The Last Thing He Wanted

Year 12, Day 179 - 6/27/20 - Movie #3,585

BEFORE: Reporting from suburban Massachusetts today, after my first trip on Amtrak since the pandemic started.  First real trip out of town, now that the virus numbers in both the NYC area and the Boston area are very acceptable (unlike some other areas of the country that re-opened too early) so I felt that there was an extremely minimal risk of me catching the virus on one three-hour train trip and then infecting my parents.  Anyway, my sister's theory is that my parents both had the virus in January, before anyone knew what the symptoms were, and they were both diagnosed with "weird flu" - so if that theory holds, then I couldn't possibly infect them anyway.

So I'm here, and I'm spending time with them, doing crosswords with my Mom, running errands with my Dad and eating take-out subs (heroes) with both of them.  Tomorrow after they watch church on TV I'm going to go downtown and buy them diner omelettes with all the breakfast fixings, and then maybe a Father's Day dinner (I know, it's a week late) from whatever restaurant they want.  Also, I managed to find their TV remote, which has been missing for months - they have a Smart TV that my sister got them which can access Netflix and Amazon Prime, only without the right remote it's impossible to do that.  With the cable remote I can switch the TV input so we can watch a DVD, so I programmed "Toy Story 4" for my Mom in the afternoon and this evening signed on to Netflix so they could watch "The Two Popes".  That's on my list to, but I haven't been able to link there yet.

Ben Affleck carries over again from "State of Play", and today's film is also on Netflix, but I watched it on my phone late last night after they went to bed. 

THE PLOT: A veteran D.C. journalist loses the thread of her own narrative when a guilt-propelled errand for her father thrusts her from byline to unwitting subject in the very story she's trying to break.

AFTER: This film is set back in 1984, during the Reagan re-election campaign, and the big story that the lead character wants to break concerns the Nicaraguan Contras, and whether they might be receiving arms and supplies from the U.S. administration.  My first thought is "Jeez, are we still on this?  It's been 36 years now, and the fact that our country was illegally supplying arms to certain forces in certain Latin American countries has been well established, right?"  Plus, I've seen this same topic covered in several recent movies, like "American Made" and, more recently, "Lord of War".  Why are we still beating this same well-played drum?  Haven't there been more recent political scandals that we can make movies about instead?

To be fair, this is based on a novel by Joan Didion, which was written in 1996.  But even back then, wasn't this Nicaraguan stuff old news?  Why did it take almost 25 years to turn this into a movie, and wasn't there some kind of expiration date on adapting a novel into a book?  I mean, I guess on the other hand if you can find some new angle on the Civil War you can certainly try to make a new movie about that, but everyone's then going to compare it to "Gone With the Wind", or at least "Glory", and if you're not bringing anything new to the table, then why bother? 

It's fairly obvious that somebody created this story to demonstrate the height of irony - the female journalist who's been trying to crack the Nicaraguan Contras story finds herself pulled off of that story and assigned instead to the campaign trail - only when her father contacts her for the first time in years, and then falls ill, she finds herself taking his place on the "big deal" that he's set up, and wouldn't you know it, that deal involves delivering arms to Central America.  WHAT ARE THE ODDS?  She ends up right in the middle of the very story she was pulled off of, only now she's part of the story.  (That's a theme that carries over from "State of Play", a journalist getting too close.)

In "The Next Three Days", I witnessed how far a man would go to rescue his wife from jail - in a similar manner here, we see just how far a daughter would go to try to keep her father out of trouble.  Because it turns out that rebel forces in Nicaragua aren't necessarily the most honest people, so instead of the money he was promised, they pay for the arms with bags of little white powder, and it turns out that those are much harder to deposit in the bank.  Look, I love my father, but if I found out he was involved in a drugs-for-guns scheme (not that he would), I think there's definitely a point where I would stop helping him, for sure.

But that's not what happens here, Elena doesn't get back on the plane and fly back to the U.S., instead she starts chasing after the money that her father is owed, because that also dovetails a little too neatly with the story that she wants to write.  This puts her in touch with a number of shady characters in Costa Rica, and puts her in a position where she doesn't know who to trust.  And every stupid choice she makes, from contacting her journalist friend back home to demanding a plane ticket home to showing up at the U.S. Embassy to try to get a new passport - just gets her deeper into trouble.  Meanwhile, who's watching her sick father while she's chasing down leads, or just plain running away from gunfire? 

Eventually a mid-level staffer from the State Department shows up and claims to want to help her, but is he on the level?  He sets her up at a beach resort in Antigua and says he'll fly her home "tomorrow", but after several "tomorrows" come and go, she starts to realize that he was maybe just trying to get rid of her, or provide free maid service for his ex-pat pal who runs the beach resort. I guess there are worse ways to spend your time, but she's eager to get back to the U.S. and break the story?  Choose your friends carefully, I guess.

Also starring Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Ocean's 8"), Rosie Perez (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Edi Gathegi (last seen in "Aloha"), Mel Rodriguez (last heard in "Onward"), Toby Jones (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Carlos Leal, Julian Gamble, Ben Chase, Robert Sedgwick, David Vadim, Onata Aprile, Casinao Ancalle, Laura Niemi, Sewell Whitney, Sandra Rodriguez, Yetta Gottesman (last seen in "Lucky You"), Josette Pagan, Juan Carlos Diaz, Barbara Andres, Charles Gemmill, with archive footage of Jerry Falwell (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story") and the voice of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton").

RATING: 4 out of 10 fresh coconuts

State of Play

Year 12, Day 178 - 6/26/20 - Movie #3,584

BEFORE: Russell Crowe carries over again from "The Next Three Days", even though he's been here for the LAST three days, making four total.  And now Ben Affleck will be here for four films in a row, even if I drop "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", which would have made it five.  But look who's back, it's Helen Mirren in her 6th film this year, she's not that far behind Owen Wilson, Maya Rudolph and Robert De Niro, who all have 8 appearances so far in 2020.  And I've also got 6 McConaughey films on tap, and he's already made one appearance so far - so it it's still anybody's game.

THE PLOT: When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington D.C. journalist starts investigating the case involving a U.S. Representative, his old college friend.

AFTER: I've decided that this film is like an Olympic diver who felt the need to squeeze one too many mid-air moves into his routine, which then forced him to hit the water at such an odd angle, it created so much splash that none of the judges were sure what type of dive he was even trying to do in the first place.  Does that make sense?  In other words, we're told to expect a certain kind of film, and THESE are the good people and THESE are the bad people, and then one little last-minute change and everything got upended at the end.  Umm, I think.  Let me just say that the ending is very unclear, and leave it at that.

Before that, there's a TON of conflict of interest stuff, I daresay too much to be believable.  If a journalist had been the college roommate of a congressman, that's one thing - college roommates don't always stay in touch, so when that politician makes the news for some reason, the journalist might be allowed to report on it, in fact what he remembers about the guy from the college days might even come in handy, to give some insight on what he was like, where he came from.  BUT, if that journalist is actively friends with that politician NOW, if that journalist is giving him (or his wife) relationship advice, or letting that congressman crash on his couch, then I gotta call a big NITPICK POINT here, there's just NO WAY that a decent newspaper editor would let that writer comment on his pal's situation, as it would be impossible for him to be objective.

In other instances seen here, the journalist comes across some key evidence in the case - photos of the killed woman that he can (sort of) trace back to their source, but the newspaper decides to sit on them for 48 hours and NOT turn them over to the police.  But NITPICK POINT #2, how does this serve their interests?  They eventually make a deal with the police to have first rights to publish any story connected to future evidence, but that should have been an assumed deal offered up in the first place.  The evidence is only valuable if it helps the police solve the crime, so why not hand it over sooner?  It does nobody any good if they don't share it.

This film was originally going to star Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, and act as something of a "Fight Club" reunion, but Brad Pitt had some disagreements with the director over the writing (something about the way they were adapting a TV series into a movie), plus there was a writers' strike in 2007 so even if they had wanted to accommodate Pitt's suggested changes, there were no writers available to do so.  And then the film got delayed so long because of Pitt's schedule that Norton had to drop out, too.  So Russell Crowe replaced Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck replaced Edward Norton.  And then it eventually became very ironic that Affleck's character's affair with his staffer got revealed, and a few years later Affleck's own affair with his family's nanny made the news.

Boy, remember back in the late 2000's decade, when everyone was worried about the privatization of America's homeland security, and what it meant for corporations like Haliburton to have working relationships with the U.S. military and government?  Those seem like such simpler times, before we were all worried about collusion with Russia, trade embargoes with China, nuclear attacks from North Korea, the appointment of too many conservative judges, the loss of abortion rights, global warming, caravans of immigrants heading toward our borders, immigrant kids being put in cages, and then of course the pandemic, collapse of the economy, and police violence caused by systemic racism?  Man, I sort of miss the days of Dick Cheney's shenanigans, because at least you knew where you stood back then.  These last three and a half years have really made me nostalgic for the Bush years, of all things - we didn't know how good we had it at the time.

I've got to cut my ramblings short today - I have to go catch a train for Boston, but if I think of anything else to say I'll add it later tonight.

Also starring Ben Affleck (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Rachel McAdams (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Debt"), Robin Wright (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Harry Lennix (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Josh Mostel (last seen in "Rounders"), Wendy Makkena (last seen in "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit"), Michael Jace (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), Brennan Brown (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Michael Berresse, Michael Weston (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Widows"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "Paterson"), David Harbour (last seen in "W.E."), Zoe Lister-Jones (last seen in "All Good Things"), Tuck Milligan, Steve Park (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Maria Thayer (last seen in "Table 19"), Rob Benedict (last seen in "Still Waiting...", Dan Brown, Katy Mixon (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Shane Edelman, Gregg Binkley, with cameos from Lou Dobbs (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Chris Matthews (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Bob Schieffer (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Bob Woodward.

RATING: 5 out of 10 half-smokes from Ben's Chili Bowl

The Next Three Days

Year 12, Day 177 - 6/25/20 - Movie #3,583

BEFORE: In what I hope are the last couple weeks before I get fully back to work, assuming I still have my second job, I've got to oversee the construction of our new bathroom, which was supposed to start last week but then got delayed over tile unavailability.  So instead I'm trying to focus on health issues, get the ball rolling on fixing my hearing loss somehow - a process which I dropped in late 2018 because I got busy, plus I couldn't get a clear answer on whether it would be better to get a hearing aid or an operation, and since I was told that the operation had a 2% failure rate, I freaked out and never got the necessary CAT scan for it.  Plus I was sent to some hearing aid specialist who was hawking Norwegian hearing aids (supposedly the best ones) and then found out my insurance wouldn't cover that at all, so financially it seemed out of reach.

After many attempts I got an appointment with an ENT specialist at Mt. Sinai uptown - I would have preferred to visit Mt. Sinai in Union Square because it's closer to their specialty Eye and Ear Infirmary, where one of my bosses had a successful ear operation, only I simply could not get anyone there to answer the damn phone - and their web-site would only allow me to schedule appointments with doctors uptown.  OK, I figured I'd at least get my foot in their door today, and got an updated hearing test (right ear - still bad) plus a referral to a doctor at the Eye & Ear Infirmary who can discuss the risks and benefits of the proposed operation with me.  This is a tough decision, and it's not made any easier by the fact that health insurance won't pay for a $500 hearing aid, but it will pay for a $13,000 operation.  I can't help but think that this is a sign of why our health-care system is so screwed-up - why not make it to my benefit to choose the cheaper, less invasive potential solution?

Beyond that, why can't I just walk out of one of these doctor's offices with a working hearing aid?  Why do I always get the bum's rush instead?  This doctor mentioned that they HAD hearing aids, along with people who could supply me with one, only for some reason he said, "You don't want one of those..." and suggested I go buy one at Costco instead.  WHY?  If I went to a car dealer and said I wanted to buy a car, wouldn't it be strange if the salesman said, "Oh, you don't want one of OUR cars, believe me..."  It just doesn't make any sense - perhaps I needed to be more forceful and clear, or pretended to be someone who's capable of making a decision and said, "Can I please have a hearing aid now?"  Or perhaps I should actually MAKE that decision, attempt the simplest, least invasive (yet more expensive for me) solution and then at least that medical office will have a clearer mandate from me regarding how I want to try and solve the problem.  Just waiting for somebody to say, "OK, here's the thing that's going to work, stick this in your ear..." doesn't seem to generate a result.  I guess I'll try again next week when I'm back from Massachusetts, but these doctors need to know that I'm terrible at making decisions regarding my own care, and it took a LOT just for me to make the appointment, and also to show up for it.  God, what more do they want from me?

Russell Crowe carries over again from "Proof of Life".

THE PLOT: A married couple's life is turned upside down when the wife is accused of murder.

AFTER: I've been watching over my wife's shoulder as she's gotten into playing "Grand Theft Auto V" over the last couple of weeks - she swears it's, like, the greatest video-game ever, but if I have any more time before going back to work full-time (OK, double part-time) then I'd rather replay "GTA: Liberty City Stories" and "GTA: Vice City Stories" first.  (I've played through the first one before, but got stuck halfway through the second.). And I couldn't help but notice similarities to the two big rescue missions in "Proof of Life" to some of the missions she's been playing in the video-game.  That sort of thing continues today, because this film is really about an attempted prison-break, like working out the plan, figuring out the personnel and skills needed for the job, and then putting the team together.

Only, here's the twist - the "team" is just one guy, John Brennan, whose wife, Lara, is in jail for murdering her boss in a parking garage.  John is convinced of his wife's innocence, though for some reason he can never quite bring himself to ask the most obvious question, which is "Did you do it?"  I guess it just slips his mind every time he visits her in the joint, but let me be clear, that's probably the FIRST question I'd ask my wife if she were in jail.  Spouses can't be called to testify, right?  Look, we all want to believe that the person we've chosen to spend our life with couldn't POSSIBLY have killed another human, but things happen - people cut off other people in traffic, people swerve their cars in and take that REALLY GOOD parking spot, and if your wife's been having a really bad day up until that point, that could be just the thing that drives her over the edge.

But let's put a pin in that for the moment, because Brennan is convinced that his wife is innocent, despite her fingerprints being on the fire extinguisher and that blood stain on her jacket.  So he becomes essentially a single parent to their son, and starts to hatch a plan to get his wife out of prison, one way or another.  So there's the legal way, and then there's watching a bunch of YouTube videos to learn about picking locks, hotwiring getaway cars, and where to find reversible jackets so he can disappear quickly into a crowd.  Then for the bigger stuff, like evading security cameras, staking out the prison, paying off the guards, he finds a guy who wrote the book about prison escape.  Literally - this guy had a best seller based on his many escapes from incarceration - and he's full of helpful advice about figuring out which countries have extradition treaties, how much money you're going to need to live in another country, and how long you're willing to go without seeing the rest of your family.  Oh, and while you're at it, try not to get caught.

Another pro-tip is to create one of those giant collages of maps and news clippings on your living-room wall, because why keep your plans in a notebook or organized in a folder on your computer when you can look like an insane person who decorates with prepper conspiracy theories and ties lines of string around pushpins to prove that "It's all connected, man!"  This sort of thing is sure to help the police learn your plan later, too - I mean, it's the considerate thing to do.

After almost getting caught casing out the prison, Brennan decides that it's easier to break into a medical van that transports paperwork and swap some falsified documents into his wife's file, which make her prison doctors believe she needs medical attention, and it's a lot easier to smuggle her out of a hospital than a prison, it turns out.  For the longest time I couldn't figure out what he was doing by breaking into those vans.  But there was a method to his madness.

The plan is, once he's got her in the car, he knows exactly how long before the police can set up roadblocks and shut down the city of Pittsburgh.  All they have to do is swing by, pick up their son, get to another airport in another city, and fly to another country to start their new lives.  And they'll be fine as long as nothing goes wrong, but then, that wouldn't be a very interesting movie, now, would it?

What this movie does best, however, is keep the audience guessing about whether the wife is guilty or innocent - as stated above, at some point I was starting to wonder if they were ever going to get around to this little piece of information or not.  No spoilers here, but keeping it ambiguous for so long created some confusion over whether I should be rooting for Brennan's plan to succeed, or for the police to come out on top.  The wife wasn't even the best person to ask, because there's the possibility that she could claim herself guilty just to drive her husband and son away for their own sakes, or to prevent her husband from concocting some elaborate plan to free her, putting himself at risk.  But again, if he chooses the safe, rational path that wouldn't be a very interesting movie either, would it?

Also starring Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Brian Dennehy (last seen in "Tag"), Lennie James (last seen in "Lucky Break"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Ty Simpkins (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Helen Carey (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Daniel Stern (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Kevin Corrigan (also last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Jason Beghe (last heard in "Superman: Unbound"), Aisha Hinds (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Tyrone Giordano (last seen in "Untraceable"), Jonathan Tucker (last seen in "Hostage"), Allan Steele, RZA (last seen in "Mr. Right"), James Ransone (last seen in "The Clapper"), Moran Atias (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Michael Buie (last seen in "Bombshell"), Trudie Styler (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Tyler M. Green, Toby J. Green, Kaitlyn Wylde, Remy Nozik (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Derek Cecil, Leslie Merrill, Alissa Sullivan Haggis.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Canadian coins

Proof of Life

Year 12, Day 176 - 6/24/20 - Movie #3,582

BEFORE: Russell Crowe carries over from "Fathers & Daughters", and now that my Father's Day chain is over, I'm going to spend a few days with Mr. Crowe and then a few days with Ben Affleck, and that should get me to the end of the month.

Now, my debate after adding "Onward" was, since I've got one film too many in the chain, which one should I drop?  I'd prefer to not drop the films I have on DVD or DVR, because it's a space issue - and dropping one of the films on Netflix doesn't help me shorten my queue there, so in the end it came down to a choice between today's film, which I'm viewing on iTunes, or "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", which is on AmazonPrime.  I would have preferred to watch the "Jay and Silent Bob" movie, assuming it's good (which I can't really confirm without, you know, watching it) but on the other hand, it's got such a large cast that it seems a shame to just sandwich it between two other movies with Ben Affleck.  Maybe I should save it for later on, in case it helps me get out of a linking jam in August or September.  So in a way that's one vote for each movie, what to do?  I think "Proof of Life" sort of fits in more thematically, because I've got a bunch of action films coming up.  So that's two votes "Yay" and one vote "Nay" for "Proof of Life".

But in the end, it came down to my weekend travel plans.  If I were to schedule "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", which is available on AmazonPrime, it would fall into a slot on Sunday, when I'm scheduled to be in Massachusetts - where I'll have Netflix available on my phone, but not AmazonPrime.  Plus, I wanted to watch that Kevin Smith movie with my wife, or at least offer to watch it with her, because she did enjoy "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" years ago.  So that's two more reasons for NOT scheduling that film for this weekend, because she's not making the trip with me, I'm taking the train up just to spend a couple days with my parents, who I haven't seen since Christmas.  So it's "Proof of Life" today, and "Jay and Silent Bob" gets re-scheduled.  But hey, it's the year of the re-schedule, right?  And I've had another shot at every film that I've postponed this year, so what's one more at this point?

THE PLOT: Alice hires a professional negotiator to obtain the release of her engineer husband, who has been kidnapped by anti-government guerrillas in South America.

AFTER: I've sort of transitioned from movies about fathers to movies about neglectful fathers, here Russell Crowe plays Terry Thorne, a hostage negotiator who's divorced and has a son, and he's apparently always missing his son's soccer (or is it rugby?) games because he's off in some foreign country trying to get some other kid's father released from kidnappers.  This must have been a big problem back in the late 90's, Americans always being held for ransom, because there was some kind of insurance policy that would cover it - K&R, kidnap & ransom insurance.

A problem arises here, however, when the kidnappers (in the fictional country of Tecala) kidnap a man they believe is employed by an oil company, only he's really an engineer there to build a dam, which will ultimately allow the oil company to build a pipeline in a sort of "quid pro quo" situation.  There are some hitches in the process, though, since the oil company never gets around to supplying materials to build the dam, and then that company gets taken over by another energy company before the dam can be built, so the company that had the K&R policies no longer exists, plus somebody forgot to pay the premiums on the policy, so this guy's in some real trouble.  He doesn't even know enough about the pipeline for the company to want to save him, but try telling that to the kidnappers. And since there's no valid insurance policy the negotiator is told to pack up and go home, only he decides to return and do this job as a freebie.  (Yeah, right - as if!)

It doesn't seem likely that somebody would volunteer their services, but right now I do see reports of people volunteering at food banks and other charities, because it's needed and it's the right thing to do.  (I made a couple of donations today, once I knew that my unemployment money was still going to come in even though I'm back to work part-time - I felt a bit like I was robbing from the rich to give to the poor.).  OK, so maybe I'll give this guy a pass on this one - the engineer's wife isn't rich either, she's tended to do social work near wherever her husband is building stuff, but the engineer's sister, now maybe SHE'S got some money, she might be able to come up with a ransom payment.  If only the engineer had been nicer to his sister over the years...

Also, he sort of develops a pseudo-romance with the wife - ah, now we understand his motivation a little bit more.  Russell Crowe reportedly started a relationship with the (married) Meg Ryan during this shoot, so I have to wonder if this was a case of life imitating art, or vice versa.  The characters don't really act on their attraction, except for one kiss before the mission, but still this has to make you wonder why Terry was working at cross purposes, falling for the wife and also believing beyond rational expectations that the husband was alive.  Supposedly it was instinct, he felt deep down in his gut that he could get him back, and he is the expert, after all.  And even if he didn't earn any money for getting the engineer back, there was also the chance of another payoff if they could rescue another hostage or two from the same kidnappers.

"Proof of life" is an important step in the negotiation process, during which the kidnappers need to send some kind of evidence that the kidnapped person is still alive, and it can be a photo of him holding a recent newspaper, or allowing him to speak on the phone, or passing along information that only he would know.  Once it's been established that he's not dead, then the negotiator and the kidnappers can start working out the ransom details.  But until then, the worst part is just not knowing, and I get that.  Right now I, like probably a lot of other people, just don't know if I'm going back to work at one of my jobs.  Is my boss going to use the pandemic as an excuse for letting me go, or replace me if I don't come back right away?  Or have I been made obsolete there?  It's almost like I don't want to hear the bad news, but still, it's probably better to know than to not know, right?  At least if I'm not wanted back, I can then have more time to set up something else.  In the same way, if the kidnapped person is dead, the spouse may not want to know, but still, in the long run, it's better to know than to not know.

We the audience, however, have the advantage of knowing, because part of the film details Peter Bowman's experiences in the kidnappers' camp, where he's made to do physical labor, kept in a shack and tortured by gunshots keeping him awake at all hours, in a manner similar to what's happening in NYC right now with fireworks.  I can see tweets from other city people even more annoyed about it than I am, and that's saying something.  (Finally, however, a bunch of motorists gathered outside the Mayor's mansion and honked their horns all night, which finally made him realize that he might need to do something.  However, what he DID was hold a press conference where he announced his intention to set up a task force to do undercover sting operations to stop the flow of illegal fireworks into the city.  But just think about how useless those undercover operations are going to be, now that he went and mentioned them in a PRESS CONFERENCE.  What an idiot.  Mayor DiBlasio is ultimately just as dumb as Trump, in his own way.)

So this film starts with an action-packed rescue, and then wraps up with another action-packed rescue.  It's just too bad they couldn't do anything to pep the really long, boring middle part, which consists of a month-long captivity and negotiations, and seeing them from all perspectives doesn't really make them any more interesting, unfortunately.

Also starring Meg Ryan (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), David Morse (last seen in "Concussion"), Pamela Reed (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), David Caruso (last seen in "Hudson Hawk"), Anthony Heald (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Stanley Anderson (ditto), Michael Byrne (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Alun Armstrong (ditto), Gottfried John, Michael Kitchen (last seen in "Dracula A.D. 1972"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Mario Ernesto Sanchez (last seen in "The Specialist"), Pietro Sibille, Vicky Hernandez, Norma Martinez, Carlos Blanchard, Rowena King (last seen in "The Bucket List"), Diego Trujillo, Alejandro Cordova, Tony Vazquez, Gerard Naprous.

RATING: 6 out of 10 well-fed pigs

Fathers & Daughters

Year 12, Day 175 - 6/23/20 - Movie #3,581

BEFORE: One more film about fathers for this week's line-up, then I'm moving on.  The last four films have been all about fathers and sons, so I'll switch things up with a film about a father and daughter before we close the book on Father's Day 2020.  Now I could have linked straight from "Fathers' Day" to here via Bruce Greenwood, but by following a different link I squeezed in "Onward" as a little extra - but now I'll have to make up for that by dropping something else.  I already doubled up once in June and I'd rather not do that again.

Octavia Spencer carries over from "Onward".

THE PLOT: A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, and 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

AFTER: If you watch enough movies, and I certainly have (and then some) you may start to notice some patterns, or the same formats and techniques being used again and again.  On one level, OK, sure, there's nothing new under the sun, and we keep returning to the same TYPES of stories, if not the same exact stories.  The details may change every day, but just like Greek theater or vaudeville, it's really the same stuff over and over again.  The last real "new thing" to come along was probably the surge in superhero movies, and we're still in the middle of that trend - but for me, sometimes, it feels like all the other types of movies are stuck in neutral, they're revving their engines but not really GOING anywhere.

This is my way of saying that I've just watched another film about a struggling writer, and that's the third one in four days.  I can't say how long this trend has been going on, but clearly for a long time - "Fathers' Day" came out in 1997, over 20 years ago, and today's film is just 5 years old.  But it's not just the failed author thing, it feels like this movie tried to mash a bunch of commonly-used plot points and movie tropes together, hoping that the end result would end up being something greater than the sum of its parts.  And I'm not convinced that it is, though I'm willing to debate this point.

There's the split-timeline method of storytelling, which has gained a lot of ground in the last few years.  Rather than tell the whole story from start to finish as it should be, the film toggles between two sections, one that starts shortly after the death of Jake Davis' wife and Katie Davis' mother, and then the other one depicts Katie as an adult, doing social work with troubled kids and also experiencing her first real adult relationship after a long period of serial one-night-stand dating.  More on this in a bit.  Since Jake doesn't appear in the later timeline, we're free to make some assumptions about what happened to him, and the fact that he appears to have medical problems resulting from an accident in the earlier timeline, the theory that he's no longer alive would seem to be supported.  This creates the opportunity to throw in another tired trope, the chance for a prominent actor to play an unwell person, which as the theory goes, can create a shortcut to get to an Oscar nomination.

We eventually learn that Jack's medical problems are tied to the accident in which his wife died, and that they're not just physical, there's some mental damage as well.  And when you combine his medical problems with his writing problems, namely an inability to match the success of his award-winning previous novel, and the resentment that exists between him and his wife's sister and her husband (who blame him for her death), this creates a perfect storm of disaster in the first timeline - after his in-laws take care of Katie for 7 months while Jack gets the care he needs for recovery, the in-laws hatch a plan to propose adopting Katie themselves, as they have more money than a struggling writer, and the connections to get her into the best schools and such.  Once Jack returns, he takes over again as Katie's sole parent and vows to make things work.

Non-meanwhile, in the later timeline, the adult Katie goes through a progression of those one-night stands, and confesses to her therapist that she's incapable of feeling love, and honestly doesn't miss it.  This eventually changes when she meets Cameron, who coincidentally is very familiar with the book that her father wrote about raising her as a single parent, and can't believe that he has a chance to date the woman who inspired a character in his all-time favorite book.  Yep, he's a struggling writer, too, and he's maybe got some issues himself, but honestly, there's no time to get into those.  But for Katie, who clearly has daddy issues, a moody struggling writer is somebody that she can't seem to resist.  This is basic Love Psychology 101, if you ask me, however it is commendable that we slowly get to learn how the events of the earlier timeline affect grown-up Katie in the later timeline.  Whatever went down between her and her father is obviously still having an impact on who she is, what she does for a living, and who she falls in (and out) of love with.

(You know a character is off the rails if they're in a relationship with another character played by Aaron Paul - and HE'S the more stable sensible one of the two.)

Non-meanwhile, again, in the earlier timeline, the in-laws feel that Jack is an unfit parent, when you combine his recurring health issues with his inability to write another best-seller, therefore his inability to provide for his daughter, so they file for custody in court.  It's a huge long shot that a judge would award custody to a relative when there is an alive, active parent available, but since this is America, a very litigious society, the in-laws feel that whoever can hire the more expensive lawyer is going to win the case.  And all this pressure only makes Jack's writer's block worse, and also creates more stress, which isn't helpful for his continuing health problems.

Look, there's a simple fix in a family custody case, and it kind of bothers me that a supposedly-clever writer wouldn't think of it.  If the in-laws really want to adopt Katie, one potential solution to this dilemma would be to name them as her legal guardians in the event of Jack's death or medical inability to take care of his daughter.  This solves a number of problems at once, it gives the in-laws what they want (eventually, maybe) and it gives Jack piece of mind that if his medical condition gets worse, then someone will be providing for his daughter.  And then, just maybe, it satisfies the in-laws enough that they drop the court case and stop asking for custody, at least temporarily, but maybe for good.  And if he should die, then he wouldn't be in much of a position to care about who's raising Katie.  Done and done, but instead both sides huddle with their lawyers and end up unwilling or unable to compromise.

NITPICK POINT: In the earlier timeline, which is set around 1989-1990, Jack still uses an old-fashioned typewriter, as most authors seem to do in movies (even current ones).  He says something about how in 10 years, maybe everyone will be using computers to write stuff.  I'm fairly sure that by 1989 writing novels on laptops was already very commonplace.  But if the movie was accurate on this detail, then they couldn't really show that great clackety-clack of the typewriter, or have that typical scene where a whole stack of paper goes flying up in the air, ruining that author's last week of work, because there's simply no back-up copy, or any way to put the pages back in order.  Please.

Also starring Russell Crowe (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "The Clapper"), Kylie Rogers (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Aaron Paul (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), Diane Kruger (last seen in "The Host"), Quvenzhane Wallis (last heard in "Trolls"), Janet McTeer (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Book Club"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Michelle Veintimilla, Ryan Eggold (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Paula Marshall (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Brendan Griffin, Chris Douglass.

RATING: 5 out of 10 missed bedtime stories

Onward

Year 12, Day 174 - 6/22/20 - Movie #3,580

BEFORE: I've made great progress this year getting to the animated films category, I tackled a week's worth of animated DC superhero films in January, plus the two "Nut Job" films, then once the annual romance chain was over I crossed off "Leap!" and "Ferdinand" in March, then I circled back in May for another 7 animated films, like "Frozen 2", "Tarzan 2" and "The Secret Life of Pets 2". That didn't leave much behind, except for unlinkables like "The Red Turtle" and the CGI "Lion King".  I'll have to get to those later, but since the ones left don't link together, I've got to drop them in-between the live-action films if I'm ever going to get to them.

This one had the advantage of not only linking between two films about fathers, but also (I believe) fitting in thematically, so I moved it up on the list for "Whenever" to "Umm, How about Next Week?"  Now, this means I'll have to drop one of the other films I had planned for June, but that's easily narrowed down to two choices.  I'll talk more about this in a couple days - just know that once I drop that film, I'm back on schedule.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus carries over from "Fathers' Day".

THE PLOT: Two elven brothers embark on a quest to bring their father back for one day.

AFTER: I'm not sure that I completely buy the premise here, which is that there's a magical land somewhere, post-Middle Earth or something, where magic existed once, only it was very hard to access, and once these creatures discovered fossil fuels that were much easier to access, nearly everybody just somehow forgot how to use magic or be magical.  Well, umm, OK, but then there are still things like centaurs and manticores and pixies, and they still HAVE all of their magical abilities, but they choose to, what, ignore them?  It's a cute idea that doesn't completely work.  There are also games like Dungeons & Dragons, only they're based on history, not fantasy.  But if everybody KNOWS that the magical things in these games were once real, then they haven't really forgotten, have they?  So on some level it's a conscious choice to NOT think about magical things or use their own abilities most of the time?  Again, cute, but also clunky, clunky, clunky.

I'm trying to think of a real-world equivalent, and the only thing I can think of is painting.  Back in the Renaissance you couldn't throw a rock without hitting an artist, even if not all of them were very good.  We still remember a few of them today, typically the best ones, but there were probably hundreds, thousands of them who never amounted to much - because what the hell else was there to do back then but paint?  Right up until the 1700's and 1800's, there were painters all over the place, even if the styles changed dramatically over time, museums are still filled with the greater and lesser works of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Eyck and so on.  But name one famous painter today, and that charlatan Thomas Kinkaide doesn't count.  Neither does Bob Ross.  I'm sure there are great painters around today, but there will never be much need for them, thanks to photography.  Suddenly painters weren't needed as much after we had cameras - painted portraits seem unnecessary now, except for offical portraits of world leaders.  The process of painting is much like the magic portrayed in "Onward", people still kind of know it's there, but it's not considered necessary any more, not when you've got a job and a couple of hobbies and you're planning that trip and looking for new games to play on your phone.

Anyway, Ian and Barley Lightfoot are a couple of elven brothers, and when Ian turns 16, their mother gives them a gift left behind by their deceased father, part of which is a spell that will bring him back to life for one day, so that he can see how well his sons grew up.  (Barley has a few childhood memories of their father, but Ian was younger and doesn't remember him at all.).  Although Barley believes in magic, he has no ability to cast the spell, but Ian's got "the gift", only doesn't really know how to use it, so they only bring their father halfway back.  Unfortunately, it's the lower half, the spell only brings back his legs and, umm, well, everything below the waist, let's just leave it there.  Now, a couple of NITPICK POINTS here about this whole process, like if Mr. Lightfoot doesn't have a brain, then what's controlling the legs?  How does he recognize his son's signature "drum-tap" on his foot if his head isn't there to process that rhythm?  I know, somehow "it's MAGIC" is supposed to take care of this, and to a certain extent it does, but you just know I'm not going to be satisfied with that, right?

The Phoenix Gem that brought their father (half-)back gets used up in the spell, so the two teens drive to a mythical tavern to seek out the Manticore, who might be able to direct them to another Phoenix Gem.  There's a lot of mythical quest stuff that gets cribbed from D&D here (and D&D itself cribbed a lot of stuff from Tolkien) but in the end every quest is the same - go to the tavern, seek out a map, begin the perilous quest along the dangerous route, after your arduous journey, find the magic object, defeat the evil power, gain the treasure.  And what we have here is a combination of "every" quest movie mixed with mythology that's half LOTR and half "Shrek"-like fantasyland.  Plus it's two mismatched individuals on a buddy comedy road trip - just like "Fathers' Day" (and "Due Date", and "The Guilt Trip", etc. etc.)

But there's a bunch of new stuff in here, too, like all the spells that Ian learns to cast along the way (shit, that's probably all cribbed from "Harry Potter", never mind...) but hey, there are also centaurs and pixies and the good news is that the mythical fairyland is now racially diverse and LGBTQ friendly, so that's something, right?  And the boys drive this kick-ass van with cool 1970's graphics of a unicorn on it!  (Shit, wasn't there something in the news about Disney/Pixar hiring somebody's cool unicorn van for a party, and then blatantly ripping off that van's unicorn design for this film?). OK, OK, so there's nothing new under the sun, but at least this film puts all those old things together in a new way.  The Fantasy Land here is just like ours, they have fast-food joints and highways and smartphones and convenience stores that sell cheesy poofs, the only difference is that there are no humans, just elves and pixies and unicorns and, umm, ogres?  I'll admit had a tough time identifying all of the different creatures that live in this PC ethnically diverse fairyland.

That's because there's no time!  We're off on a quest!  The spell wears off in 24 hours so if we want to bring back the other half of Mr. Lightfoot we've got to hurry and drive north for some reason!  And follow the map that we found on the back of the children's menu placemat at the tavern!  And meanwhile Mom's got to race to find the Manticore, too, and race to find her sons because they don't know about the curse, and the magic guardian that protects the thing!  Umm, we think.

I liked the Manticore character - this is somebody who DOES remember the way things used to be in the age of magic.  Perhaps she lives a lot longer than other mythical creatures, but she's fallen on hard times, had to sell that magical sword a few years back, had to turn the tavern where everybody meets to start their quest into something like a family restaurant, with a karaoke machine and crayons for the kids to use while they're waiting for their griffin nuggets.  After seeing that one kid's birthday party too many, it pushes her over the edge and makes her realize what she's become, and how far she's fallen.  The pixies are a close second, they became a bunch of leather-wearing bikers who forgot how to use their wings, and instead of riding tiny motorcycles, they work in tandem to drive regular-size motorcycles, which seems a lot more difficult than, say, flying with wings.

Anyway, I was right to program this one so close to Father's Day, because it gives the perspective of two characters who have lost their father, and all the emotions that come along with that.  And probably anyone who's lost a parent would do anything to have some sense of closure, or to have that one more day with someone who's passed on, just to say the things they should have said, if only they'd known it was their last chance to say them.  Even though you know that's impossible, it's still something that you might want - and how far would you go to try and get that?

On top of all the sentiment, there are like a hundred little in-jokes and Easter eggs here, which we've come to expect from Pixar.  Barley's van has a bumper sticker that reads "You shall not pass" and the local Burger Shire has a sign that reads "Now serving 2nd breakfast."  And if you freeze-frame the menu/placemat in the tavern, you'll see they serve sodas called "Mt. Doom" and "Mt. Mist" instead of Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist.  Some of this is the sort of stuff you might see on signs at your local Renaissance Faire, but some of it also rises above that humor level.  And yeah, this movie borrows heavily from everything, like "Indiana Jones" and "Weekend at Bernie's", but at least it blends all that together in something akin to a new way.

This film had its theatrical run cut short, because the Covid-19 pandemic shut all the theaters down just a few weeks into its run - but it's up on Disney Plus and some of the other streaming services too.  That's technically both a bad thing and a good thing, fewer people got to see it in the theaters but now more people are able to see it sooner via streaming.

Also starring the voices of Tom Holland (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Chris Pratt (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Mel Rodriguez (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Kyle Bornheimer (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Lena Waithe (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Ali Wong (last seen in "Father Figures"), Grey Griffin (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Tracey Ullman (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Wilmer Valderrama (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), George Psarras, John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Coco").

RATING: 8 out of 10 parking tickets

Fathers' Day

Year 12, Day 173 - 6/21/20 - Movie #3,579

BEFORE: Well, this is where I wanted to be when I blocked out the year.  Mission accomplished, so far anyway.  I've still got a ways to go if I want to have another Perfect Year - I think that would be quite ironic, in this most terrible of years, the absolute crap-tacular dumpster fire that is 2020 if I could pull out another year-long continuously linked chain, like I did last year.  But I've got all of July to work out a viable chain that will get me to October, it's still too early to think about it now, and then deal with whatever slots are left for November or December.  But if I've done the math right, I've got things programmed already up to slot 3,618.  I've got about 30 or 31 films put aside for October and a lead-out, that gets me close to 3,650.  So, really, just 50 slots left to program, assuming I can find a chain shorter than that to connect July 31 with October 1 (which is 61 days, by my count).  I like my chances.

I spoke briefly with my father today, just to wish him a happy holiday - and to let him know I'm coming up to visit next weekend.  If I can catch the Acela train on Friday I can be up there by 8:30, maybe a late dinner at my parents' house before I hang out with them for a few days, and I can be back in NYC in time for work on Monday.  

Robin Williams carries over from "World's Greatest Dad".

THE PLOT: A woman cons two old boyfriends into searching for her runaway son by convincing both that they are the boy's father.

AFTER: Wow, there's a lot of comic talent here just in the three leads, but I just wish this movie from 1997 had known what to do with it all.  Instead the story sort of leads almost nowhere, kind of like the rock band tour seen in the film, it goes from place to place, doesn't stay anywhere very long, moves on to the next town, but thankfully it's over very quickly so you can catch a different band next week.  Seriously, how many rock concerts do you really remember, start to finish?  Maybe two or three really good ones in your life, if you're lucky.  That's why I love live albums, especially if I saw that act perform on that tour, then I don't have to remember the tracks played - I got the live albums from the two McCartney tours I saw (Happy belated 78th birthday to Sir Paul, who has two songs featured in this movie, "Young Boy" and "The World Tonight") and another fave is the "Arch Allies" live album from REO Speedwagon and Styx.

But Sugar Ray? Was that the biggest band of 1997, or was that just a band that was available.  Was there anyone who quit their job or dropped out of school to go follow Sugar Ray on tour?  I kind of doubt it, though I'll admit I've been wrong before.  But that's where the two lead characters here have to go to find the boy they each think is his biological son - out on tour with Sugar Ray.  There's no accounting for taste, I guess - but I don't think the filmmakers here had much experience with Sugar Ray's fans, who are depicted here as a bunch of punks, Goths and drug addicts.  Jeez, learn to read the room already - that's like showing heavy metal fans at an Uncle Kracker concert, or inner city youths jamming to the Beach Boys.

But hey, 1997 was a crazy time.  Pre-9/11, pre-Katrina, pre-pandemic.  Back when a woman you slept with could tell you that you fathered a child 17 years ago, and you'd be inclined to just believe her on the spot.  Oh, sure, you'd know about blood tests and DNA tests, but who has that kind of time?  Especially when the boy in question has run away to follow Sugar Ray on tour.  A simpler time perhaps.  Heck, I've already seen one film this month about a mother who slept around a lot and may not know the truth about her sons' parentage, so why not another one?  But the big question here then becomes - why would she enlist her two ex-boyfriends to hunt the kid down, when the boy's (adoptive?) father is also quite capable of doing so?  Look, it's not like she KNEW that her husband was going to have car trouble, and then a horrible accident with a portable toilet, but maybe she was psychic or something?

It just feels like there were problems here in the concept or early scripting stage.  If you're writing this story, wouldn't it make more sense to show the husband having his accident first, and then this would necessitate Collette dialing up her old lovers to find her son?  I guess maybe this would have tipped the reveal a little too soon, but it could have worked if the Sugar Ray concert were in Los Angeles, then moved on to San Francisco, for her to contact each man in turn, and then they could meet up with each other in much of the same contrived way, and the story would feel a little more honest, I think.  But as it stands, the problem of a runaway teen seems like it could have been solved within the current family unit, without enlisting outside help - so the whole plot felt very contrived as a result.

Then there's the constant self-sabotaging that the characters all seem to do, all of which causes further delays in the action, essentially drawing out what should have been a 20-minute story to over 90 minutes.  Scott runs away.  Scott buys an expensive necklace for his girlfriend.  Scott is found, then runs away again.  The drug dealers find Scott, then lose him.  Jack and Dale have to move on to the next city, and so on.  Each concert ends and it's like telling Super Mario that the princess is in another castle at the end of each level.  And we're moving on to Reno now, wake me when the tour is over.

Robin Williams plays Dale, a frustrated writer again, as he was yesterday in "World's Greatest Dad", but the film can't really seem to decide if this is who he really is - at various times he claims to be an actor, a photographer, etc.  Plus he demonstrates suicidal tendencies, a fear of flying, nervousness, gambling addiction and uncontrollable weeping/laughing, so I couldn't even really tell if his character was supposed to be sane or insane.  I'm thinking insane would make more sense, but in a way, that also applies to Robin Williams himself.

Billy Crystal's character, Jack, on the other hand, is supposed to be the straight man here on the buddy comedy road trip, but he's also twice-divorced and afraid to become a father with his third wife, so he's also kind of screwed up.  But it turns out that maybe Jack and Dale hanging out with each other is good for both of them, Jack learns to loosen up a bit and Dale gains from having some adult supervision.  Gee, it's almost like this is an example of a buddy comedy formula or something.

NITPICK POINT: At the end, Jack (Billy Crystal) claims to be an expert at telling when someone is lying to him.  So, umm, where was this ability at the start of the movie?  That could have saved everybody a lot of time and hassle.

Also starring Billy Crystal (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "Enough Said"), Nastassja Kinski (last seen in "Town & Country"), Charlie Hofheimer (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Charles Rocket (last seen in "Murder at 1600"), Patti D'Arbanville (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Haylie Johnson, Jared Harris (last seen in "Allied"), Louis Lombardi (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Dennis Burkley (last seen in "Tin Cup"), Mark McGrath, Ricky Harris (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Paul Herman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), with cameos from Mel Gibson (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Mary McCormack (last seen in "True Crime"), Jason Reitman, Dana Gould.

RATING: 5 out of 10 slot machines