Sherlock Gnomes

Year 11, Day 96 - 4/6/19 - Movie #3,194

BEFORE: Well, it's been quite a week for fantasy films already, and also quite a week for mash-ups - I watched a heist movie that was also a horror film, a sci-fi movie with horror mixed in, and a fantasy film mixed with a political diatribe.  So maybe it's fitting that I end the week with a mash-up of a children's animated film mixed with, umm, a literary mystery?  Shakespeare meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?  God only knows what I'm in for with this one, but Johnny Depp carries over from "Fantastic Beasts 2" to voice Sherlock Holmes.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Gnomeo & Juliet" (Movie #1,318)

THE PLOT: Garden gnomes Gnomeo & Juliet recruit renowned detective Sherlock Gnomes to investigate the mysterious disappearance of other garden ornaments.

AFTER: Oh, but this was dreadful to watch, I don't even know where to start.  Maybe with the entire concept, which wants so badly to be just like "Toy Story", only with garden gnomes, because everybody just LOVES those things, right?  Umm, no, nobody does, and if anyone does like gnomes, you need to watch out for those people, they're probably a bit off.  So many rules here, like with "Toy Story", about how the ornaments can think, move and speak, but they can't talk to humans, or let humans see them move, or else their entire cover will be blown, so they have to move when nobody is watching, or wear disguises, or suddenly stand still if a human approaches, in whatever position they're in, and hope that the person doesn't notice they're in a different position that they were before.

It's maddening, and somebody put WAY too much effort in thinking about these rules, just to entertain kids, and it seems pointless because the current generation of kids probably doesn't even know what a garden gnome IS, so why should they care about them when they go missing.  Really, I'd love to know how many parents had to explain to their kids why we have garden gnomes at all, when there's no valid reason for them.  What purpose do they serve?  Even here they're called "ornaments", which implies right there in the name that they're merely for looks and have no function.  So why would kids want to watch a movie about them, unless there's also some kind of tie-in video game like Pokemon or something?

Then for the specifics of the story, a whole bunch of garden gnomes goes missing, and if they don't DO anything, then why is that even important?  I feel like I'm going to unravel this whole plot just by pulling on a single thread.  Sure, it's a kid's movie, and who cares?  But parents are going to have to watch this one, too, and that's just not kind, to make adults watch a film that's completely devoid of any point.  OK, there is one good message for the kids, that people should appreciate their partners more, whether that's romantic partners or work-partners like Holmes and Watson, and not take other people's presence in their lives for granted.  I support the message, the film just gets there in a very roundabout and dumb way.

In this scenario, Gnomeo and Juliet are out of their new garden home when the rest of their family and friends get taken by something, and Sherlock and Watson happen upon the case at the very same time, what a coincidence, so they all work together to follow the clues - only Sherlock deciphers the clues and tends to shrug everyone else off with an "I'll explain later" or "There's no time to discuss the clue, we've got to hurry!"  Umm, this is not such a great message for the kids, because it could have been better if all four characters had to work together, and they each had different ideas about what the clues meant, or each one brought in some bit of knowledge that would help crack the case.  (See, writing for kids movies is easy, so why is Sherlock the only one here who can think of things?). They could have left him the "deductive reasoning" bits and had the other characters contribute in different ways, but they didn't.

Sherlock's weakness is that he always thinks that Professor Moriarty is behind every case, even when he's not.  The Moriarty character here is very weird, it's not part of the gnome world at all, it's some strange mascot for a pie shop, and that seems very out of place.  As such, what's his motivation to be evil, or to take down the gnomes, or to do anything but selling pies?  That's a big disconnect - Sherlock wants to solve crimes and protect gnomes, Gnomeo and Juliet want to work in their new garden, then find their friends, but what's Moriarty all about here?  It's never explained.  Plus I could have sworn that was the voice of Jemaine Clement, but it wasn't.  Did they hire a sound-alike when they found he wasn't available?

After this film pointed out that Watson often feels dismissed and talked-down to by Sherlock, now somebody needs to go and write an extensive story where Watson is a criminal genius, or perhaps Watson and Moriarty are the same person, and that person is so smart he can hide right under Sherlock's nose, pretending to be his assistant/partner while also gathering information he needs to trick or defeat him.  Ohh, that's a great idea, but now I'll probably find out somebody did it already - sort of like how the other night I had the great idea to combine mayonnaise and BBQ sauce into one condiment (like some people do with mayonnaise and ketchup).  It tasted great, only it was an odd yellow/gray color, so I have to regard it as a culinary fail - still, I was proud that I thought of it, it seemed very original.  That is, until my wife searched the web and found out that the makers of "Mayo-Chup" (a horrible, terrible name, even "Ketchonnaise" would be better...) also are planning to release "Mayomust" and, you guessed it, "Mayocue".  And they announced this in MARCH, so I'm about a month late with my brilliant new idea - seems about right.

I think I see the problem with "Sherlock Gnomes", it was probably much easier to do a gnome-based version of "Romeo & Juliet", because that's ONE storyline that nearly everyone already knows.  But there's no ONE Sherlock Holmes story to spoof, so instead they had to do just a generic mystery story that had elements of several Conan Doyle stories, and that idea just seems doomed to fail.  And without a decent story to hang its hat on, this sequel then just becomes an efficient delivery system for random Elton John songs.  (He's an executive producer of this franchise, so his song catalogue is easily licensed for the screen that way.)

Also starring the voices of James McAvoy (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Girl on the Train"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Mary J. Blige (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Michael Caine (last seen in "Going in Style"), Maggie Smith (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Jamie Demetriou (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Ashley Jensen (last seen in "The Lobster"), Matt Lucas (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Richard Wilson, Julio Bonet, Kelly Asbury, Dan Starkey, Dexter Fletcher (last seen in "Tristan & Isolde"), James Hong (last heard in "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!"), John Stevenson, Stephen Wight, Javone Prince, and a cameo from Ozzy Osbourne (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne").

RATING: 3 out of 10 dinosaur bones

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Year 11, Day 95 - 4/5/19 - Movie #3,193

BEFORE: Carmen Ejogo carries over again from "Born to Be Blue", and I've got some catching up to do this weekend - catching up on "True Detective", catching up on movies in general (I like to be sort of one day ahead by starting before midnight, so maybe I'll double up today) and catching up on this franchise.  I was late to the "Fantastic Beasts" party, just like I was late to watch most of the "Harry Potter" films - I watched the first installment a little over a year ago in January 2018, even though the film came out in 2016.  And as usual, as soon as I watched the first of something, suddenly everyone's talking about when the sequel is coming out - I feel like they never would have announced a sequel to "Shaun the Sheep" until I watched the first one, but that's crazy, right?  As soon as I watched "Super Troopers 2", they announced there would be a third film.  So now I'm expecting to hear about "Venom 2: Carnage Unleashed" or "The Commuter 2: Mass Transit" or "Eat, Pray, Love Some More".  I've got three sequels coming up on my list next week, so be prepared for some breaking news about "Paddington 3", "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again Again" and "Mary Poppins Just Won't Go Away".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (Movie #2,819)

THE PLOT: The second installment of the "Fantastic Beasts" series featuring the adventures of Magizoologist Newt Scamander.

AFTER: Look, you know me by now, I get deep into these franchise films, particularly the geeky ones relating to sci-fi, superheroes and fantasy.  (I've avoided the "Twilight" and "Transformers" franchises, along with "The Fast and the Furious", but I guess never say never...).  Honestly, I can't recall a time when a franchise took such a turn away from where it started, and they're only on the SECOND one of these films.  People tuned in to the first "Fantastic Beasts" film for two things - for Newt and the magical animals that he found and cared for.  Kids love pets, and even non-real ones like Pokemons, and that film had a lot of that "gotta catch and collect 'em all" spirit to it.  Everything else - the possible love story, the totalitarian rules of the Ministry of Magic, the hinted-at connections to the Potterverse - those seemed to be there just to linger in the background, to provide some context for the adventures of the man with the Tardis-like traveling case and his menagerie.

So now in the second installment, it feels a bit like somebody forgot what was appealing about the first film, and tried to throw in a whole bunch of stuff about politics, taking the villain character that was in the first film for about two minutes and bringing him to the forefront.  His vague rhetoric about "pure-bloods" was probably meant to evoke the policies of Hitler or Mussolini, even though they referred to magic users vs. non-magic users, by setting this film between the World Wars, we're automatically reminded of a time when those same principles were applied to gentiles vs. Jews, whites vs. non-whites, or Germans vs. non-Germans, take your pick, I guess.

But then something changed in America between the first film and the second, you know what I'm talking about, and this whole Grindelwald thing seems to have taken on a new meaning - he's still ranting about pure-bloods and non-mags, but is it possible that this is supposed to represent hatred for Mexicans?  Democrats?  Anybody who's different?  When Grindelwald calls all of his supporters together, is it supposed to look like a Trump rally, or is that a coincidence?  Am I projecting that onto the screen from within myself?  This is crazy, I know that movies of this size take YEARS to write, develop, film and edit, so this all must have been planned out well in advance of the 2016 election, so what gives?  I have to conclude that we're seeing echoes of reality every time there's someone on screen who's acting dictatorial or rousing up an audience's fears of the unknown.  The only thing missing here was Grindelwald wearing a red hat that reads "Make the Dark Arts Great Again".

Anyway, it's a weird mix because of what we now know about Grindelwald and Dumbledore, thanks to J.K. Rowling's recent revelations in the press.  This film only states that when they were younger they were "closer than brothers", and that Dumbledore can't possibly take up arms - er, wands - against his old mate, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what that all means.  But come on, just say it already in the film if it's THAT important to the plot.  My issue is that liberal policies, like those about freedom to love whoever we want, regardless of gender, are usually seen as passive, positive, favoring non-agression, and this takes that idea and throws it out the window.  This is like mixing the gay pride parade with a military parade, and the combination just isn't mixing right for me.  Yes, I realize there are gay activists, but you expect violence and militarism to come more from the anti-gay, conservative hate-group side, right?  If the "freedom to love" party started using violence and aggression, that would seem like a contradiction.

So I think there's a lot of confusion in Grindelwald's proposed policies, since he's all about keeping the "magic" race pure, but isn't the Ministry ALREADY against mixing with the muggles?  I guess he wants to take things even further, and put the magic-users in charge of the whole show, and make the non-mags into slaves, or worse.  And then the "join or die" mentality ends up dividing families and couples, and where have I seen all THAT before?  I don't know any specific cases of supporting Trump being used as valid grounds for divorce, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

The only thing I can compare this to is "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", when a whole ton of Star Wars fans showed up at the theater to learn about the backstory of the Jedi Order, what they did in there heyday, maybe standing against great evil in the galaxy, and instead we were treated to a lesson on politics in the Galactic Senate, trade embargoes and negotiations and the struggles of the Gungans to be considered citizens of Naboo.  Yeah, George Lucas really had his finger on the pulse there - he wanted to tell his story the way he wanted to, and didn't really care what the fans wanted to see.  "The Crimes of Grindelwald" has that same feel, like why not just send Newt out on another adventure to collect more fantastic beasts?  There are only like TWO new beasts in this film, the rest are holdovers from the first film, and that's not really going to wow anybody in the same fashion as before.

Just like the "Alien" and "Star Wars" prequels, everybody knows where the story needs to end, so it's almost a fait accompli that the Ministry will (eventually) relax their rules on relationships with non-mags.  But apparently it's going to be a very twisty road getting there.

Also starring Eddie Redmayne (last heard in "Early Man"), Jude Law (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Johnny Depp (last heard in "The Doors: When You're Strange"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Alison Sudol (ditto), Ezra Miller (ditto), Zoe Kravitz (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Callum Turner (last seen in "Assassin's Creed"), Claudia Kim (last seen in "Avengers: Age of Ultron"), William Nadylam, Kevin Guthrie, Brontis Jodorowsky (last seen in "Jodorowsky's Dune"), Fiona Glascott (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Poppy Corby-Tuech, Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson (last seen in "Justice League"), Olafur Darri Olagsson (last heard in "The BFG"), David Sakurai, Victoria Yeates, Jessica Williams (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine 2"), Derek Riddell, Wolf Roth, Cornell John, Simon Meacock, Claudius Peters, Bart Soroczynski, David Wilmot, Alfie Simmons, Jamie Campbell Bower (last seen in "Anonymous"), Toby Regbo (last seen in "One Day"), Hugh Quarshie (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Keith Chanter, Isaura Barbe-Brown.

RATING: 5 out of 10 spirit familiars

Born to Be Blue

Year 11, Day 94 - 4/4/19 - Movie #3,192

BEFORE: Sure, I could have gone right on ahead to "Fantastic Beasts" sequel, with Katharine Waterston carrying over from "Alien: Covenant", but I'd rather squeeze in another film if I can, that's just going to make me land on the "right" film for Movie #3,200.  So instead Carmen Ejogo carries over from "Alien: Covenant", and she'll be here tomorrow too.  Her three-chain film comes at the same time as I'm trying to finish Season 3 of "True Detective", which she is also in, so it's a nice bit of synchronicity between my movie viewing and my TV viewing.  2 episodes to go, I should be able to watch them over the coming weekend.

I got this to go on a DVD with the movie about Miles Davis, and I couldn't find a way to link to this from the "Before..." trilogy I watched in February, so it's a bit of clean-up work tonight - get it off the list, everything must go.  It's just over 90 minutes so this won't slow me down in any way.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Miles Ahead" (Movie #2,738)

THE PLOT: A re-imagining of jazz legend Chet Baker's musical comeback in the late 60's.

AFTER: Well, this was a real chore to watch - not because the film is terrible, but because the DVD just wouldn't PLAY in my 6-disc changer.  I tried cleaning the disc, I tried putting it in a different slot in the machine, the menu would come up, but every time I tried to PLAY the movie, the machine would freeze up, like it couldn't read the movie on the disc.  Well, it's a homemade DVD, I suppose I should expect this every now and again, except it just doesn't happen often at all.  I even tried playing the movie BEFORE it on the disc, hoping that instead of going back to the main menu, it would go right into the 2nd film.  Nope, it got stuck there too.  Finally I had to move it to another DVD player just to stand a chance of watching it - must have been some kind of random error on the disc, or a stubborn speck of dust, who knows.

It's nice to know that if I couldn't watch the film on DVD, there's always iTunes, though I'd hate to pay $3.99 to watch a film I already have on disc, but at least the chain could still continue.  I could have just removed it from the list, and the chain would have neatly sealed itself up without it, with Carmen Ejogo in three films in a row that wouldn't have been a big deal, except it would have thrown my count off by one.  Oh, well, you can't have everything.

But let me get to the film - how is this a "re-imagining" of Chet Baker's story?  What does that mean, that none of this is true?  Or that the filmmakers took a bunch of liberties or filled in a lot of gaps about his story?  Now I have to go look him up on Wikipedia to see how much of this film's plot is listed in his biography.  What a chore, especially when I don't really care about jazz music.  And boy, do I hate "semi-factual" movies - either get it right, or don't do it at all.

It's notable that there's no mention of Chet Baker being married on his Wiki page - and this film makes a point of showing him falling in love with the actress PLAYING his wife in a movie about him, which he is also starring in.  Ugh, my head hurts now, with Ethan Hawke starring in a film playing Chet Baker starring in a film where he plays Chet Baker.  You screenwriters think you're so damned clever, don't you?  And the same actress plays his wife in the flashbacks and also the actress playing her in the movie, right?  Wait, did David Lynch direct this?  But it's a funny coincidence that yesterday in "Alien: Covenant", Michael Fassbender played two roles, the androids Walter and David, and now here we have Carmen Egojo playing both Jane and Elaine, and people remark that Chet's girlfriend looks a lot like his ex-wife...

I feel like calling a Mulligan on this one, though, just because I don't give a lick about jazz, and I don't know enough about Chet Baker to say whether this is an accurate portrayal of the man or the music.  I certainly don't have the strength to raise any NITPICK POINTS tonight, so I think I'm just going to say this is "not my thing" and move on.  OK, there's nothing here that offends me, like with "Spring Breakers", but nothing here really thrills me either.  I'm just numb to it.  It's really just about Chet Baker struggling to play trumpet again after he gets a few of his teeth knocked out by some thugs, presumably because he owed somebody some money for drugs.

So he has to take on odd jobs until he can get his mouth back in shape to play again - meanwhile his parole officer has to keep checking in on him to make sure he stays clean, or at least on the methadone, and isn't hanging out with the wrong people.  Meanwhile, his goal is to get back to where he can play a set at New York City's famous Birdland club - which, by the way, was usually full of exactly the type of people he wasn't supposed to be hanging out with.

Amazingly, I think the Birdland club is still there in Manhattan.  Well, not THERE exactly, because it was in a different location up until 1965, and then re-opened in 1986 in Harlem and then in 1996 moved to West 44th St., but it still exists in some form.  Now it's close to 50 years in operation, that's no small feat.

Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Before Midnight"), Callum Keith Rennie (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Stephen McHattie (last seen in "Mother!"), Janet-Laine Green, Tony Nappo (last seen in "Murder at 1600"), Kevin Hanchard, Dan Lett, Katie Boland, Barbara Eve Harris, Eugene Clark.

RATING: 4 out of 10 bowling pins

Alien: Covenant

Year 11, Day 93 - 4/3/19 - Movie #3,191

BEFORE: I know what you're thinking - yesterday's film was part ghost-story, and an "Alien" film by definition is another mash-up, part sci-fi and part horror.  So why deal with this film now, why not save it for October?  Well, I have to walk this fine line between dealing with the linking and dealing with movies thematically - for me to have any chance of having a "perfect" year with an unbroken chain, I've got to deal with films as they come up to the top of the list, or else re-arrange everything, and I feel like I JUST got my chain settled from now until mid-July, so I don't want to tear it all apart or mess with it.

You'd think that would be simple, just move "The Vault" and this film to October, only then I have to think about linking TO those films, and then AWAY from them, and I just don't have the links.  As a pair these two films don't match anything that's currently set for horror month - and anyway, I may be running a reduced horror month in 2019 anyway.  To get "Coco" and "Hotel Transylvania 3" in there with my other films, I had to add some other animated films as connective tissue - so the October chain right now is 11 films, that's a short month, but at least everything links.  As it is, I still need to come up with an intro and an outro, but there seem to be a lot of possible ways to get there and back again.  More on this later.  I just want to know that I'll be able to include "New Mutants", "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", "Bird Box" and "Mary Shelley".  It would also be great if "Glass" became available by then, even on some streaming service, and I've got an option to add either "The Witch" or "It: Chapter Two", but not both.  So we'll see.

I thought I had something yesterday, I tried moving today's film, plus "A Quiet Place" and "Fantastic Beasts 2" to October, but a couple bad things happened - one, I couldn't close the gap in April that was formed by taking those films out, and also that meant I'd have to move "Mary Poppins Returns" and possibly also "Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again" with them, and those don't really belong in October, right?  (One links to "The Cloverfield Paradox", the other links to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", if you really need to know...)

But then I saw it would be easier to go from the animated Halloween films to that zombie film if I just added a couple more animated films.  So, which is the greater sin, putting a few films in October that clearly don't belong there, or taking a couple horror-like films OUT of October and watching them in April?  I'm not sure, I have to just go with my gut here - and I'll probably end up making two mistakes, since a couple cutesy animated films are going to creep into October anyway, unless something changes.  I'll have to review this again in August, I think.

For now, James Franco carries over from "The Vault" to what I think is a very small cameo here, but it counts.  And this may be the last time I see him for a while, but again, you never know.  9 films with him already this year is a good total, that will have to do.  There's not much on his filmography that I haven't seen that I also feel compelled to seek out at this time.

Umm, SPOILER ALERT if you're not current on this franchise, but even if you're not, you can probably guess what to expect from an "Alien" film, right?

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Prometheus" (Movie #1,470)

THE PLOT: The crew of a colony ship, bound for a remote planet, discover an uncharted paradise with a threat beyond their imagination and must attempt a harrowing escape.

AFTER: I finally got to the end of buying digital files to replace all of my cassette tapes, the last band was, of course, ZZ Top - and now I have to take a look at my CDs and tapes of soundtracks and compilations to see if any of them warrant being replaced digitally.  Then I've got a whole ton of cover albums, mostly Beatles-related, since everyone and his brother has covered Beatles songs at some point.  That task seems even harder than ripping and replacing all the original music from A to Z, and by the time I finish, there will be some new music format released and I'll have to start all over.  ("What, you're still using MP4s, grandpa, get with the program - everyone's on liquid crystal MP5 now, you put them in an eyedropper and get the music delivered right into your brain via the optic nerve...")

But I bring up the music because the latest film in a movie franchise is a lot like the latest album by your favorite band.  You have to listen to it, because you used to love that band, but you're never sure if the new album is going to live up to the band at their peak, that heyday they had when you were a kid, so will listening to their new stuff measure up, or is it just bound to disappoint you?  I loved ZZ Top when I was 15, and the next three albums after "Eliminator" entertained me, but after the "Antenna" album in 1991 there was a distinct drop in quality, and the band never won me back.  "Rhythmeen"?  "XXX"?  By the time the band released "Mescalero" I felt I didn't even understand them any more.  It looks like they had a new album in 2012 that I totally missed, now I have to decide if it's worth a listen.

But let me relate the "Alien" franchise to a band that more people are familiar with, the Beatles.  I don't think anyone can argue that the Beatles had probably the best run ever, in the 7 short years they were recording together, and ever since they've been the symbol of lightning in a bottle, they couldn't get back together but had successful solo careers, and every band probably wonders if they could ever hope to duplicate that type of success, and whether it's even worth it in the end if phenomenal success also causes you to burn out twice as quickly.  The first "Alien" film was a hit, because nobody had seen anything like it before - so that's the equivalent of "Meet the Beatles", taking the world by storm.  Somehow "Aliens" became more successful, building on the success of the first film, better creatively even though it played with the same themes, that's a bit like "A Hard Day's Night".

For the sake of argument, let's call the next two films, "Alien 3" and "Alien: Resurrection" sort of like the "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" of the franchise, where the hardcore fans really liked them, but there was sort of a tonal shift that left other fans behind, and so you're hard pressed to find fans who'll say, "Oh, that album was my favorite" except in certain circles.  And then the "Alien vs. Predator" films just sort of seem kind of "Magical Mystery Tour" or "White Album"-y to me, where there was so much going on and the creativity seemed to be firing in too many directions at once, so even the true fans were confused about what was going on, and whether somebody was really in charge of the big picture.  So "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" are collectively a bit like "Abbey Road" and "Let it Be" to me, where things seem to be renewed and refreshed from a creative standpoint, but come on, it's got to be sort of like a last hurrah, right?  How much longer can they keep adding to the catalog before it collapses in on itself?  The storytelling has definitely matured, and in some ways it's a return to form, with callbacks to the original films/albums, but to get there they had to completely burn down the path they were on and rebuild their sound from the ground up.

I don't know, the problem with this analogy is that according to this train of thought, the franchise never had its big "Sgt. Pepper" moment, which I think is accurate, but other fans may disagree.  Maybe a better analogy is the "Star Wars" franchise, which also went back to the past to do a series of prequels, which would/will ultimately end in something that takes place RIGHT before the original "Alien" film from 1979. So in this scenario, "Prometheus" is like "The Phantom Menace" and "Covenant" is like "Attack of the Clones", they can probably fit in one more episode before people will want to see a DIRECT prequel to the original film they know from childhood.  Interviews with Ridley Scott seem to suggest that this is the path that they're on - but we thought of "Revenge of the Sith" as a direct prequel to "A New Hope", and then somebody shoehorned in "Rogue One" and "Solo: A Star Wars Story", which are like Episodes 3.9 or 3.5.  You can fit a whole series of stories between two other ones if you really try.

But to do that, at this point in time, you've got to walk that fine line between breaking new ground and giving the fans what they expect - naturally you've got to get some of those gory, chest-breaking moments where the alien hatches from within somebody in the most gruesome way, and it would be great if there's a point where people are hunting a xenomorph through a spaceship's air ducts and maze-like halls.  Really, to be truly innovative at this point, wouldn't an "Alien" film depict an outer-space mission where everything goes according to plan, and nobody dies by being eaten or ripped apart?  That would be a first, only everyone would feel disappointed, right?  Like, I paid my 15 bucks, I want to see some astronauts suffer, and not just because NASA didn't pack enough medium-sized spacesuits for two women to have a romantic spacewalk together.

So basically all you need to know is that there's a ship full of colonists heading toward a far-off world that's been carefully selected.  Probably humans have used up all the viable resources on Earth at this point, so we've got to start moving to other worlds - this is implied but not explicitly stated.  But a freak solar flare damages the ship and the ship's resident android, Walter, has to pull the crew out of stasis early to fix the ship.  After that happens, they pick up a weird transmission from a nearby planet that seems to be in English, and that planet also appears to be perfect for their needs, so why keep going on their mission when there's a perfect planet RIGHT THERE that could work for their colony? What could POSSIBLY go wrong in this scenario?  Umm, here's a hint, it's an "Alien" film...

Look, there are things I understand about the xenomorph aliens, and there are certainly things I DON'T understand.  But this film seems to suggest that they were "designed" as these super-efficient organisms, being great at killing humans, but also at developing within them, and then of course bursting out in spectacular fashion.  Is that the goal?  Is it like humans are this edible birthing matrix that easily supplies them with their first meal?  And then the rest of the humans are just like, big bag lunches just walking around?  Humans are their mothers and fathers, but also lunch and dinner?  It all seems a bit confusing.  And then if the xenomorphs can enter as little floating cells, through the ear tissue or the nostrils, then what do they need the face-huggers for?  Are the face-huggers alive or just mindless delivery systems for the embryos?  Or is everything like the tiny mouth within the giant mouth, full of recursive back-up systems within the main system?

Everything about the xenomorphs reminds me of the birthing process, as we find out here that humanity is their round-about creator AND their typical hosts.  I can't tell which birthing process is more disgusting, though, the one the aliens use or the regular human one.  Then, when I think about it, I realize how much the aliens share in common with human fetuses - they grow inside humans, feed off of them, destroy their bodies when they leave, and then continue to use the humans as a food source.  Now I can't look at a woman nursing a baby without thinking about either aliens feeding or it being some form of cannibalism.  Either way, it's stomach-churning for me, which is probably one of the reasons I don't have any kids.  Miracle of childbirth, my ass.  A newborn baby covered in fluid, it's just nauseating.  I can't wait for the future where babies are fertilized and grown in tanks, and sex is just for fun and not procreation.

NITPICK POINT: Look, I just hope that when humanity is finally ready to explore the galaxy and colonize other planets that they use these "Alien" films as training videos, as examples of what NOT to do.  A whole team of people fly down to the surface of an unknown planet and NOT ONE of them wears a spacesuit - and then, when they arrive they START testing the air and the water?  If you ask me, that should have been done BEFORE they all started breathing on the planet.  They should have all worn air-tight spacesuits before they tested for viruses, pathogens, toxins... am I way off base here?  Then there's the issue of putting the medical bay WAY inside the ship, so a sick person would basically infect corridor after corridor before getting to a place where they can be isolated and contained? Uh-uh, no way.  There should be a way to contain someone BEFORE bringing them back on board the ship, for exactly this reason, so they won't infect the entire crew.

There are references to the Engineers, which are this ancient race that supposedly terraformed all the planets or something, and sacrificed themselves one by one to jump-start life on all the various planets (Umm, I think...this was sort of shown in "Prometheus").  But then, what was up with the flashback to the Engineers in the MIDDLE of this film?  How do the events depicted there link up to the creation of the Xenomorphs?  That's all a bit foggy - or do I have to wait until the next film to see the next little snippet of THAT story?  It's maddening.  And who was "remembering" that story here, or who was telling that story to whom?  It seemed to have no relation to the main plot, except for the location.

Just like the "Star Wars" series, the original director came back to make the prequels - Ridley Scott directed both "Prometheus" and this one, and now there's rumblings that James Cameron may come back to the franchise, but I wouldn't put any money on that.  Scott's sequel to "Covenant" got put on hold because of poor box office, but now that Disney has acquired most of Fox after Rupert Murdoch cashed in his chips, things are a little bit more hazy, except the only thing for sure is that there WILL be more content.  Disney doesn't tend to buy things to NOT make more money from them.

Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Frank"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her"), Billy Crudup (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Danny McBride (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Demian Bichir (last seen in "The Hateful Eight"), Carmen Ejogo (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Jussie Smollett (last seen in "The Mighty Ducks"), Callie Hernandez (last seen in "La La Land"), Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Guy Pearce (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Lorelei King, Goran D. Kleut, Andrew Crawford, with archive footage of Noomi Rapace (last seen in "What Happened to Monday"), Logan Marshall-Green (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming")

RATING: 6 out of 10 airlocks

The Vault

Year 11, Day 92 - 4/2/19 - Movie #3,190

BEFORE: The James Franco week (OK, almost a week, it's 5 days) rolls on as he carries over from "Spring Breakers".  Tonight's film is probably going to seem like a masterpiece, no matter what, when compared with that piece of trash film.  I just saw there's a new Harmony Korine film coming out, this one with Matthew McConnaughey, and the E.W. critic just trashed it for many of the same reasons I didn't like "Spring Breakers".  OK, so I can just avoid Harmony Korine films in the future, I think that would probably be for the best.

But I seem to have hit an odd pocket of horror films, like "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil", and tonight's film apparently qualifies, too - plus I've got another film tomorrow and then "A Quiet Place" coming up next week.  So it seems like just going by linking alone, I've hit a little vein of this topic - so if I want to preserve my linking chain, I may just do a reduced horror chain when October rolls around this year, and I'll just point back to the films I watched in March and April, saying I covered this topic already for 2017.  I'm still looking for links among horror films I haven't seen, I might be able to cobble together a 7-film chain if I'm lucky, but hey, you never know, things could change.  Maybe I can also get to "Coco" and "Hotel Transylvania 3", those also seem obviously Halloweeny.

THE PLOT: Two estranged sisters are forced to help rob a bank in order to save their brother. But this is no ordinary bank.

AFTER: You just don't see a lot of genre mash-ups these days, everything's so targeted that a film has to usually fit squarely in a pocket so it can be properly marketed to fans.  The days of good comedy/documentaries or romance/Westerns are behind us, it seems - but then along comes a genre mash-up I haven't seen before, the heist/horror combination.  I'm guessing the elevator pitch here was "Dog Day Afternoon" meets "The Sixth Sense".

There's a pretty fair build-up as we see a number of customers going about their bank business, or at least pretending to.  But how many people in the bank are just pretending to do their business, apply for teller positions, or wait for credit approval?  Who's that guy?  Is he in on it?  Is HE part of the plan?  What about HER?

At some point, the trap is sprung, guns are drawn, and hostages are tied up.  Fortunately (or perhaps it was planned) there's some kind of fire emergency down the block, so the bank robbers appear to have all the time they need, right up until the moment that they don't.  But it's pretty clear this is a bunch of amateurs (they never stop using their REAL NAMES, for example...) and their petty squabbling and arguments over how to handle the hostages puts them at odds with each other, but JUST when it looks like they're all going to shoot each other, one of the hostages speaks up, and a man claiming to be the bank's assistant manager tells them everything they need to know about the alarm systems, and how to get where the BIG money is, in the vault in the basement.

There's just one catch, and that's getting the money out of the vault, since the basement is the remains of the "old bank", and it's rumored to be haunted.  Seems there was another bank robbery back in the 1980's, and it didn't end well.  Some say you can see the masked bank robber out of the corner of your eye, or hear whispers of the hostages pleading for help.  But I'm sure those are just silly ghost stories, right, and there are no such things as ghosts, so what could possibly...OH MY GOD, he's right behind me, isn't he?

They use a lot of the old horror-movie tropes here, like the mysterious phone call that can't be traced, and people seeing things that aren't really there (or..ARE THEY?) and security cameras that fizzle out or lights that dim at EXACTLY the wrong moment, and so on.  Which reminds me that I've never seen the "Scream" movies, maybe I should check them out for the same reason. But I do like the mixing of genres here, I thought it really worked, where you might not think that it would.

Also starring Francesca Eastwood (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Taryn Manning (last seen in "Hustle & Flow"), Scott Haze (last seen in "Venom"), Q'orianka Kilcher (last seen in "Hostiles"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Keith Loneker (also last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Jeff Gum, Jill Jane Clements (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Michael Milford, Aleksander Vayshelboym, Debbie Sherman, Lee Broda, Anthony DiRocco, Dmitry Paniotto, Adina Galupa, Beatrice Hernandez, Cristin Azure, Rebecca Ray, John D. Hickman, Robin Martino, Keenan Rogers.

RATING: 5 out of 10 safe deposit boxes

Spring Breakers

Year 11, Day 91 - 4/1/19 - Movie #3,189

BEFORE: OK, March is over, but the Madness continues - it just turns into spring fever, right?  Some people might even BE on spring break right now, so it makes sense to drop this one in here, especially since it's airing now on Netflix, but could disappear at any moment.  Damn, I realized too late that this connects to one of "back-to-school" films, which is now going to be left nearly unsinkable, but what can I do?  I'm not going to sit on a film with "spring" in the title until September, that wouldn't make any sense.  I'll have to hope that some other films will pop up between now and then - look, I sat on "Everybody Wants Some!!" for about two years, and eventually some other films came along and made linking possible.  Anything is possible, you just have to believe in it...

James Franco carries over again from "127 Hours" and adds to his tally - he should finish 2019 with at least 9 appearances, which could make him the front-runner, at least for now.

THE PLOT: Four college girls hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation.  While partying, drinking and taking drugs, they are arrested, only to be bailed out by a drug and arms dealer.

AFTER: Damn, and I was doing so well last week, I rolled a bunch of sevens for my ratings, and I was flying high.  But then along came "127 Hours" to kill my buzz, and now there's this crappy storyline tonight, which glorifies the party scene, drug use, objectification of women, and thug life in general.  This is hardly my idea of a good time - I didn't party like this in college, never went on spring break, and now of course I'm too old to do so, and have no desire for it anyway.  I don't even like the beach during the summer, it's too hot and the sand is always too sticky AND impossible to walk on, AND it gets in your food.  What's the upside of going to the beach again?  OK, maybe I stand an above-average chance of seeing an attractive woman in a swimsuit, but can't I do that from home, thanks to the internet?  I've got beer at home, too, as much as I want AND I can get more without paying high bar prices.  Plus it looks like most of the beer in this film either gets spilled or poured or sprayed on a girl's breasts, so that's a big waste of money...

College kids, use your heads, you don't need to go to Florida to party.  Travel costs money, and you're going to need that money to start paying back your loan debts.  Once you're a working person, you'll have more disposable income to sink into liquid assets.  Beer is cheaper from the supermarket or deli than in a bar, have you seen the mark-up on beer at a bar?  I can buy a whole six-pack at the store for what they charge for ONE BEER at some pubs...

Plus, it's FLORIDA, the most fucked-up state in our country, and I don't think I'm overstating this.  How many news stories or YouTube clips have we seen in the last few years that involve some combination of meth-heads, pick-up trucks, bath salts, monkeys, alligators...you can almost play "Florida Mad-Libs" and make up your own news headline: Florida man arrested for driving his (unusual vehicle) while high on (exotic drug) with his (strange animal) in the passenger seat after breaking into a local (type of store).  Why would anyone want to go there to party?  Plus, this is the state that screwed up TWO Presidential elections in recent memory - so those of us in the Upper 49 states should definitely stop going there and rewarding the bad behavior of Floridians with our tourist dollars. Are we all in agreement?

But hey, maybe the college girls seen here will fit right in, because three of them performed armed robbery at a chicken restaurant to fund their spring break vacation.  They used toy guns, but what they lacked in real ammo they made up for with psychotic behavior.  (Hmm, this was also a plot point in "Flyboys", where a pilot admitted to bank robbery with a toy gun...and that was back in the 1910's, so I guess some things never change...)

Debate rages over whether this film constitutes "exploitation" or not - considering the number of women shown party in (and out of) bikinis, I'm going to go with "sure".  The argument that says that depicting women drunk, stoned and making out with each other for a cheering crowd of men is in fact "empowering" holds a lot less water, IMHO.  Even worse movie sins are committed here, though, in other parts of the film where lines of dialogue are repeated four or five times, plus there's a flash-FORWARD at one point (or is everything after that a flash-BACK?) and just general non-relevance.  OK, the girls left standing want to go back to their normal lives after all the violence they witness (and commit) but is that even possible?

Also starring Selena Gomez (last seen in "The Fundamentals of Caring"), Vanessa Hudgens (last seen in "Sucker Punch"), Ashley Benson (last seen in "Pixels"), Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Heather Morris (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Jeff Jarrett, Russell Stuart, Ash Lendzion, Emma Holzer.

RATING: 2 out of 10 beer funnels

127 Hours

Year 11, Day 90 - 3/31/19 - Movie #3,188

BEFORE: Well, I did test out some names, and I found some actors who have appeared more times in my countdown than Liam Neeson, with 44 appearances.  Research is in the early stages, and it takes me a while to test out names because I have to SUBTRACT each actor's producing or directing credits (thanks so much for lumping everything together, IMDB...) and also times they were "thanked" at the end of films they weren't in.  Then I have to check their appearances as "SELF" in documentaries, because those DON'T pop up in an IMDB advanced search.  (again, thanks for nothing, IMDB programmers...).

I only tested out about 35 names, because this process is so time-consuming. But so far I've learned that ahead of Liam Neeson's 44 appearances in my countdown are Matt Damon with 45 films, Bruce Willis with 47, and Samuel L. Jackson with 49.  It wouldn't surprise me if those numbers hold up and SLJ turns out to be the overall leader in the end, because he's been around for a long time, and he's turned up A LOT in the last few years, what with all the Marvel movies, and he's been very busy in other franchise films too.  The highest woman on my list (so far) is Meryl Streep with 40 appearances, and the highest character actor is Steve Buscemi with 37, beating out both J.K. Simmons and Richard Jenkins.  If I can land on a definitive Top 10 then I'll publish it, but it's also constantly in flux - James Franco will be adding five films to his total this week, for example, and today he carries over from "Flyboys".  This is his 6th 2019 appearance tonight, and three more are on the way, so he should finish the year with 9 appearances at least, could be more.

Now, since this is my last film for March, here are my monthly stats on viewing formats:

10 Movies watched on Cable (saved to DVD): 27 Dresses, Mona Lisa Smile, Eat Pray Love, Nights in Rodanthe, Paris Can Wait, Streets of Fire, All the Money in the World, Lucky Break, Shaun the Sheep Movie, The Commuter
6 Movies watched on Cable (not saved): Under the Tuscan Sun, The Great Wall, Early Man, Super Troopers 2, Flyboys, 127 Hours
5 Watched on Netflix: I Am Michael, What Happened to Monday, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Chappaquidick, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
2 Watched on iTunes: Jenny's Wedding, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3 Watched on Academy screeners: The Hero, Vox Lux, At Eternity's Gate
2 Watched in Theaters: Aquaman, Captain Marvel
1 Watched on Purchased DVD: Venom

29 Total films for March (Yeah, I took two days off, I deserved it...)

Big deal, right?  Only if I compare the number of movies watched on cable (saved plus unsaved) each month, I'm noticing a trend - in January it was 20, in February it was 18, and this month it was 16. Hmmm, a quick look at April and May suggests that it may drop even lower, to about 12.  So maybe I am getting to a point where premium cable movies are less important.  Or maybe I'm just using so much "mortar" (films on Netflix and Academy screeners) between the "bricks" (films I've already recorded off of cable) that it's skewing the results.  I'm not going to cut the cord just yet, but the mathematical trend is suggesting that the need is lessening, so perhaps in the future I'll need to make a decision about this.

THE PLOT: An adventurous mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures to survive.

AFTER: Sometimes I just know it's going to be one of "those" weeks here at the Movie Year.  Like on one end of the spectrum I had this nice animated film about a flock of sheep going to the city to find a lost farmer, but since then there's been a lot of violence and bloodshed.  OK, so maybe in "Super Troopers 2" people only got hurt in comic fashion, but apart from that, there were a lot of people getting shot in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", fighter pilots getting killed in "Flyboys", and a bunch of college students accidentally killing themselves in "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil".  Several people got shot or died on a train in "The Commuter", plus there was that very infamous drowning in "Chappaquiddick".  Notably, there was also a man with no arms and legs in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", and last night in "Flyboys" a pilot crashed his plane and couldn't pull his hand out from under it, so that hand had to go.  All of this, and still I wasn't really prepared for "127 Hours" - where you probably already know what happens, unless you've also been trapped under a rock for a long period of time.

This is why I put off watching this film for so very long - I don't handle gore well in films, especially if it's very realistic.  Cartoon violence I can take, of course, but the more real it seems, the more it turns my stomach - and so this film was very difficult for me to watch.  I can't watch those surgery shows on TV, either, or even videos where people pop a pimple or a cyst or something, though that's trendy these days for some weird reason.  Oddly, I'm fine during minor surgery on my own body, like I've had a root canal, two ingrown toenails removed and got stitched up after a head injury, and I was totally calm the whole time, just give me some novocaine, do what you have to do and don't make me watch.

Of course, this is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, whose arm got trapped under a rock in a canyon, forcing him to survive alone with little food or water while he struggled to free himself, one way or the other.  Calling for help didn't work, and for some reason he didn't have a cell phone and had not told anyone exactly where he was going. "Oops".  Once he knew that help was not on the way, and that moving the rock was not possible, he had a limited amount of time to act, before he died from boredom.  I don't think I could go one day with television or a movie, but for the younger kids, just imagine 5 days without Candy Crush or even Sudoku...

SO, what have we learned this week?  How about never get on a train with Liam Neeson, or for that matter, never get in a vehicle with a Kennedy.  More importantly, never go camping in hillbilly country, and never go rock-climbing, or mountain climbing, or free climbing, or canyoneering.  None of that, no thank you, don't do it.  I mean, if you have to do it, go with friends or at least tell people where you're going or have a working cell phone, but I think it's safer to just not go at all.  It's funny, when we were in Aruba we went on one of those cave tours, and I thought maybe I could handle it, but once we got inside the first cave and they closed the door, suddenly I just wanted to be anywhere else, preferably outside.  So when a woman in back said she wanted to leave, I leapt at the chance to escort her down the mountain path, you know, just to make sure she made it back to the visitor's center OK.

I know that cave has been there for thousands, if not millions of years, and the chances against it collapsing on the very day I'm there are astronomically huge, but why chance it?  Especially when my lizard brain is telling me to stay out of tight spaces, plus nobody else on the tour wants to see a grown man reduced to an emotional wreck just because he feels the walls closing in.  I didn't care what the optics were of me leaving the tour, because that still looked better than crying or screaming in front of other adults.  Instead I had a Coke at a picnic table and thought about how I'd made the right move, especially if the cave DID collapse that day - or if not, and the tour group made it back safely, how they'd have me to thank for that.

But hey, "127 Hours" proves me right. Franco's character, during one of his more lucid moments in the canyon, imagines how this rock fell from space millions of years ago, and had no purpose until HE came along, and his weight somehow pushed it into the canyon, where it could crush his arm.  And everything he did, every choice he made in his life, was something that pushed him toward his own fateful meeting with that rock.  That's a staggering thought, and it's all the more reason why nobody should ever go rock-climbing or canyoneering or whatever - your destiny could be in that canyon, so you should avoid meeting up with your destiny for as long as possible, right?

I suppose I should be grateful, because watching Franco's character performing his own amputation was so stomach-turning for me that I had no desire to eat dessert or a late-night snack, and I've recently given those up - not for Lent, that's a bunch of hooey.  But I went to the doctor's almost a week ago for an annual physical, and was told (again) that I need to lose some weight.  Usually I just laugh this sort of thing off, or try to ignore it, but after two years of BBQ-themed vacations, it seems my weight has gotten out of hand.  So I've been fasting the last few days, again not in a religious way, but something called "intermittent fasting", where I can eat for an 8-hour period, and then not during the following 16 hours.  Basically it just means no breakfast and no dessert, which I think can fit right into my schedule since I usually sleep through breakfast anyway - so skipping dessert is the only tough part.  The goal is to maximize the time that my body is drawing energy from stored calories rather than ones I just ate, because at some point after a few hours without food, that switches over.  And 16 hours isn't that much time, especially if I'm asleep for 8 of those hours - so really, the goal is to lose weight while I sleep, and if I wake up hungry, well, it's just a couple hours until lunch, isn't it? I don't even have to do it every day, like weekdays only would work, though it could work faster if I also do it on the weekends, and choose slightly more sensible meals than usual.  I've been at this for 5 days now, and already my jeans are a little looser.  I even went almost 24 hours without food last week, nothing between Thursday's lunch and Friday's lunch, just to prove I could.  16 or 24 hours without food isn't going to kill me, it would probably take 5 or 6 days, so really, it's a mental game.

I think they took a great risk in turning Ralston's story into a movie - because these days, you never know what the next viral craze is going to be, stupid things like planking or the mannequin challenge or trying to drink a whole gallon of milk (which is impossible, like you're not even supposed to drink a whole gallon of WATER at one time, you can overdose even on that).  God forbid the next big internet challenge becomes people getting themselves stuck in very tight spaces and then having to cut off a body part to get out.  Those crazy millennials with those stupid extended earlobe things, they're all about the body modifications, right?  Why not really challenge yourself and hack off a limb, you stupid twits?  I internet-dare you.  Because the rock-climbing addiction just gets worse and worse as these thrill-seekers keep chasing bigger highs, and then where does it end?  With them trying to climb Mount Everest or K2 and losing a limb or two to frostbite, anyway, so why not just stay home, hack off a limb there and save some money and time?

The film ends with an update on the real Aron Ralston, who apparently thought that a grappling hook hand would be a better replacement than one that mimics a real hand - and he continued to go mountain-climbing, so the only conclusion I can draw is that he learned nothing from his bad experience.  He also got married and had a kid, so my best to that young kid who will be raised by his mother when Daddy climbs one mountain too many...  Sorry, but I call them the way I see them.

NITPICK POINT: I'm no expert on rock climbing, or rescue operations or even medical procedures, but it seems to me that if you had to amputate an arm, that would best be done at a joint like the elbow, no?  The place where he cuts into his arm makes no sense, like what was his plan, to saw through his arm bone with his dull multi-tool?  Am I crazy?  You go for the joint, right?  Then there wouldn't have been the need to break the arm bone first.  But I guess if you're dumb enough to go rock-climbing, you're also dumb enough to not know the best place to cut off your arm.

I think I prefer to take this film as a metaphor for something, only I'm not sure what.  But I could see this film being used by therapists when their patients are in a tough spot - for one thing, no matter how bad you're feeling about your life, at least you're not stuck in the bottom of a canyon with a giant rock on your arm - in other words, no matter how bad things are, they could always be worse.  And maybe if you're in a bad situation like a terrible job, or a relationship you want to get out of, or bad living conditions, well, that's your "canyon".  And maybe there's a person or a thing that's giving you trouble, and that's your "rock".  You've got to do whatever it takes to get out from under your rock and then out of that canyon, even if it means leaving a piece of yourself behind.

Thankfully, in the grand scheme of things, it only a very small percentage of people who find that their metaphorical canyon and rock are a real, genuine canyon and rock.  My heart goes out to those people, but they should have heeded my advice - never go rock climbing.

Also starring Kate Mara (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), Amber Tamblyn (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Clemence Poesy (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Kate Burton (last seen in "2 Days in New York"), Treat Williams (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Pieter Jan Brugge, Rebecca C. Olson with a cameo from the real Aron Ralston.

RATING: 4 out of 10 carabiners

Flyboys

Year 11, Day 89 - 3/30/19 - Movie #3,187

BEFORE: OK, enough dicking around, let's clear the James Franco category again.  With certain actors, like Franco, Nicole Kidman, let's say Liam Neeson even, it always feels like I'm "done" with them, then another three or four build up over the course of a year.  Stupid me, I never thought cumulative stats would be important to me, so even though I've totalled up appearances at the end of each year, I don't know who's in the lead all-time over the course of 10 1/3 years.  There's no real way for me to figure that out without searching on EVERY name, and that's an impossible job.  For those three actors I mentioned, Franco has 25 appearances, Kidman has 30, and Neeson has 44.  I'm just going to maybe try some random names and see if anybody can beat 44.  Not now, when I have some more time.

Tyler Labine carries over again from "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil", and I've got five films with James Franco lined up here, including at least one that I've been putting off for a very long time. But hey, this will bring Franco's total up to 30, and he'll be tied with Nicole Kidman.  Still, I have no idea who the top ten even are - but De Niro has 47, so let's imagine he's in the lead, at least for the moment.
(But even then, I've got to find a way to remove an actor's producing credits and "Thanks to..." credits, IMDB just lumps them all together in its search function, which doesn't help. So De Niro's 47 is really a 42 when I remove his producing-only/non-starring credits.)

I've probably got to think of some more actors with careers that have spanned decades to figure this out....

THE PLOT: The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I and became the country's first fighter pilots.

AFTER: So far this year my war films have been sort of concentrated on modern ones, like "13 Hours", "12 Strong" and "Seal Team Six", all set in the Middle East. World War I popped up in the flashbacks within "Goodbye Christopher Robin", though apart from that, I've got a bunch of World War II films on my list, like "Dunkirk", "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour", plus also there's "Defiance", "The Reader" and "The Zookeeper's Wife".  But I think maybe this works out, I'll deal with World War I again tonight, and then later this year I'll try to knock off all the WW2 films.  Though I don't have specific slots for them all yet, so I'll have to wing it.  If I'm unable to get to them in 2019, that's OK too, because 2020 will mark the 80th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, and the 85th anniversary of the end of that war - so I'm good either way, watching them this year or next.

"Flyboys" was quite exciting and therefore enjoyable, but I think a large part of that came from the amazing aerial footage.  The dogfights looked so good I was left questioning whether they were filmed live or if they were mostly special effects, or perhaps some combination of the two.  Look, I can't just switch off my curiosity about HOW a film is made, it's just always going to be there, so the best I can do is live with it and try not to let that get in the way of me enjoying the film.  And the fact that I couldn't TELL if the airplane footage was real or CGI or something else, I think that should count as a compliment, right?

Unfortunately, it seems the whole film couldn't take place in the sky, the pilots had to come down to earth at some point, and those parts of the film felt somewhat boring by comparison.  James Franco played Blaine Rawlings, who I'm assuming was not based on a real person, and it felt to me like Franco had a tough time giving this guy some character.  His romance with a French woman seemed very tame - I mean, I know it was a different time with different morals, but COME ON, it took them like three weeks to kiss.  Romance during wartime means you don't have to stretch it out, they could all die at any moment, so wouldn't they just skip all the polite courting stuff and, you know, get down to it?

A couple of the other pilots managed to stand out as characters, but not enough.  The most interesting was probably the African-American pilot who had been living in France as a boxer, then it's a long way to the guy in second place, who was just a portly rich guy whose parents thought he was a failure.  Tied for third was the guy who changed his name to escape a criminal background, and the guy suffering from PTSD, or as it was called back then, "shell shock".  Though it seems the treatment for that during WWI was a strong slap in the face and a flask of bourbon, not the psycho-therapy we have in place today.

The worst lack of character was seen in Reed Cassidy, the veteran pilot who'd been in the squadron the longest, and had probably seen all of his mates die in combat.  Sure, one could imagine such a person to be solitary and jaded, but this kind of went overboard here, resulting in a character who was really a giant blank.  "Oooh, he doesn't want to talk about his past..." - yeah, that's a narrative cop-out if ever there was one. Wait, he drinks AND he goes to brothels?  Nope, none of that counts as character development, either.  Look, the more the script tells us about these people, their backgrounds, their hopes and dreams, the more we're going to feel it when they die in a dogfight.  If I don't know anything about them, then I'm barely going to feel each kill from a German tri-plane.

There was a great build-up here, and I'm down with the first half of the film and the effects throughout, but once the plot turned into "James Franco's character goes rogue and takes on the whole German army to rescue the French girl he likes", that's stretching the bounds of believability to a great degree.  What happened to teamwork and following orders?  Oh, let's just throw that all out the window so one guy can try to save his girl from the Nazis.  The Germans are in the middle of taking over the whole damn country, but let's put all our plans on hold so one guy can do his hero thing.  Give me a break.

EDIT: Well, after a little research on IMDB and Wikipedia, I discovered that the writers did research real stories of these World War I pilots, but then they changed all their names for the film, so if you ask me, that's a wash.  As for the special effects, the film combines footage of both authentic and replica aircraft, and James Franco took flying lessons and earned a pilot's license before filming.  But I'm also seeing notes about computer-generated aircraft, so logically the film contains some mix of live aerial footage and CGI effects. It's visually stunning, so that makes sense.

NITPICK POINT: These pilots are given pistols before they take off, because if their planes are damaged, their options seem to be to burn up in an explosion, jump to their deaths, or (the apparent best solution) blow their brains out with the gun.  Really?  What year was the parachute invented?  I just looked it up, the modern parachute was invented in the 18th century, and the first parachute jump from a plane was in 1911.  This was set in 1916, so what gives?  Ah, it seems that the airplane cockpits at the time were not large enough to accommodate the parachutes of the day, plus the early models added too much weight to the plane.  Fair enough, but to not mention parachutes AT ALL in this film, when they did exist, still seems like a weird omission.  But I'm guessing the writers just needed an excuse for why a pilots would have a gun in a cockpit, because that became a plot point.

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Martin Henderson (last seen in "Everest"), Jean Reno (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2"), Jennifer Decker, Abdul Salis (last seen in "Love Actually"), Philip Winchester, David Ellison, Michael Jibson (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast"), Tim Pigott-Smith (last seen in RED 2"), Gunnar Winbergh, Lex Shrapnel (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Pip Pickering, Ian Rose, Augustin Legrand.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Fokkers