Raising Cain - 1992

Perhaps it was how amateur this movie felt that made me guess a year way before it was produced. There are two options for a amateur feeling film. 1 it is amateur and early into a directors filmography, and 2 it is late career and the director has "gone bad." This is option 2.

Brian De Palma. Now, I know I also gave Phantom of the Paradise low marks, but that was still full of life and paunch and suffered not from bloatedness and laziness but instead from overambitious nonsense and "too-much-itis". But compared to Raising Cain... woo, lemme just say this movie was stupid and terrible.

Raising Cain is sort of a dream team also. You got John Lithgow as the main character, De Palma in the director chair, it's a psychological thriller, same music guy De Palma always works with, and its slow burn style. Except, its also not, because like 10 minutes into the movie we're given too much information and there are spoilers present, so I might as well put them in the synopsis too. Lithgow is early on shows to be crazy, with multiple personalities at least. So, when he then later...has them again...it's not surprising, you dig? And it's not well acted or written either, as a surprise for these guys who normally are quite good.

Lithgow is portrayed as having mainly his split personality Cain. Cain gets unleashed whenever Lithgow is turned on I think, something like that, and he was the result of Lithgow having his father do experiments on him. Lithgow's main persona is boring numbskulled Doctor Carter, and his wife has an affair with some guy, so Cain comes out and kills her. Lithgow's wife is played by Lolita Davidovich, and damn if her character had bad dialogue and was ALSO not well acted. I am unfamiliar with her, but if I just saw this, I would think she was not a successful actress at all.

Raising Cain was a modest success, and De Palma's career wasn't stunted by it, and many of his most known works was still to come including Mission Impossible. So I guess this was just a weird bump in the road for him. And it's not completely awful... but it's close.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - 1976

Jodie Foster man! Jodie Foster is critically underrated. We knew from Silence of the Lambs that she was incredibly talented, and oddly enough she is not in a ton of movies, but this one is insane! So good.

Little Girl I will refer to as TLG in this blog. TLG is a slow burn, intensely written, simplistic story based on a story by Laird Koenig. Given how fucking great the dialogue in this, Laird Koenig should have been given a blank check to write any future screenplay about ANYTHING. I see he has a few credits on IMDB, and I'm going to see if the library has any of his other works.

TLG begins and we see a young, but extremely adult Jodie Foster as Rynn Jacobs. She lives in a small house with her father, a poet, and she is secret and secluded. In the beginning, we see the landlady coming by and her and Rynn have a contentious, haughty relationship. It is clear Rynn is hiding something, and they get in a spat leading to Rynn asking her to leave. When amateur magician Mario befriends Rynn, he begins to uncover some dark, mysterious secrets Rynn has, and one of them being the reason why Rynn's father hasn't been seen by anyone...

Yeah, so this is awesome. We are led into the story with an unreliable narrator, with mysterious and bizarre interactions, with secrets, with lies, with macabre darkness. Rynn is extremely well acted, extremely mature, and it is unfathomable that Jodie Foster was 12 turning 13 at the time of this filming. She is intense, layered, brilliant, talented, secretive, volumous. She is given a fantastic foil in Martin Sheen, a criminal with sadistic and perverted intent towards her. Then there's Mario, a friendly, slightly off-kilter weirdo with great nuance and a friendly, helpful character. The dialogue, as I said before, is so fantastically written that any of these guys are believable in full.

It's incredible to think that this was made, and it does feature some strong sexual themes for a 13 year old girl to go through. Martin Sheen straight up wants to rape her, and she has a sex scene with Mario, in which her nude breasts and butt are seen. That is a weird, disjointed part in the film, something which definitely did not need to be in the film and which was added on to try to appeal to the whole "exploitation" movement of the times. It's weird, and it didn't belong.

But the movie does belong. To the five star club.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - 2006

I remember when Perfume came to my old theater, my buddy who still worked there after I'd quit told me it was really good. I think that at one point I walked in and watched the end, which was quite unusual for me to see none of the leadup to the ending, and instead just watch the big climactic scene. I knew the ending, but I don't think I'd ever seen the other parts of the film.

Perfume stars Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste, a gangly and awkward, but brilliant and talented young man. He is born to a destitute woman, and immediately we are told by the narrator that Jean-Baptiste has a wicked and immediate talent for smells. He is basically a superhuman, with superhuman sense of smell. This is captured later on when he has a transformative experience smelling a young woman, and when he tries to follow her and smell her, he startles her and when she cries out, her puts his hand over her mouth and suffocates her. Then, when he tries to capture the smell of her and is unable to, he decides to get into the perfuming business so that he can learn how to capture smells.

So right off we have a troubled and sympathetic main character. His motivation is divine and pure, and it is his natural disposition. The question of his talent is answered and we understand his motivation and his need. But, he is also a murderer, and as time goes on, he murders more people in a quest to find a certain, perfect scent. The movie is about this quest, and it is about the steps he takes to ultimately kill 13 women, get their smell, and create a perfect perfume from them.

Directed by Tom Tykwer, who we previously saw with Run Lola Run, we have a super stylistic, super well shot film. There is no sacrifice in this movie, no scrimping on acting, set design, style, and theme. The acting is fucking great, and I didn't realize that Ben Whishaw was the new Q until I viewed his filmography just now. He is really good in this, layered, challenged, driven, enigmatic, charismatic, magnetic, and forlorn. He is not give many lines, and is always diminitve and strange, yet he is so strong and brilliant he remains appealing.

The movie is almost 2.5 hours, and I was going to watch it in two sittings, but it was so good I was absolutely compelled to keep watching. I kept saying, "well, another 10 minutes" to myself, and eventually I only had 20 minutes left and decided just to fucking finish it. And it did not disappoint. This is a thoroughly cool, entertaining, mysterious film, with a hypnotic feel and a dark, but beautiful storyline. 5 stars.

Update 9/6/2021: Sometimes recently I have felt so inspired by things I have read the book. Perfume did this, and I rented and read the story by Patrick Suskind, translated into English. It is rare that I would say such a thing, but I think the movie of Perfume is better. I say in my movie review "Jean-Baptiste has a wicked and immediate talent for smells" which was really just artistic language, he is not actually wicked at that point in the movie, but in the book he is. His whole motivation comes from hatred and disdain, and his mission is less clear.

In the book, Jean-Baptiste has a much different goal and vision, and wants adamantly to destroy, which makes sense as he's a killer... But it is so much better when it's given ambiguity and beauty behind his action in the movie. In the movie he has a clear goal and a reason to pursue the goal, in the book he just sort of wanders around working on perfume. It's a nitpicky thing as well, but given the book was translated, it also read a bit plainly/and-or straightforward, and that's never fun.

I dunno, no hate, but I did really really love the movie.

Key Largo - 1948

Well, who knows. I get these things, hankerings if you will. Hankerings to see some of these classic Hollywood films. I've now seen 3 of the 4 Bogart/Bacall films, enjoying them thoroughly. And this is the last of the films they did together.

Hunmphy Bogey stars as Frank McCloud, a former army major coming to meet the family of a man who died in his service. The man's widow is Lauren Bacall, and his father is Lionel Barrymore. They live in and run a hotel in Key Largo, a small island close to Florida. As Bogey arrives, however, so does Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco, a notorious gangster. He has a money scam going on at the island, and he is there on business with his cronies. They stumble into his ex girl, Gaye Dawn (my new drag name) and when a storm starts moving in, the gangsters take control of the little group in the hotel.

We have a few plots going on it this movie and it stays interesting. Bogey being an army man has a natural leadership and a natural disdain for the criminals. The criminals are aware of this, and they challenge him as well as show they respect him in different ways. Bacall and Barrymore rely on him, and are unsure of exactly the kind of man he is, and in the meantime the mob boss Rocco is a thorough scumbag, arresting them all with his immediate threat. It's very well managed in that respect.

Directed by venerable classic John Huston, this hits all the marks and when the movie gets down to the end, it's really quite dark and I'd say realistic. The ending was quite unorthodox for the time, and though it is different from the play and book, it was still really strong. I'd say I liked it in that dark, nihilistic sense.

If I knew of more dark, character driven, fast paced movies like this, I'd for sure watch them. This was a very strong piece. I give it a 4.

Bunny Lake is Missing - 1965

It may have been exactly a week ago I got the random thought to see what else Keir Dullea is in besides 2001 A Space Odyssey. I did some quick research and found this 60's psychological thriller directed by Otto Preminger and for sure I was in for a good time.

Keir Dullea stars in the bizarrely named Bunny Lake is missing. Guys, can you give her a different last name so it doesn't sound like an actual lake is gone, instead of a human girl? Maybe that's the point. Maybe, cause there are so many different angles and ideas here that we never really land on anything specific, and that's a clue to my final rating I give away in the beginning of this review. I don't care dawg.

Keir Dullea is Steven Lake, and his sister Ann Lake goes to pick up her daughter Bunny Lake from elementary school one day. She is new to town, having just moved here to get help from Steven. Ann gets to the school and Bunny is nowhere to be found. No record of Bunny exists. Steven arrives around the same time as the police and others are coming in because of the disturbance. There is further complication as records about Bunny are screwy, no one saw her on the trip, and the mothers stuff contains no items belonging to Bunny. The idea is that we are supposed to, as an audience, have an unreliable narrator, and wonder which person is deceiving us.

So. Do I jump to the "problem" with all this? I guess so. Spoilers. Number one, the MUSIC?! What the living fuck is this corny, zany music everywhere in the film? It undercuts every dark turn and the greater atmosphere. It takes away from scenes in measurable ways. Second, the acting. Keir Dullea is not especially good in this, and his role is so huge and important in the end especially, cuz, fuck the end. Need I say more? These siblings have some weird age regression, homicidal, incestuous, completely ridiculous, and poorly written thing going on. And the movie is too 60's and not able to quite therefore nail down exactly what it is, lots of things being hinted sort of to, and some others not being hinted to, and instead we just get the idea "They're crazy" or at least Keir Dullea is, but no. Just no. It's shit.

I wanted a slow burn psychological thriller that would give me hints as to why Stanley Kubrick chose Dullea after seeing him in this movie. The best I can say for all of Bunny Lake is that it was ahead of it's time, I guess, but it failed in what I wanted. All I needed was some atmosphere, guys, come on. But really, the ending would have ruined it either way, so I guess atmosphere is not enough.

The Stuff - 1985

Rest in peace Larry Cohen, a director whose work I am enjoying more and more passed away in 2019.

I don't remember It's Alive. The killer baby movie that spawned two sequels and I saw a long time ago was not a movie I knew was made by him. I think I saw it with my friend Todd in either high school or around that age, and I was not ready for it. I also regularly conflate it with the other killer baby movies and Basket Case. The point being, why is It's Alive not at my library, not free on Amazon, and not on the Hoopla app? My library has only one Larry Cohen movie. That is a straight out crime.

I saw Bone, Q The Winged Serpent, and God Told Me To in this blog, and I have at least thought every Cohen movie was a three star affair, but more often than not I found them to be better than that, original, well acted, and interesting. The Stuff will join that list. I will also say, I'd never seen this before. Much like It's Alive, there was a slew of killer food-related things in this era, and I got this one confused with Popcorn. I also got it confused with the general slime/weird substance movies such as The Blob.

Larry Cohen favorite Michael Moriarty stars in the The Stuff. He's perfect as a slimy, weird and funny former FBI agent who is called in to investigate this white substance that's been hugely popularized in the US. He has a slight western drawl and he is a confident, exaggerated personality who is also relentless and smart. The Stuff is this thick white cream which came out of the Earth, and some local yokels found, ate it, decided it was tasty, and are now selling it. Turns out The Stuff is potentially taking control of people and killing them, and now Moriarty and his ragtag team has to stop it.

It's as simple as that, and we cut right to the chase with kid Jason being thrown in with Moriarty and his romantic interest. They investigate the Stuff company, and they have to do something about it while people come after them. This movie is great. It's well paced, it's well acted, it has great effects, and the comedy and entertainment level is really high. The Stuff is a satire, and a comedy first and foremost, and a really entertaining horror film second. It has the backbones of satire that went on to make Robocop what it was, and I didn't know Robocop wasn't the first.

The Stuff is a great film. I really enjoyed it, I laughed out loud a few times, and the effects are awesome. It's not huge in scope, and therefore can easily accomplish what it tries to do, and was simply put: a ton of fun. I give it 4 stars.

Alien Versus Predator: Requiem - 2007

Fuck it. I dunno. Looking for something to do while I'm in the house. This would not have normally gotten a review.

Alien v Predator was actually pretty good, surprising everyone especially me. AVP:R was another movie I saw in the theater. I don't remember bro, I guess it was like, the year after I quit my first job and I likely had a friend in the theater trade still who got me free tickets.

AVPR brings back nobody but picks up exactly where AVP left off. We have the Alien bust out of the Predator and it took on some of the Predator traits, then the ship goes spiraling back towards earth and that PredAlien is let loose on a small city in Colorado. The town has some young 20-something heart throbs involved in a romantic triangle and our steamy blonde hero Jimmy or whatever his name is has the hots for the girl, but she is involved with the asshole character, and blah blah you get it, who cares. The Predators dispatch a dude to come to Earth and hunt the PredAlien, so that's the real fucking plot.

I didn't really like it then, I don't really like it now. Lemme say first off, you can tell the directors came from music videos. I was thinking about this idea of hiring music video directors to direct specifically horror or sci fi films, and some of them of course branch out into film and succeed massively. Others, though, fail. The Brothers Strause, as they credit themselves, failed big time.

I feel like I don't even need to detail their dumbass film. No, it's not that bad. On a technical aspect, in the effects way, in the ability to follow the plot, it succeeds. And the problems are not the directors fault either. This was written to be a second, third, fourth rate sci fi schlockfest. There's no focus on any real human characters, the PredAlien disappears, the first half the movie largely is humans wandering around a forest or a sewer "looking for things". Then it immediately shifts into action, and there's some cool moments again, but largely you can really tell they were just trying to do too many things at once.

I knew at the time I saw this in theaters that the AVP idea was dead, I knew there would be no sequel. It really only took 5 years for a sequel, albeit to Alien and not AVP. Prometheus and Covenant will likely not get reviewed by me on this blog, but hell, give it one more night where I need to kill time in the house and maybe it'll happen.

Windwalker - 1981

Childhood movies, as I've discussed before, are quite strange. I remember this movie from being like age 8, 9, 10, whatever. I saw this multiple times, and like much of our VHS I don't think I saw it much after we moved into town when I was 14.

Windwalker is indicative of the type of movies I've been raised with. It's weird, imaginative, offbeat and obscure. Windwalker is fairly unknown, but has real actors and directed by a real guy. Watching it again though, it is still really very odd. There's little information on it online, I didn't see many reviews for it online or much information on Wikipedia.

Windwalker is a Native American film, sort of two stories. It is the story of a old man reflecting on his life, told in flashbacks, and showing him as he met his wife, had twins, and lost one of them in a raid by a rival Indian group. The Crow steal his son and he searched for the boy to no avail. In modern day, the story is about the old man and his conflict with the Crow, and the ensuing results of that fight.

Here's what I'll say: the acting is fine, the story is interesting, but overall it's kind of weird and dull. The direction is a bit lacking, full of uninspired camera work. But it is a "good" film, saved by magical bizarre elements, given backbone by their relation to the Native American stories. The Native American element is cool, but most actors in this were white men without any makeup or anything. In modern day, I doubt you'd see a Native American story written, directed, and starring white men. Oh well.

Not sure how to rate this. It will always mean something to me, but I don't really know what. I'll give it 3.5.

AVP: Alien Versus Predator - 2004

With Gourley and Rust is by far the best podcast ever. I say this with all love and respect to the other podcasts I've held near to my heart, but also with a near worship of Gourley and Rust that I hate to have. This is the kind of podcast where I have to mete it out to once a week or I will bulk listen to every episode in one day.

They are on to their next season, which I am so incredibly looking forward to that it hurts, random one shot horror movies. And here I am, stuck in Alien Versus Predator, and I have three episodes out I haven't listened to! Be still, my beating heart.

Alien Versus Predator I saw in the theater and maybe once afterwards. I remember being vaguely disappointed, as I was with Freddy v Jason. I thought the alien was made to be a little too weak, for sure, and I don't think I'd ever seen Predator 2. This was the first time since probably 2004/2005 I've seen the film.

Paul WS Anderson had directed Mortal Kombat, a film I have admitted I loved, and I remember being hyped he was directing this movie. As the film opens, we have American scientists discovering a heat signature in Antarctica. They assemble a team with Sanaa Lathan, Ewen Bremner, Raoul Bova, Tommy Flanagan and others are all recruited to investigate this occurrence, and they charge into Antarctica not knowing what to expect. Turns out a pre-Mayan, pre-Egyptian pyramid is buried 2000 feet below the ice, and when they get to it they find some ancient writing and signs of the Alien on earth. There is an Alien queen which awakes from a frozen slumber and lays eggs. Even more mysterious is the Predator weapons they find, and soon enough three Predators arrive, fighting against the Xenomorphs that are being released.

This movie checks all the boxes, it has what you want. It has humans getting dispatched and/or being strong and standing up to aliens or predators. It has alien on predator violence, cool kills on both sides. It has some spooky hunting scenes and pyramid intricacies, which are always fun, especially if you're a Egyptophile like me. Also I thought during watching this, think of what the team discovers in this movie: They discover hard evidence that there was a pre-Mayan pre-Egyptian civilization, it worshiped aliens, because not only does one species but two species exist, they discovered that the predators have been continually visiting earth and fighting aliens, and they discovered the technology of BOTH species. This is basically the biggest scientific breakthrough of all time.

You can tell from watching this that the director, writers, actors, production all took this very seriously. It's a big dumb loud action movie, but it's so grounded and so pumped full of love and respect that it never breaks the fourth wall and it never tries to be anything that it is not. It's the opposite of Fast and the Furious or Marvel, with it's winking, jabbing, stupid acknowledgement of how retarded it is as a series. I think when I saw this AVP film originally, if I had known how bad action movies were going to become, I would have enjoyed this more.

This is not trying to be a five star film everyone will love. I had a kickass time watching it, but this is a B movie and it's okay with that. Again, not flying it in your face, not trying to make you laugh or cry. It's just a film for it's audience and nothing more, and that give it a solid 4 stars.

Phantom of the Paradise - 1974

I've always wondered what other movies could be said in the same breath as Rocky Horror. Rocky Horror, dear readers, is not a film I liked very much. If anyone can get my style as of yet, it's that I am hit or miss on that subtle difficult tool known as intention, and to me Rocky Horror was always too self aware, too much in the vein of "trying too hard". And that leads us right into Phantom of the Paradise, a Brian de Palma film strikingly similar to Rocky Horror.

Faust. Phantom of the Opera. Music. Comedy. Weirdness. These are the plot synosis words to describe Paradise. Paradise is a extremely self aware, extremely "going for it" horror musical comedy with a clash of plots somewhere between Phantom of the Opera and a revenge flick. It has a dweeb music writer get his rock opera stolen by big record executives, given to another band, and then the dweeb gets crushed by a vinyl press (?!) and come after them for revenge, now donning a Phantom of the Opera mask.

This movie plays like a veritable "How to" make a cult movie. The gawky comedy of the main character in clash with his super cool and over the top alter ego later on, the songs that are all Faust themed and not too long to wear out their welcome, the nudity, the extremity, the offbeat other injections along the way are the exact same devices used in Rocky Horror. In fact, I first took this for a Rocky Horror ripoff, not realizing Horror came out the year after this.

I don't know if I can completely explain my negative reaction to this film. Intention and the trying-too-hard weared thin, I am not a musicals guy at all is coupled with that, as well as the story seemed unnecessarily long and overdone. It has the elements and if someone loved Rocky Horror I would not hesitate to recommend them to this movie. Another instance of, well, maybe it just isn't for me. It's for other, cooler dudes. I give it 2.

Carrie - 1976

I didn't realize watching Carrie would carry on my still-going marathon of movies from 1976. Hey dog, the marathon is going until 2026 so buckle the fuck up.

Carrie I rewatched because I've been watching Brian De Palma films lately. Spoilers. I remembered three or so things from Carrie. 1, I remembered that as a young adult/teenager when I saw this that it had some nice nudity in it. It does, hot breasts in the beginning. 2, I remembered the blood soaked chaos in the end finale. One of the most powerful moments in film history? We'll get there in the review. 3, I remembered the cool ending with the hand coming out of the grave.

I was thinking about how in many ways, I think the hand coming out at the end of this film really inspired Friday the 13th. The ending of Jason coming out of the lake is virtually exactly the same thing, something really creepy and crazy that happens out of nowhere and then is shrugged off as a dream, except WAS IT?! By the way, did you know Carrie had 3 sequels? I know I have seen The Rage: Carrie 2, but I didn't ever hear of the third one that came out that hinted at a TV show based on Carrie that never happened!

Carrie is a high school girl who is mocked by basically all her peers. She's a weirdo, and in the opening scene she begins menstruating in the womens shower after PE class. Mark that down as another thing I remembered about this film. The teachers are concerned that Carrie didn't know this was going to happen, but the reason why is soon apparent. Carrie's mom is a religion obsessed nutcase, spouting off about the evils of virtually everything, and punishing Carrie by locking her in the closet to repent. Early on we also begin to see Carrie manifesting a strange power, a telekinesis which usually takes the form of moving something small, but as the film goes on gets stronger. Soon enough, some bullies get punished for being mean to Carrie, and plan to get back at her. They get one of their friends to invite Carrie to the prom, and things begin to erupt.

I mean, first of all, the build is really good, and it lasts exactly the right length. There is a lot to the first hour of the film, and it's also well paced and acted with Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Sissy Spacek, PJ Soles, Sydney Lassick, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, et all, they're all turning in some grade A material in here. The film feels effortless, and I was shocked because it also doesn't jampack the ending. We are at the prom around the hour mark, with all the events there being given a shitload of time. The prom scene barely needs talking about. It's epic, I didn't overexaggerate earlier when I said, this might be one of the best, strongest, best acted, and creepiest sequences in all horror films. It's fucking iconic, and so well done.

This movie is awesome! I feel like for some reason it's not said in the same breath with a lot of classic horror, but then again, it's not like this is underrated. It's quite good! Hugely successful too. I'll give it 5 stars.

Blood City - 1977

Also known as "Welcome to Blood City".

Why did I rewatch this? I can't say very easily and concisely. I was browsing in the library and I saw this on a duo DVD pack with a movie called And God Said to Cain with Klaus Kinski. I wanted to see Blood City again because I remembered it being good, or at least odd and different. I wanted to see the Klaus Kinski movie, because obviously I did.

Rewatching Blood City, I first noticed that I didn't remember much of it at all. I guess this was on the Sci Fi Invasion boxset, and I mis-remembered that boxset as having only been a few years ago. Theo, you've been writing this reviews blog for 7 years now. Get a life. Do something else, please, will you?

Keir Dullea wakes up on a beach with some strangers and none of them have any memory. They have cards in their pockets that identify them as criminals. They wander to a little city where there is a sort of law system in place, and loosely they can advance through this society by killing people. Keir makes headway and appears to be able to hang, while in the meantime lawman and "immortal guy" Jack Palance is sort of helping him out. Then, we have the behind the scenes thing I talked about in my previous review. These couple people who are watching and observing him, and clearly using him as some sort of experiment.

I remembered the Cabin in the Woods aspect, the sciency control experiment thing being a bigger plot line than it was. In essence, they make it clear this is some sort of Matrix-like world wherein Keir is not actually in the town, he is there in the building jacked into some device which simulates the reality. However, they are not as involved as the Cabin people. Also, there is no real pay off to this storyline, just a cool idea which sort of fizzles.

This was not a great rewatch. The movie is really quite dull with a slow plodding atmosphere, and it seems nothing has any real consequence, or as I just demonstrated, payoff. In short, you finish the movie and just kinds sit there, "huh". I watched it in a void created by the sci fi boxset, and now that the void is gone, I see this for what it is.

I'll give the rewatch 3 stars still, just a bit worse than last time.

Micmacs - 2009

Might as well close the loop here. My library does not have The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet.

Micmacs is the story of an oddball character Bazil who gets shot in the head early on and is left with the possibility of dying at any moment. He vows revenge on the arms dealers that made the bullet, and after teaming up with a collection of other oddball underground misfits, he launches a campaign to undermine the arms dealers and get them out of business.

What we have is some signature Jeunet strange people, some signature off-kilter shots and cutaways, and some cool design buildings, rooms, and ideas. There is not as much of any of these though, to ever be compared to Amelie or Lost Children. Bazil has a thing of focusing himself by asking himself random questions, i.e. how many people does it take to wear down a step, and we'll have a cutaway to that. We'll see brief histories or brief oddities about characters, but not as much as the signature Amelie.

Additionally, his main character and his others are not given as much love and detail. I suppose Bazil is likable, but I did not like him. He seems a bit like he's trying too hard, and Dany Boon isn't exactly exploding with charm or empathy to make us connect with him. We get Dominique Pinon as a guy who launches himself out of cannons, we get a contortionist, we get a math whiz woman, and other people who make up this misfit family, but none of them are as automatic and immediate as Krank, One, Amelie, or Raphael or Nino.

I don't really know. I didn't remember Micmacs as a film at all, and I doubt I'll remember it or rewatch it after this. Decidedly sub-par.