Lady and the Tramp (2019)

Year 12, Day 186 - 7/4/20 - Movie #3,592

BEFORE: I'm still working my way through the (so-called) "live-action" remakes of Disney's classic animated films. (I've got just "Dumbo" and "The Lion King" left, and then "Mulan" if it ever gets released...)  Only they're not "live-action", not fully, because they have CGI animals and other stuff in them.  "Live-action" is really only a term used by animators when discussing movies that aren't animated - but the Disney "live-action" films are all at least partly animated, so please, Disney, find another name.  I guess "non-animated" is too on the nose, plus it sounds like it has a bit of a negative connotation.  But come on guys, are we just supposed to ignore the parts that were clearly animated?

Even if those dogs are real (and I'm not saying they are, not yet anyway) the techniques of making a dog appear to "talk" via animated mouths is used here, so THAT'S ANIMATION!  Or at least needs to be considered a "visual effect", so it sells all other live-action films short as a collective genre.  I guess if they can use technology to make dogs appear to talk in commercials for flea and tick medicine, they can do the same in the updated version of this Disney classic film.

(The voice of) Clancy Brown carries over from "Supercon".

THE PLOT: The romantic tale of a sheltered uptown Cocker Spaniel dog and a streetwise downtown mutt.

AFTER: Look, I wish Disney Corp. the very best, I really do.  And I say this as a stockholder, not just a fan of many of their properties.  I would have visited Epcot or maybe even "Galaxy's Edge" this May if the pandemic hadn't made travel impossible - maybe next year.  But I don't really understand the need to strip-mine their own library for old properties that can be renovated for the next generation.  I guess they worked their way through all of Western literature, from Brothers Grimm to Victor Hugo to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and they reached the end and decided to start back at the beginning.  Can the "live-action" Snow White be far behind, or can we not use the derogatory term "dwarves" any more?

Yep, I'm going to focus on diversity issues today, because I don't see the need to use "Lady and the Tramp" to rewrite history, to depict the United States of the 1920's (or is it 1930's?) as racially diverse, especially in a Southern (??, again, not sure) town, when we all know IT WAS NOT THAT WAY!  It's great to want to depict diversity, and it's great to hire a racially diverse cast to do that, but you can't change our history. (In the same way that pulling down statues of slave-owners doesn't change what happened back then, even if it makes us feel better now.)  You can depict an alternate history in a movie, but that doesn't change the past.  But I guess it makes some people feel better to pretend that back then there were opportunities for, say, people of Asian descent to practice medicine, or for a mixed-race couple to get married and live in a home together without the rest of the community freaking out.  It was a different time, people were just not as accepting of racial diversity, and suggesting otherwise seems not only pointless, but overly, even wrongfully, nostalgic.  Nostalgia for a time that never really existed is not really nostalgia.

I think it would be great if people back then had been more accepting, only they weren't, and we have to deal with that fact, agree and admit that racism happened in the past, in order to help prevent it in the future.  If we allow our children to think that middle America was racially diverse back in the 1920's, what kind of message does that send?  By suggesting that racism was defeated back then, it's almost a sign that we can relax now, let our guard down because this is a problem that's already been solved, and that's just not where we are as a country.  We're still divided on topics like this, and we have been for decades, change doesn't come easily or quickly, and movies that suggest that the past was all sunshine and rainbows seem very misguided.

And it's not really race-blind casting if it feels like a production company went out of its way to be more diverse.  I agree that racial diversity is great, but it's got to come naturally - if it feels forced then it's quite obvious that somebody's trying to - not whitewash, but whatever the opposite of whitewash is - the past.  Color-wash?  I hate to connect the casting here to some kind of affirmative action, but damn it, that's what it feels like.  The P.C. police are apparently not going to rest until they remake every film from my childhood and make sure they're all racially diversified and gender-neutral, right?  What's going to happen in another 40 years, assuming that the world becomes more liberal and accepting overall, will Disney go back and re-make "Lady and the Tramp" again, with an entire transgender cast?  They'd have to remove "Lady" from the title, because maybe the dog was born female but identifies as a male, what then?

(I bring this up, of course, just as the filmed version of the original cast production of "Hamilton" is also hitting Disney Plus - and this is another example of what I'm talking about.  I understand casting the parts of Washington, Jefferson and others with actors of color, and in a way it makes a point simply because it stands out and seems shocking, but it's also stunt casting in a way.  And since it was intentional, that's not really "race-blind" casting, it's intentionally casting a minority to make up for some grievances of the past, but as stated above, it also sends a weird message to the kids, a suggestion that maybe things back in colonial times were different than they were.  I understand it, but I don't completely agree with it.  And part of me feels that if it's wrong to cast a white actor in a minority role, then the reverse should be wrong, too.  Disney/Marvel got flak for casting Tilda Swinton as "the Ancient One" in the Avengers movies, because that's been established as an Asian (and male) character.  If that's wrong, then so is casting that's overly racially diverse.  "Well, who's to say a black man can't play George Washington?"  I say that of course he CAN, but I'm still free to question the motives of that casting.  And if white comedians are getting in trouble for appearing in blackface, then we should also question the Wayans Brothers performing in white-face in that movie.)

Apparently, we can't even call Siamese cats "Siamese" any more, either.  Here I think things have really gone too far into the P.C. world.  That's the name of the breed, it's not derogatory in any way, we have Scottish terriers and French poodles and English bulldogs and nobody seems to care about them, and there are Pekingese dogs and Persian cats, so what's the big deal about "Siamese"?  In the original movie the two cats that came over with Aunt Sarah and wrecked the house sang a whole song about the fact that they were "Si-a-meese if you please" and OK, the tune was a little sing-songy and it had a little bit of an Oriental flair to it, but was that racist?  The Siamese cats have now been replaced by a different breed, Devon Rexes, and that whole song got replaced by a new one, "What a Shame" and I say, what a shame that Disney anticipated a backlash for keeping the old song intact.  There isn't even a country called Siam any more, so who would get offended?  Look, we changed the name of Siamese twins to "conjoined twins" (the most famous set of conjoined twins happened to be from Siam, that was an awful turn of events, I'll admit) but that doesn't mean that everything from the old Siam needs to be re-named.  Right now we're going through a phase in America where suddenly everything from the Old South has to be re-named, the music group "Lady Antebellum" is now called "Lady A", and even the Dixie Chicks are now just called "The Chicks".  Well, there you go, racism solved!  That oughta do it!  It's just a bit ridiculous.

Look, I don't think we should have confederate flags or statues of confederate heroes, either.  But while trying to erase the past might help us feel better in the short-term, it's simply not a long-term solution.  Change takes time, and we need to make sure we don't backslide - we need to keep the conversation going so that people in the future can learn from the past.  If we don't talk about the Holocaust, we risk it happening again, and the same goes for slavery, discrimination and racial injustice.  The South lost the Civil War, so there really shouldn't be people waving that flag and trying to keep those ideals alive.  But if we start mandating how people should think, or what language they can or can't use, or force movies to cast black actors in traditionally white roles, aren't we giving up some of the freedom ideals that should be woven into the fabric of our country?  We can create laws and fines that punish people for being prejudiced and bigoted, but true change has to come from within, and that takes a long time - in the meantime we still have freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and occasionally that means listening to some language and ideas that we don't personally agree with.

Beyond all that, I think it's a waste of F. Murray Abraham's talents to cast him as the Italian restaurant owner.  Was Stanley Tucci not available?  It could have been a fun "Big Night" reference.  This guy got a freakin' Oscar for playing Salieri in "Amadeus" and now he's got a 3-minute role feeding DOGS spaghetti and meatballs?  This is almost as bad as casting John Malkovich as a disgruntled TV writer on the convention circuit in "Supercon"!  (here's the real scandal - I just found out that the "F." in his name doesn't stand for anything, he was born Murray Abraham and added the "F." later himself, so it's not short for "Fred" or "Franklin", it's just "F.")

While we're on the topic of names, I never really understood the character names in this film - the synopsis and IMDB credits list the names of Lady's owners as "Jim Dear" and "Darling", which I always took to not be their real names, but just what Lady heard them CALL each other all the time.  So this is what Lady would THINK their names are, because that's what she's heard, plus she's a dog. So what ARE their real names?  If their last name is "Dear" than the woman's full name is "Darling Dear", and that's a little much, isn't it?  What is the name on their mailbox, on their mail?  I want to know...

But the main message of this film is about rescuing dogs from shelters, and that does go a long way with me, even though I'm a cat owner, never owned a dog (but most of them love me, anyway).  Thankfully most of the dogs seen in the pound here get rescued or adopted, despite the efforts of the villainous dogcatcher.  For this reason I'm going to try to let a lot of things slide here, and one of the few silver linings during this pandemic has been reports of more people working from home, spending time with their families and adopting more pets - rescuing over breeding.  That's great, and some shelters I think were even saying they were running out of dogs to adopt.  Let's try and keep that going, people.  Keep your kittehs and doggos safe and sheltered this July 4, don't let them near the fireworks and try to keep them calm and happy if a bunch of knuckleheads are shooting off firecrackers in your neighborhood.

Oh, and this is NOT my planned film for the July 4 theme, I'm behind by one day, but it's coming up next. I'll just count that as a second film on the same day.

Also starring Thomas Mann (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "Flatliners"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Morning Glory"), F. Murray Abraham (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Arturo Castro (last seen in "Snatched"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Curtis Lyons (last seen in "Game Night"), Kate Kneeland, Darryl W. Handy (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Denitra Isler (ditto), Robert Walker-Branchaud (last seen in "Father Figures"), Roger Payano, Charles Orr, Parvesh Cheena, Matt Mercurio (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker") and the voices of Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Justin Theroux (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "A Star Is Born" (2018)), Ashley Jensen (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Benedict Wong (ditto), Janelle Monae (last seen in "Moonlight"), Nate Wonder, Roman GianArthur, James Bentley, Jentel Hawkins, Ara Storm O'Keefe, Aemon Wolf O'Keefe.

RATING: 5 out of 10 riverboat musicians

Supercon

Year 12, Day 185 - 7/3/20 - Movie #3,591

BEFORE: July is usually convention time for a lot of people - I worked a booth at the San Diego Comic-Con for about 15 years straight, or maybe it was 12 and just felt like 15.  Anyway, it stopped being profitable at some point and I was getting more and more frustrated with it, so we called it a day in 2017.  And I finished my last SDCC very tired, very pissed off and with duct tape holding my pants together. (It's a long story, you can probably find it on this blog if you know where to look.)

There's not going to be a real San Diego Comic Con this year, because of Covid-19 concerns in California - it was cancelled a few months ago, around the time San Diego started housing homeless people in the convention center.  Plus, having THAT many people gather together, in a place with poor air circulation on the convention floor, plus people camping out in sleeping bags for Hall H programming, plus partying, plus hotel pools, plus shaking celebrities' hands...  Well, you get the idea.  A big convention has always been a giant petri dish for colds and diseases, STDs, UTIs, you name it.  I've been sick there myself enough times, and that was before the time of Corona.

BUT, all is not lost, there is a virtual version of the San Diego Con planned, July 22-26, which will feature much of the programming that WOULD have been in Hall H, but without all that annoying human contact and standing in line.  I'll admit that a virtual costume contest doesn't have the same appeal of a live one, but to make up for it, all the programming and virtual events are FREE, you just have to register.  (and hey, who's to say there won't be a bit of unplanned nudity in a virtual costume contest - they can't control that, if you think about it...)  There are usually people who get shut out of the SDCC every year, who don't realize you have to buy tickets via lottery months in advance, but with a virtual con, there are no limits, they could have MILLIONS of people attending online, and they keep their brand alive, and then maybe next year, but we'll see.

We're waiting to hear about the New York Comic Con in October - my boss registered for a table in Artists Alley, but they have neither confirmed nor cancelled to date.  Obviously the virus numbers are good for NYC right now, but nobody can say what things will be like in October - plus the Javits Convention Center was used as a Covid-19 field hospital, so there's that.  And if it goes forward, everyone will have to wear masks, but since it's a Comic-Con, many people are ALREADY wearing masks as part of their costumes, they'll just have to add a filter or a surgical mask underneath.

Mike Epps carries over again from "Dolemite Is My Name".

THE PLOT: A rag-tag group of former TV stars and comic book artists, who make their living working at conventions, decide to steal the loot from a crooked promoter and an overbearing former TV icon.

AFTER: OK, so this one's not set at the San Diego Comic-Con, or even the NY Comic-Con - BUT it is set at a (fictitious) convention that takes place on... the Fourth of July weekend!  How about THAT for an unintentional coincidence?  See, believe in the chain, and random acts of serendipity will happen.  However, I don't think there are any Comic-Cons that take place on major holidays, but I could be wrong.  The thing is, the people who work at the convention centers, like security guards and installers and cargo people, they're all union.  Working on July 4 is probably like triple overtime for them, and that would make the convention not so profitable.  So, nice coincidence and all that, but I still have to call a NITPICK POINT here, story-wise.

Sometimes I'll program a short film prior to a feature, or if I'm on Netflix and a movie's not that long, I may watch a comedy special post-movie, and in that case I'll try to pair up an appropriate comedy special with the film as a tie-in - so today I was on Amazon Prime for "Supercon" and I followed that with a Russell Peters special called "Deported".  I haven't seen much of Peters' comedy work, and I remain unimpressed - he's no Lewis Black or Jim Jefferies, that's for sure.  But he's Canadian and of Indian descent, so perhaps his comedy just doesn't speak to me.  His timing's off, and making a lot of jokes about protecting his butthole, mistaking an endoscopy for a colonoscopy, that's very un-PC now, it could be seen as anti-gay.  I guess they're pretty conservative up there in Canada, eh?

But let's get back to "Supercon".  Over the years I've had a couple good ideas for movies - and sometimes you just KNOW you've got a good idea if you've never seen a movie like the one you're thinking up.  Just think about how many movies I watch, and if I can think of something I've never seen before, that's an accomplishment, with all the competition that's out there.  A few years back we were visiting some of my wife's family friends upstate in the Kingston/Rhinebeck area, and we visited the Culinary Institute of America (we're big "Top Chef" and "Chopped" fans) and I realized the initials C.I.A. were shared with a certain intelligence agency.  "What if," I thought, "some foreign terrorists attacked the U..S., but didn't do enough research, and accidentally attacked this cooking school, thinking it was the OTHER C.I.A.?  Then there would have to be some would-be chefs battling the terrorists with their knives, and maybe some pots and pans - like, who wouldn't want to see a terrorist get flambéed by some culinary students?  But the best title I could come up with was "Fry Hard", so that really made it seem like a silly idea.

But the OTHER good idea I had for a movie came from my experiences working at San Diego Comic-Con, when on Sunday, the last day of the convention, I had to take cash from our till and walk across the very crowded convention floor to the show office, and put down a deposit on next year's booth, which could cost over $3,000 - and they wanted to get half of that in cash, a year in advance.  So that meant walking through a crowd carrying $1,500 in cash, always afraid that someone might pick my pocket, or I might drop the envelope with the cash.  Then I thought, if I'm paying the convention staff $1,500, and the guy in the line in front of me is doing the same, and the guy in front of HIM is doing the same, there's a lot of money in that show office.  What if somebody robbed it, or worse, what if they robbed everybody standing in line and we didn't even get credit for making the deposit before the robbery?  But that's when I started thinking that you could set a heist movie at a comic-con, and this was 7 or 8 years ago.

I got excited when I heard that somebody had a similar idea - unfortunately earlier this year I recorded "The Con Is On", thinking that was the movie about a Comic-Con heist, and it wasn't.  But that made me look up the name of the movie about a Comic-Con heist, and it's "Supercon", now available on Amazon Prime.  Such a rich opportunity for a heist film, there's all that nerd cash, and nobody expects a bunch of criminals at such a nerdy event.  Plus there are costumes everywhere, and a lot of them are similar, so there's a chance to pull a "switcheroo" where the cops unmask the thief, only it's not the right person, just someone with the same costume idea.  Chase scenes through a crowded convention center - disputes over whether an artist doesn't deliver on a character sketch he was paid to do, and one year in San Diego somebody got into a fight over saving seats in one of the programming rooms and stabbed a guy in the eye with a pen!

So there's a great, Oceans-11 style heist film that could be set at a comic book convention - only "Supercon" just isn't it.  This is four or five loser characters who all want to get back at a famous sci-fi TV star who's making thousands of dollars signing autographs, and the convention promoter who coincidentally fired all of THEM, banning them from the convention for fighting with this A-list arrogant actor.   So since none of them can earn any money from their booths, they decide to steal the money from the show office, but on the last day when every other guest has been paid EXCEPT for the A-list asshole actor.  Umm, this isn't really how conventions work either, so NITPICK POINT #2 - the convention promoter is there to TAKE money in from the people with booths, he wouldn't be giving it out.  It's like four-walling, the convention promoter would charge all of the famous people (or their representatives) for their booths, and then it's up to the artists/writers/actors to sell their wares and try to turn a profit - good luck with that.  But I can't imagine a scenario where the convention would take in all the money and pay the vendors a cut, that's just not how it's done.

It's a bit funny that these four people - a former child actor, a female comic artist - and honestly, I'm not even sure what the other two people did, that's how weak the story is here - have no idea how to be criminals, so they propose a number of different heist scenarios, all of which come from people who have watched WAY too many movies, and in all of them the woman is wearing something skimpy.  Somehow they think if you just send somebody through the air ducts of a building, they can get into any room and unlock it from the inside, for example - these are the lessons that Hollywood teaches us, right?  So their heist in the end bears little resemblance to their far-fetched plans, but that's OK - they stumble through the heist and one has a very unfortunate accident falling out of that air duct into the world's messiest toilet.  Messier than the one seen in "Trainspotting", even - but yeah, that sort of rings true for a comic-con - I've seen (and maybe caused) enough of those situations.

But the description of the theft that went down at the Atlanta convention, with the thieves dressed as stormtroopers and blending in with the crowd - THAT'S a better story than the one we're presented with here.  Why couldn't some of the exciting elements of that tale been worked into the main story here, why are they just thrown away via an anecdote?  Right there is proof that a good Comic-Con heist story is still out there, waiting to be written, and it doesn't just have to be a couple pudgy guys in silly generic superhero costumes stumbling their way through the maze of locked doors behind the scenes in a convention center, or smelling bad convention farts in a men's room.

One other brief, shining moment as the A-list star chases after his stolen money, and gets caught on camera going on a tirade and denouncing all of nerd culture, causing a shameful "TMZ"-style carerr-ruining moment.  And how they got John Malkovich to be in this stinker, I'll never know.  It couldn't be the script, so did he just have an available week and took this on a whim, or did someone have blackmail material? (Maybe there's some magic involved - if you say his name out loud three times, he appears to accept a role in your indie film.)  Except for his performance, nothing's really funny here, it's all just lackluster and flat, where a comic convention is supposed to be an exciting, entertaining place, not just a bunch of nerds waiting in line for autographs.  Well, OK, it is that, but it isn't JUST that.  It would be nice if a screenwriter understood the material a bit more, or at all.

Also starring Ryan Kwanten, Maggie Grace (last seen in "Faster"), Brooks Braselman, Russell Peters (last seen in "The Clapper"), Clancy Brown (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), John Malkovich (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Caroline Fourmy (last seen in "Pitch Perfect"), George Murdoch, Donald Watkins, Hunter Burke, Anthony Nguyen, CariDee English, Jeff Pope, Candi Brooks (last seen in "Get Hard"), Devyn A. Tyler (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Zak Knutson (last seen in "Tusk"), Matt Shurley, Josh Perry, Freddy Waff, Andy Sipes, Russell Tyrrell, René J.F. Piazza (last seen in "The Paperboy").

RATING: 3 out of 10 signed glossy photos

Dolemite Is My Name

Year 12, Day 184 - 7/2/20 - Movie #3,590

BEFORE: I've got nothing but anxiety right now, as we wait to see how our bathroom remodeling is going, and while it feels like great progress is being made overall, there's only so much progress on each day, and with a holiday weekend coming up, it just feels like it's going to take forever.  Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to hear if I'm welcome to go back to my second job at any point, so more anxiety there, and then on top of that there's still lingering anxiety over the potential second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So I haven't been sleeping very well, but I think the main reason for that is the construction noise in my own house that starts at 8 am, which is much earlier than I'm used to being awake - then I can't exactly nap during the day while construction is ongoing.  Thankfully the workers knock off for the day at 4 pm, but by then my afternoon coffee has kicked in, so I just lay in bed for half an hour today at 6 pm and couldn't even doze off.  I'd love to catch up on sleep this weekend, but to make the right film land on July 4, I'll need to double-up and watch two movies on Saturday.

Actually, I don't NEED to, all I'd need to do to shorten the list by one would be to drop or re-schedule "Dolemite Is My Name" - which presents a problem, because I WANT to see it, and I can't say that about every movie these days.  With Mike Epps (and Maggie Grace) appearing in both "Faster" and tomorrow's film, I could skip this one, only I don't want to.  So I'm going to proceed with it and double up on Saturday, kicking the problem down the road a couple of days.

Now, at the same time, I've worked out some preliminary scheduling for August - and I found several paths that can get me from the end of the music documentary chain (July 31 or so) to the release of "Wonder Woman '84" or August 14, assuming that movie theaters are open then and that film's release stays on schedule.  This relieves some of my anxiety, but I'll still need to find a path from that superhero movie to the start of the Halloween/horror chain on October 1 - and let's say I need to do that in 30 steps, leaving 10 slots to connect Halloween and Christmas.  I can't rest easy until I have a path to the end of the year.

The worst-case scenario, let's say, would be watching "Dolemite Is My Name" today, when I could have skipped it, and then finding out that it's impossible to get from my film on August 14 to my film on October 1, without going through "Dolemite Is My Name".  That's too horrible to think about, but right now it's all I can focus on.  That's stinking thinking, though, and I should just make the best plan I can for right now, live for today, and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

So Mike Epps carries over from "Faster".

THE PLOT: The story of real-life legend Rudy Ray Moore, a comedy and rap pioneer who proved naysayers wrong when his hilarious, obscene, kung-fu fighting alter ego, Dolemite, became a 1970's blaxploitation phenomenon.

AFTER: I'm perhaps a bit out of my comfort zone tonight, because I haven't watched many blaxplotation films, I'm a bit outside of their target market.  Sure, I could, and the original "Shaft", "Superfly" and "Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song" are all on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", but I always seem to have more important things to watch.  Does this make me racist?  I don't think so, I just feel like I'm in touch with what films on that list are going to appeal to me, and it's a matter of priorities.  Look, "Enter the Dragon" is on that list, and I'm just not a fan of kung fu movies, or Bruce Lee movies.  I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt.

But sure, I'll watch an Eddie Murphy comedy ABOUT the man who played Dolemite, that's like one degree removed from watching "Dolemite" and I can count on this one being funny, then I don't have to pick apart what's funny because it's so unfunny, or parse out what makes a bad good movie different from a plain bad movie - and if I get that one wrong, then I will sound racist.  As tonight's movie itself points out, the humor in "Dolemite" was aimed straight at the black audiences, who loved it partially because it was speaking directly to them.

But let me back up a bit for my fellow honkies - Rudy Ray Moore was a real comedian who found greater success after adopting a "pimp" character named Dolemite, which he based on the stories of older black men in Los Angeles, some who were homeless ("hoboes" or "bums", back in the day) yet still had dignity enough to brag about their accomplishments in the urban arena, to prove how macho they were, sexually or in fights with other men.  Moore listened to them, recorded some of them, and pumped up their brags even more for his routines, which moved him from the comedy clubs to putting out comedy records (which you couldn't buy in most stores back then because they had nekkid women on the album covers) and then into film stardom via the 1975 movie "Dolemite", famous for its low production values, and for being almost as profitable as "Deep Throat" was.

There's plenty of funny material outside the routines here - I particularly enjoyed seeing how the film was made, by a director who barely cared and a cast and crew that barely knew what they were doing.  This called to mind two other films for me, "The Disaster Artist" for its similar portrayal of a clueless independent filmmaker who was determined beyond belief to bring his vision to life, and also "Bowfinger", another film on the same topic which also had Eddie Murphy in two roles, as a famous actor who appeared in this low-budget film without consent, and also his naive identical cousin who got roped into being that actor's stand-in.

Rudy Ray Moore signs away the profits and royalties from his comedy albums in order to raise the money from his record company to make his Dolemite movie, because he believes that this is where his character belongs, on the big screen.  The appeal of being in a movie is partly a feeling of immortality, because such works live on long after we're gone.  Sometimes I'll watch a black and white movie on TCM and think about how everyone in that film is dead now, but I can still see them whenever I want and I know all of their names.  I've been in a couple movies myself (docs and animated) and I sometimes wonder how long people will know my name, if only from the credits on IMDB.  If I'd stayed working in retail, or became the manager of a movie theater, I couldn't even think along those lines - so to be working outside of movies, I'd feel like maybe a day would come when nobody would remember me, I'd just be a file in a county records office or something.

Rudy is portrayed as a man who will do whatever it takes to get that film made, from using film students as camera-men to offering to fix up an old hotel in order to use it as a shooting location - and I admire that.  Having encountered tasks before the pandemic at one studio that I preferred to not do, I feel terribly ashamed now.  I should have regarded getting up every weekday and being allowed to work on movies as a great gift, and now I feel like I squandered that gift.  To work on an animated feature for five years, to do everything from typing up the script to scanning drawings, from filing copyright forms to calculating payroll, from timing exposure sheets to posting the cast list on IMDB, I got somewhat complacent, and I didn't realize how good I had it.  If I can't work on the final year of that film's production, I'm going to feel like I dropped the ball somehow, like I blew it.  Not to mention that I've been friends with that director for nearly 25 years, so I would hate to think that I ruined that friendship at the same time.  And now I'm feeling anxiety again, so let's move on.

Rudy gets his film finished, after hitting up his record company for another round of funding, putting more of himself on the line if the movie doesn't turn out well.  And then he encounters "four-walling", which is a real process in which a movie theater will screen a film, but only if the production company buys ALL the tickets in advance, and then absorbs all the risk in the event that nobody shows up to see the movie.  BUT, if the crowd does show up, then the producers stand to make a nice little profit.  I've encountered this in a couple theaters in Manhattan, when we finished an animated feature the only way to have a NYC premiere was to buy out the whole theater - which does help keep independent cinemas alive, but it also puts the burden on the filmmakers to promote the film, and the tricky thing about promotion is that you just never know if you've done enough.  No matter how much promotion you do, on the night of the screening, you're going to be standing in the lobby, wondering if a line is going to form.  That rings true - though part of me wonders whether four-walling was a thing back in 1975, or if it's a more recent convention.

(EDIT: Wikipedia is telling me that four wall distribution was around in the late 1960's and the 1970's, but mainly in smaller markets, and almost never in New York or Los Angeles.  And an interesting implication, which I did not know, is that if a film is distributed ONLY via four wall distribution, for copyright purposes it may be considered an "unpublished work".  Apparently if the filmmakers are forced to buy up all the tickets, even if they sell or give away all the tickets, that's not the same as people buying tickets for a theater that may have empty seats.  Something to think about.)

This is also close to other aspects of indie film production that I've experienced - you put the best filmmaking team together that you can afford.  You call your friends for help, or you hire (semi-) professionals who might become your friends during the process.  You may disagree or argue with people during the production, but the bottom line is that everybody's got their eye on the prize, working toward that day you can premiere the film in the theater, or at a film festival, or show somebody a DVD of the film and say, "Look, right there, THAT'S ME!"  And in doing so, in a small way, for just a brief period of time, you might feel immortal.  And that's why we do what we do.

Also starring Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Vampire in Brooklyn"), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "The Predator"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Table 19"), Tituss Burgess (last seen in "Set It Up"), Da'Vine Joy Randolph (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Wesley Snipes (last seen in "The Expendables 3"), Aleksandar Filimonovic, Tip "T.I." Harris (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Chris Rock (last seen in "Top Five"), Ron Cephas Jones (last seen in "Venom"), Luenell (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Gerald Downey (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Joshua Weinstein, Allen Rueckert, Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Tommie Earl Jenkins, Snoop Dogg (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Little Women"), Baker Chase Powell, Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "State of Play"), Tasha Smith (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Jill Savel, Ivo Nandi (last seen in "Creed II"), Michael Peter Bolus, Kazy Tauginas, John Michael Herndon, Phil Abrams (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), with archive footage of Jack Lemmon (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Walter Matthau (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), and Rudy Ray Moore.

RATING: 7 out of 10 clubs on the "chitlin circuit"

Faster

Year 12, Day 183 - 7/1/20 - Movie #3,589

BEFORE: We're taking advantage of the pandemic by having our bathroom remodeled, so there goes our stimulus money, but since I'm still home two days a week and my wife has the opportunity to work from home, someone can be home on any given day to supervise the construction crew.  Our bathroom stuff is piled in boxes in other rooms, and I have to brush my teeth at the kitchen sink, but we've absolutely hated that upstairs bathroom since we moved in, and now we can design a new one. But that also means during the demolition phase that I simply can't sleep past 9 am, so for three days now I've been up at 8 (Monday I had to catch the early train back from Boston).  That means going to bed RIGHT after my movies, and thankfully they've been on the shorter side.

July is finally here, and we're waiting on word that it's safe to eat in restaurants again - while some other parts of the country are finding out their restaurants and bars have to close again.  So a bit of a weird start for National Hot Dog Month and also National Ice Cream Month.  Here's hoping we all get to celebrate soon.  Independence Day is coming up, and perhaps that's never felt so ironic - though I can think of a couple groups of people through history who probably felt the irony of that day in the past.

Beyond the 4th of July, we've got the first-ever virtual San Diego Comic-Con coming up, and then later in the month I'm going to kick off my Summer Classic Rock Concert series, since right now there are no rock concerts, either.  And my linking will focus on Mike Epps, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sharon Stone, among others, before we get into the musical stuff.

For today, Tom Berenger carries over from "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball".

THE PLOT: An ex-con performs a series of apparently unrelated killings.  He gets tracked by a veteran cop with secrets of his own and an egocentric hit man.

AFTER: This would have fit in nicely with my Dwayne Johnson chain last year - but then I would have been TWO films over for the year and not one, and I might not have gotten to a Christmas film. Carla Gugino's also in this, and she was also in two of the films with "The Rock" I watched last year. So in a way this one's a follow-up of sorts to "San Andreas" and "Race to Witch Mountain" from last September...only I wasn't really aware of it then, I just got this to fill up a DVD with "Fighting with My Family", and this was the quickest option airing on cable at that moment.

But damn if it doesn't fit right in here thematically, because this week's been all about hit-men/assassins, as seen in the "Smokin' Aces" films and, to a lesser extent, "The Last Thing He Wanted" and "State of Play".  This film has three main characters, the "Driver", "Killer" and "Cop" and it's a slow build to a collision course between the three men.  The film can't really be bothered to name anyone, since nearly every character in the credits is defined by their role - other notable characters include "Warden" (Tom Berenger, only in the film for the first two minutes or so, but that counts), but let's not forget "The Evangelist", "Mother", "Doctor", and "Old Guy".  But then there's also "Marina" and "Baphomet", so what happened, did the writer in charge of naming characters suddenly get sick, or did he go on vacation?  Did the production company fire him before he finished thinking of names, and did the Writer's Guild rules prevent anyone non-union from doing such a complex task?

I guess it's not important, we judge these stereotypical characters by their actions, not their names - plus a lot of the best names were perhaps already taken, like "John Wick" or "Jack Reacher".  Right?  Only the lack of names sort of highlights how generic and cookie-cutter some of these modern-action films really are - like the old westerns, which lead you to believe that the Wild West was neatly divided into "heroes" and "villains", which is a load of bull.  Reality is usually a lot more complicated than that.  Speaking of which, it feels like "Faster" is very complex in that sense, much like "The Next Three Days", which played that guilty/innocent card very late in the game, so I really wasn't sure if I was supposed to be rooting for the police or the (potential) murderer's husband.  Or maybe "Baby Driver" is another good example of modern complex crime film - Baby is an anti-hero of sorts, he drives getaway cars for bank robbers, which is a bad thing, but he makes it look so good that we want to root for him.  But should we?

Here we see "Driver" get released from prison and go for a nice leisurely marathon run across the desert to find his sportscar.  Umm, I assume it's his, because he knew just where to find it, but the film is admittedly very lean on the details. Anyway, it's his after he finds it, and he knows just what to do with it, track down the members of the rival crew that took down HIS crew, back in the day.  There's also the "Killer" who's been hired to kill Driver, only again, I didn't know that at first, so I thought that maybe they just bumped into each other randomly - did I miss something, or was there a detail about Killer being given this job that wasn't shown?  And the third influential character is "Cop", who's trying to put the pieces together of why Driver's going around town, seemingly killing random people who aren't connected in any way - or are they?

There are flashbacks, sure, that eventually clue us in on some of the details of that original heist, how it went down pretty well, and then Driver's peculiar ability to drive backwards or directly into traffic somehow allowed the gang in the getaway car to elude the cops.  But even this was somewhat confusing - like cops understand that sometimes cars go in reverse, they don't see a car moving backwards and make the mistake of thinking that the car is going forwards just because it's pointed that way.  If this trick worked, then you could get into any rock concert for free just by walking in backwards through the exit.  (Do not attempt.)

But what happened after the getaway was that a rival crew tracked down Driver's crew, which included Driver's brother (conveniently identified in the credits as "Driver's Brother", because if they said "Gary", I guess someone felt you'd have no idea who that was) or technically it's his half-brother, because they had the same mother but different fathers.  (That's so weird, but that's been a common theme this week too, with the Tremor (half-)Brothers.)  And the only reason that everybody knows this happened is that one of the rival crew members videotaped the whole thing, because he happens to make snuff films.  Umm, what a weird, random convenient coincidence!  This way the female police detective Cicero (one of the few characters here that has a name, maybe because "Lady Cop" was too obvious?) can play catch-up with what everybody else already seems to know.

I think this technique, however, of not supplying the audience with much exposition, as trendy as it is, seems a bit short-sighted.  As a result, the first time you watch this film you'll know almost nothing, and then the next time (if there is a next time), you may feel you know TOO MUCH.  But a film can only become a cult classic if fans are willing to watch it again and again - I think "Baby Driver" has that potential, which means maybe it found the right balance between mystery and exposition.  One thing I missed was the identity of who originally betrayed the Driver's crew - at one point he thought it was his non-father, but the trip to see his mother (named "Mother") confirmed that it wasn't.  So I missed the part where they said who it WAS, but I caught up with that fact via the synopsis on Wikipedia.

There are so many oft-used tropes in this one - the Cop is just 10 days from retirement, the Killer accepts only one dollar as payment for a hit - that's it's a bit hard to know if there's anything original here, or if it should be regarded as just a pastiche of commonly-used ideas from other action movies.  If you put enough of those elements commonly seen in any film genre (Western, sci-fi, rom-com) together, can you create something new, or is the result merely an echo of the films that have gone before it?  I'm not sure I know the answer to that - but it's worth discussing.

Certainly at just a few minutes over an hour-and-a-half, this film won't waste a lot of your time if you want to try and answer that question yourself.  Since I had to get up early today for home remodeling (there's just no sleeping through someone tearing down your bathroom) I appreciated the short running time, which enabled me to fall asleep much earlier than usual.

Also starring Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "Lemmy"), Carla Gugino (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Maggie Grace (last seen in "Taken 3"), Moon Bloodgood (last seen in "The Sessions"), Courtney Gains (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), John Cirigliano, Lester Speight, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (last seen in "Trumbo"), Mike Epps (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Xander Berkeley (last seen in "The Grifters"), Matt Gerald (last seen in "Rampage"), Annie Corley (last seen in "Monster"), Jennifer Carpenter, Michael Irby (last seen in "Flightplan"), Geraldine Kearns (last seen in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), with cameos from Jack Wallace (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Sally Stevens.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Gospel Choir members

Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball

Year 12, Day 182 - 6/30/20 - Movie #3,588

BEFORE: It's the last movie for June, so let's check the stats.  Once again, I added one extra movie during the month, as I did all year - so six months in, I'm six films ahead of the day count.  That's fine, because I've hit all my benchmarks and holidays, but I'm just worried about running out of slots before I run out of year.  I won't know for sure if squeezing in the extra films is to my benefit until I make that connective chain between July 31 and October 1.  I should probably get on that soon, or at least try making some attempts - but I've been waiting to find out for sure if and when movie theaters are going to open in NYC, that's kind of important.

In June there were:
12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Girl in the Spider's Web, Father Figures, Wonder, Drillbit Taylor, Shorts, Motherless Brooklyn, Lord of War, The Family Man, State of Play, The Company Men, Smokin' Aces, Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball
5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The 15:17 to Paris, River's Edge, House of D, Fathers' Day, The Next Three Days
5 watched on Netflix: The Other Side of the Wind, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, Between Two Ferns: The Movie, The Trust, The Last Thing He Wanted
6 watched on iTunes: Knives Out, Selma, Straight Outta Compton, Love Simon, World's Greatest Dad, Proof of Life
2 watched on Amazon Prime: Are You Here, Fathers & Daughters
1 watched on Disney+: Onward
31 TOTAL

Cable's back in a big way, after Netflix ruled May.  Over half my films came from cable - also no Academy screeners this month, because the lockdown still prevented my second office from opening, and that's where they are.  But the screeners' loss is a gain for Netflix and iTunes, though Netflix is still down from last month, and iTunes is up.  Those are the films that helped me connect the cable movies, though, so they're still invaluable.  The Netflix queue still has about 90 films in it, which is better than 100 but there's still a long way to go before it's cleared.

Christopher Michael Holley carries over from "Smokin' Aces", which appears to be the most significant carry-over plotwise, but so do two other actors.

THE PLOT: Insane assassins gather in or near a bar, waiting to kill an insignificant FBI pencil pusher, kept in a safe house surrounded by FBI agents, at 3 a.m. to collect $3M.

AFTER: Ah, I get it, this was a PREQUEL to "Smokin' Aces", only it came out 4 years after, so it's kind of both a prequel and a sequel.  Right?  I mean, they couldn't use most of the characters from "Smokin' Aces" again (for obvious reasons), or maybe they couldn't afford those stars again, or maybe the scheduling just didn't work out for some of them.  Now, the bigger question I have concerns how all that affected the story, because some characters appear in both films, and some only in one or the other.  If, say, one particular actor was game to appear in the sequel, does that mean he or she was automatically in?  And if they said "No, thanks" or had a conflict, does that mean they were out?  Was the availability driving the story, or the other way around?

That assassin that pulls the old "false face" latex mask trick, he's back - I mean, you've just gotta have him, I think.  And that minor character I mentioned before who carries over gets a meaty back story, the only problem is that knowing his deal now changes NOTHING about his appearance in the first film (which is, umm, really the second now).  They don't even really do much with him here, but if you think about it, he can't really get too involved with the action because we all know he's got to survive this encounter and appear in the other film - where he had almost zero impact, but the timeline must be preserved.

The fact that the Nazi/redneck/alt-right Tremor Brothers are back is somewhat more problematic, since only one actor from the first film appears here - so they created a new (bigger, dumber) Tremor brother, and also a Tremor sister.  Hey, that's OK, go feminism (umm, I think?) and women can be Nazi rednecks, too (wait, do we really want that?) and let's throw in the Tremor father for good measure.  So three Tremors in one film, four Tremors in the other, and only one character crosses over.  Hmm, I thought they said in the first film that the three Tremor brothers had different fathers, but then would they all have the same last name?  I must have misheard it, because that's not how last names work, unless they all took the mother's last name, or the "Brother" title is something of an honorific.  If they had the same father but different mothers, wouldn't that make more sense?  Maybe I misheard it, or some of them changed their last names?  You know what, it doesn't really matter because I've already spent more time thinking about it than the screenwriters did.

(Ah, I get it, perhaps it's a joke.  Maybe this is one of the only Tremor brothers who knew who his father was, because he's seen hanging out with him.  And perhaps if all the other Tremor brothers had the same mother, and the last name Tremor, maybe Jeeves' mother and father share the same last name, and are related.  A little brother-sister action, or perhaps cousins?  That would fit with the stereotypes about southern rednecks.)

Oh, and there's a different director on this film, too.  Mr. Carnahan couldn't hang in there for a second film, or maybe HE had a scheduling conflict, I'll have to investigate.  But you can feel sort of a shift here, because the main focus is put on the FBI agents, instead of the vast array of colorful, quirky assassin characters.  It's funny, I was complaining about that emphasis yesterday, but now that the Feds get higher billing, it seems like a shame, because most of the agents are so damn boring, always worried about procedure and securing the scene, doing surveillance for intel and.....sorry, I fell asleep for just a few seconds there.  Can I change my answer about which characters should be the stars of this franchise?

For good measure, and to replace the assassins who couldn't or wouldn't be in the prequel, they added a hot Latino assassin who prefers to drug her prey with a toxin she wears on her lips, and one nicknamed "The Surgeon" who likes to play with his catch, test out a little bit of brain torture before he finishes them off.  That's, well, it's approaching interesting at least - I remember some Marvel comics with the Punisher where he'd pull out a criminal's intestines and spread them around a bit to make him confess, or tell him what he needed to know.  So there's something of a comic book feel to the "Smokin' Aces" franchise, I'll confess.  But it's unfortunate that no one in this film is trying to "smoke" the character nicknamed "Aces", so the title no longer applies.

The assassins respond to a hit put on one of those FBI actuary types, somebody who sits at a desk and reviews files and crime scene reports and tries to figger stuff out, so the big question is, "Who would put a contract out on this guy?" and the bigger question is "Why does the contract stipulate that he has to be killed on April 19 at exactly 3 am?  Without giving anything away, I'll brag that I figured it out very early, using the same logic that was seen in the first film (that's now really the second).  I just imagined what the most ridiculous possible twist could be, and that turned out to be correct.  Does it make sense?  Of course not, but that's what I've come to expect from this franchise over just two days' time.  This is why I haven't watched any of the "Fast & Furious" movies, because I'm betting the reveals are just as ridiculous, and I don't want to learn to anticipate them, because that would justify them.  Maybe sometime in the future, but not this year.  Or next year.

It's not really a NITPICK POINT, but it's curious that when the FBI learns that one of their agents is in jeopardy, they put him in a safe house (which is also a jazz club/restaurant?  Weird...) and yet all the assassins still know exactly where to find him on the appointed date & time.  Hmmmm....  Now, of course, if the FBI can wiretap the criminals, maybe the criminals can spy on the FBI.  Or maybe there's a leak, or maybe they knocked on the door of every jazz club in town until they found one that wouldn't let assassins in.

Bottom line is, while the first film felt a bit like there was too much action to keep track of, this one feels like ten minutes of story stretched out to an 86-minute movie.  All the conversations between the agents, and all the prep work they do just seems like filler material.  They could have added two or three more assassins here and decreased the time spent on government agent chatter.  At this rate, the last decent action movie I've seen was "The Next Three Days" - so I'm going to give the genre just one more chance and then I'm moving on.  For now.

Also starring Tom Berenger (last seen in "The Big Chill"), Clayne Crawford (last seen in "The Great Raid"), David Richmond-Peck (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Jason Schombing (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Jared Keeso (last seen in "Godzilla"), Hrothgar Mathews (last seen in "The Core"), Keegan Connor Tracy (last seen in "White Noise"), Sonja Bennett (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Martha Higareda, Vinnie Jones (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Autumn Reeser (last seen in "Sully"), Maury Sterling (also carrying over from "Smokin' Aces"), Tommy Flanagan (ditto), Michael Parks (last seen in "Tusk"), C. Ernst Harth (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat").

RATING: 3 out of 10 Mexican standoffs

Smokin' Aces

Year 12, Day 181 - 6/29/20 - Movie #3,587

BEFORE: OK, I helped my parents get take-out twice yesterday, we had omelettes for Sunday Brunch, and I ordered from their favorite Italian place, and my father drove me over to get the food during a tremendous thunderstorm - because nothing helps you feel like a teenager again more than having your father drive you places.  And on the way back there were floods and fires and downed trees and power lines, because this storm was just relentless, I don't think there had been a storm like that in that area for several years.  But mission accomplished, Father's Day celebrated a week late, and so it's time for me to buy my train ticket home so I can make it to work on Monday morning - er, afternoon.

I've reached the end of this little Ben Affleck mini-chain (after postponing "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot") as he carries over again from "The Company Men", soeven though you can probably guess quite easily what movie I'll be watching tomorrow, Ben Affleck is NOT in it.  And I'm very close to the end of the month, too, so sequels and stats tomorrow.  I've got just enough time to watch this one in the early morning hours of Monday before getting five hours of sleep and waking up to catch the 9:15 Acela train back to New York.

THE PLOT: When a Las Vegas performer-turned-snitch named Buddy Israel decides to turn state's evidence against the mob, it seems that a whole lot of people would like to make sure he's no longer breathing.

AFTER: We're back in Vegas tonight, home of recently watched movies like "The Trust" and, umm, no wait, "Father's Day" was set in Reno.  Though I did re-watch "Casino" a couple weeks ago, over the course of two or three nights, I didn't mention it here because I'd seen the film before.  But I did spot a number of places that we visited on our vacation last October, like Oscar's Steakhouse at the Plaza Hotel (the scene where Sam and Ginger dine out and argue over her spending habits), the parking lot at Main Street Station (where Sam's car explodes) and the Mob Museum (which used to be a federal courthouse, appearing late in the film).  I kept my eyes open during "Smokin' Aces", but it seemed to be filmed partly at the Linx, which was one hotel/casino that we didn't go to.  I think the action moved to Lake Tahoe at one point, so that could be one reason why I didn't recognize much.

I know this movie has something like a cult following, which is what interested me in taping it off cable in the first place.  A few months ago one channel was running both this film and its sequel, thankfully on demand so I could dub them to DVD, which helps keep my DVR from filling up.  But I kind of don't get the appeal here, it's just way too quirky to be taken seriously, even for an action movie.  There's a bunch of assassins, I get that, and they're all after the same target, I'm still with you, but they're all just so WEIRD in different ways that it made the entire film completely beyond the pale.  One assassin, for example, uses those "false faces" that we've seen in the "Mission: Impossible" films, so his way of getting close to the target would be to kill or kidnap someone close to the mark, and then make one of those gel mold type things so he could pass AS that person.  We all know, though, that the technology to do this just isn't THERE, never was, and at best the guy would just end up looking like somebody wearing a terrible Halloween mask.  The movie, however, then switches actors, replacing the assassin actor with the one who played the kidnapped guy, as if the mask is SO GOOD that he essentially becomes the other guy, which is just a load of B.S.  Maybe this fools the rubes, but not somebody who understands movie make-up tricks.

Then there are the three Tremor Brothers, who act like inbred hicks but they also appear to be easily distracted (or dumb) or perhaps would rather just cause mayhem than focus on their targets, so if they have a chance to use a chainsaw instead of a sniper rifle, and destroy a hotel room in the process, then that's what they're going to do.  Wait, I thought this was a movie about PROFESSIONAL assassins, and they don't seem to act at all professional to me.  Were they just eye candy or another distraction to keep from getting to the end of the movie too soon?  Discuss.

The target here is Buddy "Aces" Israel, a former Vegas magician proficient at card tricks, mostly using Aces (get it?) who wants to testify against the mob to take it down, so naturally this puts a price on his head, which every hitman in town wants to collect.  That seems like a pretty good, straightforward idea, but then it gets so darn complicated, much more than it needed to.  There's an older mobster who apparently went through many surgeries over the course of several decades just to change his appearance, and how he's connected to the target and WHY he wants to kill him is to be revealed later.  I'd concede that this point is rather important, but the WHY of it all involves an unbelievable back-story and so much twisted logic that I could barely make sense of it all.  OK, yeah maybe in retrospect it explains things just a tiny bit, but COME ON!  We already had one clear motivation why the mob wanted him killed, that's really all the story needed, piling on another reason that dovetails with the first, but makes very little sense, is just gratuitous.

So I get that each assassin has a different method for getting close to the target - the "false face" assassin I mentioned earlier has his method.  The female hit-men (hit-women?) take a dual approach, one dresses like a hooker to get close to the target, while the other is in the next casino over with a sniper rifle and scope.  Another assassin, Pasquale Acosta, dresses like a casino employee to get past security, and then those Tremor Brothers show up and start tearing things apart in the most unsubtle fashion, and basically everything goes to hell.  Then there are the FBI agents and three ex-cop bail bondsman/bounty hunters thrown into the mix, and before you know it everyone's mixing it up and shooting at each other and I couldn't tell which end was up, or who, if anybody, I should be rooting for here.

Then for some reason, in the middle of it all, the FBI suddenly withdraws their offer of witness protection - but is this something that would be likely to happen?  And then the FBI Deputy Director who changes the plan doesn't inform his own agents in the field of this little fact?  That seems a bit unlikely, a twist just designed to create a bit more drama - but either this guy is a valuable witness or not, and if he is, than why drop the offer, but if he isn't, why start the whole operation to rescue him and put him in witness protection in the first place?

Then there are a few hundred little threads that never really go anywhere - like why is it so important to mention that one assassin chewed off his own fingertips so he couldn't be identified by finger prints?  This never becomes important, not once.  So, why mention it?  Anyway I remember from watching "CSI" that fingerprints aren't the only method of identifying someone, it's just the most convenient.  A criminal could be ID'd by a footprint or a noseprint, even an ear print.  So this fact about the assassin matters very little.

So I don't know, there are a lot of interestingly-shaped pieces here, but I'm not sure they fit together properly to form a larger coherent thing.  Compared to a similarly-themed film like, say, "The Hitman's Bodyguard", which was just as violent, just as comic, but had a stronger narrative, and something closer to a point.  What was up with the kid with the numchucks?  The guy in the bunny costume?  And who the heck was Laverne?

Sometimes modern action pictures forget that there only needs to be a very simple objective, and when things are cloudy like they were here (or in, say, "The Girl in the Spider's Web") I find myself afterwards wondering what the point of this little exercise was - or if there even was one to being with.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "The Last Laugh"(2019)), Chris Pine (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Common (last seen in "Selma"), Jeremy Piven (last seen in "The Family Man"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Book Club"), Tommy Flanagan (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Joseph Ruskin (last seen in "Robin and the 7 Hoods"), Alicia Keys (last seen in "Clive Davis; The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Taraji P. Henson (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Nestor Carbonell (last seen in "The Dark Knight Rises"), Kevin Durand (last seen in "The Captive"), Maury Sterling (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "State of Play"), Vladimir Kulich, Peter Berg (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Martin Henderson (last seen in "Flyboys"), Joel Edgerton (last seen in "The King"), Christopher Michael Holley (last seen in "21"), Matthew Fox (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Alex Rocco (last seen in "Stick"), Mike Falkow, Davenia McFadden, Curtis Armstrong (last heard in "Planes: Fire & Rescue"), George Fisher, David Proval (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Patrick St. Esprit (last seen in "War Dogs"), Zach Cumer, Marianne Muellerleile, Brian Bloom (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), with cameos from Wayne Newton, Joe Carnahan.

RATING: 5 out of 10 stuck elevators

The Company Men

Year 12, Day 180 - 6/28/20 - Movie #3,586

BEFORE: Ben Affleck carries over from "The Last Thing He Wanted" to make three Affleck films in a row, with the fourth and final tomorrow.  Remember, I'm skipping "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" and I'll try to reschedule it in August or September.

THE PLOT: A year in the life of three men trying to survive a round of corporate downsizing at a major company - and how that affects them, their families and their communities.

AFTER: OK, my first reaction is "Who gives a crap about these white men who lost their jobs?" but perhaps that's a little bit short-sighted.  This film came out during the last real recession (I'm not counting the problems caused by that bank bailout thing) so maybe it has some pertinent life lessons in it if we're headed into another recession now, caused by the pandemic closures.

The "company" in question here is GTX, a giant shipbuilding conglomerate that apparently builds ships for the cruise lines and, umm, other clients too, I guess.  Times are tough and orders are down across the board, so layoffs are inevitable - because otherwise the top executives would have to take a pay cut, and for some reason that's just not going to happen.  Also I think the company here was trying to make itself look "leaner" so it would be in a better position for a corporate take-over to happen, so that meant salaries had to be cut.  (Or was it to discourage a take-over?  This point seems to be a little unclear.)

So the film follows three different men who get laid off - top sales associate Bobby Walker, middle-management executive Phil Woodward, and Chief Financial Officer Gene McClary.  Each man simply thought that he was invaluable to the company, and they were all wrong.  I mean, on some level, those are the breaks, right?  But on the other hand, it certainly seems weird that the person with the safest job is the one in charge of laying off all of the others.  And the CFO was a co-founder of the company, would it be that easy to lay off someone at that level, who was the second employee ever?  Wouldn't a CFO have some kind of job security, or a contract that stated he couldn't be laid off within a certain period of time?  How could the company even continue without a CFO?  (Umm, also the CFO appears to be having an affair with the HR manager, so I guess even that doesn't buy you much extra time once the pink slips start to get handed out.)

The three men also have very different approaches to dealing with their new unemployed status - Bobby mails out a ton of resumes and starts going on interviews, but since he's from Boston, he's a bit of a hothead and also stubborn, so the job interviews he does get don't go well.  He demands more money than the interviewers are willing to give (Umm, not a good strategy) and he also refuses to give up golfing or his Porsche.  He argues that the Porsche helps him look like he deserves a six-figure salary, and that's key in getting one - he may have a point, however if he had downgraded to a cheaper car sooner, maybe his family wouldn't have had to sell the house.  He ends up taking a job with his wife's brother's construction company, carrying plywood and hanging drywall and such.  I guess he had to be broken down and humbled before he deserved to make any more money?

Senior Manager Phil seems to fare a little better at first, he gets a window office at the job center, but having lunch with his contacts only leads him to jobs that he's over-qualified for, or require a lot of travel, and he's considered to old to take them.  (Umm, that's age discrimination, and Phil could sue his friends for that and maybe get a nice settlement.)  And former CFO Gene has the most opportunity, even though he no longer has a job, he still has a lot of company stock, and the sale of GTX gives him the chance, through selling his stock, to starting his own shipbuilding company, which has the added benefit of bringing business back to Boston's failing waterfront and also allows him to hire a bunch of ex-GTX employees.  Well, it's not a happy ending for everybody, but it's at least a good start.

This film provides a great opportunity to hear a lot of those words that sound great when spoken by someone with a Boston accent - like "lumber" (lum-bah), and "shipyard" (ship-yahhd).  Kevin Costner, however, tried a little too hard (flashing back perhaps to the times he played "JFK") and his accent wasn't believable - but Affleck's was spot-on, as I would expect it to be.

Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "Little Women"), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Rosemarie DeWitt (last seen in "Promised Land"), Maria Bello (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "The Proposal"), Eamonn Walker (last seen in "Lord of War"), Nancy Villone (last seen in "Stronger"), Tom Kemp (also last seen in "Little Women"), Maryann Plunkett (ditto), Lewis D. Wheeler (ditto), Anthony Estrella (ditto), Dana Eskelson (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Patricia Kalember (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Cady Huffman, Anthony O'Leary, Angela Rezza, Kent Shocknek, Tonye Patano (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Kathy Harum (last seen in "Patriots Day"), James Colby (ditto), Lance Greene, Celeste Oliva (last seen in "Bleed for This"), Chris Everett, David Catanzaro, Sasha Spielberg (last seen in "The Post"), John Doman (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Annette Miller, David De Beck (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), William Hill (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days'), Carolyn Pickman, Jeff Barry, David Wilson Barnes (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack")

RATING: 4 out of 10 golf clubs