Go Your Own Way

Before Rumours (2024), I had watched exactly one Guy Maddin movie, and thought I had him figured out. Rumours is completely different, but I didn't have to change my opinion at all.

The movie takes place at a G7 summit in Germany, hosted by Cate Blanchett, chancellor of Germany. The final dinner will be held in a pavilion in a park, with just the seven leaders. On the walk to the pavilion, they stop to see an archeological dig, where several Bog Men are being excavated - ancient corpses. perfectly preserved in the mud of a marsh, except their bones are dissolved. Most of the leaders are not impressed.

We also see that Roy Dupuis, PM of Canada, has had a fling with Nikki Amuka-Bird, PM of the UK. He's a young, handsome man with a man bun, interested in renewing the fling, while she wants to keep it professional between them now. But Blanchett seems to be interested.

At the dinner, the leaders try to work out a short joint statement on the summit. Their efforts are not very inspiring. Charles Dance, president of the USA, falls asleep. Dupuis keeps storming off - and hears strange sounds. Blanchett follows him, and, yep, they get it on.

But when they return, they notice that the waiters have disappeared. And there cel phones don't work (except the Italian PM, he didn't bring his). It's getting dark. Dupuis wanders off and finds a brain the size of a small car. Bog men are seen lurking in the shadows. Bog men are doing something freaky in the shadows. And so on. 

There are a couple of comic themes to this. The most obvious is how helpless our leaders are without their aides and servants. But Maddin doesn't really lean on this. He's more interested in how taken up by anodyne, pointless "joint statements". There's a lovely scene where one of the leaders is musing about the first G7 joint statement. He starts to recite it from memory and the whole group joins in. And it's the most boring, meaningless load of BS you've ever heard. 

Of course, Maddin also has to focus on Canadianness (Canadianity?). His Canadian is sexy, brooding, handsome, and in the end, puts together a stirring (boring) statement, and saves the day (?). In fact, I think the biggest joke of the movie is that leaders are people, with romantic entanglements, weaknesses, petty grudges and so forth. Actually, it's a joke on us all. 

The Gorge (Obscured by Clouds)

We recently bought an Apple TV box. It came with a three-month free subscription to Apple TV+, so we figured we should try it out. The Gorge (2025) had just come out, and we felt like some dumb direct-to-streaming action, so we tried it out. 

It starts with Anya Taylor-Joy hiding in a cave in a cliff, and then performing a long-range assassination. She is a Lithuanian working for the Russians, with a terminally ill father. She is going on a year-long mission, he plans to kill himself on Valentine's Day. We then meet Miles Teller, a mercenary whose nightmares keep him from sleeping. 

Teller is "private security", a mercenary and sniper. Sigourney Weaver, a shadowy high-level intelligence operative, recruits him for a year-long mission, the details of which she will not divulge.

The mission turns out to be manning one of two watchtowers, one on either side of the titular gorge. The sides are steep and the bottom is perpetually hidden by fog. His predecessor gives him a 2-minute briefing and takes off. He soon realizes that the watchtower on the other side is manned by Taylor-Joy. 

Teller is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, Taylor-Joy more of a good-time girl. She starts writing signs for him to read through his spotting scope. He tells her they aren't supposed to communicate. Then one day, Taylor-Joy's birthday, he finds out what they are watching for, when  horde of demon zombies come crawling up the walls of the gorge.

They use their automated weapons and sharpshooting skills to repel the attack, and enjoy the thrill of victory. Taylor-Joy calls it her best birthday ever. 

They continue to converse at long distance, until Valentine's Day. Teller wants to comfort Taylor-Joy, and actually ziplines across the gorge. They have a tender few days together, then he has to head back to check in. But the line breaks and he falls into the gorge - with a parachute, thank God. Taylor-Joy armors up and jumps after him.

So up to now, we have had a romantic military spy thriller, with a touch of SF. Once they get down in the gorge, it becomes a monster horror movie. This part is fun too, especially because our two stars get to work together. But it is kind of a jarring shift in tone.

Fortunately, we liked both tones, and were able to hang with the transition. I particularly love Anya Taylor-Joy (as I have mentioned a few times, I think). Miles Teller is a little harder to warm up to. Maybe I just hate him for that weak Reed Richards turn. Of course, Weaver as the villain of the piece was great, if short. 

I think this was a cut above the usual dumb action movies coming out lately. Maybe either half could have been a standard issue direct-to-streamer, but put them together, and add Anya Taylor-Joy, and you've got something. 

First and Last

I think I heard about Last and First Men (2020) on a random film podcast. Someone mentioned it in passing (Josh Olson?) on some random podcast and I was intrigued. Short summary: Voice-over narration based on the Olaf Stapledon story accompanied by slow, black and white shots of Soviet brutalist monuments. Directed and scored by Johann Johannsson.

And that's really almost all I can say about it. The story is told by Tilda Swinton, as a transmission from millions of years in the future, telling a little about the future history of the world, and the comping apocalypse (for them). The visuals are grainy, 16-mm slow pans of concrete sculptures and buildings from the Soviet era. Some could be stills, except for clouds moving in the background. There are no humans, few animals, not even many plants. Mostly concrete and sky. 

The music is very Johannsson: atonal, eerie, organic. It ties the whole thing together. 

I haven't read any Stapledon since maybe high school, but remembered his stories as very cosmic in theme, while down to earth in prose. It was well suited for this kind of meditation. I liked watching this a lot, although I treated it as more of a music video than a story

Twice the Action

I picked out a few mindless action movies with low expectations: The Killer’s Game (2024) and Hidden Strike (2023). I wasn't disappointed.

The Killer's Game stars Dave Bautista as the titular killer. His assignment is to kill someone at a modern dance performance at the Budapest Opera House. Very swank. He makes the kill, and takes a moment to observe the main dancer on stage, Sophia Boutella. When security starts shooting up the place, she hurts her ankle. So in the confusion, he picks her up and carries her outside. They have an instant attraction, but he is struck by a blinding headache, and runs off. 

But he tracks her down later to return her phone, and they start a cute courtship. He is very hesitant and shy, because of his work, and she thinks he's charming. But he goes to the doctor, and discovers that he has Creutzfeldt-Jakobs, and will soon be incapacitated, then dead.

Now around here, I got really excited. First, when he first went to the doc, the doc mentioned his scars and injuries, calling them his "resume", and cautioned him about CTE. In real life, Bautista is trying to move out of action movies and into more human roles, losing a lot of weight. Then he is talking to Boutella about her ankle and they start comparing injuries. So there is a fighting/dancing analogy being. I would like to see dance choreography treated like fight choreography in movies, bringing the excitement and skill without so much violence. I couldn't wait to see how this played out.

I knew the next part from the basic plot summary: He decides to put a contract out on himself, so he wouldn't go through the dementia stages of CJD. He goes to his handler, Ben Kingsley. For some reason, Kingsley is sort of playing his character, the Rabbi, from Lucky Number Slevin. He refuses to kill Bautista, who is like a son to him. So he goes to Pom Klementieff, a Korean mobster whose father was killed by Bautista. She'll take the job, and starts sending killer after him. 

And as you might have guessed, he was misdiagnosed. He does not have CJD, maybe it's just stress? I feel like this is a common movie plot, but can't place it. 

So I'm all psyched for a movie about moving out of a violent profession due to wear and tear, relating it to Bautista's real life aspirations, including some relationship between dancing and fighting. Instead, we get a ridiculous succession of themed assassins trying to kill Bautista and failing. They include a flamenco fighter, two stripper fighters, two violent Scotsmen, moto-cross killers, a gang of Korean pop-star types, with Terry Crews hanging back, waiting for the fee to go up. It was fun and silly, and very much not what I was hoping for. Still thought it was great.

Hidden Strike also starred and ex-wrestler, Jobn Cena, as well as Jackie Chan. It's set in the near future, during the oil wars. In an unnamed Middle Eastern country, rebels are besieging an oil refinery. Jackie Chan's security team is called in to extract them (including his estranged daughter). Meanwhile, John Cena is a mercenary, semi-retired, heading up an orphanage for the kids whose parents died in the wars. His brother convinces him to do One Last Mission to get money for the villagers' water. 

It turns out more or less that Cena's brother is on the team attacking the refinery. Or maybe not - there seem to be many groups at play. Anyway, Cena and Jackie first fight, then join together to save the hostages and the village. 

There's some cute interplay between Cena and Chan, and Chan can still bring it both in the back-talk and fighting. There's one set piece where Chan is fighting the bad guy in a factory with a fire suppressant cannon. A good Chan fight always manages to use all the possibilities of a prop or setting, and this was a good one. There are also several bus fights, a trope I enjoy. But overall, this was a mess. I think the hand of the Chinese government is way too prominent, so the dramatic beats are all undercut by propaganda beats. 

Still, I didn't expect much and wasn't disappointed. I got more than I needed from one movie, and about what I expected from the other.  

Passionless

I'll try to keep this short: After sound came to motion pictures, silent stars like Buster Keaton were considered a problem. Could they be make money in a talkie world? One solution was to pair them with younger, more verbal comics. In Buster's case, this was Jimmy Durante. Hence, The Passionate Plumber (1932).

Quick summary: Parisian Irene Purcell has a married lover, Gilbert Roland. She wants to break off with him, she wants to keep him, she wants to make him jealous. She also has some plumbing problems, so she sends her chauffeur, Jimmy Durante to fetch plumber Buster Keaton. When Keaton shows up at Purcell's place at the same time as Roland, she pretends that Keaton is her suitor. And the merry mixups ensue.

One of these mixups is that Keaton is really an inventor who has added a flashlight to a pistol as an early laser sight. He hopes to sell this idea to the French army, but every time he gets close to a general, he pulls the gun and is assumed to be an assassin. Plus, he gets into duels with everyone he meets, like Homer Simpson with the glove slaps. 

Keaton does get a little bit of physical comedy here and there, although I didn't see any daring stunts. Durante gets to do a little of his patented malapropism, and also some romance with the maid (Polly Moran). But neither is served well by the movie, and don't work especially well against each other. 

Amazingly, MGM made three movies pairing Keaton and Durante (the others were What, No Beer and Speak Easily - ironic, since these movies drove Keaton to alcoholism). Durante went on to become whatever he became (respected comic relief?), and Keaton never recovered until the 60s, when he was slowly re-discovered. 

Oh, well, we still have the silents.

The Last Dance

I finally got around to watching A.K.A. Doc Pomus (2012), and I'm so glad I did. Note that this wasn't a library DVD, but a Hoopla stream - Hoopla is a library of movies, books, and comics, available through many public libraries. 

If you don't know Doc, he is most famous (maybe) for writing Save the Last Dance For Me. Or maybe Viva Las Vegas, This Magic Moment, or Teenager Love. Or maybe he's famous for having written (with collaborators) just so many great rock songs. But he was born Jerome Felder, a Jewish boy in Brooklyn. He was a happy, athletic kid, until age 8, when he contracted polio. After a long convalescence, he wound up on crutches. 

But as a teenager, he discovered the blues. He started hanging around the clubs of New York. Since he was young, he didn't drink, and one manager tried to throw him out. So he said he was a performer, and got on stage and sung a song. He went over so well that this became his career. Imagine how good an underaged, short, crippled Jewish kid had to be to make it in the New York blues scene. He changed his name to Doc Pomus, because it sounded good.

Then Lieber and Stoller rewrote one of his songs, Young Blood, for the Coasters, and he became a songwriter. He was one of the kings of the Brill Building, writing songs for anyone who wanted them, usually with his collaborator Mort Shuman.

Although he spent a few years married in the suburbs, he had a hard time commuting, so he got a room at a hotel next to the Brill Building. He used to hold court in the lobby with musicians and songwriters, but also hookers, gamblers, addicts, and almost anyone with a story to tell. 

When the Beatles made it normal for bands to write their own songs, the Brill Building system broke down. He had ups and downs. For a few years, his source of income were the poker games he held in his room. He met with, wrote for, and mentored a bunch of people, including Willy Deville, Dr John, and B.B. King. He gave songwriting classes for upcoming writers like Shawn Colvin - and with the women there is a hint of some physical stuff. Apparently an older, overweight, disabled man could be pretty sexy. Someone described him as encompassing the two poles of Genius and Cool.

It's an amazing documentary, including not just his musical world, but also his family, his ex-wife and children, his sister and others, who seemed very down-to-earth Jewish Brooklyn. It's a great snapshot of a few eras of New York and popular music. And the stories!

No Dark Sarcasm

Pink Floyd fans come in two varieties: Those who like the more psychedelic sound, before Dark Side of the Moon, and the those who prefer the more accessible after. I am of the first group. Since The Wall is post Dark Side, I was not a great fan, and I have never seen Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982). Until now.

It's a surreal story about a rock star called Pink, played by rock star Bob Geldof. It starts in the trenches of WWII, where Pink's father is fighting while his wife and son wait for him at home. But he never comes back, leaving Pink confused and wishing for a male presence at home. 

At school, the teachers ridicule and bully him, maybe more than the other kids. You know how the song goes, "Hey, teachers, leave those kids alone."

In the present day (I guess), we see Pink as a zoned out, blank young man, staring at Dam Busters on the TV. When he does get on stage (which by the end requires a lot of drugs and the song "Comfortably Numb"). he acts like a dictator at a fascist rally, with the audience throwing salutes and goose-stepping along. 

However, all this isn't presented quite linearly - you get zonked Pink in between scenes of young Pink. There is some animation as well, a lot of it abstract, sexualized flowers. And of course, it's all set to the songs from the album.

In the end, I just wasn't sold on the movie. Alan Parker's direction and cutting was very cool, but I'm not sure the story held together. The war-ruined childhood, the evils of the schools, the entertainer as fascist: these themes didn't hold together as well as I felt they should. And the shellshocked empty-eyed rock star at the heart (?) of it: not very engaging, and also, boo-hoo, the rich and talented are so oppressed. 

Plus, the songs just aren't my favorite Pink Floyd. I guess it's back to Pompei.

Quiet Please

Who would have expected that A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), a prequel to two recent monster/horror movies, would be so poetic? Maybe knowing that it starred Lupita Nyong'o would have been enough of a clue.

It starts with Nyong'o in hospice, with her emotional support cat, dying of cancer. She's depressed and sarcastic, sharing a poem in group therapy about how shitty the hospice is. The only thing keeping her going is transdermal fentanyl. Alex Wolff, who works at the hospice jollies her into coming to a show in nearby New York City. She agrees, if he promises that they can get pizza.

The show turns out to be a puppet show, which actually starts out nice, but gets dark. Nyong'o decides to wait outside, and Wolff shows up to let her know they have to get back to hospice imeediately. She argues, demanding her pizza, but the get everyone into the bus. And then they notice things falling from the sky.

It's the blind monsters from the other movies, showing up for the first time. They start tearing up everything in the city that makes noise (everything). Nyong'o is knocked out, and wakes up back in the theater, now a temporary refuge. Happily, her cat is still with her. So is Wolff, but he makes too much noise, and is killed. She also meets Djimon Hounsou, who we know makes it because he's in A Quiet Place 2. 

The government tells everyone to head for the South Street Seaport to be evacuated by sea - the monsters can swim, and the military have blown up the bridges. But Nyong'o doesn't want to be saved. She wants her pizza in Harlem. So she starts walking north, against the crowds. She picks up a traumatized English law student, Joseph Quinn. Although she tries to get him to join the evacuation, he just keeps tagging along with her - and her cat. 

So a lot of the movie is Nyong'o and Quinn traveling through an apocalyptic New York, in search of pizza. We learn that nyong'o was a poet, and her father played piano in Harlem. After the show, he'd take his daughter for pizza. Hence her quest. She and Quinn don't exactly bond, but they give each other comfort.

But the main thing I took away from the movie was Nyong'o's face, her eyes wide with terror and her hands over her mouth lest she scream. It's very Us. She is amazing in this, sensitive, doomed, in pain, with troubles deeper than the end of the world. Also, her cat, played by two cat actors, not CGI, was great, and she survives. The action scene that cat goes through! Nyong'o famously was afraid of cats and had to work very hard to get comfortable with them. And now she actually has a pet cat.

But I have to say, I sometimes felt like the monsters had a point. Maybe people should be quieter - not torn to pieces if they squeak, but hushed up a little. I can imagine a sequel in the far future, where mankind has become quiet and introspective and learns to live among the monsters.