BEFORE: OK, May 1 is here so let's get to the format stats for April. Once again, I doubled up and watched an extra movie, which I've done each month in 2020 so far - so I'm four movies ahead of the day count, but that's been necessary to get my chain to line up with the appropriate holidays. I'll have to watch an extra movie this weekend, too, just so I'll hit Mother's Day right on the nose.
APRIL 2020:
15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Leisure Seeker, Eye in the Sky, The Debt, The Professor and the Madman, On the Basis of Sex, The Blind Side, The Upside, Rocketman, The Take, The Mountain Between Us, The Reader, The House That Jack Built, The Con Is On, Motherhood, Den of Thieves
4 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Tree of Life, Cold Pursuit, Hard Rain, The Kitchen
2 watched on Netflix: Beasts of No Nation, Look Who's Back
5 watched on Academy screeners: The Good Liar, Little Women, Ford v Ferrari, Richard Jewell, Just Mercy
4 watched on Amazon Prime: Midsommar, Elvis & Nixon, Downfall, The Report
1 watched on Tubi: The Boys from Brazil
31 TOTAL
Cable's still way out in front as my primary source of movies, but looking ahead to May, I'm seeing a lot more films coming streaming services than cable. So even though April was 2/3 cable-based, I'm thinking May's going to swing the other way and be about 2/3 streaming films. This is partially due to the fact that I'm running out of Academy screeners, so some other format's going to have to pick up the slack. And I've also really made an effort to schedule more films from my Netflix and Disney+ saved lists. My Netflix queue shot up again last month after a thorough search, and I've got to stem that rising tide. This could cause my DVR to fill up, but I've spent the last two weeks burning as many movies as possible to DVD to try to clear it, so I should be OK.
Gerard Butler carries over from "Den of Thieves". I totally forgot that I waited so long to watch the first movie in this series that by the time I did, the sequel was in theaters, so I ended up seeing them back-to-back. But then I had to wait four years for the follow-up, because this one just didn't seem worth going to the theater for. But I finally decide to work it in, programmed it months ago, and I figured if it didn't pop up on cable or streaming, I'd just pay to see it on iTunes. But between then and now, it premiered on Netflix, so there you go, more great planning on my part.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Olympus Has Fallen" (Movie #2,268), "London Has Fallen" (Movie #2,269)
THE PLOT: Mike Banning is framed for the attempted assassination of the President and must evade his own agency and the FBI as he tries to uncover the real threat.
AFTER: Film franchises seem to naturally spark a ton of questions, like "Which are better, the Star Wars sequels or the Star Wars prequels?" and "How many actors does it take to play Spider-Man (or Batman) over a ten-year period?" Then of course, there's "Are we ever going to see any sequel to "Avatar"?" But maybe the most common is, "How many films are too many?" Well, I guess maybe you know it when you get there - and three might be the legal limit for the "(BLANK) Has Fallen" franchise.
Don't get me wrong, they've tried their darnedest to keep things fresh, like in the first two films Aaron Eckhart played the U.S. President, and the first film featured North Korean terrorists attacking the White House, and the second film had Pakistani terrorists attacking London, and Morgan Freeman's character had moved up from Speaker of the House to V.P. Now the storyline has advanced him to President (though they don't say what exactly happened to the previous President, I hope he's OK) but meanwhile, Secret Service agent Mike Banning is still getting too old for this shit. Meanwhile, his wife is somehow getting younger, in fact she looks like a completely different person. Maybe she had some cosmetic surgery?
You can still count on a few certainties in a "(BLANK) Has Fallen" film. (Quick SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen any films in this series, because if you've seen one, you've sort of seen them all.) You can bet that somebody's going to be targeting the U.S. President, you can bet that Banning's going to have to go on the run to save him and/or clear his own name, and you can bet that there will be a mole somewhere in the ranks. The identity of the mole is exceedingly easy to deduce here, I saw it coming from a mile away, it's like they made no attempt at all to hide it. Where's the artistry of hiding a criminal mastermind in plain sight - maybe this director should go watch "Den of Thieves", just saying.
Banning gets framed for trying to kill the President - as the drone strike is programmed to recognize him and not kill him, plus there's the matter of the deposit to the secret bank account that's so secret that even he doesn't know about it. Plus, he goes on the run again - isn't that what guilty people do, try to run away? Guys, it's just his thing, it's what he does, he'll be back, don't worry, as soon as he figures out who's behind the assassination, something everybody in the audience already knows. (Honestly, you just don't cast THAT actor to play a hero, just saying.)
Banning's far from perfect, he's got migraines and insomnia from concussions (all those explosions in the first two films, I'd wager) and he's seceretly taking painkillers - but he's our best hope at protecting the President, once he can get his head together and prove that he didn't try to kill the President. OK, yeah, good luck with that, let me know how that goes. Hey, maybe it's time to retire and relax, come on, he had a good run. But that would be like John McClane not making another "Die Hard" film or Harrison Ford not playing Indiana Jones again, or Arnold not coming back in another "Terminator" movie. There's always going to be one more adventure, it's just a matter of time. And then even if the actor gets too old or dies, God forbid, they can still re-boot the series by going back and making prequel films, like they did with Jack Ryan, or, um, "Young Indiana Jones".
Overall, it's fine, there's plenty of action, but I worry that someone might have stolen - sorry, borrowed - plot elements from another film, "Big Game", which was also about someone trying to assassinate a black President (Samuel L. Jackson in that one). Both films were developed during (or at the tail end of) the Obama administration, so what does that mean? Why can't we have a film where someone's trying to kill a large, loud, stupid, controversial President with a bad combover? We've all had nearly four years now to get one made.
Better than seeing Mike Banning clear his name and earn a promotion is seeing him track down and re-connect with his absent father while on the run. Clay Banning is easily the most interesting character in the whole series, since he lives off the grid in a Unabomber-like shack, is a Vietnam vet with a long white beard, and is even more "too old for this shit" than his son is. The addition of this character almost makes up for the lack of originality in the rest of the film.
Also starring Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Danny Huston (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Michael Landes (last seen in "Burlesque"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Nick Nolte (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Piper Perabo (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Jada Pinkett Smith (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Lance Reddick (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Frederick Schmidt (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Joseph Millson (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Ori Pfeffer (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Mark Arnold (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Chris Browning (last seen in "Let Me In"), Rocci Williams, Kerry Shale (last seen in "The Trip to Spain"), with archive footage of Vladimir Putin (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Angela Merkel (last seen in "Look Who's Back").
RATING: 5 out of 10 smoke grenades
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