Hotel Artemis

Year 12, Day 32 - 2/1/20 - Movie #3,434

BEFORE: Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, plus the Puppy Bowl is on, followed by the season premiere of "The Masked Singer", and it will also be the start of my annual romance chain.  I'm not sure, but there may also be a sporting event of some sort, I wouldn't know.  That's not part of my job any more, plus my team got knocked out in the playoffs.  You know the one.

Melvyn Douglas carries over from "The Candidate" to the first film on TCM's line-up tomorrow, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 2)
6:30 am "Ninotchka" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
8:30 am "Morning Glory" (1933) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 pm "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 pm "Little Women" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 pm "Lassie Come Home" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Hold Back the Dawn" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 am "All This, and Heaven Too" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
2:45 am "Dark Victory" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
4:45 am "42nd Street" (1933)

I've only seen three of these 12 films - "The Maltese Falcon" of course, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Dark Victory" - but the 1941 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is on my watchlist.  So now I'm 7 for 22, already down to about 32%.  They must be burning off the dead wood tomorrow, I mean, who's going to watch "Lassie Come Home" when the Puppy Bowl is airing?

Charlie Day carries over from "Pacific Rim: Uprising".

THE PLOT: In riot-torn, near-future Los Angeles, the Nurse runs a secret members-only emergency room for criminals.

AFTER: The calendar now reads February (unless you forgot to flip it over), but I've got one more film that feels like it fits in with the January chain - it starts with a bank heist, concerns a bunch of strangers with hidden agendas thrown together in a hotel atmosphere, and it ends with everything going to hell.  Meanwhile there are riots going on in the streets of Los Angeles - this is set in the future, but really, aren't riots always going on in L.A.?  This also feels like it could have been set in some kind of comic-book universe - the Batman comics used to feature a doctor named Leslie Tompkins, who ran some kind of free clinic and would operate on Batman if he got really injured, and Marvel has a recurring character called Night Nurse who patches up both heroes and villains on the D.L.

But part of me just doesn't know what to DO with this film.  Like, I want to put it on a DVD, but what would I possibly pair it with?  Nothing seems to really work, because there's no other movie like this one, plus I don't have anything else on the DVR with Jodie Foster or Sterling K. Brown, so I can't really do a double-feature with the same actor even.  The only thing this reminds me of is the "Purge" franchise, which I've been avoiding, because I had a bad feeling that they don't all connect to each other (Nope, I was wrong, there is a way to link between them, provided I start with the prequel film).  Anyway, there are four "Purge" films so if I collect those in the future, that wouldn't leave room on a DVD for this one.

At least it's a semi-original idea, and with all the bad political developments in the news, it's fairly easy to think of America as descending into political chaos - I passed a demonstration yesterday on Sixth Avenue that was protesting the police presence on the subways while also calling for FREE mass transit.  Umm, so wait, you people want more people riding the city's subways and buses, but you want the cops to stay AWAY?  Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.  Day after day I look around on the subway and I think, "You know what this subway station needs?  More lawlessness..."  I don't get this next generation, like the only time you want cops to stay away is if you're up to something. We FINALLY got people to stop smoking and drinking on the trains (with the odd rare exception) and you want us to go backwards now?  Be careful what you wish for.

In "Hotel Artemis" the protest raging in the streets is over water, that's California for you, but it could just as easily have been about income equality or the electoral college or the pending cancellation of HBO's "Ballers" series.  People are angry because the world is running out of resources, and also places to dump our trash.  No one's really doing anything constructive about climate change, and society is run by criminals and politicians, which is redundant.  Jeez, this all seems a bit familiar, doesn't it?  Maybe the future is just a reflection of our present, hmm...  I've been misquoting Mark Twain recently by telling people that "History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes."  (The real quote from Twain is a bit more boring: "It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible."

In other words, we can't change who we are, which is also echoed here in one character's desire to get out of the criminal life, but he finds that circumstances (and his brother) keep pulling him back in.  These men are the core of the gang robbing the bank at the start of the film, and when things don't go well, and they're injured and on the run, the safest place to go is Hotel Artemis.  BUT there are rules, and only paid members are allowed, and their implanted microchips will grant them access.  This means that in the future, organized crime is more organized than ever, with special guilds and high-tech operations, and also medical robots and 3-D printed organs ready for transplanting.  So it's kind of a bad news/good news thing.

But the situation gets complicated, and house rules start to get broken, when two new patients are admitted - one is the Wolf King, the biggest mobster in L.A. who also happens to be the benefactor of the secret hospital, and the other is a wounded cop who happens to be the childhood friend of the Nurse's deceased son.  Throw in a secret assassin who's only there to take the Wolf King down, and all bets are off.  Another film where, chances are, not everyone's going to survive until the closing credits.  But that's what people want in their movies now, blood and circuses.  And in the future we'll live in a world where snuff films are the new porn.

Also starring Jodie Foster (last seen in "The Beaver"), Sterling K. Brown (last seen in "The Predator"), Sofia Boutella (last seen in "The Mummy"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "Joker"), Jenny Slate (last seen in "Venom"), Zachary Quinto (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Heist"), Kenneth Choi (last seen in "Bright"), Josh Tillman, Evan Jones (last seen in "Lucky You"), Nathan Davis Jr.

RATING: 5 out of 10 bullet holes

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "31 Degrees of Oscar" links are: Richard Carle, C. Aubrey Smith, Barton MacLane, Mary Astor, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald Crisp, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Charles Boyer, Bette Davis and George Brent.

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Year 12, Day 31 - 1/31/20 - Movie #3,433

BEFORE: Well, it's certainly been a big month, bigger than usual.  I crammed two extra movies in there and watched THREE Best Picture contenders, took a tour of the DC comics universe, saw at least four bank robberies go south, and whatever money wasn't stolen by strippers got lost to Bernie Madoff.  I learned how the Joker started (maybe) and also how Jimmy Hoffa ended (again, maybe).  We fixed the dying sun (twice), saw the Borrowers save a house (twice) and watched Roberto Duran fight Sugar Ray Leonard (also twice).  A murder got solved in Denmark and a robbery took place in Sweden.

I'm ending with an uninentional progression - "1917" covered World War I, "The Catcher Was a Spy" took place during World War II, and there was a bit in "Bad Times at the El Royale" with a Vietnam flashback.  And tonight it's the robot/kaiju wars of the future.  I know, it's a little wonky but work with me here.  Here's the January format breakdown:

17 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Whale Rider, The Young Victoria, The Borrowers (1997), The Borrowers (2011), Stand Up Guys, Killers, Everybody's Fine, The Wizard of Lies, Heist, All-Star Superman, Superman: Unbound, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Batman: The Killing Joke, Superman: Brainiac Attacks, Stockholm, The Catcher Was a Spy, Pacific Rim: Uprising
7 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Sense of an Ending, Mortal Engines, Once Upon a Time in America, Teen Titans GO! to the Movies, Shazam!, Bad Times at the El Royale
1 watched on Netflix: The Irishman
3 watched on Academy screeners: Hustlers, Joker, 1917
2 watched on iTunes: Sunshine, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
2 watched on Amazon Prime: The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, Hands of Stone
1 watched on Tubi: The Nut Job
33 TOTALin January

Now, I want to get started a little early on posting Turner Classic Movies' "31 Days of Oscar" line-up - this way if there's something you want to watch on Day 1, I'm giving you enough time to tune in and catch it.  As I mentioned, this year they're back to the "360 Degrees of Oscar" format, where each film links by actor to the next film - I knew I should have trademarked this idea, then they at least would owe me some royalties that way.  I'll give you the first link, and then see if you can fill in the others - answers at the bottom of the page.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 1)
6:00 am "The Entertainer" (1960) with Laurence Olivier linking to:
7:45 am "Wuthering Heights" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 am "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 am "Quo Vadis" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
2:45 pm "Billy Budd" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
5:00 pm "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1967) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) with _____________ linking to:
11:30 pm "Funny Girl" (1968) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 am "The Way We Were" (1973) with _____________ linking to:
4:30 am "The Candidate" (1972)

Ha, some really easy ones there at the end - well, it's just Day 1, the real stumpers lie ahead, no doubt.    I've seen 4 out of these 10 films - "Doctor Zhivago", "Funny Girl", "The Way We Were" and "The Candidate" - so I'm off to a fine start with a 40% average.  That's probably the high-water mark for me, I can't possibly maintain that rate.  Still, I finished last year with a seen percentage close to 43%.

Cailee Spaeny carries over from "Bad Times at the El Royale".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Pacific Rim" (Movie #1,829)

THE PLOT: Jake Pentecost reunites with Mako More to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat.

AFTER: I recorded this off cable over a year ago, it was another film that I could have used as a possible link to get to "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker".  But I went a different way to get there, so now I want to clear this one off the books as soon as possible, because I need more storage space on my DVR, it's above 70% full.

I remember the biggest problem with the original "Pacific Rim", as my boss pointed out in his blog review, was that the technology had all these self-imposed limits on it.  There simply HAD to be two people piloting each giant Jaeger (why?) and they just HAD to share some kind of mental link in order to operate the technology (again, WHY?) and if they didn't work together as a team then their heads would explode or something, and they wouldn't be able to defeat the evil power.

Somebody please tell the screenwriter that this is fiction, and the only limits are to his own imagination - why couldn't he write about a world where the tech was just a little bit better, and it only took ONE pilot to make the giant robot work?  Or maybe they could just, you know, TALK to each other and coordinate and then they wouldn't have to have some mental link that could scramble their brains together.  Wouldn't that be better?  Why create this wonderful future world with tech that just isn't QUITE up to snuff?  Were these limitations put into place to create some artificial sense of drama, to make the task seem a bit more dangerous or difficult, so we'll appreciate it more when the good guys win and the bad guys lose?  I feel so manipulated after thinking about the film this way.

Why do there need to be any humans in the Jaegers at all?  Just so somebody can react to dangers at the speed of thought?  This is a movie, the pilots could just as easily be at a different location and move the Jaegers remotely, it's not like their puny human strength is really making the limbs move, that's all servos and hydraulics or whatever.  For that matter, we've got technology NOW where people control drones and robots from far away with remotes, and people are working on robots that can operate autonomously, so why not project into the future a timeline where the Jaegers didn't need humans inside them at all?  Making them just giant versions of Iron Man's suit kind of feels like the tech didn't go far enough, or it's some kind of step backwards from where we call could be or should be.

It seems like maybe the writers of the sequel heard all the complaints, because they did end up creating ONE giant robot that can be piloted by one person, but it's the smallest one.  Again, WHY?  The whole point is to put regular-sized people inside giant robots so they can do amazing things, so why draw the line at "One person can pilot a 40-foot tall robot, but not a 200-foot tall robot, because THAT would be ridiculous."  Umm, it's too late, the whole premise is already beyond ludicrous. And does every action of the Jaegers simply have to happen in real time, which is impossible anyway - any robot built THAT big would have a delay every time it had to move an arm or a leg, just because of the size and the weight of all the machinery involved - think more like the way that the Statue of Liberty walked through Manhattan in "Ghostbusters II".  Everybody knows that the bigger something is, the slower it moves through space, that's just the physics of monster movies.  If you want to make a man in a monster suit look huge, you film him from below and slow the film down (or rather, you speed the camera motor UP so when you run the film at normal speed, it looks much slower.)

In one way the tech from the first film seems like VCRs and VHS cassettes - they got the job done at the time (1980's) but they were very problematic, and they had their limitations - tracking problems, the tape sometimes got stuck in the machine, you could accidentally tape over a movie you liked, plus they broke easily, too many moving parts, and after a few years the machines and the tapes would wear out, especially if you watched them too often.  The Jaeger tech in the sequel seems more like DVDs, a definite improvement in quality and performance, but they still seem to have problems - you can't touch or scratch one side of the disc, or you'll make it unwatchable, plus don't get it wet, leave it out in the sun, or drop it on the floor because you know which side it will land on.  I guess we had to go through all those stages to get to the digital age, but damn, we still have problems - what if you can't get your wi-fi to work, or you don't have the right plug-in for your browser, or your phone has some problem with the battery.  Are we ever going to get to a point where things just WORK and you can watch any movie any time you want, whenever and wherever?  Same question for the Jaeger tech, with the future's biggest tech companies behind it, why can't it just work from the get-go?

Then there's the whole logic behind how they came to create the new Jaegers for this film, the fact that they were already READY to fight when the Kaiju came back seems really suspicious.  Think about it, the logic is, "It's been 10 years since the last battle, and there's been no sign of the Kaiju coming back - so we've GOT to get ready for them."  Huh?  How does THAT follow?  Don't get me wrong, it's great to be ready for any bad situation that may arise, but how does the sense of urgency follow from the Kaiju's absence?  Think about the recent situation with the new Corona virus in China - I saw on the news that they were building two new hospitals just to deal with the infected patients.  This seems weird to me, because when you think of a hospital, one usually takes a few years to build, so I'd prefer a reaction with a quicker response time, but look at it the other way around - if the Chinese government had built two new hospitals and completed them JUST before the virus hit, you might start thinking up conspiracy theories, right?  That's essentially what happens here, with training on new Jaegers for NO apparent reason, but inadvertently then being prepared when they do attack.

This is another example from the "let's destroy as many CGI buildings as we can in two hours" school of filmmaking, which is a disturbing trend that I think started shortly after the 9/11 attacks.  Personally, since I saw that attack play out in real time, and watched the World Trade Center collapse, I really don't have a desire to be reminded of that in every CGI-heavy movie battle.  Also, the giant robots have lightsabers now?  Sorry, chain swords?  This seems a bit much, no?  And why do all the Jaeger names have to consist of two nonsense words, like "November Ajax" and "Saber Athena"?  What's wrong with "the red one", "the blue one" and "the black one"?  Damn, this film takes itself way too seriously for a pile of special effects fluff.  Also, tangential point to this, why did somebody stop and take time to NAME the attacking monsters, haven't we got more important problems right now, like the attacking monster, than coming up with cool names for the thingie we need to stop?

For that matter, why do the Jaegers count down from 10 before they launch, when the Kaiju are close to their goal, and literally every second counts.  Just go, already!  Wouldn't it suck if they arrived too late to stop the monsters because they just HAD to have a 10 second countdown first?

Once again, there's much confusion over CHINESE NAMES in the credits - why can't Hollywood ever get this right?  China's, like, one of the biggest markets for movies, and more and more stories seem to be pandering to this market to get some of that sweet, sweet Asian money.  So why can't they bill the actors from this country properly, with the family name first and the given name second, as their entire culture, and billions of people, do?  How come the IMDB gets it right but the credits of most blockbusters don't, leading to confusion across the board and extra work for the database engineers?  On top of that, why are Asian actors (apparently) encouraged to use their "American" names instead of the names they were given at birth?  How can we continue to earn those Asia-dollars if we don't respect their culture and adapt to their customs, instead of forcing their people to conform to OUR arbitrary standards?

Also starring John Boyega (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Scott Eastwood (last seen in "Snowden"), Burn Gorman (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Charlie Day (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Tian Jing (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Rinko Kikuchi (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Adria Arjona (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Max Zhang, Wesley Wong, Karan Brar, Ivanna Sakhno, Mackenyu, Lily Ji, Shyrley Rodriguez, Rahart Adams, Levi Meaden, Dustin Clare, Nick E. Tarabay, Jaime Slater, Daniel Feuerriegel, Qian Yongchen, with archive footage of Idris Elba (last seen in "Molly's Game").

RATING: 4 out of 10 structural integrity warnings

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Flora Robson, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Terence Stamp, Julie Christie, Omar Sharif, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford.

Bad Times at the El Royale

Year 12, Day 30 - 1/30/20 - Movie #3,432

BEFORE: Two films left in January, then I can get started on posting the TCM Oscar schedule and also my romance chain - but I've got to get there first.  I'm supposed to take the Jeopardy! online test tonight at 11 pm EST, and thanks to my busy work AND movie-watching schedule, I haven't been able to do much studying.  I know where my weak spots are - African countries, Vice Presidents, the Crimean War - but you can't really cram for this test like that.  If you do, then they just turn around and ask you about last week's Grammy Awards, and you realize you should have paid more attention to THAT.  You can't cheat, either, because you only have 15 seconds per question, barely enough time to think about your answer, and not enough time to Google anything, so it's really a test of how much info you have handy, on the tip of your brain.  So here's hoping they ask me about recent DC superheroes, different boxing weight divisions, Jimmy Hoffa, Queen Victoria (or Queen Anne, or Mary Queen of Scots) and maybe Stockholm syndrome or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle...

Shea Whigham carries over from "The Catcher Was a Spy".

THE PLOT: In the early 1970's, four strangers check in at the El Royale Hotel, staffed by a single desk clerk.  Some of the new guests' reasons for being there are less than innocent and some are not who they appear to be.

AFTER: This feels a little bit like some kind of lost Tarantino film, or maybe I'm just recalling that he directed a segment in another hotel-based film, called "Four Rooms".  I know this probably isn't the case, but it almost feels like some writer found out that Quentin was planning to set his next film in Los Angeles in the 1960's, and tried to anticipate the story he was going to write and beat him to the punch.  I say this because the non-linear approach here feels a little bit like an homage to "Pulp Fiction", where the story sort of slowly enfolds as it bends back upon itself, plus it's a slow build of violence (similar to, say, "Reservoir Dogs") where a bunch of strangers are thrown together at a location for travelers (as in "The Hateful Eight") and you start to get the feeling that maybe not all of the characters are going to make it to the end of the story (umm, every Tarantino pic).

Plus there's a charismatic but unhinged cult leader, and the buzz leaked out about how "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" tangentially tells the story of the Manson family, so there's another comparison.  I haven't been able to schedule this film just yet (I missed my chance to drop it in between two other films with Al Pacino in them, the screener didn't arrive in time...) but I want to see it ASAP.  I'm putting a rough late-March/early April schedule together now, and I do have a way to link to it, but it's very early, and there's a LOT to consider.  I think the next calendar reference point is Hitler's birthday, oddly enough, because I have several films where he's a prominent character, but is that really the way I want to go?  Plus, with so much turnover a large portion of my watchlist could be all-new by then, so maybe it's best to wait until the end of February to draw up the next segment of my schedule.

The main question to ask here, and the answer could be a very personal one, is whether the separate story pieces come together to form a coherent whole.   There's a bank heist, one that happened in the past, where the money may have ended up being stashed under one of the hotel's rooms, so part of the reason that one or more of the guests are there in the first place could be to find the money - only, who's looking for it?  And which room is it in?  Who else knows about it?  And what else is going down in this hotel at the same time?  Naturally these answers are doled out to us quite slowly, some might say too slowly, plus what's up with the hidden microphones and the two-way mirrors?

I have to call a bit NITPICK POINT on a main premise of the film, that a hotel could be built on a state line, half in California and half in Nevada.  Cute idea, perhaps, but the only reason to put this plot point in a film would be if somebody could gain something by stepping over the state line - like if they were chased by cops and needed to get out of their jurisdiction.  Unfortunately this never comes up, the state line is ever present but it's never USEFUL or even particularly important, so why even have it be this way?  The more I think about it, the more I realize it would never, ever happen, not even to give hotel guests the opportunity to gamble in Nevada and say, follow that up with a drink in California.  You can drink in Nevada, too, unless for some reason it's a dry county, which it's not.

Think about the logistics of running this hotel - charging different rates for rooms, maintaining two sets of books, being aware of two sets of laws, not to mention tax rates, zoning laws, two sets of local, county and state governments, inspections, basically double work on everything.  Plus how would the place get built in the first place, unless someone bought two adjoining properties, one in each state, and joined them together, OR they built the property before someone decided on where exactly the state line was, which is unlikely.  Look, I live right near the border between Brooklyn and Queens in NYC, and the borough divider runs right down the middle of the street - there are no houses that are half in Brooklyn and half in Queens, because that's stupid, and that's also not how borders work.  Borders define lots, and property is built on lots, and except for Four Corners park in the Southwest, it's incredibly rare to have anything right ON the borders.

Ah, a little research on IMDB tells me that the fictional El Royale is based on the Cal Neva, a real resort that was co-owned by Frank Sinatra (and Dean Martin, and mobster Sam Giancana) for a while, which straddles the California-Nevada border on the shore of Lake Tahoe.  That resort famously had a large white line that divided the dining room in half - but for legal purposes, technically the resort consisted of two adjacent properties in neighboring states that were joined.  Again, two sets of books, two accounts for every aspect of the business - was the novelty factor worth all of the extra work?  Sinatra had his gaming license suspended at some point, and leased the property to investors in 1968.  After changing hands several times, the property closed for renovations in 2013 and has not yet re-opened.

So I guess I stand corrected - it is possible to have a hotel resort in two states, it's just dumb.

Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Cynthia Erivo (last seen in "Widows"), Dakota Johnson (last seen in "Black Mass"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Cailee Spaeny (last seen in "Vice"), Lewis Pullman (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Nick Offerman (last seen in "The Little Hours"), Xavier Dolan (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Mark O'Brien (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Charles Halford (last seen in "The Clapper"), Jim O'Heir (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), Alvina August, Gerry Nairn, William B. Davis, Manny Jacinto, Tally Rodin, Sophia Lauchin Hirt, Hannah Zirke, Billy Wickman, Charlotte Mosby, Austin Abell, with archive footage of Richard Nixon (last seen in "Stockholm")

RATING: 6 out of 10 jukebox selections

The Catcher Was a Spy

Year 12, Day 29 - 1/29/20 - Movie #3,431

BEFORE: From World War I, I move on to World War II.  No films about World War III currently scheduled, but that's a good thing.  After tonight it's all about watching the three films that will connect me to the start of my romance chain, now re-scheduled from February 1 to February 2, to accommodate the late addition of "1917".

Mark Strong carries over from "1917" - for his 6th appearance in 2020.  De Niro has 7 already, and will win the month, but Mark Strong is right behind - but it's still very early, anything can happen, and usually does.

THE PLOT: A major league baseball player, Moe Berg, lives a double life working for the Office of Strategic Services.

AFTER: This is another one of those "absurd but true" stories, like "Stockholm" was - people only found out years later that this guy who was a catcher for the Red Sox also worked for the OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA.  Moe Berg was a very smart guy, he spoke seven languages fluently and was passable in a few others.  He had several college degrees, which doesn't really fit the stereotype we have these days for athletes - but this was back before World War II, it was a different time, back when a college degree meant something, and colleges didn't create a bunch of "easy A" courses for athletes to take.

But being smart, athletic, fluent in several languages - he might not have been considered 1-A for the WW2 draft, but he wanted to serve his country somehow, so intelligence seemed to be that path for him, and the OSS wanted him.  Plus he had footage he had filmed in Japan when he was there on an exhibition baseball trip, so I guess he was thinking ahead?  The smarter people had been debating for years over whether war with Japan was inevitable.

After months doing desk work, he finally got sent into the field, to track down Werner Heisenberg in Zurich, to determine if the Nazis were close to building an atomic bomb, which was theoretical at the time.  Albert Einstein and a few other scientists had already signed up with the Allies - Einstein was visiting the U.S. in 1933 when Hitler came to power, and because he was Jewish, he just didn't go back, and later became an American citizen in 1940.  Einstein had warned FDR about the possibility of using nuclear fission as a weapon, so the question became how far the Nazi scientists had also come in this regard.

Heisenberg was one of the chief German scientists, and had received the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of quantum mechanics.  What came to be known as the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle" stated that on the quantum level, the more precisely a particle's position could be determined, the less precisely its momentum could be predicted, and vice versa.  In other words, you could either figure out where something tiny is or where it's going, but not both.  (It was NOT, as some mistakenly believe, the similar principle that measuring certain systems changes the nature of what's being measured, that's called "the observer effect".)  But there was a whole lot of uncertainty around Heisenberg himself, it seems, like where his loyalties were.  Was he close to developing a nuclear weapon?  If so, why didn't he create one, and if not, was this due to a lack of resources or information, or was he willingly preventing the creation of such a device?

So Moe Berg was sent to Italy to learn more about Heisenberg from his associate, Professor Amaldi, and his colleague in Zurich, Professor Scherrer.  Heisenberg was scheduled to visit Zurich to lecture on nuclear fission, and Berg was tasked with figuring out how far Heisenberg's research had gone, and eliminating him, if necessary, to keep atomic energy out of the reach of Nazi Germany.

This is fascinating and important stuff - it's too bad nobody seemed to care about this subject matter any more, this film cost $14 million to make and didn't even break $1 million in ticket sales.  Come on, people, Paul Rudd is so likable, and he's good in just about everything, what was the problem?  Too brainy of a subject matter for you?  Too much physics and not enough baseball?  Spies aren't always of the "Mission: Impossible" type, that's not real life - real spies spend time in libraries and study other cultures and languages, and they don't just cut wires on bombs that are about to explode, they sometimes also have to learn things like physics and chemistry, so sorry to disappoint you.

I think I'm going to be kind to this one - I don't think it received anything near the level of attention that it deserved.

Also starring Paul Rudd (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Sienna Miller (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Giancarlo Giannini (last seen in "A Walk in the Clouds"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Sunshine"), Guy Pearce (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "San Andreas"), Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Shea Whigham (last seen in "Joker"), William Hope, John Schwab (last seen in "Annihilation"), Pierfrancesco Favino (last seen in "Rush"), James McVan, Jordan Long (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Ben Miles (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Anna Geislerova, Agnese Nano.

RATING: 6 out of 10 quiz show appearances

1917

Year 12, Day 28 - 1/28/20 - Movie #3,430

BEFORE: This wasn't part of the plan, I admit, but I would rather go into the last days of Oscar season having watched three of the Best Picture nominees, instead of two.  As long as I've got the opportunity to drop in another one, I should probably take it, right?  So Mark Strong carries over from "Stockholm", and he'll be here tomorrow as I get back on the plan.  Even if this makes me late for starting the romance chain, which I believe it will, I should watch this.

THE PLOT: As a World War I regiment assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory, two soldiers are assigned to race and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap.

AFTER: Like, I just don't know if "1917" can win Best Picture, though it seems to have quite a bit of momentum right now.  With my terrible track record in the past few years - I never quite see enough nominees to have a decent chance of seeing the winning film BEFORE it wins - I think maybe I'm hedging some bets by getting this one out of the way.  Now that I've seen "The Irishman", "Joker" and this one, I think that means the clear favorite is now "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood", right?(And to think that I could have worked that one in, too, between Al Pacino's appearances in "The Irishman" and "Stand Up Guys" - oh, well...)

Besides, so my argument goes, the major selling point here is that "1917" is designed to look like one continuous shot, with no visible cuts.  That's a trick, right?  Yeah, but then again, isn't all filmmaking just a bunch of tricks?  Nothing is real in the end, not the lighting, not the background, that plane is just a prop, the sound was dubbed in later, it's all trickery and fakery to get the best image and sound up on the screen, so why am I so concerned about the gimmickry of making many shots look like one big one, with no cuts?  Besides, "Birdman" tried to do the same thing, and that went on to win Best Picture a few years back.  "The Revenant" didn't really have Leonardo DiCaprio jumping off a cliff on a real horse, or getting mauled by a real bear, and that film did OK during its awards season, too.

War films also seem to have something of an inside track, too, like "Dunkirk, "Darkest Hour" and "Churchill" all did in 2017.  These things come in waves, I guess, because the 2018 nominated films didn't really have any prominent war stories, but then they're back in the 2019 line-up, with one film set in World War I and "Jojo Rabbit" set during World War II.  Is that what's bothering me, that the war film had a little easier time getting nominated?  I've got to learn to put all this petty stuff aside, and try to analyze "1917" fairly.  Which is nearly impossible, because once a film gets the nomination, suddenly I have to stop and think about it, like "Is this one worthy?  Could it win Best Picture?"  But just phrasing the question that way sets me up in a defensive manner, now I want to pick it apart, and that doesn't feel impartial at all.

OK, so here are my complaints about the story.  This journey from the trenches to get a message to the Devonshire Regiment is very long and frustrating, from an observer's point of view.  I know, it's a difficult mission so it's supposed to be frustrating, but I'm left wondering, if these two soldiers knew how important the message was, which they did, why didn't they GO STRAIGHT THERE?  It felt like they kept getting distracted - yes, sure, it's a war zone, yes, I understand that things go wrong on a mission, but it's almost ridiculous how their journey doesn't go in a straight line, directionally or narratively.  I'm not going to talk here about the things that happen to them - because that's essentially the whole movie, but COME ON!

Near the end, when the soldier with the message is going through the trenches near the new Hindenburg Line, he keeps trying to get in touch with the commanding officer, and about twenty times in a row, all he hears is, "Oh, he's in the next trench over..." or "He's up there, just a few hundred yards away..." and then "No, I'm the captain, you need the colonel, keep going..." and this is after I've spent over 90 minutes of my life watching this soldier move across dangerous terrain to talk to this guy.  It reminded me of the end of every level of "Super Mario Bros." where Mario keeps rescuing a princess and the game text reads, "Thank you Mario!  But our princess is in another castle!"  God DAMN IT, I just rescued her from this one, how does this keep happening?  And when is this soldier going to reach the guy he's supposed to deliver the damn message to?

Don't get me wrong, it's clear that a LOT of work went in to making this film, and I'm thinking that a TON of technical wizardry was involved, but I wonder whether this film would have so much hype if it weren't designed to look like one seamless shot for two hours, which I know that it can't possibly be.  Now I want to watch it again or look online to figure out where the seams are, because they have to be there, and right now I can only think of one spot.  That's the double-edged sword that arises from using this technique - it's impressive, sure, but so is any magic trick - but a magic trick done well turns other magicians into people who won't rest until they figure out how the trick is done.  My film school training therefore turns me into Penn and Teller on "Fool Us".

But this is all part of my "worry spiral", which starts with me worrying that I haven't seen enough nominated films when Oscar time draws near - then I'll worry that the ones I've seen aren't really worthy, or don't have a chance to win.  That's really not a big deal in the end, because I'm going to try to see them all, eventually.  But that in turn gives me something else to worry about, the fact that I'm worrying over something so inconsequential is also a cause for concern, and so on....

Also starring George MacKay (last seen in "Defiance"), Dean-Charles Chapman (last seen in "The Commuter"), Andrew Scott (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Richard Madden (last seen in "Cinderella"), Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Benedict Cumberbatch (last heard in "Dr. Seuss' The Grinch"), Daniel Mays (last seen in "A Good Year"), Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "Notes on a Scandal"), Jamie Parker, Michael Jibson (last seen in "Flyboys"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), Chris Walley, Nabhaan Rizwan, Michael Cornelius, Pip Carter (last seen in "Spectre"), Andy Apollo, Paul Tinto, Billy Postlethwaite, Gabriel Akuwudike, Spike Leighton, Robert Maaser, Taddeo Kufus, Justin Edwards, John Hollingworth

RATING: 6 out of 10 collapsed bridges

Stockholm

Year 12, Day 27 - 1/27/20 - Movie #3,429

BEFORE:  Mark Strong carries over from "Shazam!" - I already used Mark Strong as a link once this month, to get from "Sunshine" to "The Young Victoria", and now he's back for another 3 films.  That's sort of been the hardest thing for me to learn about linking films by actor, to not freak out when I can't put ALL the films with one actor together.  It's OK to cover only SOME of the films with an actor and leave off one or two, especially if I need those films to make another connection down the road - it's a more holistic approach, I'm thinking long-term or big picture, and that's the process by which I got my first Perfect Year in 2019.  Let's see if that approach works again in 2020.

THE PLOT: Based on the absurd but true 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm that was documented in the New Yorker as the origin of "Stockholm Syndrome".

AFTER: This film is based on a real 1973 bank robbery, which eventually led psychologists to the syndrome named after it, which occurs when people held captive empathize with their captors or develop some kind of romantic feelings for them.  Outside Sweden, this feeling is known as "Stockholm Syndrome", but within Sweden, it was first called Norrmalmstorg syndrome, named after the square where the bank robbery took place.  I guess the citizens of Sweden felt they didn't want people to think of Stockholm as a city where people keep falling in love with their abusers, like if you walk around the city you 're going to see a bunch of kidnappings and hostage situations as some kind of bizarre courtship ritual?

Why do people do this, have sympathy for the people holding them captive?  Is it just a survival strategy, or is it just a side-effect of our brains asking the question, "How could another person DO this, what led to this behavior?"  Or are we so desperate for human contact that we'll form a bond with just about anyone, including someone trying to hurt us?  I guess it doesn't matter HOW you meet your love partners in the end, but wouldn't this make an awkward story to tell your grandchildren, if the relationship somehow turns out to be a lasting one?  I guess the bottom line is, the more time you spend with anyone, even your captor or abuser, the more likely you are to find things you have in common with them, and that leads to familiarity, and that leads to empathy.  The reverse is true also, the more time you spend apart from someone you care about, the more likely you are to develop different interests and find things that you DON'T have in common, and that leads to disassociation and possibly, eventually, the disbanding of relations or further separation.

Relationships are irrational - and so are hostage crises, who's to say what is and isn't an appropriate emotional response to them?  Let's just agree that this happens, it's a valid thing, and that's why sometimes hostages won't testify in court later against their captors.  Moving on to the film, rather than the syndrome.

What's a little weird here is an American (non-Swedish) actor blatantly playing a Swedish bank-robber named Lars (all names changed from the original robbery, but still) and at first he's mistaken for a different bank robber named Kaj.  What's also weird is seeing usually bald actor Mark Strong with long, black hair.  Lars wears a wig to pretend to be Kaj, but Mark's wearing a wig to pretend to be Gunnar, and I guess Gunnar really is supposed to have hair.  Gunnar's in prison at the start of the film, but one of Lars' demands is that Gunnar be released from prison and brought to the bank, along with 1 million dollars - er, I mean kroner?

The cops were on the scene from the start, like an undercover detective was just walking by when he saw people fleeing from the bank, so he stepped in and tried to defuse the situation, but failed.  Then the chief of police showed up, and set up a tactical team on the second floor of the bank building.  Negotiations continued as the robbers threatened to kill the hostages, only after making the threats to the police, the robbers would chat with the hostages and play cribbage to pass the time.  Ah, this is where we maybe start to see a bit of a disconnect, acting one way when the cops are listening and another way after they leave the room.

It's sort of a staple of heist movies that not everything goes according to plan - "Dog Day Afternoon" is the classic, but "Heist" is a perfect recent example, where a team of casino robbers had to hijack a bus when their getaway driver got nervous and took off.  Here it's tough to say whether Lars' original plan was doomed to fail because of his demands - what if the police couldn't find the same Ford Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in "Bullitt"?  Wouldn't it have been better to already have that car standing by, and just tell the cops where to find it in the parking lot, and bring it around to the bank's front entrance?

It was also a very poor plan to round up the hostages and sit with them in the bank vault - it's a safe place to hole up, sure, until you realize that all the police have to do is walk into the bank and lock the robbers IN the vault.  They really should have seen that coming.  This also sets up the comic situation where the police have to drill into the bank vault just to release tear gas to disable the robbers. Meanwhile, by this point the hostages have fallen prey to the Stockholm syndrome, so they're practically functioning as accomplishes, they'll do just about anything as long as it increases their chances of surviving the incident.

The real Gunnar testified that all of his actions were done to save hostages, and his conviction was later overturned, and later he did become friends with one of the hostages.  The real Lars served 10 years for the robbery attempt, and he later got engaged, but contrary to popular belief, his fiancée was NOT one of the hostages from the Kreditbanken.  He later committed more crimes, and evaded capture by Swedish authorities for 10 years - and in 2006, when he tried to turn himself in, he was told that the police were no longer actively pursuing charges against him.  Sweden sounds like a pretty weird country.

Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Noomi Rapace (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Christopher Heyerdahl (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Bea Santos (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Mark Rendall (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Ian Matthews (last seen in "The Captive"), John Ralston, Shanti Roney, Christopher Wagelin, Throbjorn Harr with archive footage of Richard Nixon (last seen in "Dogville")

RATING: 5 out of 10 bullet-proof vests

Shazam!

Year 12, Day 26 - 1/26/20 - Movie #3,428

BEFORE: January usually gets a bad rap, because after New Year's Day there often isn't much going on - most good TV shows are on break, Hollywood focuses on getting people to see the Oscar-nominated movies but otherwise treats the month as a dumping ground for terrible movies, plus the weather often sucks, everyone's sick or still reeling from the holidays, and it's hard to get motivated to do any work around the house because of all the above reasons (who wants to take down the Christmas lights, anyway, can't we just leave them up all year and just not turn them on?)

Meanwhile, February seems like a much more happening month, with Valentine's Day (there's Groundhog Day, too, but who cares?) and now the Super Bowl is usually in February (or watch the Puppy Bowl if your team's not in the big game), plus there's the actual Oscar telecast, Black History month if you're into that, meanwhile the days are going to start getting noticably longer and thanks to climate change, it may even start to feel a bit like spring.  Plus it's sweeps month on TV and most shows will be back on (Survivor, The Masked Singer, and the final season of Star Wars: the Clone Wars are my can't-misses).

A couple of changes going into effect around here, as always, on Feb. 1.  First, I'll switch over to all-romance-based programming - I usually have enough built up to cover the whole month plus a little extra, and that worked out very well for me last year.  I always come close to clearing the board each year, then I say I can't possibly find more romances for next year, but there are always more to watch. (Bear in mind, I count films about divorce and break-ups to be romance-based, because you have to take the bad with the good where relationships are concerned.). Plus I'll start charting my progress with regards to how many of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" films that I've seen, my stats tend to increase a little each year.  I'm stoked because once again they're linking films by actor, as I do, and I've thought of a good way to list their schedule here.  Hey, whatever I can do to help them out.

But first I have to get through the ass-end of January, so now that DC Comics Week is over, it's five random (more or less) films that will get me from here to what I've determined is the best place to start the romance chain.  Though you never know, there could still be a surprise gem within the linking material, and any of the romance films could turn out to be stinkers.  That's why I play the game, because I just never know.

The voice of Fred Tatasciore carries over from "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies".

THE PLOT: A fostered boy in search of his mother instead finds unexpected super powers and soon gains a powerful enemy.

AFTER: Speaking of DC characters that are connected to Marvel character, the superhero we now know as "Shazam" used to be called Captain Marvel, and I think he's been around longer than any of the 5 Marvel characters who have used the name (the most recent of course, is Carol Danvers, who got her own movie last year.)  But if I remember correctly, this character's stories were first published by a third company, Fawcett Comics, and it wasn't until DC bought up the rights in 1972 and tried to add him to their universe that the threat of lawsuits loomed, because by this time Marvel had published their own Captain Marvel comics (Mar-Vell, the former Kree soldier who came to earth and later died of cancer).  Which was ironic, because DC had once sued Fawcett Comics, claiming that the character was too much of a rip-off of Superman.

But this character also had a cheezy Saturday morning TV show when I was a kid, in which Billy Batson traveled around the U.S. with his mentor (conveniently named Mentor) and when needed, transformed into a hero with the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury, which even then seemed like a weird mix of Biblical characters and Greek mythology. (No Greek Gods or heroes begin with "S", I guess...) which also turned the teen into an adult to access his powers.  Because a teen with super-powers is just silly, I guess?  And then you're infringing on "Spider-Man" territory.  Anyway, there seems to be a lot of redundancy with that skill set, several of the Greek heroes are known for strength, like Atlas and Hercules, but I guess they didn't want to give him the blacksmithing powers of Hephaestus, what would he do with those?

Anyway, this is a new take on Billy Batson, in the old days when Billy would transform into Captain Marvel, suddenly he would talk and think like an adult, but at some point there was a shift, and he would retain his memory and childlike attitude in his adult hero body.  (So in mash-up terms, it's like "Spider-Man" meets "Big"). More changes down the line as DC's reboots tweaked the character, and after that "Flashpoint" event I mentioned the other day, the storyline "The New 52" created the version of the character that this movie adapted, with Billy's sister Mary, friend Freddy Freeman and three other kids all becoming similar heroes that would work together as a de facto family.  Then it seems like the characters were conspicuously absent from the DC Universe after the "Rebirth" reboot, but with the movie in production it seems that sparked another revival of the "Shazam Family" comics.  What's a movie without a tie-in comic to sell, after all?

And just as one director tried to tie the Joker's origin story to Batman's, so has another director tried to tie together the origins of Shazam and his arch-nemesis, Dr. Sivana.  Here Dr. Sivana was earlier offered the Shazam! power by an aging wizard, only Sivana couldn't ignore the tempation of the seven deadly sins to choose their "Eye of Sin" power over the deal offered to him by the wizard.  Maybe he wasn't as pure of heart as the wizard thought (so, umm, why did he pick that kid in the first place?) or maybe the glowing Eye just looked a lot cooler, but come on, who would listen to the nasty growling statues instead of kindly old wizard?  Thank you, next, and Sivana was rejected, then spent years interviewing other people who also failed the test to figure out how to get another shot at it.

Years later, Billy Batson, a foster kid known for running away from every group home so he can look for his missing mother, does a good deed by sticking up for his foster brother, Freddy, when he's the target of school bullies.  Ah, finally someone with a moral compass who might actually pass the test! (Umm, why didn't Freddy get a shot at winning the wizard's powers?).  This leads to Billy gaining super-powers and the ability to transform into an adult body, and totally trashing the bullies' truck.  As I've said several times in this space, Hollywood films always get this wrong, you can't defeat bullies with more violence, because then you become just like them.  As hard as it is, you've got to find another way, whether that's turning them in, showing them compassion, or buying them off - any of these answers are better than lowering yourself to their level of violence.  This may be the first film  I've seen where the bullied characters (eventually) realize that responding in kind is not a valid solution.

Billy and Freddy also realize they have to do something with these new power, besides using it to buy beer (which tastes terrible anyway to teens, especially if you buy the cheap stuff, nice touch) and Billy gets his chance when one of his lightning bolts causes a bus to teeter on the edge of an elevated highway, several stories above the ground.  But here's something else that Hollywood movies always get wrong about falling things - you can't just catch a bus, or a falling person, a few feet above the ground and have everything be OK.  That bus built up a HUGE amount of momentum as it fell, and just preventing it from hitting the ground is not going to prevent it from breaking or crumpling.  It should have crushed or shattered after hitting Shazam, because he did nothing to slow its fall.  In the same way, if someone is falling off a building or from a plane, a superhero can't just catch them safely in mid-air without slowing their descent first.  It's not the ground that kills people, it's the sudden stop, and that also happens if they hit a superhero's arms on their way down.  Giant-sized NITPICK POINT here.

But this leads to Sivana (who finally figured out how to get back to the wizard's lair and get those sin-based powers) to find Shazam, the wizard's true champion, so he can try to get those powers too.  Hmm, that's altogether lazy and envious and greedy, not to mention gluttonous - maybe this guy really does understand the 7 deadly sins.  And he tracks down Billy's whole foster family to try to hold them hostage, leading to a final showdown at the Philadelphia Winter Carnival.

Last year it was lighthouses that kept turning up in my movies, this year it seems to be carnivals - there was the hastily contructed Liberty Park in "The Nut Job 2", the run-down abandoned carnival that Joker used to torture Jim Gordon in "Batman: The Killing Joke" and now this film features a winter carnival where Sivana fights Shazam & his friends.  Maybe it reaches back to "Toy Story 4" last September, which was also partially set in a carnival.  But already twice this year I've seen ferris wheels coming loose or falling over used as a plot point, that's an odd coincidence.  Throw in three appearances of the Joker, who worked as a clown in the recent origin film, and it's really been a circus around here lately...

But hang on, because I'm about to tie the whole superhero-based week together - from Joker and the other Batman films to the three Superman-based films, plus this one.  Right now there's a storyline going on in DC Comics, part of their "Year of the Villain" crossover, which involves the Joker from another universe crossing into the main DC-verse - but it's really that universe's Batman who got infected with Joker toxin, and he's now known as the "Batman Who Laughs", (playing off a nickname for another alt-Joker called "The Man who Laughs").  This evil hybrid even joined Lex Luthor in the Legion of Doom, as seen in Justice League comics!  Then recent issues of the "Batman/Superman" title, it was revealed that this villain (though imprisoned in the Hall of Justice) had managed to previously dose several other characters with his mind-control toxin, turning them into his infected helpers.  Those six enslaved characters include Supergirl, Shazam, Commissioner Gordon, and Donna Troy (who used to be one of the Teen Titans).  So now we have to wait to find out if Batman and Superman together can track down the "Secret Six" who were infected and find a way to save them, then defeat the Batman Who Laughs....

I will get back to superhero movies, I'm just not sure when - I think I've cleared them all off my list except for that "Suicide Squad" animated film, but Marvel's got at least three movies coming out this year in theaters - "The New Mutants" (delayed from last April), "Black Widow" and "Morbius", and DC's got "Wonder Woman 1984" on tap for June.  We'll see if I can work those in, but I'll wait until mid-March to start working out more of this year's schedule.

Also starring Zachary Levi (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Mark Strong (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer (last seen in "It"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Faithe Herman, Meagan Good, Grace Fulton, Michelle Borth (last seen in "Lucky You"), Ian Chen, Ross Butler, Jovan Armand, D.J. Cotrona, Marta Milans (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Cooper Andrews, Ethan Pugiotto (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), John Glover (last seen in "52 Pick-Up"), Wayne Ward, Landon Doak, Caroline Palmer, Andi Osho, Carson MacCormac, Evan Marsh, Lotta Losten, the voices of David F. Sandberg, Steve Blum (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Darin de Paul, with a cameo from Seth Green.

RATING: 7 out of 10 superpower test videos on YouTube