Week Ending 4/10/26

The world has accepted merpeople as equals. We see it in the infrastructure and the people surrounding Juno's (Shunsei Ôta) young reporter as he chases an exclusive for his editor. A last-minute departure change and a dangerous journey through a literal jet stream highway that's not meant for human travel later finds him at his destination a minute too late. To his surprise, however, is a familiar face on another boat readying to set sail. So, he stows away on that one instead.

Could it really be Stephan (Oji Suzuka)? His childhood idol and the man who, along with his mermaid wife ChaO (Anna Yamada), ushered in this new era of coexistence between land and sea? We've seen a brief glimpse into the novelization of his life and how he was saved by a mermaid as a boy only to fall in love and live happily ever after years later ... but what happened next? Well, we're about to find out as Juno lucks into conducting the interview of the century.

The feature debut of director Yasuhiro Aoki (who's spent four decades working as a storyboard artist and key animator, amongst other hats, on a ton of big-name properties), ChaO soon takes us back in time to a crucial moment in Earth's history: an unlikely wedding proposal that changed everything. Because Stephan isn't a boy when we meet his past self. He's a grown man who's about to find himself lost at sea and in need of a savior.

His boss (Ryôta Yamasato) has just rejected his condensed air engine that would revolutionize the shipping industry as well as create an olive branch to King Neptunus (Kenta Miyake) by helping to protect marine life in the process. Why? Because it isn't cost effective. Diplomacy means nothing to a short-sighted capitalist, but everything to an opportunist who sees value in being at the table. And that's exactly where he sits upon realizing who saved Stephan's life.

Screenwriter Hanasaki Kino does a great job writing the ensuing romantic comedy as both a meet cute and tragic pairing. Is Princess ChaO's proposal a random whim? Is it worth it for Stephan to say yes if it means his boss will finally bankroll his project? Can her love also become his the longer they get to know one another? These aren't easy questions to ask, though, considering merpeople look like giant talking fish when out of the water.

As such, the narrative deals with what Aoki describes as learning to grasp the "tolerance to understand and appreciate other cultures." It can reveal itself as somewhat shallow considering ChaO's natural state is a beautiful woman through the filter of water or when comfortable with showing her true self around humans. One could argue Stephan is being less empathetic towards his wife than hopeful the aesthetic barrier between them will soon dissolve.

But there's merit in that too. How many societal issues aren't taken seriously by a certain segment of the population until they find themself or a loved one victimized by it? The promise of a beautiful wife opens Stephan's heart to the beauty of her soul and lets love blossom even as his brain refuses to fully figure it out until it's too late. What then is he really angry about when his world inevitably comes crashing down? ChaO or himself?

The hand-drawn animation style is wonderfully unique with myriad different character designs that go beyond just the difference between humans and merpeople. The latter have their differing forms (humanoid or fish) while the former simply have multiple body types: proportional, big heads, and spherical. It leads to many humorous moments and physical comedy as each interacts with their environment. And Aoki has a lot of fun with action homage too.

Kino deftly brings Juno back for necessary reminders that we're watching a story as told by a narrator with a very specific agenda to how it unfolds. It's the tragedy of Stephan's immaturity and ease at taking ChaO for granted rather than helping her feel comfortable in this new world first and then the epiphany of core memories he had long forgotten to better clarify his stubborn motivations and introduce his potential for growth. Maybe a happy ending is still possible.

After all, the world did change. Whether Stephan and ChaO's love set this new harmonious cohabitation between species in motion or not, acceptance was found on a social and cultural level beyond the bullying and ignorance we see during their "celebrity" love affair's early days. As with all things partisan and bigoted today, the first step to understanding is trust. To be yourself and to see others as who they are rather than the warped image you've been fed.

7/10

After decades of carrying the notion that Faces of Death was a compilation of snuff films (real or not) completely devoid of any connective tissue beyond each vignette's gruesome loss of life, I learned something from finally watching it for myself:

No one at my middle school ever saw it either.

Who knew it would just be a faux documentary compiled of real archival crime/accident scene footage, culturally specific animal slaughter, and the goofiest fictionalized scenes you can imagine full of poor acting, sloppy edits to "mask" the artifice, and writer/director John Alan Schwartz inserting himself into a blood-smeared orgy as a cult leader? Capping things with that seance also makes me wonder if anyone ever saw the film considering how certain so many were about everything being authentic.

The scariest moment was eventually returning to Michael Carr's Dr. Francis B. Gröss only to discover he put those tiny glasses back onto his face just as tilted and borderline unusable as they were before he took them off.

4/10

How do you remake a compilation film like Faces of Death? The entire allure of the original "video nasty" was that audiences weren't sure whether what they saw was real or not. Trying to recreate that same sense of uncertainty is therefore impossible under the definition of what "remake" means as an entertainment format. Were they actually going to kill real people this time? Of course not. So, director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei did the next best thing.

Because their inability to commit murder and/or pretend to do so without an instantaneous law enforcement inquiry refuting it doesn't mean their characters can't. This new entry into the franchise is thus a film about what it would look like if someone did take the assignment literally. It's not even far-fetched to imagine someone would considering our culture's affinity to accrue wealth and cachet through video content creation. Give the people what they want.

Let's face it: people crave carnage. They want the jolt of adrenaline from finding and viewing something they aren't allowed to see. The urban legend that surrounded John Alan Schwartz's faux documentary was only ever the gateway into what my generation discovered during the infancy of the internet and websites granting access to Saddam Hussein's death or ISIS beheadings. And it's only become worse as short form video scrolling becomes a way of life.

Goldhaber and Mazzei's approach to this project is nothing short of ingenious as a result. They introduce us to Margot (Barbie Ferreira), a content moderator at the country's number one video app Kino who spends her day watching the footage users on the platform flag for indecency. She clicks "Allow" on the ones that are obviously fake. She clicks "Content warning" for those that straddle the line. And she clicks "Remove" on the clips with truly heinous subject matter.

Is it a perfect method to keep her company's subscribers safe? Of course not. You could argue it isn't even safer than letting an LLM do the job since Margot is just as susceptible to rejecting Narcan and condom tutorials as "drug use" and "sexual content" despite serving a necessary educational purpose within those realms. It's not like it matters anyway either. Her boss (Jermaine Fowler) knows the bad stuff pays the bills. He advocates always erring on the side of allowance.

And that leads us to Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), the man behind a series of bloody videos that look fake with their mannequin supporting casts and overlaid audio of Michael Carr's Dr. Francis B. Gröss from Faces of Death. Margot doesn't think twice when allowing the first since it plays like a joke. The second instance gives her pause, though. Its victim is easily identifiable and the "special effects" look too real to discount. Is someone doing a bit? Is this a serial killer?

I forgot how old I am to be able to understand the user comment "This reminds me of Faces of Death." Whereas it clicks automatically for those in the know (especially with Carr's voice), however, Margot is clueless about the reference. So, she googles the title like anyone would to discover its history. She also finds it sitting on her horror-obsessed roommate's (Aaron Holliday) VHS Shelf. (Why does he have two copies of Independence Day?!) The similarity is uncanny.

What follows is the inevitable race against time between someone with an insane theory no one believes and its perpetrator continuing to commit his crimes. Goldhaber and Mazzei are nothing if not process driven in the authenticity with which they present their narratives whether that be Cam or How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and they don't disappoint here. They reveal exactly how Arthur would kill and how Margot would attempt to stop him.

We get the split-screen identity searches that serve as a reminder to never trust a link sent anonymously over the web. There's the practical nature with which to endear yourself to a potential victim and the influencer ego that takes over to make you wonder if your physical safety might be less important than your virality when clicks and likes become synonymous with self-worth. Even the blatant tongue-in-cheek monologuing about remakes is as biting as it is silly.

That duality is the point. Goldhaber and Mazzei understand the absurdity of their premise just as much as they acknowledge the danger inherent to it. Their Faces of Death doesn't reach the disturbing heights of Pascal Plante's Red Rooms, but it does present the same commentary and themes in a more mainstream package with presumably greater appeal. Watching Margot's co-workers (led by Charli XCX) and the police "enjoy" this content isn't farce. It's reality.

So too is public consciousness numbing itself to the stakes behind what they consume. It was one thing for John Alan Schwartz to blur the line between real death via archival footage and his staged approximations back in 1978. We still all received our news and truth from the same five outlets that operated with the integrity to position the greater good above profit. Now? With no sure way to confirm the validity of anything and infinite unvetted sources weighing in?

It's easier to just assume everything is fake. To turn off our empathy and "enjoy" the violence in ways that systematically normalize it. And even if you can maintain a healthy distance from the videos themselves, are you immune to the politicized commentary normalizing their content in the background? Because being one step removed from the act doesn't protect you from acquiring that same taste for blood and becoming complicit in it.

Don't therefore disregard Margot's backstory as just a throwaway mirror. It is very purposeful in both presenting the price of infamy and exposing the pain of morality. Because you could draw a line between her and Arthur to exploit the societal effects of content consumption and pretend volatile legislative bans will help rather than harm, but the real lesson is in how different their reactions to their place within that dichotomy. Bans only ever mask the real issues at-hand.

The juicy stuff is therefore in the ease of Fowler's character ignoring Margot's warnings, people giggling upon recognizing Margot from her viral moment rather than comforting her, and how criminals manipulate police into protecting them by weaponizing prejudices. Our world has never been more transparently broadcast than today. We should be connecting on a human level, not letting it divide, harden, and scare us into turning strangers into faceless statistics.

7/10

Who better to create (alongside showrunner Andrew Guest) a television show starring Ben Kingsley's Trevor "The Mandarin" Slattery than the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? Sure, Destin Daniel Cretton has since gone and completed the new Spider-Man entry Brand New Day, but there's something nice about keeping a connection to the material—no matter how silly it is or the fact that Cretton himself came to the character after Shane Black.

The Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King is one of my favorite pieces in the MCU puzzle, so I was always going to be excited to see Kingsley get back into the fray. That he does so alongside Yahya Abdul-Mateen II only made "Wonder Man" more enticing. And it was going to be a smaller, more character-driven story that wasn't hinging on a "big bad" or Avengers-level destruction? That's exactly what this franchise needs after a decade-plus of stagnant over-saturation.

Because what's the problem with origin movies these days? They always find themselves unable to focus on the hero since they're too preoccupied with advancing a mythology that he/she shouldn't be a huge part of anyway. So, strip it down. Focus on a struggling actor desperate to hide his abilities so as not to be uninsurable on a film set (Abdul-Mateen II's Simon Williams) and an industry pariah desperate to shake his criminal past for one more chance.

Good on Cretton and Guest for playing with the formula too and not just making who Simon can become into the titular hero. Give the history of that character some flavor by having it be an in-world artifact in need of sprucing up. Go meta with the MCU concept of adaptation and let the character be inspired by the IP rather than having the IP dictate the character yet again. I know a lot of people hated the "Mandarin" reversal, but I loved its subversive wink.

It's a perfect mirror between fiction and reality. Just as Wonder Man is betrayed by best friend Barnaby in the movie Simon and Trevor hope to act in, they too are embroiled in a situation that risks their own fast-forming relationship. Simon has secret powers the Department of Damage Control (DODC) wants to curb and Trevor has access to help them do so in exchange for his freedom (he never finished his jail sentence). What happens when the truth comes out?

That's the plot. That's it. Can their friendship overcome the betrayal? Can they escape the watchful eye of DODC Agent Cleary (Arian Moayed)? Can they overcome the odds stacked against them to hit the big time and be the stars their acting talent deserves? Add a fun bottle episode for narrative clarity (starring Byron Bowers' "Doorman") and a couple cameos playing absurd versions of themselves (Josh Gad and Joe Pantoliano) and it's easy to enjoy the ride.

Sure, there's still some fantastical superhero chaos (Simon can't really control his powers, so the slightest tremor in his psyche can explosively manifest around him) with one very memorable jolt of violence, but this is more about an insecure loner with a chip on his shoulder discovering the benefits of opening up and being vulnerable for once in his life. It's about finding a friend and remembering what it means to trust someone implicitly no matter the consequences.

Is it confusing to be called a mini-series only to then be renewed for a second season? Yes. Especially since the whole "Marvel Spotlight" banner was created to designate storylines that stood alone from other MCU threads. But the post-Endgame landscape has been pretty inconsistent overall with numerous pivots away from and towards whatever is currently sticking to Kevin Feige's wall. It's been a bit of a circus, but "Wonder Man" serves as a nice, low stakes balm.

7/10

An oil man (Corbin Bernsen's Merriell Sunday Sr.) and an explorer (William Sadler's Hollis Bannister) journey into the arctic winds of the Alaskan territory circa 1947 to drill some wells. Well, that's the story at least. The latter's daughter Ellie (Brittany Allen), despite not having seen or heard from him in decades, knows her father would never partner with someone like Sunday for money. There must be another reason and it's a mystery worth following.

Filmmakers Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta pour a lot of expositional background into this character so she will reluctantly join Merriell Sunday Jr. (Eric Nelsen) on a rescue mission once their fathers and the rest of their team go radio silent after an SOS signal. Ellie wears a brace on her bad leg, hasn't left her cartography office in years, and is very vocal about being able to make a difference in her field without leaving home.

Is her decision therefore a product of toiling for years without the respect she deserves? Perhaps an excuse to prove the doubters wrong by saving the man they all adore as a means to dismiss her? Or is it simply an opportunity to prove to herself that she's more than her fear? That she can be the person Merriell Jr. says she is even if he's merely blowing smoke to cajole her onto the team as a glorified mascot? Whatever the reason, her arrival gets The Yeti started.

One could say this is a result of Ellie being the only character on-screen given the time and effort to be more than a stereotypical, affected cliché en route to suffering a gruesome death at the claws of the titular beast (a fully practical, ten-foot creature that gets its moment to shine after what's mainly a less-is-more approach to the carnage it inflicts). Merriell Jr. is her mirror (a child who uses his father's shadow as a security blanket) and the others fulfill utilitarian roles.

There's Dr. Lamb (Christina Bennett Lind, whose twin sister Heather also plays the character's twin) and Parker (Elizabeth Cappuccino) as the team's heart wanting to discover their stalker and understand its place in history and nature. There's Dynamite Dan (Gallerano) spewing so much period-specific misogyny that he's destined to go out early, Coates (Linc Hand) as their tortured protector, and Booker's (Jim Cummings) calm and sensitive pragmatist on coms.

Each is here to progress the plot, augment the obvious tensions between Merriell Jr. and Ellie once the former starts (wrongly) positioning himself as "leader," and become playthings for the monster hunting them with every step taken towards their outpost destination. They push and prod Ellie to a breaking point wherein she will either accept defeat via the voices she cannot escape or realize she's had it in her to be the hero she was born to become ... but on her own terms.

That's the central theme to the film and the reason for all the parent/child dynamics whether Coates' story about his daughter, Parker's about her father, Merriell Jr. and Ellie falling prey to the large shoes they should never have been forced to fill, and the protective nature of an animal searching for its cub. It's also about learning to accept that everything that goes wrong isn't inherently your fault. That most of your guilt and shame is a product of external forces.

The Yeti is much more dramatic and heartfelt in its narrative progression and aesthetic style as a result. Yes, there's an ample amount of blood and gore to satisfy the horror lovers taking a chance on a low-budget, soundstage-shot (in my hometown of Buffalo, NY) indie such as this, but the feel of the whole (from Joel Froome's lingering close-ups to John Hunter's score) is conversely driven by emotion. Allen, Cummings, Hand, and Lind lead the way there.

Nelsen adds some nice touches too, though. His Merriell Jr. does well to show what happens when fear consumes rather than inspire (as it does Ellie). We believe it when he apologizes despite doing exactly what he apologized for again shortly after. We believe that he has a good heart even as he ignores it to pretend to be the man his father wants him to be. It's a tragic character that's necessary to understanding how strong Ellie is by comparison.

Does the script give Allen enough to really run with that? Maybe not. But the filmmakers are leaning into their heightened genre trappings so the whole is marketable to horror audiences and thus don't quite have the room to dedicate to the characters as you might hope. This is a surprisingly big cast and each actor needs a little time of their own to be more than just a statistic, so we must accept that Ellie's trajectory towards self-confidence is enough.

I'd argue it is because that's literally the main through line. How does Ellie go from teacher in self-exile to explorer realizing all the tools necessary to survive were inside her the whole time? I've also seen people complaining her inevitable reunion with dad is lacking because of his actions, but they're missing the point. Everything they dislike about it is intentional because it confirms he was always in the wrong. Ellie never needed him. She's succeeded despite him.

6/10