The Circle

Year 12, Day 263 - 9/19/20 - Movie #3,657

BEFORE: This one's simple, Tom Hanks carries over from "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" - but still, it was a long road getting here.  I've been semi-curious about this one since it was released in 2017, and I never saw it listed on any of the premium cable channels.  Perhaps it was On Demand, but naturally I like to avoid paying for those movies if I don't have to, I'll only do that if a film I like and I've seen but don't have a copy of, and would help fill up a DVD with another similar film, makes a return appearance there, because that sort of feels like my last chance to grab it, and maybe that's worth $2.99 or $3.99.  But this one was MIA for a long time, not on Netflix or Hulu or anything - umm, unless maybe I misssed it.  Finally I spotted it on Amazon Prime a few months ago and made a note of that, and of course it then takes me a few more months to find a slot for it.  But since it's helping me out of a linking jam, then all is sort of forgiven.

THE PLOT: A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company called The Circle, only to uncover an agenda that will affect the lives of all humanity.

AFTER: I've been binge-watching "The Vow" on HBO, which is all about that NXIVM cult that sprung up near Albany a few years back, and finally made the news in 2017 when it was revealed that some Hollywood actresses had been recruiting for the organization's inner circle, which involved getting branded with the leader's initials and swearing a vow of sexual obedience or something (I'm still fuzzy on some details, I'm halfway through and they're parceling out the information like little food pellets).  But what's evident is how their leader, Keith Raniere, was a captivating personality who seemed to be extremely smart in talking about science and human behaviors, but also used the elements of religion, multi-level marketing and also torture tactics to keep everyone around him both mentally and physically dependent.  It's like if you mixed scientology with TED talks and threw in some Pokemon collecting - namely those colored scarves that marked the rise of members through the organization.  Perhaps that more closely resembles the colored belts you get while studying karate, but who wouldn't want to rise more quickly through the ranks to get those neat scarves, like the green one with the stripes?

And paying for all those "courses", only to be told when you complete ten courses that the threshold to reach the next level is now fifteen courses, so get out there in the world and earn some more money so you can complete five more and move up a level.  But if you recruit ten more members, maybe we'll give you a discount on those next five courses.  Become a mentor or a prefect, and then you'll really be making some progress, plus you'll get the next scarf color AND have five "slaves" giving you their collateral.  Get up at 5 am, have a low-calorie breakfast, teach a class, take a class, singing rehearsal, skip lunch, recruiting time, more classes, more rehearsals, more recruiting, and then you better not miss the 11 pm volleyball game if you want to hear what our esteemed leader has to say today.  Get to bed by 1 am and repeat.

And I see a bit of that pattern reflected here in "The Circle", a film in which the lead character takes a new job at a technology company and makes jokes about "drinking the Kool-Aid" with the cooler members of the staff.  Most of her co-workers, however, are hooked on the Kool-Aid without being aware of it, because the Google-like campus of The Circle has everything they need, from the smoothie bar to the spa to the ping-pong tables and even weekend activities for those who live on campus - why on Earth would anybody need or want to leave work?  More to the point, is anybody around here getting any work done?  It almost doesn't matter, because soon everybody will be working for the Circle, or have a Circle account, or be a Circler in some way.  So is this supposed to be Google, or Facebook, or Amazon?  I suppose yes, yes, and yes, but also maybe no?

The main imagineer hosts "Dream Fridays", where attendance in the giant conference hall isn't exactly mandatory, but come on, it probably totally is.  Here the company announces its latest plans for world domination - sorry, its latest products, and how they're going to help take over the world - sorry again, how they're going to help make life better for everybody.  Tom Hanks here plays the guy who's part Steve Jobs, part Jeff Bezos and maybe part Elon Musk.  (StevElon JoBezosk?).  When we first see him, he's pitching "SeeChange", which is a series of tiny, camouflaged movie cameras that resemble glass marbles, which can be stuck to any surface in, say, a remote European country in danger of being invaded by Soviets or taken over by an oppressive regime, but now the world has 24/7 remote access to that country, so the world is watching, and therefore the news of any international crimes like this can be reported on immediately from across the globe.  What could possibly be wrong with this?  Well, a few things - like who's watching?  And on whose authority?  What makes that entity the world's police?

The theory is that once everything is visible, nothing can be hidden, therefore no crime - but does that logic really pan out?  If somebody can create this new camera tech, somebody else can invent counter-tech, or a way around it, like a drone that would float around and find the cameras, then disable them.  But don't listen to me, you just go ahead with your little presentation.  Plus, don't we already have this sort of technology, now that everybody has a camera on their damn phone?  How's that working out for us?  If everybody has the ability to record crime, between phones and police body-cams, then there shouldn't be any more inappropriate police shootings, right?  Yeah, so I don't think this is going to work out.  As a Guppy (that's a new employee at The Circle), Mae circulates at one of their parties and talks to people who are similarly trying to solve problems like child abduction by having tracking chips implanted into infants' bones.  Sure, because that's worked so well with putting microchips into pets - they still run away and get hit by cars, you know.  Plus it's only going to lead to kidnappers hurting the kids in order to get the chips out, like cutting off their limbs.  Jeez, it's like nobody at this company thinks a situation through via the worst-case scenario or something.

But as she works her way up from customer service rep (?) to essentially being the face of the company, Mae does come up with some ideas that are relevant to this year's current events.  In a brainstorming session regarding voting, it's noted that the largest segment of the voting-eligible U.S. population is the segment that doesn't vote.  We all know that if this group of people could be motivated, they could have an enormous impact on any election.  Since the vast majority of these non-voters have Circle accounts, it leads to a question - why not work with the state and federal governments to allow people to vote on-line, through their accounts?  It's a valid question, one might as well ask why we don't allow people to vote through Facebook or Twitter?  Right now, the answer is - because many of those accounts don't represent real people.  Remember the Russian TwitterBots? Fake Facebook posts?  All you need to start a Facebook account is a phony name, some photos and a valid e-mail address.  So that's just not going to work.  The internet is still like the Wild West - or perhaps more like Westworld, a place where people go to escape reality and be whoever they want to be, and opening the election up to online voting could allow more voter fraud than ever before.

Mae and The Circle executives double down on the idea, though - what if voting was made mandatory to maintain your social media account?  What if people could pay their parking tickets online?  (Umm, I think you already can...).  I filed for unemployment online in April, even though many people had problems getting through to the NYS Dept. of Labor web-site - I think I can now reveal a secret, many of those people were using browsers that were too advanced, which is why they kept encountering crashes on the antiquated New York State government site.  My wife noticed, way down at the bottom of the page, a recommendation for which browser to use, and it was an OLD one, which she just happened to have a copy of on her computer.  So there you go, we got through because we tend to not upgrade our software unless we absolutely have to, I knew that would pay off someday.  If you allow your computer to auto-upgrade your software, you're going to pay a price.

Time passes, and a California Senator comes forward, allowing The Circle to grant access to all of her e-mails and social media posts - but this plotline doesn't really go anywhere.  Mae gets in trouble for breaking into a kayak rental company in the middle of the night and this somehow leads her to living a "Truman Show" kind of existence, wearing a body-cam and allowing millions of followers to track her daily activities.  Yeah, there are quite a few things wrong with this, like we all still need our privacy - it's not like there are freaks out there on the internet who just want to watch her during intimate moments, like trying on clothes or bathroom breaks, right?  Oh, wait.  Then Mae assists with the launch of the company's new features, which use crowd-sourcing techniques to track down wanted felons - nope, no danger there, not at all.  Regular people catching killers on camera, what could possibly go wrong?

Maybe it's just the long anticipation that resulted from not having access to this film for three years after its release - but I don't think it lives up to that hype, or any hype.  There are a few half-formed ideas here that never really come together into a coherent story.  The Circle and its products are good, until they aren't - that's not much of a plotline.  And again, whose arc is this meant to represent?  Steve Jobs was alternately a genius and the devil during his career, now I think in retrospect we've pretty much settled on genius. (Umm, right?). Jeff Bezos was hailed as a hero for a long while, when Amazon was getting everybody the books, movies and, well, everything they needed with 2-day shipping, but after the reception Amazon got in New York City last year, and all the reports of how they mistreat their employees, I think the story may have changed.  Elon Musk was similarly hailed for promoting electric cars, but now he's just a stoner with a fixation on space travel, and that hardly seems like an improvement from the people in the cheap seats.

So, once we come out of this pandemic, where are we going to find ourselves, technologically speaking?  Who are the new inventors and innovators of the near-future, and is anybody going to care about them?  Now that we have drones taking video of everything so we can all just sit at home and watch our streaming services, and get every kind of food delivered to our door, what's even left to invent?  Once we have 5G speeds, is anything going to be better, or are we just going to get the same crap delivered to us even faster?

NITPICK POINT: Mae meets and befriends the creator of True You, a Circle product that has grown beyond its creator's control, and he's still hanging around the campus in a sort of freelance "big thinker" position.  But the film never tells us what True You is, or what it does, or why he's unhappy about it.  Could the screenwriter just not be bothered to come up with something?  And if he's unhappy with the company, why the heck is he still there?  Just another tangential plotline that goes nowhere, apparently.

Also starring Emma Watson (last seen in "Little Women"), John Boyega (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "Stuber"), Ellar Coltrane (last seen in "Boyhood"), Patton Oswalt (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Frailty"), Glenne Headly (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Nate Corddry (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Mamoudou Athie (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Julian von Nagel, Amie McCarthy Winn, Amir Talai (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Elvy Yost, Lauren Baldwin, Nicola Bertram, Jimmy Wong, Ellen Wong (last seen in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"), Smith Cho, Poorna Jagannathan, Judy Reyes, Eve Gordon (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Andrea Brooks, Frederick Koehler (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), with a cameo from Beck (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon").

RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of Soylent (how that drink company stays in business with THAT name, I have no idea...)

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Year 12, Day 262 - 9/18/20 - Movie 3,656

BEFORE: It's still Emmy Week, and wouldn't you know it, tonight's film is about a TV show on PBS that won multiple Emmys over the years. My luck holds out!

Two actresses carry over from "Tallulah", one is Tammy Blanchard who played the mother of the kidnapped baby yesterday, and the other is Maddie Corman, who had a smaller role as a friend that Margo bumped into on the street, and hadn't seen since her divorce.  I only really need one link between films, two isn't better but hey, it's more.  Always good to have a back-up.  I already used Maddie Corman as a link earlier this year, she was in both "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Private Life" back in February.  But that's OK, these are my rules so using somebody twice in the same calendar year is fine - someone could be in two romance films in February and also be a link between two horror films in October, it's allowed.  This film shares two actors with "Little Women", too - I think maybe that was briefly part of the plan, but it didn't happen that way, and that's a good thing, because I'm closing in on my second Perfect Year in a row, and if I'd linked between those two films, maybe my chain would have fallen apart at some point after that.  Who's to say?

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (Movie #3,275)

THE PLOT: Based on the true story of the real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and a magazine journalist.

AFTER: So there's this thing called the "Mandela Effect", which is a phenomenon that occurs when a large number of people remember things incorrectly - many people seem to recall, for example, that Nelson Mandela died in prison during the years of apartheid in South Africa.  He did not, he was released from prison in 1990, and then served as President of South Africa from 1991 to 1997 - when you show people the exact timeline dates, then they quickly realize that he did not die in prison.  Or maybe they just thought he died earlier than he did, so when he did pass away in 2013, apparently some people's reaction was, "Wait, Nelson Mandela was still alive?" 
I saw one of those clickbait-type articles the other day, and it had a list of 40 or so instances of the Mandela Effect - but some were really bogus, like the fact that some people swear that the cleaning product "Febreze" used to be spelled "Febreeze", or "Froot Loops" were spelled "Fruit Loops" when they were a kid.  That's not really the Mandela Effect, that's just bad spelling - on behalf of the consumer in the first case, and by Kellogg's in the second.  (Legally, they probably contain no actual fruit, so by spelling the name with the word "Froot", they're safe from prosecution.)  But there was one Mandela Effect example that concerned Mr. Rogers, and it had to do with his opening theme song, which actually begins "It's a beautiful day in THIS neighborhood" instead of "THE neighborhood".  This is also not a good example of the Mandela Effect, because it just means that people are singing the song incorrectly, not suffering from a mass delusion.

There's also the rumor that won't die, which pertains to Fred Rogers' secret past as a sharpshooter in Vietnam, or maybe Korea.  This isn't the Mandela Effect either, just a pesky urban legend that won't go away, possibly because there's no proof that he WASN'T a decorated sniper.  Well, guess what, there's also no evidence that he WAS - you can't prove a negative in that backwards way.  This rumor was probably started by someone who refused to believe that anybody could be so sane in an insane world, so straight-laced and gosh-darn NICE, so illogically there must be a dark side to him.  Except there wasn't, Fred Rogers was born before irony, and for the most part, what you saw was what you got.  (I understand this is a bit like thinking the world was in black and white before color film was invented - turns out the 18th century wasn't all sepia-toned like we tend to think of it.  But though we had irony in O. Henry short stories and such, we didn't have PERSONAL cultural irony back then, like a evangelical preacher who's got a boyfriend on the side, or a black studies professor who turns out to be Caucasian.  I think this trend started in the 1990's with the preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and kind of ballooned from there.)

Not that this Esquire reporter (Lloyd Vogel in today's fiction film, but Tom Junod IRL) didn't try - he went to Pittsburgh to do a profile on Fred Rogers for the magazine's "heroes" issue, and he did his best to uncover what was wrong with Mr. Rogers.  What's he hiding, with his puppets and his Land of Make-Believe and his ability to connect with children?  (OK, maybe that concept of personal cultural irony really took off when Michael Jackson got more money than God.).  Mr. Rogers didn't have a monkey named Bubbles, or an amusement park in his backyard, and very few skeletons in his closet. So it turns out that he had a tough time with his sons when they were teenagers - so does every parent, so that just makes him even more normal!

It turned out that Lloyd Vogel had some personal problems, and was probably projecting those on to his interview subjects - he was notoriously tough in his articles, partially because his own father who abandoned his family had recently come back into his life, and this led to a fist-fight at his sister's wedding.  Plus his marriage was going through some difficulties, plus he'd recently become a father for the first time, and he was still carrying around the emotional baggage from his mother's death, which was only compounded by his father's departure, and recently triggered by his return.  Whew!  It's like the perfect storm of dysfunction - and you're going to send this guy out to do a profile on the absolutely nicest, squarest person on public television?  That editor should have HER head examined.

After a rocky start, Lloyd eventually gives in to the magic of children's television and Fred Rogers, part minister and part therapist and all-around good listener, in addition to puppeteer and children's TV host.  My own personal "Mandela Effect" might be remembering Mr. Rogers interacting with his puppets, which is impossible, because he WAS the puppeteer on his show, that's why he didn't appear in the Land of Make-Believe himself - clearly I'm mis-remembering.  After watching the documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor" last year I had that "AHA!" moment, that all of the puppets sound a bit like him.  And in a way, he is the puppets and they are him and we are all together, goo goo ga joob.  Aren't all puppetteers just a little bit crazy, and some of them even more so?  If Fred Rogers had any issues, I bet he worked them out through the personalities Daniel Tiger and King Friday XIII.

By all means, go seek out that documentary about Fred Rogers, because it put the focus squarely where it belongs, on the puppet master and TV show host and the man that the soul of America needs very badly right now, only it's too late, he's not coming back.  There were moments in that doc that brought me to tears, especially Mr. Rogers testifying before Congress about how kids needed to be told what to do with their feelings, therefore PBS needed more federal funding.  You can't debate Mr. Rogers, and if you think you can, then you've already lost.  Fred Rogers doesn't mind his show being recorded on a VCR?  He doesn't give a crap about copyright protection, he just wants more kids to be able to watch his show and learn things?  That's a heck of an argument, motion passes and we're adjourned.

The focus in this semi-fictional film is on the reporter, who's only Mr. Rogers-adjacent.  The entire use of Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers is essentially just a framing device for another man's personal growth, and with all respect to Mr. Vogel (Junod), I can't help but think that somebody missed the main story here.  For all that this film does tell us about Fred Rogers - he played the piano, he spent too much time shaking his fans' hands, he was a bit of a perfectionist on the set - he still remains something of a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  Or else, like the urban legend, there's just no THERE there.  Again, watch the documentary if you want to learn about the man himself.  Just keep some tissues handy.

Still, I'm glad that Mr. Vogel made some form of peace with his father, that he kept his marriage together and came up with the brilliant idea of writing at home so he could take care of his son and his wife could go back to work.  (There, was that so difficult?  Now in 2020, that's what EVERYBODY was doing, so congratulations, you were a trendsetter.).  But where, oh where, is the modern-day Fred Rogers that we need?  Our kids are in the hands of Paw Patrol and Rick & Morty, with no successor in sight.  Even "Sesame Street" has moved from PBS to HBO, where I assume the plotlines are now more adult, the puppets can swear, Bert and Ernie have gotten married at last and Cookie Monster's finally getting help for his addiction issues.  (I don't watch the show, I'll admit, but this all seems more in line with premium cable.)

The worst thing anyone can say about Fred Rogers is that he was tough to interview - because he often cared more about the interviewer than in answering questions about himself.  Fred Rogers the character does this consistently in the film, and even pauses during a conversation with the journalist in a restaurant for them to think about all the people who loved them over the years.  As they pan over the other diners, I spotted Mr. Rogers' real-life wife, Joanne.  I figured the other people had to be important, too - one was the actor who played Mr. McFeeley ("Speedy Delivery!") another was a producer from the original show, and the head of Family Communications - all people who were integral to the success of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood".  That actor, David Newell, played Mr. McFeeley for 33 years - that's what an actor calls "a good gig".

The weirdest parts of this film are probably the dream sequences - as Lloyd Vogel deals with all of his personal problems as he is interviewing Fred Rogers, he has a couple of bizarre dreams, as one might when they have new experiences and there are big changes in their life, and his brain decides to jumble them all together and mess with him.  So in his dream he finds himself inside the castle in the Land of Make-Believe, he's small and puppet-sized and his wife is normal human-sized, but in the role and costume of Lady Aberlin.  Then, weirdest of all, Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers appears in the Land of Make-Believe, but that's impossible!  He was never there, remember, he needed to be working the puppets!  This scene really freaked me out, it reminded me of parts of "Eraserhead" where that little singing lady was living in the man's apartment radiator.  If David Lynch ever directed a children's show, God help us, it would probably look a bit like this.  Not cool.

Also starring Tom Hanks (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Matthew Rhys (last seen in "The Report"), Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper (last seen in "The Company Men"), Maryann Plunkett (ditto), Enrico Colantoni (last seen in "Contagion"), Christine Lahti (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Wendy Makkena (last seen in "State of Play"), Noah Harpster, Carmen Cusack, Jessica Hecht (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), Daniel Krell, Bill Isler, Margy Whitmer, with archive footage of Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Whitney"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Fred Rogers (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and cameos from Joanne Rogers, David Newell (both also last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?").

RATING: 5 out of 10 cardigans in the closet (and zero skeletons!)

Tallulah

Year 12, Day 261 - 9/17/20 - Movie #3,655

BEFORE: A couple of late nights watching MSNBC, and suddenly my concerns over not seeing "Black Widow" in November seem very petty and selfish.  There are people on the West Coast who have lost their homes, there are almost 200,000 dead because of a virus, and our country's democratic ideals have been turned upside-down, and I'm fretting over one movie?  Sometimes I'm the worst.  I mean, come on, let's get it together here, I'm alive and I'm healthy (relatively) and I still have my sanity (again, relatively) so I'm resolved to quit complaining and just stay the course, and try to look on the bright side of things.  And if that's not possible, then the less dark side.

Allison Janney carries over again from "Liberal Arts", and that's the end of her chain, but she'll be back again one more time in October.

THE PLOT: Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Manhattan housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.

AFTER: I made a joke on Twitter the other day about stress dreams I was having, in which I was back at my old job circa 1989, and I said that I expected my ex-wife to turn up any night now.  That turned out to be prophetic, and I suppose it was a combination of "Liberal Arts" and today's film that triggered it.  (Joking about it probably didn't help either.). In "Liberal Arts" a thirty-something man goes back to visit his old college, and "Tallulah" depicts a woman who lives in some form of NYU campus-sponsored housing, because her husband is/was a professor there, only they're separated, and he now lives with his boyfriend.  The apartment she lives in is on Fifth Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets, just a few blocks north of Washington Square Park, and just one block south of the Rubin Hall dorm, where I frequently ate while at NYU.  My dorm was two blocks away, but didn't have a dining hall.

So, put all that together - NYU, someone going back to college, a character whose spouse came out of the closet - and it was kind of inevitable.  Plus I fell asleep in the recliner, and that's where I get the best sleep, but also the most vivid dreams.  In last night's dream I was attending some kind of college reunion, in some giant open-air banquet hall, and there were a ton of people there.  I tried to work things out so my wife and I could sit at a table that was filling up, but I couldn't prevent what then started to happen - my ex-wife arrived at the table and focused on me, and I realized she'd be sitting down at the same table as us.  Suddenly I couldn't remember anybody's name and I had to make introductions around the table, so I was in panic mode, and...well, that's it, that's when I woke up from the sheer terror of it all.  It's a bit hard to explain, but I think I'd prefer a dream where I was being chased by a demon or on a plane that's about to crash. As a result I had dry heaves for half an hour, and I couldn't eat lunch today.

But let's put my baggage back in the overhead compartment and get on with "Tallulah".  The film centers on a woman who's a drifter and lives in her van, and like yesterday's film, it starts with something of a break-up.  Her boyfriend expresses a desire to return home, whatever that means, and the next morning, he's gone.  This leads Tallulah, or "Lu", to sift through a stack of stolen credit cards and start driving toward New York City.  We don't know who she's there to visit at first, but it turns out to be her boyfriend Nico's mother, Margo, who wants nothing to do with Lu or her son, and refuses to give out any money or help.

Then, while wandering through a hotel and eating scraps from the room service trays on the floor, Tallulah gets mistaken for a hotel employee, and a guest hires her to watch her baby for the day while she meets with a man across town to have an affair.  At first this is just an opportunity to make a quick $100, but when Lu determines that the infant girl is unwanted and mostly neglected by her mother, she takes the baby with her after the woman returns and passes out.  This leads her to use the baby to get closer to her boyfriend's mother, by lying and saying that it's her child and Nico is the father, making Margo feel obligated to welcome them in to her apartment.

Margo and Tallulah are designed to be an odd pairing, that's a classic trope, seen most recently in "Stuber", "Spies in Disguise" and such - they're polar opposites.  One's a young woman with no home, no family, and a loose definition of morality, while the other is older with a fixed residence, a family that she's tried to hold on too tightly to, and a strong moral center.  So over the next few days they butt heads, challenge each other, but also each gains insight into the other's world, and in the end they sort of bond and maybe become a little bit like each other.  Sure, it's formulaic, but it's been proven to work again and again in the movie world.  They've each supposedly got the best interests of baby Maggie at heart, but that could all be jeopardized when Margo learns that Maggie is really Maddie, and not really her grand-child.

There are a few contrivances where Tallulah has to dispose of the daily newspapers, or distract Margo when news about the "hotel baby snatcher" airs on TV.  And it's a little odd that nobody out on the streets of New York recognizes her, with all the media attention devoted to the case.  Finally it's a dinner with Nico's father and his boyfriend that leads to somebody tipping off the police about the location of the missing baby - otherwise it seems that New York's Finest didn't really have a clue about how to proceed in this case.  So NITPICK POINT: continually interviewing the baby's mother is less likely to produce any leads than good old-fashioned detective work might.  Why not show some cops out there on patrol, casing playgrounds and stores that sell baby supplies?

I'm also wondering how this film managed to pull off the trick of making a character who kidnaps a baby sympathetic, which seems like a real feat of screenplay engineering.  Was this to fulfill a challenge that one writer issued to another?  Or an attempt to get inside the head of a real person who did this, or something similar?  Ah, a little research on Wikipedia tells me that the film's writer/director, Sian Heder, worked as a babysitter in a Los Angeles hotel, and one time she was required to look after a girl whose mother had come to the hotel to have an affair.  Afterwards, Heder thought that maybe she should have taken the child away from her mother.

This also finally confirms for me my theory about "Netflix Original" films - they're allowed to remain on the service much longer than other films, which seem to mostly have a term of two years.  This makes sense, if Netflix financed the film or bought the rights to be its sole streaming provider, why not keep the film around to maximize their investment?

The biggest problem may be that there's no real ending here, by that I mean that the film stops, but there's no real resolution.  We may assume that Margo will fight for Tallulah in a legal sense, having been transformed somewhat by bonding with her, even if that relationship was founded on lies.  But then there's something of a quandary there, because Margo was portrayed as someone who had a hard time with letting go - so wouldn't it display more personal growth if she let Tallulah leave her life, rather than stand by her?  Or has she learned to find some personal balance in holding on to others, but not too tightly?

Also starring Ellen Page (last seen in "Hard Candy"), Tammy Blanchard (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), David Zayas (last seen in "The Interpreter"), John Benjamin Hickey (last seen in "Hostiles"), Zachary Quinto (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Uzo Aduba (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Fredric Lehne (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Felix Solis, Maddie Corman (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Evangeline Ellis, Liliana Ellis, Eden Marryshow, Jason Tottenham.

RATING: 5 out of 10 "freegan" meals

Liberal Arts

Year 12, Day 260 - 9/16/20 - Movie #3,654

BEFORE: Great, now I'm seeing posts online about Disney possibly moving the date of "Black Widow", because the movies that are being released in theaters are still under-performing, and Warner Brothers just moved "Wonder Woman 1984" from October to Christmas.  I have planned for this, because I created two paths to the end of the year, and either one will still get me my "perfect year" (though frankly, in all other aspects 2020 has been anything but) - one path has "Black Widow" in it, and the other one does not.  This really only affects the last nine movies of the year - and I'm determined to finish this year strong, regardless of whatever the date that movie theaters in New York City open turns out to be.  And if I have to spend half of 2021 making up for all the movies that I DIDN'T SEE in 2020, so be it - I think a lot of people are going to be in that same boat with me.

But damn it, I'm also looking forward to watching "Hellboy" (the one that got released last year - the prequel? reboot?). Even though that's a very obvious October-style movie, I had it slated for the film to watch right after the "Black Widow" release on November 6, with David Harbour carrying over.  (I briefly had a plan to drop it in right before the October chain started, if "Black Widow" got pushed into 2021, only I can't find the link on one end to make it possible - perhaps it was never there, and this was just a case of wishful thinking).  So if "Black Widow" doesn't get released, then "Hellboy" is out of this year's schedule with it.

Here's the problem - my October horror chain this year is a linking masterpiece, if I do say so myself.  But it's also a very fragile thing.  It's like a giant Jenga pile, and if I start pulling out movies now, I don't know which one is going to make the whole pile collapse.  Any and all efforts to start the October chain in a different spot have met with disaster - I can link to a film currently in the middle and head in one of the two directions from there, but the chain then will not (so far) link back to the next slot, and that would mean that one or more films on the schedule would have to be jettisoned.

Sometimes my chains are circular, I can identify cast members (coded in green) that are special links, which could allow me to flip around certain sections of the chain - this has been very helpful at least twice already this year.  And while there are some actors who appear several times in non-sequential horror films this year, I can't find a section that will flip around and keep the same films, or even the same number of films, in the month.  And I can't flip the whole horror chain around, because of the "Twilight" films - my actor links to and from them are not in ALL of those movies, so flipping it around would mean I'd have to watch that series in reverse order.  I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be recommended - but who knows? Maybe it would make them better.  Still, let's not risk it.

But could there be another way to save "Hellboy", if needed?  I went up and down my schedule today, looking for a way to drop it in, and there is one, only there are a couple of problems.  Now that I've dropped "The Call of the Wild" and "Downhill" from this year's plan, one of the films I'm dropping in to replace them DOES link to "Hellboy".  And since "Hellboy" also links to the last film in September before the horror chain starts, that seems like a possible solution.  BUT it would mean dropping four other films from the line-up, then I'll come up short for September, and also for the year.  Plus, one of those four films I really want to see, and I've re-scheduled it at least twice already.
Also, I would need to decide within the next five films if I want to do this, and it seems maybe Disney is delaying their decision as long as possible, to see when theaters in NYC and L.A. are going to open.

Interestingly (maybe) my chain from today's film to the first film of October is another big circle, in other words, "Liberal Arts" also links to the first horror film.  I could drop "Liberal Arts", as Allison Janney is in tomorrow's film, and the gap would close up, but that doesn't help me.  I could drop into the circle from another point, one actor from "Bad Education" is also in "Jumanji: The Next Level", then that links to another film later in the circle - but that doesn't help me either.  Plus "Jumanji: The Next Level" is playing an important part linking two films at the end of the October chain.  I could put "Hellboy" up in September and try to find a home in December for those four films I'd have to drop, but I'm not sure about that.  Or maybe there's a film that could just take the slot "Black Widow", a film that would link to both the film before it and "Hellboy" - only I haven't found it yet.

So, I'm back where I started, with two paths to the end of the year, and I just have to wait to see if Disney's going to move "Black Widow", or offer it on Disney Plus at a premium price, or what.  If "Black Widow" moves to, say, February, as some say it might, then "Hellboy" is out of the plan for 2020, that's the price that has to be paid.  But I'm still thinking it could happen - I could travel to Hoboken, NJ to watch the film if it does get released on November 6, plus I have a ton of extra time built into the schedule - if it got moved to, say, early December I could still work it in.  Stay tuned, because it's Disney's move to make.

Allison Janney carries over from "Bad Education", and it's a small consolation that BACK TO SCHOOL film #4 follows immediately after #3.

THE PLOT: When 30-something Jesse returns to his alma mater for a professor's retirement party, he falls for Zibby, a college student, and is faced with a powerful attraction that springs up between them.

AFTER: It turns out this is a film that could easily have been part of a February romance chain - but as with the other films I've watched this month that were kind of on that bubble, like "The Wilde Wedding" and "The Wife", it turns out that the leftovers in the romance section are sort of connecting a little bit better now that I've taken a few films away, it's kind of an improvement by subtraction, and it's resolved a few conflicts, or will keep me from making difficult decisions next February. I still should have plenty of time in December to review the February 2020 romance chain and move things around, should the need arise.  Some more romances could pop up between now and then, you never know.

But for my purposes, this counts as a "back to school" film - in a different sense, where an alumnus goes back to visit his college when a favorite teacher is retiring.  The main character works at a college in New York City (they don't say which one) but he's not a teacher, he's in the admissions department.  But they do say which college he goes back to visit, it's called Kenyon College, which happens to be the alma mater of both the film's star and director, Josh Radnor, but also of Allison Janney, who plays a English lit professor who specialized in the "Romantics" - this is the work of Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, etc., not necessarily works with romance in them, but certainly full of emotions.  Oddly, this is the third film in recent memory that depicts or implies a romantic relationship between a teacher and a (current or former) student - the others were "The Wife" and "Bad Education".  It's a bit of a loose running theme, it seems.

Jesse Fisher's not in a good mindset, because he's just broken up with his live-in girlfriend in NYC.  So a trip back to Ohio seems like a chance to clear his head, and the first thing he does when he arrives is meet his professor's best friends, and they happen to have a college-age daughter that Jesse hits it off with.  Despite the age difference, they strike up a correspondence and Jesse then keeps finding more excuses to fly back to Ohio to see Zibby.  He also forms a friendship with Nat, a mysterious stoner-like character who mostly appears on the campus at night to bring Jesse some spiritual-ish wisdom and then bring him to parties.  It wouldn't be the first time that a character turned out to be imaginary, and in fact Jesse even asks Nat at one point if he's real - that doesn't seem to be the case here, I mean it's possible, but then it would have been horribly telegraphed.

Zibby may be only 19, while Jesse is 35, but she's very mature for her age, and, let's face it, he's just the opposite, somebody who never really matured, which may explain why that woman broke up with him at the start of the film.  So maybe they could make it work - or maybe they're fooling themselves, and a lot of people just never think of themselves as old.  Even the retiring Professor Hoberg says he still thinks of himself as 19, even though he's taught at the college for 37 years.  Hoberg later rethinks his desire to retire and begs the head of the department to let him come back, but it's too late, his replacement has already been hired.

As Jesse grows closer to Zibby, however, for some reason he starts to look for reasons why it may not work out, and he focuses on a vampire book that she's reading as a symbol of their differences.  He even reads the whole novel just to prove it's as terrible as he thinks it is, and the resulting argument over this book is either a symbol of their age difference, or represents Jesse's need to self-sabotage, or both.  Or maybe it's just a dig at literature like "Twilight" or "True Blood", it's tough to say.  At least one actress here also appears in the "Twilight" movies, so maybe it's just an inside joke.

In some ways this is a bit of an anti-romance, because rarely do you see a story like this that highlights the differences between two people after they meet - the general pattern for any relationship is that two people will tend to focus on the things they have in common when they first get together, and then later in the relationship focus on the things that they don't have in common, especially when one or both are looking for reasons to split up.  The Jesse-Zibby relationship does it differently, pointing out both at around the same time, because this age difference is a big hurdle that's there right from the start, and when things start to get more physical, it becomes this insurmountable thing, leading to the possible conclusion that maybe both of them should be dating someone more age-appropriate.  I tend to agree, a 35-year old man should probably not consider a romance with someone whose age ends in "-teen".

It turns out that Libby eventually admits that she was using Jesse as a bit of a short-cut, and there are steps to her personal growth and relationship experiences that she needs to experience on her own schedule.  It's rare to see a character who's able to admit something like that - I'm reminded of the film "I Give it a Year", which had a married couple who tried very hard to keep their marriage together, but ultimately had to follow the logic that was showing them at every turn that they were both better off scrapping the marriage and starting fresh with other people.  It defies movie romance logic, sure, but you want to feel like that's a common occurence in people's everyday lives.

Still, the relationship was a mostly positive thing for both of them, you can't say they didn't give it a try, and in the end, that's what this crazy life is all about - meeting people, connecting with them, growing together with them if you can, and if not, then growing apart and trying again.  The whole film is sort of about the inevitable need to move forward, and the futility of going back to an old school or an old way of life.  As I said before, I didn't HAVE to watch this film here, if I'd skipped it then the chain would have closed up the gap, but I'm glad I had a slot to spare for this one here.

NITPICK POINT: One of the earliest scenes shows Jesse bringing his clothes to a NYC laundromat, and for some reason, somebody steals his laundry.  Why?  Who the heck steals somebody else's dirty clothes?  This doesn't seem to connect to anything in the rest of the film, so why is it even there?  It goes nowhere and just doesn't feel like something that even happens.

Also starring Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Darling Companion"), John Magaro (last seen in "Marshall"), Elizabeth Reaser (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Kate Burton (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Robert Desiderio, Zac Efron (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), Kristen Bush, Ali Ahn, Ned Daunis, Gregg Edelman (last seen in "The Proposal")

RATING: 6 out of 10 classical music pieces on a mix CD

Bad Education

Year 12, Day 258 - 9/14/20 - Movie #3,653

BEFORE: I've simply got to slow down and add some more skip days, or I'll have to sit idle for a few days at the end of the month, and nobody wants that.  Just 12 more films in September, and 16 (30 days has September...30 minus 14, yeah that's right) days to watch them.  So at least one skip day this week, maybe two.

But this movie is an HBO original, which means it's Emmy-eligible, and the Emmys are coming up this weekend.  Yep, for once I'm watching a film while it's still a contender, in the category of Outstandingng Television Movie, and also Hugh Jackman is up for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.  Hey, I may watch the award show this weekend then, because after tonight I'll have seen one of the nominees!

Seriously, though, I don't want nearly as much TV as I used to, but there are a few nominated series this year that I HAVE seen, in what little free time remains after I watch all my movies.  "Bad Education" will be the only TV movie I'll have seen, let's see - DAMN, this breakdown on Wikipedia is very confusing, because it's got all the "Creative Arts" Emmys on a separate page, and it looks like those are given out over four nights, starting with tonight?  I don't get it.

But here are the Emmy-nominated shows that I HAVE seen: In the comedy category, "Schitt's Creek" and that's it.  That's it?  For drama series, "Stranger Things" and "The Mandalorian" - OK, I guess two is better than one.  Limited series - "Watchmen", and that's all.  Well, that was all I needed to watch.  Competition program, I've seen "Top Chef" and "The Masked Singer", at least in the Variety Talk category I'm four for five, since I watch "The Daily Show", "Full Frontal", "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and "This Week Tonight with John Oliver" regularly.  (Sorry, Jimmy Kimmel...)

My acting picks sort of echo what I've mentioned above - I wouldn't mind if Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy made it a clean sweep for "Schitt's Creek" in the comedy category.  (Yes, I've also seen "SNL", but I'm not as much of a fan of Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon.).  But for drama series, I've seen NONE of the nominated performances for lead actor, lead actress, or supporting actor, only Thandie Newton for best supporting actress for "Westworld". (What, no nomination for Evan Rachel Wood?).  For limited series or movie, it comes down to Jeremy Irons for "Watchmen" or Hugh Jackman for "Bad Education" in the lead actor category, Regina King for "Watchmen" in the lead actress category, THREE actors from "Watchmen" nominated for best supporting actor, and Jean Smart nominated for best supporting actress for "Watchmen".

So there you go, I'm Team Watchmen and Team Schitt's Creek - most of the other shows are alien to me.  Sure, I've heard about "Ozark" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", and I'd love to catch up on "The Good Place" someday, but I just don't have that kind of time.  I'm not going to watch "Better Call Saul" because I never watched "Breaking Bad" - look, if I had any extra time I'd buckle down and watch "Game of Thrones", but it's just not possible, I have a job.  I can't watch the series "The Handmaid's Tale" or "What We Do in the Shadows" because they're based on movies I haven't seen, but are on my list, so maybe someday.  That leaves "The Crown", "Big Little Lies", "Killing Eve", "Mrs. America", "Dead to Me", "Succession", "Hollywood", "Insecure", "Little Fires Everywhere" and "The Kominsky Method" - hmm, I've heard good things about all of them, but I'd need to be three people to watch all that TV!

Wait, there are also those Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, whatever that means.  I'm still WAY behind the rest of the country on pop culture, but I do watch a couple of the shows that have been nominated in the "throwaway" categories - like "Shark Tank", "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" (almost done!), "A Very Brady Renovation" (not proud...), "Drunk History" in the Variety Sketch category, and three nominated documentary series or specials: "Tiger King", "McMillions" and "Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time".  Then there are the animated programs: "The Simpsons" and "Bob's Burgers", also "Robot Chicken" in the short form category, and three comedy specials: "John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch", "Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill", and "Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones".  Jeez, I've got a much better record of watching these "fringe" shows than I do for the main dramas and comedies!  What does that say about me?

That's my Emmy preview, I'll tune in on Sunday to see if any of my shows won anything.  For today, Jimmy Tatro carries over from "Stuber", and this is BACK TO SCHOOL movie #3 for 2020.

THE PLOT: The beloved superintendent of New York's Roslyn school district and his staff, friends and relatives become the prime suspects in the unfolding of the single largest public school embezzlement scandal in American history.

AFTER: This one's based on a true story, in the town of Roslyn on Long Island, it was discovered in 2004 that several of the school officials had been embezzling money from the district, though it's a little unclear from my initial research if those funds were connected to construction projects, as depicted in the film.  But it is true that the story was first broken by a reporter for the school newspaper, which seems a little odd because as the film itself states, most often an article for the school newspaper would need to be approved not only by an editor but also the school principal, and other officials as well.  "Bad Education" doubles down on this premise, suggesting that the superintendent would also have had to approve the article (which doesn't make sense, since the article would implicate him) and also depicts him at the start of the film encouraging that reporter to take risks, to treat every story like an opportunity, to turn that puff piece about the new school skywalk into something.  Well, don't say he didn't ask for it...  I figured from the start that this scene might turn out to be a bit overly ironic.

In real life, the reporter for the high-school paper was investigating the dismissal of a woman who had worked as an assistant superintendent and stole money two years earlier, but was allowed to resign her job without criminal charges.  While researching this article, the reporter was told that she could not print that woman's name (but anybody up on the town gossip could probably figure it out) and sure enough, she did interview the superintendent, Frank Tassone, who eventually was charged as a co-conspirator on similar charges.  So the film's account gets some of the details wrong, but is sort of tru-ish.  (has truthiness?).

But knowing that the filmmakers perhaps changed some of the details makes it a bit hard to then figure out what's real and what's been changed for the sake of drama.  Kudos for portraying a gay man whose orientation doesn't completely define his character, but then that's probably balanced by portraying a gay man as an embezzler and a liar, so I suppose that's a wash.  One step forward and one step back for LGBTQ representation, I guess.  Remember this is set back in 2004, it was a different time, I think, like there was no gay marriage, so it's possible that the portrayal of a closeted superintendent who wears a wedding ring as a dodge (he claims to be a widower, but is he?) might be somewhat accurate?  Further revelations about his relationships also help to create this very nebulous, murky sort of character - but again, pre-gay marriage so maybe at the time it was common for a gay man to have a longtime live-in lover, but also something else on the side.

The theory proposed here is that these members of the superintendent's office and school board were allowed to cook the books for years because things were going well in the community - the high-school was getting ranked higher each year (umm, by whoever ranks high schools, not sure who that is) and more of its students were getting accepted into Ivy League schools.  Therefore there was sort of a ripple effect where wealthier people were buying houses in that district so their kids could go to Roslyn High, and in turn, property values were going up, and that means everyone in town was doing well.  If anyone were to burst that bubble and uncover the corruption connected to the school's improvements fund, their next budget wouldn't be improved, the school's ranking could go down, fewer students accepted into Brown or Dartmouth, and the next thing you know, the rich people are moving away.  Hmm, I'm not sure about that last part, it sounds a lot like some of Trump's warnings about Joe Biden's America, where the suburbs are vast wastelands and gang members are moving in to the house next door to you.

In fact, there's a lot here that reminds me of Trump-like practices and current events.  It's easy to draw a connection between Frank Tassone and our Commander in Cheeto, our "Orange Julius Caesar".  In both cases, as staffers and assistants kept getting accused of crimes, both Tassone and Trump would disavow their actions and distance themselves, despite the fact that they probably ordered the wrongdoing to happen in the first place.  How many Trump staffers were forced to resign or incarcerated at some point?  Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, just to name a few.  Others had such short tenures (Scaramucci, H.R. McMaster) that it may lead you to believe they were asked very quickly to do something shady and took the first opportunity to resign instead. James Comey, Sebastian Gorka, Rex Tillerson - come on, they're all dirty but they somehow managed to get off the Titanic before the iceberg hit.

But let's just focus on Steve Bannon for a second - you knew this guy was six shades of corrupt when you first saw him, right?  And now he's been arrested for pocketing large amounts of money from a fund that was raising money to build that border wall.  That's not too different from taking money designed for school construction and building a back patio with it, right?  All through the film, they keep talking about a "skywalk" - but what the hell is a skywalk?  And why did the school need one, as a place to store their multiple pizza ovens?  Oh, I had a good long laugh when Bannon got arrested on mail fraud and money laundering charges, I mean, what else can you expect from someone who was involved with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, then founded Breitbart News?  The good news is that his trial won't start until 2021, so there's a good chance that Trump won't be still in office to pardon him.  Things are already looking up for 2021.

The other thing I'm reminded of here is Frank Tassone giving that interview to a high-school reporter, and that leading to the news of his own corruption breaking.  Let's see, who also recently gave an interview to a reporter, with that coming back to bite him in the ass?  Right, it's Trump, who talked with Bob Woodward back in April about how he was trying to "downplay" the pandemic so that people wouldn't panic, instead of, you know, keeping the public properly informed or giving them the knowledge and equipment needed to save their lives.  It's unconscionable to think that he held back time, effort and resources because it briefly looked like COVID-19 was only going to spread in big cities and blue states.  The geography and math on this is akin to a Hitler-like "final solution" that would reduce the number of Democrats and secure him another term.  I feel like we should maybe hold Bob Woodward responsible too, if he knew this back in April and didn't report it, but I suppose that if he had, without the weight of almost 200,000 dead U.S. citizens attached, it could have been waved off as "fake news" - or worse, spun just like the Republicans are spinning it now, like a country without panic is somehow better than a country with 200,000 more alive citizens in it.  This latest scandal, which is like scandal number 1,000 and counting, just makes me want to vomit.  And then vote.

So, bottom line, there are people in positions of power, whether that's at the federal, state or local level, who will put their personal needs ahead of the people they're supposed to be serving.  Perhaps it's always been this way, perhaps it will always be this way.  But we have to believe that eventually, the actions of those people will be exposed, and the damage will be tabulated and some form of penance or retribution will be enacted.  Think about how many political scandals there have been in the last decade - were there really that many more corrupt politicians working their scams, or did journalists and investigators just get better at exposing and prosecuting them?  Maybe it's a little of both, but that's my small glimmer of hope for today.  "Sic semper tyrannis." - thus always to tyrants.

Also starring Hugh Jackman (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Allison Janney (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella (last seen in "House of D"), Annaleigh Ashford (last seen in "Late Night"), Ray Romano (last seen in "The Irishman"), Stephanie Kurtzuba (ditto), Larry Romano (ditto), John Scurti (ditto), Steve Routman (ditto), Hari Dhillon, Jeremy Shamos (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Catherine Curtin, Kathrine Narducci (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Ray Abruzzo (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Kayli Carter (last seen in "Private Life"), Pat Healy (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Welker White (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Justin Swain (last seen in "The Post"), Victor Verhaeghe (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Peter Appel, Jorge Chapa (last seen in "The Wilde Wedding"), Jane Brockman.

RATING: 5 out of 10 first-class plane tickets

Stuber

Year 12, Day 257 - 9/13/20 - Movie #3,652

BEFORE: I got really lucky with "Spies in Disguise", in that I programmed it before it became available on cable - I was willing to pay the iTunes fee because I needed the link to today's film, but I think that's probably where my luck is going to run out.  I did the same thing with two other films - the recent remake of "The Call of the Wild" with Harrison Ford, and "Downhill" with Will Ferrell.  I planned to include both of these in September's chain two months ago, figuring that by the time I'd get to them, surely they'd be available on premium cable, or On Demand, or at least for rental on iTunes.  Nope and nope - "The Call of the Wild" is still a buy-only deal on iTunes, at $14.99, and the same goes for "Downhill" at $9.99.  Too rich for my blood, as I'm still only working part-time.

To be fair, both films are available for rental on AmazonPrime, for $5.99.  Hmm, if it's going to cost me $12 just to maintain my plan, and that's above what I'm paying now for cable, I'd prefer to find another solution.  I might rent (on average) two films each month from iTunes, but that's a last resort, and that only costs me about $6-8 per month, so let me try and find another path.  I know, I said no more messing around with the chain, but these are desperate times and I'm not going to pay exorbitant fees.

Hmm, a little searching through my cast lists, and I found a combination of two films that could take the place of "The Call of the Wild", that's going to drop me off right where I need to be next, and then  if I drop "Downhill", the total number of films left in 2020 remains the same.  So that's the back-up plan, unless "The Call of the Wild" suddenly airs on HBO next week, then I'm rescheduling it and "Downhill" for next year.  Already this year I've knocked off several films that have been rescheduled again and again, like "Thirteen", "Matinee", "The Blind Side" and "Call Me by Your Name", so it's not the end for those movies, I just need to be ready to watch them when they become a bit more available.

Now, I'm crossing my fingers that those two replacement films will still be on Hulu for another week, so I can watch them when I need to.  This is not a given, I feel like it's about 50-50 odds that they'll disappear, given my bad history with this happening with Hulu.  Come on, just stay there a bit longer....don't make me spend $8 on iTunes to rent these two films that I'm watching to avoid paying $12 to AmazonPrime.

Karen Gillan carries over from "Spies in Disguise".  She's also in "The Call of the Wild", and I was going to use her as a link twice this month, but now I guess she'll only be in four movies this year, and not five.  C'est la vie - she's also in "Jumanji: The Next Level", scheduled for late October.

THE PLOT: A detective recruits his Uber driver into an unexpected night of adventure.

AFTER: I guess if you think about it, it's still a bit early for me to be watching the films of 2020.  Movie theaters still aren't open in New York City, so I've had to pass on the current releases like "Tenet", "The New Mutants" and "Bill & Ted Face the Music", while other 2020 releases like "No Time to Die", "Bob's Burgers" and the new "Ghostbusters" have all been delayed until next year, thanks to that pesky virus.  And the news just broke that "Wonder Woman 1984" has been postponed until Christmas, which makes me not saving a slot for it a wise decision.  I've pinned all my hopes on "Black Widow", still scheduled for November 6, but the release status of that is still a bit unclear.  (I've got a back-up plan to complete my year without it, but I would rather not have to use that.)

Still, streaming and cable are where it's at, and I have managed to see a number of films this year with 2020 release dates - they either opened in January and made it to cable the regular way, or they went direct to streaming, either way the result is the same for "Just Mercy", "1917", "Bad Boys for Life", "The Gentlemen", "Greed", "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band", "The Last Thing He Wanted", "Onward", "The Willoughbys", "7500" and tomorrow's film.  That's not bad, 11 films with 2020 release dates, considering the circumstances.  Let's say that maybe I can get 3 or 4 more in, like a couple of Netflix premieres in addition to "Black Widow".  Seeing 15 films from 2020 DURING 2020 would be quite an accomplishment, considering that theaters near me haven't been open since March.  Usually I'd rack up a few superhero films in an average year, but this year I might have to settle for just "Black Widow" and "Birds of Prey", the way things are going.  And I plan to be very busy during 2021 catching up on all the films I missed this year.

But in the meantime, my list is still full of movies released in 2019, there's still so much to choose from, like "Stuber", now running on HBO (one of those pesky channels that does not allow me to dub a film to DVD, very annoying - but my DVR is acting up again, and if it dies like all of its predecessors, I may lose this ability altogether, along with a bunch of Ingmar Bergman movies I've been storing up for January like so many acorns).  It's a serviceable enough comedy, obviously riffing off the "unlikely comedy pairing" motif, only taking that to the extreme.  That's been something of a running theme around here these last few days, starting with the different approaches to police work of the two cops in "Bad Boys for Life", then we had Will Smith teaming up with his younger clone, then Will Smith teaming up with a nerd inventor.  The divide has been growing in these matchups, until we find ourselves with a large, brutal cop teamed up with a small, gentle Uber driver.  If you follow the logic, and assume that the comedy is found in the chasm between the two personalities, then by rights this one should be hilarious.

Eh, it is and it isn't.  There's nothing horribly offensive here, it's maybe a bit too formulaic, but if you're looking for laughs in an action movie (combined in that peanut butter in chocolate way) that won't take up too much of your time, you could sure do a lot worse than this.  Would I rather be on a different track that would allow me to see "The New Mutants" and "Tenet"?  Perhaps, I don't know - it doesn't do much good to wish for things that I can't have, plus what if I don't end up liking "The New Mutants"?  It seems like a slam-dunk, but then, so did "X-Men: Dark Phoenix".  Maybe it's better to stick with the movies I have on hand, they're a known quantity, umm, after I watch them, anyway.  It is what it is at this point.

Dave Bautista took all the comedy skills he learned while playing Drax in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies and applied them here, which sort of leads to questions about whether he's funny on purpose or funny accidentally.  Yes, there's a difference.  If he's just a big muscle-bound guy who can just say funny things because they're written down for him, that's one thing, but if he's aware of the image he puts out there, has a genuine sense of humor and doesn't take himself too seriously, somehow I think that puts him in a different category.  Considering that he was grown in the same lab that produced Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and then John Cena, who have both been in comedies as well as action films, I'm guessing that some form of acting lessons is part of the WWE training program.  But then why haven't we seen more wrestling superstars headlining Hollywood films?  Why is it just these three guys?

The paper-thin plot here is about Vic, a burly cop whose partner dies in a shootout, partially because he lost his glasses.  Six months later, he finally gets his Lasik surgery, but on the same day that his daughter has her first gallery show, and also his partner's killer finally resurfaces and he gets some intel about when and where that guy's going to be.  Naturally he didn't know all of this was going to go down on the same day, because the simple answer here would be to just re-schedule the surgery.  No, of course the call about the drug dealer he's been looking for comes AFTER the surgery, and since he forgot about his daughter's show, she downloads the Uber app for him because he won't be able to drive himself around that day.

Still, he tries, and wrecks his car - but all of this goes toward character, it shows that he's a straight-ahead, forceful guy who has trouble asking other people for help.  He's more of a "hold the gun on somebody and demand answers" kind of guy, cut from the same cloth as Riggs from "Lethal Weapon", or any of a number of characters played by Dwayne Johnson.  Shoot 'em all and then sort it out later.  But since he desperately needs to reach his contact and get a lead on the bad guy, he takes that step and calls an Uber, not knowing what the consequences will be.

Let's just assume there are a number of NITPICK POINTS here, associated with Vic's vision.  Like, if he can't drive a car, how is he properly operating the Uber app?  Just saying.  As a person who's had eyeglasses since the age of 6, I can't really condone the actions of Vic here with regards to his vision. Clearly he had bad vision BEFORE the operation, so he's already familiar with the concept of not being able to see.  What, exactly, suddenly made him think that he'd be able to operate a car while his eyes are still recovering from LASIK surgery?  Did he suddenly get stupid when his vision was bad, but in a different way?  Plus, he's a cop, so he should be well aware of the potential consquences of driving while impaired - so while this stuff is all funny, and necessary to drive the plot forward, it's not at all logical.  And as a sight-challenged person, I think I take some offense here - impaired vision does not lead to impaired judgement.  In fact, it's quite the opposite - if I lost my glasses and couldn't see well, there's no way I'd get behind the wheel or do any of the other things Vic does while his eyes are recovering.

Meanwhile, the mild-mannered driver he happens to choose, Stu, has problems of his own, like a dead-end job at a sporting goods store (which is why he's driving Uber shifts on his off-hours) and a business deal/platonic relationship with a woman he likes, they're going to open a spin class center together, only he can't quite tell her how he feels about her.  Oh, if only he could encounter someone who could show him how to assert himself and take control of his life!  Wait for it...

Vic forces Stu in to a number of dangerous situations, while he works his way up the drug-dealer chain in order to find out when the big drop is going down.  But together, can the two of them track down the top crook, make it to the gallery show, uncover police corruption and fix Stu's career and relationship, all at the same time?  While forging a friendship based on mutual respect, despite their vast personality differences?  Duh, it's a movie, of course they can!

Where the heck has Mira Sorvino been hiding?  There's plenty of credits on her IMDB page, but the last film that she was in that I've seen was "The Final Cut", released in 2004!  Has she encountered some difficulty getting hired in Hollywood, or has she deliberately been turning down mainstream work in favor of smaller, more personal projects?  It's tough to determine.

Also starring Kumail Nanjiani (last heard in "Men in Black: International"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Iko Uwais (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens"), Natalie Morales (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Betty Gilpin (last seen in "True Story"), Jimmy Tatro (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Mira Sorvino (last seen in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"), Steve Howey (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Amin Joseph (last seen in "The Gambler"), Scott Lawrence (last seen in "The Host"), Rene Moran, Julia Vasi, Melody Peng, Victoria Anastasi, Malachi Malik (last seen in "The Accountant"), Amber Chardae Robinson, Patricia French (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Roger Payano (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Jay D. Kacho.

RATING: 6 out of 10 male strippers