Prince Avalanche

Year 16, Day 356 - 12/21/24 - Movie #4,898

BEFORE: Emile Hirsch carries over again from "Speed Racer". I promise, I'm back on Christmas stuff RIGHT after this, with just two films left in the year.  This weekend is going to be all about getting into the Christmas spirit, or at least trying to.  I've got one of my famous Christmas music mixes playing as I type this, I went out for drinks with the theater staff on Thursday - that's as close as I'm going to get to an office holiday party this year - and I watched the last hour of "Bad Santa 2" since it was airing last night while I had the TV on. 

I didn't send out Christmas cards last year or this year, I also didn't make a new music mix CD for family and friends, I feel a little guilty but November has been very busy for me since taking on the second job.  That's when I usually compiled and field-tested my mixes, and I don't know, maybe I'll get back to doing that in the future, but I just haven't been in the mood.  I did that for 30 years and I've got plenty of mix CDs to re-listen to, so hopefully others feel the same way, assuming they saved my cassettes and CDs over the years. 

Have not done any Christmas shopping either, and it's nearly too late now anyway - we did our shopping between Christmas and New Year's during the pandemic, and honestly, that was easier and stores were less crowded and it made me wonder why everyone doesn't do it that way.  Sure, it helps that my family lives in another state and presents are probably going to arrive late no matter what, so sure, I kind of get a pass now.  Maybe if I listen to some more music I'll be more motivated - but really, I just want to make our Christmas lasagna and drink some Christmas-themed beer.  OH, I also bought eggnog tonight, I found some at a liquor store near where we went out to dinner with a friend, so there's that.  It's the kind that already has the alcohol in it, so after I write this review I'll drink some and maybe feel more merry.  It's got rum, brandy AND whiskey in it so if that's not merry, I don't know what is.  

THE PLOT: Two highway road workers spend the summer of 1988 away from their city lives. The isolated landscape becomes a place of misadventure as the men find themselves at odds with each other and the women they left behind. 

AFTER: This is a strange little film, by that I mean that there's not much too it, it's a simple story that doesn't feel like it's going to go anywhere for the majority of the time, and then when it finally does go somewhere, that's probably not a place you were expecting it to go.  Feels a lot like a film festival film, so I wonder if this did well at Sundance or Slamdance or a bunch of quirky festivals.  Yes, I'm exactly right, it was nominated for the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival, a notorious indie film haven.  Also did well at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sitges International Film Festival in Spain. I've worked on animated films that did well at Sitges.  And yes, it also played at Sundance in 2013 - I KNEW IT, I could just sort of FEEL it. 

The film opens with a message telling us that 1987 was a particular bad year for wildfires in the state of Texas, and it's a bit hard to see how that plays into the story, unless it means that there were more road crews at work than ever before the following year, not only restoring burned road posts but also re-painting lines and clearing fallen trees and brush to prevent more fires.  I guess that makes sense? 

Alvin, the older one, runs a two-man road crew and is the kind of guy who took the job to get out of the city and commune with nature, also it sounds like there's a relationship with a woman that is vastly improved by him being somewhere else, if that makes sense.  Alvin has hired the younger brother of his wife (or girlfriend) as his second, and if that isn't awkward to begin with, well, just wait.  They're different ages so they're at different stages of life, and so maybe that's one reason it's hard for them to find some common ground.  Lance, the younger one, finds it harder to focus on the tasks at hand, and spends more time thinking about the upcoming weekend, and how he's going to drive into town and dance and party and maybe get laid. 

Well, different strokes for different folks, and Alvin doesn't mind if Lance takes the truck into town, because he's fine camping by himself, sleeping in a hammock and catching fish or small game animals, or just lying in the middle of the road when there's no traffic.  He writes letters to his lover about how the time spent outdoors is improving his outlook on life, so we can only wonder what things were like for him in the city.  Hey, this was back before Austin was a cool place to live, maybe, so who knows, maybe it was quite boring.  I've been all through the major cities in Texas myself, but that was on BBQ-themed vacations, so I can't really say I've held a job there or been bored there.  Perhaps for Alvin that was hell.  

I do know something about being the older person with younger workmates, since I am the oldest person working at the theater, and usually I'm paired with someone in their thirties or even twenties, so I have to try to relate to them and not just sound like an old fart all the time.  My fun stories are all about working on music videos in the late 1980's or my second wedding in 2001, and these people weren't even alive in the 80's and most haven't been married once yet, so I don't really know what they think of me, other than that I've been around and seen some things.  

Naturally, Alvin and Lance end up rubbing each other the wrong way - Lance fills in the crossword puzzle in one of Alvin's comic books (unforgivable) and Alvin breaks Lance's new watch (uncalled for) and so before long they're chasing each other around the forest with tools and you wonder if they can ever get back to being friends after all that.  Well, you know, drinking together might help, as would finding a common foe to rage against.  But then Lance goes through Alvin's letters from home and learns that the relationship with his sister is not great, it's been going downhill for some time, and sure, this explains a lot.  However, once the link between the two men is severed, really, all bets are off.  

Upon further reflection, perhaps this weird little movie isn't so weird after all - I'm going to have to write my year-end wrap-up post next week and "most weird" is definitely going to be a category, but when you compare this film to "Spaceman", "Beau Is Afraid" "infinity Pool" and "IF", I'm afraid there's really no comparison.  So I'm just going to let this one be, leave it alone and let it be whatever it is, it's free to exist in its own little corner of the movie multiverse, because really, what's the harm?  Are there lingering questions about the woman whose house burned down, and whether or not she got into the truck driver's truck, hell I'm not even sure if she's real or a figment of Alvin's imagination.  I'm just going to smile, nod, and slowly walk away.  It's Christmas time and I'm suddenly in a giving mood and I'm not going to tear this one apart.  Must be the egg nog. 

Also starring Paul Rudd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Lance LeGault (last seen in "Coma"), Joyce Payne, Gina Grande, and the voice of Lynn Shelton (last seen in "Outside In"). .  

RATING: 5 out of 10 free-range chickens

Speed Racer

Year 16, Day 353 - 12/18/24 - Movie #4,897

BEFORE: Emile Hirsch carries over from "Force of Nature", and I'm not sure yet, but it's possible that Emile Hirsch could be the last actor with three or more appearances this year who will get added to my year-end countdown.  The leader at the end of the Doc Block is still the leader, that hasn't changed, all that remains now is for me to double-check my stats, as anyone with three or more appearances will make the cut.  Paul Rudd is already in with four appearances, but he's going to make two more in the last three films of the year, while Emile Hirsch also has four appearances after tonight, but he's only got one more coming up. 

You never know, there could be a surprise latecomer, but I'm going to start totalling things up using a different method in order to check my own work.  This process usually takes a few days, a lot of cutting and pasting names into a spreadsheet, but when all that's done, I'll feel a lot better about the certainty of my record-keeping. 

THE PLOT: A young driver, Speed Racer, aspires to be champion of the racing world with the help of his family and his high-tech Mach 5 automobile. 

AFTER: I stand corrected - I'd cut "Speed Racer" from my chain back in June, initially it was going to go between "The Company You Keep" and "Blue Beetle", with Susan Sarandon appearing in all three films.  But I cut it so I could land the right film on Father's Day, and what a great idea that turned out to be - I couldn't possibly have known that I'd have another chance at the end of the year to work it in, but I suppose it doesn't matter whether I watched this in June or December, either way it's the middle film in a chain of three films with the same actor or actress.  And either way I get to delete it from my DVR and clear up some space.  BUT, now Susan Sarandon's going to make the year-end countdown, too.  It's funny, just last night I watched a few minutes of her on the big screen in "The Six Triple Eight", the new Tyler Perry movie in which she plays Eleanor Roosevelt.  

OK, I really don't know how to process "Speed Racer".  I never watched the old cartoons, not in any form or incarnation, and I certainly never read the old manga (?) comics that are the original form of the stories.  How do you even write a comic book about racing cars?  I mean nothing even MOVES in a comic book, and racing is all about fast movement.  How do you even DRAW that to being with?  

Then there are aspects of this story that are so silly, so childlike and simplistic that I don't even understand how they can exist - "Speed Racer" is his actual NAME?  I thought it was a title, like "Grand Champion" or a job description, not the name on his birth certificate.  First name "Speed", last name "Racer"?  That's just stupid, right?  Everyone in his family has the last name of "Racer", I mean I guess that works but most people with the last name "Baker" are not really bakers, maybe some are but I'm thinking only a very small percentage.  How many people with the last name of "Cooper" actually manufacture barrels, or wagon wheels or whatever that means?  Sometimes people have a first name that tips off what their parents wanted them to grow up and do, like there's a football player named "Lawyer Milloy", and he's, well, he's not a lawyer but I guess you can't really name your kid "Football Player" or "Running Back", so I guess you do what you can.  So OK, if he was born into a family of Racers who are also racers, I guess maybe "Speed" works as a first name - hey, his older brother was named "Rex", which means "king" and his younger brother is named "Spritle" which is three times as ridiculous.  And his father is Pops Racer and his mom is just "Mom", again, what are the odds?  Or was some writer just too lazy to give them first names? 

Then there are the racetracks which are all over-the-top, flat-out ridiculous, I mean there's not one of them that could exist in the real world.  This is because the movie was made in a world where we have fantastical video-games, and supercomputers that can do CGI animation, making the impossible look real.  OK, real-ish.  There are racetracks that are hundreds of miles long, they do spiral shapes and loop-de-loops and they go up mountains and across deserts and ice fields, it would all be impossible in actual live racing, but hey, it's a movie and it doesn't have to be real.  But the flipside of that is, just because you CAN animate these impossible racetrack scenarios, that doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD.  I was left with this whole artificial feeling, like I know that movies don't reflect reality, but then if nothing is really real, then what the hell am I watching?  I guess it's like "Star Wars", we don't have any spaceships that can go into hyperspace and fly from planet to planet, but it's a fun thing to see happen in a movie, and we all get to visit Tatooine and Hoth and Bespin vicariously. 

The problem here is, I just don't CARE about these characters, not in the way I found myself caring about Luke, Leia, Han & Chewie over the years. Who gives a crap whether Speed Racer joins this racing team or that one?  Whether he knocks Snake Oiler's car off a mountain or gets rear-ended by Pitter Pat?  Again, it's all cartoony, I get it, and expecting all these minor character to be realistic is a bit like wishing that "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" more closely resembled real boxing.  It's just not going to happen.  

What's also kind of weird here is how straight everybody is forced to play things - like discussing these cartoony races where cars have circular saws coming out of their wheels, trying to slash the other racer's tires, or cars that can dispense oil slicks at the push of a button.  It's ridiculous on top of ridiculous, and it's all so over-the-top that I didn't know which end was up, I couldn't keep track of where reality stopped and fantasy took over, and I sure couldn't tell which car was ahead in any race at any given time.  To be honest, I can say the same thing about "Gran Turismo" or any auto race on TV, I can never tell who's winning without the graphics on the screen pointing that out.  Auto racing is a very confusing sport, and this movie about it doubly so.  

Supposedly there's a big villain here, and it's the corporate billionaire who signs racers to his team, wines and dines them, gets them to wear his uniforms and puts his team logos on their cars, but make no mistake, he's EVIL.  And because the movie can't really express this simply, there's the fact that the Grand Prix Championship Super Bowl of Racing is always fixed, and that's about the only way we know how bad this guy really is.  Look, I don't have any idea how NASCAR works or what it takes to run a racing team or be competitive in this particular sport, but as far as I know, every racer has an equal chance of winning any given race.  Or so I've been led to believe.  Or maybe it comes down to the pit-crew, right? 

Speed Racer doesn't really have a pit crew, instead he's got a spotting team out in the field with binoculars, or a girlfriend flying in a helicopter to alert him to the ludicrous dangers coming up on the track. But who needs a pit crew, since it's a movie and he doesn't need to change his tires or even refuel?  Movie magic is in play and we wouldn't want nasty reality having any effect on our characters.  It's a fantasy film across the board, but that's what makes it weirder that everyone takes things so seriously.  Kind of like "Fatman", the story dictates that Santa needs to work with the Pentagon so he can fly all around the world in one night and NORAD doesn't totally freak out or confuse him with a missile, he's traveling THAT fast after all.  Really, it's not the speed that Santa Claus would have to travel at that makes his annual journey impossible, it's the fact that he has to stop every 100 feet or so if he's going to visit every damn house.  Do you have any idea how many houses are in just one city, let alone every city and town?  Even if you factor out the non-believers, and the people of other faiths, still, the number of Christian households alone is a killer, that's why he travels east to west and takes advantage of the time-zones.  Right? 

Anyway, somebody spent a LOT of money making "Speed Racer", I'm almost afraid to see how much, it was probably bigger than the GDP of most countries.  Which number do you figure is larger, the amount of money Hollywood spends each year to make movies, or the amount the U.S. government spends across all its cabinet departments?  When you include movies like "Speed Racer", I'm guessing it's the former. EDIT: I guess I'm wrong, thanks to Google I learned that the U.S. film & video industry spent $66 billion in 2021, while the U.S. federal government spent $6.2 trillion in 2023. Different years, but a trillion is a lot more than a billion.  OK, good to know. But "Speed Racer" only made $93 million against a $120 million budget, so it was not profitable.  Therefore maybe a big waste of everyone's time. 

That's really how I'm going to treat this one, a big pile of mindless fun, or it would have been fun if I could have just relaxed and enjoyed it.  But I think I'm out of the age-bracket for this one, the subject matter doesn't really appeal to me, and I just have more important things to think about, sorry.  They shot this in super HD, which meant they could basically do anything they wanted with every image, like pixel-wise, but mostly they just did a bunch of fancy wipes which created this weird layering effect.  I'm not really impressed by that, like you could do ANYTHING you wanted, so why that? 

Well, anyway, it's off the DVR and I freed up some more space.  Three films left to go in this Movie Year before the break.  I'll be back here Friday or Saturday and then I'll watch the other two films next week.  I've also got to save some time for my annual viewing of "Bad Santa" and "Bad Santa 2". 

Also starring Christina Ricci (last seen in 'The Matrix Resurrections"), John Goodman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Matthew Fox (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Roger Allam (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Paulie Litt (last seen in "Doubt"), Benno Furmann (last seen in "Joyeux Noel"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Rain (last seen in "The Prince"), Richard Roundtree (last seen in "Shaft" (2019), Kick Gurry (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Ramon Tikaram (ditto), John Benfield (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Christian Oliver (last seen in "The Good German"), Ralph Herforth (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Scott Porter (last seen in "Music and Lyrics"), Yu Nan (last seen in "The Expendables 2"), Nayo Wallace, Melvil Poupaud (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Ben Miles (last seen in "Napoleon"), Cosma Shiva Hagen, Moritz Bleibtreu (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Karl Yune (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Togo Igawa (ditto), Joon Park, Nicholas Elia (last seen in "White Noise"), Ariel Winter (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Corinne Orr, Milka Duno, Melissa Holroyd (last seen in "Mute"), Giancarlo Ganziano, Peter Fernandez (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Harvey Friedman (last seen in "She Said"), Sadao Ueda (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Valery Tscheplanowa, Sami Loris, Olivier Marlo, Sean McDonagh, Mark Zak (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Julia Joyce, Clayton Nemrow, Ricky Watson, Brandon Robinson, Julie T. Wallace (last seen in "The Living Daylights"), Waldemar Kobus (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Matthias Redhammer, Eckehard Hoffmann, Art LaFleur (last seen in "Maverick"), Peter Navy Tulasosopo (last seen in "Fun Size"), Paul Sirr, Kady Taylor, Jana Pallaske (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Bojidara Maximova, Werner Daehn (last seen in "The Operative"), Komi Togbonou, Joe Mazza, Ludmilla Ismallow, Ashley Walters, Jeng Neuhaus, Sesesa Terziyan, Ill-Young Kim, Yuriri Naka (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Oscar Ortega Sanchez (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Yu Fang, Nargess Rashidi, Andrés Cantor (last seen in "Muppets Most Wanted"), Luka Andres, Joel Cross, Alister Mazzotti

RATING: 4 out of 10 pancakes

Force of Nature

Year 16, Day 351 - 12/16/24 - Movie #4,896

BEFORE: After that Santa Claus movie, I'm back on heist films.  But really, if you think about it, isn't the Santa Claus story REALLY a heist story, only in reverse?  I mean, here's a guy who's an expert in breaking into every house in the country, at like lightning speed, and the only difference between him and a thief is that he GIVES you stuff instead of takes it away.  Sure, that's an important distinction, but really, it's kind of the same principle, right?  Get in, don't get seen, eat the cookies, drink the milk and get out without being seen.  Santa is the legendary, ultimate second-story heist guy.  

Mel Gibson carries over again from "Fatman", where he played a happily-married Santa who just happened to be married to a Mrs. Claus of color.  Not a coincidence, I'm thinking, if Mel was really on the apology tour and trying to prove he's not racist. (But you know what that means, then.) It's great to see Santa being faithful to Mrs. Claus, because I know the temptation just HAS to be there.  After all, Santa knows where all the naughty girls live, and he also knows when they're awake. Just saying. 

THE PLOT: A gang of thieves plan a heist during a hurricane and encounter trouble when a cop tries to force everyone in the building to evacuate. 

AFTER: Right off the bat, I recognized the opening logo at the start of the film - this was made by the production company that made all of those Bruce Willis Action movies a few years ago, the ones that were all made on the cheap, and each one only had Bruce Willis in it for a few scenes, so you just KNOW they shot all of his scenes on the same day, because they could only afford him for one day of their shoot.  Hell, maybe they hired him for five days and shot all of his scenes for ten movies, back to back, who can say?   

I also recognized a bunch of the background players, like Tyler Jon Olson, from the same group of films, which includes "Precious Cargo", "Hard Kill", "Reprisal", "Extraction" and "Acts of Violence".  So I don't even have to look it up, I'm 95% sure this was shot in Florida, not Puerto Rico where the story takes place.  They had just a few too many aerial shots of the real Puerto Rico, which makes me think they were over-selling that point, trying to cover up the fact that they shot no scenes there.  Huh, i was wrong, shot in New Mexico.  OK, but yesterday I was able to tell that "Fatman" was shot in Canada, not Alasks, because of the supporting cast of Toronto actors.  Yeah, I may have seen a few too many movies. I'd say last week was an all-Canadian week except "Bandit" was set in Canada and FILMED in Georgia.  The U.S. state, not the former Soviet republic.  

Amyway, in tonight's film a gang of bank robbers tries to pull of an art heist from a Puerto Rico apartment complex in the middle of a hurricane.  Which only sounds a little less dangerous than a gang robbing a casino vault in Las Vegas in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  But that happened too this year, I don't want to forget about it.  But come on, it's like Mad Libs, right, somebody in Hollywood just names a noun to steal, a city, a type of building and a disaster, and that's a movie.  A gang tries to rob a safe full of gold from an airplane during a hostage crisis, and that's "Lift".  Right? 

OK, maybe I'm over-simplifying things.  There's really a LOT going on here, maybe too much, and maybe it all comes together neatly in the end, and maybe it's a little too neat.  The lead is Cardillo, a former NYC police officer who got disgraced after a shooting that went wrong. Like, really wrong.  So he ended up on a police force in Puerto Rico, and he's checked out, he doesn't really care about the job, he's just biding his time while he contemplates suicide. Then during the hurricane he gets paired up with a female rookie and they're assigned to clear buildlings, to make sure everyone has been evacuated.  Before long they're sent to a buildling where two old men, one a retired cop, are refusing to leave.  By coincidence, it just happens to be the same building where another suspect accused of stealing meat from a grocery lives, and he's got a pet that needs to be fed, a very hungry cat. (hint hint, he was trying to get 100 pounds of meat to feed his cat.  Nope, nothing suspicious about that at all...)

By another coincidence, the art thieves strike the building soon after the police arrive, and they find the safe in the basement where one of the older men may have stashed some very valuable paintings.  No luck, the safe is empty, so they have to search this whole complex, room by room, which naturally puts them into contact with our two young police officers, also the retired cop (who's getting way too old for this shit...) and his daughter, who happens to look a lot like the girlfriend Cardillo had back in NY, and come on, that's not a coincidence, they're just setting up the ending WAY in advance.  

The retired cop's daughter is a doctor, and she's trying to get him to go to the hospital for his dialysis, also it's the safest place for him to be if a bunch of art thieves are going to be coming around.  But they miss their window for evacuation - too much standing around discussing their back-stories, I think - so now they all have to hunker down in this apartment complex and make the most of it.. And wouldn't you know it, the police radios don't work during the intense storm, so they can't call for back-up, they're cut off from society and they're going to have to fight the thieves, like "Home Alone" style.  Only without the comedy and the holiday-themed booby traps.  

Things go from bad to worse when that cat-owner is mauled by his own very-hungry cat, and so they have to find a doctor in the building, or at least some medical supplies.  Then the rookie police officer gets captured by the thieves, and meanwhile Cardio and his future love-interest are shot at while looking for those medical supplies.  Even worse than that, the retired cop frees the rookie, but then he remembers that being in the movie any longer would require another day's pay to Mel Gibson, so he manages to get himself shot, because the filmmakers just can't afford that. 

Finally the thieves track down the other old man and learn that there's a room in his apartment JUST filled with valuable paintings, some of which have been lost since World War II.  It's a big payoff for the thieves, they take Cardillo's uniform and the keys to his police van, and they're in the clear, they'll be richer than they ever imagined, as long as they don't fall for the oldest trick in the book.  And it's pretty easy to figure out exactly what that's going to be.

The official word on this one is that it's not terrible.  However, it's not all that great either.  That company I was talking about that cranked out all those stinker Bruce Willis films is called EFO, Emmett/Furla Oasis Films.  I have no idea how this comany manages to stay in business when their films have budgets of $15 million and tend to gross under $1 million, like this one did. That's just not a viable business plan, unless they're laundering money or they're a front for a criminal organization - it's worth looking into, but that's just my opinion. 

Also starring Emile Hirsch (last seen in "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Barbarian"), Stephanie Cayo, David Zayas (last seen in "13"), Jasper Polish (last seen in "The Astronaut Farmer"), Will Catlett, Swen Temmel (last seen in "Bandit"), Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Precious Cargo"), Jorge Luis Ramos, Blas Sien Diaz, Joksan Ramos, Julio Ramos Velez (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Jorge Antares (ditto), Jasvier Ortiz Cortes (ditto), Sebastian Vazquez, Jesy McKinney, Xavier Reyes, Luillo Ruiz, Johanna Rosaly, Rey Hernandez (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Jerry D. Medina, Leslee Emmett (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Anil Raman, Geoffrey M. Reeves (last seen in "Reprisal").

RATING: 4 out of 10 "oxy-moron" pain pills

Fatman

Year 16, Day 349 - 12/14/24 - Movie #4,895

BEFORE: Well, it's been quite a week, but then again, I was sort of expecting that. I was scheduled for more hours than usual, from a Saturday night screening of a film I worked on that was screening at the theater where I ALSO work, through 14-hour work days on Tuesday, Wednesday AND Friday.  I must be some kind of glutton for punishment. Yesterday was Friday the 13th and I was working the premiere of a VERY big film (hint: Zimmerman) and I was on outdoor duty most of the night, and it was freakin' cold.  One woman passed out as she was crossing through the barricades, and even though there were security guards all around I still had to make sure she was attended to, and that the police officer next to me called an ambulance, and then I had to check with the EMTs to make sure she was OK.  Then, after midnight when I was trying to get the theater back in order and go home, I slipped and fell outside and got a cut on my head.  Not a bad one, I'm just lucky I didn't do any more damage to myself, I landed on my shoulder so that's going to hurt for a while - thankfully the job's winding down for the school's winter break, so I'll have a lot of time at home to recover coming up very soon. 

Mel Gibson carries over again from "Bandit". You probably figured out this was coming, this is a Christmas movie coming in a bit early, but the schedule dictated this going here so I could get to two more Christmas movies in the week after next.  

THE PLOT: A rowdy, unorthodox Santa Claus is fighting to save his declining business. Meanwhile, Billy, a neglected and precocious 12 year old, hires a hit man to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking.  

AFTER: This is part of a trend in Christmas movies to "modernize" the Santa Claus story, I think between the Tim Allen "Santa Clause" films (never seen them) and others like "Santa Claus: The Movie" this has been going on for some time now.  So Mel Gibson is the latest to take on a Santa with a more contemporary feel - last year it was Kurt Russell in "The Christmas Chronicles" and the voice of J.K. Simmons in "Klaus" before that.  If I'm being honest I was kind of hoping I could link to "Violent Night" with David Harbour, but it just wasn't in the cards based on what I watched in November.  Maybe next year - also that movie "Red One" is in theaters now, with J.K. Simmons (again?) playing a modern, very fit and muscular Santa. Not sure how I feel about that, but like I always say, put it on the list, maybe I can get to it some time in the future. 

I had a couple beers tonight, a little holiday cheer, one was a Deep River "Ginger Snapped" oatmeal stout, with hints of molasses, ginger and other spices. As soon as I saw Mel Gibson as Santa shooting up some beer cans, I figured I made the right choice to pair the beer with the film.  I could probably do a whole different blog about what beer or cocktail to pair with each movie, but you know, there's a reason why I don't usually do this, because I get sleepy enough watching movies as it is.  But tonight I could use a little "muscle relaxant" because of the shoulder pain.  Earlier today we also drove out to Long Island so my wife could get smokes, and after we had lunch at a place called Shennanigan's (really) we hit up a holiday market, and there was a brewery there, Great South Bay, and I picked up another six of their Roasty Toasty stout. Dark beers for winter, that's my jam. 

Anyway, Gibson puts a new spin on Santa Claus here, or Chris Cringle, really.  It's weird that they play this one so straight, like it's a comedy but one that takes itself way too serious or something.  How do you balance the typical nonsense and frivolity of the usual Santa story?  Well, I guess by depicting the workshop as a failing business, even with the U.S. government subsidizing it and giving Santa a big check every month.  By delivering Christmas presents to all the good children, he's helping the U.S. economy, err, somehow, I guess in a roundabout way if he delivers presents then Christmas is a big deal, and then people go out and buy food for Christmas dinner and presents for each other and all of that boosts the U.S. GDP.  Right?  It's trickle-up economics, or something.  Santa's actions help the Dow Jones index?  

Oh, and Santa's not just an action hero here, he's got some kind of super-powers, like he's super-strong (has to be, to lift all those toys) and he's got a super memory (again, he has to, to maintain such a long gift list every year) and by extension super-speed if he can deliver to millions of houses in one night.  Very conveniently, we don't actually see him delivering on Christmas Eve, because really, he's so fast you can't catch him on camera, so don't even try - but we do see him coming back to the workshop on Christmas morning, after being shot and getting ready to heal with his super-healing power.  Come on, who shot Santa? It's not like his sleigh looks anything like a drone or a foreign military plane!

But again, things are not all fine at the workshop, because Santa's been giving out more and more coal every year to the bad kids (this tracks too, kids have been getting worse, thanks to social media bullying and also regular bullying, not to mention ADHD and being over-sugared and over-caffeinated and over-weight, this new generation of kids is probably the naughtiest ever.). So the government's cut Santa's check in half, since he only delivered gifts to about half of the kids.  But the flipside of this is that Santa himself has been keeping America's coal producers in business, despite the push to switch to cleaner energy sources.  Windmills are bad for the coal industry, but naughty kids are GREAT for it.  

One kid in particular has spent too much time alone, his rich father is off on business trips to the Caribbean again and again, so he's raised by his grandmother and the house staff, so he pretty much gets whatever he wants, or he figures out a way to get it.  He even hires a hit-man to kidnap the little girl who won the science fair so he could threaten her into giving up her first-place ribbon so he could win instead of being first runner-up.  Parents, do you SEE what happens to your kids when you never say "NO" to them?  They just turn into entitled brats, and your actions (or inactions) allow this to happen.  

Santa, the voice of reason here, and also a couple centuries of arcane knowledge and elf management, gives this rich kid the lump of coal he deserves - but little Billy decides to dip into grandma's checking account again and hire the hit-man to take Santa Claus out.  The hit-man, who's listed in the credits only as "Skinny Man" is willing to take the job because he's got his own agenda against the Fatman, at some point Santa stopped fulfilling his Christmas wish list.  (Well, we find out near the end of the film that the child who later became Skinny Man had very unreasonbale requests, but I guess that's neither here nor there, because he still holds that grudge.)

So while Chris Cringle is forced to re-tool his workshop to produce jet fighter control panels for the U.S. Dept. of Defense - and after telling his elves this will only be for two months, anyway it's the slow season because no kids have Christmas requests in January or February, and they can go back to making toys in March - there's a killer driving up through Canada in the days after Christmas to reach Santa's workshop, which is somewhere in Alaska, it turns out.  This hit-man is slick, he couldn't find any record online about where that workshop is, so he tracked him through the mail - those letters that kids write to Santa have to go somewhere, don't they?  

Once he's found the right town, it only takes a little bit of asking around to find out that Cringle comes by every few days to check his P.O. box, and that he drives a red Ford pick-up (again, makes sense) and then he follows him back to the workshop and reindeer farm.  Though perhaps he wasn't expecting to encounter the U.S. military there, overseeing the new assembly line.  Again, all of this is played STRAIGHT, like we're supposed to take this all very very seriously, which, in itself, is quite hilarious.  So it's funny how non-funny this film is, if that makes sense. 

Oh, you can TRY to kill Santa, but again, he's got Wolverine-like healing, and also he's super-strong and super durable and also he's not bad with weapons either.  Yeah, if you come for the Fatman you'd better bring an army.  One hit-man with a sniper rifle just isn't going to cut it.  I suppose that's not as comforting as it sounds, but it's what we're asked to play along with here.  Santa may be a couple hundred years old and also may have fallen on some hard times, but the jolly old elf still has some tricks up his sleeve.  

Santa learns the hard way, though, what this new Generation Alpha is capable of - like hiring a hit-man to take him out and not even feeling bad about it.  Oh, well, yeah, that's going to change now that Santa knows the score, he's got to change with the times and it's time to send out a new message to the entitled pre-teens: straighten up and fly right, because the big fluffy gloves are OFF.  So, umm, you better watch out.  That's it, cry or don't cry, but you better watch out because he's coming to town. And he's pissed off. Hey, maybe this IS the Santa Claus that the next generation needs, after all. 

Also starring Walton Goggins (last seen in "Three Christs"), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (last heard in "The Sea Beast"), Chance Hurstfield (last seen in "Coffee & Kareem"), Susanne Sutchy, Robert Bockstael, Michael Dyson (last seen in "Murder at 1600"), Deborah Grover (last seen in "Alice, Darling"), Ellison Grier Butler, Eric Woolfe (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Lynne Adams (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Ekaterina Baker (last seen in "The Protégé"), Natale Darbyson (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Robert Reynolds (ditto), Corbin Smyth Currie, Paul Whitney, Paulino Nunes (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Kate Hurman, John Tokatlidis, Sean Devine (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Sean Tucker (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Shaun Benson (last seen in "K-19: The Widowmaker"), Mikael Conde (last seen in "Midway"), Ronald Tang, Peter Chow, Jack Sivyer, Xavier X. Sotelo, Alexa Devine, Ellen Manchee, Bill Turnbull (last seen in "Little Italy"), Daniel Garcia, Dylan Roberts (last seen in "Amelia"), Jason Gosbee (last seen in "White House Down"), Stefan Keyes, Bill Lake (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Michelle Lang, Michael Dickson, Gordon Finley, Mireille Gagne, Claude Guertin, Claude Huard, Caren MacNevin, Kevin Barry McIntyre, Joyce Rivera and the voice of Tom Fugedi.   

RATING: 6 out of 10 glasses of milk

Bandit

Year 16, Day 344 - 12/9/24 - Movie #4,894

BEFORE: Just two movies this week, and I want to get just a LITTLE closer to Christmas before I watch the next movie after this.  You get it, right?  But it works out great because I'm going to have three very long shifts over the next 4 days, I don't know when or how I'm going to sleep, but I suppose I'll figure that out.  And sleeping is actually more important than watching movies, it turns out.  There's a lot of coffee needed to make this week possible, but then when it wears off I'm probably going to crash real hard.  See you on the other side. 

Mel Gibson carries over from "On the Line". 

THE PLOT: After escaping from a Michigan prison, a career criminal assumes a new identity in Canada and goes on to rob a record 59 banks and jewelry stores while being hunted by a police task force. Based on the story of the Flying Bandit.  

AFTER: This film is based on the true story of an American who moved to Canada and robbed almost 60 banks over a few years, due to the fact that nobody in Canada ever saw the need to have armed guards in every bank.  Even after this man, who went by the name of Robert Whiteman for many years, robbed many banks successfully, this was NOT enough motivation to hire proper security for every bank in Canada, that just wasn't seen as a proper use of bank resources, hiring thousands of security guards across the country.  Who knows, maybe when you factor in the guards' salaries, plus health care, pension, disability pay, sick leave, workers compensation, and paid leave, perhaps it was cheaper to just let this guy rob a bank or two a month. Who's to say?  

His real name wasn't Robert Whiteman at all, it was Gilbert Galvan Jr. when he lived in America, but then when he broke out of prison and headed up to Canada, he couldn't get a job selling ice cream unless he had a Canadian I.D., so he paid a homeless guy $22 (Canadian) for his I.D.  The movie at this point tells us, "This really happened." but I'm not so sure about this part of the story.  For one thing, isn't it much too cold up in Canada to eat ice cream, and also, that's a thing that happy people do, and I'm not sure Canadians are capable of feeling things like joy and happiness.  I could be wrong, though.

Whiteman's small business dreams are crushed, however, when the ice cream business decides to focus on sales made by truck, rather than those little bicycle carts. So Whiteman has to teach himself to rob banks, because it's not like he can get a driver's license for an ice cream truck, that would be ridiculous.  Also he can't possibly become a carpenter, electrician, painter, postal worker, car salesman, office worker, grocery store worker, pizza delivery guy, bank teller, news reporter, movie theater usher, librarian, bartender, waiter, limo driver, radio DJ, furniture salesman, insurance broker, shoe salesman, baker, barista, hospital orderly, bricklayer, furniture mover, baggage handler, barber, cashier, florist, gardener, plumber, grave-digger, mechanic, photographer, farmer, doorman, lifeguard, fisherman or tour guide, now could he?  Nope, it's either selling ice cream by bicycle or robbing banks, those would appear to be his only two options, because it's the 1980's and Reaganomics are in play and all that. 

Maybe he should have just gone to work for a different ice cream bicycle cart company, or maybe he could have opened his own ice cream business, oh, but to do that he'd have to have money, and we're back at the same problem.  OK, robbing banks is it, I guess.  He does one robbery and gets a feel for it, he likes it AND he's kind of good at it, except he forgets to bring a bag to put the money in.  No worries, this is Canada so they just give you the money bag they have lying around and then they help you stuff the money in AND zip it up for you.  They're very nice people, these Canadians, maybe a bit simple, and they can't feel happiness, but otherwise they seem OK.  

The last time I was in Canada, my wife and I went to Niagara Falls and then drove through Ontario for a bit, I went to a beer festival in Hamilton that for some reason had a rock-climbing wall, probably a bad thing to have at a beer festival in retrospect.  I remember also getting ripped off for orange juice in a Denny's, they asked us if we wanted juice when we sat down, then brought us a whole pitcher, and honestly I was thinking about a glass, I don't love OJ enough to want a whole pitcher.  Then we saw that glasses of juice were FREE with every breakfast combo, so we could have just waited and had that, but instead we were charged about $18 for the pitcher we didn't really want.  I was mad until I remembered that was 18 Canadian dollars, and that's not even real money, so who cares? 

Anyway, Whiteman starts doing really well for himself, and decides to visit other Canadian provinces and pull his little bank robber act, then fly back to Ontario because nobody in Canada before him had ever considered leaving a city right after committing a crime, I guess most Canadian criminals wouldn't dream of doing that, instead they just stand outside the crime scene and wait for the RCMP to arrest them - well that would be the decent thing to do, I suppose.  Flying out of town to escape the law probably feels like cheating to them, like it just wouldn't be sporting.  But as an American he probably knew that after a bank robbery the best thing to do is get out of town, fast.  

It's strange that there are two schools of thought about this - the natural human instinct is to choose flight over fight, run away as soon as you've done something wrong, it just makes sense to the lizard brain.  Ah, but only guilty people run away, and if police see you running they could immediately know the score.  It takes a smart man to WALK away from the crime, because then you just look like a guy walking down the street. I remember a lot of kids in high school getting in trouble for leaving school early by trying to sneak out by the gym, which was close to the parking lot.  Well, forget it because the gym teacher will catch you, and now you've got detention.  If I had a study hall for last period, I used to walk out right by the office and wave to the secretaries as I left.  Now, I had a reputation as a straight-A student, so they never stopped me, not once, because I walked out and didn't try to run or sneak out, plus they figured if I was leaving early I probably had a darn good reason.  

That's the whole theory here in the depiction of Whiteman's robberies - he'd put on a fake nose or a weird wig or wear something notable like a construction worker's vest, and then ditch that right after the crime, change into a business suit, and WALK away from the bank, because he wanted to look like he had nothing to hide, and a guilty person wouldn't walk, they'd run.  Plus, the cops were looking for that construction worker with the big nose and the long hair, and well, that wasn't him, not any more. 

Right now law enforcement has been looking for the person who killed a health insurance CEO in New York, and it seems that he was able to get away from the scene by taking a bicycle through Central Park, where he ditched his backpack, then took a taxi from the Upper West Side to a bus terminal in the Bronx, and from there he got on a bus and headed out to Pennsylvania, and I'm guessing it was all done at normal human "nothing to see here" speed.  That's how you do it, really.  I also recall those prison inmates who busted out in upstate New York a few years back and most people figured they would head for Canada, which was RIGHT there, only that was just a little too obvious.  Nobody was, for example, expecting them to head south and try to make it to Mexico, but if they had, they might have been more successful. Just saying. 

In the meantime, since it was the 1980's, the airlines had just come up with this thing called frequent flyer miles, or maybe they were called "loyalty programs" back then, before SkyMiles or AdvantageMiles or whatever.  They knew you had a choice of airlines, and they wanted to thank you for your loyalty, so if you made enough trips on one airline, they tracked that and then they gave you gold or diamond or platinum medallion status.  If you reached 100,000 miles then I think you got to bang a stewardess, remember that it was a different time.  

Whiteman had been in a relationship, however, with a woman who ran the hostel or shelter or whatever he first stayed when he reached Ottawa.  He left her for a while back when he couldn't figure out if he really wanted to rob banks or sell ice cream for the rest of his life, and remember those were the ONLY two choices available to him, so he was relieved when he learned that he COULD rob banks and therefore he could support this beautiful woman that was way out of his league and he didn't deserve at all.  Whew, what a relief, and it's not like it's going to be really awkward when she finds out about the bank robberies, he just told her his father got him a job in Vancouver and he's got to fly there every couple of weeks to help analyze business security systems, which is kind of true, if you think of that as a euphemism for "casing a bank".  And he's got to fly back and forth because they haven't invented camera phones yet - yep, this alibi is totally believable, it's just not very true. 

Not-Whiteman gets financed by a gangster named Tommy Kay in exchange for a cut of the haul from each bank robbery, and the average heist nets him about $20,000 - but again, remember that's Canadian dollars, so it doesn't really go as far as you might think, since their money's not even real.  But the bad news is that there's a law enforcement task force trying to take Tommy Kay down, and they track everyone who comes and goes in and out of Tommy's club, so eventually the task force sets their eyes on Galvin/Whiteman, because they've got a feeling that he's up to something more than collecting a lot of air miles.  

Kay convinces Whiteman to stop robbing small banks with small payouts, and go for a bigger heist, something called "The Big Vancouver", which involves robbing a jewelry store.  It's an elaborate scheme, and though Robby is used to working alone, he teams up with one of Tommy's guys for the jewelery theft, and they almost get caught by the task force.  They only escape because Whiteman had the brilliant idea to hire a bunch of out-of-work actors to dress identically to the robbers and walk around the mail in pairs, so that the Task Force won't know which pair to track.  And Robby trained them all to walk away, not run.  

It was a great idea to cast Josh Duhamel, because he's a charming, attractive guy (jeez, I'm straight and I'd switch...) and so we like Robby and we want him to succeed.  We see a glimpse of the real Gilbert Galvan at the end of the movie, and he's nowhere near as attractive as Duhamel.  Maybe Galvan was 1980's attractive, but damn, Josh Duhamel looks like he was synthetically grown in a handsome lab or something.

Eventually, the money from Galvan's robberies is all gone, because he made the mistake of buying bigger and bigger houses with it, to keep impressing his wife.  Did he not sell the smaller houses when he bought the bigger ones?  I guess even in the 1980's, with a booming economy and Reaganomics working/not working, even a bank robber couldn't get ahead - eventually after a few years of paying that mortgage, that safe full of money wasn't so full any more. And remember, once again, he simply COULD NOT get a regular job for some reason that I forget or was never mentioned.  So even though he KNEW the task force was looking for him, he had to start robbing banks again, as Willie Sutton said, "Because that's where the money is."

But the ride had to come to an end at some point - it was only a matter of time before somebody in Canada learned how to put an exploding dye pack into one of the money bags.  Or the task force would finally have some evidence against Whiteman, like if he left behind a stray fingerprint or something.  The important thing to know about working ANY job, even a bank robbing one, is to know when to call it quits.  Whiteman kept saying, "This will be the last job." followed by "No, THIS one will be the last job."  Well, guess what, you probably don't get to decide that, and the task force might have something to say about it, too. Still, maybe it's best to know when to say "When."

Also starring Josh Duhamel (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Elisha Cuthbert (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Nestor Carbonell (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Swen Temmel (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Keith Arthur Bolden (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Michael H. Cole (ditto), Dylan Flashner (last seen in "The Card Counter"), Olivia d'Abo (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Claire Bronson (last seen in "Think Like a Man"), Eric J. Little, Jessica Luza (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Rachael Markarian (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Leander Suleiman (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Ian Hoch (last seen in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), Lorenzo Yearby, Chiara D'Ambrosio, Jacobi Hollingshed, Jason Vail (last seen in "Tammy"), Cooper Thornton (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Todd d'Amour (last seen in "C'mon C'mon"), Christina Bach (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Leslie Stratton, Dayna Beilenson (last seen in "Secret Headquarters"), Jerry Ascione (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), B.J. Winfrey, Greg Corbett (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Megan Hayes (last seen in "Zola"), Charlie Sara, Ashley Doughterty, Hannah Celeste, Packer Morley, Faisal Mahmood, Derek Severson, Clayton Landey (last seen in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"), Burns Burns (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Spence Maughon (last seen in "Fantastic Four" (2015)), Sherilan Lane, Haley Webb (last seen in "Blonde"), Mary DeMatteo with archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Boy George (last seen in "Wham!"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 music videos (in the early days of MTV)

On the Line

Year 16, Day 342 - 12/7/24 - Movie #4,893

BEFORE: All right, we're getting down to it - the road to Christmas leads right through Mel Gibson this year.  Maybe you can guess what's coming up next week.  But seven films remain for this Movie Year after tonight, but I'm making progress very slowly because I'm so damn busy with two jobs. I'm working both days this weekend, and then I don't get a day off until Thursday, and I just booked an eye exam for that day at a new eyeglass provider in Queens, because my vision just keeps getting worse, as does my hearing.  What I really should be doing is watching as many films as I can before I can no longer hear or see them - really, it's no fun getting old.

Kevin Dillon carries over from "A Midnight Clear". 

THE PLOT: A radio host takes a call, where an unknown person threatens to kill the showman's family on air. To save loved ones, the host will have to play a survival game and the only way to win is to find out the identity of the criminal.  

AFTER: Speaking of old, Mel Gibson.  And Clint Eastwood. Neither shows any sign of retiring, but really, both should consider it, I mean, if they don't have enough money to go the Gene Hackman route than I really don't know why anybody is an actor.  If I got to be an actor and made a couple million for being in ONE movie then I'd be done, I'd probably take my ball and go home, find a small town upstate where that money would buy a house AND pay my living expenses for the next 20 years.  But nobody really DOES that, instead they try to become top-tier actors who make five million per picture, and then ten, then twenty, meanwhile their lifestyles are getting more extravagant (I assume) and they have to pay agents, assistants, alimony, child support, where the hell does it all end?  Honestly I'd love to hear about some a-level actor who puts all his money in the bank, lives in a simple one-room apartment in a small California town when he's not traveling to make movies, and then cashes in by buying up a few Starbucks franchises or something and never needs to work again.  Sure, he can make a movie a year by choice, but not because he needs to, and therefore he's more relaxed and a better actor.  But I'm betting that's just not how it works.  

Forget it, we all know that life is a never-ending treadmill and that should go double for famous people, why should they get to relax if I can't?  Screw you, Mel Gibson, I hope you never retire and have to keep on working forever.  Remember when he essentially got cancelled, after launching a film directing career, and things seemed to be going well, but then he got arrested for driving drunk and called some female police officer "sugar tits" during his arrest?  He also said some very racist things during that incident, and then a couple years later a recording of a phone call with his wife got leaked, where he said some more racist things.  That phone call led to restraining orders and domestic violence charges, plus he was blacklisted (oh, the irony) from Hollywood for almost 10 years.  

He kind of battled his way back, though, by starring in "The Beaver" and "Edge of Darkness" and by directing "Hacksaw Ridge", and since then he's made a bunch more movies, like "Daddy's Home 2" and "Boss Level", so I guess you have to wonder whether it was worth it or not.  Just kidding, he made some respectable movies, too, like "Blood Father" and "Dragged Across Concrete", so really, it's not for me to say.  But I wonder sometimes which Mel Gibson I'm going to get in any particular movie, if that makes sense.  Hey, he's 68 and still working so I guess every day above ground is a good one, he's on his third major relationship and has nine kids in total, so that's a lot of incentive to keep working, I guess. 

The movie's a tough one to review, though, because it starts out as one kind of movie and then turns into something completely different by the end, I don't want to spoil it other than to say what I just did, which is maybe too much.  What seems to be happening may not be what is really happening, and with a lot of action taking place over phone calls and over a radio broadcast, well, we all know that things aren't always what they sound like, especially over non-visual mediums.  Nobody likes a complete fake-out, and perhaps that's what we're dealing with here, you may take a lot of things for granted and then realize later on that you were way off-base, your brain helped fill in the gaps a bit because you've seen other action movies and you know how they tend to go.  

Anyway, after the part that introduces us to Elvis, the shock-jock lead character, the guy who works the late-night shift at a call-in talk radio station, he gets a call from Gary, a guy who claims to be breaking into his house in Pasadena to possibly kidnap or kill his wife and daughter.  This guy apparently has a grudge against the radio host over the way he treated a former employee, who was Gary's girlfriend and she later committed suicide, so naturally Gary blames Elvis for her death, and by the way, Gary's an ex-soldier who came back from Afghanistan with military training, which means he knows weapons and also bomb stuff.  After the fake-out when it's revealed that Gary wasn't near Elvis' house at all, things get even worse, as he's rigged the whole radio station building to explode and he starts playing the kind of games that the Joker would think up. 

Elvis, with the help of his switchboard operator and the new intern from the U.K., has to keep Gary on the line long enough to either figure out his identity or get the L.A. cops to show up and deal with him.  Yeah, good luck on that last one, he's better off taking matters into his own hands, like "Die Hard" style.  As mentioned above, there are more twists that follow so I'm going to stop describing the plot in case you want to review the film yourself. 

But let me just say that there are a LOT of things that don't add up here, for example we're not exactly sure why Gary wants to stay on the air, basically broadcasting his name and the details of his sick games and potential crimes to any law enforcement officials listening.  It's also not very clear whether the radio show has managed to stay broadcasting the entire time, or what exactly the listeners can hear from any of the parties.  The microphones seem to work as if by magic, but then, isn't the whole medium of radio and TV a form of magic, one that nobody really understands how it works?  Oh, no, wait, I'm thinking about vinyl records, nobody really knows how they work.  But radio and TV operate invisibly via waves that nobody can prove exist, and that's kind of like magic, right?  Hell, it's a movie so things work the way we need them to work, I guess. 

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "Father Stu"), William Moseley (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Alia Seror O'Neill (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Paul Spera (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Nadia Fares, Enrique Arce (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Yoli Fuller (last seen in "Good Grief"), John Robinson (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Ravin J. Ganatra (last seen in "Greed"), Yann Bean (last seen in "Jackie"), Nancy Tate, Carole Weyers (last heard in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Romy Pointet, Robbie Nock (last seen in "The Pink Panther" (2006)), Agathe Bokja, and the voices of Hallie Paquin, Anna Maryan, Rebecca Leffler. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen computers 

A Midnight Clear

Year 16, Day 339 - 12/4/24 - Movie #4,892

BEFORE: Well this linking worked out better than most, I think. Frank Whaley carries over from "When Trumpets Fade" - but also the subject matter carries over, World War II and all that.  And even though today's film was released in 1992 six years BEFORE "When Trumpets Fade", it's the logical successor because it's set in December 1944, right after the Battle of the Hurtgen forest in November that same year.  This one takes place in the Ardennes Forest, which was the setting for what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge.  I'll need to read up on the actual battle a bit more, but thematically I think I'm on point here, this film rightfully follows the previous film in all the right ways, it would be next on the World War II timeline, so a bit of luck with the scheduling.  Or a happy accident, whichever. 

THE PLOT: The Ardennes Forest, December 1944. A squad of six U.S. infantrymen is sent to occupy a house as an observation post as the German army is expected to advance through that area.  However, the Germans seem oddly friendly. 

AFTER: There's a similar point of view here as well, like "When Trumpets Fade" this film represents the new view of the futility of war, even World War II, in a post-Vietnam, post-"M*A*S*H", post-"Platoon" movie-scape.  Again, at the time of World War II no filmmaker would have dreamed of making an anti-war film, and this reverence lasted throughout the 1950's and into the first part of the 60's, and then of course everything changed.  So suddenly a World War II film could ALSO be an anti-war film, whatever that meant, and so then maybe people started to view it in a different way, I can't be sure.  But yeah, realistically, it's war, and sometimes commanding officers make bad decisions and sometimes young men die because of that.  And then there's the fact that even with good planning, not all military operations are successful, unforeseen things take place, things go wrong and results are not always achieved, and again, young men die. 

There was another film I watched a few years back called "Joyeux Noel", about a Christmastime truce between the warring factions during World War I, and that film is kind of right in line with this one, even though they take place during different wars, and "A Midnight Clear" is set 30 years later, although this film was released 13 years before "Joyeux Noel" was, so, umm, who's copying who?  This one might be the original after all.  

Again we're presented with a squad of six men, most very young and inexperienced in the ways of warfare, and the squad leader has recently been promoted to sergeant not because of his deeds of great heroism, but basically because he's still alive.  And he hasn't been able to get his stripes attached to his uniform because those symbols are in short supply and on back order - at the rate privates are getting promoted they'd probably be better just taking the stripes off a dead sergeant, or even just switching jackets with him.  What good is the chain of command if nobody can get their uniforms updated to reflect their recent promotions?  

This squad is sent to occupy a house in the forest, and keep an eye out for German patrols, reporting back whatever intelligence they can.  But on the way there the road is blocked by two frozen corpses that have been placed in the road, locked in a grim embrace.  Then once the squad settles in at the house and enjoys some sardines and wine, they go a few days without seeing any Germans, however, they can hear them at night, calling out to them - one of the U.S. soldiers speaks Yiddish, which is sort of based on German, and thinks the Germans are telling them to "sleep well", which they believe is some kind of taunt.  

When they do encounter a German patrol during the day, the German soldiers do not shoot at them, although they had a clear shot and an opportunity to aim first, but then while the U.S. soldiers are freaking out, the mysterious Germans vanish.  And when the Germans do attack one night, it's not with bullets but with snowballs.  After the Germans light a Christmas tree and sing carols like "O Tannenbaum" and "Stille Nacht", it seems that they're proposing some kind of truce, and they exchange gifts, some wine from the house for some sausages from the Germans.  

Meeting up the next day, the German squad is revealed to be comprised of some very old soldiers and fresh recruits young enough to be their grandsons, and the older soldiers are claiming to not be Nazis, just career soldiers doing their job.  They want to surrender to the U.S. troops before the next German offensive, because they are afraid of getting killed when the hostilities resume.  I guess it's possible that through attrition and five or six years of war all that was left of the German army were the very old and the very young - or at least that's who they were sending out on the advance patrols.  

However, the Germans are afraid of reprisals if their superiors should investigate their capture and it looks like they surrendered without a struggle - so the German's propose that the Americans launch a fake offensive, both sides fire their guns into the air only, and then there will be enough bullet casings around the forest to look like a skirmish took place, and that way it will appear that this squad of soldiers fought back and did not get captured willingly.  After some debate, the U.S. soldiers are on board with this deception, because what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Their mistake was concealing the true nature of the gunfight from "Mother" Wilkins, a soldier who was mentally unstable after the last few battles and from learning of the death of his child back home. At the house "Mother" had taken to occupying the top floor by himself so he could reflect on some art stored there.  Sure, because German art and poetry and music is all so uplifting and positive. JK, it really isn't.  Wilkins mistakes the fake firefight between the sides for a real one, and then starts shooting to save his squad.  Whoopsie.  Well I guess then maybe staging a fake battle wasn't such a great idea after all. 

Knowing that it would break "Mother" even more to tell him his actions led to the death of several Germans who were about to surrender, the squad decides to never tell him.  In their version of the story, Mother arrived just in time as the Germans were about to kill the rest of the squad.  So the dangerous soldier with mental health issues who acted irrationally gets a citation and is transferred off the front lines, while the squad members who were trying to do something different and save a few lives on the other side find themselves sent back to the front lines.  It would seem so very irrational if it didn't seem more like the messed-up way that military operations really go down, and that is to say that nobody really knows how and why things happen, not even the commanding officers.  And if one squad isn't operating well or reporting back the proper indication, like if they're more concerned with taking baths and sleeping in nice beds  then maybe that squad needs to be pulled off the front lines and replaced, only it appears that the C.O.s aren't seeing the problem to be much of a problem.  Anyway the Germans will be making another push in a few days, so most of these guys aren't expected to survive anyway?                             

Overall, though, I'm left wondering if the previous depictions of World War II might have been too jingoisitic and forgiving regarding the mistakes that soldiers make, and then of course the flipside of that is wondering if the post-80's depictions of war as a confusing, deadly and ultimately futile undertaking doesn't go too far in the other direction.  Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle?  

I also have to call attention to the flashback story, where the members of the recently-formed squad all search for a prostitute to sleep with just before they ship out, and instead they find a woman who is willing to have sex with all of them, but only because her boyfriend had recently died in the war, and she was one step away from killing herself.  The new recruits end up just spending the night with her talking and drinking and playing card games, and then at night she comes to each one of them and DOES have sex with all of them in turn, because damn it, that's the most patriotic thing a woman can do for her country, have sex with all of the soldiers just before they ship out.  Yeah, that's not really a big step forward for feminism, not in 1992 or even back in 1944 for that matter.  

The good news is that I've officially started watching Christmas-themed movies, this is the first of, umm, let's say four. Yesterday's film ended with Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas", because, well, it was November and that's probably what the soldiers were dreaming about, making it home by December 25 maybe.  But the whole film wasn't Christmas-themed like this one kind of is.  I don't think "Black Christmas" really counts as a Christmas film either, especially since I watched it during October.  Or does it? 

Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Peter Berg (last seen in "Fire in the Sky"), Kevin Dillon (last seen in "Poseidon"), Arye Gross (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Gary Sinise (last seen in "The Human Stain"), John C. McGinley (last seen in "Identity"), David Jensen (last seen in "Species"), Larry Joshua (last seen in "The X-Files"), Curt Lowens (last seen in "Torn Curtin"), Rachel Griffin, Timothy S. Shoemaker, Kelly Gately, Bill Osborn, Andre Lamal

RATING: 5 out of 10 grenades (hanging on the Christmas tree like ornaments)