Suburbicon

Year 11, Day 5 - 1/5/19 - Movie #3,105

BEFORE: Oscar Isaac carries over again from "A Most Violent Year", and now that I've tabled "W.E." for later, and realized that he also voices a character in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", it's a fair bet I'll see - or hear - him again later this year.  But I've got to keep moving on...

THE PLOT: As a 1950's suburban community self-destructs, a home invasion has sinister consequences for one seemingly normal family.

AFTER: This was pitched as a sort of a dark comedy, and that's often a really vague description, what exactly does that mean?  Is it going to be more "dark" or more "comic"?  But as the story played out, it started to have something of a "Fargo"-like vibe to it, so when the closing credits said the story was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, I wasn't really surprised at all, things then started to make more sense.  Those guys have really found the middle ground between comedy and tragedy over the years, even if sometimes it leans a little more toward comedy, like in "Raising Arizona", and sometimes a little more toward tragedy, like in "No Country for Old Men".  In fact, they wrote part of this screenplay way back in 1986, right after "Blood Simple" came out.  Jeez, do those guys have many more 30-year old screenplays lying around, just waiting to be turned into movies?

I should say that's half the story here, because that old screenplay contained the "family crime" story, which got mixed with another screenplay about the black family moving in to an all-white neighborhood, and what that led to.  So two scripts got Frankenstein-ed together here, which maybe explains why the structure here feels a bit off.  The separate tales are made to run concurrently here, and they mix together just a little bit, but that's not how either story was initially designed.  It's a bit like cooking two meals in the same pot, inevitably they're going to mix together and that's probably going to affect the taste of both in the end.  Whether that resulting taste is good or bad is ultimately up to the diners, or the audience.

But though half of the screenplay was written in the 1980's, it really hearkens back to the 1950's, and it reminds me of the stories of John M. Cain, who wrote "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice".  Even though some think of the 1950's as the Best Decade Ever, with the poodle skirts and the jukeboxes and the leather jackets, Elvis and Buddy Holly and Eisenhower's era of good feelings, there was a lot going on that wasn't so great, like spousal abuse and child abuse and so much racism.  And if you believe Cain, then part of that American Dream was figuring out how to kill your family members and collect the sweet insurance money.  But was that really a widespread practice, or just another pulp fiction convention, which then became a Hollywood movie staple?

And that brings me back to the mixing of the two screenplays, because the film opens with people finding out that they've got an African-American family living in their suburban idyll, and not reacting very well.  Then the story shifts to the home invasion plot, and since something just didn't feel right about the home invasion, I incorrectly assumed that the whole thing was being staged in order to frame the black neighbors for a crime.  It seemed a bit crazy that someone should go to that much trouble to get rid of their neighbors, but since I misread a cause and effect relationship due to the timing of the events, you can kind of see how I jumped to that conclusion.  But, it turned out that there was something hinky going on, so I was wrong, but for the right reasons.

Which is fine, but I strongly suspect that once everything is revealed, and everyone's motivation for doing what they did is out in the open, if you were to go back and watch the beginning again with that knowledge in mind, something's just not going to add up.  You just don't get to the goal you want with a plan like that, that's all I'm saying.  Not now, not then.  So this is a throwback to an alternate past that I'm hoping never existed, or else the good old days weren't really all that good to begin with.

Also starring Matt Damon (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Noah Jupe, Glenn Fleshler (also carrying over from "A Most Violent Year"), Alex Hassell (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Megan Ferguson (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jack Conley (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Gary Basaraba (last seen in "The Accountant"), Michael D. Cohen, Karimah Westbrook, Leith Burke, Tony Espinosa (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), James Handy (last seen in "Logan"), Steven Shaw, Don Baldaramos, Nancy Daly, Richard Kind (last heard in "Inside Out").

RATING: 5 out of 10 archival news interviews

A Most Violent Year

Year 11, Day 4 - 1/4/19 - Movie #3,104

BEFORE: OK, so I'd worked out a little 4-film Oscar Isaac chain, and I was going to dip back into the Academy screeners from years past to watch "W.E.", a film about King Edward VIII giving up the throne of England for the woman he loved, but then as the day neared, I wondered if it would be too jarring to go from an action-packed sci-fi thriller to a period romance.  I mean, a film's a film, but too many quick genre changes can be confusing.  Another problem is that I've planned a Steve Carell chain for late January, and in the new pile of screeners two films came in that I was hoping for, both "Vice" with Carell and "Mission: Impossible - Fallout", which doesn't star Steve Carell but is key to completing my January chain.  But then "Welcome to Marwen" also arrived, and I want to see that one too - but that makes 32 films for January, not 31, so something's got to go.  Now the thing about the chain, if I need to drop something, I can only drop something from a chain of 3 or more without affecting the flow.  So it came down to "Welcome to Marwen", "W.E." or "Absolute Beginners" on Netflix, I could only program two out of the three. What to do?

At the studio yesterday, I realized that my boss was letting a neighbor store some boxes in her studio while the neighbor is moving, and of course those boxes are stacked RIGHT in front of the shelf where I was keeping the dozen or so screeners from pre-2018 that I want to watch.  So there you go, fate made the decision for me about which film to drop.  Look, I'm not going to move a bunch of heavy boxes containing fragile art stuff that belongs to someone else - that's madness.  And if you think about it, I should give priority to the films on Netflix, because they should disappear at any time.  I can still watch "Welcome to Marwen" in late January, because the pile of CURRENT Academy screeners isn't blocked, just the older ones.  I couldn't have asked for a clearer sign from the universe that "W.E." just isn't in the cards right now, but since I've got a bunch of films set during the World War II era on my list, like "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour" - and "W.E." shares an actor with "Dunkirk", so it could be handy for linking later on - I'll have to just keep it on the list and try to get to it later in the year.

For now, Oscar Isaac carries over from "Annihilation", and it will just be a 3-film chain instead of a 4-film one.  That's how it goes - tonight's film is also on Netflix, and since my list there has grown way too large (115 titles, but that includes comedy specials...) I've got to start chipping away at it.

THE PLOT: In New York City 1981, an ambitious immigrant fights to protect his business and family during the most dangerous year in the city's history.

AFTER: Look, I'm not saying that a drama about corruption in the heating oil industry in NYC thematically follows after a sci-fi thriller either, but it's a bit easier to take.  And I had such a nice little theme going about perceptions and reality, like "Game Night" (are the kidnappers real or actors?) and "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" (is the store alive, and can toys really move on their own?) and even "Annihilation" (umm, what is really happening here?)  Though it's a bit of a stretch, I GUESS you could say there's a bit of reality-mystery here, like "Who's behind the oil truck heists?" and "Is everyone in this business corrupt?" and "What is legal, anyway?".  No?  Ehh, I didn't think so, but you can't blame a guy for trying.

But I have to be honest here, and say that I don't find the ins and outs of the heating oil industry to be particularly fascinating, and if I did, then I would probably get a job in that field, rather than watch a movie about that.  I can think of about a hundred other professions I would rather see a movie character have that would be more interesting than running a heating oil delivery business, even in crime-ridden 1981 NYC.  And if you ask me, there's still a lot of crime in NYC, probably just as much as there was back then, only now it gets under-reported so the NYPD and the Mayor's office can say the city is "safer than ever", only they're not telling you about the murders that were classified as "traffic accidents" or a dead body being pulled from the river called "accidental drowning", despite the four obvious bullet holes.  A safer city gets more money from tourism, after all.  And now that they're not arresting people for pot possession any more, the crime statistics will be even lower - see, it's not the crime that's gone down, it's just a conscious choice to ignore more of it. 

But there is an argument here almost made for gun control, and how bogus it is to say things like "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  When criminals start robbing the tanker trucks here, the best advice offered to the drivers is to just give up the truck - when one driver arms himself and shoots back at the robbers, he ends up in just as much trouble as the thieves, if not more.  So there you go.

I knew something was bogus about the central characters, because every time Abel Morales is asked about how legit his company is, he answers with "We follow the standard industry practices..."  Umm, that's not a "No" answer, now, is it?  It's like if you ask your phone or cable company if they're overcharging you, what do you THINK they're going to say?  "Oh, right, we were screwing you and we didn't realize it.  Here's half your monthly payment back."  As if. 

Abel wants his own fuel terminal on the East River, so that he can have better access to oil, and sell it to his competitors, set his own prices when the need is greater, and not rely on his suppliers who probably do the same to him.  Is that really the goal, the American Dream, "Screw the other guy before he can do it to you?"  And he's supposed to be the good one, the noble one?  I'm not buying it.  After going to great lengths to beg and borrow financing from here and there to put the deal together, his lawyer keeps asking him, "Why does it have to be THIS deal, why THIS terminal?" and I'm not sure we ever get a clear answer.

NITPICK POINT: When asked how much money he needs to make the deal, Abel says, "A million and a half dollars".  Who would ever phrase it like that?  He wouldn't need to say "dollars", that would be implied, because most deals in NYC wouldn't be in francs or pesos or pounds, or even bagels.  And why say "A million and a half" when you can say "One point five million", which would be more common and a lot clearer? 

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Junebug"), David Oyelowo (last seen in "Interstellar"), Albert Brooks (last seen in "Drive"), Catalina Sandino Marino (last seen in "Fast Food Nation"), Elyes Gabel (last seen in "MI-5"), Ashley Williams, Jerry Adler (last seen in "Prime"), Christopher Abbott (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Elizabeth Marvel (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"), Robert Clohessy (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Peter Gerety (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Glenn Fleshler (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), David Margulies (last seen in "Ishtar"), Annie Funke, Patrick Breen (last seen in "One True Thing"), Kathleen Doyle (last seen in "Body Snatchers"), Pico Alexander (last seen in "War Machine"), William Hill (last seen in "Chuck"), Matthew Maher, Jason Ralph, Taylor Richardson, Giselle Eisenberg.

RATING: 4 out of 10 tollbooths on the Queensboro bridge

Annihilation

Year 11, Day 3 - 1/3/19 - Movie #3,103

BEFORE: Well, I had two things go my way today - first off, I found my little flash drive with all my movie lists on it.  For the last week I thought that maybe I'd lost it, that it fell out of my pocket while I was taking my wallet out to pay for something or get my Metrocard.  But I just left it at one of my offices, the one I go to on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I hadn't been there in a week because of the New Year's holiday.  I mean, I've got printed out lists of what movie to watch next, but the drive also has my cast breakdowns, so I couldn't go any further past mid-March without that.  It's a big 36-page document that I would hate to have to retype, so getting the drive back is a real plus.  I also use the drive to carry home digital music files from the one computer that I have access to that can still rip CDs, but the movie lists are hard to replace, so I'm going to back up the lists to every computer at home and the offices, just in case I really do lose the drive someday.

Secondly, the news broke today that the "L" subway train is not going to go out of service for 15 months starting in April - without this train in service I was looking at either a 15-minute walk each day to another, probably more crowded train, or a combination of train, bus and ferry that could have potentially doubled my commuting time, so this is great, I can continue to lead the lifestyle I've become accustomed to, which involves staying up late, oversleeping and getting to work a little late every day instead of forcing myself to get up earlier to arrive even later than usual.  Governor Cuomo toured the tunnels under the Hudson that still need to be repaired after Superstorm Sandy, which was like 6 years ago, and he had some university think tank come up with a way to repair the tunnels without affecting my daily commute.  So thank heaven for small favors, and thankfully I stayed the course and didn't panic by doing something crazy like moving or buying my own car.  (Once again, I'm rewarded for inaction, it's kind of my thing...)

Natalie Portman carries over from "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium", and I think this is just the way my chain is going to run for a while - the bulk of what constitutes my list are relatively new films, like over 1/3 of the films were released in 2016-2018.  But I can still dip back for a film like last night's, which came out in 2007, if I need to make a connection.  Perhaps I should look at it the other way, that I need to use recent films to connect the older ones.  But it's really all the same thing.

THE PLOT: A biologist signs up for a dangerous secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.

AFTER: I'm going to be a little generous tonight, because there's some good stuff here, plotlines that I haven't seen before in a movie - and this movie did get some attention for having so many strong female characters, right about the time that the #metoo movement was really going full steam, about a year ago.  But now I've read that some people didn't like the way the director changed the ending of the book, and added some plot elements that are somewhat reminiscent of other movies - but they're movies I've never heard of, so that makes no difference to me.  And it's also being referred to as one of the big box office bombs of 2018, but that's neither here nor there to me - hey, if you want a movie to make money, maybe don't release it while everyone's rushing out to see "Black Panther".

It's good and twisty, too, and for once I didn't see the twists coming, which isn't easy considering I dubbed it to DVD and tried VERY hard not to see anything important, but sometimes I can't help it.  Still, I can't help but feel even though the story is strong and feels very original (to me, again, your mileage may vary) once I start listing a few NITPICK POINTS I may have a different opinion.

My first bone of contention is my most common complaint about films, the non-linear time-jumping. The story starts with Lena, noting that her husband's been gone for a year, though we don't know at first if this means he left, or he died, or what.  Eventually we learn that he's been on a military mission and presumed dead, only then he shows up.  Before this, he's seen a few times in flashbacks, so here's where the confusion starts - when he comes home, is that just another flashback?  See, this is where I find myself with two differing opinions, because when you jump around like this, it only sows confusion, but here the jumping around also slowly reveals the information we need to know, like the details of the mission.  We didn't need to know them at first, because neither did Lena, so we're right there in her shoes - but still, I maintain that the story could have been told in the proper order, and dramatic tension still could have been maintained.

This occurs again because we see bits of Lena's debrief after HER mission, before we even get to the point where she BEGINS the mission.  So, way too early in my opinion, we learn a few things we DON'T need to know, namely that Lena's going to go on a mission, and that she's going to survive.  This seems to be working against maintaining tension, because the mission, when it comes around, would be a little scarier if we hadn't already gotten a peek at her debrief.  Obviously this is a common practice, to use an interrogation as a sort of framing device, and then show all the action as someone is relating their story.  But then the real meat of the movie is essentially a flashback, and then I think here as a result there's flashbacks within flashbacks, which shouldn't happen as per the rules of film language.  Come on, just find a better way.

(Like, later on, the team finds a video camera and gets a glimpse of what went down with the last team - that's a sneaky way to accomplish the same thing as a flashback, only it's motivated by the plot, and it just works better.)

I don't think I'm spoiling anything by revealing that her husband's not in great shape after his experiences within the zone they call "The Shimmer", which is also expanding in size.  Several missions of military men have entered the zone and not come back at all, so the assumption is that they all either died, went crazy or both.  I guess another assumption is that testosterone or male ego was somehow the downfall of those men, so the next thing to try is to send in a team of women.  Umm, sure, that makes perfect logical sense.  The film tries to make a clear distinction that this is NOT a suicidal mission, merely a "self-destructive" one, but I think that's putting too fine a point on things.  There's a big difference between being a drinker, an addict and a person willing to enter a contaminated zone.

Which brings me to my biggest NITPICK POINT, which is, if you know, or even suspect, that there's something in this area that is toxic, dangerous or hallucinogenic, or something that killed the last team by being eaten or breathed, then the next team should go in wearing full hazmat gear, right?  Like oxygen tanks and bullet-proof vests, or those suits that people wear when they defuse bombs.  But no, the women are sent in with only guns, their wits, and a week's supply of food.  Whatever happened to being prepared?

I'm not going to talk too much about what the new team finds in the Shimmer - just that the proper technical term would be some weird, freaky-ass shit.  Like, think of the last 10 minutes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" mixed with "Interstellar" and "Arrival", maybe throw in "War of the Worlds" and "The Thing" to be on the safe side.  I hope I haven't given anything away here.

The film also tries to make some kind of point about life, from a scientific point of view - we look at the way that cells reproduce, the way that a human embryo develops into a fetus, and that process also bears some resemblance to the way that cancer cells grow and form a tumor.  I guess that's like the yin and yang of biology right there.  But it only leads to more questions, in my opinion - like, if you trace that process back billions of years, does that mean that all life on earth came from one cell? But then where did THAT cell come from?  Was it an accident, a mutation, a random bunch of chemicals and materials that got struck by lightning?  Of course, we could never know - some people say the first cell on earth might have arrived on a meteorite, but then where did it come from before that?  That doesn't answer the question, it just moves its location.

Also, the process of cells reproducing doesn't really completely explain a few things, like humans start out as a fertilized egg, which is two cells coming together, a sperm cell and an egg cell.  Together they each have half the genetic material to form a new full cell, which splits to become two and then four cells, eight and so on.  But at some point those cells have to specialize, like THIS cell is going to end up in the fetus's heart, and this one's going to be a tiny bit of a hair follicle, and so on.  How does THAT happen?  Some theories have suggested that what we now know as human organs were once organisms on their own, and somehow they came together to form more complex biological systems that worked together - like some organisms were better at processing food, and others could see and others had chemicals that could fight infections.  And over billions of years of interactions both good and bad, somehow we ended up with things like reptiles and mammals with internal organs that did different things.  I don't know, a planet full of eyeballs and hearts and lungs floating around, trying to figure out how to work together is just way too weird.

I think it's also a huge stretch that someone with so much knowledge in biology would also have a military background, but what do I know?  I'll have to withhold my other N.P.'s because I don't want to even come close to giving away the film's ending.  Just know that they're there.

Also starring Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Gina Rodriguez (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Benedict Wong (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Sonoya Mizuno, David Gyasi (last seen in "Interstellar")

RATING: 6 out of 10 combat boots

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Year 11, Day 2 - 1/2/19 - Movie #3,102

BEFORE: OK, that's one film down for 2019, only 299 more to go...

If you're wondering why I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions yet, it's because I took care of most of the things I wanted to do last January, like catch up on TV (easy to do over the holiday break) and get my hearing checked.  I didn't manage to get my hearing FIXED, but I did get it checked, that should count for something.  My other resolution last year was to watch more films on Netflix - that definitely got done.

Beyond that, I think I've got leftover resolutions from 2017 that weren't attended to, like taking a look at my modest retirement account to figure out if I should be making additional contributions to it, and beyond THAT, I've got to finish re-alphabetizing my comic books (I only got to the letter "D" in December) and take some more longboxes to my storage unit.  There's other work that needs to be done at home, like hiring someone to fix the hole in the basement ceiling and maybe get a plumber to figure out how to get my wedding ring out from behind the bathroom vanity, where it fell sometime last summer.  I can't move the vanity because the sink is in it, and the pipes are in place - so I'll have to call in a professional at some point.

All the others are standard "good idea" sort of resolutions - try to lose some weight, think about getting a better job somehow, etc.  I suppose I should finish replacing all my music cassettes with digital files, because I stopped a couple months ago after hitting the letter "W", and I think I should probably look into dropping some cable channels to try to save some money.  When my last DVR got replaced I lost the ability to dub movies from HBO and Cinemax to DVD, because those channels run some kind of signal that prevents dubbing - and it's been 6 months since I tried figuring out a workable solution, so those channels now are just streaming services to me.  Whatever - but I haven't recorded anything good off the Encore channels in months, so maybe I can drop those.  As I said yesterday, I'd love it if there were ONE service that could stream every movie, any time, without them ever going away, for one low fee - but even as I type that, it sounds impossible.  Maybe in a couple years....

Jason Bateman carries over from "Game Night", and now I realize that I could have put that film and tonight's film right after "Office Christmas Party" - why didn't I do that?  Then my post-christmas films would have been all about games and toys, and thematically that fits right in with Christmas.  What the hell was I thinking?  But then again, if I hadn't saved these two films for January, I might not have had a clear linking path between Jan. 1 and Feb. 1 - so you see, most of the time everything works out for the best.  Umm, sure, let's go with that.

THE PLOT: Molly Mahoney is the awkward and insecure manager of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, the strangest, most fantastic toy store in the world.  But when Mr. Magorium, the 243-year-old eccentric who owns the store, bequeaths the store to her, a dark and ominous change begins to take over the once-remarkable emporium. 

AFTER: This might seem like an odd direction for me to go, because I think this film has a bit of a reputation as a bomb, either critically or financially, so why waste a slot on it?  Well, I was trying to clear the DVR a bit, and I needed another movie to go with tomorrow's film, and as I mentioned before, I'm limited now by which channels will allow their programming to be dubbed, so this fit the bill.  I admit I was curious about this film, like if it's bad, how bad is it?  And more importantly, WHY is it bad?  Like is it stupid, or did it just fail to connect with the audience somehow?

After watching it, it's tough to say.  It almost feels like it was trying too hard, or maybe it aimed a little too high in its attempts to generate a sense of wonder, does that make sense?  Like it was a little too obvious in stating what it was trying to do, which was to entertain.  I think a movie needs to tell a good story first, and not be all in-your-face with its goals, as if it's saying, "Hey, everybody, look over here, look how dazzling I am?  Are you not entertained?  Come on, I'm trying really hard!" In other words, stop talking about it and start being about it - and all this film wants to do is talk about how magical everything is.

I mean, I get it, it's a toy store where everything seems to be alive and move on its own, and the usual rules of gravity and time/space don't apply.  But is that really magical?  I feel the need to break down the concept of "magic" into three distinct things - there's magician magic, there's real life magic, and then there's movie magic.  Magician magic is the stuff magicians do, like making playing cards disappear and then re-appear inside a sealed box, or appearing to saw a lady in half, or pretending to make the Statue of Liberty disappear.  Magician magic is not real, there's a simple enough explanation for every trick, most of which can be found on the internet, and if I can't guess how a trick is done, I look it up immediately, because I constantly need to reassure myself what is real and what is not.  And magicians are liars, if they say "I'm about to do magic", they're not, and if they say, "I'm going to saw this lady in half", then I know for sure that's not what they're about to do.  The only non-lying magicians are people like Penn & Teller, who are at least honest about the fact that they're about to lie to you, and that all magicians are liars.

Next there's real-life magic, and this is the sort of thing that happens when you meet the love of your life, or someone makes a large donation to charity, or gives someone their kidney or something.  These are real, possible, tangible things, but they have enormous effects on our outlook and well-being, plus they're not always logical, and so because they can't always be explained, their effects are considered a form of magic.  Then there's movie magic, which is all about special effects, and making the unreal appear to be real - and since most people don't get enough real-life magic in their lives, watching movies can sometimes work as a sort of stand-in.  Personally, since I no longer believed in magician magic, I think I set out on a career in movies because it was magic that I did believe in.  But just as a magician knows how to do his tricks, going to film school taught me how the magic was made, so for a while I didn't believe in this magic either.  It took me years after film school to get back my love for movies, can you imagine that?

Now, as I see it, here's the problem with "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" - you can't just fill the screen with movie magic in an attempt to create real-life magic.  That, in itself, is just not enough.  There comes a point where "more" isn't more at all, it becomes too much.  If everything within the walls of the toy store is magical, then doesn't that cheapen magic in some way?  Compare that to a film like "Big" where there was ONE magical fortune-telling device that did something incredible.  It's a little more believable, right?  And then a kid has an encounter with it, and later needs to find that one magical machine to put things right again.  Or take "Field of Dreams", where there's ONE magical ball-field in Iowa where the ghosts of the old ball-players appear.  If the ghosts appeared at every baseball field in the country, then that wouldn't be special, you could see them every time you bought a ticket to a game, and then you'd grow tired of that, as special as it might be.

So here we have a store where the owner is magical, and the paper airplanes are magical and the finger-paints are magical and the books are magical, and damn, but isn't all this magic exhausting?  And then whenever the movie lags, it's "Hey, look, there's something magical over THERE" and that's when I feel it's just trying to hard to get my attention and win me over.  Now, I should state that I don't have any children, so I've never gone through that period of adulthood where I have to play with kids, read stories to kids, and get to re-connect with that childlike belief that everything is possible, including the things we can think of that probably aren't.  I do watch movies aimed at kids, but I do so from an adult non-breeder perspective, so they affect me differently, and as always, your mileage may vary.

The cynical part of me is cynical enough to say that someone just set out to do a gender-swapped "Mary Poppins" with the Mr. Magorium character, or riff on Willy Wonka, because weird adult characters who both entertain kids and teach people lessons have a solid cinema history, but I'd like to think there's more to this film than that.  But I'm JUST not seeing it.  The main lesson here seems to be if you've lost your way creatively in your career, just hold on and surround yourself with friends who are more talented, and eventually you'll get your mojo back.  But it's also possible that there's nothing really there, that the film just functions like a big, dark mirror, and different people are going to see different things in it, depending on what they bring to the table.

So I think this definitely belongs in the category of "OK, all of this is probably a big metaphor for something, but for WHAT?"  The death of a parent of loved one?  The fact that adults work too hard and forget how to play?  The fact that the only limits people have are self-imposed?  Honestly, I don't have a clue, I'm just grasping at straws.

My sole NITPICK POINT tonight is about that age-old question that Mr. Magorium asks, which is why hot dogs are sold in 10-pack but the buns are sold in 8-packs.  Umm, sorry but this was covered years ago, like in the 2nd year of the internet people finally got to the bottom of it.  It's no longer a mystery, that's all I'm saying.  First off, if you're having a big party, just buy 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of buns.  Boom, 40 hot dogs, 40 buns, no more problems, thanks to math.  Secondly, you CAN find hot dogs sold in 8-packs, you just have to look a little harder on the store shelves and pick the right brand.  (I've heard you can also find hot dog rolls sold in 10-packs, but I have not personally looked for them.) 

Finally, the "reason" this happens is not (as this film posits) in case you drop a couple of hot dogs, nor is it because some people like eating their hot dog without a bun.  Going gluten-free is a recent development, after all.  The reason this occurs is because butchers and bakers package their foods separately and differently.  Often (I won't say "always", that's how you get into trouble) 10 hot dogs together weigh one pound (though again, if you buy the larger hot dogs, it can be 8) and bakers, for whatever reason, determined that 8 buns stack the best on store shelves.  Or some people say since they're baked in 4-roll pans, that's how they ended up getting packaged.  Yes, it would be a perfect world if butchers and bakers got together and worked this all out before going to market, but they just didn't, because it's not a perfect world, OK?  Back in the day you had butcher shops and bakeries, and nobody bought their sausages and rolls at the same time.  It's only since the invention of the supermarket that anybody even thought of this as a problem - both butchers and bakers then stated that the other fellow had to change the way they were selling things, and anyway, people had more important things to worry about, like World War I and fighting cholera.   So there you go, it's no longer one of life's unanswerable lingering questions.  Plus, if you really wanted to investigate this, you wouldn't go to ask a hot dog vendor like Mr. Magorium did.  Why would a hot dog vendor even care, much less know the answer? Wasn't there some Oscar Mayer company hotline he could call?

Also starring Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)", Natalie Portman (last seen in "Brothers"), Zach Mills (last seen in "Super 8"), Ted Ludzik (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Rebecca Northan, Kiele Sanchez, Jonathan Potts, Mike Realba, David Collins, Marcia Bennett, Quancetia Hamilton, with a cameo from Steve Whitmire as Kermit the Frog (last heard in "The Muppet Christmas Carol").

RATING: 3 out of 10 integers in the Fibonacci sequence

Game Night

Year 11, Day 1 - 1/1/19 - Movie #3,101

BEFORE: Out with the old, in with the new.  It's January 1, all the digit counters are re-set and we prepare for another year that we all hope will be better, in some way, though we know deep down, in many ways it will just be more of the same.  But that's "stinking thinking" and I won't have it taint the new year.  There will be plenty of bad movies willing to take care of that.

When I'm looking for a film to start off the new year, I have to start by looking at February.  The romance chain for February is all figured out, so I'm looking to link to one of its two ends in something close to 30 or 31 steps.  Unfortunately, it's almost as hard to link backwards as it is to link forwards, so there's a large document with all the cast lists of the films available to me, and it's color-coded, anyone whose name appears more than once is in light blue, all the other names are in black.  And when I put two films next to each other and they share an actor, I turn that person's name from blue to red, so I can see the connection better.  There's some trial and error involved, as each film probably has at least three or four blue names, representing the different paths I can choose.

Some films are unlinkables, though, and others are "one-linkables", meaning they currently connect to only one other film on the list.  When I start with my February 1 film and develop a chain of about 30 films that then ends with a one-linkable, that chain could be the one.  So I do want to hit a dead end, but it's all about hitting it at the right time.  So when I reverse that, I know that if I start HERE, with "Game Night", I'll make it to Feb. 1 right on schedule.  Then I can review those 30 or 31 films and ask myself, "Do these films seem important, are they the ones that I want to make a priority?" and if the answer is "Yes", I can proceed.  Admittedly, it's an inexact science, but it's a process that keeps me going.

The romance chain extends into mid-March, and I've got some ideas for the next 10 or so films, but that's as far as I can go, because by then there will be new films on the list, and therefore different linking opportunities.

Before we dive in, it's time for my annual long-distance dedication to someone who's no longer with us - Carrie Fisher and Tom Petty were the recipients for the last two years.  The obvious choice would be Stan Lee, who left this mortal plane in the closing weeks of 2018, and that's someone who created a large body of work with a wide variety of characters, a story-teller beloved for his craft who was very popular, and also someone I got to meet in person several times, because I've been to so many Marvel stockholder meetings and Comic-Cons.  But then there's also Will Vinton, who died in October, and he also created a large body of work, just in clay animation instead of comics, and he was also a popular story-teller known as a giant in his field, and he's also someone I met several times, in fact I sort of worked for him for a number of years.  I can't possibly choose, so they're going to have to share the honor.  Well, I'm entering my second decade of doing this, and it's the start of Year 11, and what's an "11" but two ones, so for the first time I dedicate this Movie Year to two people.

THE PLOT: A group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery when one's shady brother is seemingly kidnapped by dangerous gangsters.

AFTER: The safest bet here was to assume that an innocent game night would soon spiral out of control, because who would want to go to the movies and watch as people play completely normal games of Pictionary, Charades and Taboo?  That would be the worst movie ever.  Plus, "things spiral out of control" is the exact plot of, like, the last 8 Jason Bateman movies, right?  ("Office Christmas Party", "The Family Fang", "The Gift", "Bad Words", "Horrible Bosses", "Identity Thief" - yeah, I stand by that.)

It turns out I was right on the money, because on the first game night the lead couple (Max & Annie) hosts, the biggest challenge is to get all the guests into the house without alerting their neighbor, who they're trying to avoid.  He's a policeman who use to be invited to game nights, but since his wife left him, the other gamers have decided they don't want to deal with his strange mannerisms and creepy vibe.  But he still suspects the others are having game night without him, because he sees the snacks in their grocery bags, and anyway, Max's brother Brooks shows up and parks RIGHT outside, thereby blowing any efforts to conceal the night's activity.  (Everything's kind of important here, because the neighbor's job, creepy vibe and even his dog become part of the story later on...)

The short-term solution to this problem seems simple - have game night at someone else's house.  And that's what they do, since Brooks is in town for a while, and renting a McMansion across town.
When the guests (Max & Annie, plus two other couples) come over, Brooks - who's been overshadowing his little brother for years, with a better job, fast cars, and a personality that's always cutting Max down to size - has something besides board games planned, one of those interactive murder-mystery games that you hire an outside company to stage.  (Is that really a thing?  I'll have to remember to check...).

In an astounding coincidence that could only happen in the movies, the staged kidnapping is interrupted by what could be a real one, because as I saw in "Rough Night", the average Americans are just one knock on the door away from interacting with random jewel thieves or gangsters who are just roaming the streets of Miami, or in this case Atlanta.  But thanks to bad timing and comic misunderstanding, the couples set off in their own directions, trying to solve Brooks' kidnapping, which they think is all part of a game.  Ha ha, the average American can't tell the difference between a real gun and a fake one, or a real car chase and a staged one.

Once again, I feel like some screenwriters have created some reality here that bears little resemblance to the real world, so recently I've seen an office christmas party, a bachelorette party and now a murder-mystery party that don't follow regular rules, but are clearly just designed to spread the maximum amount of chaos over the movie screen.  And really, aren't these three movies that are dipping into the same subject matter, with slightly different details in each one?  Coming next year is "Easter Party", where a kids' egg hunt is interrupted by a bunch of jewel thieves who have hidden their diamonds inside plastic eggs, and they need to find them before the kids do, but they're foiled by Jason Bateman in a bunny suit.  OK, probably not, but there are only so many types of parties left to make movies about.  In other news, it looks like that movie called "Supercon", about a heist set at a comic convention got released last April, only I missed it.  It got terrible reviews, but since I thought up the idea for a movie like that years ago (after carrying about $1500 in cash across the convention center to put down a deposit for the next year's booth), I'd probably give it a look.

Let's get to the NITPICK POINTS, though.  I did like how the lead couple met, as captains of rival pub trivia teams.  I lived in that world for a long time, since I spent 8 years on a trivia team, and I know those people are very competitive.  A romance between two trivia "alphas" might play out sort of like it does here.  But trivia is kind of its own animal, just because you're good at pub trivia, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll also be good at Jenga, or Dance Dance Revolution, or Pictionary, for that matter.  Those all require different skill sets - I also played Dungeons & Dragons for a five-year stretch, and those players are a different type of nerd, too.  If a D&D player moved into gaming, he'd probably play strategy games like Settlers of Catan.  So someone skilled at trivia would probably prefer games like Trivial Pursuit (duh) over other fare.  And murder-mysteries are their own thing, probably enjoyed most by fans of detective novels, not hardcore gamers.  The payoffs are different, if you're a competive person just out to WIN, a murder mystery might not scratch that itch, because the goal there is to SOLVE and be correct.  Think about the different goals in playing Monopoly and Clue, they require different strategies.

And of course, the coincidences and conveniences here represent a very far stretch, though I don't want to get too deep into them here.  Reality is subjective, and it changes several times here as the true nature of the game is slowly revealed, and the players get deeper and deeper into the world of organized crime and underground fight clubs.  I kind of want to watch this one again, just to find all the little Easter eggs - like the "tilt-shift" effect that's used in the aerial long-shots, which make the houses look like the famous Life board game.  Then there are subtle references to Simon Says, Charades, Monopoly and even Operation peppered throughout the film.  Something about the car chases seemed a little bit off, but now I realize that the camera often took the overhead POV shot of the couple's car, and the car seemed to remain static, with the rest of the world rotating around it when it swerved - that could easily be the POV shot from a video-game like "Grand Theft Auto 3".

And the movie itself nearly gets stolen by Jesse Plemons as the neighbor cop - who comes off as creepy because he speaks about things with no emotion.  That's got to be difficult for an actor, to play someone who's depressed and speaks in a monotone, but to also give the impression that there's a lot going on inside, like one wrong move and this guy could spring into action, and you're just not sure what he's capable of.  Remember what they always say after tragedies, how someone was a very quiet guy and kept to himself, and nobody could have predicted what that guy was going to do.  THIS is that guy.

Starring Jason Bateman (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Rachel McAdams (last heard in "The Little Prince"), Kyle Chandler (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Billy Magnussen (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Kylie Bunbury (last seen in "The Sitter"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Hostiles"), Michael C. Hall (last seen in "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Danny Huston (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Shaft"), Chelsea Peretti (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Camille Chen, Zerrick Williams, Joshua Mikel (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), R.F. Daley, Michael Cyril Creighton (last seen in "The Post"), Brooke Jaye Taylor, Natasha Hall, Malcolm Hughes, Jessica Lee, with cameos from directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Jenga pieces

year 10 wrap-up / Year 11 preview

That's the buzzer, signifying the end of regulation play for another year.  Ten years down, God knows how many to go, since I'm no closer to wrapping up then I was at this time last year.  I guess the clock is ticking, because we broke the planet and we'll all be either burned up by global warming or drowning under the rising sea levels, or some combination of the two, within the next two decades.  So there's that to look forward to, I suppose - at least there will be a clear sign that it's time for me to stop.  But let's look back on the year that was, and what it was all about.  This is my annual attempt to draw some form of meaning from a collection of 300 essentially random films, only they weren't really random, and they don't always add up to some larger meaning, but I feel I have to try.

If the ratings are any indication, then my favorite film seen in 2018 was "Ready Player One".  Of course, your mileage may vary, and it's possible that maybe the results were skewed by watching that film on a good day, or maybe it was very relevant to my thoughts and feelings on THAT day, perhaps a re-watch is in order, because it's airing on HBO now - but I just don't have the time, since Movie Year 11 starts in just a few days.  But regardless, this was the only film I saw this year that got a "9" on my scale.  The runner-ups with scores of "8" were "Avengers: Infinity War", "Black Panther", "Incredibles 2" and "Solo: A Star Wars Story".  Yeah, that seems about right for a geek like me.  Nearly 20 films scored "7", so I have to count that as a good year.  On the opposite end of the scale, I saw three films that only rated a "2" from me, which were the 1999 rom-com "The Bachelor", last year's animated film "The Emoji Movie", and 2014's weird horror film "Tusk".  I stand by those ratings.

(I need to note that some films arrived in theaters too late for consideration in 2018 - or too late to be worked into the chain, anyway.  So at the moment I don't know how "Aquaman", "Venom", "Ralph Breaks the Internet", "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", "Fantastic Beasts 2", "Bohemian Rhapsody", and several others would have stacked up.  But since I'm planning on having access to Academy screeners, I hope to work these films in during the first few months of 2019.  More on this later.)

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD, if you didn't see all of the 300 films that I did this year.

1) By topic, there's no denying that superhero/comic-book films are still dominating at the box office, and are (with the notable exceptions above) usually the things I pay the most attention to, and run out to the theater to see.  Tangential to this topic are the "people with powers" films, even if they're not technically super-heroic, I'm still going to lump them together.  In addition to the Marvel/Disney films "Black Panther", "Avengers; Infinity War", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "Deadpool 2" and "Incredibles 2", this subject covers "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Matilda", plus "Split", and even works its way into the spy genre, because the agents in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" might as well be seen as possessing super-human abilities.  Plus "Kingsman" is based on a comic book, and so were the films "Atomic Blonde" and "Wilson", and when you think about it, "The Legend of Tarzan" and even the Sherlock Holmes films are based on the same sort of pulpy fiction.  What do they all have in common?  They all have people using their best human and super-human abilities to band together to defeat the evil power, it's as simple as that - that's why these films almost always work, because we love to see heroes working together.

2) Of course, superheroes are fantasy characters, but they're not the only ones.  On the flip-side of that there are the monsters and fantasy creatures, which in some years gets relegated to my horror chain in October.  But in 2019 the creatures came out in other months, too, and we had orcs in "Warcraft" and "Bright", the big tree monster in "A Monster Calls" and the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast", plus all kinds of trolls and goblins in "The Spiderwick Chronicles", and a yeti, werewolf, giant mantis, evil garden gnomes and a sinister ventrioquist dummy in "Goosebumps" - and then there were dinosaurs and dragons in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" and "Pete's Dragon", plus all kinds of amazing creatures in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them".  Then when October finally DID come around, my focus this year was on ghosts ("Ghost Story", "Topper", "Crimson Peak", "The Others"), two different films titled "The Mummy", 10 classic films about Dracula, and let's not forget about the one-offs like "The Curse of the Werewolf", "Kong: Skull Island", Pennywise the clown from "It" the Gill-Man from "The Shape of Water" and those weird Brat-zis from "Yoga Hosers".  On second thought, let's forget about those.  Oh, and I don't want to forget the alien life-form seen in "Life".

3) Largely, the superheroes and the monsters are franchise films, meaning that they're part of something bigger - why make money from one movie when you can make MORE money from several films?  Like the Marvel Universe, which brought me a respectable number of films this year.  And then the 2017 film "The Mummy" was supposed to be the start of a whole new Universal Monsters franchise, only that now seems like it's DOA.  And it looks like "Kong: Skull Island" is a prequel to a combined King Kong/Godzilla universe to come.  I skipped "Aquaman" so there was no representation from the DC Universe this year, but to be fair, the DCU had a big 2017 with both "Wonder Woman" and "Justice League".  And "Fantastic Beasts" is really a continuation of the "Harry Potter" franchise, but striking out in a new direction.  But you can't talk about franchises without breaking them down into prequels, sequels, remakes and re-boots.  In its own way, "The Mummy" was both a remake and a reboot, plus a prequel that didn't work out.  And all the Marvel films were tie-ins or sequels, like "Ant-Man and the Wasp" was a sequel to "Ant-Man", but also tied in to "Avengers: Infinity War", which itself was a sequel to "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Captain America: Civil War".  So was "Black Panther", and of course "Deadpool 2" was a sequel to the original from just a couple years ago.

4) Other sequels I watched this year: "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "Split", "Bridget Jones's Baby", "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2", "T2 Trainspotting", "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", "War for the Planet of the Apes", "Goon: Last of the Enforcers", "Mascots" (sort of), "Mute" (again, sort of), "The Trip to Italy" and "The Trip to Spain", "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", "Mulan 2", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", "Incredibles 2", "Kong: Skull Island", "Dracula's Daughter", "Son of Dracula" and "Topper Returns".  And I guess you can count "Mr. Holmes" as a sequel to the other Sherlock Holmes stories.  For prequels, there was only one this year, but it was a big one: "Solo: A Star Wars Story" gave us the back story of how Han met Chewie and Lando and became a smuggler.

Then there were a few films that I finally got around to, only to have Hollywood release a sequel shortly after - it's like they don't want me to make any progress at all or something.  This list includes
"Mamma Mia", "Fantastic Beasts", and "Goosebumps".  After that I half-expected Hollywood to announce a sequel to "Junebug" or "I Heart Huckabees".

But it was also a big year for remakes - like "Going in Style", "The Postman Always Rings Twice", "Show Boat", "Beauty and the Beast", "Ben-Hur", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Pete's Dragon", "Fahrenheit 451", "It", "The Stepford Wives" and "Flatliners".  But I'm going to count the following films as re-boots rather than remakes, because they're so very different from the original films that they launched from: "The Legend of Tarzan", "Shaft", "The Birth of a Nation" and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle".  But overall, it's no surprise that everything old is new again, one way or the other.  If a movie made money before, someone will find a way to put a new spin on it and get it released again, so it can make money again.

5) Another way Hollywood makes money is by adapting books into films, and for once, I'm not talking about comic books.  This year I watched all of the Basil Rathbone "Sherlock Holmes" films, some of which were adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ground-breaking detective stories, but some had original storylines.  Similarly, the Dracula films all tie back to the original novel in some way, but then tend to go their own direction, and the same goes for "The Legend of Tarzan".  But classic novels were also turned into films like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" (umm, very loosely...) and then more serious novels like "Ben-Hur", "Fahrenheit 451", "Murder on the Orient Express" and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  Then some films came from more modern novels like "Bridget Jones's Baby", "Dolores Claiborne", "The Girl on the Train", "The Human Stain", "The Dinner" and the horror book "It".  Others were inspired by YA novels like "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", "Holes", "Goosebumps" and "The Spiderwick Chronicles".  And if I'm being honest, I've had two books on my shelf for years that I've been meaning to read - those are "Ready Player One" and "The Shack", but now I've seen both movies, so I don't have to read the books.

Some films were adapted from plays, not books - these include "Fences", "Proof", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Show Boat", "Kiss Me Kate", "Mamma Mia!", and "Carnage".  "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" was written as a movie, but then it became a stage musical later on.  But then, so did "King Kong".

6) Speaking of books, I watched a fair number of films about famous authors, too, like "Hemingway & Gellhorn", "Miss Potter", "Rebel in the Rye" (about J.D. Salinger) and "On the Road" (which was somehow not just written by Jack Kerouac, it was also about him, only his character in the book has a different name, Sal Paradise, and honestly, I just found that to be incredibly confusing.)

7) But while I'm talking about being "On the Road", let's talk about road trips - because in addition to all those trips back and forth Sal made between California, Denver and North Carolina, Movie Year 2018 started out with a road trip in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday", as he left his home-town for the very first time (umm, just forget that time he went to the Alamo in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, OK?) Then in January, a bunch of Soviet POW's walked all the way across Asia in "The Way Back" - which I say counts as a road trip.  Amy Adams found herself falling for an Irish man in "Leap Year" as they attempted to cross the Irish countryside, while everything kept going wrong. Same goes for the bunch of Americans traveling to Greece in "My Life in Ruins" and Richard Burton with a bus-load of Baptist women touring Mexico in "The Night of the Iguana".  Burton and Liz Taylor also got stuck at Heathrow airport in "The V.I.P.s", and a train got stuck in the snow in "Murder on the Orient Express".  Another ill-advised trip was seen in "Silence", where two 17th century Jesuit priests traveled to Japan to find their mentor, and it didn't end well.

A man went on a road-trip to Kansas with his father to get some film developed in "Kodachrome", another man went traveling on a tractor to see his sick brother in "The Straight Story", and a Japanese boy went to the island of garbage to try to get his dog back in "Isle of Dogs".  Paul Rudd played a lost man who found a new purpose caring for a teen with muscular dystrophy by taking him on a road-trip to see America's weirdest roadside attractions.  Then later in the year, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon played two guys named Steve and Rob who went on "The Trip to Italy" and "The Trip to Spain".  Any time those guys want to travel around and eat at fine restaurants, I'm happy to watch them do that. And then finally, in "Queen of the Desert", Nicole Kidman played Gertrude Bell, who traveled through all of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia making maps and meeting sheiks, which apparently was very important in the early 1900's.  (My wife and I went on a road trip, too - in October we flew to Dallas and drove to Austin, San Antonio, Houston and New Orleans on a BBQ Crawl.)

8) But let's stick with the Middle East for a minute - it's a common enough theme these days, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are technically still going on, even through three presidents have declared them to be various stages of "over".  In films this year, I saw war, terrorism or fear of the Middle East depicted in these films: "Rendition", "Rock the Kasbah", "War Machine" and "Brothers".

Other war films included "Hacksaw Ridge" (WWII), "Allied" (WWII), "Heartbreak Ridge" (invasion of Grenada), "The Beguiled" (Civil War) and "The Birth of a Nation" (1831 slave rebellion)

9) Which leads me to films about spies & hit-men.  The latter were seen in "Mr. Right" and "The Hitman's Bodyguard", both of which showed that it's hard to be a hit-man and have a personal life, too.  This was also the case in "Allied", where two spies fell in love during a mission in World War II,  and Brad Pitt ended up falling out of his marriage to Angelina Jolie.  The CIA had trouble in North Africa in "Rendition", an MI6 agent had trouble in Berlin in 1989 in "Atomic Blonde", and terrorists tried to shoot down the President's plane in "Big Game".  The more fantastic/ridiculous side of secret agents was depicted in both "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" and "XXX: Return of Xander Cage", but other spy films were based on real incidents, like the Robert Hanssen incident in "Breach" and the Valerie Plame affair in "Fair Game".

10) If you recall the Valerie Plame affair, it involved VP Dick Cheney "accidentally" revealing the name of a CIA agent in the media, forgetting that secret agents are supposed to be secret.  Whoopsie. Other government wrong-doing was on display in "The Post", which was about the Pentagon Papers, a long set of documents about how the U.S. botched the Vietnam War, and "Kill the Messenger", where another reporter exposed the CIA's involvement in cocaine trafficking and funding the Contras in the 1980's.  This topic was seen again in "American Made", but from the POV of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who flew missions for the CIA, smuggling guns and drugs.  And if you believe the film "Moonwalkers", then the CIA also had a hand in faking the moon landing.  Your call on that one.
I also saw large bad government actions in both the past ("The Birth of a Nation") and the future ("Fahrenheit 451") and even in Japan ("Isle of Dogs").  Meanwhile, on the local level, there was police wrong-doing in "Shaft", "Fruitvale Station" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri".

11) But while I'm taking on the government, you just can't talk about it these days without thinking about deceptions and scams - already I've seen numerous reviews of 2018 that are calling it the Year of the Lie, with the President as possibly the biggest liar of all time (way too many falsehoods in his speeches and tweets to even START to list here...) so in that vein, I'm going to recap all the lies, deceptions and scams I saw in films this year.  Let's start with the heists and property crimes - the bank robberies in "Going in Style" and "Hell or High Water", the insurance scam in "The Postman Always Rings Twice", the ponzi scheme in "The Polka King" and the fraudulent business development grant in "T2 Trainspotting".  There were sketchy arms deals in "War Dogs", a sketchy gold-prospecting scheme in "Gold", and a very sketchy violin auction/switcheroo in "The Red Violin".  Then the largest embezzlement bank fraud ever in Canada was seen in "Owning Mahowny", which was immediately followed by Philip Seymour Hoffman going out of his way to cover up his stepson's death in "God's Pocket".

Little lies grew into big problems in films like "Atonement", with its false rape claim, and "The Human Stain", where a man kept his race secret to get ahead.  Another man played fast and loose with the rules of documentary filmmaking to get ahead in "While We're Young", and a teen cheated to get ahead in the Mr. Julius Caesar competition in "The Emperor's Club".  A woman was led to believe that she was a great singer in "Florence Foster Jenkins" (only she wasn't) and another woman with memory problems was lied to in "Before I Go to Sleep".  And a man got so jealous of his friend's success that he accidentally killed his horse, then couldn't find a way to tell him, in "Envy".

But wait, there's more - a whole family of performance artists/scam artists got back together in "The Family Fang", a man told a bunch of lies about his former classmate in "The Gift" in order to destroy his marriage, and a young woman seduced a photographer to get back at him for his previous sexual misconduct in "Hard Candy".  Not enough to prove this was the Year of the Lie?  What about "The Greatest Showman", the film about P.T. Barnum, one of the biggest liars of all time?  Or what about "Collateral Beauty", where a man's friends hire actors to play the abstract concepts of Time, Death and Love in order to break him out of his funk?  What about Joaquin Phoenix's alleged attempt to quit acting and start a rap career, as seen in "I'm Still Here"?  People now say that whole movie was a faked documentary, but I think the jury's still out - that could just be an excuse to cover up a really, really misguided career move.  Or if it was all fake, then I was made to watch a fake documentary, which in the end is just as bad.  Either way, Joaquin Phoenix owes me two hours of my time back.

12) Bigger crimes, like assault, kidnapping and murder, were depicted in films like "Split", "Nocturnal Animals", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Dolores Claiborne", "The Girl on the Train", "Shaft", "Three Billboards", "Alpha Dog", "Like Minds", "Secret in their Eyes", "Hard Candy", "Dead Calm" and "The Shack".  And the topic of death was further explored in films like "Flatliners" and "Avengers: Infinity War" (Umm, no spoilers here but the MCU is obviously a few superheroes short now.  Don't worry, I think it's only temporary.). Then I think I have to give another nod here to the "Sherlock Holmes" movies, because most of them were about solving murders.

13) But there's no getting around it, death was everywhere this year, and it affected key holidays like Mother's Day and Father's Day.  There were dead or dying parents in "People Like Us", "A Monster Calls", "Beginners", "You Can Count on Me", "Proof", "Two Weeks", "One True Thing", "Kodachrome", "Winter Passing", "Fences", "Wish I was Here", "No Reservations" and "Happy Tears".  Meanwhile there were dead spouses in "Love Liza", "Deadpool 2", "Dolores Claiborne", "Smart People" and "Miss Potter". Children weren't exempt, because they were killed off in films like "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby", "Rabbit Hole", "Junebug", "God's Pocket", "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "Collateral Beauty", "The Book of Henry", "Fruitvale Station", "The Shack", and "The Fundamentals of Caring".  Let's face it, it was a tough year, the body count was high no matter how you look at it.

14) But there was some good news, too, there were plenty of films where kids LIVED, and ended up being really smart and precocious.  They grew up, some of them got super-powers, they went to school and fell in love in movies like "Matilda", "Gifted", "Atonement", "Pete's Dragon", "Music of the Heart", "The Florida Project", "The Squid and the Whale", "Sing Street", "The Book of Henry", "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", "Big Game" and "It".  What the heck, let's throw Jesus from "The Young Messiah" into this category, too, because that's what he supposedly was, right?  A precocious kid with powers.  And the older teens went to high school and college in "Lady Bird", "The Emperor's Club", "The Edge of Seventeen", "Everybody Wants Some!!", "The Man Who Knew Infinity", and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle".

15) "Jumanji" became a video-game, and video-games also inspired the films "Assassin's Creed", "Warcraft", "Ready Player One", and the on-line dare game "Nerve".  Even text message icons got turned into a movie in "The Emoji Movie" - I'm not saying that was a good idea (it wasn't) but it did happen.

16) Video games are competitive, so that leads me right to the annual Sports round-up.  This year (as always, I suppose) I watched a couple films about boxing - "Chuck" and "Bleed for This".  But I also had a look at hockey in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers", ice skating in "I, Tonya", tennis in "Wimbledon", and roller derby in "Whip It".  It's a bit of a stretch, but I can kind of include the lesser sports here, like the extreme sports seen in "XXX: Return of Xander Cage" and "Hardcore Henry", plus there was sharp-shooting in "Annie Get Your Gun", gambling in "The House" and "Owning Mahowny", competitive butter-sculpting in "Butter" and competitive mascot-work in "Mascots". OK, since I've been to the Texas state fair I can confirm that butter-sculpting is a real thing, but on that last one, I have my doubts.

17) The biggest category for me this year, though, was the rock and pop music documentaries, over 50 of them.  I started with the Beatles, which is where my personal love of rock music began, and from there I explored as many musicians as I could in a semi-logical (OK, more or less random) order, with docs about Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Chicago, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and the Doors - and that was only Phase 1.  In Phase 2 I covered Nirvana and some more of the Seattle grunge scene, then transitioned into films about Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, the Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, back-up singers and Clive Davis.  Phase 3 sent me back to the 1960's with films about James Brown, the Beach Boys, the session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, Frank Zappa, the Who, George Harrison, David Bowie, and Alice Cooper - and from there it was a sprint to the finish through the world of 1980's heavy metal, with films about Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Lemmy from Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rush.  When you step back and look at it from a distance, it seems a bit like the story was always the same: get famous, get rich, get high and get dead, though it didn't always happen in that order.  But that seems a bit too cynical, because really, the industry's to blame at the end of the day, that hype machine that made the artists keep touring and keep spitting out albums, often at the cost of their own mental or physical health.  And that wore at me, after the films about the "27 Club" and realizing that thinking about rock music is now forever entwined with the deaths of people like Hendrix and Bowie and Joe Cocker and Glenn Frey (and Terry Kath, and Amy Winehouse, and I can go on and on...). It's sad how many have been lost, though the music's not really gone, we can keep listening to it, but for how long?

As for non-musical documentaries, there were just a couple - "I'm Still Here" and "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast".  The latter one, celebrating the accomplishments of nonagenarians like Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, was just what I needed to combat the depression of watching all those rock stars die young. 

18) In addition to the rockumentaries, there were Bio-pics about musicians/entertainers - like the story of Hank Williams in "I Saw the Light", the Four Seasons in "Jersey Boys", "The Polka King" and "Music of the Heart", "Florence Foster Jenkins", and P.T. Barnum in "The Greatest Showman".
Oddly, the other films based on real people's stories all had a common thread - they tended to end the film with real footage of their subjects, like Valerie Plame in "Fair Game", Tonya Harding in "I, Tonya", Jeff Bauman in "Stronger" and Vinny Pazienza in "Bleed for This".  The credits scenes also gave us updates on the stories of the women of NASA in "Hidden Figures", the Ryan children from "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio", Richard and Mildred Loving from "Loving", Desmond Doss from "Hacksaw Ridge", the arms dealers from "War Dogs" and the kidnappers from "Alpha Dog".  I want to say that this trend continued in "Kill the Messenger", "Fruitvale Station" and "American Made", but I'd need to double-check.  But I know for sure this happened in "The Disaster Artist", which put the fictional footage side-by-side with clips from Tommy Wiseau's film "The Room", so we could judge for ourselves how close the fiction came to reality.

This just leaves the two bio-pics about Henry VIII, which were "Anne of the Thousand Days" and "The Private Life of Henry VIII".

19) Of course, the romance category is always a big one for me, mostly in February, but they have a way of popping up in other months as well - The highlights this year were "Frankie and Johnny", "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby", "No Reservations", "Junebug", "Leap Year", "Once", "Sing Street", "Miss Potter", "Bridget Jones's Baby", "Mamma Mia!", "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2", 'Take This Waltz", "Rust and Bone", "Mr. Right", and "Wimbledon" - for the modern-set films, anyway.

Then there were the classic romances, the ones that came to me from TCM - "Flying Down to Rio", "Silk Stockings", "Easter Parade", "Royal Wedding", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Show Boat", "Kiss Me Kate", "Kismet" and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "The Comedians" and "The Sandpiper". Basically, this was my clean-up work on Fred Astaire and Burton/Taylor, combined with a tribute to Howard Keel.

And a special sub-category this year, romances with large age differences, as seen in "Smart People", "The Comedian", "A Good Year" and "Daddy Longlegs".  Basically, anything with Fred Astaire tends to exhibit this sort of storyline. 

The flip-side of romance was explored in films like "Le Divorce", "The Squid and the Whale" and "Saving Silverman", which were more about splitting up then getting together.

20) Women were more prominent than ever, which is a good thing - like Mrs. Incredible took center stage fighting crime in "Incredibles 2", and there was a strong female villain in "The Mummy" (the most recent one), and of course they tend to dominate certain romance films, like "Leap Year", "Bridget Jones's Baby" or "Miss Potter".  But hey, what about "Hard Candy", which was made well before the #metoo movement, but is as strong a statement against sexual harassment as you're likely to find.  What about "Jane Got a Gun" or "Allied" or "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"?  "Superstar"?  "I, Tonya"?  "Lady Bird"?  Maybe I'm stretching things a bit here. OK, "Hidden Figures", plus the Wasp now shares billing in the title with Ant-Man.  Progress is being made.

And a shout-out to these films for having prominent gay, bi-sexual or transgender characters: "Far From Heaven", "Albert Nobbs", "The Overnight", "Beginners", "Mamma Mia!", "The Stepford Wives", "Rough Night" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch".  

21) This might seem like an awkward segue to a very strange category, but I couldn't help but notice a recurring theme that involved loss of limbs/body modifications - a woman lost her legs in an accident in "Rust and Bone", and Jeff Bauman lost his legs at the Boston Marathon bombing in "Stronger", and of course in "Deadpool 2" the main character was always losing a hand or a leg here and there, but for him they always grew back.  In two very different films, things got very small for different reasons - superheroes shrunk to fight crime in "Ant-Man & The Wasp" and in "Downsizing", people got smaller because it made some kind of economic and resource-based sense. Then things got even weirder in "Get Out" and "The Stepford Wives" when people started using hypnotism and implants to control other people.  And in both "Hardcore Henry" and "Ghost in the Shell", people's brains were transplanted into new cybernetic bodies so they could fight criminals and defeat evil with the power of parkour.  But weirdest of all were the body modifications seen in "The Lobster", where people were turned into animals if they couldn't find their mates, and then a selfish DJ was forced to undergo operations that made him go full-walrus in "Tusk".  Yeah, some things you just can't un-see.

22) What does that leave me with? Ah, the violent Westerns: "Jane Got a Gun", "Appaloosa", "Hostiles", "The Outlaw Josey Wales"

23) And the Random dramas - like North Country" and "Roman J. Israel, Esq." Well those were both legal dramas, as was "Loving", there's a rough theme there.  Then there was "Time Out of Mind", and "Wilson", I guess those are sort of films about people being difficult and disconnecting from society, which was also seen in "The Comedian".  Truthfully I'm getting tired of making these connections, I'l like to start wrapping this up.

23) Random Sci-Fi/Fantasy (non-superhero) - "Life", "Solo: A Star Wars Story", "Fantastic Beasts", "Ready Player One", "Fahrenheit 451", "War for the Planet of the Apes"? "Mute", "Ghost in the Shell" - but I already covered most of these in the categories above.

24) Random comedies, the ones that don't really fit anywhere else, or even share anything in common - "Table 19", "Superstar", "Casa de mi Padre".

25) Action/Survival films - "The Finest Hours", "The Grey", "Silence", "Hardcore Henry", "Big Game" and such...

26) Films about Religion?  "Hacksaw Ridge", "Silence", "The Shack", and "The Young Messiah"

27) Ah, my annual rant against excessive non-linear time-jumping - this was on display in "Beginners", "Atomic Blonde", "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (split timelines, really), "Rendition" (also two timelines), "Secret in Their Eyes" (also two timelines), "Mr. Holmes" (with THREE timelines to follow), "The Girl on the Train" (also three timelines), "Atonement" (which jumped from a scene labeled "Four Years Later" to another one labeled "Six Months Earlier" - earlier than what?  Earlier than the place we started, or three and a half years after that?  Then at the end, we're shown scenes that didn't even happen...) but the award for the most time-jumping probably should go to "The Red Violin", which juggled FIVE different timelines, "Cloud Atlas"-style, though at least four of them played out in chronological order. 

Films that managed to get away with jumping around were "Deadpoool 2" (time travel worked well there, through use of Cable's time machine), "Alice Through the Looking Glass" (again, time travel, but at least driven by the plot), and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (where the time travel didn't work right, it would have created a paradox) and I'll allow the time-travel in "Avengers: Infinity War" because I think it was super-important, and motivated by the time gem.

And the following films stand accused of excessive flashbackery: "Like Minds", "Split", "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her", "Jane Got a Gun", "Dolores Claiborne", "Proof", "The Human Stain", "The Legend of Tarzan", "The Dinner", "Fruitvale Station" (which has a flashback-within-a-flashback), "Ghost Story" and "Nocturnal Animals" (which had a split timeline and flashbacks that weren't even real, since they were in a novel, but somehow were treated as if they really happened, for some reason...).

I'm going to allow the flashbacks in films like "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" and "The Family Fang", because they were dropped in to reveal key points of the back-story at the right time, which is the way they SHOULD be used. 

28) On a similar note, here were the very confusing films - the ones that left me wondering what they were all about - "Youth", "Nocturnal Animals", "I Heart Huckabees", "Smart People", "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", "Tusk" and "Yoga Hosers", "The Florida Project", "On the Road"  Then there were the movies that seemed to be metaphors for SOMETHING, only I'm not exactly sure what, like "Downsizing", "The Shack", "Tusk", "The Lobster", "Holes", "Butter", "Mute", "Happy Tears".

29) (Almost) finally, I sort of discovered the films of Noah Baumbach this year, by watching "The Squid and the Whale", "While We're Young", and "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)". I've got my eyes peeled for more work from him, with two more on my watchlist now - "Frances Ha" and "Kicking and Screaming".  So I'll re-visit this topic in February.

The whole year came (almost) to an end with two films about EPIC parties, "Office Christmas Party" and "Rough Night".  Come to think of it, there was usually two of everything this year - there were two movies about rich people meeting to discuss their children's wrong actions ("Carnage" and "The Dinner"), two films about illegal U.S. government activity in the drug trade in the 1980's, ("American Made" and "Kill the Messenger"), and two documentaries about the Grateful Dead, when quite honestly, one probably would have been enough.  And let's not forget this was the year where one guy got turned into a walrus, while another one wanted to get turned into a lobster.  That alone should give you an idea how weird this year was. 

I saw 9 of this year's 300 films in theaters this year, which for me is right about where I wanted to be. The vast majority of the films still came from premium cable, or I had dubbed them from cable to DVD.  Factoring in all of the rock docs, I figure that I watched 52 films on Netflix this year, and another 17 films on iTunes, which was my next destination if I found that a film had vanished from Netflix. And I watched another 14 films on Academy screeners, because I either needed them right away for linking purposes, or they were taking too long to appear on cable, or both.  And then ONE film was on YouTube for free, which was the documentary "Lemmy" - considering I didn't know anything about Motorhead or care for their music, the price was about right.  So streaming is up this year over last, but I'm not prepared to cut the cable cord just yet.  My system now has a lot of different ways to watch the same film, and considering that I can no longer dub from some premium channels to DVD, and the fact that my DVR has limited space, and also that movies tend to disappear from Netflix with no notice, I feel that I need all of these methods available to me right now, though if someone creates a streaming service that has every movie, all the time, for sure, that could change.

Now, before I get to the annual tally of who appeared in this year's films the most times, a brief word of explanation - I watched so many documentaries on rock and pop this year, the rules are a little bit different.  My definition of what constitutes an "appearance" differs slightly from the one that the IMDB uses.  Obviously anyone who's a major player in rock and roll had the inside track this year, so as you might expect, influential people in that world, like members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, dominate the top of my charts.

With an actor or actress, it's easier to count their appearances, but for a famous music star, they're just as likely to appear on the SOUNDTRACK of a movie than on camera in a scene - and the IMDB counts, say, an Elton John song in a film as an "appearance", but I don't.  So I have to subtract those.  And if Elton John appears on camera being interviewed, that's for sure an "appearance".  But what if he appears in a crowd scene, or archive footage from an awards show, or stock footage from Live Aid?  Sometimes the IMDB counts that, and sometimes not.  And in many cases I've had to update the IMDB listing just to get an accurate count for myself, which meant taking lots of notes while watching each film.  And then once I had my list of documentary appearances, I had to cross-reference that with the cast lists of my fiction films - because Elton John made a notable cameo in a very big spy movie, but no spoilers here.  (McCartney also made a cameo in a big Disney film, that counts too.)

There are a large number of actors on the list, too - but some really big names from the past are just not being represented any more - partially this is because I've already worked my way through the filmographies of top box-office draws like Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Julia Roberts - so there just aren't as many films with them for me to watch any more.  De Niro was in one film this year, "The Comedian", Nicholson was in two, but that's not enough to make the cut-off, which is THREE appearances. Dozens of actors had two appearances this year, even under-the-radar ones like Jaeden Lieberher and Hiroyuki Sanada - but I can't exactly go looking for another film with someone in it, just so they'll make the list, that would be madness.

Other people who easily made it on to the list include actors from the Sherlock Holmes movies (well, there were 14 of those, and they kept using the same actors again and again in different roles...) and also U.S. presidents who appeared in archive footage (in both rock documentaries and dramas set in the 1970's and 80's).  Also, people who were tangential to the music industry, like talk-show hosts and music industry executives that were interviewed several times.  Even the Beatles's spiritual guru made the list, which also features a good number of "character actors", always more likely to appear than top stars, for some reason.  I mean, when you think about how many Tom Cruise movies can be released in one year, there's definitely a limit, but with someone like Michael Shannon, all bets are off.

The winner, with 19 appearances is Sir Paul McCartney, who appeared in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "27: Gone Too Soon", "George Michael: Freedom", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", "History of the Eagles", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Concert for George", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back", "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne", "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"

Tied for second, with 14 appearances:
Nigel Bruce - 14 "Sherlock Holmes" films
Mick Jagger - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix", "Long Strange Trip", "Crossfire Hurricane", "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "27: Gone Too Soon", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
John Lennon - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "27: Gone Too Soon", "George Michael: Freedom", "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"
Basil Rathbone - 14 "Sherlock Holmes" films
Ringo Starr - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "27: Gone Too Soon", "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words", "The Kids Are Alright", "Concert for George", "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"

With 13 appearances:
Keith Richards - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Long Strange Trip", "Crossfire Hurricane", "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "27: Gone Too Soon", "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Kids Are Alright", "Rush: Time Stand Still"

With 11 appearances:

George Harrison - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Concert for George", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", 

Samuel L. Jackson - "The Legend of Tarzan", "xXx: Return of Xander Cage", "Shaft", "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", "Avengers: Infinity War", "The Red Violin", "Big Game", "The Hitman's Bodyguard", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", "Incredibles 2", "Kong: Skull Island"
Nicole Kidman - "Rabbit Hole", "The Human Stain", "The Beguiled", "Hemingway & Gellhorn", "Secret in Their Eyes", "The Others", "Before I Go to Sleep", "Dead Calm", "Queen of the Desert", "The Stepford Wives", "The Family Fang"


With 10 appearances:
Mary Gordon - 10 Sherlock Holmes movies
Jimi Hendrix - "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Brian Jones - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Crossfire Hurricane", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Charlie Watts - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Long Strange Trip", "Crossfire Hurricane", "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "27: Gone Too Soon", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Rush: Time Stand Still"

With 8 appearances:
Harry Cording - 8 Sherlock Holmes movies
Elton John - "Gaga: Five Foot Two", "George Michael: Freedom", "History of the Eagles", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom, "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
James McAvoy - "Split", 3 "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" films, "Atonement", "Wimbledon", "Deadpool 2", "Atomic Blonde"

With 7 appearances:
Fred Astaire - "Daddy Long Legs", "Flying Down to Rio", "Silk Stockings", "Easter Parade", "Royal Wedding", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Ghost Story"
David Bowie - "27: Gone Too Soon", "George Michael: Freedom", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", "David Bowie: The Last Five Years", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister"
Johnny Depp - "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Tusk", "Yoga Hosers", "The Doors: When You're Strange"
Dave Grohl - "27: Gone Too Soon", "Hype!", "Amy", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back", "Lemmy", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Woody Harrelson - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "Solo: A Star Wars Story", "War for the Planet of the Apes", "North Country", "Wilson", "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio", "The Edge of Seventeen"
Leyland Hodgson - 7 Sherlock Holmes movies
Keith Moon - "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "History of the Eagles", "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words", "The Kids Are Alright", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Richard Nixon - "Kill the Messenger", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "History of the Eagles", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Little Richard - "Jimi Hendrix", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"

With 6 appearances:
Tony Bennett - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Amy", "Gaga: Five Foot Two", "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast", "George Michael: Freedom", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Chuck Berry - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
Jack Black - "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage", "Envy", "Goosebumps", "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle", "Saving Silverman", "The Polka King"
Jake Gyllenhaal - "Nocturnal Animals", "Rendition", "Life", "Brothers", "Stronger", "Proof"
Holmes Herbert - 6 Sherlock Holmes movies
Dennis Hoey - 6 Sherlock Holmes movies
Olaf Hytten - 6 Sherlock Holmes movies
Michael Jackson - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall" "This Is It", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"
Janis Joplin - "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Toby Kebbell - "Warcraft: The Beginning", "A Monster Calls", "Ben-Hur", "War for the Planet of the Apes", "Gold", "Kong: Skull Island"
Martin Luther King Jr. - "Hidden Figures", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "History of the Eagles", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Christopher Lee - "The Mummy", "Horror of Dracula", "Dracula: Prince of Darkness", "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave", "Taste the Blood of Dracula", "Dracula A.D. 1972"
Laura Linney - "Nocturnal Animals", "Mr. Holmes", "Breach", "The Squid and the Whale", "You Can Count on Me", "The Dinner"
Meryl Streep - "Mamma Mia!", "Music of the Heart", "Rendition", "Florence Foster Jenkins", "One True Thing", "The Post"
Naomi Watts - "I Heart Huckabees", "Le Divorce", "Chuck", "The Book of Henry", "While We're Young", "Fair Game"
Ronnie Wood - "Crossfire Hurricane", "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Frederick Worlock - 6 Sherlock Holmes movies

With 5 appearances:
Betsy Aidem - "Far From Heaven", "You Can Count on Me", "Music of the Heart", "The Greatest Showman", "Winter Passing"
Wilson Benge - "Royal Wedding", 4 Sherlock Holmes movies
Richard Burton - "The Comedians", "The Sandpiper", "The Night of the Iguana", "The V.I.P.s", "Anne of the Thousand Days"
Dick Cavett - "Jimi Hendrix", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Peter Cushing - "The Mummy", "Horror of Dracula", "The Brides of Dracula", "Dracula: Prince of Darkness", "Dracula A.D. 1972"
Clive Davis - "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "George Michael: Freedom", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Viola Davis - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" movies, "Far from Heaven", "Fences"
Bob Dylan - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Colin Farrell - "The Way Back", "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", "Roman J. Israel, Esq.", "The Lobster", "The Beguiled"
Ben Foster - "Hell or High Water", "The Finest Hours", "Warcraft: The Beginning", "Alpha Dog", "Hostiles"
Gerald Hamer - 5 Sherlock Holmes movies
Ed Harris - "Appaloosa", "The Way Back", "The Human Stain", "Kodachrome", "Winter Passing"
Richard Jenkins - "I Heart Huckabees", "God's Pocket", "North Country", "Kong: Skull Island", 'The Shape of Water"
Caleb Landry Jones - "Get Out", "God's Pocket", "The Florida Project", "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "American Made"
Howard Keel - "Annie Get Your Gun", "Show Boat", "Kiss Me Kate", "Kismet", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"
Chuck Leavell - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"
Stan Lee - "Yoga Hosers", "Black Panther", "Avengers: Infinity War", "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast", "Ant-Man and the Wasp"
Ewan McGregor - "Miss Potter", "Beginners", "Beauty and the Beast", "T2 Trainspotting", "Jane Got a Gun"
T.J. Miller - "The Emoji Movie", "Ready Player One", "Deadpool 2", "Goon: Last of the Enforcers", "Office Christmas Party"
Sandra Oh - "Rabbit Hole", "Owning Mahowny", "Hard Candy", "Mulan 2", "The Red Violin"
Yoko Ono - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Isle of Dogs"
Ozzy Osbourne - "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back", "Lemmy", "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years", "Black Sabbath: The End of the End",
"God Bless Ozzy Osbourne"
Michael Ripper - "The Mummy", "The Curse of the Werewolf", "The Brides of Dracula", "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave", "Taste the Blood of Dracula"
Dee Snider - "History of the Eagles", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back", "Lemmy"
Octavia Spencer - "Hidden Figures", "Fruitvale Station", "The Shack", "Gifted", "The Shape of Water"
Bruce Springsteen - "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Springsteen & I", "20 Feet from Stardom"
Pete Townshend - "Jimi Hendrix", "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "History of the Eagles", "The Kids Are Alright", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Ian Wolfe - "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", 4 Sherlock Holmes movies
Bill Wyman - "Crossfire Hurricane", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Renee Zellweger - "Appaloosa", "Miss Potter", "Bridget Jones's Baby", "The Bachelor", "One True Thing"

With 4 appearances:
Amy Adams - "Nocturnal Animals", "Junebug", "Leap Year", "On the Road"
Nina Arianda - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" movies, "Florence Foster Jenkins"
Hal Blaine - "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Sofia Boutella - "Atomic Blonde", "Fahrenheit 451", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", "The Mummy"
Lucy Boynton - "Sing Street", "Miss Potter", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Rebel in the Rye"
Bobby Cannavale - "I, Tonya", "The Fundamentals of Caring", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"
Jessica Chastain - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" films, "Crimson Peak"
Michael Chernus - "Winter Passing", "The Dinner", "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)", "The Family Fang"
Joe Chrest - "Butter", "I Saw the Light", "On the Road", "Gifted"
Eric Clapton - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Concert for George"
Glenn Close - "Warcraft: The Beginning", "Albert Nobbs", "Le Divorce", "The Stepford Wives"
Steve Coogan - "I'm Still Here", "The Trip to Italy", "The Trip to Spain", "The Dinner"
Marion Cotillard - "Assassin's Creed", "Allied", "Rust and Bone", "A Good Year"
Roger Daltrey - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "History of the Eagles", "The Kids Are Alright", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Cyril Delevanti - "The Night of the Iguana", "The House of Fear", "Dressed to Kill", "Son of Dracula"
Kirsten Dunst - "Wimbledon", "The Beguiled", "On the Road", "Hidden Figures"
Joel Edgerton - "The Gift", "Loving", "Jane Got a Gun", "Bright"
Rebecca Ferguson - "Florence Foster Jenkins", "The Girl on the Train", "The Greatest Showman", "Life"
Will Ferrell - "Winter Passing", "Superstar", "Casa de mi Padre", "The House"
Colin Firth - "Bridget Jones's Baby", "Mamma Mia!", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", "Before I Go to Sleep"
David Foster - "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
Aretha Franklin - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "George Michael: Freedom", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Jerry Garcia - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Long Strange Trip", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Bruce Greenwood - "The Post", "Kodachrome", "Gold", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
Merv Griffin - "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago" "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Brad William Henke - "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday", "Split", "Bright", "North Country"
Tom Hiddleston - "I Saw the Light", "Avengers: Infinity War", "Kong: Skull Island", "Crimson Peak"
Ciaran Hinds - "Silence", 2 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" films, "Bleed for This"
Cissy Houston - "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom"
Isabelle Huppert - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" movies, "I Heart Huckabees"
William Hurt - "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her", "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them", "One True Thing", "Avengers: Infinity War"
Scarlett Johansson - "Avengers: Infinity War", "Isle of Dogs", "Rough Night", "Ghost in the Shell"
Robert Kennedy - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "History of the Eagles"
Bobby Keys - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"
Adam LeFevre - "You Can Count on Me", "Music of the Heart", "Fair Game", "Gold"
Jay Leno - "I'm Still Here", "Amy", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "20 Feet from Stardom"
David Letterman - "I'm Still Here", "Hype!", "Amy", "20 Feet from Stardom"
Kurt Loder - "Atomic Blonde", "Long Strange Trip", "Hype!", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Matthew Maher - "I'm Still Here", "The Finest Hours", "Lady Bird", "While We're Young"
Dean Martin - "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "The Wrecking Crew!"
George Martin - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"
Margo Martindale - "Table 19", "The Human Stain", "Downsizing", "Wilson"
Gavin Muir - 4 Sherlock Holmes movies
Terry Notary - "Warcraft: The Beginning", "Avengers: Infinity War", "War for the Planet of the Apes", "Kong: Skull Island"
Ellen Page - "Smart People", "Whip It", "Flatliners", "Hard Candy"
Josh Pais - "Going in Style", "Music of the Heart", "I Saw the Light", "The Family Fang"
Randall Park - "The House", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "The Disaster Artist", "Office Christmas Party"
Ron Perlman - "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", "Moonwalkers", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "Chuck"
Michelle Pfeiffer - "Frankie and Johnny", "People Like Us", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Ant-Man and the Wasp"
Elvis Presley - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "27: Gone Too Soon"
Lou Reed - "Jimi Hendrix", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"
John C. Reilly - "Dolores Claiborne", "Carnage", "The Lobster", "Kong: Skull Island"
Mark Ronson - "Amy", "Gaga: Five Foot Two", "George Michael: Freedom", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
Paul Rudd - "Rush: Time Stand Still", "Mute", "The Fundamentals of Caring", "Ant-Man & The Wasp"
Michael Shannon - "Loving", "Nocturnal Animals", "Fahrenheit 451", "The Shape of Water"
Frank Sinatra - "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "The Wrecking Crew!", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Karan Soni - "Deadpool 2", "Goosebumps", "Office Christmas Party", "Rough Night"
Ben Stiller - "I'm Still Here", "While We're Young", "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)", "Envy"
Ed Sullivan - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "The Doors: When You're Strange", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Elizabeth Taylor - "The Comedians", "The Sandpiper", "The V.I.P.s", "Anne of the Thousand Days"
Christopher Walken - "The Stepford Wives", "The Family Fang", "Jersey Boys", "Envy"
Andy Warhol - "The Doors: When You're Strange", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Sigourney Weaver - "A Monster Calls", "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Collected)", "Holes", "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"
Bob Weir - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Long Strange Trip", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Celia Weston - "No Reservations", "Far from Heaven", "Junebug", "Happy Tears"
Bruce Willis - "I'm Still Here", "Split", "Rock the Kasbah", "Alpha Dog"
Brian Wilson - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Stevie Wonder - "George Michael: Freedom", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
George Woodbridge - "The Mummy" (1959), "The Curse of the Werewolf", "Horror of Dracula", "Dracula: Prince of Darkness"

With 3 appearances:
Lou Adler - "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Sasha Allen - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Claud Allister - "Kiss Me Kate", "The Private Life of Henry VIII", "Dracula's Daughter"
Evelyn Ankers - "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror", "The Pearl of Death", "Son of Dracula"
Mark Arnold - "Bridget Jones's Baby", "Florence Foster Jenkins", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
Lionel Atwill - "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon", "House of Dracula"
Bob Balaban - "No Reservations", "Mascots", "Isle of Dogs"
Seth Barrish - "Going in Style", "The Post", "The Family Fang"
Jason Bateman - "The Gift", "The Family Fang", "Office Christmas Party"
Will Beinbrink - "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her", "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them", "I Saw the Light"
Jillian Bell - "Goosebumps", "Office Christmas Party", "Rough Night"
Paul Bettany - "Avengers: Infinity War", "Wimbledon", "Solo: A Star Wars Story"
Billy Bevan - "The Pearl of Death", "Terror by Night", "Dracula's Daughter"
Javier Botet - "Crimson Peak", "It", "The Mummy"
Guy Boyd - "Winter Passing", "While We're Young", "Ghost Story"
Pattie Boyd - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"
Jeff Bridges - "Hell or High Water", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
Jim Broadbent - "Bridget Jones's Baby", "The Legend of Tarzan", "Big Game"
Hillary Brooke - "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror", "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death", "The Woman in Green"
James Brown - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Ty Burrell - "Butter", "Fair Game", "Rough Night"
George H.W. Bush - "American Made", "Gaga: Five Foot Two", "The Polka King"
David Byrne - "20 Feet from Stardom", "Stop Making Sense", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
Bill Camp - "Loving", "Hostiles", "Gold"
Johnny Carson - "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Paul Cavanagh - "The Scarlet Claw", "The House of Fear", "The Woman in Green"
Dick Clark - "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Matt Clifford - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Bill Clinton - "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "History of the Eagles"
E.E. Clive - "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Dracula's Daughter"
Kurt Cobain - "27: Gone Too Soon", "Kurt & Courtney", "Hype!"
Natalie Cole - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Amy", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Toni Collette - "Like Minds", "xXx: Return of Xander Cage", "Shaft"
Alice Cooper - "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "Lemmy", "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"
James Corden - "The Emoji Movie", "George Michael: Freedom", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
James Cosmo - "Ben-Hur", "Moonwalkers", "T2 Trainspotting"
Kevin Costner - "Hidden Figures", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Steve Coulter - "Kill the Messenger", "The Birth of a Nation", "American Made"
Katie Couric - "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words"
David Crosby - "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Russell Crowe - "War Machine", "A Good Year", "The Mummy"
Tom Cruise - "American Made", "History of the Eagles", "The Mummy"
Henry Daniell - "Sherlock Holmes and Voice of Terror", "Sherlock Holmes in Washington", "The Woman in Green"
Embeth Davidtz - "Matilda", "Junebug", "The Emperor's Club"
Sammy Davis Jr. - "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Karl Denson - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
David Denman - "Smart People", "The Gift", "Fair Game"
Laura Dern - "Downsizing", "Wilson", "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"
Zoey Deutch - "Everybody Wants Some!!", "Rebel in the Rye", "The Disaster Artist"
Danny DeVito - "Matilda", "The Comedian", "I'm Still Here"
Micky Dolenz - "27: Gone Too Soon", "The Wrecking Crew!", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Adam Driver - "Silence", "While We're Young", "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"
Aaron Eckhart - "Bleed for This", "Rabbit Hole", "No Reservations"
Cass Elliot - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "The Wrecking Crew!"
John Entwhistle - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Kids Are Alright", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Brian Epstein - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"
Jon Favreau - "People Like Us", "Wimbledon", "Solo: A Star Wars Story"
Mary Forbes - "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Sherlock Holmes in Washington", "Terror by Night"
Bernard Fowler - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Stephen Fry - "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "The Man Who Knew Infinity", "Le Divorce"
Josh Gad - "Beauty and the Beast", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Wish I Was Here"
Mike Garson - "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", "David Bowie: The Last Five Years", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"
David Geffen - "George Michael: Freedom", "History of the Eagles", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
McKenna Grace - "I, Tonya", "Ready Player One", "Gifted"
Hugh Grant - "I'm Still Here", "Bridget Jones's Baby", "Florence Foster Jenkins"
Judy Greer - "War for the Planet of the Apes", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "Wilson"
Bob Gunton - "I Heart Huckabees", "Rendition", "Dolores Claiborne"
Bill Hader - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" films
Kirk Hammett - "Lemmy", "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"
Tom Hanks - "The Post", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence", "Concert for George"
Jerry Harrison - "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Stop Making Sense"
Dennis Haysbert - "Far From Heaven", "Breach", "Kodachrome"
Lucas Hedges - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "Kill the Messenger", "Lady Bird"
Philip Seymour Hoffman - "Love Liza", "Owning Mahowny", "God's Pocket"
Arthur Hohl - "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Spider Woman", "The Scarlet Claw"
Whitney Houston - "George Michael: Freedom", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Bryce Dallas Howard - "Gold", "Pete's Dragon", "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"
Kate Hudson - "Le Divorce", "Wish I Was Here", "Rock the Kasbah"
Jeremy Irons - "The Man Who Knew Infinity", "Assassin's Creed", "Appaloosa"
Hugh Jackman - "Butter", "The Greatest Showman", "Deadpool 2"
Nikki M. James - 3 "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" movies
Allison Janney - "The Girl on the Train", "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", "I, Tonya"
Jay-Z - "Amy", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Al Jardine - "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Darryl Jones - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Toby Jones - "The Man Who Knew Infinity", "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", "Atomic Blonde"
Michael B. Jordan - "Black Panther", "Fahrenheit 451", "Fruitvale Station"
Jaiden Kaine - "Mr. Right", "Hidden Figures", "The Family Fang"
Florence Kasumba - "Black Panther", "Avengers: Infinity War", "Mute"
Harvey Keitel - "The Comedian", "Youth", "Isle of Dogs"
John F. Kennedy - "Hidden Figures", "How the Beatles Changed the World", "The Doors: When You're Strange"
Patrick Kennedy - "Atonement", "Mr. Holmes", "A Good Year"
Marwan Kenzari - "Ben-Hur", "Murder on the Orient Express",  "The Mummy"
Lemmy Kilmister - "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister", "Lemmy", "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"
Carole King - "History of the Eagles", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Keira Knightley - "Atonement", "Collateral Beauty", "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"
Zoë Kravitz - "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", "No Reservations", "Rough Night"
Bill Kreutzmann - "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Long Strange Trip", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Lady Gaga - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "Gaga: Five Foot Two", "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"
Peter Lawford - "Easter Parade", "Royal Wedding", "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death"
Julian Lennon - "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Whitney: Can I Be Me"
Phil Lesh - "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Long Strange Trip", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Ted Levine - "Bleed for This", "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", "Big Game"
Juliette Lewis - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "Nerve", "Whip It"
Mike Love - "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Matt Malloy - "Far From Heaven", "Loving", "The Stepford Wives"
Miles Mander - "The Private Life of Henry VIII", "The Scarlet Claw", "The Pearl of Death"
Eddie Marsan - "God's Pocket", "Deadpool 2", "Atomic Blonde"
Frances McDormand - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "North Country", "Isle of Dogs"
Ron McKernan - "Janis: Little Girl Blue", "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir", "Long Strange Trip"
Joshua Mikel - "I, Tonya", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "Office Christmas Party"
E. Roger Mitchell - "Kill the Messenger", "American Made", "Goosebumps"
Julianne Moore - "Far From Heaven", "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
Hattie Morahan - "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "Beauty and the Beast", "Mr. Holmes"
Jim Morrison - "The Doors: When You're Strange", "27: Gone Too Soon", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Enrique Murciano - "Bright", "Collateral Beauty", "Rough Night"
Bill Murray - "Isle of Dogs", "Rock the Kasbah", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Liam Neeson - "Silence", "A Monster Calls", "The Grey"
Julianne Nicholson - "I, Tonya", "Two Weeks", "One True Thing"
Barack Obama - "I'm Still Here", "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "Rush: Time Stand Still"
Bob Odenkirk - "The Post", "The Disaster Artist", "Incredibles 2"
Elizabeth Olsen - "I Saw the Light", "Kodachrome", "Avengers: Infinity War"
John Ortiz - "Going in Style", "The Finest Hours", "Kong: Skull Island"
Chris Pine - "People Like Us", "Hell or High Water", "The Finest Hours"
Brad Pitt - "War Machine", "Allied", "Deadpool 2"
Jesse Plemons - "The Post", "American Made", "Hostiles"
Iggy Pop - "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World", "Super Duper Alice Cooper", "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister"
Natalie Portman - "I'm Still Here", "Jane Got a Gun", "Brothers"
Parker Posey - "Happy Tears", "Hemingway & Gellhorn", "Mascots"
Billy Preston - "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Concert for George"
Luce Rains - "Appaloosa", "Brothers", "Hostiles"
Wyatt Ralff - "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her", "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them", "While We're Young"
Edgar Ramirez - "Bright", "The Girl on the Train", "Gold"
Don Randi - "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Ronald Reagan - "American Made", "Atomic Blonde", "Long Strange Trip"
Jeremy Renner - "North Country", "The House", "Kill the Messenger"
Ryan Reynolds - "Life", "Deadpool 2", "The Hitman's Bodyguard"
Tim Ries - "The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America", "The Rolling Stones Havana Moon", "Crossfire Hurricane"
Joan Rivers - "I'm Still Here", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Robbie Robertson - "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", "Elvis Presley: The Searcher", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Sam Rockwell - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "Mr. Right", "Mute"
Genesis Rodriguez - "Tusk", "Yoga Hosers", "Casa de mi Padre"
Seth Rogen - "Take This Waltz", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "The Disaster Artist"
Saoirse Ronan - "The Way Back", "Atonement", "Lady Bird"
Diana Ross - "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
Leon Russell - "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", "20 Feet from Stardom", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Wyatt Russell - "Table 19", "Goon: Last of the Enforcers", "Everybody Wants Some!!"
Peter Sallis - "The V.I.P.s", "The Curse of the Werewolf", "Taste the Blood of Dracula"
Rodrigo Santoro - "Ben-Hur", "Jane Got a Gun", "Hemingway & Gellhorn"
Diane Sawyer - "27: Gone Too Soon", "Whitney: Can I Be Me", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"
Liev Schreiber - "Goon: Last of the Enforcers", "Isle of Dogs", "Chuck"
Adam Scott - "Leap Year", "The Overnight", "The Disaster Artist"
Jason Schwartzman - "The Overnight", "I Heart Huckabees", "The Polka King"
Amanda Seyfried - "Mamma Mia!", "Alpha Dog", "While We're Young"
Paul Shaffer - "I'm Still Here", "Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago", "20 Feet from Stardom"
Michael Sheen - "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "Nocturnal Animals", "Kill the Messenger"
Sally Shepherd - "The House of Fear", "The Woman in Green", "Dressed to Kill"
Sarah Silverman - "Take This Waltz", "The Bachelor", "The Book of Henry"
Bill Skarsgard - "Deadpool 2", "Atomic Blonde", "It"
Jayson Warner Smith - "I Saw the Light", "The Birth of a Nation", "American Made"
Phil Spector - "20 Feet from Stardom", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Sebastian Stan - "Black Panther", "I, Tonya", "Avengers: Infinity War"
Maureen Starkey - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"
Rod Stewart - "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "20 Feet from Stardom"
Sting - "History of the Eagles", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"
David Strathairn - "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "Dolores Claiborne", "Hemingway & Gellhorn"
Mark Strong - "The Way Back", "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", "Before I Go to Sleep"
Miles Teller - "Bleed for This", "War Dogs", "Rabbit Hole"
Ahmir-Khalib "Questlove" Thompson - "Amy", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Emma Thompson - "Beauty and the Beast", "Bridget Jones's Baby", "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"
Justin Timberlake - "Alpha Dog", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"
Robert Trujillo - "Lemmy", "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne", "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster"
Steven Tyler - "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall", "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"
Lars Ulrich - "Hemingway & Gellhorn", "Lemmy", "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster"
Courtney B. Vance - "Isle of Dogs", "The Mummy", "Office Christmas Party"
Christoph Waltz - "Downsizing", "Carnage", "The Legend of Tarzan"
Mia Wasikowska - "Albert Nobbs", "Alice Through the Looking Glass", "Crimson Peak"
Muddy Waters - "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"
Jimmy Webb - "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me", "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Rachel Weisz - "Youth", "The Lobster", "Envy"
Tina Weymouth - "20 Feet from Stardom", "Stop Making Sense", "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"
Bradley Whitford - "Get Out", "The Post", "I Saw the Light"
Steven Wiig - "Hemingway & Gellhorn", "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", "Ant-Man & the Wasp"
Olivia Wilde - "People Like Us", "Butter", "Alpha Dog"
Michael Kenneth Williams - "Assassin's Creed", "Kill the Messenger", "Time Out of Mind"
Carl Wilson - "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Dennis Wilson - "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown", "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds", "The Wrecking Crew!"
Rita Wilson - "Mamma Mia!", "My Life in Ruins", "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"
Sally Wingert - "North Country", "The Straight Story", "Wilson"
Marjorie Wood - "Show Boat", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"
Letitia Wright - "Black Panther", "Avengers: Infinity War", "Ready Player One"
Keenan Wynn - "Royal Wedding", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Kiss Me Kate"
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - "How the Beatles Changed the World", "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond", "27: Gone Too Soon"
Russell Yuen - "Owning Mahowny", "The Human Stain", "The Red Violin"
Frank Zappa - "The Wrecking Crew!", "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words", "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
George Zucco - "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Sherlock Holmes in Washington", "Topper Returns"

Well, you can't say I didn't cover everything this year, from A to Z - or Alice Cooper to Frank Zappa, if you will.  But what's ahead, what's coming up in Year 11?  I've only got it planned out to mid-March, so there's a lot of mystery after that, but after my last re-ordering, January is all about priorities, trying to get to some of the most important (by my way of thinking, anyway) films of the last year or so, the ones I just haven't been able to link to yet, like "Annihilation", "Suburbicon" and "Mission: Impossible - Fallout".  Then in February will be my annual review of romance films, and in both January and February I'm looking to dip heavily into the Netflix list to make the linking possible, and to try to reduce it, plus to get to films like "Game Over, Man" and "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" that fell through the cracks in 2018.  But I'll be watching some Academy screeners in January too - "Vice" is the most important one that I want to see, and there's an opportunity to make that part of a Steve Carell chain that includes "Battle of the Sexes", "Last Flag Flying" and maybe "Welcome to Marwen".  So there's always something to look forward to here at the Movie Year, and Year 11 is already swelling with hope, as it should.