Collateral Beauty

Year 10, Day 97 - 4/7/18 - Movie #2,899

BEFORE: OK, new theme for this past week, it's really all been about outsmarting or fooling the other guy.  Think about it: Ben-Hur had to outsmart his competition in the chariot race, then the CIA tried to fake the moon landing, Renton and Simon in "T2 Trainspotting" were trying to outsmart each other, Jane and Dan had to outsmart the Bishop gang in "Jane Got a Gun", and then the buddy cops had to keep the magic wand away from the other cops and the bad elves in "Bright".  Easy peasy, right?  Maybe you can say that's a constant theme in any and all action films, but I'm gonna roll with it, because it looks like the trend's going to continue today, as Will Smith carries over from "Bright".

THE PLOT: Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death.  Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

AFTER: Howard, the central character here, is clearly a man in crisis mode.  He's still reeling from the death of his young daughter three years ago, and even though he's going through the motions of daily life and work, he's not really present, avoiding all company meetings and spending his time just going back and forth between the office, his apartment and the dog park.  He's not eating or sleeping well, and is basically an emotional zombie, cut off from anything that might make him remember or have any feels.  AND he rides his bicycle in Manhattan, even on the bridges, so that to me suggests he's got a death wish.

But his advertising agency is circling the drain, and this affects his three closest friends, who happen to also be his business partner and co-workers.  To get the best deal in a company buyout, his "friends" decide to have him declared incompetent, and to do this, they hire a private detective to follow him around.  The detective learns (don't ask how) that he's been writing letters to three abstract entities - Love, Time and Death.  Which, in another coincidence, just HAPPEN to be the three driving forces that he claimed drive all advertising, in an attempt at an inspirational speech when his company started.  Because we all want love, need more time, and fear death, and somehow this makes us buy more stuff.  I'm not exactly sure this is how advertising works - in fact, are we even sure that advertising works at all, especially on today's jaded millennials?  Just saying...

So Howard's three friends devise a plan to either snap him out of his funk, or have him declared incompetent - it's a little unclear which is more important, because either result will manage to work for them.  I've got to call this as a NITPICK POINT, because characters need clear motivations, and the motivation for the scam that they concoct is quite unclear, and keeps shifting around.  They hire three actors to play Love, Time and Death to then confront Howard in the real world, as if those cosmic beings are answering his letters.  Then they HAPPEN to encounter an acting company with just three actors, who in their own ways, just HAPPEN to properly represent the three concepts.

But which of the actors should play which part?  They seem naturally to gravitate toward casting the older woman as Death, the younger woman as Love, and the twenty-something black man as Time.  But why?  Isn't this a form of ageism, sexism and racism?  Who says the old woman has to play Death, why can't she represent Time?  Or Love?  Why does the pretty girl play Love, couldn't Death appear as a younger, attractive woman?

Forget that, do this man's friends really have his best interests at heart, or are they just trying to save their company?  OK, maybe these are dovetailing mutual interests, but the concept is just so misguided here.  "We really care about our friend/boss, so we're going to have him proven mentally incompetent."  How does that make any sense?  Not to mention, if he was already on the edge (for FIVE YEARS) before they took action, isn't there a chance that convincing him that he's seeing the personification of abstract entities likely to push him OVER the edge?  He's deep in grief, let's make him think that he's also hallucinating, sure, what a great plan.

Then there are these three friends, and each one ends up bonding with one of the actors they hired.  Wouldn't you know, each one forms a friendship that helps them see things differently, and also leads to a solution in each one of THEIR personal lives?  Plain and simple, this story is manipulation, on an emotional level as well as on a "How the universe works" level.  I don't let religious leaders tell me how the universe works, or fails to, so I'm certainly not going to let a movie do that, either.

You might think that the "Love" character would give Howard's friend romantic advice, but her main concern is about his daughter, who he's estranged from after a divorce from her mother.  Her "great" advice is that even though his daughter doesn't want to see him, he doesn't need her permission to love his daughter.  Great, so this turns him into a pushy dad at best, and a stalker at worst.  Maybe his daughter just needs some space and time away from him, only now she's not going to get it.  And maybe these actors should keep their crappy advice to themselves.

So, is Howard crazy or just damaged?  The jury's still out on this - first he seems crazy because he just wants to topple dominos for days on end AND he writes these letters to abstract concepts.  THEN maybe he's not, because it seems like some of his actions are having some therapeutic effects, and he is reachable, through his friends' actions.  Then he seems crazy again, because he believes the falsehood, and is able to have these abstract conversations with the actors playing the entities.  Then we learn more stuff at the end, and we're sort of back into crazy town.

I saw the ending coming a mile away, because I'm seen every episode of "The Twilight Zone" (including the one with Robert Redford, hint hint).  I watched them all when I was a kid, and I got a feel for the cosmic sense of irony that seemed to pervade through all the episodes.  But at a time in my life when I was trying to sort out what's real, what's a story and what's just plain impossible, they were a big help to me, because they often contradicted each other, so if any of them were fantasy, then logically they were ALL fantasy.  To me they represented a form of comparative religion.  If they ever bring back that show again, they should offer the hosting/show-runner job to M. Night Shyamalan, because I think his fascination with twist endings possibly rivals Rod Serling's.

My main NITPICK POINT tonight concerns the plan to secretly video-tape Howard talking to the three actors who represent Love, Time and Death, and to then "digitally remove" the actors, so that he'll be seen in the footage talking to no one, and therefore crazy.  This is technologically impossible, given the state of editing technology today.  Perhaps a giant, expensive special effects house could do this for millions of dollars, but nobody here had that kind of budget.  Let's say Howard was talking to the Death character on the subway, in order to remove the Death character, there would need to be footage shot from the same angle of the same subway car without her in it, so that there would be something to replace her in the video.  Since that didn't exist, removing her from the scene would not be possible.  Yet we're led to believe that it was done.

I've got other issues over things that are not possible, but I'm going to withhold them to avoid spoilers.  This could easily turn into a very grief-filled year, because I've got dying mother characters coming up for Mothers Day, dying father characters for Father's Day, and dead spouses worked into the chain too.  Well, at least that's a theme.

Also starring Edward Norton (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Kate Winslet (last seen in "Labor Day"), Keira Knightley (last seen in "Atonement"), Michael Peña (last seen in "Vacation"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "Southpaw"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "Trumbo"), Jacob Latimore, Enrique Murciano, Ann Dowd (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis"), Kylie Rogers, Mary Beth Peil (last seen in "The Odd Couple II"), Natalie Gold, Liza Colon-Zayas.

RATING: 3 out of 10 grief counseling sessions

Bright

Year 10, Day 96 - 4/6/18 - Movie #2,898

BEFORE: Well, after the two Jesus-based films, I seem to have settled on a very violent theme, a lot of guns this week, from the CIA agents and British gangsters in "Moonwalkers" to the Western shootouts in "Jane Got a Gun", and surprisingly there was violence in "T2 Trainspotting", but no guns.  So I don't know, maybe this is "guns and drugs" week or something - people smoked a lot of pot in "Moonwalkers" and then there were all kinds of drugs in "T2".  With a cop film on the docket tonight, it's probably more guns, guns, guns.

Joel Edgerton carries over from "Jane Got a Gun" to play an orc tonight.  Yep, that's right.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Warcraft" (Movie #2,812)

THE PLOT: Set in a world where fantasy creatures live side-by-side with humans.  A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.

AFTER: First off tonight, a word about mash-ups, since this film is essentially a mash-up of a cop film and a fantasy film.  The last Hobbit film came out what, four years ago?  Yeah, that's about the right amount of lead time.  Four years later, and I've seen TWO films about orcs that were released in 2017.  A couple weeks ago, we started seeing ads for a show called "Rocktopia" that's playing here in New York.  The ads make it seem very exciting, like an incredible mix of classical music and rock and roll, a concert event that shouldn't be missed.  But then, that's what ads are for, right?

I sort of half-suggested to my wife that we should consider going, because we've tried over the past two decades to see some of those acts that we might have missed when we were younger, because those aging rockers sure aren't getting any younger, and so once or twice a year we'll hit the concert circuit and see a nostalgic act, like Meat Loaf, Air Supply, Chicago, Styx, or REO Speedwagon - our list is now quite extensive, and we've got very few "bucket list" acts that we haven't seen.  Just in time, too, I'm glad I saw Bowie once back in like 1984, my only real regret now is never seeing Tom Petty live. So on first glance, this Rocktopia thing seemed right up our alley.

But then I thought, before dropping $150 for a couple of mezzanine seats, I should check out the music, to make sure that the mash-ups worked, and I realize this might be a little subjective.  Hey, there's the CD on iTunes, maybe spending $8 on the album before locking ourselves in to this show might be a solid investment.  Then I thought, wait, there are videos of Rocktopia concerts from Budapest on YouTube, let me check them out for free.  Wow, I'm glad I did that first, because the mash-ups range from barely acceptable down to flat-out horrible.  One's basically a cover of Styx's "Come Sail Away" proceeded by a couple minutes of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", with a transition that was just OK.  Same thing with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" leading into The Who's "Baba O'Riley", it's just one before the other, which shouldn't count as a mash-up.

The worst, musically speaking, is the orchestra playing part of "Rhapsody in Blue" and then awkwardly following that with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".  I suspect these two pieces of music were paired more because they share a word in the title - but if that's the case, why not call the resulting pairing "Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue"?   The general rule on music mash-ups is that the title should also be a mash-up, or involve wordplay in some manner.  Therefore the other pieces should have names like "Eine Kleine StyxMusik" or "Also Sprach Baba O'Riley".  And the mix of Beethoven's 9th Symphony paired with "Don't Stop Believin'" should therefore be called "Ode to Journey".  But that's just one man's opinion.

This brings me to "Bright", which really should have a better name, also.  I would have called it something that referenced "Lord of the Rings", like maybe "CrimeLord of the Rings", but then I suppose that would be too much on the nose.  Anything would be better than "Bright", though.

This is one of those films on Netflix I'm now rushing to, because I'm not sure when they're going to disappear, like "Jane Got a Gun" did.  Maybe Netflix originals like this one, "Sandy Wexler" and "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday" are likely to stick around longer than other studios' films that Netflix licenses, I have no idea.

I also have no idea HOW the humans ended up sharing their world with fantasy creatures like elves, fairies and orcs.  Was Earth always this way in this timeline?  Or was there a magic spell or dimensional doorway that allowed these beings to cross over from another world?  That seems to be the case, because this story shows the first orc to serve as an L.A. cop, so why didn't that ever happen before?  Oh, yeah, because orcs don't tend to be heroic, they're "chaotic evil", as we used to say when we played D&D.

But the orc here is serving as a "diversity hire", and that's when this film's story shines the brightest, when they end up poking fun at our current PC culture, and the orc becomes sort of shorthand for a certain minority when the department gets "integrated".  (Hint: orc lives matter...). Hey, it wasn't that long ago in U.S. history when certain people thought that African-Americans couldn't or shouldn't be policemen, or astronauts or major league baseball players.  I wish I could say that some larger point was made here about race relations by showing an orc trying to succeed in a mostly-human world, but there's just no attempt made at allegory here, I don't think.  Or is there?

The story gets so bogged down in this "Shield of Light" organization, which never fully gets explained (add it to the list...) and then it just turns into one big chase scene once the main characters find this magic wand that everyone seems to want for some reason.  (Yet another thing that doesn't get properly explained...).

Similar to last night's back-and-forth over how well Jane can shoot a gun, here there are inconsistencies over who can wield a magic wand - first we're told that ONLY the fantasy creatures can use them, and even then, only with an intense amount of training.  Then there's a reversal, we find out that some humans can use the magic wands, like maybe one person out of a million has some innate ability to control the wand without dying.  But for the other 999,999 people, holding the wand means instant death, not only to them but to everyone around them.  Who would be willing to take those odds?  Yet everyone seems eager to get their hands on the wand, because then all of their wishes will come true, or something?  It's very unclear what even the luckiest person can accomplish with a wand - but why is everyone so eager to play these terrible odds, do they all have a wish to die?

Also starring Will Smith (last seen in "Concussion"), Noomi Rapace (last seen in "Prometheus"), Edgar Ramirez (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Lucy Fry, Happy Anderson (last seen in "The Comedian"), Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Margaret Cho, Brad William Henke (last seen in "Split"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "Suicide Squad"), Kenneth Choi (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Dawn Olivieri (last seen in "American Hustle"), Matt Gerald (last seen in "XXX: State of the Union"), Alex Meraz, Enrique Murciano, Scarlet Spencer, Andrea Navedo, Bobby Naderi, Chris Browning, and a cameo from Joe Rogan.

RATING: 5 out of 10 angry fairies

Jane Got a Gun

Year 10, Day 95 - 4/5/18 - Movie #2,897

BEFORE: I'm getting very close now to the point where I'm going to dive into the Academy screeners of films that were released in 2017, and also start working in theatrical releases from 2018.  But still, there's something about 2016, it seems it was a banner year for movies all around - if not in terms of quality, then at least in terms of quantity.  I've kept track of the Top 250 films (according to IMDB) for every year since 2009, and usually I'll end up watching about 89-90 of those.  To date I've watched 100 films with 2016 release dates, and I still have another 21 or 22 on the watchlist.  More are popping up on cable now, so there doesn't seem to be an end in sight to the films of 2016.

Now, a couple of possible reasons for this - one is that it's just time for them to finally make their way to premium cable, another is that I recall going out to the movies a LOT during 2016, maybe 10 or 11 times. But it's also the year that Netflix really changed the game and started streaming to the masses, and that's got to play a part.  I didn't get on board until the middle of last year, but naturally the movies that were there for me to see at the time ("Sing", "Zootopia", "The Jungle Book", etc.) had all come out during 2016.  So there's that.  More ways to watch movies equals more choices, so more films from that year ending up in my countdown is to be expected.

(IMDB used to have this great feature where I could see all of the films on my list on a bar graph, sorted by year, and that made it a lot easier to identify years that spiked on the graph, but they seem to have discontinued this little applet.  Now I have to count the films myself...)

Unfortunately I came on board just a bit too late, and now it seems that films I spotted on Netflix are starting to disappear.  Case in point, tonight's film.  It was on Netflix when I did a massive search through their playlist in February, so I made it part of my chain.  But when I checked for it last week, it was gone.  I thought that most films were on Netflix for 2-year periods, but this one only lasted there 18 months.  I can't change my chain now, I'm programmed through July 4, and skipping this film would have meant re-working everything.  (With luck, I could have found a way back to the chain, but in this case I couldn't.)  So I had to pony up $5 tonight to watch this on iTunes, and that also means I don't have a permanent copy, so I'll have to add it to the list of films to record on the DVR if cable ever gets around to showing them.

But, all things considered, I get my Netflix for free (my wife's account) and I get to watch Academy screeners for free (my bosses are both members) so if I have to pay $5 every once in a while to keep the chain going, it's not such a bad deal.

Ewan McGregor carries over from "T2 Trainspotting".

THE PLOT: A woman asks her ex-lover for help in order to save her outlaw husband from a gang out to kill him.

AFTER: Despite no longer being on Netflix, and despite underperforming at the box office (making $1.5 million in the U.S. against a $25 million budget, ouch) this film FEELS like it should have some potential, especially with THREE stars made famous by the "Star Wars" prequels.  (Of those three, it's weird that Joel Edgerton, who played the young version of Luke's Uncle Owen, currently has the hottest career going.)  And what is "Star Wars" but a Western film set in space?  So naturally you'd think they'd do well when put together in a real Western.

But here comes my nemesis, the non-linear narrative.  In pure comic-book / contemporary cinema (post-Pulp Fiction) fashion, the story starts in the middle, in the most enigmatic moment - a man rides on a horse to his home in a canyon, where his wife and daughter are waiting.  Only when he gets close to the house and falls off his horse do we realize that he's been shot several times, and barely made it home alive.

Before long we learn a few details about their situation, and after pulling most of the bullets from the man's body, she rides off to seek help from a gunslinger, someone she clearly has a history with, and his answer is, well, not constructive.  From there the film flashes back to seven years previous, and then five years previous, and gradually we learn about these people, how they got to be here, and what the true nature of the relationships are.

I've railed against this type of storytelling again and again for its inherent enigmatic, confusing nature, and the fact that it's usually a crutch of a technique that (supposedly) helps turn an otherwise  non-interesting narrative into something that at least will qualify as "artsy".  Maybe not "artsy-fartsy", but at least it looks like someone's making an attempt to be different.  Problem is, nearly everyone's doing it these days, so it doesn't help a film stand out as much as it used to.  "Memento" made a big splash with it, and it's been a long slow slog downhill from there.

But I'm prepared to make a rare exception tonight, because this is the one reason I'll allow this editing format to exist: the gradual release of information to the audience, which, over time, then changes our perception of the events first presented to us.  Tarantino, perhaps the person most famous for keeping this technique alive, even used it in "The Hateful Eight", to great effect.  Hey, let's go back for just a minute and show everyone what happened yesterday in this exact same location, because if you see that, it may change your mind about whether the people snowed in at the cabin really are who they say they are.  And it should lead to a feeling of, "Whoa, wait a minute, this changes everything!" assuming that it's done right.

I think this film is working largely among the same lines, because we're presented with what seems to be the remnants of a standard love triangle.  This fickle woman left one man to take up with another, and now that she needs the help of the first man, he doesn't want to help her.  Simple enough, but then the flashbacks come along and slowly reveal the real story, and thankfully, that changes everything.  Did she leave him?  Did he leave her?  Did something else happen to split these two lovers apart?  Obviously their situation in the present is now completely different than it once was, are these just two good people who could never quite get on to the same page, relationship-wise?

It turns out that this whole town in New Mexico seems to be built on constantly shifting moral sands. Every male character seems to have his image on a "Wanted" poster for one reason or another.  If that's the case, who can we trust?  Who is good and who is evil, or do those terms even apply out in the Old West?  And what does it say about people who feel they have to live in a tiny house in a huge canyon, one that can only be approached from one possible angle?  Clearly these people have been expecting some form of trouble, even if it's been a long time coming.

NP: Jane shoots a man who's hassling her with a pistol.  Then later, when Dan has her shooting targets with a pistol, she seems to have no talent.  Then she picks up a shotgun and blows off an ax handle from a fair distance, claiming that she knows how to hunt, therefore she can use a shotgun.  So, is she a good shot or not?  The film can't seem to make up its mind.

NP #2: Similarly, she rides over to the house of her ex-lover to ask for help in defending her home.  Later her husband says, "I thought you told me he was dead..."  Her reply is, "I thought that he was..."  OK, but you RODE OVER TO HIS HOUSE, so clearly this is not true.  To be fair, this does get partially explained by the aforementioned gradual release of information about the characters' back-stories.  Or does it?  Some things still seem unclear or contradictory.

Also starring Natalie Portman (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Joel Edgerton (last seen in "Loving"), Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Little Children"), Boyd Holbrook (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Rodrigo Santoro (last seen as Jesus in "Ben-Hur"), Sam Quinn, James Burnett, Nash Egerton (last seen in "The Gift"), Alex Manette (last seen in "The Butler"), Piper Sheets, Maisie McMaster.

RATING: 6 out of 10 mason jars

T2 Trainspotting

Year 10, Day 94 - 4/4/18 - Movie #2,896

BEFORE: This film easily could have been part of the February chain, with links to both "Bridget Jones's Baby" and two Ewan McGregor films, "Beginners" and "Miss Potter".  But February's list is special, devoted to romance, and I had a feeling this film wouldn't fit in there.  So I had to reschedule it, which means circling back to Mr. McGregor for two more films.  So James Cosmo carries over from "Moonwalkers" for a third film in a row, and gets me closer to Movie #2,900.

THE PLOT: After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie.

AFTER: There are two kinds of films that I'll let play in the background, late at night, after I've finished my daily movie and while I'm reading comic books or playing a game on my phone, when I'm likely to fall asleep.  One kind is a movie that I enjoy that holds up during repeat viewings, such as "The Big Lebowski" or "Beerfest", and the other is a film like "The Usual Suspects" or "Trainspotting", and I'll half-watch it in the hopes that I'll finally come to some kind of understanding about it, after repeated failed attempts. A couple months ago, the original "Trainspotting" film was in the background quite a bit, and that didn't really help me much.

The problem is those THICK Scottish accents, it takes about half an hour for my ear to adjust to them, and during that half hour I can't understand a thing, so I've probably missed the set-up of the original film a dozen times over.  But that's why we have Wikipedia, so before watching the sequel, I took a few minutes to go over everything that went down between Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud in the original film.  It's some pretty messed-up shite, and I stand behind the belief that a lot of it was presented in a very oblique manner, with some heroin-induced dream sequences that don't make much sense, but then, that's the point of a heroin-induced dream sequence, isn't it?

And I can't say I have much experience with the drug culture, not in Scotland, not even here in NYC, not since college anyway.  So I avoided the 1996 film "Trainspotting" film for a long time, and then when I finally got to it, I found that I didn't really relate to it, or perhaps it didn't relate to me, so I watched it and moved on.  But I couldn't help feeling over the years that I'd missed something somehow.

Now I get a second chance to understand these characters - it's 20 years later, both for me in real life and the characters in the film, and they've all come back together.  Which is not necessarily a good thing, because of the way they left things between them, mostly unresolved.  SPOILER ALERT for the original film - Renton took all the money, leaving some behind for Spud, and Begbie was pretty pissed about that.  It's honestly quite a coincidence that Renton would show up exactly 20 years later, be able to track down Spud and Sick Boy, and it's at this very same time that Begbie manages to escape from prison.  But then, if it weren't for coincidences, we wouldn't have a story that reunites all the characters, would we? 

Irvine Welsh, the writer of the original novel, has written sequels since then, so "T2" borrows heavily from one of them, "Porno", but it's a loose adaptation.  We already have "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", so I guess there was less reason to make "Sick Boy and Rents Make a Porno".  But just like in the book, Sick Boy now owns a pub, and since business is down, he has dreams about turning it into a massage parlor, complete with a sauna for his girlfriend, because at the moment he's only making money from blackmailing schemes and needs a bigger source of income.  That's when Renton comes back on the scene, he finds Spud just in time to prevent him from committing suicide, then he reunites with Sick Boy/Simon.  Simon's still pissed over the deal from the first film, so he's really intending to lure Renton in on an even bigger deal, so he can screw him over for revenge.

At the same time, Begbie gets himself stabbed in prison, then escapes from the hospital.  So he's back on the scene but is forced to lay low, and this enables the plot to proceed without him. Prolonging his encounter with Renton gives him time to re-connect with his wife and son, which isn't necessarily a good thing either.  He only wants to take his son out on robberies, ignoring the fact that his son is getting ready to attend college, and he can't seem to get it up in bed with his wife.  So he becomes one of many sad-sack losers in this film, and you start to realize that everyone here is sort of circling the drain, it's just a matter of time before their lives turn back into crap.  And that's the comedy part.

Failed marriages, absent fathers, get-rich quick schemes gone bad, and, of course, relapses after getting clean.  Meanwhile everyone's getting older, their health is getting worse, and business is bad. Renton gets involved in a love triangle, inserting himself between Simon and his girl/cohort, Veronika.  So that's another powder-keg situation that you just know is going to blow up at some point.  Simon gets pinched for his earlier blackmail schemes, so that leads to the need for bigger and bigger schemes, to pay for a lawyer and to make up for what the other income they've lost.  And then a rival pimp gets word of the brothel being built, and puts the kibosh on that.

Finally, Begbie figures out that Renton's not in Amsterdam, he's right there in town, and sets a trap for his mates.  The cycle of opportunity followed by betrayal finally comes to a close, at least until they make Trainspotting 3, probably set in a nursing home.  But the struggle here at least felt real to me, the inability of four losers to rise above their stations perfectly encapsulates the futility of life.  Why bother trying or working hard at anything? 

Also starring Ewan McGregor (last heard in "Beauty and the Beast"), Ewen Bremner (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Robert Carlyle (last seen in "28 Weeks Later"), Kelly Macdonald (last seen in "Anna Karenina"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Anjela Nedyalkova, Steven Robertson (last seen in "Joyeux Noel"), Elek Kish, Simon Weir, Bradley Welsh, Pauline Turner, Kyle Fitzpatrick, Charlie Hardie, Scot Greenan, Eileen Nicholas, Kevin McKidd (last heard in "Brave"), Gordon Kennedy, Daniel Smith, Tereza Duskova, Katie Leung (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), James McElvar, Connor McIndoe, Christopher Mullen, John Bell, Elijah Wolf, Michael Shaw, Ben Skelton, Aiden Haggarty, Logan Gillies, Hamish Haggerty, Daniel Jackson, with a cameo from Irvine Welsh. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 yellow notepads

Moonwalkers

Year 10, Day 93 - 4/3/18 - Movie #2,895

BEFORE: I suppose I'm two days late in getting to a proper April Fool's film, though I didn't think of that connection until just now.  We've all heard the conspiracy theories about how the moon landing was faked, though I didn't know about Stanley Kubrick's connection to that urban legend until just last year.  (Supposedly, the clues are all there in "The Shining", plus "2001: A Space Odyssey".)  This film uses that story about Kubrick working for the CIA as a jumping-off point.

James Cosmo carries over from "Ben-Hur", where he played the slave-master aboard the Roman ship.

 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Room 237" (Movie #2,724)

THE PLOT: After failing to locate the legendary Stanley Kubrick, an unstable CIA agent must instead team up with a seedy rock-band manager to develop the biggest con of all time - staging the moon landing.

AFTER: There's a reason why urban legends and conspiracy theories persist, and are difficult to dispel - it's because they sound likely, especially with everything else that's true and happening in the world, but because of the fact that they're NOT true, they're nearly impossible to disprove.  They often FEEL true because they tend to sound like other news stories, or the way that we think the world works, or fails to work, and you just can't disprove a negative.  (The Bible works along the same lines, just try to come up with some evidence that Noah didn't build an ark, or Jesus didn't rise from the tomb three days after the crucifixion.  Good luck with that.)

With everything we know about the CIA, for example, and all the underhanded things they've done over the years, faking the moon landing seems pretty tame by comparison - but it's right in line with the Nixon administration, Watergate, Vietnam, the Cold War, etc.  The U.S. government probably felt they were competing with the Russians to get to the moon first, so it's easy to assume it was a "win at all costs" scenario, with good old American patriotism on the line.

Enter Stanley Kubrick, who was a bit eccentric, to say the least, and not just a filmmaker but also an "auteur", who had made a very realistic-looking film about outer space, in which the U.S. had not only landed on the moon but also had established a base there, and was (or would be, in the far-off future year of 2001) launching spacecraft from there to go and explore an object floating around Jupiter.  And this film was released in 1968, the year BEFORE the real moon landing.  So it stands to reason that somewhere, in a movie studio, there was a fake moonscape, models of landing craft, things that theoretically could be used again if someone WERE inclined to pass off a fake moon landing film as a real one.

There was a mockumentary that came out in 2002 that really pushed this idea that Kubrick filmed some fake footage for NASA, perhaps just in case the Apollo 11 astronauts didn't make it to the moon, so they'd have something to run on TV no matter what.

"Moonwalkers" is filled with tributes to Kubrick, or at least references to his films.  One main character is named "Tom Kidman", a mash-up of the names of the two lead actors in "Eyes Wide Shut".  Another character is made to resemble a general from "Dr. Strangelove", and Kidman beats up someone to the classical piece "The Thieving Magpie" by Rossini, which of course is a direct reference to "A Clockwork Orange". And we also hear the famous "Also Sprach Zarathustra" music that introduced the moonlith in "2001".  Through this, of course, we realize that perhaps nothing in this film is meant to be taken seriously - duh, it is a comedy.

And it's one that also manages to poke fun at failing rock bands, too-artsy film directors, hippies and the "free love" movement, drugs, NASA, the CIA, British gangsters, government incompetence, and conspiracy theories in general.  If the moon landings were fake, there would have been around 400,000 people who were in on the conspiracy, for a period of ten years of the Apollo Project, at the very least.  And NONE of those people have come forward since, with tangible proof that fakery was involved?  That itself seems a lot harder to believe than sending three astronauts to the moon and back.

After watching this film, my mind created a mash-up dream that also incorporated elements of "Ben-Hur", "Jesus Christ Superstar" and the recent sexual abuse allegations against "Ren & Stimpy" animator John Kricfalusi, since that new scandal broke just the other day.  I read the whole BuzzFeed article about John K., since my animator boss co-hosted some screenings in Chicago with him about a decade ago.

In my dream, I was taking place in sort of a heist movie, I was one of several teenagers pulling off this scenario where were were trying to steal something from another teen's clubhouse, and then when the job was done, the whole thing turned into a movie that was being filmed, and I was one of the actors, and the movie was being made for the Disney Channel, or Nickelodeon or something.  What was weird was that I was really the age I am now, 49, but playing a teen role.  The other actors wanted to hang out and party after the filming was over, but I declined, because how would that look, a 49-year-old man partying with a bunch of teenagers, I could really get into trouble for that.  So I left them behind and walked away from the shoot, and the whole movie was being filmed in a department store (my boss told a story last week in front of an audience about a Kanye West video that was shot by Michel Gondry at Macy's in NY, after hours.)

So I was leaving the department store, but then my boss showed up with his friend, a songwriter he's worked with often, and he was going to help her return a piece of luggage she had bought.  But as I was talking to him a bunch of policemen or agents surrounded him and put him in handcuffs, and originally I thought it was because he had written a blog post in support of John Kricfalusi, but the people around me seemed to think there was another reason he was being arrested, only nobody would tell me because their kids were within earshot.  So I was standing there defending my boss against some kind of allegations that I didn't understand.  Again, this was a stress dream based on news reports about another animator, mashed up with details from the last few films that I watched.

EDIT: I just found out via Facebook that TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. release of Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" - April 3, 1968.  I swear, I had no idea this was the case when I selected this film for viewing today.  Just one of those eerie little coincidences - or is it a vast conspiracy?

Also starring Rupert Grint (last seen in "CBGB"), Ron Perlman (last heard in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Robert Sheehan (last seen in "Season of the Witch"), Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Burnt"), Eric Lampaert, Kevin Bishop (last seen in "Muppet Treasure Island"), Tom Audenaert, Erika Sainte, Jay Benedict, Kerry Shale (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), John Flanders, Joe Sheridan (last seen in "The Man in the Iron Mask") Andrew Blumenthal,

RATING: 6 out of 10 cosmic jellyfish

Ben-Hur (2016)

Year 10, Day 92 - 4/2/18 - Movie #2,894

BEFORE: Since I happen to know that Jesus appears as a character in "Ben-Hur" (the not-so-subtle subtitle of the original book is "A Tale of the Christ", I seem to recall) that made it very easy to program this one next, to follow "The Young Messiah".  I was convinced after checking the cast lists that no actors carried over, but apparently I was wrong.  One actor, Jarreth J. Merz, appears in both films.  He also had a small role in "The Passion of the Christ", so now I regret shoe-horning that film into a Richard Burton-centric chain last year just to mark the Easter holiday.  If I had saved that film for this year, I could have watched THREE Jesus-themed films in a row, with all of them sharing one actor.  Oh, well, hindsight is always 20/20, I have to make the best linking choices that are available to me at any given moment. 

THE PLOT: Judah Ben-Hur, a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother, an officer in the Roman army, returns to his homeland after years at sea to seek revenge, but finds redemption.

AFTER: When you get right down to it, there are no such things as coincidence in the Bible - once you insert that Hand of God, then (supposedly) everything happens for a reason.  Joseph has a dream that tells him to take his family to Egypt, shortly before King Herod kills all the children of a certain age.  It's like it was meant to be.  That kind of serendipity runs throughout the Bible - Noah builds an ark and finishes just as the rainclouds start to gather.  What I want to know is, how many people built their arks a few years too early, and then grew tired of waiting for the flood to start?

It also extends to the Biblical epic "Ben-Hur", which was written as a novel in 1880 - but it FEELS like it could have been part of the Bible, only it wasn't. It's Bible-adjacent, with Roman soldiers pushing their weight around in Judea, and a certain peaceful carpenter hanging around in the background, dispensing advice as necessary.  When Judah Ben-Hur is falsely accused of allowing an assassination attempt on Pontius Pilate's life, Jesus is there to offer him some water as he's taken into custody and beaten.

Years later, as Jesus is dragging his cross through the streets and is being beaten and tortured, Ben-Hur offers him some water in a nice bit of symmetry.  And that's when I realized that their stories are like mirror images of each other, they both represent the sacrifices they're willing to make to save their loved ones.  For Ben-Hur, that means taking the rap, even though it was the young zealot Ditmas who shot the arrow at Pilate, the Romans are threatening to punish his sister and mother if he doesn't "tell the truth", which really means telling them exactly what they want to hear.  It's the Roman version of extreme rendition.

Psych!  April Fool's!  The Romans were going to crucify his sister and mother anyway, no matter what, but Judah's confession gets him a nice long sea voyage, as a galley slave and oarsman on a Roman ship.  This means being shackled in place, 24/7 and rowing as necessary, but the good news is that after 5 years of rowing, he's really in good physical shape.   Do you know how many people these days would pay to be part of a tough exercise regimen like that?

Serendipity strikes again when the Roman ship sinks, and Judah Ben-Hur is believed to have gone down with the ship (because he was chained in, duh) but instead was able to free himself, and he washes ashore very close to the tent of the ONE MAN in that territory, Sheik Ilderim, who happens to be a chariot racer, and who happens to believe his story about being falsely accused, and who happens to be registered for the big chariot race coming up in Rome next month, which gives Ben-Hur just enough time to get his strength back, help cure the horses of their ailments, and learn how to competitively drive a chariot.  Right.

And of COURSE the guy that Ben-Hur has to beat in the chariot race is his ex-adopted brother, of COURSE it is.  Because he was in the Roman army under Pilate, and his association with Ben-Hur got him kicked off the expeditionary forces, so of COURSE the only way he can advance through the ranks now is to compete in chariot races, which are often quite deadly.  (Serendipity/coincidence like this continues for pretty much the whole picture - Judah just HAPPENS to bump into his wife on the streets, he just HAPPENS to know the Roman soldier who knows that his sister and mother are still alive.  But if this stuff didn't go down like this, the film would otherwise be about 5 hours long...)

Let's be clear about this, though - we all came here for the chariot race, didn't we?  So in the end, who cares about exactly how we get there, how many little coincidences lead to the chariot race, let's get to some racing!  There's a newly-built circus (no, not the kind with clowns - a round racing arena, like a hippodrome) with all the fancy bells and whistles, so let's "Shake and bake"!  (because some of those chariots are shaky, and Jerusalem's quite hot, hence the "bake"...)  Really, this is kind of like NASCAR at the start of the C.E. 

The best advice that Ilderim gives Judah is to hang at the back of the chariot pack - because this will give the chariots in the lead ample time to take each other out.  So the best strategy is a form of "drafting", staying behind the other drivers until it's time to make his move.  OK, it may work, but it's a real pussy way to win a chariot race.  But the first man across the finish line is also the last one to die.

Say what you will about the 1959 version of "Ben-Hur", the one with Charlton Heston -  it may have won the Best Picture Oscar, but it didn't spend one-tenth the money that people are willing to spend these days on special effects.  By comparison, the 2016 chariot race is light-years ahead of the one in the 1959 film, yet that picture is well-respected, and this one is generally considered a bomb.  Go figure.  But this film held my attention for two hours and change, while the Heston version is nearly three and a half hours long.  So if I had to watch one of them over again, I'd go with the 2016 remake.

Also starring Jack Huston (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Toby Kebbell (last seen in "A Monster Calls"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Going in Style"), Nazanin Boniadi (last seen in "Passengers"), Rodrigo Santoro (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Sofia Black D'Elia, Ayelet Zurer (last seen in "Vantage Point") Haluk Bilginer (last seen in "Ishtar"), Moises Arias (last seen in "Nacho Libre"), Pilou Asbaek (last seen in "Lucy"), Marwan Kenzari, James Cosmo (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), David Walsmley, Yasen Atour, Francesco Scianna, Gabriel Lo Giudice, Stefano Scherini, Alessandro Giuggioli, Maurice Lee.

RATING: 7 out of 10 lepers

The Young Messiah

Year 10, Day 91 - 4/1/18 - Movie #2,893

BEFORE: So this year, as everyone knows, Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day are taking place on the same day, and I for one can't think of anything more appropriate.  (So, yeah, today some of my personal views about religion might creep into this space, just a fair warning.). But the two holidays are really quite different, one is all about telling lies and half-truths, getting people to believe that something that didn't happen might possibly have happened.  And the other one takes place every year on the first day of April.

I was raised Catholic, so for the first 12-15 years of my life I was indoctrinated to believe that the Bible was non-fiction, that things went down in the time period of 1,000-B.C.E to 33 A.D. according to that book, but I later came to learn that this is a ridiculous fiction, because nobody who wrote down these tales of certain events that Judeo-Christian people rely on was present for said events - even the people who wrote the Gospels did so 50 to 100 years after the fact, and by that time the stories had grown to have a life of their own.  I believe in the fallibility of humans, so that between re-tellings, mis-translations and exaggerations, I firmly believe that we can never know for sure what took place that inspired the Bible.  And so I treat it as a work of fiction written by unreliable sources.  It's a very important piece of fiction with very relevant messages, but come on.  What's easier to believe, that miracles occurred that have not occurred since, or people told stories that grew and grew, until they overshadowed reality itself?  I vote for the latter.

Last year at this time, I watched "The Robe", "The Passion of the Christ" and "Risen".  This one must have come into my possession some time after last Easter.  I used Jesus as a connecting fictional character last year, because it was impossible otherwise to link to "The Passion of the Christ", but there you go, a simple rule change allowed it.  This time I'm going to do better, though, even though this film is nearly as unlinkable as last year's Easter films were.  Christian McKay carries over from "Florence Foster Jenkins", where he played a reviewer for the New York Post.

THE PLOT: Tells the story of Jesus Christ at age seven, as his family departs Egypt to return home to Nazareth.

AFTER:  This film is based on Anne Rice's novel "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt", and I understand where the author is coming from, in that one can't help but try to understand some of the things that the Bible tells us about Jesus, maybe attempt to reconcile what we've been told with what reason tells us is and isn't possible.  I know I've been doing that for a long time.  "What really happened," I might wonder, "that got so twisted out of shape that we now have the fantastical story that we have, where Jesus basically has super-powers that we don't understand?"

There's also a big gap in Jesus' timeline - the Bible doesn't really cover the years between age 7 and his late 20's.  There's rampant speculation about where he went and what he did, but isn't the easiest answer that there was nothing really special about him at this time?  Maybe he was just a regular guy, and anything that was "special" was written later to explain what happened to him and what it all supposedly meant.  I take the mental track that he suddenly became relevant in his 20's, fomenting rebellion and leading a group of disciples who were theologically subversive, and therefore dangerous.  And an origin story of supernatural or godlike nature is a really easy thing to write after the fact, therefore reverse-engineering the righteousness of his cause.

Remember, this was a different time - unlike today, "prophet" was a valid career choice then, and the Old Testament was full of them.  I believe Jesus was a prophet - and a charismatic one at that, even if he only really said half of the things the Bible says he said.  The miracle of the loaves and the fishes is not that he was able to magically transform a small amount of food into a larger amount of food, it's that his words of kindness were so eloquent that he got enough people to donate the food they had on them, enough to fill baskets and feed a crowd.  But let's put aside my explanations for "miracles" like this one, and the turning of water into wine (hint: this magic trick involved porous clay jars...) and focus on the time period covered by this film.

This was also a time where common people didn't understand what dreams were - Sigmund Freud et al weren't there to explain that dreams are just our brains working overtime while our bodies rest, and working through the meanings behind our daily experiences.  So when people back then dreamed things, they thought they were messages from God.  Joseph dreamed that he should leave Israel and bring Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and that turned out to be a lucky thing (again, if you believe the story...).  What about all the parents who dreamed about moving away from Israel who didn't act on their dreams?  We never hear about them, but then I guess their babies were killed by King Herod, so maybe we should always listen to our dreams.  Then Joseph had another dream seven years later that they should move back home, so he got lucky twice (or he wasn't telling the truth about his dreams, we'll never know...)

When we first see young Jesus here, he gets in trouble because he's trying to protect a girl (his cousin, Salome) from being bullied (or worse) by an older boy.  Jesus, however, sees a man drop an apple on the ground, and the bully trips on the apple, hits his head and dies.  Since no one but Jesus can see this mysterious man, Jesus is blamed for his death.  An angry mob demands that Jesus should be punished (get used to this, Jesus...) but Jesus has a way to fix things, he just finds the dead boy's body and resurrects him, easy-peasy.  Apparently he'd been practicing on dead birds.  As you might imagine, this doesn't calm the angry mob, because now they believe he's performed some kind of witchcraft.  The resurrected boy doesn't seem too happy either, because he starts beating up Jesus - I guess he preferred being dead?

But it's that mysterious man, the one that only Jesus could see, who is important - the IMDB credits call him "Demon", but Wikipedia just calls him "Satan".  I suppose this tracks with Jesus' other adult super-powers, because he's later tempted by Satan in the desert, and no one else ever claims to have seen Satan.  So, resurrections, being able to see invisible demons, and being super-smart about religious history - that's a lot for a 7-year old to deal with.  Plus, you have to remember, it wasn't easy being Jesus because there weren't a lot of kids his age for him to play with, at least not in Judea.  Remember, Herod killed them all.

Speaking of Herod, there are multiple King Herods, which I guess I sort of knew already, but failed to realize.  The King Herod who ordered the death of children born around the time of Jesus, because of that prophecy from the Wise Men, was replaced by another King Herod, who's the one who sentenced Jesus to crucifixion.  (Herod the Great vs. Herod Antipas, apparently.  There, I've learned something today.). When Herod the Great died, Joseph supposedly moved the family back to Judea.
 
Along for the ride is Jesus' uncle, Cleopas (I've not heard of this character before, but my guess is that he's added here to explain why James is Jesus' cousin, and not his brother.  That seems a bit convenient.) and the story dictates that he's not right in the head, because when Jesus heals his mental illness while swimming in a river, news of this reaches the new King Herod, and Herod sends his soldiers out to track down this boy with magical healing powers.  This leads to a sort of "CSI: Judea" plot line, where again there are many contrivances and conveniences that are nearly as hard to swallow as the original Bible stories themselves.

All these contrivances made this story feel a little like a TV sitcom, where we can all see where the plot lines are going, so certain things just have to happen to get the characters to where they need to be.  Or maybe a little like "Gotham", where the backstories of Bruce Wayne and many of his future super-enemies are explored, and the plot inches forward every week, but never really gets to the point where Bruce becomes Batman, even though we all know this is where it's inevitably headed.  We the audience know where Jesus' story will take him, so he's definitely on this path, only it's exactly the one that a writer would write for him that would direct him there.

In the end, Jesus asks a rabbi about that story from seven years ago, the one that most people have forgotten, about the three Magi and the prophecy about the special baby being born - and it's really no different here than Superman finding out about the rocket-ship that brought him from Krypton.  But once Jesus knows his origin story, he talks to Mary, and she confirms that she learned that she would give birth from an angel, who brought her the good news.  Ah, but this is subversive in itself, I think - because how many times have you heard a proud mother describe her baby as "an angel, straight from heaven", or words to that effect?  It's usually a metaphor, sure, but what if Mary, speaking metaphorically, was what started the story in the first place?  What if, instead of telling young Jesus about "the birds and the bees", she mentioned an angel, as some kind of stork-like baby delivery service - and this was her way of telling Jesus that she thought he was special?  Every mother wants to believe her baby is special, right?

And then maybe Jesus grew up believing this story, in the way that kids today believe in Santa Claus, or Jesus?  That might have colored the way that he acted as an adult, who therefore believed he was the son of God?  (And like most people, he probably didn't want to think about his parents "doing it", so the angel story was therefore easier.).  Now, me, I like to think that when Jesus said he was "son of God", he meant in a way that suggested that everyone was a "son of God", but hey, I wasn't there.  But that's my point, everything Jesus-related, including the Bible, is just idle speculation because of unreliable or non-existent narrators.  We all have to pick and choose which parts of this story we choose to believe and also dis-believe.

My posting tonight was delayed by watching "Jesus Christ Superstar: the Live Concert" on NBC.  It's not really my thing, but I have seen the original film and one or two other re-interpretations of this musical, so I gave it a whirl.  Alice Cooper definitely stole the show as Herod.  (Herod Antipas, that is, not Herod the Great.  Now I know the difference.) I'm not going to count this as part of my chain, because even though it was over two hours long, it's not technically a movie, not even a TV movie.  It was a "concert event", and besides, it doesn't link to my chain, not at all.

Also starring Adam Greaves-Neal, Sara Lazzaro, Vincent Walsh (last seen in "300: Rise of an Empire"), Sean Bean (last seen in "Pixels"), Jonathan Bailey (last seen in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Rory Keenan (last seen in "The Brother's Grimsby"), Agni Scott (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Jane Lapotaire, Finn McLeod Ireland, David Bradley (last seen in "The World's End"), David Burke, Isabelle Adriani, Paul Ireland, Lee Boardman (last seen in "Emma"), Clive Russell (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Jarreth J. Merz (last seen in "The Passion of the Christ"), Dorotea Mercuri, Lois Ellington, Douglas Dean

RATING: 4 out of 10 sweet cakes