The Dark Tower

Year 12, Day 277 - 10/3/20 - Movie #3,666

BEFORE: Look at that, I've got a "666" right there in the film's number, totally arbitrary, I know, but you love to see that during Halloween season, right?  I remember way back in Year 2 that I saved the horror movie "It" for the slot numbered 666, and I thought that was really clever.  Of course, that was the 1990 two episode mini-series based on the Stephen King novel, not the 2017 big screen adaptation of the same story.  I've got "It: Chapter Two" coming up at the end of the month, also "Doctor Sleep" in about two weeks, so it's a big month for catching up on Stephen King, a perennial choice for movies around here during October.  King's been so prolific that it seems there are always a couple more movies based on his books to watch - I'll still have the remake of "Pet Sematary", the original "Salem's Lot" and a couple of lesser works left after this month is over.

(Movies #1,666 and #2,666 don't fit the pattern and are therefore discounted.  There's nothing demonic about Woody Allen's "September", is there?)

Fran Kranz carries over from "The Cabin in the Woods".  There's a film called "A Good Marriage" based on a Stephen King story, it's available on AmazonPrime, and I could have linked there via Kristen Connolly, but then that's a dead end, I couldn't proceed any further from there, so that link is also hereby discounted.

THE PLOT: A boy haunted by visions of a dark tower from a parallel reality teams up with the tower's disillusioned guardian to stop an evil warlock known as the Man in Black, who plans to use the boy to destroy the tower and open the gates of Hell.

AFTER: Again, I offered to hold off on this one until Saturday afternoon, to give my wife a chance to watch this with me, but she declined, despite being a big fan of (some of) Stephen King's books.  And again, I point out that unlike me, she seems to know a thing or two about what movies to not watch.  Maybe she just didn't get into the whole "Dark Tower" series, which is a complex set of eight books and two short stories, incorporating elements of horror, fantasy and Westerns, which many people have described over the years as "basically unfilmable" - and yet somebody persisted.  Note that I didn't use the word "succeeded".

I have to back up a bit here, because it took about 10 years to bring this film to the screen, beginning back in 2007 when J.J. Abrams and the other creators of "Lost", Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, optioned the rights from King, who happened to be a big fan of "Lost", and agreed that maybe these were the right guys for the job.  The "Lost" guys, on the other hand, were big Stephen King fans, and maybe that's what got in the way when they tried to adapt the series into film form.  It's inevitable that some changes need to be made when adapting a book into a movie, some things have to be condensed, some characters or plotlines might need to be dropped, but if they think that's like chipping pieces off of a Michelangelo sculpture, they may not be able to do what needs to be done.  This is what held up "Watchmen" for so many years, and finally a filmmaker came along and realized that the comic book was, in itself, already the perfect storyboard for a movie. (Mostly...)

Ron Howard and Universal Pictures then spent five years trying to adapt the series, planning a trilogy of films and then a couple of TV mini-series to bridge the gaps in-between.  Casting choices were bouncing around between Viggo Mortensen and Javier Bardem, then later Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson.  But after spending $5 million on the rights to the stories (the "Lost" guys spent only $19.00)
Universal started cutting back the project's budget, and talking about a Netflix release instead of a theatrical one.  Suddenly the script had to be re-written to accommodate the smaller budget, and I'll bet that suddenly the process of cutting out characters and plotlines got a lot easier when there was less money to go around.

Sony Pictures got involved in 2015, with a re-worked script and a renewed sense of purpose, also a new director, so Ron Howard was out (don't worry about him, he landed on his feet), some definitive casting choices were finally made, and the film was on track for a 2017 release.  But really, by this point with so many irons in the fire, so many re-workings of the script, could the final film even resemble the original book series any more?  Because of all this monkeying around, I'm fairly sure that the story here has been gutted of most pertinent details, and is now little more than a framework of a plot, containing just a few basic elements.  It's really just down to "good guy battles bad guy" at this point, with sort of half a point to make which no longer makes any sense, assuming that it made sense in the first place, which I doubt.

Basically our Earth, our reality, is one of several, and protecting all the different realities in the universe is the titular Dark Tower, which somehow keeps all the bad nasty things that are outside the universe from getting in.  The Man in Black wants to destroy the tower, somehow using a power generated from the minds of kidnapped Earth children, to let the bad things in from Hell (?) and the last Gunslinger is trying to stop the Man in Black, thereby saving the Tower and protecting the universe.  Jake is an Earth kid who has "The Shine" and has been drawing images of the Gunslinger and the Man in Black, and figures out the location of a portal to get off our Earth and into Midworld, where the Gunslinger is, to help take down the Man in Black.  Again, this feelsl like an extremely over-simplified version of a much more complex story, and once I'm done here I'm going to go look up the plot of the Stephen King books, and I'm certain they'll be much more elaborate.

My understanding is that there were going to be all sorts of connections to other Stephen King stories, because I thought they all took place in the same universe, but maybe I missed them, or failed to understand the connections, because now I have to go look those up too.  Damn, why is this movie requiring me to do so much extra work?  Why can't I just say this is a lame movie and move on?  I just don't have that in me, apparently.  Or maybe I was thinking of that "Castle Rock" series on Hulu, the one that is filled with Easter eggs and inside references to the other films in the Stephen King-verse.  I suppose I could go watch that show, but I'm in the middle of Season 1 of "Jessica Jones" right now, and I want to finish the Marvel series that are on Netflix before they expire.  I already watched "Daredevil", "Punisher" and "The Defenders", but not "Jessica Jones", "Cage" and "Iron Fist".  Since we still don't know when the pandemic's going to end, maybe I can still keep working on this, then think about "Castle Rock".

But it's kind of funny that I'm 8 episodes in on "Jessica Jones" where the main villain, Kilgrave (aka the Purple Man) has mind control powers (aka power of suggestion) and coincidentally, so does the Man in Black.  He can tell people to "hate" or "stop breathing" and then that's what they'll do, and they're powerless to fight back.  The only people immune to his powers seem to be Jake and the Gunslinger (Roland), which seems extremely convenient.  The Man in Black is also referred to as a "warlock", but I wasn't sure if this is accurate, or if he was a demon, the Devil, or what.  Again, an appalling lack of details here for people who never read the books.  I'm usually torn over whether I should read the book first before seeing a movie version, like I bought the novel "Ready Player One" but never got around to reading it, and now that I've found I enjoy the movie, it's kind of too late to read the book.  Again, going back to "Watchmen", I loved the comic and I was glad the film was very faithful to it, except the film had a slightly different ending, which I preferred over the book's.  (Since I don't read many books these days, it's becoming less and less of a problem, though.)

Jake and Roland learn that they need to destroy the Man in Black's machine that's trying to take down the Tower, but it's six months away by foot.  Their solution is to use a portal to get to our Earth, then use another portal to get closer to the machine.  This was also fairly confusing, like I thought the tower was somehow outside all realities so it could protect all realities, so how can it be on Mid-World, too?  Again, please dumb it down for us clueless people.  Anyway, that's the plan, only the Man in Black traps Roland in a gun store and then brings Jake with him to his machine, to use Jake's power to make another attempt on the Tower.  Roland then has to find the portal back to Mid-World and wait for Jake to send him instructions on how to use it, then defeat the Man in Black.  Simple, right?

At least this all clocks in at about 90 minutes, so even though it felt like a waste of time, at least it won't waste too much of your time - I'm afraid that's the best I can say about it.  Disappointing, on so many levels.

They shopped around a TV series that would have perhaps been closer to the book series and tell the story leading up to this movie, but it got shopped around to Netflix and AmazonPrime and it seems that everybody took a pass.  Now there are rumblings about a sequel to this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  Considering the terrible production timelines that were involved in developing this movie, I think it's more likely that another 10 years will pass before somebody tries to re-boot this storyline, similar to how movies like "The Golden Compass", "Westworld" and "Lost in Space" got hot again as new TV series after a required fallow period.

Also starring Idris Elba (last seen in "The Mountain Between us"), Matthew McConaughey (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Tom Taylor (last seen in "The Kid Who Would Be King"), Claudia Kim (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Abbey Lee (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Katheryn Winnick (last seen in "Killers"), Dennis Haysbert (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Michael Barbieri (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Jose Zuniga (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Nicholas Hamilton (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), De-Wet Nagel, Ben Gavin, Nicholas Pauling, Inge Beckmann, Alfredo Narciso (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Eva Kaminsky, Robbie McLean, Mark Elderkin, Karl Thaning, Reon Van der Watt, Kenneth Fok (last seen in "Serenity"), Gabe Gabriel, Bill Walters.

RATING: 4 out of 10 helpful villagers

The Cabin in the Woods

Year 12, Day 275 - 10/1/20 - Movie #3,665

BEFORE: Before I kick off the annual horror movie jam for October, and complete a Chris Hemsworth triple-play, let's take a quick look back at my format breakdown for September:

SEPTEMBER -
6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Wife, Thirteen, Bad Boys for Life, Gemini Man, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Drunk Parents
5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Spies in Disguise, Stuber, Bad Education, Lucy in the Sky
4 watched on Netflix: Cookie's Fortune, Tallulah, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Extraction
2 watched on iTunes: The New Guy, Liberal Arts
3 watched on Amazon Prime: The Wilde Wedding, The Circle, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
2 watched on Hulu: Please Stand By, Hearts Beat Loud
22 TOTAL

I know, it was a bit of a sleeper month, some back-to-school films and some indie films that barely moved the needle, a couple Will Smith action films, though, but then the sappiness of Mr. Rogers, the silliness of Will Ferrell and the nightmare that was "Drunk Parents" (still haven't recovered).  But half of my films are still coming from cable, that's a trend that doesn't seem likely to change.

October's not going to be a full month, either, just 24 films, because I left a week's worth of room here in case New York Comic-Con happened, or we planned some kind of vacation.  Well, no Comic-Con, and no getaway is planned, but my wife and I both have birthdays, so I'll work in the necessary skip days somehow.  Even if I don't enjoy these horror movies, I love this chain - maybe that's a bit hard to explain, but it's where we find ourselves.  Now, technically, two of October's planned films aren't scary horror films, one's a superhero film and one's more like a fantasy comedy, but connections have to be made somehow, films have been rescheduled here and I really want to clear them from the list, and other films that COULD have fit here, like "Hellboy", have been removed due to close proximity to "Black Widow" - but I'm going to forge ahead with it and try to take it all as it comes.  When the month is over, I'm going to be very, very close to the end of regulation play for the year and maybe I'll do a quick re-assess then.

Chris Hemsworth carries over from "Extraction".

THE PLOT: Five friends go for a break at a remote cabin, where they get more than they bargained for, discovering the truth behind the cabin in the woods.

AFTER: Speaking of formats, I'm not quite sure where to count this one - because I watched the first 1/3 on cable on demand, the second 1/3 on my DVD, and the final 1/3 on Hulu.  Obviously my first choice was cable, because the digital reception's better than a DVD and also I get the captions, but when I went back to look at something again, the DVR would not stop rewinding, then it wouldn't go forward again - I think there was a bad connection, or the cable company was updating the listings, because after finally stopping it, the search function was unavailable, so I couldn't even find the movie in the menu to pick up where I left off.  OK, so there's my back-up DVD, only sometimes the DVD player won't recognize the second film on a DVD with two movies on it, and then I have to turn off the DVD player and wait a few minutes before trying again.  It's definitely the player and not the disc that's the problem, because that movie will play fine in the back-up DVD player that's part of a DVD/VCR combo, only then the resolution isn't great.  And then even when I could get the primary DVD to play the movie, the TV has a problem with signals from that DVD player when movie scenes are too dark, it makes them even DARKER (umm, thanks?) unless I leave the DVD menu screen up, which helps lighten the image, but blocks part of the picture.  Finally I just said "screw it" and checked to see if this film was streaming anywhere just to finish the film without getting too pissed off, even though it was clearly already too late for that.

Anyway, I persevered, and what the hell did I just watch?  Admittedly I added this to my list months ago after reading some internet article about, "Hey, here's like the craziest horror movie that you probably haven't seen" which mentioned that it was full of in-jokes and Easter eggs and maybe it was clickbait of the highest order, but I'll admit that I was intrigued.  OK, put it on the list.  Tomorrow's film was, for a very long time, the planned start of this year's horror chain, then a review of the cast lists suggested that I could tack this one on at the start, and this freed up the films that I was going to use to link TO the horror chain, like "Frailty", and so that became part of the McConaughey chain earlier this year.  Somehow, these things keep finding ways to work out for the best this year, but then again, it takes a lot of work on my part to make them work out that way.

Reportedly, this film flew under the radar for several years - it was filmed back in 2009, before "The Avengers" and before "Thor" made Chris Hemsworth a star, and some say that his performance here had a lot to do with casting him as Thor. (Joss Whedon, director of "The Avengers", wrote this one). This was going to be theatrically released in 2010, but then its studio, MGM, had financial problems and sold several films to Lionsgate, who planned to release it for Halloween 2011.  It finally hit festivals like South by Southwest in 2012 and then got a theatrical release, April 2012.  Even then, I think it was rarely discussed, because I didn't learn about it until this year.  But then, I'm still not any kind of horror enthusiast, I still have to force myself to devote time to this genre every year - and now it's more of a habit for me than, say, a true love of the subject matter.

Part of that, I think, is because the entire genre is so ridiculous - that, plus as a kid they scared me silly, I couldn't sleep for days after seeing "Poltergeist" in a theater - so I really needed to get my head straight at some point, and clarify what is real and what is not real.  To do that, I had to dismiss all horror movies everywhere and maybe that's why it took me so long to circle back to them.  Sci-fi I could watch all day long, and in many ways those films are just as ridiculous, but what makes some horror movies scary is that they're about people just like us, who want to do something completely normal, like go on vacation or go party in the woods, and then something terrible happens.  The fact that this WORKS to scare people means that Hollywood is going to use that same tactic again and again - jeez, how many "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm St." movies are there?  Not that I've seen any of those...

(ALERT: Possible SPOILERS ahead, turn back now if you haven't seen this or plan to in the future.)

But every once in a while, a film comes along that subverts a whole genre - the last one I saw that did that for horror was "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil", which re-imagined the whole "Chainsaw Massacre" slasher film topic with a bunch of teens who were very accident prone and these two poor innocent rednecks kept getting blamed incorrectly for their deaths.  This one goes even a step beyond that, and re-imagines the whole "haunted cabin" motif as a secret cover for a giant corporate or government conspiracy - I don't want to give away the whole plot here, but it involves a giant mission-control sort of set-up, which the film does show us very early on.  It's extremely cagey about it for a very long time, like is this a VR simulation, a TV reality prank show or a terrible theme park gone wrong, or what?  More to the point, who's watching, who's in charge here?  Maybe there's an answer at the end, maybe not, and maybe you buy it and maybe you don't, but life's a journey, not a destination, so I'm not even going to get into all that.

They could have introduced the whole "mission control" storyline much later, if you ask me - but there was a conscious choice made to do that early, but it's an indicator that this is not your standard horror film.  Horny teens go to a remote cabin in the woods and accidentally unleash an ancient evil, sure, that's fairly standard.  But if the house is full of cameras and microphones, and everyone's actions are being recorded and, to a certain extent, controlled, then that's a whole new layer of extra crazy.  Someone's pumping the woods full of pheromones to make the teens horny, and then other drugs in the house to make them stupider - which could go a long way towards explaining why teens make such dumb moves when they know there's a killer stalking the campgrounds.  (I think there was a car commercial a couple years ago that riffed on that, with a bunch of teens choosing not to jump into the car and drive to safety, but instead hide in the shack full of buzzsaws, axes and other sharp objects - which allowed the backwoods serial killer to do a take for the camera, as if to say, "Really?").

The thing I wanted to go back and take a look at, which led to all my technical problems while viewing this film, and which was also mentioned in that article I read about the film, was the big white-board in the control room, which detailed all the possible scenarios that could befall our heroes, since the cabin essentially allows them to choose their own path to destruction.  Could be vampires, could be ghosts, could be zombies.  It's a little like that bit in "Ghostbusters" where a random thought was used to choose the form of the Destroyer.  Place your bets, because everyone working in the control room's got money on something, like a giant football pool.  One guy keeps betting on "Merman", and it's never going to be "Merman", is it?  Not until "The Shape of Water" got released six years later, and I don't know how this movie could possibly have predicted that.  (Hey, wasn't Richard Jenkins also in THAT film?  Hmm...)

I think in many ways the technicians pulling the strings here are a stand-in for the audience, and this is sort of how some people watch horror movies, they tune in knowing very little and then try to predict where the film is going to go.  This can be a tricky thing, because we all love to be surprised, but we also don't want to waste our time and money on a film that doesn't deliver, so some research is required before selecting a movie to watch, but too much knowledge about what's going to happen is also bad, because then we could also feel like we've wasted our time and money if there are no surprises.  So that's why I stop talking about the plot at a certain point, because I'll always try to preserve the payoffs if I can.  But I don't think it gives away too much to say that the last half hour of this is just plain batshit crazy.

Really, there's no better way for me to celebrate horror films in this Year of Weird Movies than by kicking things off with one of the weirdest.  This meta-level horror film somehow explains everything and nothing, and folds the whole genre in on itself so many times that it nearly implodes in an avalanche of crazy nonsense, but I think in a good way.  Extra points, I think, for including both a character who's a bigger burnout stoner than Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo" and also working in the REO Speedwagon song "Roll With the Changes".

Also starring Kristen Connolly (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Anna Hutchinson, Fran Kranz (last seen in "Orange County"), Jesse Williams (last seen in "The Butler"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Bradley Whitford (last seen in "Other People"), Brian J. White, Amy Acker (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Tim DeZarn (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Jodelle Ferland (last heard in "ParaNorman"), Matt Drake, Dan Payne, Dan Shea, Maya Massar, Tom Lenk, Greg Zach, Patrick Sabongui, Nels Lennarson (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Terry Notary (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Patrick Gilmore (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Richard Cetrone, Naomi Gantug, Phoebe Galvan.

RATING: 7 out of 10 Japanese schoolgirls

Extraction

Year 12, Day 273 - 9/29/20 - Movie #3,664

BEFORE: It's the last film for September, with Chris Hemsworth carrying over from "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot".  On one level, I know I should be happy, because this perfectly sets me up for the October horror chain to start in two days time, and I've got a clear path to the end of the year, even though Disney moved "Black Widow" from November to next May.

But it's still going to eat at me, isn't it?  The fact that "Hellboy" is sitting there on my DVR, and if I follow my rules, that I made up, I can't watch it.  "Hellboy" was programmed right after "Black Widow", with David Harbour carrying over.  And what stinks is that David Harbour is in today's movie, which makes me feel like there should have been a way.  Months ago I came up with some alternate plan that moved "Hellboy" up to today's slot, or someplace close to it - only when I reviewed that plan a second time, I couldn't find the connection on the other end.  Did I ever have one, or was it just wishful thinking that one would present itself?  Did I mistakenly believe that some actor or actress, like Rosario Dawson, had a role in "Hellboy"?  It's annoying that I can't remember what I was thinking at the time that led me to rely on a path that didn't exist.

I worked on it a bit today, one last futile hope - and sure, I found a couple of paths that would allow me to move "Hellboy" here, but none of them fully work.  Frankie Shaw from "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" was in a film called "Knife Fight" with David Harbour, which would link to "Hellboy" and then "Extraction" and allow me to continue - but should I let the linking force me to watch a film I don't have a copy of, and possibly have no interest in?  Then there's Sasha Lane from "Hearts Beat Loud", who does have a role in "Hellboy" - but of course I can't erase the fact that I've watched four films since then.

So maybe I just need to suck it up - "Hellboy", like so many other things, is re-scheduled for next year, and I have to deal with that.  It was always an outlier, anyway - a sort-of horror film that didn't fit into October, it was hanging out in November as a back-up plan after "Black Widow" moved to November.  It's connected to that Marvel film on my schedule, so I should just be happy that the collateral damage of the "Black Widow" delay is only taking one other film along with it.

THE PLOT: Tyler Rake, a fearless black market mercenary, embarks on the most deadly extraction of his career when he's enlisted to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord.

AFTER: Again, I'm trying my best to be happy, but these days, that's just not easy.  I've got election anxiety on top of pandemic anxiety on top of partial-unemployment anxiety, so really, I feel like my nerves are getting stretched very thin.  I'm just a big ball of worry these days, and spending 4 out of 7 days at home still isn't calming me down at all, it just feels like it's making things worse.  Every day I don't go out and get some new part-time job is painful, but any job I take, like if I go work at a store or something, just increases my risk, and Covid rates are starting to creep up again in New York City, at least in some neighborhoods.  We're supposed to enter a new phase tomorrow, with limited indoor dining made available, but I bet if the citywide positive rates go up over 2% or 3%, they're going to reconsider that move if they make the connection.  (I thinking, bring on the horror movies for 2020, because at this point, what could be scarier than real life?)

"Extraction" didn't do much to alleviate my stress levels - I guess maybe it was an OK distraction, because it did allow me to focus less on my personal stress by showing me somebody else's.  This film happens to be the most popular Netflix original film at the moment - or is it of all time? - but it's also the second film I've seen this year about someone who's an expert at rescuing people being held for ransom, the first was "Proof of Life".  There's also some stuff in here about teens being trained as soldiers, so I guess it's also got similar themes to "Beasts of No Nation", though it's not set in Africa but Bangladesh instead.  So it's those two films mixed in with a dash of "Slumdog Millionaire" - just kidding, it's got nothing to do with that one.

Tyler Rake is a mercenary soldier, in desperate need of money - or perhaps in desperate need of being able to handle a job that nobody else can handle, it's maybe even a little bit of both.  There's some suggestion that he's secretly looking for the job that will take him down, but I'm not sure I buy that motivation, because there are probably easier ways to kill yourself, like, say, not wearing a mask to a political rally these days, but that's a separate issue.  When the teen son of a Bangladeshi drug lord is held for ransom by another gangster, Tyler and his team are called in - because they'll cost money, too, but can you really trust the other gangster to let the kid go, once the ransom has been paid?

Tyler does the job, he locates where the teen is being held, infiltrates the site and takes them all down, the first of many thrilling action sequences where it's basically him against everyone, and he tends to come out on top.  But after transmitting evidence that the mission has succeeded, something goes wrong, and his team is attacked by other forces hired by the kid's father.  I was very confused at this point, but reading the plot summary on Wikipedia suggests that after Tyler got Ovi free from the kidnappers, it made sense for his father's forces to take his team down, because then they don't have to pay him.  OK, now it's clear, things were just a bit foggy during the movie, there was a lot going on in the action sequences, and not much time spent on exposition.

Tyler's support team tells him repeatedly to abandon the job, leave the kid behind and walk away, but he can't - this is not who he is, plus he's haunted by the memory of his own son, who got sick after Tyler left his family.  So instead he's challenged with somehow getting Ovi across Dhaka when simply everyone is looking for them - the kid's father's forces, the rival drug lord's forces, the police who are probably on the payroll of one of the gangsters, and then there's the army of street kids who've been pressed into similar service.  Tyler's forced to call on an old teammate who lives in the city, and is out of the extraction business, plus they may not have parted on good terms, making an already tough situation even tougher, and there goes my stress level again.

More elaborate fight sequences and one unlikely team-up later, and Tyler has to decide what's more important, getting paid or making sure that the kid is brought to safety, because it seems at this point it's impossible to accomplish both things.  It all leads to a big showdown on one of the blocked-off vehicle-filled bridges leading out of the city, which isn't really any kind of spoiler because the film actually STARTS with a flash-forward of this battle, then spends the next two hours jumping back to explain how Tyler got there. This is a valid storytelling format, commonly seen on the "splash page" of comic books, but it's been gaining more exposure in movies over the last few years.  The theory is that you give the viewers a little taste of what's to come, even if that taste is very confusing, so they'll be eager to know how we're all going to get to that extreme set of circumstances.

The exciting car chases and indoor shoot-outs seem extremely complicated - it's very possible a ton of special effects were used to transition between exterior shots to the interior shot within a vehicle, and then back out again.  This technique can very impressive unless you should happen to think a bit too much about, "Hey, how did they DO that?" at which point you're kind of aware that an effects shot is in play, and that can take you out of the film's internal reality for just a bit.  So I recommend trying to not think about that too much, however my recommendation itself might make that impossible.  Umm, sorry.

Seeing Hemsworth in action, and David Harbour as another actor who was JUST ABOUT poised to become part of the MCU in "Black Widow" before the quarantine restrictions got extended, has really driven home to me that this will, unfortunately, be the first year in ages that I haven't seen a movie based on Marvel comics.  Again, this is very distressing for me, but some sacrifices have to be made. I wasn't even able to see "New Mutants" this year, so I'm eager for 2021 and/or a Covid vaccine to be available, so we can get movie theaters in NYC open again.  In the ongoing battle between Marvel and DC, it looks like DC's going to win 2020 hands-down, even if I don't get to see "Wonder Woman 1984" until next year.  I did a whole week of DC-based films in January, including "Joker", "Shazam!" and 6 animated films with Batman or Superman.  Then I followed up in May with "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay", and I've still got "Birds of Prey" scheduled for October.  Oh, it's painful for me as a Marvel fan (in the comic-book world, I probably read about 80% to 90% Marvel) but here's hoping that Marvel can come back strong on my 2021 schedule.

Also starring Rudhraksh Jaiswal, Randeep Hooda, Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "The Upside"), Pankaj Tripathi, David Harbour (last seen in "State of Play"), Priyanshu Painyuli, Sudipto Balav, Adam Bessa, Shataf Figar, Suraj Rikame, Neha Mahajan, Sam Hargrave (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Abhinav Srivastava, Rob Collins, Wayne Blair, Chris Jai Alex, Vonzell Carter.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Oxycontin tablets

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Year 12, Day 271 - 9/27/20 - Movie #3,663

BEFORE: I've been hearing about these "flights to nowhere", which are a desperate play by the airlines to make some money at a time when hardly anybody is traveling - I think the main one is in Australia, it takes off from Sydney, flies around the country for seven hours and then lands back in Sydney, thus not spreading any COVID-19 to another city or country.  Really, it's all the things that many people hate about flying - cramped space, shared air, a non-zero chance of being in a plane crash - without any of the benefits, like going somewhere and accomplishing something by visiting another city.  I'll put up with the downsides of traveling on a plane if there's something waiting for me at the other end, like a cruise or a week in Vegas, but I'm just not seeing the upside of getting on a plane and enduring turbulence and leg cramps for seven hours just to fly over a couple tourist attractions and not really visit them.  Yet these flights are selling out, which I think is an indication of just how desperate people are to get out of the house and just pretend that things are back to normal for a few hours, when they clearly are not.

But I wish I'd thought about these flights to nowhere a couple days ago, because they would have been a great metaphor for "Drunk Parents" - that storyline similarly circled around for a few hours and never really got anywhere.  I'm hoping for better results today, with a new (OK, from last year, but new to me) film from Kevin Smith, and man, it's been a while.  I endured both "Tusk" and "Yoga Hosers" back-to-back a couple years ago, and they did not score well according to my very non-scientific system.  Again, maybe better results today, hope springs eternal.

This is one of those films with a HUGE cast, dozens of cameos, it looks like - which is part of the reason it's been scheduled several times already this year, but since it's the Year of the Re-Schedule, I didn't really mind moving it if I thought it could fulfill a better linking need a little further down the road.  With so many actors in it, it could fit in many different places, and I think by putting it HERE it's helping me out of something of a linking jam, so it makes sense to put it where it has the most value.  Without it I simply can't connect the September chain I wanted to the start of my horror chain, I think that will be evident in just a couple of days, when you see how I get from here to there. Putting this between two other films with, say, Ben Affleck or Molly Shannon in them would have felt like a waste, or at least a mis-step.

Plus, my wife and I watched "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" together, years ago, so I gave her a couple of chances to watch the sequel with me, once I realized it was on AmazonPrime.  And she passed, again and again - but she's funny that way, I'll watch every film in a franchise long after they've started to go downhill, and she would rather just keep the memory of the first film in a series, if it was good, and not risk ruining that with an inferior sequel.  She's probaby right to do so - but if this Reboot film is any good, I can at least bring that to her attention tomorrow.

Joe Manganiello carries over from "Drunk Parents".

THE PLOT: Jay and Silent Bob return to Hollywood to stop a reboot of the "Bluntman and Chronic" movie from getting made.

AFTER: Jeez, how long has it been since "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"?  That film precedes my blog's existence by eight full years - that was close to Will Ferrell's first movie role, wasn't it?  (OK, it was more like his tenth, but his star was still on the rise.). That film came out in 2001, and Kevin Smith's directed like 7 other films since then, including "Clerks II", and he's directed episodes of "Flash" and "Supergirl" and produced a bunch of other TV shows that I don't watch.  But he keeps coming back to this shared universe of his films, the only problem being that it has to include films like "Dogma" and "Chasing Amy" that diverged from the central storyline quite a bit, so as a result there are actors he's used again and again that now have to play multiple roles, and the fans are then asked to just ignore this, which isn't possible.  (Remember when Jason Lee had to play both Brodie AND Banky in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"?  And nobody noticed that those two characters looked alike?  Just wait, it gets worse...)

Here, Jay and Silent Bob find out that the "Bluntman and Chronic" franchise is going to be re-booted, so they go see Brodie so they can find out just what a re-boot is.  They learn that's when Hollywood makes the same movie over again, only with just enough changed so that you have to pay for the same shit again.  Then they're off to Hollywood on a quest to stop the movie from being made, which is basically the same exact plotline from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", only just enough has been changed here so that we all have to pay for the same shit again.  Hmm, I can't tell if this movie is aware of its own irony or not - either Kevin Smith is clueless, or guilty of the same sins as the other franchise directors, and I'm not sure which is worse.  He's got to be in on the joke, right?  But then he's just repeating himself, or the whole franchise is coasting on fumes, and neither of those is good.  It's like "Star Wars" telling us we have to watch the heroes blow up yet ANOTHER Death Star, even if it's not called that.

The guilty party here, the man who's poised to destroy the "Bluntman" franchise, is Kevin Smith - so now HE has to play two roles in this reboot - which is only a reboot by HIS own rules, really.  For most reboots, that means some kind of total re-invention or re-casting, so this isn't a re-boot, it's just a rehash, or standard sequel.  Because at least they change everything around for a re-boot, this is just the same story, only without Will Ferrell.  And they check in on how all the secondary characters from all the other View Askew movies are doing now, and people are co-parenting with their gay exes while learning from their toddlers and going vegan and eating healthier and trying not to just hang out in front of the Quik Stop dealing drugs all day.  But at the same time, they're all smoking more weed than ever - maybe that's just Jay and Silent Bob.

The goal is the same - get to Hollywood in under five days, to stop a movie based on them from being made - which you might be able to do in a van if you do nothing but drive, don't stop for sleeping or any other distractions.  But OF COURSE they stop for distractions, so therefore the drive is impossible.  So is getting tickets for Chronic-Con on such short notice, but of course they find a way to do that, too.  Ben Affleck plays the magical comic-book writer with badges for everyone who also makes veiled references to playing Batman while giving us life lessons about raising kids.  (BARF!). Meanwhile Matt Damon is reduced to a quick cameo who makes veiled references to playing Jason Bourne while narrating the journey west and talking about being the angel from "Dogma".  (Again, Kevin Smith plays himself, a guy who debates whether he should cast his talentless daughter in a movie while giving us life lessons about eating healthier to avoid heart attacks.)

In the last film that focused on Jay and Silent Bob (who are really the C3P0 and R2d2 of the View Askewniverse, if you think about it - only they don't make "Star Wars" movies about the droids) they hooked up with four women who pretended to be animal rights activists, but were really diamond thieves, or something, and all that slowed down the mission, but was at least interesting.  The big difference in this film is perhaps that our heroes travel in a similar van but with four very different women, an ethnically diverse and partially handi-capable group of teens who met in a chat-room for girls who grew up without fathers (hint, hint) and somehow feel that appearing in a crowd scene in the "Bluntman and Chronic" reboot will go a long way toward alleviating their various long-standing emotional problems resulting from their past traumas.  Umm, it won't.  But hey, look how woke our franchise is now!

For extra liberal bonus points, the group of girls plus Jay and Bob take down a pedophile and the Klan - softball targets if ever there were any.  (Is this "Drunk Parents" or "The Blues Brothers"?). Is it OK to beat up a pedophile and take his van?  Is it OK to take down a Klan rally with the Alec Baldwin speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross"?  Does that even make sense?  And how does this get us any closer to Hollywood?  I suppose it makes more sense than hiring an Uber driver to take them cross-country, but really, not by much.

The good news is that things do perk up once they finally make it to the convention - there's so much to make fun of at a big geek convention!  (Or at least there was, back in the before times, when you could have a big geek convention...). Everybody at the convention is dressed like Jay and Silent Bob, so they blend right in, to the point of almost disappearing.  And Kevin Smith/Silent Bob does a riff on that famous Marx Brothers routine from "Duck Soup" where two people who look alike make you think that somebody's looking in a mirror, when it's the look-alike seen through an open door.  Can't beat the classics, really, all you can do is rip them off.  Here's where another zillion cameos come into play, too, from the reunited cast of "Clerks" to the reunited cast of "Chasing Amy" to the reunited cast of "Comic Book Men", which was one reality show that I never watched.  You're also advised to stay away from this film if you don't know who played the lawyer in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", just like if you didn't see "Ant-Man and the Wasp", you're not going to understand the jumping-off point in "Avengers: Endgame".

Look, I've been doing this a long time, I've seen sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots.  I've seen sequels that were also prequels, remakes that were also sequels, prequels that were also reboots.  But I guess I've never seen a sequel pretending to be a reboot but that was really a remake.  So, that's...something?  I can't even tell, because I'm still thinking about that flight to nowhere, and in its own way, this is that - it gets off the ground, sure, but then, really it's almost got no place to go.  Well, OK, it definitely goes somewhere, but it's no place new, and then it lands back at the same airport, so what was the point, except to kill a few hours when we've got nothing better to do?

I really wanted to like this film, because I'm a fan of what Kevin Smith has accomplished, he created a whole universe where many different stories can be told, so he should be up on a level with Stan Lee, George Lucas and Stephen King.  But he's not, because something seems to be holding him back and making him unmotivated. (Gee, I wonder what...). Also, he needs to remember how to be funny, it seems that heart attack made him just a bit too serious.  And the jokes he tells are still racially charged - you just can't cast a diverse cast and then STILL make fun of their ethnicities, because then you've negated the mitzvah.  Dude, this is your universe, you're like its God, and you just want to keep doing the same plotlines and the same jokes, over and over?  (Oh, sorry, you threw in some references to "The Shape of Water" and "Justice League", have a damn medal.). I'm glad you survived your heart attack, but maybe that should have been a wake-up call to make something new and positive instead of the same old tired story.

Also starring Jason Mewes (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Kevin Smith (allegedly last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Harley Quinn Smith (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"), Shannon Elizabeth (last seen in "Love Actually"), Aparna Brielle, Jason Lee (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Joey Lauren Adams (last seen in "Big Daddy"), Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (also last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Brian O'Halloran (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Treshelle Edmond, Alice Wen (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Frankie Shaw (last seen in "Dreamland"), Justin Long (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Donnell Rawlings, David Dastmalchian (last seen in "Bird Box"), Chris Jericho (last seen in "MacGruber"), Kate Micucci (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Diedrich Bader (last heard in "Superman: Unbound"), Melissa Benoist (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Val Kilmer (last seen in "The Snowman"), Tommy Chong (last heard in "Zootopia"), Ben Affleck (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Other People"), Ralph Garman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Rosario Dawson (last seen in "Rent"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Shazam!"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Love Happens"), Mickey Gooch Jr. (last seen in "The Clapper"), Joseph D. Reitman (last seen in "Money Monster"), with the voice of Stephen Root (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor")

and cameos from Jason Biggs (last seen in "Saving Silverman"), James Van Der Beek (last seen in "Downsizing"), Method Man (last seen in "Paterson"), Redman, Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Robert Kirkman, Keith Coogan, Stan Lee (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Marilyn Ghigliotti, Ernie O'Donnell, Scott Schiaffo, John Willyung (last seen in "Chasing Amy"), Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Ming Chen, Mike Zapcic, Chris Wood, Jesse Rath, Ben Gleib, (last heard in "The Book of Life") Brian Quinn, Marc Bernardin, Jake Richardson (last seen in "Clerks II"), Nick Fehlinger, Johnny "Bananas" Devenanzio.

RATING: 4 out of 10 Hater Totz