The Year of Living Dangerously

Year 9, Day 245 - 9/2/17 - Movie #2,734

BEFORE: I'm getting a late start today, because I was out last night drinking at my boss' wife's birthday party, which was held at a bar on a boat over on the Hudson River.  It was a long walk back to civilization (8th Ave.) where I could buy my weekly comics and get a subway home, then I had to change the cat litter and take out the trash, so by the time I sat down to watch this film, I only got through about 15 minutes before falling asleep.  I'll try again to find where I left off, and finish the story.

Linda Hunt carries over from "Pocahontas 2".

THE PLOT: A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.

AFTER: I've tried this year to be a little more politically-oriented, given the state our union these days.  Early in the year I watched "Reds", a film about the Russian Revolution, and followed that later with "Seven Years in Tibet" (with Communist China taking over Tibet), and a couple of Cold War-era spy films like "The Ipcress File", and some newer terrorist-themed films like "Body of Lies" before getting back to American political films like "Snowden", "Wiener" and "Trumped".  After that came "Our Brand Is Crisis" (set in South America) and "The Crying Game" (Ireland) before hitting three assassination-based films: "Vantage Point", "Bobby" and "Jackie".  (Wait, don't forget "Nashville"...)

Maybe that's all too much politics for me, because by the time I got to this one, set during the 1965 Indonesian overthrow of President Sukarno, I just don't really care any more.  I've never even heard of this Sukarno, I know nothing about Indonesian history or politics, and I couldn't keep straight which faction was backed by the Communists and which was the populist faction.  To make things worse, the Communist Party of Indonesia was called the PKI, and I can't even tell how that acronym is derived from those words, and Sukarno was replaced by Suharto, and those names are just too much alike.

So I spent the whole film not knowing who to root for or what was really going on, or how this all made a fitting background for the romance between an Australian reporter and a British (?) embassy worker who might be a spy.  And then there's the photographer/camera-man who's half-Chinese and half-Australian and might also be a spy.  Jeez, is everyone in this damn country a spy, or what?   Plus this camera-man was a man notably played by a woman (Linda Hunt was the first and only person to win an Oscar for playing the other gender, but I have a feeling more nominees like this are on the way...) and while this was a champion casting move for those who favor things of a transgender nature, it was also a bit of stunt casting, meaning that it was so distracting that it ended up taking some of the focus away from the performance.  I mean, in the back of my mind I always knew that was a woman playing a man, so it was hard for me to see it as anything else but that.

I recognized the Vangelis music "L'Enfant" from the album "Opera Sauvage" (which I used to listen to frequently in college when I needed to relax) but it seemed very out of place here - when I hear new age music like Vangelis, I think of futuristic films like "Blade Runner", not a political piece set in the mid-1960's.  That also was a little distracting for me.

But hey, congratulations on making political revolution really boring.

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "What Women Want"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Bill Kerr (last seen in "Peter Pan"), Michael Murphy (last seen in "Nashville"), Noel Ferrier, Bembol Roco, Paul Sonkkila, Ali Nur, Mike Empirie, Kuh Ledesma, Domingo Landicho.

RATING: 3 out of 10 rocks thrown at the embassy

Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World

Year 9, Day 244 - 9/1/17 - Movie #2,733

BEFORE: I can't believe it's September already, fall is almost here, and there was a chill in the air this morning for the first time I can remember.  Honestly, it's the first time I've been awake before 10 am in recent memory, too - I had to get up early for a 9:30 eye exam, since these floaters in my eyes are just not going away, in fact they're getting worse, so I feel like I have to do something or my vision's just going to keep going downhill, just like my knee and various other body parts.


But September brings the promise of fall, not just cooler weather but all things pumpkin-flavored and other things like cider and Oktoberfest beers, and Halloween and Thanksgiving will be here before you know it.  I watched the first "Pocahontas" film right around Thanksgiving 2013, but I need to watch this sequel in September because it provides a link to this weekend's films starring Mel Gibson, who is notoriously absent from this film, but at least they hired his sound-alike brother to fill in for him - kind of like how Jim Hanks does voices for the "Toy Story" video games and does impressions of his brother Tom on "Robot Chicken".

Voice actor Jim Cummings carries over from "The Fox and the Hound 2", as do four other actors (Rob Paulsen, Jeff Bennett, Kath Soucie, April Winchell) who I won't mention below because their characters are not specified, here they provide "additional voices".  But they do make my linking between animated films much easier.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Pocahontas" (Movie #1,592)

AFTER: This is a typical Disney film, in that it has no interest in presenting a story based on real history, even when the "Princess" involved is a real historical figure.  While it's true that John Smith was injured in a gunpowder explosion and returned to England, and then the Powhatan Indians were told incorrectly that he had died, here he falls off of a building during a swordfight and is presumed dead - I suppose the end result is the same where Pocahontas is concerned.

But then after encountering John Rolfe (Pocahontas apparently had a thing for men named "John") she married him in the New World before shipping off to England with him - in this Disney sequel, Rolfe reluctantly brings her to England with him so she can negotiate with King James.  In reality she married Rolfe in 1614 and they had a son, and essentially their marriage brokered a peace between the citizens of Jamestown and the Native Americans, which kids are not going to learn about if they depend on Walt Disney Studios for their history lessons.  Then the Rolfes traveled, with their son, to England in 1616, where she was regarded as either royalty or a curiosity, depending upon whom you ask. 

As far as we know, she didn't bring a raccoon with her to the U.K., which would have been seen as an infestation of an invasive species.  But I did kind of like the moment in the film where Pocahontas is trying to meditate to consider what action she should take, and she can't concentrate because of the noise from her THREE annoying animal sidekicks.  Someone at Disney apparently felt the same way about them as I do. 

Also, NITPICK POINT, the real Governor Ratcliffe died a few years before Pocahontas came to England, and for that matter, William Shakespeare died a couple of months before - although he's seen here in a cameo getting inspired for the famous "To be or not to be..." line in "Hamlet".  Too bad that play had been written and performed years before the visit, too.

So even though this one is available on Netflix (but not for long, if Disney's plans to create their own streaming service come through) it may be worth skipping, since it has no historical value, and even fans of the first "Pocahontas" film tend to avoid it, or not even acknowledge it.


Also starring the voices of Irene Bedard (last heard in "Pocahontas"), Donal Gibson, Billy Zane (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Linda Hunt (last seen in "Dragonfly"), Finola Hughes (last seen in "Soapdish"), David Ogden Stiers (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Brad Garrett (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Russell Means (also last heard in "Pocahontas"), Michelle St. John (ditto), John Kassir, Frank Welker (last heard in "101 Dalmatians").

RATING: 3 out of 10 dog biscuits (wait, did they have those back in the 1600's?)

The Fox and the Hound 2

Year 9, Day 243- 8/31/17 - Movie #2,732

BEFORE: This may seem like a bit of a jolt, following a couple of adult-themed comedies with an animated film for kids.  But the back-to-school sequence is over, and I needed some linking material to make it to the start of the next chain this weekend, so I'm dipping back into the Netflix animation list for two films that will link to some heavier Mel Gibson material by Saturday.  (Thankfully, only two films are needed to link "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates" to "The Year of Living Dangerously", because I really didn't have room in the schedule for a longer sequence.) I justify tonight's animated film by pointing out that Stephen Root carries over from "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates".

But this makes the week another real mixed bag - last week it felt a bit like I covered 7 genres in 7 days, and this week I went from a serial-killer crime thriller to a biopic on a tech genius to a couple of raunchy comedies, and now it's animation - and I'll be back on war-based dramas this weekend.  It's enough to give me genre whiplash.

THE PLOT: Copper the hound dog joins a canine music band, and spends less and less time with his best friend, Tod the fox.  Is their friendship in danger?

AFTER: And now I know the downside of mixing up my genres, it leads to very strange dreams - I had a nightmare this morning that went on for a very long time, and was definitely influenced by this film, "Untraceable", and also the season finale of "Little People, Big World", which I watched last night before "The Fox and the Hound 2".  In the dream I was going to the East Village to visit a married couple, friends I have not seen in years, and when I got to their block, my friend Doug was wearing make-up and dressed as "sexy Jesus" (Thanks, "Hamlet 2" for that...) and he hugged me and took me inside, where he got involved in a film production meeting, and then didn't have time to talk to me.  So I waited for his wife to get ready for work, and together we headed out of the building and had to exit via a cartoon-like conveyor belt through a woodshop, and had to avoid several menacing saws.  Then I walked her to work, she was working at a kind of adult summer camp on top of a New York City building, where she ran in staged road races against the adult campers.  From there, the dream devolved into a surreal mash-up of serial killers, giant singing cartoon animals, and a bunch of old-man/infant hybrids.  Very disturbing.  So I don't recommend that anyone else watch my particular combination of movies and TV shows from this week, lest they suffer a similar nightmare.

(This also proves that I'm desperately in need of a break - so after September 9, I'm shutting down for three weeks, and I'll start up again on October 1. Maybe I'll catch up on some comic books, and the final season of "Mad Men" while I'm on break.  If I can finish off "Mad Men", and maybe watch the last 4 episodes of "11.22.63", I should probably start on "Stranger Things".)

But forget all that weirdness, let me focus on this Disney "midquel" - which is a word I never knew before, but it apparently means that this sequel takes place in the MIDDLE of the previous film.  It's been a long time since I saw "The Fox and the Hound", but I do remember that we see the main characters when they are young pups, and then later they're voiced by older actors, Mickey Rooney and Kurt Russell later in the film.  So this all tracks, Disney apparently wanted to crank out a sequel that was set when the animals were still young and cute, and not forced to become enemies.  But 25 years is a LONG time to pass between a film and its sequel - though I don't think it's a record, that honor goes to "Bambi" and it's sequel, with a 63-year gap.  (2nd place - "Fantasia" with 59 years between it and "Fantasia 2000").

We see a bit of Copper's early training as a hunting dog, but before long his owner heads off to the County Fair, as does the Widow Tweed, and then Tod the fox helps Copper break free so they can run off to the fair also.  They want to see the fireworks, which is a bit strange because most dogs are afraid of fireworks, which seems quite reasonable to me.  They get sidetracked, however, when Copper falls in with a bunch of singing dogs in a fair act, and he ends up replacing the female diva dog, who simply CAN'T work under such terrible conditions, and is let go.  There's a talent scout making the rounds of the fair, looking for acts to play at the Grand Ole Opry, so I guess that sets this film somewhere near Nashville?

Oddly, there are some connections to yesterday's film, despite the wide difference in genres.  Both "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates" and "Neighbors 2" featured party scenarios where everything spirals out of control, and in today's film, that happens at the county fair - a chase scene that goes wrong, with a cow running through the fair, and the Ferris Wheel coming loose from its supports and hitting the performance tent at the worst possible time, just as the talent scout is watching the Singin' Strays perform. (And once again, Stephen Root's character is the one most bothered by the mayhem...)  So the lead characters have to admit their mistakes, pull together and go out of their way to put things right and restore order, followed by a musical number.  See?  Not so different after all.

But the worst thing about a "midquel" seems to be that the fact that there can be no real character growth here - Tod and Copper's adventures at the fair and their encounter with the Singin' Strays can't change them in any meaningful way, because they have to be put back into their proper position and roles, so as not to conflict with the latter parts of "The Fox and the Hound".  And it's a little sad that despite all the fun they have together here, we also see the fracturing of their friendship, which we know is going to turn into a great divide in just a few short years, with Copper becoming a hunting dog and Tod becoming prey.

Also starring the voices of Reba McEntire (last seen in "Maverick"), Patrick Swayze (last seen in "Dirty Dancing"), Jeff Foxworthy (last heard in "The Smurfs 2"), Jim Cummings (last heard in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Kath Soucie (last heard in "Zootopia"), Jonah Bobo, Harrison Fahn, Jeff Bennett (last heard in "Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle"), Rob Paulsen, Russi Taylor, Hannah Farr.

RATING: 4 out of 10 bones with no meat on them (did someone think dogs can eat them?)

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Year 9, Day 242 - 8/30/17 - Movie #2,731

BEFORE: Zac Efron carries over from "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising", for a film that perhaps would fit in an a February chain, since it's about dating, but I need it tonight for the linking purposes.  Anyway, it's another recent comedy about people acting poorly, which is turning out to be a little mini-theme for the week. 

THE PLOT: Two hard-partying brothers place an online ad to find the perfect dates for their sister's Hawaiian wedding.  Hoping for a wild getaway, the boys instead find themselves out-hustled by an uncontrollable duo.

AFTER: Between the young, self-absorbed sorority girls in last night's film, and tonight's youngish, self-indulgent brothers in today's film, it's clear that Hollywood is sending us a message - millennials are terrible people at heart, all of them.  Anyone born after, say, 1985, is no good at being an adult, what with their text messages, online dating, party-hearty lifestyles, and never, ever, one ounce of consideration for other people.  Based on what I've seen in real life, I have to support this message.

So when Mike and Dave are asked by their parents to please, for once, not get out of control at a family party, the parents know that asking them to change would be impossible - again, it's because the entire generation is out of control (because their Gen X parents all vowed to NOT be like their controlling, abusive Baby Boomer parents, so now none of these youngsters have any discipline at all...).  The best the parents can do is to force the boys (and they do act like boys, not men) to bring dates, hoping against hope that being near women and focused on them might improve their behavior.

Unfortunately, the best women that answer their ad (though they pretend to meet them another way, because responding to the ad would expose their hidden motive) are in it just for the free vacation, they don't have any intention (at first) of being on their best behavior either, or for that matter, sleeping with their dates.  See, the women are JUST as self-indulgent and duplicitous as the boys, which I suppose is a step forward for feminism, but is this really the type of equality that women should aspire to?  Why not aim higher, to be BETTER than the men, when that would be so easy to achieve?

In a way, the girls are superior to the boys here, because they make lying and acting out of control seem so easy - whether it's drinking, taking drugs or leading the boys on with the promise of sex.  Girls rule, boys drool, right?  The boys are much worse at lying or hiding their true intentions, and more easily prone to fisticuffs - so once again, this film really does have a handle on what the young kids are like these days. As a result, even though it seems like occasionally characters have the best motives here, nobody really does, and everyone's just looking out for themselves, which sums up millennials perfectly.

Finally, at the end of the film, when everything is in shambles, everyone learns to think about someone other than themselves, and this foursome pulls together to make the wedding happen.  But even then you have to wonder if they did all that just so they could perform a song and dance at the reception and once again, it's all about them.  You kids today really are the worst - I know that makes me sound like an old, angry man but there you go.  I'm being nice tonight because I did laugh out loud a couple of times - but I'm laughing AT you, millennials, not WITH you.

Also starring Adam Devine (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Anna Kendrick (last seen in "The Hollars"), Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Dirty Grandpa"), Stephen Root (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Stephanie Faracy, Sugar Lyn Beard (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Sam Richardson (also carrying over from "Neighbors 2"), Alice Wetterlund (last seen in "The Interview"), Lavell Crawford (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Mary Holland, Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine 2"), with cameos from Jake Johnson (last seen in "Safety Not Guaranteed"), Marc Maron, Erik Griffin, Wendy Williams, Branscombe Richmond (last heard in "Moana").

RATING: 4 out of 10 sake bombs

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

Year 9, Day 241 - 8/29/17 - Movie #2,730

BEFORE: I could have gone several different ways with the linking after "Steve Jobs" - I've got another film with Kate Winslet on my list, but I'll get to that on Labor Day (because the film is "Labor Day").  And I've somehow got FIVE films with Michael Stuhlbarg in them, and I'm going to link those together next week.  For now, I'm going to follow the Seth Rogen link, because that gets me to the third of my three back-to-school films, this one centered on a college sorority.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Neighbors" (Movie #2,134)

THE PLOT: When their new next-door neighbors turn out to be a sorority even worse than the fraternity previously living there, Mac and Kelly team with their former enemy, Teddy, to bring the girls down.

AFTER: Before I begin, I'm going to take a moment to re-read my review of the first "Neighbors" film, from about two years ago.  Yep, same problems here, with inconsistencies in the set-up, and then more inconsistencies with the constantly-shifting motivations of the main characters. Well, at least the series is consistent in the fact that it's inconsistent.

The set-up problem - once again, we have a fraternity/sorority that seeks a property outside the college campus, for reasons that are barely mentioned, let alone explained.  This is a major zoning issue, one that any real estate agent should be hip to - "Oh, you're a sorority, this is a residential neighborhood, and you need to be registered in one of the houses for exactly this purpose on the campus."  This is what the realtor SHOULD have said, but instead it was, "Well, the rent on this house is $25,000 a month, but I'll rent it to you for $5,000 a month, for no stated reason, other than this is what will move the plot forward."

The inconsistencies with the factions - on one side we've got the (approaching) middle-age couple, and on the other side is the sorority AND Teddy, the frat brother from the first film.  But wait, at the end of the first film Teddy and the couple had reconciled, made their peace and they were hanging out together.  What happened in-between to make him shift his allegiance?  Again, never explained, except that this does move the plot forward, so let's go with it.  The couple similarly finally gets around to moving (which they should have done in the first film, if I'm being honest - if living next door to a frat was so bad, why not just cut your losses and run for the hills?) and after putting money down on their new house, their old house is in escrow, which means they don't get the funds for 30 days while the new owner performs inspections and such.

Oh, if only there weren't a sorority that just moved in next door, which would be grounds for the new buyers to immediately withdraw their bid, leaving the couple financially stretched too thin, as the owners of TWO houses!  This means they're going to lose them both, right?  Umm, no, it doesn't, that's not how real-estate works.  Assuming they have equity in the old house, that's money that belongs to them and does not go away, no matter what else happens.  The worst case scenario here is that they would lose one house in order to afford the other.  Someone NOT buying their first house means that they still own, it doesn't just belong to nobody after an offer is withdrawn.

But, they clearly state that the couple is very dim when it comes to real estate, because they don't understand "escrow" in the first place, and their faces go blank when the real-estate agent explains it for what presumably is the fifth or sixth time.  You know what, some people are probably meant to live in apartments and not own real estate, it's probably safer for them.  I've only purchased two properties, but I sold my condominium in Brooklyn just before buying my house in Queens, and they way they usually structure this sort of thing is that the closing on the new property is contingent upon the sale of the old one, for exactly this reason, so that the seller/buyer doesn't get stuck between the two houses, with no place to live.  (I had a good real estate lawyer, and she even got us extra time to move out of the condo and advance time to move stuff into the house.)  But the closings on both deals happened in two meetings that were close together, I got a big check from the guy who bought my condo, my bank balance was HUGE for a few days, then we sunk as much of that money as we could into the house to reduce the mortgage, leaving enough to pay back my parents for the down payment and to also buy some new furniture.

It's not like the frat boys or sorority sisters are any smarter - their basic unit of money is the "bucket", which they collect cover charges in when they throw a frat party.  Hey, you know what, instead of paying $20 to get into a frat party and then drinking for "free", you could take that $20 down to the deli or mini-mart and buy TWO six-packs of some very nice (or a case of some awful) beer.  But anyway, how much money is in a bucket?  Doesn't that depend on the size of the bucket, or how much the money is pushed down into the bucket?  Can we all agree that "5 buckets of money" is a haphazard, non-standard amount?

For that matter, creating a new sorority that's outside the fraternity system, is that even a thing?  This screenplay wants so badly to have it both ways - they're students, but they're living off-campus, and I don't think we see one character open a book or study for a test in the whole film.  They're freshmen and therefore possibly teenagers, but they're somehow allowed to drink without consequence - so what state is this located in, and what's the drinking age there?  They don't have any money, so they need to throw a party, but then where did the get the money to buy the drinks and decorations?  Same goes for their "scheme" to corner the market on marijuana sales during the big tailgate event.  We have no money, so let's sell pot!  Great, but first you have to BUY the pot, and that takes money, which you just said you don't have.  So big glaring, honking NITPICK POINT there.

The fight / prank war between the couple and the sorority sisters was basically just a repeat of the fight they had with the fraternity - "Let's call the cops!" "No wait, we can't call the cops!" "OK, let's crash their party and take it down from the inside..." "Change of plan, let's call the cops!"  Haven't we seen all of this before, even the bit with the airbags, despite the fact that someone pointed out that airbags just don't work that way, even though the screenplay dictates that they must?  Then they just borrowed the sorority's team dynamic from "Pitch Perfect", right down to having one of the sisters act just like Fat Amy.  When they say that our country needs to recycle more, this is not what they mean.

Time and time again, this movie also proves that the PC movement has gotten way out of hand.  The Dean says, "I can't go after this sorority, because of what they stand for, how would that look?"  OK, so girls get a pass on all of their bad behavior, just because they're girls?  That doesn't seem fair.  There's another gag where the black cops rough up and use tasers on all the white drug dealers they arrest, but then when they burst in on black drug dealers, they're very polite and offer the dealers beverages in the squad car.  It's meant to be funny, but it underlies the fact that in our quest to be "politically correct" (again I note that should be regarded as an oxymoron) we're practicing a distorted form of discrimination.  Either everyone from this point forward gets treated equally, or according to their actions and not their race, sex or religious beliefs, or else the whole system is BS.

I watched an episode of that HBO news show "Vice", all about the events of Charlottesville a couple of weeks ago, where alt-right NeoNazis showed up to cause trouble around the taking down of those Confederate statues, and like most reasonable people (I hope), I was sickened by what I saw.  Entitled white males who are convinced that the problems in the world are caused by Jews taking their jobs, or black people acting like "savages" in the streets.  One had hoped that these clouded racist attitudes were a thing of the past, but unfortunately you don't have to dig too deep to find people who still think this way.  But, on the other hand, if we treat people of certain races or genders or religions differently because of real or perceived biases in the past, then the pendulum has maybe swung too far in the other direction.

However, it does seem to be some kind of injustice that fraternities in the U.S. can throw parties with alcohol, while sororities can't. (Assuming this is true, which a quick search on the web confirms.)  There are other matters connected to this, such as the fact that fraternities pay more for insurance as a result, but the basic sexism here doesn't seem to make much sense.  Which group of people is more likely to get out of control, a bunch of frat boys or a group of sorority sisters?  And which group of people is more likely to get in trouble for sexual assault?  And why is that the same group that's being given access to alcohol at parties?  This voluntary practice seems to assume that men are more inclined to drink responsibly while women can't be trusted to figure that out, when the opposite is probably more true.  So there really should be one set of rules applied to the entire Greek system.  If having no alcohol at female parties is truly safer and more cost-effective for insurance, then the same should apply to the male parties.  Or why can't some system be implemented to check the ages of everyone partying on campus, male or female?

Also starring Zac Efron (last seen in "Dirty Grandpa"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Chloë Grace Moretz (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Dave Franco (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), Ike Barinholtz (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Hannibal Buress (ditto), Billy Eichner (ditto), Carla Gallo (last seen in "Neighbors"), Lisa Kudrow (ditto), Jerrod Carmichael (ditto), Kiersey Clemons, Beanie Feldstein, Clara Mamet, Awkwafina, John Early, Liz Cackowski (last seen in "The To Do List"), Sam Richardson, with cameos from Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon 2"), Kyle Mooney (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "The Expendables 3"), Abbi Jacobson, Brian Huskey (also last seen in "The To Do List"), Selena Gomez.

RATING: 4 out of 10 Minions on exercise bikes

Steve Jobs

Year 9, Day 240 - 8/28/17 - Movie #2,729

BEFORE: It's not cheating if I use child actors to link between movies - the right child actors get a LOT of work, and even I may not realize that I'm seeing the same few dozen kids, again and again.  I always check these credits, especially if some kid looks familiar and I'm sure I've seen him or her in another film.  This time Perla Haney-Jardine carries over from "Untraceable" to play Steve Job's daughter, Lisa, at the age of 19 in one of the time periods covered.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jobs" (Movie #2,092)

THE PLOT: A portrait of Steve Jobs, at the epicenter of the digital revolution - the story unfolds behind the scenes at three iconic product launches. 

AFTER: I wondered why the world needed a SECOND film telling the backstory of Steve Jobs, after that one released in 2013 that starred Ashton Kutcher.  Was this just the usual by-product of two Hollywood studios producing similar films, or one ripping off the other?  Since this was the second film on the same subject to hit the marketplace, it almost HAD to find a new way of presenting the same biographical information, and for the most part, this one did.

While the first film "Jobs" took a mainly linear-narrative approach to Steve Jobs' life, which I tend to appreciate more, this one set out to concentrate on three similar scenes set at different points in Jobs' career - the unveiling of the original Mac in 1984, the 1988 launch of the NeXT computer, and the 1998 introduction of the iMac, after Jobs returned to Apple Computers following the NeXT disaster.  In each time period, Jobs is visited backstage (or in one notable case, on the stage) by the same four people (I think): Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Andy Hertzfeld, and his daughter Lisa (twice accompanied by her mother, and once alone).

It's an innovative format, which at times reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by four ghosts (that's right, I said FOUR, Marley totally counts as a ghost) in "A Christmas Carol".  But why does everyone seem to visit him backstage, when there's just 10 minutes to go before each presentation starts?  Couldn't they have all seen him the day before, or earlier in the morning?  Or was this when Steve Jobs took all of his most important meetings, in the minutes before each product launch?  I can't take this seriously, it's got to be just a storytelling convention to make things easier for the filmmakers, right?  It seems to me to be the height of rudeness to try and conduct business at this point in time, again and again - can you blame Steve Jobs for being pissed off, if everyone keeps bothering him right before he's supposed to go on stage?

Let me try and focus on the positives for a minute, because there is a lot of juicy insightful dramatic material that takes place in these conversations, attempting to give some insight into Steve Jobs' personality, or lack thereof.  I didn't know that he was adopted, which (according to this film) seems to have influenced not only his drive to succeed, but also his lack of a connection to his own daughter. While Scully points out the positive points of adoption, that he was selected by his parents, Jobs counters with the information that his first adoptive parents returned him, and his second adoptive parents were involved in a court case to adopt him, so they at first avoided forming a loving bond with him, preparing for the possibility that they would lose the case.

The rest of Jobs' personality, however, we're left to speculate about - Wozniak's character had a great line about how it should be possible for someone to be both a great designer AND not an asshole, but is it?  Does a certain amount of ego fuel the drive to succeed, so is it possible that the necessary ego to be great at something also creates an arrogance as a by-product?  At the close of the film, Jobs confesses to his daughter that he was "poorly made", so can we infer that his personality flaw is similar to a product's technical flaw, like a lack of a microphone jack or a system board that doesn't allow you to add more RAM?  And if so, is being an asshole a hardware problem, rather than a software one?  Because you can always add new software, but if there's a design flaw in the hardware, it can't be corrected.

However, and this is a major sticking point for me, the film could not seem to stay within the "three act" time parameters, because it flashed back liberally to other points.  So it didn't even seem to follow its own rules - what's the point of saying, "Hey, we're going to focus on JUST these three time periods..." if it doesn't even do that?  During the 1984 scenes there are flashbacks to Jobs and Wozniak working on the first Apple computers in that garage, and during the 1988 scenes they flash back to Jobs being fired by John Scully a couple years before, and during the 1998 scenes they flash back to Sculley being first hired by Jobs - so come on, the framework here was just an excuse to jump around through time randomly (more or less) which is that major trend that's hot in Hollywood now that drives me totally berserk.

It's not just that the timeline is fractured, it's what results from pulling this crap, time and again.  Toggling between Jobs and Scully arguing in both 1988 AND 1985 at the same time is confusing to say the least, especially when the thing they're arguing about in 1988 is the nature of their argument in 1985, when Jobs got fired.  And the reason that we couldn't see these things play out in the correct order is what, exactly?  Also, what's the point of flashing back to Scully's hiring during the 1998 scenes - nostalgia?  Who gives a crap, when Scully's been fired at that point for promoting the disastrous Newton PDA?  So what if he comes to reconcile with Jobs in 1998?  Seeing the exact details of the conversation that took place during his hiring adds exactly NOTHING to the 1998 storyline, so why include it?

We already knew from the first film that Jobs failed upward, more or less.  The 1984 Mac was apparently a dog of a product (hey, I owned one, I had a lot of fun with it at the time, once someone invented games like "Fool's Errand"...) and the NeXT computer was apparently also a non-starter.  But the OS for the NeXT got Jobs hired back at Apple, because once they put the NeXT OS into the Apple hardware, they got an iMac, which was a success.  Jobs' (or more probably, the screenwriter's) comparison of his madness-is-the-method design approach to Skylab seems very insightful - when they launched that space station back in the day, they didn't know how they were going to get it back to Earth, but they figured they had some time to work it out. (Umm, they didn't.)  Jobs seems to have taken a similar approach by designing computers that people didn't know they needed yet, until he told them that they did.  Buy this computer now, so you'll have it when they invent the internet.  ("The what?"  "Never mind, just buy it...")

While the 2013 film "Jobs" wasn't perfect, either, I think it did some things better, besides just telling a linear narrative story that people don't need timeline charts to understand.  Seeing Jobs park in a handicapped spot, again and again, for example, tells us just as much about his personality, if not more, than his argument with Woz over an unwillingness to acknowledge the Apple II team during the Macintosh launch.  And BOTH films stopped before mentioning the iPod, iPad and iPhone, which collectively have changed personal technology for nearly everyone.  Now before I go, I want to focus for just a minute on the two actors, and their different portrayals of Jobs in the two films.

Neither one is perfect, nor would you expect either one to be, especially if each actor is going to portray Jobs over a long period of time.  Again, I think about "A Christmas Carol", in its various incarnations ("Scrooge", "Scrooged", etc.), since in that story we see Ebenezer Scrooge as both an old miser and as a young clerk.  Do you cast George C. Scott, for example, as Scrooge and then try to make him look young for the flashbacks, or do you cast Albert Finney (who was 34 in 1970) and then make him look much older for the present-day scenes?  There's no one right answer...

But consider this - Kutcher probably had the better accent, because Fassbender still came off as sounding foreign, non-American to me.  I know many European actors can pull off an American accent, but he's just not one of them.  By the same token, I couldn't believe Kate Winslet's Polish-American accent, either.  (What's with all these foreigners taking jobs away from Amurrican actors?) Kutcher also looked better as the young Steve Jobs, but I couldn't buy him as the older one, it seemed very fakey.  Fassbender, on the other hand, seemed more like a visual dead ringer for Jobs in the 1998 scenes, but in the sequences set earlier, he just looked like a young Fassbender, not evoking the character at all.

So, here's what I propose, and I think this could work - someone needs to make a fan edit of the first 2/3 of "Jobs", with Kutcher playing in the more narrative vein, right up until the timeline hits 1998, and then we cut to Fassbender as the older version, for the last 1/3 of "Steve Jobs", only we cut out the unnecessary flashback.  I realize this wouldn't be perfect - for one thing, you'd have two different actors playing Wozniak (Josh Gad turns into Seth Rogen) and Sculley (Matthew Modine turns into Jeff Daniels), but for minor characters like Steve's daughter, it could work, since you wouldn't expect her to look the same at age 19 than she did at, say, 12.  How about it?  If I have time at home I may give this a try, since I've now got both films on the same disc.

NITPICK POINT: To drive the point home, the three different time periods here were apparently filmed on 16mm, 35mm and digital formats to illustrate the changes in technology over time.  Great trick, only I didn't notice any difference in the look of the film over the course of the film.  So that seems like a bit of wasted effort.

Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Kate Winslet (last seen in "Triple 9"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "101 Dalmatians"), Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Sleeping With Other People"), Ripley Sobo (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Makenzie Moss, John Ortiz (last seen in "Blackhat"), Sarah Snook, John Steen, Adam Shapiro (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Stan Roth, Steven Wiig (last seen in "Into the Wild") with archive footage of Bob Dylan (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), John Lennon, Pablo Picasso.

RATING: 5 out of 10 floppy disks

Untraceable

Year 9, Day 239 - 8/27/17 - Movie #2,728

BEFORE: My genre-mixing continues, as I follow a zany school-based comedy with a crime drama about hunting a serial killer.  But Colin Hanks carries over from "Orange County" so I hope that justifies it.  I did a whole serial-killer chain way back in 2013, with everything from "Zodiac" to "Summer of Sam", "Wild at Heart" and "Natural Born Killers", and it sort of feels like I've been doing little follow-ups ever since, with movies like "Red Dragon" and "Monster" last year.  I don't think I've got anything else like that currently on my watchlist, but I never know when another one is going to pop up.

THE PLOT: FBI agent Jennifer Marsh is tasked with hunting down a seemingly untraceable serial killer who posts live videos of his victims on the internet.  As time runs out, the cat and mouse chase becomes more personal.

AFTER: My first thought after watching this is that I really miss the "CSI" shows - remember that trend, where it seemed like every crime could be solved just through forensic science, and not through those dusty outdated methods like interviewing suspects or going on stakeouts?  Even when the show morphed into "CSI: Cyber" and they tried in vain to keep the series alive for another year or so, but I guess every dog has his day, and eventually other shows like "Criminal Minds" and "Person of Interest" came around to take slightly different approaches.  But damn, I was invested into three hours of "CSI" every week there for a while, to the point where it felt strange when the shows ended and I got all that time back.

I think a lot of the trend goes back to "The Silence of the Lambs" and its sequels and prequels, I don't think it was a coincidence that they hired William Petersen for the original "CSI" show, since he starred in "Manhunter" back in 1986, they even put him up against Tom Noonan as a villain once, with a giant wink to the audience.  I thought of "The Silence of the Lambs" while watching "Untraceable" because it pulled the same cheap stunt, which is to use parallel editing to make the audience THINK that the FBI is about to bust down the door of the killer's house, only to have the rug pulled out from under us, when we realize that the killer is one step ahead and the Feds' Intel has sent them to the wrong place.  "CSI" would pull that trick too, if there was still a half-hour left in the episode, you'd kind of know that things weren't going to get wrapped up so soon.

Way back in 2008, I guess this is what people were afraid the internet would get used for, someone would find a way to get snuff films broadcast out to a larger audience.  But did that ever really happen, or did people get mostly distracted by cute panda-cams and arguments over whether that dress was blue and black or gold and white?  I mean, outside of ISIS web-streaming a beheading or two, has society really descended into the kind of depravity seen here, or are people generally just more interested in porn, Netflix and Amazon Prime?  OK, sure, we've still got hackers but they seem mostly interested in stealing credit card numbers and influencing elections, not live executions.

I must be slipping, I didn't notice the references to "Mad Men" - Colin Hanks mentions an upcoming date with "Peggy the secretary", and he did a guest appearance on a couple episodes of that show - or to "The Shining", with the lead FBI agent staying in room 237 at a hotel.  We should all know not to ever go into room 237, right?  I wonder if hotels around the world encounter people who won't stay in that room, like the way some buildings don't have a 13th floor.  (Yes they do, it's just been renamed as the 14th floor!  If landlords were truly superstitious, they'd build a 13th floor and just let it remain empty.)

The fear in making a film like this should have related to possibly inspiring someone out there to mimic the actions in the film, where the increased traffic to a web-site would hasten a victim's death, sort of like a Groupon for torture fans.  Which is ironic, because in the film the FBI agent doesn't want her boss to hold a press conference, because any publicity for the crime would only encourage people to visit the site more, which would also increase the rate of the murder.  And yet they never mentioned that at least some of the traffic to the site came from the FBI agents themselves, who had to log on there to search for evidence.  Hey, it's all about the hit counts at the end of the day, right?  What a world...

Also starring Diane Lane (last heard in "Inside Out"), Billy Burke, Joseph Cross (last seen in "Lincoln"), Mary Beth Hurt (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Peter Gray Lewis (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Perla Haney-Jardine (last seen in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Tyrone Giordano (last seen in "The Family Stone"), Tim DeZarn, Christopher Cousins (last seen in "For Love of the Game"), Dax Jordan, John Breen, Brynn Baron.

RATING: 5 out of 10 mirror servers