"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Nine years after the first film, Ben Affleck returns as his assassin-on-the-spectrum (with most of the cast) in The Accountant 2, a movie that seems to have been put into production by current events (which would make it prescient, honestly). The gap is acknowledged, the characters have moved on, and to its credit, the sequel doesn't do a beat-for-beat, greatest hits compilation of the first one. We don't have enough actual super-accounting as a result (sad), but I mostly like it. Wolff goes up against human traffickers, again with the help of his brother played Jon Bernthal who really steals the show. He's very funny and drive the black comedy as well as the "brothers reconnecting" subplot, and the audience was just eating it up. He needs a higher cinematic profile, yo. Replacing the childhood memories and coping mechanisms integral to the first film are threads relating to connection - whether romantic, familial or even human-animal. The mystery is fine and the action is strong, but this is where the movie shines, despite the pacing issues it unavoidably creates. One weird thing is that they don't use the word autism in the film, which seems odd, but perhaps it's coming from a place of evolving language on the issue, admitting this is a comic book portrayal, or a rejection of labels to define people. But if there ever were a time to defend the neurodivergent community by using the word, it's now. Weaker than the first one, but still a good time at the movies.
At home: Based on a 1980s FBI manhunt for insurrectionist white supremacists, The Order is a competently-made film, with good performances (Jude Law is the grizzled Fed, Tye Sheridan is more or less a younger version of his character, Nicholas Hoult - yes, it's a Young X-Men reunion - is the leader of the domestic terrorists), and an important subject (the group is a precursor with actual lineage to the Jan6 insurrection). However, there's very little here that I'm going to remember in a week. Maybe the Pyrrhic climax, but otherwise... I think, AS A FILM, it's kept back by the facts of the case (something true of many "true stories", which is why it'll never be one of my favorite genres). It just feels like it's a meeting, then a shootout, another meeting, another shootout, etc., interspersed with the characters' personal subplots. This happens then this happens then this happens, the bane of the biopic. For me, it would have been stronger if it had hit its theme of law enforcement's systemic disappointment, of having someone in the crosshairs, just out of range. It's there, but felt, itself, out of range.
I fully admit I have a thing for Naomie Harris, but she and Natalie Dormer really are excellent in The Wasp, a twisted thriller that asks what it would take for you to kill your childhood friend's spouse (if asked). Perhaps it depends on the circumstances. But as those circumstances start to come to light, including a lot of unresolved trauma from those school days, the twists start piling on and the revenge is not what it seems. Once it basically becomes a two-hander, you can tell this was adapted from a play, but between the high tension of the situation and the nicely-integrated flashbacks, it doesn't feel less cinematic. The central theme is that of cyclical violence, imposing your hurt on others to, in turn, be transmitted to another and another and another. But can you close the loop by turning that violence on the one who caused it? The insect stuff acts as a further metaphor that adds a layer to a genre that rarely makes use of such poetic notions.
In Magpie, Daisy Ridley is a housewife suffering through postpartum depression, possibly on the verge of psychosis... at least to hear her self-absorbed husband (Star Trek: Discovery's Shazad Latif) tell it. And things go from bad to worse when their daughter gets a role in a film, and he starts lusting after the lead actress on set (Revenge's Matilda Lutz). It soon becomes clear that Latif is a toxic monster continually gaslighting his wife and daughter, subtle emotional abuse that must be paid for. The thriller is turned inward as a revenge seems imminent, if only we can divine what Ridley is doing when faced with a possible affair between the starlet and the husband. So if there's psychosis here, at least it's in service of what we, the audience, want to see happen. Well done. My only real problem with the film is that it's shot in that low-contrast style that makes my eyes hurt, but it's not a deal breaker.
The Loveless is a real mood. It certainly isn't a PLOT. Kathryn Bigelow's first feature (co-directed and co-written with someone who never directed or wrote another) is all style, with little happening, or at least, little happening that's really the protagonists' doing, but it's infused with so much cool, I don't think it matters. Filled with smoky music (the score by co-lead Robert Gordon), the deep breaths between lines of dialog make it sound like an extended beat poem (when the credits roll, there are space between the names that tell me this was all very much planned out). We're in Kerouac's 1950s. Young Willem Dafoe is a ne'er-do-well greaser leading a bunch of venal bikers, but the "propriety" of the small town they pitstop into is proven to be just as venal and slimy - indeed, more - than whatever anarchic energy the "criminal bikers" are supposed to bring. I wouldn't even say they were catalysts for the violence that comes. A slick, slow-burning Southern Gothic.
You know when you're watching the first scene of a film and you go "ah, this is just a fake movie playing inside the movie"? Well, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity starts with such a scene, except it's not fake. A tongue-in-cheek SFploitation rendering of "The Most Dangerous Game", it rightly knows it's a spoof and is therefore pretty entertaining despite the bad props, costumes, sets, effects and acting. Early on, I had to ask just who ARE these bikini-wearing slave girls, and the answer is, whoever they need to be at any point in the film. Personally, I would have given B-movie icon Brinke Stevens the role opposite Elizabeth Kaitan's main heroine (two blondes in the same costume gets confusing and besides, Brink Stevens), but as this is essentially New Moon nonsense (I mean that as a positive), it doesn't really matter. New Moon knows it doesn't have the resources to make something TOO solid, so it gives us reasons to watch anyway - nudity, jokes (I had a few smiles and giggles), and general shamelessness. I do feel like I know the huntsman, Don Scribner, from SOMEwhere specific, but I can't place it. Like he's been playing slimes like this his whole career. But I haven't really seen him in anything, not even on television, or at least, not during this era. Maybe he just looks and sounds like someone (and half those answers are Christian Bale). Slave Girls was his first credit.
Starting with the fun premise of an accidental heist, Chongqing Hot Pot doesn't really know what it is or what it has, given how the twists aren't just in the plot, but in the genre and tone as well. It's still fun, vibrantly shot, and full of surprises, but yes, it might tie itself into one knot too many. Because sometimes it's a comedy about three school chums who started a restaurant together in an underground bunker. Sometimes it's a drama where one of them is in so much debt, even his family is being threatened. Sometimes it's a cheesy romcom about a school crush returning to the fold. Sometimes it's a bloody action film with shades of Oldboy. And that's as well as doing heist tropes that could have been the whole movie. Somehow, still not enough cooking. That all said, I think we do like the characters, the action is strong, and I especially like the climax which, between the music, choreography, editing, cinematography, suspense and poetics really hits hard.
Ozu's first talkie, The Only Son, starts like many of his early films and you'd be forgiven for thinking it would be about a child, a child who has a lot of responsibility piled on his shoulders when his widowed mother decides to let him stay in school while she makes crippling sacrifices. And I would have watched that film. But we instead jump more than a dozen years to see the boy all grown-up and living in the shadow of those responsibilities, and of having failed at becoming a "great man" in Tokyo. He's kept all this from his mother, and he spends a lot of money he doesn't have on her when she visits... all innate of that great guilt he feels. He has just become "a man", is that so bad? There's an indictment of parental disappointment here that's pretty universal, and Ozu shows us a lot of parent-child relationships in the background and foreground. And success is certainly scalable. What might have boy become had he stayed in his small fishbowl? I think there's a reading of the ending that absolutely condemns professional ambition. As with most of Ozu's work, there's a restrained melodrama brewing that pulls at the heart strings, and while the very specific style of his post-War work isn't quite here yet, he still knows when to cut to a baby, a clothes line or a smokestack, to make his points.
[Palestine] A winter romance in Palestine, the Nasser Brothers' Gaza Mon Amour presents an older man, a fisherman, who finally decides to get married, if Hiam Abbass (from Succession) will have him. Or if he can get enough courage to ask her, I suppose. Trying to corner a patch of happiness under an oppressive regime, while being hassled by state police and squalid poverty is perhaps emboldened by a strange fertility statue found under the water, well, that's the magic of cinema. It's an element of low-key fantasy - insofar as it makes him dream - that rubs shoulders with a bleak reality. The Nassers are telling a feel-good story, but not shying away from the realities of Gaza, as it was in 2020 (a sad postscript). Quite charming despite the suspenseful setting and circumstances, and I absolutely loved the ending (or pair of endings).
[Iraq, Kuwait] In the mid-2010s, veterans' groups came together ot make a zombie movie by and for veterans (not withstanding technical talent and genre-famous cameos), and so Range 15 was born. Not a War Story is a documentary tracking the making of that horror-comedy cheapie and it had a real opportunity to really delve into the similarities between war theaters and guerilla film-making. Because when that's the vibe, when we're discussing how much dedication and discipline is required in both worlds, and having veterans tell their stories while covered in movie gore on set, it's at its most interesting. Unfortunately, it eventually resolves into a "making of" DVD extra about a movie I haven't seen (it looks amusing, so maybe one day), and leans way too much into being a marketing tool to hype the movie, in a way that's - oof! - is at once desperate for you to see it, love it, and think it changed the face of movies together, and preemptively flipping you the finger if you don't do all three of those things.
Books: Evan Dorkin's Beasts of Burden Omnibus collects all the stories and mini-series featuring the Wise Dogs Society TO DATE (which is still more than 500 pages of content, but I say "to date" because dark omens presage more), a book that plays at once like a beautifully illustrated children's book and a dark and gory horror comic (though Dorkin's trademark humor still shines through). Underneath the quiet suburb of Burden Hill are things that Man was not meant to know, see, but dogs (and cats and other animals) definitely do. And so they fight evil. Jill Thompson (who does most of the art) understands animal behavior and produces wonderful watercolors for the series, and we miss her when the baton is passed to Benjamin Dewey, although he proves up to snuff (perhaps especially because his chapters delve deep into the lore and use a different cast of canines). There's even a Hellboy team-up in there, completists! Animal lovers will find their due, but tender hearts may be shocked by the amount of graphic violence. I would say it's that contrast that makes Beasts of Burden the success it is. The Omnibus includes artists' notes, sketches, thumbnails and all the cover art.
I've read a few of Christian Slade's Korgi stories in my day, but Korgi: The Complete Tale puts them in order and context, with over 500 pages of beautiful, wordless (except for the Frog's introductions) illustrations which, but for the sequencing, could all be spot illos in a book of fairy tales. Absolutely gorgeous work. I didn't realize before that there was a continuing saga to the somewhat surreal fable, and even a flashback (in as surprisingly paired-down art style) to the lore of Korgi Hollow AND a flash forward (or sorts) connecting it to our own world. The collection includes every Korgi story, even short, charming pieces printed in anthologies and Free Comic Book Day initiatives, as well as character sketches that tell you a bit more than can be gleaned from the silent stories. Generally, if you like cue dogs, cute fairies and/or cute Godzillas and Krakens, this is for you. As for the alien (because, yeah, it's a pretty eclectic world) being called Black 7 - I see what you did there, Christian.
Clayton Junior's Wild Thing: My Life as a Wolf has a graphic simplicity that belies a certain storytelling complexity. Some will rightly say it meanders - a guard dog gets lost in the woods, joins a wolf pack endangered by human encroachment, and has several encounters/adventures in a world red of tooth and claw - but I think it's complexity and interest comes from how the animal point of view is rendered. What does the dog, Silver, understand? He's a bit oblivious, so we might judge his master harshly, but he won't. He takes things as perfectly natural that would traumatize a human being. He doesn't really understand humans, but he doesn't understand wolves either. And the wolves understand humans even less, as per their nature. So in that sense, it's quite intriguing, and whatever sadness we might feel at this moment or that is mitigated by whether or not Silver does.
RPGs: Continuing our current Torg Eternity adventure in the Liverpool Necropolis of Aysle, the PCs went through a fight with various elementals, a search through the wizard's effects for clues, one of their number being mind-controlled by a Darkness Device, and a furious escape from an assembled army surrounding the tower (oh, and a fight with a patrol at the finish line when they failed their Dramatic Skill Resolution). Some good action and role-play, as we'll see in Best Bits below. More important to me this session was the fact that we officially play-tested mechanics I've been working on to add drama (or melodrama) to scenes (more on this tomorrow). It worked well, on the one hand creating chaos for one target character, on the other, promising something interesting in the next session. And this is totally independent of the Freedom Magician getting momentarily seduced by Uthorion's Darkness Device, getting a Frightening Aspect and corruption roll that ALMOST, RIGHT THEN AND THERE, turned him into a pawn of the Evil One forever (gotta watch that Charisma drain!). So plenty of drama in what would normally have been a scene about looking through a guy's paperwork.
Best bits: Even if something hasn't been prepped and isn't therefore "true", when a player plays an Idea/Inspiration card, I like it to count. So when fighting a nearly-invisible air elemental, I let "inspiration" strike to retcon the encounter so that the creature was connected to its element pool, which could therefore be more easily attacked and destroyed. A lot of cantrip use from the Realm Runner, hiding behind little mounds of dirt or fling bottles around to "trick" opponents. During all these fights, the poor Monster Hunter was trying to brew potions and forge explosive bullets, and it seemed every element was out to ruin his science (he still managed to make more than half the stuff). The Melodrama mechanic forced a "damaging secret" from his lips too (with a little help from the Darkness Device's influence), but the massacre of his platoon when he first turned into a were-bat was met with "yeah, we figured". What was ACTUALLY damaging was his whispered confession that he kept an apprentice around to eat him if necessary. The kid heard and quit (I get to create a new Assistant, as this is a Perk, and I'm happy about it). The Frankenstein played a Romance card on a Red Sonja type palling around with the team, and I'm playing it like she accepts his crush without going further, unless he cures his cursed existence, somehow. He's also the one who figured out how to leave the tower without the army noticing, via the wine cellar's access to the tunnels... well, with a Ring of Earth Melding where a door hadn't yet been built.
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