Frozen II

Year 12, Day 137 - 5/16/20 - Movie #3,542

BEFORE: That's four films crossed off my Netflix list this week, now I've got to shift over to Disney Plus for a few films.  Yesterday's film and today's film share so many stars with the films from my romance chain that I'm very glad I schedule those films mostly in February, so I'm not tempted to jump between live-action romance and animation intended for kids, I'd risk thematic whiplash.  When I separate out the animation films and watch them in little chains of their own, it just feels like I'm more on point, and the linking usually works out between them.  And when I finish this chain of 6 or 7 cartoons, there won't be many animated films left on my list, just a few obscure ones like "The Red Turtle" and "I Lost My Body" that present difficult linking challenges.  So I'm not sure when I can get to those.

But let's stick with the easy linking, while it holds.  Josh Gad carries over from "The Angry Birds Movie 2", and so does one other actor.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Frozen" (Movie #1,853)

THE PLOT: Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven leave Arendelle to travel to an ancient, autumn-bound forest of an enchanted land.  They set out to find the origin of Elsa's powers in order to save their kingdom.

AFTER: I think I liked this sequel a little more than the original "Frozen" film, even though I may end up giving it the same score in the end.  They didn't have to waste time introducing all the characters, so there was more space to really get into the backstory of their parents, and figure out where Elsa's powers might come from.  Do we really even know for sure that their parents are dead?  The rule of thumb for comic books and soap operas is that if you don't see a body, the characters aren't dead, they're just gone for dramatic effect.  And even then, if there's a body to be buried, in comic books that's just a stumbling block, the next writer can just say that was a clone that died, or use a magic wishing stone to bring them back, or say the hero was just in hibernation while some alien implant healed them.  Since we haven't seen Agnarr and Iduna (they get names in this film, which could be important later) except in flashback, there's a good chance they could come back in "Frozen III".

Who Queen Iduna is and where she came from is important here, and I figured it out well before "Frozen II" started asking the questions.  But it's a nice twist, involving the people of Northuldra, who live in the land up North, and believe in a magical island called Ahtohallan which is even further north.  But though everyone knows where it is, nobody ever goes there - so when Elsa hears a voice calling her from up north, all the main characters pack up for a long wagon-ride.  And the two sisters swear they're going to get to the bottom of this mystery together, no matter what, except that's not the way it goes down.  Elsa pulls the same "diva" move that she did in the first film and pushes everyone away from her so she can follow the voice herself.  Anna, the more sensible, grounded one, pretty much does the same thing with Kristoff, her boyfriend, by leaving with Elsa and not telling him.  So nobody really learns from their past mistakes, and ends up in trouble again.

What they find in Northuldra is a section of forest that the spirits have surrounded in a mist, and a group of warriors from both peoples has been stuck in there, fighting the same fight for the last 34 years.  Elsa's new power, based on the suggestion from Olaf that "water has memory" involves making ice sculptures that allow her to see past events, which is awfully convenient if she's trying to learn about the mistakes that her grandfather made.  It seems he gave the other tribe a gift that turned out to be harmful to their lands, even though it appeared helpful, and the four elemental spirits were not happy that people on earth were fighting and not living in harmony.  Why the spirits waited 34 years for the right opportunity to threaten the city of Arendelle is still something of a mystery, though.

Somebody clearly wanted "Into the Unknown" to be another big hit like "Let It Go" was, and even though in some ways it feels like the same song with different lyrics, for some reason I don't think it managed to connect with the audience in the same way.  Personally I think "Lost in the Woods" was a better song, it sounded a bit like a ballad that Chicago or REO Speedwagon forgot to release.  Still, it was better than "The Next Right Thing", which felt like a real time-killer when Anna didn't know what to do next, so she sang a song about not knowing what to do, which itself prevented her from doing that next thing, ironically.  Just do it, you don't have to sing a song about every little thing you're about to do!

But overall, DisneyCo. succeeded in producing a sequel that moves the franchise's storyline ahead in a logical but still unforeseen way, transforming most of the characters again in a positive direction, while fostering a suggestion to kids that it might be a good idea to live in a way that's more harmonious with the planet.  While not specifically addressing climate change (that might have been a little too preachy and on-point), there's the promotion of the old outdoor ways over the urban method of civilization, and I think that's ultimately a good thing.  Get outside, kids, and get some fresh air, umm, just as soon as the pandemic is over.

Also starring the voices of Kristen Bell (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Idina Menzel (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Jonathan Groff (last seen in "American Sniper"), Sterling K. Brown (also last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Evan Rachel Wood (last heard in "Strange Magic"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Martha Plimpton (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Jason Ritter (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Rachel Matthews, Jeremy Sisto (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "The Debt"), Alan Tudyk (also last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Paul Briggs (last heard in "Big Hero 6"), Santino Fontana (last seen in "Sisters"), Hadley Gannaway, Livvy Stubenrauch (last heard in "Frozen"), Mattea Conforti, Eva Bella, Delaney Rose Stein, Jackson Stein (last heard in "Zootopia"), Aurora

RATING: 6 out of 10 rounds of charades

The Angry Birds Movie 2

Year 12, Day 136 - 5/15/20 - Movie #3,541

BEFORE: OK, so I've got a plan for July.  Actually, several.  I've got a linked chain of 13 documentaries that I'd like to get to, and with luck, the ones on each end happen to feature actors in them that happen to appear in other movies on my list - so my goal was to get from July 4 to a movie with one of those actors in it - either end, I can always flip the chain around if needed.  The actors are Sharon Stone and Ron Funches, but that doesn't really matter.  Applying my patented complicated linking techniques (involving scrap paper, post-its and a lot of circles and arrows) I found that there are several paths I can take, which is a sign that I may have TOO MANY movies on my list, but this can be a good thing if it makes linking easier.  Now I just have to pick one of the paths, which could contain the movies I most want to see, and I've got my documentary chain confirmed for summer, which should take me right up to the end of July.  That's 12 films to GET to Sharon Stone, 13 docs, and a one or two-film leadout.  Add the first four days of July which are already programmed, and that's a whole month.

Where will that leave me on August 1?  No idea.  But if I can get from there to some back-to-school films, and from those to the start of my October horror chain, then that's a year, maybe even another perfect year. We'll see.  Every step helps form a small chain, and if the small chains keep connecting to make a larger chain, then I'm still in business.  To make it happen, as I suspected, I need to move "The Laundromat" from May to July.  It was between two other films with Will Forte, so the May chain will just close up without it, and those two films are on the same topic (sort of) so it feels like this was meant to be.  The large cast of "The Laundromat" made it a much easier target to hit as a lead in for the documentaries, so it made sense to do this.

Maya Rudolph carries over again from "The Willoughbys", and that's it for her for now, but she'll be back in May for one more appearance.  I think with that 8th film in May, she'll take the lead for appearances for the year, ahead of De Niro's 7.

THE PLOT: The flightless birds and scheming green pigs take their feud to the next level.

AFTER: Wow, and I thought "The Willoughbys" was tough to get through, this one was a real challenge.  Does anybody even still PLAY "Angry Birds" on their phone any more?  Haven't we all found like at least 10 better games since then?  Who the heck is still launching those birds at pig castles, or whatever the hell you did in that game?  How do you even win?  I think I played the game once for about two minutes before it got boring and frustrating.

It's the second film in the franchise, and already they've lost sight of the original premise, which was catapulting birds, if I remember correctly.  Now in this film they don't even do that, so right off, that seems weird.  Wouldn't the few people still playing the game tend to be big fans of birds being launched through the air in order to knock down buildings?  So what the hell happened, why abandon the one thing that the first movie and the game are known for?

Instead both Angry Bird Island and Pig Island are threatened by a previously unknown THIRD island, Eagle Island.  And it's kind of strange that nobody was ever aware of this island before, I mean, it's not immediately next to the others, but neither is it far enough away for residents of both known islands to be completely clueless about it.  There's even an eagle character in both the original "Angry Birds" movie and this sequel, so he obviously came from there, and yet everyone is completely blown away here that there could be characters who are neither pigs nor small birds.  WTF?  Or am I overthinking this?

Despite being close enough to the other two islands to launch stuff at, Eagle Island somehow has a polar climate, while the other two islands are distinctly tropical.  Umm, how is that possible?  That's now how weather works.  And the lead eagle is tired of eating only frozen food (namely a fish in the middle of a block of ice) and also tired of having ice in her swimming pool, falling down on the ice that's everywhere, so she has her scientists devise a plan to hurl balls of ice at the other islands to destroy everything, so she and the other eagles can move there.  First off, the eagles are birds that can fly, unlike the other birds in the film, so as the first of many NITPICK POINTS, why can't they all just fly to another island and start living there?  Doesn't have to be Bird Island or Pig Island, just pick another one with a better climate and fly there.

Then the lead eagle, Zeta, wants to put lava inside the ice balls and throw those at the other islands, to destroy them even more.  Right.  They have lava on the frozen island.  So why the hell don't they USE their own lava to melt all the ice, or at least warm up dinner?  This gets more confusing and confounding the further you do down the non-logical rabbit hole.  Things barely improve when the Birds and Pigs team up and put an elite crack squad together to travel to Eagle Island and destroy the machine that hurls lava-filled ice balls.

Admittedly, it's a nice improvement to see the two warring factions working together toward a common goal, but still a weird lesson for the kiddies, which is that the only time you should make peace with your enemy is when there's a common threat, and you both hate a third party even more than you hate each other.  But if I want to get all symbolic for a moment, perhaps the birds and pigs could be seen as warring political parties, say as Democrats (birds?) and Republicans (pigs?) who have been known to put their differences aside when there's a much larger threat to the country.  You know, something like the Taliban or a pandemic.  Wouldn't that be nice, if the two parties could work together to defeat the pandemic, instead of just toeing the party line and supporting or declaiming whatever crazy notion the President has on any given day?

I was sort of reminded of Trump when Zeta the eagle asks her scientists if they could put lava inside of an ice ball - it was a lot like Trump asking his science advisers if they could inject bleach or somehow shine strong light into a person to defeat the corona virus.  Both plans are about equal on the feasability/ridiculousness scale.  Disinfectant kills the virus on surfaces, so it's easy to see how a stupid person might ask if that can then work inside somebody's lungs.  Sure, as long as you don't mind killing them in the process, what have we got to lose?  Notice how quickly he back-pedalled off of that when he realized that the stupid people who might try that are some of the same stupid people who would be likely to vote for him in the fall?  Nah, we can't let anything happen to THOSE people.

Perhaps I'm just finding coincidences where there are none.  After all, they couldn't possibly have made this film with future pandemic events in mind, as there was no way to possibly predict the crazy  news from the last two months.

I'm glad I don't have any kids, because this way I can just hate-watch a stupid animated sequel, yet I fully admit I'm not even close to being in this film's target market.  But it would terrify me if I did have a son or daughter, and they watched this with me and I saw that they were enjoying it.

Also starring the voices of Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Josh Gad (last seen in "Marshall"), Leslie Jones (last seen in "Top Five"), Bill Hader (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Rachel Bloom, Awkwafina (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Sterling K. Brown (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Eugenio Derbez (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Tiffany Haddish (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Pete Davidson (last seen in "Set It Up"), Zach Woods (last seen in "Other People"), Dove Cameron, Tony Hale (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), JoJo Siwa, Lil Rel Howery (last seen in "Bird Box"), Nicki Minaj (last seen in "The Other Woman"), Beck Bennett (last seen in "Dean"), Gaten Matarazzo, Brooklynn Prince (last seen in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Genesis Tennon, Alma Varsano, Anthony Padilla (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Colleen Ballinger (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), David Dobrik, Mason Ramsey, Alex Hirsch, Faith Margaret Kidman-Urban, Sunday Rose Kidman-Urban, Nolan North (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Thurop Van Orman, Ally Garrett, Kelly Prizeman.

RATING: 2 out of 10 post-its

The Willoughbys

Year 12, Day 135 - 5/14/20 - Movie #3,540

BEFORE: Maya Rudolph carries over again from "Chuck & Buck" and I'll be focused on animation for the next week.  Once I get on this topic it's usually very easy to link films, because the same voice actors tend to turn up again and again, either because they love doing voice-work, or have long-time contracts with the big players, or maybe they just don't feel like traveling to do live-action films.  The animation industry should really be taking advantage of the Coronavirus lock-down, while nobody's shooting on location animators can still be drawing, and most voice-actors record in sealed rooms in sound studios anyway, very sterile, or could even record their voices remotely.  This should be a boon to the animation industry, but I'm not sure that most studios are even open for business - are Disney and Dreamworks animators working from home?  I can confirm that people are doing that in the smaller studios, but I don't know if it works for the big players.

They did change the Academy rules about films requiring a theatrical premiere to qualify for the Oscars this year, and so that means we may be seeing more animated films premiering on Netflix and other streaming services during quarantine, like today's film, which now will be eligible for Best Animated Feature.  I'm not saying it deserves to be nominated, just that it will be eligible to qualify.  The production company still needs to fill out the paperwork, and the Academy members will still need to stream it and then vote.

THE PLOT: Convinced they'd be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation.  The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family.

AFTER: The Willoughbys are a four-kid family that lives in an old house that's somehow surrounded by skyscrapers, occupying a small, gated-off niche in a very modern city (a concept that feels stolen from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where a skyscraper somehow left an undeveloped small space over his rabbit hole).  The Willoughbys have a long, proud family history, but for some reason, the current generation of parents has no interest in raising kids, they just want to kiss each other and knit, so they neglect their kids, who have to live in the coal storage room, and only get to eat leftovers from the previous day, and sometimes there are none.  OK, right off the bat, this one's coming from a weird place.  I've got like three NITPICK POINTS in the opening - like, if they didn't want kids, why did they HAVE kids?  Don't they know about birth control?  And if they found they didn't like raising the first two kids, then why on earth did they have two more?  If you don't like kids, just don't have kids, that's OK in this modern already-overpopulated world.  Even if Covid-19 ends up killing off a significant portion of the world's population, that would be terrible, but it would also be something of an opportunity to curtail over-population, give Mother Earth a bit of a break and a chance for nature to recover a bit from the damage we've been doing to it.  I guess I'm just an "earth-half-full" kind of guy in the end.

So, rather than run away, or inform any authorities about the terrible conditions they live in, the Willoughby children develop a plan to send their parents on vacation, so they can have a break from them, run their house the way it should be run, maybe get some food in their bellies for a change, plus there's a non-zero chance that their parents could be eaten by a shark, or fall off a mountain while traveling, and then they could live as independent orphans.  Clearly it's not a GREAT plan, because the kids have no income, no idea how to cook food, and eventually the government nanny-state would figure out that they'd need to become foster children or something.  But it's the plan that they have, so they mock up a travel brochure and place it where their (apparently very suggestible) parents can see it.

NITPICK POINT: The selfish, uncaring parents arrange for a nanny to watch their children while they're on extended vacation.  Umm, that doesn't seem like the action that selfish, uncaring parents would do - so, are the parents selfish and uncaring, or are they not?  There's a glaring contradiction here.  I mean, obviously caring parents would take their kids with them, so the parents still aren't saints by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they took some minimal, basic steps to insure that their children would be cared for in their absence.

See what I mean?  Story-wise, this one's all over the place.  Characters and story ideas get introduced very quickly, pay off instantly (or sometimes not at all) and then it's on to the next big idea, even if that's contradictory to the last idea, let's fire in THIS direction now.  Maybe that's just a reaction to the fact that our world's full of A.D.D. kids now, so there has to be some kind of payoff or big, colorful explosion every three minutes or kids will tune out.  Gone are the days of a movie like, say, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (or "Charlie and..." if you're a millennial) where a plot gets introduced, slowly develops over the course of 90 minutes and pays off at the end.  There's a candy factory in this film, too, but it's a wild ride with a baby on a dangerous conveyor belt for about a minute and a half, then whoosh, we're off to something else louder, flashier and more colorful.

They sort of made this same mistake a few years back with "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by trying to pack an entire book series into one frenetic movie, and then somebody realized later that it was just too much too soon, and turned it into an Amazon series, which I think did a little better.  Maybe somebody here is angling for a Netflix or a Disney channel series based on the Willoughbys, and that could be a better format for these characters.  I'm a bit surprised Netflix didn't turn this into a series straight away, they usually try to turn every project into a series instead of a one-time feature.

Taken individually, many of the ideas seem like bad ideas, though - like a group of kids who want their parents to go on vacation because they might die.  OK, they may be bad parents, but by itself, that still sounds like a bad idea to put in a film for kids.  If kids learn that people might die while on vacation, isn't that going to make it tough for parents to take their kids on vacation, once we're finally allowed to go on vacation again?  Some kids out there are going to become more neurotic and refuse to go to Switzerland or any place with bears or sharks or piranhas just because they saw people getting injured in this film.  I can't wait for the class-action lawsuit from the Switzerland Tourism Board.

Other bad ideas - "Hey, we found an abandoned baby, should we call the authorities?"  "Nah, let's just leave it on someone else's doorstep, problem solved."  Not to mention, "Hey, our parents are trying to sell their house, what should we do?"  "Let's design a bunch of dangerous traps to injure all the strangers coming to see the house!"  Terrible, terrible ideas for a kid's movie, didn't the studio run this storyline by their own legal department, who could have pointed out the culpability of giving susceptible kids malicious intent?  Although I freely admit that many animated films like this one deal with fantastical, impossible subjects on a routine basis - flying airships powered by rainbow candy, for example - they also have to consider that kids may try to replicate in the real world some of the actions and story elements that they see characters doing in movies.

There is a positive message about adoption and blended families, and an acknowledgement that not every set of parents is necessarily "good" at parenting.  I imagine that may be a revelation to some children, and maybe a depiction of fictional selfish parents may cause some kids to see their own parents in a different light - but arranging the death of one's parents (through travel?) should never, ever, be on the table, being orphaned should probably not be portrayed as preferable to having alive parents, and showing that calling child protection services is a terrible idea with bad consequences could conceivably prevent some impressionable children from making that call to get the very real help that they need.  Not every kid who finds a way to get free from their abusive or neglectful parents is going to be lucky enough to find loving surrogate parents willing to adopt them, as seen here, so finding a better way to correct the problem at hand should be encouraged over, "Hey, let's encourage our parents to climb a tall mountain, where they'll probably freeze to death!"

I'm left scratching my head over this one, I don't know how this story got cleared for kids, even though it's told humorously, I'm not sure that all young kids understand "dark humor", and therefore this story's not just weird, it seems very dangerous.  If the "Peter Rabbit" movie could get in trouble just for encouraging kids to fight back against a bully by exposing him to something he's allergic to, where's the backlash against this film, with its suggestion to "kill the bad parents"?  Umm, they realize that parents are the ones who buy tickets for kids to see movies, right?  And they also pay for Netflix subscriptions?  Any bad parents out there who don't have a sense of humor aren't going to like this one, and I'm already waiting for the scandal to break.

Also starring the voices of Will Forte (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Alessia Cara, Terry Crews (last seen in "Sorry to Bother You"), Martin Short (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Jane Krakowski (last seen in "Adult Beginners"), Seán Cullen, Ricky Gervais (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Brian Drummond, Nancy Robertson, Colleen Wheeler (last seen in "Tully").

RATING: 4 out of 10 balls of yarn

Chuck & Buck

Year 12, Day 134 - 5/13/20 - Movie #3,539

BEFORE: Maya Rudolph carries over from "Wine Country", though I'm jumping back through the mists of time to the year 2000 - then I'll bounce forward again tomorrow and we'll be back up to speed.  I have to take issue with the IMDB for the order in which they list an actor's credits if they've been on a show like "SNL".  If being on this show was very helpful for Ms. Rudolph's career, then it should appear at the bottom of her credits list, like chronologically, not up near the start of her credits list with more recent movie roles.  She was most active on that show from 2000-2007, so "SNL" should appear in her credits among the movie roles she had in 2000 - but since she's been back to make cameo appearances in recent years, most recently playing presidential candidate Kamala Harris in mock debate skits, her entire SNL show history gets filed under 2019, not 2000, and that seems misplaced.

I love the IMDB and I don't think I could do what I'm doing without their help, but sometimes it feels like the folks in charge there have no idea how to properly organize the vast amount of information that they have.

THE PLOT: An oddly naive man-child stalks his childhood best friend and tries to reconnect with their past.

AFTER: I know Mike White as the writer of "The School of Rock", and also as a contestant on two seasons of "The Amazing Race" and one season of "Survivor" (the "David vs. Goliath" season" in 2018).  But until now, I've never seen the film that launched his career, which made waves at Sundance in 2000 (I didn't go to Park City that year, but I went the year after and people were still talking about it...).  Since then, he's had writing credits on several films that have come my way, like "Pitch Perfect 3", "Beatriz at Dinner" and "Orange County".

So I put "Chuck & Buck" on my Hulu list, and guess what happened - yep, it scrolled off before I could link to it.  But it also popped up on the Epix "Drive-In" channel last year, so I hedged my bets and I've had it on the DVR for nearly a year.  Yep, it's still THAT hard to link to.  If I weren't doing a Maya Rudolph chain I don't think I could have gotten there.

And, a couple of coincidences - tonight is the season finale of "Survivor: Winners at War", so good timing there.  Mike White's not involved, but it's been an All-Stars season full of previous winners, so while I probably won't get to watch it until Thursday afternoon, it's bound to be a solid ending.  I'll just have to maintain internet "radio silence" and stay off Twitter and Facebook until after I watch it.  Thank God we still have new episodes of "Survivor" and "The Masked Singer" that were all filmed before the lockdown began.  I think California should prioritize opening up the film & TV industry - not movie theaters necessarily, but they've got to get started on filming new reality shows for the fall, right?

Also, National Mental Health Month continues, so this film found its way to the schedule during an appropriate month.  White's character, Buck, is dealing with the death of his mother, which of course is a high-stress situation for anyone to go through, but it seems to really hit him hard.  She seemed to have some kind of respiratory illness, so once again, a film is accidentally relevant and timely.  During his grieving period, Buck invites his old childhood friend, Chuck, to the funeral (point of order, do you "invite" people to funerals, or just post a notice in the newspaper and see who shows up?) and then seems to develop an odd obsession with Chuck.  After Chuck gives him a very vague, "Oh, sure, come and visit me in L.A. some time - only the next two weeks are out of the question..." Buck instead packs all his things into his car and drives to L.A.

Buck withdraws all the money (inheritance?) from his account, gets a motel room and makes inquiries at a local theater, across the street from Chuck's office, about putting on a play that he's about to write, and hires a theater staffer as the play's director, then he starts on writing the play, which turns out to be a thinly-veiled plea for Chuck's love and an attack on Chuck's fiancée, all based on an incident that happened to them as children.  Buck follows Chuck home and spies on him at night through the bedroom window, tries to visit Chuck at his office several times, and calls his house every 15 minutes, hanging up if the girlfriend answers.

There's more to the story, of course, which may seem obvious or be well-known now due to what's been written about it over the years - it's now considered ground-breaking in the world of queer cinema, but I think that needle has been moved quite a bit in the last two decades.  Now that some time has passed, I wonder if it should be regarded with the same praise, because it could be said that it equates a same-sex attraction with obsessiveness and stalking.  Sure, it only details one particular case, but the small always symbolizes the large, so if one gay fixation comes from a naive, out of line man who doesn't seem to respect personal boundaries, then by extension, to some degree, it's saying that they all do.  And when people fought to have same-sex attractions included in movies, I'm not sure that this is what they had in mind.  I guess that a depiction of a healthy same-sex attraction that came from a noble place and had its proper place in the world and might be reciprocated would still have to wait a few years to be seen by the masses.  Oh, well, baby steps were needed, I guess.

Also starring Mike White (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Chris Weitz (last seen in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"), Lupe Ontiveros (last seen in "The Big Fix"), Paul Weitz (last seen in "The Little Hours"), Beth Colt, Mary Wigmore (last seen in "Shallow Hal"), Paul Sand (last seen in "The Main Event"), Pamela Gordon (last seen in "Frances"), Tony Maxwell, Glory Simon, Gino Buccola, Annette Murphy.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Blow Pops

Wine Country

Year 12, Day 133 - 5/12/20 - Movie #3,538

BEFORE: Paula Pell carries over from "Other People", but here come four films in a row with Maya Rudolph, two live-action and then two animated.  Once I get back on cartoons I'll stay on them for about a week, after that there should only be 10 or 11 slots left in May.  At some point this month I hope to get some news about NYC opening up again and maybe going back to work, but right now there's still no news so I'm still in a holding pattern.  I know other parts of the country are opening up restaurants and beaches and other public places, but it remains to be seen if that's premature.  I guess we'll find out whether those states choose to ignore their death tolls or hide their statistics, or get shamed back into closing everything down again.

But let's finish off the Mother's Day chain (at least one of the characters in this film is probably a mom, right?) with a virtual trip to Napa Valley, in the hopes that tourism will also be back and become a thing again.  Even after planes fly again and theme parks, casinos and wineries open again, the next question will become whether Americans will WANT to travel again, and will they feel safe doing so?  Nobody's really sure.

THE PLOT: During a vacation to Napa Valley, a group of long-time friends reunite and revisit past choices.

AFTER: First question, was this pitched as "Bridesmaids" meets a female "Sideways" - is this therefore "Brideways" or "Sidemaids"?  We've seen the disastrous trip through Napa Valley thing before, we've seen the "trying to pick up the hot Asian-American sommelier" thing, too.  So it feels like they just put the same number of women from the "Bridesmaids" story in a similar situation to the "Sideways" trip and hoped the thing might write itself.  I was just left wishing it were funnier - was Tina Fey not available for a larger role?  She's always good, but they just didn't give her much to do here, as the owner/caretaker of the house.

All of the main characters are neurotic or messed-up in some way - remember, it's still National Mental Health Month.  One is hyper-organized and super-controlling to compensate for the fact that she recently lost her job and hasn't told anyone, another is a workaholic with a successful pie franchise who thinks maybe her friends don't want to include her in their outings, another doesn't want to face the fact that she's in a failing marriage to a boring guy, yet another is concerned with medical test results that she's waiting on.  Wait, that's only four and there are six main characters.  The fifth is an out lesbian who's constantly on the prowl (umm, if it's creepy for a guy, it's also creepy for a gal, welcome to the new equality) and the sixth is just "generally miserable" about her life, I guess that's where the writers ran out of ideas).

It seems Netflix is where the aging SNL comedians go to pitch their projects now, if they don't seem all that commercially viable.  Adam Sandler was once the hottest comedy actor out there, but when he started to see the box office for his films dwindling, he signed a deal with Netflix, and suddenly it didn't matter how much his films did or didn't make in a theatrical release, he got paid either way.  So, umm, what's his motivation to make better movies, then?  It's kind of like when your favorite band signs a multi-album deal with one of the bigger record labels, you just know their first album released under that deal is going to suck, because they've started to coast.  And then the albums will get even worse from there - I watched this happen to ZZ Top after their "Afterburner" album, which was the last good one they ever made.  Sandler's deal with Netflix included "Sandy Wexler", "The Do-Over", "The Ridiculous 6" and "Murder Mystery".  The only solid work he's done since then was outside of that deal, in "Uncut Gems" and the "Hotel Transylvania" movies.

Actually, the Sandler thing is a good point of reference, because for a while there he was making sure that his films all took place in Hawaii or some place tropical, just so he could get his whole family a free vacation on the film distributor's dime.  Right?  "50 First Dates", "Just Go With It", were there others?  I suppose it's a legal way to get your family a vacation, if you cast most of them in the movie, too.  But I guess maybe they got bored with Hawaii because they shot part of "Blended" in South Africa and "Murder Mystery" in Italy.  So you have to wonder if the stars family's next choice of preference is also dictating the settings for his next movie.  Or maybe it's kickbacks or freebies from that state or country's department of tourism - also quite legal, but a little more shady.

It sounds more like "Wine Country" was based on a true story, surrounding Rachel Dratch's real 50th birthday, when she did go with these friends to Napa Valley, and they did hire a chef to cook them paella.  That makes a bit more sense than "the paella cook comes with the house" and "it apparently takes 17 hours to make paella".

The ending is very stupid, they make a big deal about being at the top of a hill when one of the women is in need of medical attention.  They see someone in a car at the bottom of the hill, so one woman volunteers to fall/roll down the hill, but she's unable to recover in time to get the attention of the people in the car.  So one by one, they all convince themselves that falling or rolling down this hill is somehow necessary, only it's not.  They HAVE a golf cart, which got them to the top of the hill,  so therefore logically, it should be able to get them OFF the hill as well.  "Hey, we're not getting cell phone reception" is not a good enough reason for each character to make a big deal of jumping off this hill in turn, and risking further injury - it's not a logical progression.  Somehow this is supposed to be a symbolic re-awakening for each woman as she jumps off, into the unknown, but I'm not buying it.  Why not drive in the golf cart for 2 minutes to a place with better cell phone reception, and then call for an ambulance?  This is supposed to be a group of intelligent, mature women and they default to panic mode as soon as there's an emergency situation that they haven't encountered before.

The whole thing with the psychic/tarot card reader felt very forced - that was a cheap bit of foreshadowing, using a psychic.  Most films would probably find a more subtle way to hint at what's coming later in the film, rather than just have a tarot card reader blurt it out.  There's also the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning that these things only come true BECAUSE this character predicted them, and the prediction itself causes the other characters to do certain things, or notice other things that they otherwise wouldn't have.  Getting this group of female friends together is going to bring everything out in the open, all the little personality conflicts or long-buried disagreements, but that still doesn't mean the process has to be so ineptly telegraphed.

I didn't know who Brené Brown was, apparently she's an author and did some meaningful TED talks at some point.  Maybe I'm just not in the target audience for this movie, and professional yet emotionally vulnerable women would know more about who she is and what she's about.  Or maybe she's just the biggest celebrity author they could get to do a cameo...sorry, I'm feeling very cynical today, but I think watching this movie made me that way, to a large extent.

The best two scenes were probably the birthday party itself - I could finally believe that THIS group of women DID work together in a Chicago pizza place so many years ago - and the art gallery scene, during which the Gen X women take down the group of Millennials for being so privileged, not ever watching television on TV, over-sharing hate on the internet and just generally being horrible people. I wish this scene could have gone even further, and not just taken today's kids to task for something stupid, like liking "The Nanny".  Especially when their "OK Boomer" rant just causes all the hipsters to grab their phones and record it, thus proving the argument's point.  Umm, I think?  More scenes like this, please.

Also starring Amy Poehler (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Rachel Dratch (last seen in "The Week of"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "What Women Want"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Emily Spivey, Cherry Jones (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Maya Erskine, Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Dreamland"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Jay Larson, Craig Cackowski, Liz Cackowski (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Greg Poehler, Sunita Mani (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Brené Brown, Kate Comer (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), RJ Walker, Jason Greene.

RATING: 4 out of 10 organic sediments left in the glass

Other People

Year 12, Day 132 - 5/11/20 - Movie #3,537

BEFORE: I'm going to get back to Maya Rudolph tomorrow, and Kaitlyn Dever's going to come back in May for two more films.  That leaves Molly Shannon to carry over from "We Don't Belong Here", and it's also time to think about which actor may end up in the most films this year - I think Robert De Niro is still in the lead with 7 films, but Maya Rudolph has 4 or 5 coming up, so she's going to be a contender.  Still, the year's champion could be Owen Wilson, who has 4 films coming up in June, but he was already in three films in February, so he could have at least 7 appearances, too.  However, I'm not even at the halfway point for the year, so a lot could happen.  The next thing I have to figure out is if I'll be able to work in a documentary break after July 4 - if I can, it could help fill that long stretch between July 4 and October 1, as there are only so many "back to school" films for September.  I have four target films that could lead me into a documentary chain, so I'll have to start working out some chains from my July 4 film to see if I can land on one, and if so, in how many steps.  There's a film on Netflix called "The Laundromat" and it's tentatively in my May schedule, but if that's my documentary lead-in, I can drop it from May and shift it to July.

I've been busy the last couple of days dubbing the "Twilight" films to DVD, I think I've resigned myself to watching them this October, because they do fit into my chain rather neatly.  All of those films WERE on Hulu, but they are no longer, so I had to buy them all from cable On Demand now, so I'll have them when I need them.  I'm willing to pay for them now rather than run the risk of them not being available on streaming when October rolls around.  I'm a bit like a squirrel storing up acorns for winter, but I have to make sure to pick only the right ones.  Any actor or actress who was in the "Twilight" series will now be part of my end-of-year countdown, because for most of them, that's five appearances, and my cut-off is usually three.

THE PLOT: A struggling comedy writer, fresh off a breakup and in the midst of the worst year of his life, returns to Sacramento to care for his dying mother.

AFTER: Well, since yesterday's Mother's Day film proved to be something of a bust, it's a good thing that I packed a spare.  I found this one on Netflix and had it as part of the romance chain for a short while, but a closer look at the synopsis dictated moving it to May, and the fact that it linked to another film with a maternal theme just confirmed to me that I was on the right track.  I've been around the track a few times by now and seen enough films on this topic ("Two Weeks", "One True Thing") to know that it's probably autobiographical, so that means looking at the writer/director's story to try to parse out how much of this story comes from his/her own experience.  Yep, it all lines up, comedy writer from Sacramento, performed improv at UCB, worked for SNL, lost his mother to cancer in 2009.  Plus there are so many specific details here, like the type of cancer involved and the effects of chemotherapy, and then the effects of choosing to END chemo, that this almost had to come from real life events.

That fact's not really going to count as a spoiler, because it's another film that starts with the ending and then snaps back nearly a year to show how we arrived there.  All suspense and dramatic tension is unfortunately lost in this process, but there's still enough good material here to come close to making up for that.  David Mulcahey's father still doesn't seem to approve of his orientation/lifestyle, though it's been 10 years since he came out.  On a trip back to NYC, his father won't even enter his apartment, I guess because it's the place where naughty things happen (dude, you're going to have to go through this with your younger daughters at some point, get over it...).

The title comes from that feeling that a family tragedy like this is something that happens to "other people", although then you may find that one day it's happening to you, and you then become the "other people" to the people around you.  And they're going to either draw strength from your experience, or else thank their lucky stars that it happened to you, and not them.  But as many people have learned during this pandemic, even in the middle of tragic situations, it's important that we stay in touch with friends and family, and still find ways to entertain ourselves so as not to get completely bogged down in depression and despair.  And that could mean attending a wedding or other family function via a video-conferencing app, you just never know.

The film premiered at Sundance in 2016, and went on to win a few awards, including an Independent Spirit Award for Molly Shannon - good for her, it can't be that easy to transition from comedy to such a heavy dramatic role, and this is quite possibly her best work, combined with "Private Life" a couple years later.  She was the director's first choice to play his mother, but didn't get the part until Sissy Spacek dropped out due to a conflict.

Anyway, it's a bit of a tough slog considering the subject matter, and the extended family members were just a bit too madcap for my tastes, but I think it may be worth the effort.  After all, this may not be just something that happens to other people, everyone may have to go through some situation like this eventually, and that makes it not just significant but also close to universal.

Also starring Jesse Plemons (last seen in "The Irishman"), Bradley Whitford (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Maude Apatow (last seen in "This Is 40"), John Early (last seen in "Late Night"), Zach Woods (last seen in "Mascots"), Madisen Beaty (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Josie Totah (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), June Squibb (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Paul Dooley (last heard in "Cars 3"), Retta (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Matt Walsh (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Kerri Kenney (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Paula Pell (last heard in "Inside Out"), Colton Dunn, Nicole Byer (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Lennon Parham (last seen in "Bombshell"), D'Arcy Carden (ditto), Rose Abdoo (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Drew Tarver (last seen in "Dean"), Brandon Scott Jones (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Kyle Lane, Mike Mitchell, Richard Jin (last seen in "Lady Bird").

RATING: 5 out of 10 OK Cupid dates

We Don't Belong Here

Year 12, Day 131 - 5/10/20 - Movie #3,536

BEFORE: I chose this as a possible Mother's Day film months ago, based solely on the plot synopsis on IMDB.  As it turns out, the theme of mothers and mother-related things started a few days ago, and will continue for a couple days after the holiday, but this is where I wanted to plant the flag for the day.  Of course, it was available on Hulu when I made my plan, but I have the worst luck with that service, possibly because I treat it as sort of a third resort, if a film's not available on cable, then I may find it on Netflix, but if I don't get to it in time and it scrolls off Netflix, then I have to see if it pops up on Hulu - which this film DID, only I didn't get to it in time there either, so now I'm ready to watch it, but it's not there.  It's on AmazonPrime, sure, but for rental so at that point I might as well just rent it on iTunes for 30 days.  I hate to pay an extra $3.99 if I don't have to, but in this case I have to if I don't want to break or re-work my chain.  Just somebody, please tell me what the system is, if a film is available on Hulu, why WHY can't it just stay there long enough for me to get to it?  I know, every film there is under contract, and every contract ends at some point, it just feels like I rarely get to see anything good on that service before it's gone.  (And for some reason, it stays on my Hulu watchlist, which makes me THINK it's still there, only it's not.  That's hardly an ideal way to run a streaming service, it just pisses me off.)

Justin Chatwin carries over from "The Chumscrubber".

THE PLOT: A matriarch of a dysfunctional family is pushed to her tipping point by the disappearance of her son.

AFTER: Well, some things turn out the way I want them to, and then again, some things just don't.  Of course, any two films viewed next to each other could have some things in common, and then are probably also going to be different in many other ways.  But for the second night in a row, it's a film about mothers worrying over their sons going missing, and also, both this film and "The Chumscrubber" raise questions whether the universe has a plan or is just filled with random, occasionally happy, accidents.  Damn, I'm questioning reality itself after this one, more about that in a bit.  Oh, and SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen this one, for the umpteenth time this year, it's impossible to talk about this one without giving away some important points.

The good news is that a mother character is front and center here, Nancy Green has four kids, comprised of two adult daughters, one teen daughter, and a son at that very difficult age somewhere between 18 and 30 (honestly, it's difficult to tell with Anton Yelchin, he played teenagers in movies when he was WELL into his 20's) where he's deep into drugs or alcohol, questioning his sexuality and for some reason, very liable to trash a hotel room.  Meanwhile, the oldest (?) daughter, Elisa, is some kind of pop star (or overnight YouTube music sensation, it's tough to tell) who's been disowned by her mother (or has kicked her mother out of her life, this is also tough to tell).  The next oldest (?) daughter, Madeline, seems to have her life together (but then, why is she moving back home for a while?) and the teen daughter, Lily, has been diagnosed as possibly bipolar (like her brother?) and is seeing a therapist while only pretending to take her medication.  Again, let me remind everyone that it's National Mental Health Month, and we're deep into some of the same issues raised by "The Chumscrubber" - why are some drugs OK to prescribe while also telling our teens to not self-medicate with recreational drugs?  It's just an odd place to draw the line, that's all.  I'm willing to bet that marijuana, in its natural form, is probably better for teens in the long run than Ritalin is.

There's plenty of dysfunction to go around here, mom Nancy is concerned for her son, who took off, and has practically given up trying to discipline her youngest daughter, Lily.  I guess by the time you get to raising your fourth child it's easier to get them on medication than it is to remain a disciplinarian?  The whole family is still trying to recover from the death of Mr. Green, although not much is given here in terms of details about him, like when he died, how he died, what he did for a living to be able to afford such a large house, etc.  But the ripple effect is clearly there since every character is pretty messed up in some way.  Then there are hints that one or more of the children might have been molested by a neighbor who approached them when the parents weren't around.

I wasn't sure at first if this was another film being told out of sequence, primarily because the film starts with a bunch of fragments (including a clock running backwards) and then each scene after that felt a little disconnected from all the others, so that started to raise my suspicions.  A lot of times when this happens lately, it turns out that we're being shown things in non-linear order, and it sticks with me because it usually pisses me off.  Most directors who attempt this don't really know how to do it properly, so they end up just making a mess, or they're doing it to cover up those very long, boring allegedly "weak" parts of a story.  The first season of "Westworld" notoriously did this too, but some viewers figured it out early and put it out there as a theory that turned out to be right.  Umm, I think.  And of course, I saw this technique recently being used in "Little Women", which toggled between two different years in the lives of the March sisters, and a big tip-off was that fact that one sister cut her hair very short in the later year, so if you paid attention you could tell when each scene took place by the length of one character's hair.

Early on in "We Don't Belong Here", the son character, Max Green, dyes his hair from brown to blonde, and so I thought, "Ah, geez, here we go again, that's probably going to be important - or at least it's going to be the clue that tells me where we are in the jumping-around-through-the-timeline bit if I pay attention.  Perhaps I was overthinking things at this point, or maybe my brain has been broken by too many films that have collectively overused that time-jumping storytelling technique.

Honestly, if that were being used here, and now I'm not sure if it was, that would be the least of my problems with this story.  Something else is happening here, something that leads me to question the reality of what we're being shown.  A character jumps out of a window and falls several stories, and then appears to be very dead, which would naturally make sense.  But then that character is back in later scenes, as if nothing had happened, no damage from the fall.  This supports the time-jumping theory, falling from the window could just be that character's final chronological appearance, and everything that comes later maybe just happened before that.  But wait, there's more.  Another two characters appear to have a very bad accident at another point in the film, and then the next day, they're back in action, too.  So, is part of the film a dream, or some kind of alternate reality?  We could be in some "Donnie Darko"-like territory if people are on medication and imagining that something's "wrong" with reality, or the meds could cause them to have vivid dreams that would appear just like a section of the film, but does that really answer all of the lingering questions here?

Now, it's possible that this film is just a mess, and that some scenes contradict others, either through simple continuity mistakes, or the fact that Anton Yelchin died in 2016, before the film was released.  If he wasn't available for reshoots, perhaps the filmmakers had to work with the footage they had.  That's one possibility, however there are ways to film another actor and replace his head or face, so if that's the case, there were other solutions to getting the footage they needed to finish.  (EDIT: According to Wikipedia, all filming was completed in July 2014, so there goes that excuse.)

Another theory, and I'll check out the opinions online after I finish typing this, is that nothing is real here (duh, it's a movie, of course nothing is real...) and maybe everyone is in some kind of purgatory or afterlife, and they're trying to work out issues left over from their living lives, and if something really goes off the rails and they die, then they wake up the next day and they're fine, but they've learned a little more about themselves, and with that knowledge they're one step closer to getting out and moving on to the next thing.  The title of the film would seem to support this, as does the part near the end where the characters wait to get on a boat, there's something about that which calls to mind Greek mythology and waiting for Charon, the ferryman, to take them across the River Styx to a better place.  With all the medications I'm also sort of reminded of the red and blue pills in "The Matrix", and starting the next day over after a disaster also reminds me of "Groundhog Day".  But I guess whatever's really going on here is speculative at best, and maybe it's best left up to the viewer? The works of David Lynch, especially the recent re-boot season of "Twin Peaks", would also seem to be a reference point, in a similar way you may end up unsure of a shifting fictional reality.

(BUT, if purgatory looks and feels just like real life, then how do we know that real life is real, that we're all not in some kind of purgatory right now?  Wouldn't it make more sense for someone in purgatory or limbo to be AWARE of the fact that they are, so they can atone or make amends or work out whatever issues are keeping them there and preventing them from moving on?  Just a thought.)

OK, I checked the reviews on IMDB and there's another theory - some of the scenes that seem out of continuity could be dreams, and one or more characters in the family might have some kind of precognition ability.  Damn, I may have to watch parts of this film again to be sure, unless I can find some kind of full explanation online for everything that happens.  It's really sort of maddening.  Speaking of which, yet another possibility is that the events of this film are viewed through the lens of people who have mental illness or reactions to their medications, and that also could be affecting what we're seeing as "real".

There's a credit at the end thanking the staff of a hotel in Dedham, MA, which is right near where I grew up - that led me to check the filming locations on the IMDB, which happens to list only my hometown!  That's odd, but I haven't lived there since 1989, except for short visits, so it's not like I would ever know when a movie was being filmed there.  This made me go back and scan through the film at double-speed, looking for places I might recognize - my hometown happens to have a nature reservation, a number of large houses (McMansions, we call them) and also a sort of rehab/clinic facility, which would all fit in with the scenes in this film.  (When I was a teen, there were plenty of rumors about famous rock stars who stayed at the "Lodge" in my hometown to get sober, usually involving members of Aerosmith or the J. Geils Band getting clean there.  Who knows if any of those stories were true?)

But then I did a little more research on Wikipedia, and it seems most of the film was shot in and around Wellesley and Worcester, MA.  This would explain why the high school track didn't seem familiar to me at all. The nightclub scene was shot at Ralph's Chadwick Square Diner in Worcester, and the outdoor scenes were filmed at the Elm Bank Reservation in Wellesley, not the nature preserve in my hometown.  Nothing seemed familiar except for one shot, the exterior location of the bookstore, which was right near a theater marquee.  I was able to see the address on the door of the shop, and confirmed that was shot in Norwood, MA.  I know that theater, it's a local stage for plays now, but it used to be a movie theater, and it's where I saw the first "Star Wars" film back in 1977!

My parents still live in the next town over, so at least something seemed familiar tonight and brought back childhood memories for Mother's Day.  So there you go.

Also starring Catherine Keener (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Laggies"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "The Beaver"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The House That Jack Built"), Annie Starke (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Private Life"), Austin Abrams (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Debra Mooney, Maya Rudolph (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Michelle Hurd (last seen in "Random Hearts"), Sarah Ramos (last seen in "How to Be Single"), Mary Quick, Mark Famiglietti (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Adrian Enscoe, Sheila Stasack, Lucinda Jenney (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Tamara Hickey (last seen in "Chappaquiddick").

RATING: 3 out of 10 vague predictions from a psychic