Netflix Ramblings: Kate

 directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

written by Umair Aleem

When I watched this film a few weeks ago I considered giving it a video review, but as I wrapped it up I thought better of it; the channel feels much better suited to reviewing and creating awareness about movies that nobody watches.  Kate, in contrast, has proven to be a bit of a hit. Still, while I don't feel the need to champion this film, I definitely would like to share my thoughts on it.

Kate is the story of the eponymous gun-for-hire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who's basically been in the business since childhood, having been recruited and trained by her handler Varrick (Woody Harrelson).  When one of her jobs involves her murdering a Japanese Yakuza boss in front of his daughter, she balks at her work and lies low in Japan. A year later she is called on for one last job, this time on the older brother of her last hit, but after a seemingly chance encounter at a bar, she suddenly feels dizzy and botches the job, only to realize she has been poisoned. She only has hours to figure out who poisoned her, and so begins a desperate race against the clock, in which she does all kinds of crazy things to get to the bottom of her own murder, like invade a Yakuza-infested restaurant, and even kidnap Ani (Miku Martineau), the niece of the Yakuza boss and the actual daughter of Kate's last victim. Will she find out before he time runs out?

One doesn't watch movies like this for plot or character development, so it's slightly easier to bear the fact that the script is all over the place, and that it's riddled from nearly start to finish with ridiculous tropes like the "twist" ending, the kidnap victim developing affection for the freaking kidnapper, etc. These are kind of par for the course.

The thing is, in a post-John Wick landscape, the question becomes what this film has done to set itself apart besides depict eyeball-searing violence. The 2014 sleeper hit John Wick basically revitalized the ultra-violet assassin genre not just with its violence but its absurd premise of a retired hitman coming out of retirement and going on a killing spree because his dog was killed and his car stolen. So far the makers of that series have milked three films out of the consequences of that premise but have helped it along with some amusing, if outlandish world-building. Kate doesn't have nearly that level of quirkiness if any at all.   

One thing Kate gets right is its exotic setting; while an American in Japan isn't the most novel storytelling device (unlike, for example, a black American in Greece in Beckett), director Cedric Nicolas-Troyen makes the most out of his film's chosen setting with bright neon lights, juxtaposed against grungy streets and alleyways and finally the old-world austerity of sliding Japanese doors.  John Wick co-director David Leitch serves as one of the co-producers here, and his influence is pretty apparent in the film's visual sensibility and fight choreography.

Another thing the makers got right was their choice of lead in Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who pulls off the role quite well, really throwing herself into a lot of the really gritty fight sequences, even the ones that involve her ass getting kicked, which is something of an inevitability when one fights an army of opponents. She's also a very sympathetic actress and is thus able to carry the film when the script, with its lack of logic, fails her.  Of course, veteran actors like Woody Harrelson and Tadanobu Asano help the production along nicely, though newcomer Miku Martineau is somewhat grating as the niece whom Kate kidnaps. 

All told, though, there's little about this film that really makes it stand out in a sea of John Wick clones, but since watching it is as simple as clicking the Netflix apps, well have at it. 

6/10

Netflix Ramblings Return: A Review of Beckett (Mild Spoilers)

directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino

written by Kevin Rice, F. Filomarino

It's been a while since I've filled up this space, but having seen a movie that I had been highly anticipating for a while I felt it was finally time to check in. 

Upon seeing the trailer for the thriller Beckett on Netflix I was immediately sold; I'd quite enjoyed John David Washington's performance in Spike Lee's BlackKklansman and it was clear that he would be anchoring this film as well, given that he's the title character. The film's premise of a man on the run, while not the most novel, at least looked like it was going to be presented in a different way. 

The film starts with Beckett (Washington) and his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) vacationing in Greece, specifically Athens. When they catch wind on the news of an upcoming political rally, which threatens to be loud and disruptive, on a whim Beckett and April decide to drive up north to the countryside for some peace and quiet. Unfortunately, during the long drive, tragedy ensues, and Beckett finds himself in a police station in the middle of nowhere, recalling details of his crash to the police, including the fact that he glimpsed a red-haired boy while upside down in his wrecked SUV.  To his shock, in very short order he finds himself the subject of a manhunt, with his hunters including the very police officer (Panos Koronis) to whom he told his story.

The first hour or so of the movie engaged me quite effectively, with the peril Beckett was obviously facing effectively being compounded a bit by his fish-out-of-the-water circumstances, which in this case give new meaning to the phrase "it's all Greek to me." It also helps that the hero is basically an ordinary joe; he's not a soldier or off-duty police officer or anyone who would have any special skill to survive in this situation, i.e. he isn't Jason Bourne, and he has the dad-bod to prove it.  He manages to evade his would-be killers by sheer force of will and a generous helping of luck, which both Washington and Filomarino manage to sell for the first half (and a bit) of the film as Beckett struggles to make his way to the U.S. Embassy in Athens.

As soon as the third act rolls around, however, it pretty much all falls apart, from the guy whom I basically knew was a "twist" bad guy the moment he showed up on the screen, to the downright superhuman endurance that Beckett shows late in the film when, having been shot twice AND stabbed, he makes like freaking Batman and jumps from several storeys onto a moving car driving down a parking lot ramp.  One wonders if this was Washington's demo reel that got him the lead in Christopher Nolan's Tenet.

In short, the film suffers from a malady that has afflicted so many Netflix films, that start out with strong narrative and characterization but end in utter farce.  Fortunately, at least, Washington isn't the problem as he really throws himself into this role, but even he can't save a script this lazily written.

It's not the absolute worst way to spend two hours during the pandemic, but definitely a far, far cry from the best.

6/10 

Netflix Ramblings, the Animated Edition, Part II: Hayop Ka

 directed by Avid Liongoren

written by Manny Angeles, Paulle Olivenza, and Lliongoren

One doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out what the makers of “Hayop Ka” were going for when they made the film; it’s basically a send-up of every single Filipino drama film that revolves around some form of infidelity, of which there have been quite a lot lately. The only difference is that the characters are all animated, anthropomorphized animals.

 

So, Hayop Ka is the story of Nimfa Dimaano (voiced by Angelica Panganiban) an anthropomorphized cat who works as a saleslady in a department store, which is basically a thinly-veiled SM. She lives with her janitor boyfriend, an “askal” named Roger (voiced by Robin Padilla) who never helps her out with the bills and is basically happy to just coast along in life, treating her to the same “pares” restaurant regardless of the occasion, and screwing her brains out every chance he gets. (Yes, there’s quite a bit of interspecies coitus that goes on in this particular universe.)  Nimfa, however dreams of more, even though her friend and fellow saleslady Jhermelyn (not sure what kind of animal she’s supposed to be but she is played by Arci Muñoz) tells her she’s lucky to have Roger in her life. When handsome and rich Iñigo (a husky voiced by Sam Milby) buys perfume for his mother from Nimfa, though, things start to heat up for her as she catches a glimpse of what life could be like on “the other side.”

 

Now, the novelty is good for quite a few laughs, and in the beginning, the storytelling worked well enough to draw me in. The folks who made this film are, after all, the folks behind Saving Sally, a film which, for all its flaws, was genuinely entertaining, with a good mix of both humor and heart.  They know how to tell a story, and with what I can only imagine is more money than they had when making their inaugural feature film, they deliver some pretty memorable visuals and some really polished animation.

 

After a while though, it basically became clear to me that this film had absolutely nothing new to say on the “infidelity” subgenre; it was positioning itself as a send-up but then played out most, if not all of the cliches that usually plague these movies like the best friend who lusts after the happy-go-lucky, ambition-free boyfriend, the heroine’s desire for a better life, and so on and so forth.

 

The movie starts with a promising premise about rich-boy Iñigo hating labor unions and the trouble they cause, which could have directly led to a conflict between him and rank-and-file worker Nimfa, but they never let it play out, opting instead to have the source of their conflict be sexual rather than economic. Perhaps even more disappointingly, after making repeated reference to the economic gap between Iñigo and Nimfa, the filmmakers basically have her sad, employment-related story play out in a mid-credits sequence that isn’t even animated.

 

Saving Sally was, make no mistake, flawed, and even the filmmakers have acknowledged as much, but at least it felt like something that came from their hearts. I don’t know how much creative input Rocketsheep had in writing Hayop Ka, but when watching the tired old “infidelity” tropes play out, I really couldn’t help but feel that these were shoved down by their throats by the veterans of the commercial filmmaking scene, producers Piolo Pascual and Joyce Bernal. Pascual even has a somewhat grating cameo near the end as a DJ who lectures Nifma on what a horrible person she is, so the film has pretensions of being some kind of morality play. It gets to have its furry cake and eat it too; make of that what you will.

 

Look, all of this said, I still believe Rocketsheep deserves the views on Netflix, and the support, because really, we need local animation studios that can produce feature-length content like this. I get that making a movie like this is what can keep the studio alive to make its passion projects, and since none of us can buy tickets and go to theaters, we can offer our support by adding to its views on Netflix.

 

I just hope they come up with something better next time.

 

6/10

Netflix Ramblings, the Animated Edition: A Review of The Mitchells vs the Machines

 directed by Mike Rianda

written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe

How do you follow up a groundbreaking, giant-killing, Oscar-winning animated film like 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

The short answer is, you don't; you try something completely different. 

The Mitchells vs the Machines is a sweet little family comedy about the Mitchells, a slightly off-kilter suburban family of four living in Michigan. Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell (Abbie Jacobson) is about to head off to college, and it's a moment of fear and frustration for her father Rick (Danny McBride) who feels unable to connect not only with Katie but with his wife Linda (Maya Rudolph) and son Aaron (Mike Rianda) who spend most of their time together buried in their gadgets. It comes to a head when Rick accidentally breaks the monitor of Katie's laptop, and decides to make it up to her by driving her all the way to college on the other side of the country.  

Meanwhile, at an event in Silicone Valley, Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) a sort of Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg mashup, creator of the revolutionary, phone-based virtual assistant PAL (Olivia Colman), launches her replacement, PAL MAX, which is housed in a fleet of robots, only to discover that hell hath no fury like a virtual assistant scorned. PAL takes over her would-be replacement by taking control of Bowman's robots and uses them to round up apparently every human in the world. Through a combination of accident and idiocy, the Mitchells, right smack in the middle of their road-trip from hell, somehow manage to evade capture and it ultimately falls on them to save humanity; if only they can get their s ** t together first.And for the first time, they'll have to set (almost) all their gadgets aside to do it.

Kudos to Sony Pictures Animation for telling a story that, in this day and age of people needing more than ever before to connect with one another, dares to point out our collective slavery to gadgets (like the laptop on which I'm typing this review ) and our collective lack of actual human connection. It's a hilarious little fable about a family that, just like any other, struggles to keep it together, with a frustrated artisan of a father not wanting his daughter to repeat his mistakes and endure his heartbreak, and a daughter who wants nothing to do with her seemingly out-of-touch dad. There are, of course, lessons to be learned in the end, by both father and daughter, and by humanity in general as they come this close to being launched into space by a phone app.

It's not quite the gobsmacker that Into the Spider-Verse was, but it never aims to be, and like most Sony Animation pics (yes, even the Hotel Transylvania pics) it has its unique visual sensibility that would prevent anyone of accusing them of being Pixar wannabes. The script is loaded with its fair share of tropes, with one third-act revelation of an eavesdropped conversation feeling particularly cringe-inducing, but it's still an engaging script.  

The film has, in a remarkably subtle way, broken ground. It features the first ever openly queer lead character, without the hated "virtue signaling" or anything particularly ostentatious in the script. This stands in stark contrast to Disney's habit of trumpeting its "first ever" gay extras or peripheral characters in films from Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel. Good work showing up Disney yet again, Sony. 

With Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse  Sony Animation, as a creative force, had finally arrived, and while The Mitchells vs the Machines is not quite on the same level, it shows that they're here to stay.

8/10

Netflix Prestige Presentations: A Review of Mank

 directed by David Fincher

written by Jack Fincher

As I write this, the Academy Awards for 2021 have just been handed out, and while David Fincher's Mank led the pack with 10 nominations, it only walked away with some technical awards, with the big winner of the night being Chloe Zhao's Nomadland.  I haven't seen Nomadland, not having Disney+, so I couldn't possibly comment on whether or not it deserved its win, but having seen Mank it is with some confidence that I can say that it would not have been a worthy Best Picture winner. It is far from David Fincher's best and I think it's fair to say that it was not the year's best film, either. 

Mank is the dramatization of the true story of the late screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, played in the film by previous Oscar-winner Gary Oldman. More specifically, the film focuses on Mank's journey towards writing the film that came to define his career, the late Orson Welles' magnum opus Citizen Kane. It takes place in two different time periods: the first period, or the "present day" is the 60 days in 1940 in which Mank, in a secluded cottage while convalescing from a car accident, writes the script for Citizen Kane with the assistance of typewriter Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), and under the watchful eye of nurse Frieda (Monika Gossmann) and producer John Houseman (Sam Troughton), while the second period or the "past" spans the years 1934 to 1937, in which the events play out in Mank's career with studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer which ultimately inspire him to write the script for Kane, which is a thinly-veiled reference to media mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance).

In the present day, Mank feels the pressure early on when Welles (Tom Burke) cuts his initial 90-day deadline to 60 days. Welles removes all distractions, spiking Mank's alcohol, to which he is hopelessly addicted, with a sedative and even keeping him separate from his wife Sara (Tuppence Middleton). These safeguards notwithstanding, the 60 days prove to be a hair-raising experience for all involved.  

In the part of the movie set in his past, Mank, then one of the leading lights at MGM, is basically at the height of his screenwriting career, enjoying the trust of MGM honchos Louis Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) and schmoozing with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfriend).  At first, Mank tries to ignore his boss's seeming lack of compassion when Mayer gives most studio employees a 50% pay cut, but when progressive Democrat Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) runs against Republican Frank Merrier, Thalberg and Mayer, who support the Republican, do the unthinkable to help him win.  When he finds out who bankrolled this shameful abuse of the studio's talents, Mank is set on his path to writing Citizen Kane. 

There are creative choices I don't really agree with in this film, like the fact that Mank's dispute with Orson Welles over screenwriting credit is reduced to an argument between them in the dying minutes of the film, and what amounts to a footnote in the story. I get, though that David Fincher, working from a script from his late father Jack, wanted to focus on Mank's battle with his studio after a really terrible stunt they pulled in support of a politician, and on how he came to train his sights on Hearst, a powerful man who had every means at his disposal to ruin him. 

The problem with the Mank/Hearst feud as presented in the film is that, no matter how much Fincher wants to convince the audience of how betrayed Mank feels by his friend Hearst, there is little to no connection established between Mank and Hearst up until the great big exposition dump Mank makes when he gatecrashes Hearst's party and makes a drunken speech.  He basically tells the audience why he feels betrayed by Hearst, even though, for the uninitiated--like myself--who know nothing of Hearst, there is nothing in the film's narrative that even suggests any sort of deep relationship between them that would be undermined by betrayal. Heck, Mank doesn't even share more than a few lines of dialogue with Hearst all throughout the movie before that pivotal end point, with the closest thing to an onscreen connection between them being Mank's platonic relationship with Davies. 

It's genuinely disappointing that someone as consummately professional as David Fincher would try to get the audience to buy into a "shocker" that he didn't earn. Fincher structures the narrative as a kind of mystery, asking the audience the question: what would get a writer like Mank, who had the world as his oyster, to take on one of the most powerful men in America? The revelation, for all of the flourish that Fincher attempts to attach to it, lands with an unfortunate thud.

One shining light of this film, though, is Gary Oldman, who pours his heart into his performance, even though at 61 he looked a bit strange playing a 43-year-old, even though the fortysomething in question was an alcoholic. It didn't help that Fincher surrounded Oldman with mostly appropriately-aged actors as Mank's peers, like his wife and brother.  To his credit, Oldman still made it work, and in the end it was Fincher, with his unfortunate narrative choices, who let him down. 
  

7/10

Seen on Netflix: A Review of Love and Monsters

 directed by Michael Matthews

writteny by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson

Like News of the World, this isn't a Netflix film but one produced by a "traditional" studio (in this case Paramount Pictures) which received a limited release last year but which, due to the pandemic, mainly saw release through streaming platforms, which in our territory means Netflix. 

Love and Monsters is yet another apocalypse movie, albeit this time with a comedic twist and with a slightly different take on the subject; this time humans haven't been overrun by a zombie plague but have, instead, been decimated to the point of near annihilation by cold-blooded creatures like reptiles, amphibians and insects of every size and shape, all of which have mutated into giants as a result of chemical fallout from missiles that were  fired at an asteroid which almost destroyed the Earth.

Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien, no stranger to apocalyptic wastelands) has, following this cataclysmic event in which giant frogs, lizards and insects basically took over the world and drove humans underground, lived in an underground bunker in the last seven years with his "colony" a group of strapping young men and women---all of whom have managed to romantically couple, leaving him the odd-man out. On top of this, the trauma of losing his parents has left Joel prone to freezing in the face of peril, which means that rather than go out and fight the monsters with his fellow survivors, he's been the designated cook for seven years.

Through all of this, though, one thought keeps him going: the memory of his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) from whom he was separated just before the world as he knew it ended and whom he has finally reconnected with after years of searching for her on the radio. When a catastrophic invasion by a giant ant results in the death of one of his fellow colony members, Joel realizes he doesn't want to die alone, and so against everyone's advice, he takes a backpack, a makeshift crossbow and heads for Amy's colony, an 85-mile, seven-day trek across giant-monster-infested territory.  Along the way, he makes friends with a dog named Boy, and a tough-as-nails pair of survivors in fifty/sixtysomething Clyde (Michael Rooker) and eight-year-old Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt). Will he make it to Aimee...or even survive?

As apocalyptic films go, this one is more of a Shaun of the Dead than a Dawn of the Dead, so even though it borrows heavily from a lot of the really grim movies in the genre, like I Am Legend which also featured a character traveling with a dog, and The Mist, which also featured horrific giant monsters instead of the usual zombies, to name but a few, it manages a comedic tone that actually works in spite of the traditionally dark setting. It's an ultimately inconsequential movie, but that may be exactly what we need in times like these. 

It helps that O'Brien successfully makes the transition from his action-drama days of The Maze Runner trilogy to action-comedy.  His awkward dork Joel is a pretty big departure from his highly-capable lead Thomas from the older films, but O'Brien sells the character well. It also helps that he has a good supporting cast to play off of, particularly Rooker, Greenblatt (whom many viewers may recognize as young Gamora from Avengers: Infinity War) and Dodge, the supremely expressive dog who plays Boy. 

It also helps that, even on a shoestring budget of USD30 million, the filmmakers have managed to create a film that is wonderfully atmospheric, with the wilds of Australia's Gold Coast and other locations standing in for the wastelands of California.  So effective is the art direction in terms of establishing the post-apocalyptic vibe that even though the computer-generated monsters are relatively few and far between, each appearance makes an impact.  It's also worth noting that even in spite of a relatively small budget, the film features some genuinely impressive computer-generated, super-sized critters to terrorize our hero.

It's hardly a compelling commentary on the human condition and certainly not meant to be a life-changing experience, notwithstanding a slightly hokey speech at around the end of the film, but as movies to enjoy in the midst of the pandemic go, it feels like just what the doctor ordered.

8.5/10

Netflix Prestige Presentations: A Review of News of the World

 directed by Paul Greengrass

written by Paul Greengrass, Luke Davies

Today's review is of the kind of movie I used to thoroughly enjoy in theaters, back when that was still a thing. Directed by famed Bourne-franchise helmer Paul Greengrass and starring acting legend Tom Hanks, News of the World is a timely, taut, and surprisingly sweet if slightly predictable story about the ties that bind us all.

The year is 1870, just five years after the conclusion of the American Civil War, and Hanks plays Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Captain in the Confederate Army whose current livelihood is wandering from town to town, readings newspapers to the townsfolk for a small fee, a sort of precursor to today's news anchorman.  In his travels, he comes across the body of a murdered black soldier killed in a hate crime, and hiding nearby, his very much-alive young charge, a young girl (Helena Zengel) whose papers identify her as a German immigrant Johanna Leonberger but who apparently speaks only the native American language Kiowa. After asking around, Kidd learns that she was taken from a Kiowa family that the U.S. army had killed, who in turn had killed her family of German settlers and taken her, leaving the poor girl twice orphaned. Kidd decides to take her to the only family she has left, who live a good distance away from where he found her. As a result the two of them take a long perilous trip that sees them running into child traffickers, a small town autocrat and some very nasty weather and through it all, Kidd comes to ask himself what he really values in this world. 

For someone who established his career making gritty, contemporary action thrillers like the Jason Bourne movies or even his first collaboration with Hanks, 2013's Captain Phillips, Greengrass really seems at home with this more contemplative, less frenetic form of storytelling, which is equal parts action and drama.  

I gotta say: I really enjoyed this one. It's completely different from the kind of film I'm used to seeing from Greengrass, but it was a compelling watch nonetheless. Hanks is in his usual top form, but the real revelation here is Helena Zengel as the sometimes feral, always compelling Johanna, who has taken on the name Cicada and spends most of the film speaking in Kiowa a language the actress had to phonetically learn.  

It's a simple story and one, like I said, that tends to be a little predictable at times, but the way Greengrass and his actors bring it to life is what makes it a special viewing experience. I could tell this was a film meant to be seen on the big screen. 

Oddly enough, the film has something in common with another well-known Tom Hanks film, the animated Christmas-themed film The Polar Express, in which a character played by Hanks transports a child from one place to another over the course of the film and encounters one peril after another. The similarities end there, of course, but it was amusing to think of the comparison.

This one's worth a watch, for sure. 

9/10