug and his object of affection an all-too-game gum-chewing Scarlett Johansson.  I mean, Tony Danza plays Jon's dad.  TONY effing DANZA!  The problem is these characters don't feel like real people, but broad stereotypes one would normally find in a Saturday Night Live sketch.  Or on MTV's Jersey Shore, but I couldn't stand to watch two minutes of Jersey Shore without wanting to gouge out my eyes and stab myself in the ears with uncooked spaghetti, so Levitt's decision to center the film around these broad stereotypes made the journey of watching them unattractive and somewhat painful.  I would have much rathered it be set in Philly or Boston.  Long Island probably would have been just as problematic.

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By purposefully going retro-futuristic, 1970's-style, director Jack Plotnick sets up expectations for a whimsical Naked Gun or Black Dynamite-style farce, only to deliver a surprisingly effective close-quarters drama instead.  It's a bait-and-switch that's difficult to accept at first, but eventually the films rhythms, and excellent cast (including Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Matt Bomer, Marisa Coughlan and Jerry O'Connell) suck you into the lives of these people, leaving the anticipation of self-aware comedy gags a distant memory.  About as funny as the film gets is with Dr. Bot, the station's therapist who is only capable of spouting cliched platitudes in response to anyone's emotional unloading, but otherwise it steers away from its corny surroundings, avoids too much wink/wince inducing space-jargon and actually tries (and succeeds) at establishing real characters and real moments between them.  The most unfortunate thing about the film isn't the expectations vs. reality, but rather the fact that most of the effect are digital rather than practical... and pretty crappy at that.  It's sad that Plotnick and company didn't splurge for the extra effort of miniatures.  It's of nominal difference to the actual story at hand, but visually it would have been even more wondrous.  The practical sets and wardrobe, looking like remnants from Space: 1999 were both hokey and sumptuous, note perfect, making those CGI elements stand out awkward and atrociously.

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As past reviews on this site have mentioned, I've got a yen for espionage films...one I don't satiate quite enough.  The Bond movies feel like high points (even the bad ones) because the satisfy not just the spy element, but action, sci-fi, adventure, globetrotting, car chasing, and all sort of other elements, even if it's at the expense of being true espionage.  The Mission Impossible movies were meant to be Americanized Bond, in many respects, creating a high-octane action-adventure superspy sans accent, and I never bought into it.  With the first film, despite some excellent direction from Brian DePalma, the fact that the IMF team is immediately killed off leaving only Tom Cruise:Action Hero as our focus was quite the turnoff.  The less said about John Woo's second entry, the better (except to say that because of it we got Hugh Jackman as Wolverine instead of Dougray Scott, so thanks!).  I skipped the third entry, because I just didn't care, but the fourth entry drew me back in, since it was director Brad Bird's first live action.  Even still I only came back to MI:III not because of Ghost Protocol, but rather in anticipation of JJ Abram's Star Wars coming down the pike.  I've discovered, however, that in the end it doesn't really matter who's directing the damn thing, ever Mission Impossible movie is forgettable.  I remember next to nothing about any of them, except for the big action moments we see in the trailers all the time.  Tom Cruise's jumping away from an exploding helicopter in the second film is just as sharp in my mind as his jumping into the big swirling vortex in Rogue Nation... a film I haven't even seen... and I can't even remember a major action sequence for M:I:III.  The this third film has Michelle Monaghan as Ethan Hunt's wife (or wife to be, who can remember) being kidnapped (and apparently killed in a fake-out opening flash forward) by Philip Seymore Hoffman (RIP).  Then some stuff happens.  Keri Russell is there for some reason. Everything works out and Ethan Hunt goes off with his not-dead wife into retirement, only to return in two more films where I don't think his wife is even mentioned.  These are the epitome of "whatever" summer blockbusters.  They certainly pass the time, but as a series of films they don't connect well at all, just like it's an impossible mission to connect with or care about Ethan Hunt as a character (see what I did there?).  And those posters...woof, can they get any more dull?


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I tend not to watch most of these sci-fi-light-teen-dramas-based-off-a-young-adult-novel-series movies.  There have always been a copious amount of teen-focused novel series, but since the Harry Potter explosion they're being adapted to screen in ridiculous numbers in the hope of having the next Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Hunger Games (the cream of the crop).  The b-list has the ongoing Divergent series, the odd entry into the Percey Jackson mythology, the randomness of Narnia, and now The Maze Runner.  Of the b-list, The Maze Runner is by far the best of them, even if its plot, purpose, and eventual twist conceit is utterly ludicrous, it manages to sell it pretty well.  This first entry in the series manages to introduce its setting, add complications to it, explore the mysteries within it, and create a lot of meaningful (if cliche) dramatic friction to such positive effect that by the time it gets to revealing what the hell the maze is all about it's only stupid in hindsight.  There's a Lord of the Flies aspect that likely stems from James Dashner's source material, but the divisiveness amongst the young men never really reaches the same dire head (the threat is almost always without, rather than equally being within).  Mercifully, the introduction of a female into the all-teen-male setting doesn't send everyone on a primal hormonal rampage, and to its credit Teresa never faces a threat that the other boys don't also face.  In fact, there seems to be an intentional bucking of these sorts of in-fighting and stupid-machismo bullshit trends that stories like this usually take on, which is perhaps why I liked it so much.  Instead of things resolving with the expected drama there's often an air of civility to it, like these kids have figured things out a little better than we have.  Obviously the story ends with a sequel in mind, which David has conveniently already written up.
(and here's David's take of the first)

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In this, the Twenty-Teens entertain-you-glut where Television and Movies and web programming and video games and board games and comics and novels can be created and distributed by anyone, there's a whole subgenre of documentaries emerging: movies about movies.  In the past these were a rare beast, Hearts of Darkness (the making of Apocalypse Now) being the first major entry in the subgenre back in 1991.  But with DVDs presenting a viable medium for distributing behind-the-scenes documentaries as special features, it became commonplace to create a documentary alongside a film.  Retrospective documentaries of popular phenomenon like Star Wars were also frequently in the offing, but it's only in the past few years, especially with Netflix catering to the documentary crowd and Kickstarter providing a vehicle for funding niche passion projects (spurring on the rise of docs about films that were never made).  It's almost too much.  But something like Lost Soul, detailing how a passion project became a major flop straddles the middle ground, presenting you with a vision for a film that never got made because it was so corrupted by the people who eventually made it.  In Richard Stanley's efforts to bring H.G. Wells' novel to life, he found himself out of his depth wrestling the demands of a big studio, big stars, and the elements of a remote location wholly not designed for major motion picture production.  Summarily he was booted off the film which went from being one unfortunate train wreck to just a flat out miserable experience under the guidance of a completely detached John Frankenheimer.  It's a fascinating talking heads picture detailing the personal and emotional turmoil the film had from a broad swath of people involved, including Stanley (the oddest of odd ducks, bless him), some of his cast (Kilmer didn't participate and Brando was obviously unable to, but they loom as large of natural disasters as the typhoon that struck the set), makeup and effects teams, producers, script writers and others.  It's very thorough and very weird, plus it's a thousand times more interesting and entertaining than the actual film that wound up getting released.  (For the record, Frankenheimer jumped on the project because he had no other opportunities at that time, and did so only with the caveat of having a 3-picture deal with the studio.  Ronin was on of those pictures, so it was totally worth it to him to dispassionately crank out this shitty, already troubled adaptation).

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Having watched the above mentioned Lost Soul documentary that worked on the thesis of Richard Stanley being an unheralded and misunderstood visionary of then-modern horror, I made a concerted effort to find a copy of Hardware on DVD (I didn't need blu-ray...in fact, Hardware seems made for the grainy, warbly, crisplessness of the VHS home video market).  It's one of those films that seemed exclusively advertised in mature readers comics and (I'm guessing) horror magazines like Fangoria.  I don't recall ever watching a trailer, but the comic book ads lingered in my mind for decades.  I don't know that I ever saw a copy of the film on a video store shelf back when there were video store shelves.  I certainly can believe I would have ever passed up the opportunity to watch it should it have presented itself.  Suffice it to say I'd waited a long time to watch it.  And yep, it's a post-apocalyptic piece of garbage.  Literally and figuratively.  Like Rey in Star Wars Episode 7, Dermot Mul...ahem Dylan McDermott ventures out into the wastelands to find useful remains amidst the detritus of a great war.  Some he sells and some he gives to his girlfriend, a welding artist who makes sculptures from trash.  One piece is an old Terminator skull (it's not an actual Terminator, but it's a military war robot of similar ilk) which reboots and starts rebuilding itself from the scrap.  Some stuff happens, people get killed, scream queen style screaming, gloopy red blood, good-for-their-time-but-pretty-crappy-by-today's-standards gore effects.... Hardware is a rash of cliched and derivative moments cobbled together for a wholly unsatisfying viewing experience.  It's like if this were the disappointing, somehow smaller sequel to Terminator the way Predator II is so much the lesser of Predator.  It's not even bad in the let's-entertain-ourselves-by-making-fun-of-it way, it's just kind of there.  It certainly did little to cement Stanley as some sort of auteur or neglected filmmaking genius as posited by Lost Soul.  Had he not lost the Dr. Moreau opportunity he may have had the opportunity to develop a unique voice, but Hardware shows only slight promise of anything fantastic to come.