The Eagle Has Landed

Year 13, Day 163 - 6/12/21 - Movie #3,869

BEFORE: Robert Duvall AND Treat Williams both carry over from "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper". And this film came out five years before they faced off in that 1981 very weird film that didn't happen, not that way, not in any way, really.  I've also got questions about today's film, which is about a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill, and I have a feeling that didn't really happen either.  It's almost like you can't count on movies to reflect reality or something...

THE PLOT: A German plot to kidnap Sir Winston Churchill unfolds at the height of World War II. 

AFTER: OK, so I've got some big problems with this film, HUGE problems, and I'd like to start with the casting.  We'll get back to whether it reflects reality in a bit.  Robert Duvall is the first big star we see here, and he's cast as a Nazi.  OK, I believe in Robert Duvall, I think he worked hard to get some form of German accent down, even though since this is an American movie, he was just speaking English with a German accent, not speaking German.  But I'll allow it, because movies.  But next we've got MICHAEL CAINE as a Nazi, and I'm not saying he's not a good actor, but the problem is that he just can't do a German accent, not at all - instead he just sounds, well, a little less like Michael Caine.  But, still quite a bit like Michael Caine, if you know what I mean.  Later on, his Nazi character has to go to the U.K. and pretend to be British, so that familiar Cockney (?) accent kicks into high gear then, and that's when you realize hiring Caine was a good idea, but only for the second half of the film.  First half, terrible idea. (For God's sake, he pronounces the German name "Hans" as if it's the word "hands", just without the D!)

I should point out here that Caine plays Oberst Steiner, and h's not your typical Nazi, he's one of the "good ones" who doesn't quite understand why Hitler wants to round up and kill all the Jews.  He tries to save one Jewish woman from going to the camps, and his superior officers shoot that woman, then imprison Caine's character, and his whole paratrooper unit, just to make a point.  Trump was way off base when he talked about the NeoNazis and KKK in America, saying there were "good people on both sides", and there's a bit of that here in this film, only it JUST DOESN"T work that way.  Nazis are Nazis, this is well-established, just by being Nazis in World War II, they were complicit, and the modern Nazis are not capable of being "good people" and also Nazis at the same time.  Look, years ago I heard my grandmother once say that Hitler was just misunderstood, and took things just a bit too far.  Gee, YA THINK?

Back to the accent thing - next on the scene is Donald Sutherland, playing an Irish man who's working with the Nazis in some way, because the Irish hate the Brits, get it?  The enemy of my enemy is my friend - except that doesn't mean you should be friends with NAZIS, make a damn exception or something.  Sutherland is NOT an Irishman, though I suppose he may be of Irish descent, but again, it's important in the second half that he can pass as an Irish person, one living and working in the U.K.  So they sort of reverse-engineer his back-story and his motivation in order to make this happen, that's very obvious.  (I just checked, he was born in Canada, and is of Scottish, German and English ancestry.  An acceptable Irish accent, though.)

On the American side, because there turns out to be a cadre of American soldiers boarding not far from where this plan goes down, we've got actors Treat Williams, Larry Hagman, and Jeff Conaway, among others.  No qualms about their accents, I think they're all Americans playing Americans, so we're good.  But it all adds up to a strange cast overall, with a diversity that calls to mind "The Dirty Dozen" or "Kelly's Heroes", only without any African-Americans.  Seeing Jeff Conaway playing a soldier sort of reminded me of that time Steve Guttenberg played a Nazi hunter, in "The Boys from Brazil", opposite both Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck.  But I digress.  My point is, that there's a lot of talent here, but the cast is still comprised of actors that you might not expect to see in the same movie.  Know what I mean? 

And some of these actors are known for comedy, which then raises the question - is THIS a comedy?  I don't think so, but then again, I'm not sure.  We know that this plot to kidnap Winston Churchill never really happened, but this film is just too action-based to be considered a comedy, it takes itself WAY too seriously throughout - but then again, so did "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun", even "Top Secret!", which all prove that taking things way too seriously CAN be funny, in its own way.  But "The Eagle Has Landed" never seems to diverge into parody, so that can't be the case.  Some comic moments do come, not during the shoot-outs or the other action scenes, but it's a little funny, perhaps, that the Nazi commandos (cleverly disguised as Polish paratroopers) keep dying off.  I mean, it's not funny at first, because I think there was a unit of 36 of them at the start, then there are only 18 or 19 by the time they get pardoned and sent on the mission.  Nazi prisons must be tough...  Later they sort of die one by one, and then I have to wonder if they were taking their roles as clumsy Poles too seriously - one dies in a water-wheel accident, and it's a bit comical in addition to being tragic.  

(Great idea for a film, maybe - a squad of commandos who are all very clumsy, and they die off one by one in hilarious ways while trying to accomplish their mission - sort of a spin on "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil"?  OK, maybe not...)

Larry Hagman has a few comic moments, too, as the American commander who fought hard for his position in the war, but just got his orders to rotate back home, and he's not happy about it.  He feels a bit like a lost character from "Catch-22" in that way. So, really, in some ways this film seems like it's neither fish nor fowl, not funny enough to be considered a comedy, but also not serious enough to be taken seriously.  I know it's based on a book, but still it presents me with events in the plot that I'm not quite sure I know what to do with.  Am I supposed to root for the central characters here, the Nazis?  I don't really feel comfortable with that - do I want their plans to come to fruition, or should I be hoping that it fails hilariously?  Or just plain fails?  

The screenplay for this film was written by Mankiewicz - that's TOM Mankiewicz, the son of the famous Joseph Mankiewicz.  And the director was John Sturges, director of "The Great Escape", and "The Magnificent Seven", among others.  This was the last film he ever directed, and Quentin Tarantino just did some kind of article or breakdown about the last films from certain directors, and how some of them suck, I guess.  Michael Caine wrote in his autobiography about how Sturges was, at this point in his life, just directing movies so he could earn enough money to go deep-sea fishing, which was his passion.  As soon as "The Eagle Has Landed" wrapped, that's what the director did, he went off fishing and didn't hang around for the editing or the post-production work.  Seems about right. 

Also starring Michael Caine (last seen in "Tenet"), Donald Sutherland (last seen in "Fool's Gold"), Jenny Agutter (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Donald Pleasence (last seen in "Dracula" (1979)), Anthony Quayle (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Jean Marsh (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Sven-Bertil Taube (last seen in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (2009)), John Standing (last seen in "A Good Woman"), Judy Geeson (last seen in "To Sir, with Love"), Larry Hagman (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Siegfried Rauch (last seen in "Le Mans"), Michael Byrne (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Maurice Reeves, Keith Buckley (last seen in "The Spy Who Loved Me"), Terence Plummer (last seen in "Sexy Beast"), Jeff Conaway (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Leigh Dilley, Wolf Kahler (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Benito Mussolini (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump").

RATING: 4 out of 10 sleeper agents

The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

Year 13, Day 162 - 6/11/21 - Movie #3,868

BEFORE: Treat Williams carries over from "Howl".  I wish I could have followed the David Strathairn link to "Nomadland", but my linking chain seems to have other ideas.  Now, I'm not sure when exactly I'm going to get around to watching last year's Best Picture Oscar winner, but it's on the list, so I'll get there somehow, I have to believe that.  Today's film is the second oldest one taking up space on my DVR, I recorded it in back in May of 2019, and I desperately need to free up some space.  So that kind of takes priority for me - look, "Nomadland" is always going to be there - it's on Hulu now and it's probably going to be on cable some time in the future, and maybe by then it will be more linkable.  If not, then I have the option of watching it first thing next year, like I did with "Parasite" this year. We'll see, I guess. 

And Happy Birthday to both Peter Dinklage AND Shia LaBoeuf, neither one is in today's movie but they've both starred in FOUR of my movies so far this year...

THE PLOT: A speculation on the fate of the famous hijacker, who parachuted with his ransom and disappeared into the mountains, has Cooper following a meticulous plan to disappear into anonymity despite the best efforts of a dogged insurance agent.  

AFTER: I've just bounced back almost 40 years into the past, to a film released in 1981.  Tomorrow I'll dip back even further, but then I'll spring back to a film from 2019 - thank God for actors with very long careers, like Treat Williams, Robert Duvall and Donald Sutherland.  They've made what I've chosen to do possible.  But now I'm wondering if I've made the right move by scheduling this film today - I could have dropped it, and saved it for late September, as it's one of the few links (through Ed Flanders) to the movie I want to kick off October with.  It also could have allowed me to squeeze in one other horror movie, "The Children of the Corn".  So watching this one today leaves me with just one actor that will take me where I want to be on October 1, and that's Fred Willard.  He's in three other movies on my list, so I've at least still got a chance to get there, and in several ways - but hey, the watchlist is always changing, and the hope of proper linking always springs eternal.  

But this is a strange film, that's for sure.  In 1981, nobody knew for sure who the elusive D.B. Cooper really was, or even if that was really his name, so bereft of any hardcore evidence, somebody wrote a novel that was extremely speculative, and then some other somebodies decided to turn that into a movie, because hey, maybe this is really what happened, only it wasn't.  Was the public so desperate with Cooper-Mania that they'd spend their money on seeing a film that didn't even have one toe in the waters of reality?  There's a documentary on my list now about the whole D.B. Cooper mystery, and I can't link to it now, but maybe I can get to it some time in the future and really learned what happened - or do we still not know?  

Either way, it seems very irresponsible to have released this film in 1981 without any kind of legal disclaimer saying that it's a total work of fiction.  Isn't that what got James Frey in trouble, when he wrote "A Million Little Pieces" and claimed it was all true?  Universal Pictures fell just short of admitting this story was all B.S. by offering a million-dollar reward at the time for anyone who could provide information that would lead to the arrest of the real D.B. Cooper, only nobody ever claimed it.  

According to this film (and only to this film, I suspect), Cooper was really a Vietnam veteran named Jim Meade, somebody who could plan a mid-air heist and also have the wherewithal and the resources to parachute into Washington State right at the start of hunting season, and easily make his way to a place where he had stashed disguises and hunting gear, so that he could blend right in and escape the forest on a jeep with a fresh deer carcass.  However, he didn't plan on his old Army sergeant Bill Gruen figuring out his plan in advance somehow, and hiring himself out to the insurance company that was responsible for covering the loss of the stolen money. 

 

I'm sorry, but even as a fictional story this is all quite far-fetched, to say the least.  So many questions remain unasked and therefore unanswered, like how did Gruen know about the heist in advance, which was really the only way he could have been there when the plane landed at the airport?  Then we've got the history of rivalry between these two fictional men, which stretches back to their boot camp days, and now 10 or 12 years later, they're up against each other again?  This reminds me of "The Hunted", another film where the two leads have such a long history together that they each know how the other one thinks, but there are SO many people in this world that it becomes, like "What are the ODDS against this taking place?"

And then from Washington state there's this cross-country trek that's a constant pattern of "Cooper gets away, Gruen catches up, Cooper gets away again, Gruen catches up again" and before long, we're outside Tucson, Arizona in an aircraft salvage yard - was Cooper planning to live there with his girlfriend inside a fuselage?  What happened to their plan to go live on a tropical island?  Then it's a seemingly endless parade of stolen cars, hijacked aircraft, broken-down pick-up trucks.

There's also another interested party, Remson, played by Paul Gleason, most famous for portraying the high-school principal in "The Breakfast Club" - he functions as the comic relief here, always showing up to get the drop on either Meade or Gruen, but then losing the upper hand and ending up locked in a car trunk or covered in tires somehow.  That's all very weird, he's a weird character who screws everything up in weird ways and honestly I'm not sure why his character even exists, other than as a time-filler.  Come to think of it, the whole chase sequence across several states is almost nothing BUT time-fillers. 

NITPICK POINT: if Cooper started in Washington state and needed to disappear, why on earth would he head for Mexico when Canada was RIGHT THERE, with an unprotected border?  Remember those inmates that escaped from Dannemora Prison in upstate New York?  They had the same idea, I guess, that agents would be patrolling the Canadian border, looking for them, so better to do the unexpected, and Mexico's just a quick 2,000 miles away...it makes sense, but it also doesn't.  

I could continue with a whole bunch of N.P.'s, I'm sure, but now I'm thinking that I DON'T want to learn too much about the real D.B. Cooper case, because there is that documentary I can watch.  But I just want to quickly confirm that although the case is considered inactive by the FBI after a 45-year investigation, no conclusive evidence about the hijacker's fate or real name has ever surfaced.  A boy discovered a pile of banknotes hidden along the Columbia River in 1980, but that's it.  So I'm left with the question over why this film exists in this form in the first place...

Also starring Robert Duvall (last seen in "Widows"), Kathryn Harrold (last seen in "Into the Night"), Ed Flanders (last seen in "MacArthur"), Paul Gleason (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), R.G. Armstrong (last seen in "Reds"), Nicolas Coster (ditto), Dorothy Fielding, Cooper Huckabee (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Howard K. Smith (last seen in "Nashville"), Christopher Curry (last seen in "Sully"), Ramon Chavez, Sanford Gibbons (last seen in "Tombstone"), Pat Ast.   

RATING: 4 out of 10 hunting rifles

Howl (2010)

Year 13, Day 161 - 6/10/21 - Movie #3,867

BEFORE: Jon Hamm carries over from "Clear History" to complete a hat trick, and it's kind of funny, I've had this film sitting on my list for a while, but mostly as a back-up.  I think I've had two or maybe three opportunities before to work it in, either as part of a Jon Hamm chain or as part of a James Franco block.  But the timing never seemed right, every time there was a holiday or something coming up and adding this one would have meant one too many films, and so I decided to not squeeze another one in - I have to think about the year's total, too, and even one film too many could mean that I can't get that last Christmas film in, and end the year the way I want to.  So I passed on this one, again and again.  

And now, when I really need this film for a critical linking thing, it's still available - so I think this worked out well, regardless of the film's content or whether I'll enjoy it or not.  Plus, I didn't think I had anything relevant to Pride Month, but now I realize that I do.  The bad news, though, is that back when I first added this to my list, I think it was on Netflix, and of course it no longer is.  Then it was available on IMDB.com for a long while, but oops, I waited too long to take advantage of it there, as a free movie.  So it looked like I was relegated to PAYING for this on iTunes, but then I did a search just before watching and found it for free on some weird site, like PopcornFlix.com or something.  Hey, it was free there, I just had to watch a couple of ad breaks, and I didn't have to download any malware or give out my e-mail address or anything.  Still, why isn't this on Tubi or PlutoTV or Peacock or any of the other free sites with ads any more?  That's not a good sign, it means maybe this film was ON some of those sites, and nobody watched it.

THE PLOT: As Allen Ginsberg talks about his life and art, his most famous poem is illustrated in animation while the obscenity trial of the work is dramatized. 

AFTER: One of the "Beat Poets" make another appearance today, and I swear, I've tried, I've REALLY tried to get into them, but it's just no use.  I was born too late to be considered part of their generation, by the time I came of age the hippie movement had had its day, come and gone, and we were firmly into the Disco era.  Ginsberg, Kerouac, William S. Burroughs all peaked before I ever came close to learning their names or what they were all about - I suppose it's a bit like somebody getting into rock and roll in the 1950's and looking back on the jazz of the 1930's and thinking, "What the heck was THAT all about?"  We are all a product of the times we grew up in, to a large degree.  I watched the movie versions of "On the Road" and "Naked Lunch", and I just didn't GET them - for the first one, I didn't understand what the big deal was, and for that second one, I didn't understand anything.

When I did a deep dive in to rock documentaries a couple years ago, I watched some films about Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and the Beach Boys, and some of them were tangential to the California hippie scene, which also had a few ties to some of the Beat Generation people that were still around, like Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey - I thought maybe I could pick up from there, transition into learning a little bit more about the Beat Poets and the Merry Pranksters, but even my connection to the Woodstock era isn't that solid, since I was born in 1968.  So as an infant, I didn't really have much awareness of the music scene, I only came to appreciate classic rock of the 1960's and 70's later on.  But at least my interest in that era sort of stuck, going back a bit further to the 1950's and listening to what passed for poetry back then doesn't excite me. 

Allen Ginsberg's popped up a few times since then, like in a couple of the Bob Dylan documentaries I watched last year, and as a character in 60's set movies like "The Trial of the Chicago 7" this year.  Look, it's great that people like James Franco find something meaningful in his poetry, but I just don't understand why - and Franco is 10 years younger than I am, so again, I just don't get it.  I think perhaps he's just always looking for interesting people who led interesting lives so that he can step into their heads for a few months while making a film.  I get that Ginsberg led a life at a very critical time in U.S. history, and from a Gay Pride perspective he led the life that he led at what I'm sure was a very dynamic, confusing and exciting time.  What did it mean to be gay in the 1950's, and to not only live it, but to write poetry about it?  To live openly and hidden at the same time, speaking in metaphors about something that society wasn't yet ready to discuss at the dinner table?  Sure, from that angle it all seems rather important, but even then, that's not really part of my experience, other than I'm human and I want equality for people, gay rights to all who want them, but because it's the right thing to do, not because it benefits me directly.  

There's a lot of jumping around in time here, and you know how I generally feel about it - that's an editing cop-out, a way to organize your film when putting things in proper chronological order just doesn't work, either because some writer can't find the six-act structure or some director is just trying to be "arty", either way it's the last desperate way some artists depend on to tell their story.  I only make allowances for it when it's done properly, when the time-jumping leads to a greater understanding of how the past influences the future, and vice versa, and that's just not evident here. This film cuts between interview footage of Franco as youngish-Ginsberg, with frequent flashbacks of the younger Ginsberg as an budding poet, mixed with dramatized footage of the famous reading of "Howl" at the Six Gallery in October 1955, mixed with recreations of the obscenity trial in 1957, where the owner of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco was charged with obscenity for publishing "Howl" in a collection of Ginsberg's poems.  Then in-between all of THAT are animated sequences of city life and people floating through space over narrated segments of the famous poem.  

Yes, as you might readily imagine, that's a hodgepodge of material - and maybe it all adds up to something for you, and maybe it doesn't - it sure didn't for me.  But maybe the more into the poem "Howl" you are, the better off you'll fare with all this.  Or maybe if you're stoned and you don't want to think about anything while you're high this could be right up your alley.  It sure made me want to take drugs. (Note to my new employer: Just kidding.)  There's another obvious connection here to "The Trial of the Chicago 7", since both films featured court cases that put free speech and free thought to the test - at what point could the radicals of the 1950's and 1960's be held accountable for their words and deeds that were trying to advance human morality, but instead got labeled "counter-culture"?  And isn't "counter-culture" just a buzz-word for "the stuff we don't like", because everything's a part of the culture in the end?

In the end, though, there are a lot of film sins (in my book, anyway) committed here that keep this from adding up to much of anything - it's about beat poetry (don't care), there are many shots of Ginsberg typing, or thinking about what to type (boring), there's too much time-jumping (confusing, to say the least) and then we have to sit through a trial - that's probably the best part here, and the man defending Ginsberg's work in court was defense attorney Jake Ehrlich, who was the real-life inspiration for the character of Perry Mason. (He was very good.). So OK on the trial, because who doesn't love a good "Law & Order" episode now and then?  And if you love abstract animation sequences, then that's also a plus - just don't go in expecting "Fantasia", the animation here is more for adults, if you know what I mean.  But animation, like poetry, is quite subjective - whether it's "good" or not is primarily left up to the individual on the receiving end. 

There is another film called "Howl", released five years later in 2015, which is a horror movie - if you really want to see this film about Allen Ginsberg, for God's sake, be careful when you make your movie selection...

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "Third Person"), David Strathairn (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Selma"), Aaron Tveit (last seen in "Premium Rush"), Mary-Louise Parker (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Bob Balaban (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Jon Prescott, Treat Williams (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Todd Rotondi, Andrew Rogers, Nancy Spence, with archive footage of Allen Ginsberg. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 angel-headed hipsters

Clear History

Year 13, Day 160 - 6/9/21 - Movie #3,866

BEFORE: OK, so I got my work schedule for the start of my new job, and this might be a little rough.  So far my two jobs aren't going to overlap, but they will run on the same day sometimes - so that means I'll be managing an animation studio from 11 am to 5 pm, then heading downtown to the movie theater and ushering from 6 pm to 1:30 am.  That's like a 14-hour workday, which I've done before, mostly during Comic-Cons - but I'm older now and a workday like that could really take a lot out of me.  But it seems like I'll have the whole next day to recover, so even if I get home at 2:30 am, I could always crash when I get in, sleep until noon and get myself ready for the next workday - and obviously it makes sense that my work schedule would include nights, weekends and holidays, because that's when most people want to go out to the movies, right?  

But I've been living for the last 13 years as someone who starts watching a movie (almost) every night between 11 pm and midnight - that's not going to be possible for me now, going forward.  I may have to get creative and watch two movies on my days off, because if I get home at 3 am, I may be too exhausted to START a movie then - I'll be asleep before the opening credits are done.  So maybe I'll cram in two movies tomorrow, and spread out the reviews.  Then I may have to cut back to 5 or 6 movies a week, after July 4 anyway, because I still want to hit that holiday on the button.  But thankfully I already reduced my June schedule because of our 4-day Chicago trip.  So that's a relief.  Maybe I should spread the upcoming Summer Music Concert (and Documentary) series out over a longer period, who cares if that takes me all of July and August, right?  Spreading it out over two months would then just mean less of a break in November, I think.  Anyway, I've got options, and as long as I have the strength to continue, I'll find a way to make it work - I've come too far to turn back now.  

Jon Hamm carries over from "The Jesus Rolls".

THE PLOT: A disgraced former marketing executive plots revenge against his former boss, who made billions from the electric car company they had started together. 

AFTER: Speaking of careers, this film's about a man who worked for an electric car company, back in 2003.  He owned a minority share in the company, and was a personal friend of the CEO, and worked in the marketing department.  But when that CEO decided to name the new electric car "Howard" after his son, well, that probably brought up visions of Henry Ford naming the infamous Edsel after HIS son - and the Edsel, of course, was a tremendous flop.  So our main character here, Nathan Flomm, has serious reservations about whether this Howard car will succeed, and this causes an argument between him and the company's CEO, Will Haney.  

Nathan sort of quits, sort of gets fired and takes a severance package to give up his 10% share in the company, convinced that the business is about to go under.  But as you might be able to guess, the Howard electric car takes off, and Nathan's move suddenly seems like the worst business deal in history, his 10% would have worth a BILLION if he'd only believed in the product and stayed the course.  Wow, this rings true with me tonight, as someone who's just taken on a new job - I've been plagued with self-doubt and indecision for the last few months, ever since getting a few interviews in places like the m&m store, and an ice-cream shop and a movie theater (not the one I'm starting work at soon, a different one).  Even after accepting a job, I've had to force myself to not self-sabotage the process.  Now as my start day gets closer and closer, that sinking pit in my stomach feels worse and worse.  What if I can't handle the job?  What if the hours are too tough?  What if I don't get along with the new boss and the new co-workers?  Jeez, I haven't even started yet and I'm already looking for reasons to quit.  And of COURSE I got another interview request right after signing up, and that didn't help.  The right path's just not clear when there's another option.  

For Nathan, the result was very clear - he sabotaged his own job, and then he was out in the cold with no share in the profits.  The whole world suddenly knew his name, after making the biggest bonehead move in the history of business.  Imagine somebody who sold their stake in Amazon or Microsoft right before the company became super-successful.  (I'd use Tesla as an obvious example, but are they doing well?  I don't really follow the business news as closely as I should.). Nathan's wife walks out, and then to avoid the shame, regret and jokes, Nathan moves to Martha's Vineyard, cuts his hair, changes his looks and starts going under a new name, Rolly DaVore.  He gets a new set of friends, and works as a caretaker for an elderly woman. 

It seems like a great move, though his new life may be a little boring, at least he's known in the community, plays poker with his buddies, had a couple short-term relationships with the locals, and while life may not be spectacular, at least it's...fine.  Here's where I have to admit that I haven't watched ANY of Larry David's long-running TV series "Curb Your Enthusiasm", but from what I have seen, Larry David here is playing essentially the same character, himself.  The kind of guy who's always the butt of the joke, but also very opinionated, demanding and claims to always know the best way to do everything, and then complains until he gets his way.  I think.  Well, he's the same George Costanza/Larry David/fictional Larry David type here, only he's named Nathan. Or Rolly.  Either way, he's a Larry David type. 

As I said, things are relatively swell until Will Haney ALSO decides to move to Martha's Vineyard, like, come on, what are the ODDS?  But he's a rich CEO moving there, so naturally he's got to have a mansion built just for him, and even though he encounters Rolly, Rolly no longer looks anything like he once did as Nathan, so thankfully Haney doesn't recognize him.  You'd think that he would recognize his long-term associate by his distinctive voice and his mannerisms and his very complain-y nature, but you'd be wrong.  So Nathan/Rolly has a chance to get revenge on his old boss, while remaining more or less invisible and harmless.  Sure, it's a bit of a stretch, but at least it's FUNNY, unlike a few other comedies I could name that I watched earlier in the week that forgot to be funny.  Maybe "Clear History" just looks better by comparison, I'm not sure - but I did find parts of it funny.

There are asides that I'm betting would have been right at home on an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", like Nathan causing a break-up between two people just by saying the wrong thing to the female part of the couple, then having the black boyfriend accuse him of racism.  Or Rolly wrongly thinking that Haney's wife is really into him, just because they spent a fun day together at the annual Harvest Fair.  I haven't been to Martha's Vineyard in a long time, not since 1994, I think.  It's a long story, but this was during my first marriage, and we spent a couple nights in Walter Cronkite's house - and this was before AirBnB, she was working for Walter's son's production company, and they were making a documentary about Walter's career, and that meant someone had to drive up there and collect some of his memorabilia from his World War II reporting days.  (Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the other day that I once met Walter Cronkite.). Anyway, from what I gathered, there's a very tight-knit community with a bunch of famous people who live there seasonally, and everyone sort of knows everyone else, so this film really nailed that aspect of this small Massachusetts island.  

None of this was really filmed on Martha's Vineyard, though, except for a few aerial shots - according to the IMDB trivia page, anyway.  Filming locations did include Marblehead, North Gloucester, Beverly and North Andover, MA, and that's the Topsfield Fair in the "harvest festival" scenes.  It makes sense, they hired a bunch of Boston-area comedians to play Rolly's poker buddies, and getting all those actors, plus a film crew, out to the island would have been a logistical nightmare.  See, THIS is what I like about filmmaking, learning all the logistical stuff that makes it possible.  On the screen, you can't tell the difference between one small Massachusetts town and another, not unless you're a local. So they probably saved a bundle by NOT filming out on Martha's Vineyard., they just found another beach town on the North Shore with a marina in it, and nobody's the wiser, except for me.  

OK, so the plot pieces don't all completely come together here, who cares?  At least somebody remembered that being funny is the most important thing in a comedy - just let Larry David be himself, I guess, that's the key.  And yeah, it's a movie made for HBO - again, who cares?  A cable movie is still a movie, not every movie has to be in theaters, especially not these days.

Also starring Larry David (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Bill Hader (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "The Last Word"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "The Killer Inside me"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Eva Mendes (last seen in "Cleaner"), Amy Ryan (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), J.B. Smoove (also carrying over from "The Jesus Rolls"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Sphere"), Amy Landecker (last seen in "Project Power"), Patty Ross (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Mary Klug, Marianne Leone (last seen in "The Thin Blue Line"), Lenny Clarke (last seen in "Stronger"), Dorothy Dwyer, Peter Farrelly (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Jimmy Tingle (last seen in "Head of State"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "Opening Night"), with cameos from Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Becoming"), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), the band Chicago (last seen in "Now More than Ever: The HIstory of Chicago") and archive footage of Gary Cooper (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth")

RATING: 6 out of 10 Chicago songs on the diner jukebox.

The Jesus Rolls

Year 13, Day 159 - 6/8/21 - Movie #3,865

BEFORE: Bobby Cannavale carries over from "Thunder Force", and I've got another rare and unexpected Birthday SHOUT-out today to Sonia Braga.  I know that's it's largely random when I land a film on an actor's birthday, but I also sort of take it as a little sign from the universe that my plan is solid, and I'm somehow right where I'm supposed to be. With the career part of my life in flux right now, that's at least a small bit of imaginary comfort.  

THE PLOT: A trio of misfits whose irreverent, sexually charged dynamic evolves into a surprising love story as their spontaneous and flippant attitude towards the past or future backfires time and again. 

AFTER: OK, so if you say there's a sequel to "The Big Lebowski", well, you've got my attention.  And this one sort of slipped into existence late in 2019, which was pre-pandemic, but did it even get released in theaters?  I'm not sure - but that's NOT a good sign.  Wikipedia's telling me it was released in the U.S. in late February 2020, which was horrible timing, but there's NO box office data - that's an even worse sign.  

Somehow this is an unofficial sequel, which is a third bad sign - John Turturro got permission from the Coen Brothers to re-use his "Lebowski" character, Jesus Quintana, who admittedly tore up the screen during the five minutes the Coens gave him, which some intense bowling moves and character quirks, like when he licked that bowling ball (ewww?) and then had an intense conversation with John Goodman about the upcoming match.  But without the involvement of the Coen Brothers, this can't really be a valid corner of the Lebowski-verse, can it?  Without the same writers, the same directors, can someone really catch lightning in a bottle on the second try, and match the magic that the character once had?  Well, no.   

Essentially, this is "Solo: A Star Wars Story", taking one character from a well-known franchise and spinning him off into his own movie, and it's going to be all-new while also feeling familiar at the same time.  Only Jesus Quintana wasn't the Han Solo of the Lebowski-verse, he wasn't even the Boba Fett or the Lando, he was more like Bossk, or maybe Lobot - in that he's on-screen for a couple minutes, he's got something important to do to help or hinder the main characters, and then he's gone.  Maybe he made an impact on you in those five minutes, but does THAT, in itself, warrant a whole new movie?  No, it does not.  What happened to Lobot after "The Empire Strikes Back"?  Even for "Star Wars" fans, the correct answer is, "Who cares?"  Maybe he'll make an appearance in the "Star Wars" comic or one of the novels, but for the most part, he's done, and this is the way it should be.  

Turturro obviously had a blast playing Jesus in "Lebowski", so I guess he just figured there'd be something there.  Well, you have to PUT something there in order for there to BE something there, and mostly this film avoids any real story points that we can hang a narrative on.  Jesus gets out of jail, hooks up with his old friend Petey, and they go on a road-trip, stealing cars, meeting new people, having sexual encounters, and that's mostly it.  THAT'S IT?  OK, there's a little bit of bowling, but it's a lot like his bowling scene in the original film, he even licks the ball the same way.  (Again, ewww...). This film could have gone in any of a dozen different directions, Jesus could have embarked on a professional bowling career, for example.  He could have robbed banks, he could have formed a band, he could have run a motel or searched for buried treasure.  But no, he and his friend just want to steal cars and have sex, and I'm thinking that just does not justify a movie.  The storyline allegedly comes from adapting a French film "Les Valseuses" (which means "the testicles") but was called "Going Places" in English markets.  

The point is that Jesus was meant to be a supporting character, not a headliner, and this kind of proves that's all he was ever supposed to be, he didn't even draw my attention when he was the centerpiece of the story.  Maybe it's me, maybe I'm too caught up in my own personal drama right now to care about somebody else's.  But I'm trying to find the point of all this today, and I can't seem to do that.  Driving around upstate New York (or perhaps it's Long Island) aimlessly stealing cars just seems like a complete waste of time, and the encounters Jesus and Petey have with random strangers don't seem to amount to much either, and that's by design.  For what purpose, though?  Is it all good or bad?  Who can even say in the end?  

Also, so much talent is wasted here.  Christopher Walken is on-screen for five minutes (at most) as the prison warden, but they just didn't give him anything to DO, it's like somebody forgot to write that scene or something.  Same goes for Jesus and Petey's encounter with the nursing mother - it goes simply nowhere, so why is the scene even THERE?  Same goes for the security guard protecting the 99-cent store, the mechanic and even the doctor's wife.  

At least all the weirdness in "The Big Lebowski" added up to something in the end.  Right?  There's no resolution here, not really, the film just sort of STOPS rather than ends.  The main characters have been chased by police throughout the whole film, and I think they're still wanted at the end, so what gives?  You can sense the ways they tried to emulate the FEEL of a Coen Brothers movie, but it just didn't come close.  The structure actually reminds me of "The Blues Brothers", only without any of that film's charms, either.  Instead there's so much rambling that the end credits came as something of a relief, we could all stop getting nowhere, at least.  People are going to drift in and out of our lives as we all travel down that road, but that's all I got from the film - plus, we all KNEW that already. 

Also starring John Turturro (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Audrey Tautou, Pete Davidson (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Sonia Braga (last seen in "Wonder"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Gloria Reuben (ditto), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Hustle"), Michael Badalucco (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Sable Boykin, Margaret Reed, Nicolas Reyes, Tonino Ballardo

RATING: 4 out of 10 gas station convenience stores

Thunder Force

Year 13, Day 158 - 6/7/21 - Movie #3,864

BEFORE: Sarah Baker carries over from "The Last Word". She had a very small role as a hairdresser in "The Last Word", and I don't think she's got a major role in this one, either, but that's OK. Movies are filled with character actors and bit players, for my purposes this link is just as good as any other, because it gets me to this film, which I'm curious about, and tomorrow's film, which has been on the books for a while now, and I'm even MORE curious about. 

THE PLOT: In a world where super-villains are commonplace, two estranged childhood best friends reunite after one devises a treatment that gives them powers to protect their city. 

AFTER: Maybe it's the fact that I'm waiting to hear about my work schedule at this new job, but all I can think about is that I've got only a few more days until I might be too busy to watch a movie a day, and THIS is how I've chosen to spend my time?  What a waste...

There have been other comedies that have riffed on the superhero genre, like "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" or "Hancock" or even "Deadpool", and that last one was very successful.  But you can't just make a superhero film into a comedy, it has to be handled a certain way, and it feels like the people who made this film didn't really think too much about it, they just wanted to jump on the comic book bandwagon, just because the Avengers and other MCU films brought in so much cash.  

It comes down to tone, and whether the storyline is believable at all.  Sorry to say that the tone here isn't great, nothing feels very FUNNY and mostly, it seems like all involved are just going through the motions.  I mean, cosmic rays turning a small portion of Earthlings into super-powered people is semi-believable, but that happening ONLY to bad people and creating ONLY super-villains is not.  Why didn't the cosmic radiation create an equal number of villains AND heroes, wouldn't that make more sense?  Why did the powers only go to people with evil intent, that seems a little imbalanced, you'd think radiation would be impartial and wouldn't take that into consideration.  

Instead, one female scientist has to INVENT super-powers for good people, and this is apparently what her parents were working on when they were killed by "Miscreants" - that's the word for super-villain in this universe.  But then even that process is all wonky, like her best friend from grade school accidentally gets the super-strength injections that she was going to give herself.  OK, a few things - first, there's no safeguards in the lab to ensure that only the correct person gets the injections?  Why on earth would they automate a process that is not only dangerous, but clearly meant for ONE individual person and NOBODY else?  That's just bad lab procedure right there.  Why introduce the possibility AT ALL of a random person getting the shots, given all the side-effects and untested results that could come with them?  What if the WRONG person got these super-strength injections, wouldn't that be terrible and counter-productive?  

Emily, the scientist, then has to settle for the second-rate power, which is invisibility - and this is given to her not via injections, but in convenient pill form.  This is actually one of the film's better gags, that one subject has to endure dozens of painful shots, and the other just has to swallow a few pills.  OK, I'll allow this one because it's funny.  But the rest of the process just leads to more and more questions - why these two powers to these two people, and nobody else?  What sort of scientist didn't keep track of her breakthrough formula, so that once it got injected into the wrong person, they couldn't re-create the first dose again to give it to somebody else?  That's just stupid - with the COVID-19 vaccine, every single step probably had to be documented during its creation, so if there was some kind of setback, they wouldn't have to start over from scratch.  Did the scientist forget to keep proper notes or something?  This is a huge NITPICK POINT, as it goes against all the rules of scientific theory and proper procedures.  

Then we've got the villain with crab-like claws instead of arms - am I supposed to take this seriously, or is this just another gag that isn't as funny as somebody thought it would be?  How is this even a super-power, it just seems like a big inconvenience that he doesn't have human hands any more.  Can he DO anything special with the crab claws?  It doesn't seem like it, so how is that considered a super-power?  It's the opposite, like a terrible-power, so I don't get it. Maybe if he had a few extra arms or legs, like crabs do.  Maybe if he could run really fast, even sideways, like crabs do.  But he can't, he just has useless crab claws, so what's the point?  OK, so maybe not every super-villain gets cool laser-beam generating powers, but even still...

On top of all that, the super-villains got their powers in 1983, but it takes humanity until 2024 to come up with a way to fight back?  Really?  That's 41 years of letting the villains run the show, and they're not even a majority of people.  41 years where regular humans didn't band together to fight back?  To not find some kind of military, legislative or even nuclear solution to fight back against evil people?  That just doesn't sound like the humanity I know - eventually the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and maybe the scientific solution of giving powers to GOOD people wouldn't even have been necessary if all the regular people could have just gotten their act together.  Again, I don't get it. 

I guess you can make a case for this being a progressive film because the main hero characters are two, umm, plus-sized women.  That's all well and good, I've got no problem with that, but the film still has to be FUNNY, if that's the way you're going to go with it.  The comic books do tend to portray a bunch of unrealistic body types, for both men and women.  It's funny, they're all about having more diverse characters like more Asian, Hispanic and Muslim characters, and certainly there's been a push in comic books for more LGBTQ+ characters, but still, it's mostly "no fatties". I get that they want to encourage kids to be more active and in shape, but they kind of take that to the extreme, with all the muscles, right?  Marvel tried to have a more body-positive character once with Big Bertha, one of the Great Lakes Avengers - it's tough to tell whether that entire comic title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, though, or Marvel's parody of their own books.  Bertha was an enormously overweight woman who was, by nature of being obese, practically invulnerable, able to squash all the villains and flatten injustice, I guess.  But she could change her form and by day she was a very thin fashion model, which sent out exactly the wrong message to impressionable young girls.  Umm, nice try? 

For God's sake, please don't let them make a sequel to this nonsense, which gives superhero films a bad name.  Look, I know that Marvel's been a little slow in getting movies released over the last year, but "Black Widow" is on the way (as is "Venom 2" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home".  And I know that "Wonder Woman 1984" was a big disappointment, but last year I watched "Birds of Prey" and "Shazam!" and I still have high hopes for the next "Suicide Squad" film.  During the down-time from the Big Two, this year I've watched "The Old Guard" and "Project Power", which were both fine superhero films - this one, not so much. 

Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Octavia Spencer (last heard in "Dolittle"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Pom Klementieff (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Melissa Leo (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Taylor Mosby, Marcella Lowery, Melissa Ponzio, Ben Falcone (last seen in "CHIPS"), Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Warrior"), Tyrel Jackson Williams, David Storrs (last seen in "The Boss"), Vivian Falcone (ditto), Brendan Jennings, Jackson Dippel, Nate Hitpas, Mia Kaplan, Bria Danielle Singleton, Tai Leshaun, Trevor Larcom,  

RATING: 3 out of 10 pieces of raw chicken

The Last Word

Year 13, Day 157 - 6/6/21 - Movie #3,863

BEFORE: Joel Murray carries over from "The Bill Murray Stories". I suppose I could just skip this one, because there was an actress who appeared in archive footage yesterday (who was not listed on the film's IMDB page) and that actress is in tomorrow's movie.  But no, I'm committed to this one now, so let's hope that my work schedule next weekend doesn't make me regret the decision to watch this and thus reduce my workload.  I'm on track to hit an appropriate movie for Father's Day, plus a few days off for a trip to Chicago on that same weekend, so getting ahead of things is probably a great idea, or maybe I should double-up again this week before the job at the movie theater starts, and I'll have less time.  I just don't know, I don't handle change well, and that includes taking on a new part-time job.

I just know I have to get this one out of the way today, because I have a lot of training videos to watch, including the ones on sexual harassment that are now required for any new job I'd take on, there's no escaping this...

THE PLOT: Harriet is a retired businesswoman who tries to control everything around her.  When she decides to write her own obituary, a young journalist takes up the task of finding out the truth resulting in a life-altering friendship. 

AFTER: I suppose this one seems pretty relevant to me today because Shirley MacLaine's character is 80 years old and takes on a new role as a radio DJ - and she lucks out and finds a radio station that still plays music on vinyl, somehow it's not all digital files and pre-programmed between-song banter.  I'm not sure places like that even exist any more, though, not even at the college radio level.  It's a bit like a dinosaur getting a job at the Natural History Museum.  And here I am, setting out to become a 52-year-old rookie usher at a known movie theater chain.  Why didn't I hold out for a position at a small, indie two-screen cinema, why did I have to apply at one of the big, corporate chains?  I haven't even started work yet, and part of me is already regretting my decision.  I guess I'll find out next weekend if I've got what it takes, or if the job is going to wear me out or drive me crazy. 

But enough about me, let me get back to Harriet, who's retired and divorced but also bored.  And after reading the obituaries of many of her friends, she's starting to wonder how she'll be remembered by the world when she passes, or if she'll even be remembered at all.  This leads her to visit the editor of the local newspaper (one she kept going decades ago with all of her ad agency's media buys) so that she can get a jump on things vis-a-vis her obit.  The editor teams her up with the woman who writes the obituary column, so it can be pre-written, only Harriet's contacts generally don't have anything nice to say about her, so poor wanna-be writer Anne determines that the problem is Harriet herself, that she needs to work on her relationships, plus do something magnanimous or otherwise meaningful if she wants to be remembered in the best way.  

Harriet is forced to concede the point, and thus the DJ job - plus attempts to reconcile with her daughter and ex-husband, while also taking a young black girl under her wing for mentoring, and forming a friendship with Anne along the way.  This is all pretty routine stuff, I mean, it's great that Shirley MacLaine is still active and still making movies, but I'm not sure that the film amounts to anything overall.  Maybe it's me, I'm caught up with life changes and schedule concerns right now, my life is in flux and I know I need to start working another job and get out of the house more, but I'm just not sure now this is the way I want to do it.  I'm not sure if this new gig is going to lead to anything, or just a detour along the way, do you know what I mean?  Plus then there's the pandemic, which has thrown everything into chaos as well - I wouldn't even BE in this rough spot if not for COVID-19, which caused me to lose one of my animation jobs. I've been part-time for the last year, and I need to make more money.  

But as we all emerge from various states of lockdown, everything feels just a bit weird, you know?  Getting together with friends, dining out, going to a bar or festival or amusement park or casino, it's all going to feel a bit weird at first.  Then it's hard to distinguish if if feels weird just because you haven't done it in a while, or it feels weird because you shouldn't be doing it, or it's wrong, and that's kind of the edge I'm walking on right now.  This movie, however, like yesterday's, suggests that we all have to face our fears, get out there and DO and achieve and take a risk, because otherwise we're just stuck at home, in a routine, and slowly dying.  So I'm going to try to use that as motivation here, I've been at home four days a week for WAY too long, so even if I have to clean a few movie theater bathrooms, it's better for me to be out there, getting some exercise, earning more money, meeting new people and hopefully making something akin to personal progress.  But it still is going to feel weird, plus if I get the late shifts then my sleeping schedule's going to get even worse than it already has - I may be keeping "vampire hours" for a while.  Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead, I guess. 

The movie's neither here nor there, it didn't exactly thrill me, but it didn't piss me off much, either. Onward and upward, I hope. 

Also starring Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Anne Heche (last seen in "Opening Night"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Thomas Sadoski (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Adina Porter (last seen in "The Peacemaker"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Sarah Baker (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Steven Culp (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Basil Hoffman (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Todd Louiso (last seen in "xXx: State of the Union"), Gedde Watanabe (last heard in "Mulan II"), Yvette Freeman, Valeri Ross (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Nikki McCauley, Marshall Bell (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Alanna Ubach (last seen in "Bombshell"), Bill Glass, Millicent Martin (last seen in "Alfie" (1966)), John Billingsley (last seen in "20th Century Women"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Kinks albums