Skyscraper

Year 11, Day 271 - 9/28/19 - Movie #3,369

BEFORE: Last summer, I suffered a great loss when my DVR died - and after chewing out my cable company for several hours, and tallying up which movies that I'd been storing on the drive needed to be replaced, I was forced to start the transition off of physical media.  Before that point, I was able to dub a movie from every premium channel to DVD, so that I could always have a copy of every film I watched.  You know, just in case I ever have time to go back and re-watch something I liked (a pipe dream, it turns out...) and the cable channels aren't running it at that point.  Plus I liked having a physical record of my cinematic journeys, despite the fact that it was an ever-increasing storage problem.  I was told that my new replacement DVR would still allow me to record movies from the premium channels, but it turned out that wasn't completely true, and I had to do tests to figure out which channels run that signal that makes a film unable to copy to disc.  (The answer is fairly complex, some channels yes, some no, some work from "On Demand" only...)

But the silver lining in that whole process is that it forced me to watch more films via streaming services - and the channels that run that signal and don't allow duplication (like HBO and Cinemax) were transformed into, essentially, streaming services to me, no different from Netflix or Hulu - watch it once, take it off the list, if it's a great film, maybe look for a physical copy somewhere down the road.  Before 2017, I was about 99% cable, and after summer 2018, I'm now about 50% cable, and 50% other sources.  (I'll have a breakdown of September's stats in a couple of days, but it's been a BIG month for cable...). If I hadn't bumped up my streaming game, maybe I wouldn't be just 31 films away from my first Perfectly-Linked Movie Year right now.

But lately my way of life and my love of physical media got challenged again, I noticed that my DVD recordings weren't sounding very good - at the start of my recorded discs I'd have a fluctuating hum, sometimes very light, and sometimes incredibly distracting.  Most often this would disappear 5 or 10 minutes into the film, but sometimes it would stick around for the whole film - and so even if I'd recorded a movie to DVD, I got into the habit of checking before watching to see if that film was still airing on demand, as the HD cable copy was probably much better than the one I had on disc (and, extra bonus, I could watch with subtitles, my hearing's not improving...).

My first attempt to fix the problem involved buying new videotape - which is not easy these days.  I figured that my tapes (which I use to bring movies down to my basement lab) were probably worn out, and in the event that the problem wasn't my VHS tapes but my recording VCR, I've heard that the best way to clean the heads on a VCR is to pop in a virgin tape and record something.  I waited for a bargain on videotape on eBay and made my move.  Only after just 1 or 2 recordings on each tape, I got the humming again.  Next step was to look into replacing my VCRs, I still own 3 working VHS/DVD combo player plus the recorder, and I've already shuffled them around the house into what I think is the last possible configuration that suits my needs.

First step, replace the one I'm using for recording movies - this is no longer an easy or cheap thing to do, because the few new VCRs still on the market are going for several hundred dollars each, which is way overpriced.  The prices are high because nobody wants them any more, but logically I think that means that stores should REDUCE the prices, rather than increase them, for the people who still use them.  But what do I know about supply and demand?  If you pay $500 or $700 for a new VCR, I think you're a fool, but you've already paid the price for your foolishness.  Instead I made a note of the model number and bought a used model of the EXACT same VCR/DVD combo on Amazon for $60.  No remote included, but who cares, because I've already got a working remote.

I got the replacement a few days ago, and I put it into my system last night.  So far so good, I made two recordings on (relatively) new VHS tape, and there was no hum.  So it seems I'm back in business, no immediate need to replace my other players, I can do that little by little, until this life that I've come to be familiar with disappears entirely, or they come up with some system where I can watch any movie, any time I want, for one small fee.  We're just not there yet, so I'm going to continue to dub what I can to DVD so I can watch it at leisure, and my movies don't disappear into the ether after I watch them.  Call me crazy, but I'm keeping VHS and DVD alive for now, because it suits me to do so.

Tonight's film aired on one of those channels I can't dub from, so I can't save it - maybe that's a good thing, I don't know yet.  Dwayne Johnson carries over from "The Rundown" - from one of The Rock's earliest films to the most recent one that I'll watch during this chain.  (What, did you think I was going to run out and see "Hobbs & Shaw"?  Unlikely, since I've avoided that whole franchise to date...)

THE PLOT: A security expert must infiltrate a burning skyscraper, 225 stories above ground, when his family is trapped inside by criminals.

AFTER: OK, maybe this wasn't the best idea, because I am afraid of heights.  I don't see this as an irrational fear, I see it as a very rational one - you fall from a skyscraper, there's just no hope for you.  I worked for many years on the 15th floor of a building in Manhattan, and that was a challenge for me - and I realized the whole time that there were many buildings taller all around, but 15 floors was high enough for me.  The office briefly moved to a building around the corner, and was on the 28th floor of that building, and I couldn't have been happier when we all moved back to the old building, and I was 13 stories closer to the ground.  During the summer, my boss would like to go out on the roof and have lunch, it was a stunning view of Manhattan, but I would be edgy and nervous the whole time.  The one picture I have of myself from visiting the Grand Canyon, you can clearly see how uncomfortable I was, and I was probably over 20 feet away from the edge.

It's been years since I've visited the top of the Empire State Building (or the old World Trade Center) - I'd rather view a skyscraper from a block or two away.  They just finished a new residential building called Central Park Tower, and I hear it's nearly as tall as the Freedom Tower.  I was at an event a couple years ago at one of those fancy gyms nearby, and I remember getting dizzy just from LOOKING at the new building they were erecting.  And people want to LIVE that far off the ground?  I just don't get it.  I'll stay here in Queens where I sleep only one story above ground level, and I'm fine with that.  (Before this, I had a ground-level condo in Brooklyn for 11 years.).

The fictional Hong Kong building in this film, the Pearl, is three times TALLER than the Empire State Building, bigger than the Burj Khalifa.  What could possibly go wrong?  And then for some reason it's got these giant rotating turbines in it (does it produce its own electricity?) and a giant sphere on top - presumably in the shape of a pearl - that seems like an enormous waste of space, until you find out later in the film what it does.  Then it becomes a COLOSSAL waste of space.  We stayed in the Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City a few months ago, and that building also has a round ball on top, but one that admittedly serves no practical purpose - and even that seems like a better raison d'être than the ball atop this skyscraper has.

You're going to want to pay attention to everything they tell you about the building near the start of this film - of course it's all going to be important later on in the film.  Imagine if at the start of "Die Hard" someone casually mentioned what a great duct system the Nakatomi Plaza building had, or how easy it would be to blow it up.  In this case, Dwayne Johnson plays Will Sawyer, a security expert who reviews the safety systems of the building before its upper half it opened up for residential use, but right off the bat, there's a big NITPICK POINT as his family is somehow allowed to live in the building for a few days, while he determines whether it's safe to allow people to live there.  Sure, why not break the building codes and do something just before it's legal?  Seems a bit like eating at a restaurant before the health inspector signs off on it, but what do I know?

What Will doesn't know is that there's some kind of conspiracy to take down the building's owner, and the building is attacked by terrorists (corporate ones, not political ones, but that scarcely matters) who set the 96th floor on fire with a special chemical, and manage to disable the state-of-the-art fire safety systems (because hackers).  However, the building was supposed to be empty except for the owner/architect/shady businessman, and that just isn't the case - Sawyer's family is above the fire-line, and he can't get to them because he's been framed for the actions of the criminals.  The only way to get to them is to complete a series of impossible climbing stunts, get above the 96th floor, somehow get into the building from such a high vantage point, and then get out before the whole building goes up in flames.

Oh, and figure out what the criminals want, where it is, and how to get it, circumventing all the ridiculous architecture of the building and then maybe get the systems back on-line somehow.  I'd say call the help-line, but you know their advice is going to be so ridiculous - like "Are you sure your building is plugged in?" or "Have you tried resetting your building's password?" and "OK, we'll send a technician out to service your burning building, how about a week from Thursday?"

But this leads to a number of "Oh, crap!" moments where the lead character has to scale the outside of buildings, or balance on tiny ledges 150 stories above the ground, or ALMOST fall but catch the edge of something at the last second, and pull himself up to safety.  If it were me, and my family was in that burning skyscraper, and I MIGHT be able to save them by rappelling down the outside of skyscraper, or climbing up the side of a giant crane, or even doing one complete pull-up to get myself to safety, I'd probably end up saying, "Well, this sucks, but you know what, I can probably get a new family..."

Extra difficulty points for the lead character having an artificial leg, I think it's great that this isn't portrayed entirely as a disability, because it hardly ever slows him down, and in some cases he can do some things with his metal limb that wouldn't even be possible for someone with two regular legs.  It would have been so easy to just treat this as a weakness, but here it's anything but - it's just like anything else, there's a series of challenges involved with rescuing his family, let's stop and think about the resources we have and figure out the best way to do what needs to be done.  Screenwriters of several films I've watched lately ("Toy Story 4", "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World") could learn a thing or two from this.

What starts out as a take on "Die Hard" meets "The Towering Inferno" ends with something of a tribute to "The Lady From Shanghai", which seems a bit odd, if you ask me.  Classic film fans may pick up on the similarities, though.  And as a bonus, we all learn a very constructive argument against the use of facial recognition software.

Also starring Neve Campbell (last heard in "The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride"), Chin Han (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Roland Moller (last seen in "The Commuter"), Noah Taylor (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Byron Mann (last seen in "The Big Short"), Pablo Schreiber (last seen in "First Man"), McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan, Adrian Holmes, Elfina Luk (last seen in "Tully"), Tzi Ma (last seen in "Arrival"), Kevin Rankin (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Venus Terzo (last seen in "It" (1990)), Matt O'Leary (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen").

RATING: 5 out of 10 collapsing walkways

The Rundown

Year 11, Day 270 - 9/27/19 - Movie #3,368

BEFORE: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson carries over from "Central Intelligence".  We're going back down to South America tonight, it feels like I was just down here for "Triple Frontier", and "The Lost City of Z" before that.  But so it goes...

THE PLOT: A tough aspiring chef is hired to bring home a mobster's son from the Amazon but gets involved in the fight against an oppressive town operator and the search for a legendary treasure.

AFTER: I'm two films in to my Dwayne Johnson chain, and already I've spotted the pattern - for comic effect, you pair up "The Rock" with somebody who's smaller than average-size, and suddenly he looks bigger than a building.  Kevin Hart, Seann William Scott, it doesn't matter, just nobody close to him in size - though I suppose if you paired him up with Peter Dinklage, that would be too obvious.  Hey, it worked for Schwarzenegger when he was trying to become a household name, they paired him up with either Danny DeVito or a room full of kindergarten students, it's the same trick.

This film is kind of like "Indiana Jones" got together with "Midnight Run" and had a baby, and raised that baby on movies like "Rambo" and "The Magnificent Seven".  Those are all good things (except I've never seen a "Rambo" movie...) so why does it feel like a year from now, I'm not going to remember a thing about this movie?  It's like food with calories but no nutritional value, or something - sure, it fills you up and makes you briefly happy, but after the sugar rush wears off, you're going to crash AND be hungry again.

This was released back in 2003, and I'm not sure, but this could have been the start of that trend in movies where a character can "read the room" and fight back against a much stronger force of opponents just by using the environment around him to its best advantage.  This popped up in "Batman v. Superman", "The Equalizer", and "Kingsman: The Secret Service", which are all relatively recent (OK, maybe a few cycles ago, because those films have all had sequels already) so I'd really like to know where this came from - what film was FIRST to feature this?  Maybe it was "The Rundown", and maybe I'd be able to find out for sure, if only I knew what this ability was called.

It's important that Beck has this ability in this film, because he doesn't believe in guns.  I mean, he believes they exist, but he doesn't like using them.  Whether he thinks that only bad people use guns, or the screenwriters didn't want to make things very easy for him, I can't really say.  But it's at least interesting that he always has to find another way of doing things besides shooting a gun, and it's too bad that they couldn't sustain this for the entire film.  It's also, not-so-coincidentally a great way to turn every fight from a gun-fight into a wrestling match - and this was one of The Rock's first films after coming out of wrestling, except for those two films in "The Mummy" franchise.

It's good for a few laughs, but somehow it wasn't enough to keep me from falling asleep in the middle last night, and I had to watch the whole second half this morning before leaving for work.  I guess I'm really burned out on movies, and something has to be really super-engrossing right now to keep my interest and keep me awake.  Something tells me I need a break - and two days off for Comic-Con just isn't going to do it.  Thankfully I'm going to take another week in October for a vacation, and then I'll have almost the whole month of November to catch up on some other things.

NITPICK POINT: The film takes great care to tell us the names and (fake) bios of all the big football players that are around Knappmiller in the club, but then after they're all dispatched by Beck, they never pop up again, so all that valuable information is useless.  So why was it all displayed on-screen as if it's so damn important?  Who cares about the goofy nicknames of fictional sports stars?  (Ah, according to the IMDB, the footage is all from Vince McMahon's short-lived XFL franchise, and Vince was a producer of this film.  Still, no excuse.)

NITPICK POINT #2: Do I buy Dwayne Johnson as a chef?  Well, maybe I would if they ever showed him cooking anything, but all we ever see is him making a note about looking into porcini mushrooms.  That's not a chef, a chef would already know what those are.  I could buy him as a potential restaurant OWNER, someone who maybe started out as a bouncer and was looking to upgrade, but as a marketable chef, not so much.  EDIT: Was this a veiled reference to the old wrestling tagline "Can you SMELLLLLLL what The Rock is cooking?"  If so, I finally got it, like one day later.

Also starring Seann William Scott (last seen in "Movie 43"), Rosario Dawson (last heard in "Sorry to Bother You"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Envy", Ewen Bremner (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), Jon Gries (last seen in "The Grifters"), William Lucking (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Ernie Reyes Jr., Stuart F. Wilson, Dennis Keiffer (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Garrett Warren, Antonio Munoz, Stephen Bishop, with cameos from Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Life Itself") and the voice of Emeril Lagasse.

RATING: 5 out of 10 howler monkeys (or were they African baboons?)

Central Intelligence

Year 11, Day 269 - 9/26/19 - Movie #3,367

BEFORE: Melissa McCarthy carries over from "The Boss" for an uncredited cameo, and this is the end of her chain, for now - if my plans hold she'll be back for one more film in November.  And another big (really big) actor steps up, and he'll be here for just over a week, and his films will usher in October and the horror/fantasy theme.

I'll admit it, I've been avoiding the films with "The Rock" in them - especially that "Fast & Furious" franchise.  Boy, if I'm ever so hard up that I watch all those movies, it might seriously be time for me to stop this project.  Just a personal inkling - I mean, never say never about anything, but that would be a big warning sign for me. But I watched "Moana" about 2 years ago, and I realized that Mr. Johnson could be funny, and then last year "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" popped up at the top of the list, and that made me question why I was, perhaps unconsciously, boycotting this man's movies.  I wasn't actively not watching them, so much as not really seeking them out - but then I put together a nice little chain of them, took a couple months to get this all together, but if that helps me get to the end of my first Perfect Year, then it's all sort of worth it in the end.

THE PLOT: After he reconnects with an awkward pal from high school through Facebook, a mild-mannered accountant is lured into the world of international espionage.

AFTER:  Now here's a film that's a comedy but also a spy film, not really a spoof of spy films, because there's probably enough action here to be taken seriously, several well-choreographed fight scenes, even though some of them tend to run on a little too long.  But tone is everything, and if a film is too silly then it just kind of devolves into slapstick like "Spy" did, for example.  This is action when it needs to be action, and comedy when it needs to be comedy - but this leads to some odd shifts in character for Dwayne Johnson.  I really couldn't get a handle on his character, like was he genuinely goofily dumb, or just playing goofily dumb, which would be acceptable for a character who was a professional spy, trying to rope in an old friend to his world.

But then this leads to another set of questions, if you assume that he's just playing at being goofy and sincere, is he doing this for good purposes, or evil ones?  The film takes a really long time in deciding this, and that's part of the fun, but it's also fairly maddening.  He's apparently some kind of rogue CIA agent being pursued by other CIA agents, but maybe he's good and they're the evil agents, it wouldn't be the first time for that.  But then maybe it's a double-bluff, and he's evil playing good playing goofy and sincere.  The other CIA agents seem to think that agent Bob Stone is also the elusive Black Badger, the very man that he's (supposedly?) trying to track down.

This puts Calvin Joyner (and by extension, the audience) in a difficult position, because for the longest time, we're not really sure who to root for here.  Bob Stone seems to be on the up-and-up, and he seems to regard Calvin as a friend because of a pranking incident back in high school, where he was the only kid in class who was nice to him, but in other ways Bob Stone doesn't seem to have his head screwed on completely right.  He admits that he took the pain from that prank and pushed it down, pushed it down and tried not to think of it that much - maybe it motivated him to work out 6 hours a day for 20 years and build an incredible set of muscles, but perhaps it also twisted and corrupted him to become some kind of psychopath.  And then on top of that, it doesn't help that we get to see several different versions of how his ex-partner died.

There are other ways that this film (like many other spy films) is light on the details of spy work - much like how "The Boss" was very light on explaining how business works.  There's some kind of arms deal going down, though we never really see what weapons are being sold.  Or maybe it's some kind of satellite codes?  And they're on a thumb-drive?  I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end, it only matters that some bad people are bidding on something, and the high bidder gets something very important, and Stone needs the accounting skills of his high-school friend to figure it all out.

Unfortunately, it takes nearly the whole movie for these two to get on the same page, really.  Imagine what they could have accomplished if they had decided to work together from the get-go and were able to combine their skills in a positive way, and not keep flip-flopping over what to do at every single turn.

On a positive note, there's a very strong anti-bullying message here - but unfortunately, it seems the only way suggested to BEAT a bully is to become bigger and stronger and better at fighting than the bullies are, and beat them at their own game.  But isn't that bullying the bullies?  Surely there must be a better way of dealing with this type of person than sinking to their own level, right?  You'd think that a creative writer should be able to come up with a much more constructive method of dealing with bullies, but nope, the choices seem to be either 1) nut up and take it, force it down until you can't feel it any more, sweep it under the carpet because if you can't see it, it's not there or 2) work out until you're Hercules-size and then track them down and kick their ass.

And then once you've achieved your goal of dealing with the embarrassment of being naked in front of your whole senior class, congratulations!  You're a stronger person now, and you can take off your clothes at the reunion and be proud (or at least unashamed) of your body.  Yeah, that's a weird message.  I'm going to recommend that you keep your clothes ON at your next high-school reunion, unless you meet someone very special there - but please don't strip in front of the whole class.  Umm, nobody seems offended by this?  That's a little odd.  Nobody calls the cops to report a case of indecent exposure?  Again, that's a head-scratcher.

Also starring Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Kevin Hart (last seen in "Top Five"), Amy Ryan (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Aaron Paul (last seen in "Triple 9"), Danielle Nicolet, Ryan Hansen (last seen in "Superhero Movie"), Tim Griffin (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Timothy John Smith (last seen in "The Equalizer"), Megan Park (last seen in "Room"), Thomas Kretschmann (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"), Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Phil Reeves (last seen in "Downsizing"), Nate Richman (last seen in "Stronger").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Facebook friend requests

The Boss

Year 11, Day 268 - 9/25/19 - Movie #3,366

BEFORE: Just a few days away from October 1 now, and a few days away from having just 30 films left to watch in 2019.  Unfortunately, as soon as I get rolling on horror films, I may need to take 2 days off for New York Comic-Con.  I may spend Friday working sun-up to sundown at the convention, and then half of Saturday working, and half exploring the convention.  I probably won't have time for movies between Thursday and Sunday, because that would keep me up too late and I need to be there EARLY to set up and beat the crowds.  It's OK, I factored a few free days into October, but I was saving them for the end of the month - I can burn a couple in the first week and still finish the month on time.

Melissa McCarthy carries over again from "The Happytime Murders" - I did say she'd be around most of this week.

THE PLOT: A titan of industry is sent to prison after she's caught insider trading. When she emerges, ready to rebrand herself as America's latest sweetheart, not everyone she screwed over is so quick to forgive and forget.

AFTER: If I thought that "The Happytime Murders" was very light on the details with regard to how the puppets think, talk and move around by themselves, that pales in comparison to this film, where some screenwriters didn't let the fact that they didn't understand business AT ALL when making a film about a high-profile businesswoman.  First off, what sort of business is she in, and I mean EXACTLY?  For the whole first part of the film, there's simply no mention of what she DOES for a living, other than make rock-concert type lectures to crowds of fans, and bark random orders at her staff.  Is she an entertainment mogul, does her company manufacture something, is she in publishing or aerospace or finance?  Because those are all vastly different industries, and just having a business degree or calling yourself a "businesswoman" isn't enough.  She makes "deals", whatever that means, and she gets nabbed for insider trading (trading WHAT?) and loses her empire (which was what kind of empire?).  It's maddening how light this is on the details.  You might as well make a boxing movie and never mention what weight class the main character is in, or show any of his fights.

Apparently it's not important, what matter is that she serves her time, learns her lesson, and comes out  on the other side, ready to rebuild.  Only she doesn't learn any lesson at all from her conviction and incarceration, she gets out of prison just as spoiled and entitled as she was when she got in, if not more, because now she feels like the world owes her something for the added inconvenience.  She clearly takes advantage of her employees, doesn't even care about the personal lives of her personal assistant, and casually forgets every promise she ever made about salary increases and other benefits.  Then she shows up on the doorstep of her former assistant after getting out of jail, and expects to be given a place to stay and some help getting re-established.  Now I'm confused, am I supposed to like this character?

Even when she gets an idea for how to get back on top, by turning her former assistant's family brownie recipe into an industry that competes with Girl Scout Cookies - oh, that's actually a good idea, those supposedly "helpful" cookie sales have been operating for years without any decent competition.  It's only recently that other cookie companies have taken steps to make cookies SIMILAR to the ones sold by the Girl Scouts - hey, it's a free market, don't hate the player, hate the game - and if you think about it, why do supermarkets allow Girl Scouts to sell cookies RIGHT outside their doors, doesn't that hurt the sale of cookies INSIDE the supermarket?  Don't get me wrong, when my niece sells cookies I'm right there, and my wife and I are probably good for about a dozen boxes between us - but I have to wait THREE MONTHS for cookies?  The store around the corner has cookies NOW!  Ah, who am I kidding, I'll probably buy cookies now AND cookies that arrive in three months.

But the lead character here comes up with a way to undercut the Girl Scouts, by giving the young girls selling them 10% of the proceeds of each box, and putting another 10% into a college fund.  Umm, take that, Girl Scouts, whose members don't see ANY of the money from the cookies, except that it helps to fund their educational field trips and the ever-increasing costs of merit badges.  This might have worked very well as a plot point, if Michelle Darnell didn't do what she supposedly always does, which is to screw over anybody she's partnered with, especially if they get too close to her emotionally.  Kids raised in orphanages or those who encountered multiple adoptions don't fare very well here, the implication is that someone not raised by their birth parents can't possibly understand or appreciate the concept of having a family.  Which is not true, and casts a whole bunch of good people in a bad light, I think.

A lot more gets glossed over here - I'm no expert at starting up a business in the food industry, but I'm thinking that there are a lot of steps to that - like filing papers of organization, going through proper methods of sanitation and industrial food preparation, figuring out the cost of supplies and labor when setting the price of a sack of brownies, and so on.  What about collecting sales tax, what about the cost of promotion, what about signing an official contract or agreement between the two partners?  This last bit sort of gets covered in the film, namely if you didn't sign a partnership agreement, even if someone promises you 50% of the business, legally you haven't got squat.

What isn't sort of half-explained here just ends up being really silly.  Oh, let's break into a corporate mogul's modern office, with all its high-tech security, because we somehow know that he hasn't made an electronic copy of the contract, he probably just left it in a desk drawer and DIDN'T put it into a safe, and since it's Saturday there's no chance of the contract being legalized until Monday.  Umm, nope, nope, and hell nope.  Then for some unknown reason, let's have a sword fight with a little person on top of a skyscraper.

Most painful of all is a 5-minute (overly long) gag where the two female leads adjust each other's breasts.  Is this some part of friendship between women that I'm not aware of?  It seems like some writer's odd fetish, and honestly, I've seen enough of those this week already, from Bonnie Hunt getting splashed with a gallon of orange juice in "Cheaper By the Dozen 2" to an octopus milking a cow in some kind of puppet porn in "The Happytime Murders".  Screenwriters, y'all have some freaky weird fetishes, which is fine when you're alone, but do you have to put them into the movies that I'm watching?

Maybe I'm just not reading between the lines enough here - a character who has some shady business dealings, nobody seems to know what line of work they're really in, and they use too much self-tanner, who does that sound like?  Right, the commander in chief, who's had several failing businesses, claims to be knowledgeable on the "art of the deal", and has also screwed over everyone he's ever been in business with.  Was this character created as a female stand-in for Trump, or am I seeing the similarities where none really exist?  Man, I'm trying very hard not to get excited over today's news of an actual impeachment inquiry, which means that the House Democrats have finally agreed to start the process of investigating whether it's a good idea to initiate proceedings that might determine whether impeaching this rat bastard is worth their time.  Here's hoping.  I can't really understand why it's over one phone conversation he had with the leader of Ukraine, and not the 300 other shady things he's done since getting elected, but hey, I guess you've got to start somewhere.

Also starring Kristen Bell (last seen in "Burlesque"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Ella Anderson (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Chandler Head (ditto), Tyler Labine (last seen in "Flyboys"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "This Is 40"), Kristen Schaal (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Cedric Yarbrough (last seen in "The House"), Mary Sohn, Eva Peterson, Presley Coley, Aleandra Newcomb, Margo Martindale (last seen in "Wilson"), Ben Falcone (also carrying over from "The Happytime Murders"), Michael McDonald (ditto), Steve Mallory (ditto), Damon Jones (ditto), Larry Dorf, Vivian Falcone, Isabella Amara, with cameos from Gayle King (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), T-Pain.

RATING: 3 out of 10 too-high turtlenecks

The Happytime Murders

Year 11, Day 267 - 9/24/19 - Movie #3,365

BEFORE: So this film has been part of the plan for many months now, even when I didn't have a solid plan about how to watch it, I had it on my list.  Because the main requirement now for my list is that I have to be curious about a film, and man, this one just about maxed out the curiosity meter.

It's been on iTunes for a few months, but at a price that really discouraged renting it.  It seems they'd rather penalize the biggest fans first, the ones who will pay any price to see a movie sooner, which seems weird, because if somebody really, really, really wanted to see this, why didn't they do so when it was playing in movie theaters?

Then I waited, thinking that in time, the iTunes cost would come down, only it didn't - but I kept my options open, I figured that if it didn't become available to rent on iTunes, I'd just watch "The Equalizer 2" instead (which would have fit into my chain back between "Triple Frontier" and "If Beale Street Could Talk") but THEN, this movie started appearing in the premium cable listings, so problem solved!  It was back into the line-up (let that be a lesson to you, iTunes, lower your prices once in a while) and "The Equalizer 2" got re-scheduled for next year.  I mean, let's face it, movies about regular old vigilantes are a dime a dozen these days, but a puppet cop?  That really gets my attention.  So let's proceed.

Melissa McCarthy carries over from "Life of the Party", and so do three or four other actors.

THE PLOT: When the puppet cast of a 90's children's TV show begin to get murdered one by one, a disgraced LAPD detective-turned-private eye puppet takes on the case.

AFTER: This is another film that depicts an alternate reality of sorts, kind of like "Sorry to Bother You".  This is a world where puppets are REAL, at least in and around Los Angeles, and they can walk and talk on their own, sort of like the toys in "Toy Story 4", only there's nobody controlling them, which means they can think, too.  On top of all that, they have sex and they have sexual desires, and some of them get pretty freaky.  Like, what constitutes porn to a puppet?  This has been a trend in the last few years, going back to "Avenue Q" (which I think got sued at one point by Henson's company or maybe CTW, because the puppets looked so Sesame-Street like), and then continuing with films like "Team America: World Police" and "Sausage Party".  The idea is that if you take something associated with children's entertainment, like puppets or cute cartoon figures, and then get really R-rated and nasty with it, some people are going to be entertained by that study in contrasts.

It seems like the Jim Henson Company is finally ready to embrace the possibility of telling more adult stories - though you really have to dig through a bunch of other production companies to confirm that they were involved here.  Guess what?  It's Jim Henson's birthday today, so I landed this one coincidentally on an interesting day - one has to wonder now if he was spinning in his grave after some muppet-like creatures from his old company started saying the F-word and having sex on camera, and doing a parody of "Basic Instinct" (and yes, they went there.)  This leads to a bunch of questions, if you ask me - like, in this world, can puppets reproduce?  If so, how, especially if their ejaculate has the consistency of silly string?  Were the first puppets made by mankind, and if so, are they an offshoot of homo sapiens, or just a by-product of it, like robots?  They strongly imply that humans and puppets can have sex with each other, but there are no half-human, half-puppet hybrids, so they can't reproduce together, right?  God, this gets so confusing so quickly.

There is one character who got an organ transplant from a puppet, but that's one of the jokes - how, exactly, does that work if puppets don't have blood, but stuffing inside of them?  And they're made out of felt, not skin and bones.  The lead puppet character, Phil Philips, takes a big beating from humans at one point, but since he doesn't have any bones, their punches just get absorbed by his stuffing.  Well, if he doesn't have any bones, then how does he walk around?  How does he do anything, for that matter, without being controlled by puppeteers?  Once your brain goes looking for answers here, you may realize that there are none - you might as well ask how the toys in "Toy Story" move around by themselves and talk and think.  It's best not to think about this at all if you want to enjoy the story.  Chalk another one up on my "Wall of Weird" for the movies of 2019, right?

What you need to know is that Phil Philips was once a cop, but after an incident he lost his badge, and all puppets in the future were banned from being cops.  There's clearly a bunch of puppet racism going on in Los Angeles, where puppets are treated like second-class citizens, they apparently were once very big in the entertainment industry, appearing on shows like "The Happytime Gang", but many of them since then have been driven down into the shadowy underbelly of society.  There are puppet hospitals, puppet sex clubs, one assumes puppet restaurants and stores, but they don't really get too far into all that here.  Largely it's enough to know that they were once prominent entertainers, but they had their time in the spotlight, that's largely over, and most of them are just trying to scrape by.

Everything changes when somebody starts killing off the puppet stars from "The Happytime Gang", one of which happens to be Phil's brother.  And then the rabbit, Mr. Bumblypants - and each time, Phil's got some connection to the victim, or he was near the scene when it happened.  He also (quite coincidentally, contrivedly) had a relationship with Jenny, the only human on the show.  Clearly this is some kind of frame-up job, but who's behind it, and why?  Phil gets re-enlisted as a consultant to the police force, and gets teamed up with his old (also human) partner, despite the bad history between them, which we eventually learn about through flashback.  OK, maybe it's NOT so hard to figure out who's framing Phil, but hey, every story is a journey and some of us reach the destination faster than others, I guess.

I'm guessing this was considered a box-office bomb, because it only made $20 million domestically and had a budget of about $40 million.  Maybe theater audiences weren't ready for this, but I hope it finds a second life on cable, and maybe even develops a cult following down the road, I think it's funny enough (and strange enough) to be remembered.  This film also got 6 nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, but I don't think that was deserved - it's clearly a parody of cop films, and those should be somewhat exempt.  Plus I can name several movies from 2018 that were much worse, like that horrible "Robin Hood" remake, and what about "Welcome to Marwen"?  I'd certainly choose re-watching this over "Peter Rabbit", "I Feel Pretty" or "Billionaire Boys Club".

Sure, some screenwriter has no clue about how syndication residuals work, and the impossible logistics of puppets somehow being alive in a human world are flat-out un-workable, but aren't these minor points?  But wasn't doing a parody of "Basic Instinct" worn out about 20 years ago?

Also starring Maya Rudolph (also carrying over from "Life of the Party"), Joel McHale (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Elizabeth Banks (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Leslie David Baker (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Michael McDonald (last seen in "Ghostbusters"), Cynthy Wu (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Mitch Silpa (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Hemky Madera (last seen in "La La Land"), Ryan Gaul (last seen in "Mascots"), Fortune Feimster (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Brian Palermo (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), with cameos from Jimmy O. Yang (also last seen in "Life of the Party"), Ben Falcone (ditto), Damon Jones (ditto), Steve Mallory (ditto), and the voices of Bill Barretta (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Kevin Clash (ditto), Dorien Davies, Drew Massey, Ted Michaels, Colleen Smith, Alice Dinnean (last heard in "Kermit's Swamp Years"), Donna Kimball (last seen in "Jarhead"), Brian Henson (last heard in "Muppets From Space"), Allan Trautman, Patty Guggenheim, Victor Yerrid,

RATING: 6 out of 10 copies of "Puppet Pussy Party" magazine

Life of the Party

Year 11, Day 266 - 9/23/19 - Movie #3,364

BEFORE: I sped through the Emmy Awards last night - it turns out that if you watch on a time-delay, speed through the writing and directing awards, fast-forward through the majority of the speeches, and ONLY pay attention to who wins when a show that you like is in contention, you can get through the whole thing in just over an hour.  It's weird how I think I'm watching more TV than ever, but very little of what I like to watch gets nominated for stuff.  I never got into "Game of Thrones" (that's a time-saver right there) and in fact I've never watched ANY of the nominated drama series this year.  My comedy record is a little better, I watch "Barry" and "Schitt's Creek", but have resisted the hype around "Fleabag", "Russian Doll" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel".  For "Competition Series" (is that a new category, separated out from "Reality TV"?) I've seen every episode of "Top Chef" and "The Amazing Race", though I wonder in both cases if their best years are behind them.  But Limited Series and TV Movies, I don't touch those at all - both of those things are oxymorons, if you think about it.

Ah, but "Variety Series", that's where I really cover my bets.  I watched almost ALL of the nominated Variety Series this year, even caught up on three seasons of "Documentary Now!".  Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and the cast of SNL are my peeps, though I wish I knew how to quit "SNL", I usually hate-watch it and I can't bring myself to stop that.  It's been in the crapper ever since _____________ left the show (this bit is interactive, just drop in either Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, or Chevy Chase, depending on your age) and I don't see it improving any time soon.  Still, I enjoy it for "Weekend Update" and the occasional funny fake ad.

So congratulations to Bill Hader and John Oliver, the two people who won from shows that I watch.  Two?  That's it?  Somehow even though I'm always watching TV, I'm not watching enough TV.  I guess just most of the TV I watch just doesn't get nominated.  Can we please get a new category for best show about food?  I nominate "Carnival Eats", "Chopped", "Man vs. Food", "Halloween Baking Championship", "Burgers, Brew & 'Cue" and "Worst Cooks in America", and then you can move "Top Chef" into this category and throw in "MasterChef" and "Hell's Kitchen" if you want.

Ben Falcone had a cameo in "Cheaper By the Dozen 2" and he carries over to make another cameo appearance today.

THE PLOT: After her husband abruptly asks for a divorce, a middle-aged mother returns to college in order to complete her degree.

AFTER: Speaking of Emmys, Melissa McCarthy has two of them, and she'll be hanging around here most of the week.  This is my last scheduled "back to school" film, except I think there's one more film partially set in a high school coming up in a few days.  Well, I covered kindergarten in "Toy Story 4", grade school and high school in "Cheaper By the Dozen" and "The Glass Castle", more high school in "Fist Fight", and college in "Higher Learning" and tonight's film.  Then there was "Night School" earlier this year, which was also about adults trying to complete their degrees years after the fact.

McCarthy plays Deanna, who suffers a setback and alteration to her life plans when her husband suddenly wants to split up AND sell their house.  With no place to live, I suppose going back to college to complete her degree solves several problems at once (she was THIS close years ago, but didn't complete her archaeology degree because she was pregnant).  Conveniently, her daughter is in her senior year at the same fictional university (Decatur, supposedly outside Atlanta) so they manage to set up the maximum number of cringe-worthy opportunity for Deanna to embarrass her daughter, just by being her clueless self.  What is it about Moms, that they just love to talk all day and not really say anything at all?

The exception, however, proves to be a fear of public speaking, when Deanna finds out that her midterm has to be an oral presentation, and she develops intense anxiety, flop-sweating, awkwardness and klutziness when forced to speak in front of the class.  I would love to point out that this displays no consistency to her character, like how is she so outgoing in general but freezes up when speaking to the class?  But I know that phobias are often irrational, and don't have to follow logical rules.

I thought for a while they were going to have Deanna hook up with her professor - they're about the same age and I guess they attended college together before - but they went a different way with it, and had her fall in with a 20-something student who learns that he's got a thing for older women.  Well, I suppose they would tend to be more sexually experienced, so perhaps that's an upside.

There are definitely some laughs here, but it's also very formulaic - if your first thought was of Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School", since his character attended the same college as his son, you're not that far off the mark.  But then there are differences, like his character was very rich, and dated his English teacher, and was on the diving team.  Deanna was not rich at all, did not date her teacher, and was on the soccer team.  But it seems like maybe those were choices made so this movie wouldn't just be a re-tread of what another comedian did before.

It's too bad, though, that there are so many very underdeveloped characters - I'm thinking about Maddie's boyfriend, Jennifer's sidekick and Frank (Christine's husband), who just weren't given anything to really DO or any way to distinguish themselves.  If these three characters (and several others) weren't even there, the story would have proceeded just fine without them.

But there's also a positive message about how college girls need to support each other, and not tear each other down, whether they're older or insecure or agoraphobic or are just having trouble fitting in, or they spent several years in a coma.  Whatever, it doesn't matter, as long as you get that degree, everything else is going to fall into place, right?

Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Maya Rudolph (ditto), Molly Gordon, Gillian Jacobs (last seen in "The Box"), Jessie Ennis (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Adria Arjona (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Matt Walsh (last seen in "Widows"), Jacki Weaver (ditto), Stephen Root (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Julie Bowen (last seen in "Planes: Fire & Rescue"), Debby Ryan, Luke Benward (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Heidi Gardner, Jimmy O. Yang (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "The Battle of the Sexes"), Damon Jones (last seen in "Tammy", Steve Mallory (ditto), Yani Simone, Karen Maruyama, Nat Faxon (last seen in "Orange County"), Sarah Baker (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Courtney Patterson, Steve Falcone, Michael D. McCarthy, Christina Aguilera (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop").

RATING: 4 out of 10 tequila shots

Cheaper By the Dozen 2

Year 11, Day 265 - 9/22/19 - Movie #3,363

BEFORE: We got out to the Long Island Fair yesterday, since I'm not going to get another trip to the Texas State Fair in Dallas this year (two years in a row was probably enough) and watching episodes of "Carnival Eats" makes me long for some fried festival food.  I knew the Long Island Fair probably wasn't going to measure up to the one in Texas, but I was still underwhelmed since there just wasn't that much to DO there, they had no carnival rides or games, just a recreation of a colonial Long Island Village, a brass band concert, a diving show, an equestrian drill team and some pig racing.  (OK, there were a couple other things, like a BMX bike show, needlework and other craft displays, and a petting zoo, but nothing else I was interested in.). Even the food was a bit disappointing, since the booths were run by one catering company, so there was no competition or hustle among the vendors to come up with original fairground treats - I just had a turkey leg, a pot roast sandwich and an ice cream bar from a truck.

Still, it was probably good for me to get outdoors, and get some walking in on the weekend, I probably spend too many weekends just watching TV and movies at home.

Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt carry over from "Cheaper By the Dozen", and so do at least 12 others, I think.  I wonder if that's some kind of record for me, having 14 actors linking two films...

THE PLOT: The Bakers, while on vacation, find themselves competing with a rival family of eight children.

AFTER: My timing here couldn't be better, even though this can't really count as a "back to school" film, the plot revolves around Tom Baker getting his family together for one last vacation together before his third child moves away to NYC.  That seems like an odd thing to commemmorate, like isn't he still going to take vacations with the other nine kids?  And they're going to get easier to plan and pay for once more kids start aging out of the program.  But whatever.  It's a little odd that the film starts in June (?) with his daughter's graduation and then suddenly jumps ahead to their Labor Day vacation in September.  Great for my viewing period as a tie-in, but a bit weird for the structure of the film.

The younger kids, for some reason, don't want to waste their summer in Wisconsin, but this feels very clunky too, since the vacation isn't until September.  This means they've got half of June, all of July and most of August to do whatever they want, so it seems like a small price to pay, spending only one week (or two, this is unclear) at the end of the summer with Mom and Dad by the lake.  And it's weird that I've seen something this in two movies in one week, the parents in "Toy Story 4" also wanted a late-summer road trip before school started, so I guess maybe this is a thing?  I personally don't get it, I mean, you've got all summer to take a damn vacation, why wait until the last week?  But hey, I'm in the habit of working through the summer and taking a week off in October.  Part of that has to do with the weather and where we've been traveling lately, like I'd rather go down South or out to Vegas in October when things cool off a bit.

I think if global warming continues, we're going to see some kind of shift in people's vacation patterns.  This summer, even in NYC, it was largely too hot to do any fun outdoor activities, most days I just wanted to stay indoors with the A/C on.  So I can't even imagine being outside in Florida or some place like New Mexico during July or August, how do people there keep from spontaneously combusting?  If I took a summer vacation now I'd want to head up north to Canada or maybe even Alaska, that might be quite comfortable.  So even though for decades we've associated summer with vacation time, as a society we might want to start rethinking that.  Who wants to play outdoor sports or go camping or hiking when it's over a hundred degrees?  For that matter, it might be time to take a look at living in mountain states like Colorado or Utah.  I'd say Greenland's looking pretty nice, but here's an insider tip, most of Greenland's probably going to MELT in a decade or so, so I don't think that's going to be a viable option.  Not much actual LAND in Greenland, so I can't understand why our President was interested in buying it - oh, right, he's an idiot.

But this film came out in 2005, back when people didn't know how bad climage change was going to get, and still thought that we could recycle our way out of it.  (Now, of course, we know that's not true...). The Bakers load up their van and trailer with kids and get their two adult children to meet them at the old lake house, which they've rented many times in the past, only they never mentioned it until the sequel demanded it.  (Screenwriters are clever like that, here they just added backstory about the vacation home, the long-running rivalry with another large family, and a packrat in the house that's been stealing items from the family for longer than a rat's normal lifespan).

Some things have changed since the Baker's last vacation, the father of the rival family has bought up most of the lakefront property and erected a "members only" club, and some things haven't, since Tom Baker still hasn't learned to listen to his kids or take their needs into consideration.  Once again, it becomes all about HIM as he tries to get back at his stuffy rival and then win some kind of Family Cup.  Again, the script can't seem to decide if this is a recurring annual event at this lake, or just an occasion for these two familes to compete against each other, it's never made clear.  It almost seems like they revived this dead tradition JUST to continue the bitter rivalry between the two father figures (sure, there are other families competing, but come on, they haven't got a chance.).

The way the whole competition thing works is extremely clunky at best.  How is it fair for a canoe filled with 8 kids to compete against a canoe filled with 12?  I can't even imagine how to calculate the advantage gained by having more people rowing balanced against the disadvantage of that canoe having more weight in it.  But I've got to figure it's like racing a two-man bobsled against a four-man one, no matter who wins, you can't call that a clean victory because you changed the variables.  There are SO many things like this in the film that don't make any sense.  Why would a family rent a lake house with bedrooms for everyone inside, and then camp outside in tents?  OK, just the father wanted to do that, but it's unfathomable from any story angle.  Plus there are at least two potential romantic relationships between the children from the two families, why isn't this enough for the patriarchs to see that the families should be friendly with each other, and not rivals?

All of these are potential NITPICK POINTS, but none bigger than this one - why would anyone allow a child with a backpack FULL of fireworks (the bag is always open, firework labels clearly visible inside at all times, plus giant fireworks STICKING OUT of the bag) to attend a party at the club?  Ugh, this is either a horrendous example of hands-off parenting or the director just needed to justify an explosion-filled accident at the party.  But the ends don't justify the means, and it's the most blatant example of telegraphing ever.  OK, this leads to a discussion over whether it's better to be a disciplinarian as a parent (one family's father is, the other obviously isn't) but then how does winning the Family Cup even settle THAT argument?  Hey, we beat you at the egg toss and the three-legged race, so clearly our style of parenting is superior?  That doesn't logically follow.  It's just another chance for Tom Baker to apply his (alleged) coaching skills to his children, and as we saw in the first film, that just doesn't work.

Then, just when most of the Baker family refuses to compete, after they all realize that Tom's competitive nature and parenting style is tearing the family apart, the family does a complete 180 after finding their old team flag.  Huh?  That should have been a horrible reminder of the way the family USED to be, what got them into trouble in the first place, but instead it rallies them to join their father and compete in the events, when they've just SEEN what lies down that dark road.  Why the hell would they want to backslide into their old ways, when they just got themselves OFF of that treadmill that goes nowhere?

Points, though, for coming up with an innovative story solution to get out of the dead-end bind at the end (or maybe the screenwriters realized that both winning AND losing the competition were narrative dead ends).  Instead a last-minute complication forces the two families to work together to reach the denouement.  But it's about the best ending this could have had, and carries more emotion, too.  I'm also glad to see that Nora dropped that egotistical actor boyfriend she was living with and instead married a more solid guy who cares about something other than himself.  OK, he's no Ashton Kutcher, but if he looks a bit familiar, he went on to host three or four seasons of "Cake Wars".

Also starring Piper Perabo, Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, Kevin G. Schmidt, Alyson Stoner, Jacob Smith, Forrest Landis, Morgan York, Liliana Mumy, Blake Woodruff, Brent Kinsman, Shane Kinsman (all carrying over from "Cheaper By the Dozen"), Eugene Levy (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Carmen Electra (last seen in "American Dreamz"), Jonathan Bennett (last seen in "Mean Girls"), Shawn Roberts (last seen in xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Jaime King (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Robbie Amell, Melanie Tonello (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Taylor Lautner (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6") , Madison Fitzpatrick, Courtney Fitzpatrick, Alexander Conti, Peter Keleghan, William Copeland, with cameos from Ben Falcone (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Kathryn Joosten (last seen in "Hostage"), Adam Shankman, Shawn Levy (OK, make that 15 people carrying over.)

RATING: 5 out of 10 roasted marshmallows