The Sentinel (2006)

Year 13, Day 240 - 8/28/21 - Movie #3,922

BEFORE: The last two films were on Netflix when I planned this chain, but then left that service before I could watch them, so tonight it's something different - this film was on HBO Max, but left THAT service before I could watch it.  Either way, I've got iTunes as a sort of catch-all, $3.99 isn't that much to rent a movie there, but I can't do that too often, after a while that sort of adds up to real money, above and beyond what I'm paying for premium cable.  But the takeaway is that no matter how many streaming services you subscribe to (and I think we're holding at 5, if you count HBO Max) there's still the very real possibility that if you want to watch THAT particular movie on THAT day, it's not going to be available on any of those services.  Why can't there just be ONE service that has everything?  Oh, right, because that would be socialism instead of capitalism.  

Anyway, if I can finish off this week, it's (more or less) smooth sailing until October 1, except, wait, let me check, nope - there's one sci-fi movie scheduled for late September that's no longer on Netflix, god DAMN it.  OK, one more rental fee on iTunes, and my chain is still intact.  Really, I try and I try but inevitably I just can't get to everything in time, before it disappears from where it is, and then fails to pop up on another service.  Can't somebody DO something about this?  Is everybody just OK with this system, where everything's available for a limited time, and then just goes away?  Do we all have such short attention spans that I'm the only person bothered by this?  I just want every movie in the world available to me forever, so they're all there when I'm ready to watch them, why is that too much to ask for?  We're the greatest country in the world, we practically invented movies, they're our greatest export, what's the deal here? 

Martin Donovan carries over again from "Rememory". 

THE PLOT: A Secret Service agent is framed as the mole in an assassination attempt on the U.S. President. He must clear his name and foil another assassination attempt while on the run from a Secret Service Protective Intelligence Division agent. 

AFTER: What is the deal with this movie from 2006, why did I never hear of it before this year?  (And, second question, once I did learn about it from being listed on HBO Max, why did it disappear again so quickly?). There's nothing WRONG with it, per se, it just seems to have lived under everybody's radar for the last 15 years.  I guess with the law of averages being what it is, there must be a ton of movies like this, they get made, they get released, a few people go to the movie theater to see them, and then everybody just sort of forgets about them.  They don't win any awards, they don't make anybody's "Best of" lists, and they don't go on to become sleeper hits or cult classics, they just kind of exist and hope to be re-discovered someday, if only by a few people.  There must be some recent movies that would fall into that category, I'd say maybe "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" or "The Devil All the Time" from 2020 - but those were challenging movies, I think maybe they didn't catch on because they were dark and/or confusing.  Something like "The Way Back" or "I Used to Go Here", just because they were well-intentioned but didn't CONNECT with people. 

I guess action films can be tricky - look at other action films I watched this year, like "The Operative" or "Unlocked", you never hear anybody talk about them, or claim them as their favorite films.  These days if a film is neither "Fast" nor "Furious" or part of a superhero franchise, I guess it's hard to rise above all the static.  Maybe that's what happened to this movie - but just perhaps, it's worth a second look, because even though it was released in 2006, there's something very prescient about it, particularly in the casting of David Rasche as President Ballantine.  He's a character actor that you probably know, but I can't even say what you know him from, because I've been up and down his filmography and I can't even say what I know him from. (Maybe the 1980's parody TV show "Sledge Hammer"?). He's had a role in "United 93", and I remember they didn't want to cast prominent actors in that film, they wanted actors that looked like real people and weren't too, umm, recognizable.  But he's had minor roles in everything from "The West Wing" to "Madam Secretary"  and played a senator in "Flags of Our Fathers" and a CIA agent in "Burn After Reading".  But when you put him in the Oval Office and cast him as the President, he starts to give off a very Trump-ey vibe, even though this was released 10 years before the 2016 election. 

The First Lady is played by Kim Basinger, and even though her character is 100% American, and not from Slovenia or wherever, she still looks like she could be a former model - AND clearly there's no physical relationship between her and her husband any more, so naturally I'm going to think about Melania here.  When you add in the plot point with the First Lady having an ongoing affair with a Secret Service agent, well, that's just adding more fuel to the fire, isn't it.  Weren't there rumors about Melania doing something like that, or was it that she had an affair with the head of security at Trump Tower, or something?  We all struggled to find a reason as to why she was still with Trump, and this would explain a lot, or else we figured that she saw the relationship with "The Donald" as the quickest way to get a green card and/or fame and fortune.  Remember when she wouldn't move to Washington and live in the White House until she re-negotiated their pre-nup?  Yeah, that's really who you want as your First Lady, because clearly her heart's in the job.  Now it's what, seven months after leaving Washington and she's still keeping up appearances?  Damn, she's good.  Or maybe nobody really knows her motivations at all, who can say?  

Anyway, that's the jumping off point for this plot, Secret Service agent plus First Lady against the world, or something like that. The President is pretty clueless about what's going on, he just knows that his wife likes to spend a lot of time down at the "beach house" while he's running the country (come on, he's probably getting a bit on the side himself, I mean, isn't that WHY you run for President, in the end?). The lead character here is that agent, plus his old partner who runs the P.I.D. (Protective Intelligence Division, it took me a while to figure that one out), where they deal with the random threats against the President, the ones received by mail or voice-mail, in case they turn into something later on.  This character basically has the "Tommy Lee Jones in the Fugitive" role here, both characters are good and right, only they're at cross-purposes, and one has to track the other one down when he goes on the run.

These two, Garrison and Breckinridge, are a bit like oil and water, they used to work together but no longer get along, Breckinridge still thinks Garrison had an affair with his wife, which is why they're separated.  It isn't true, but Garrison can't really say, "I would never do that, because I've got enough on my plate, sleeping with the First Lady...", now, can he?  But it's important that these two work out their differences, because there's a bigger problem, a mole inside the Secret Service who's planning to kill the President, and he's also killing every agent who comes close to figuring out his identity.  God, if only we had a division full of investigative-type people who are used to working in anonymity to uncover hidden security threats...but what's the point of wishing for things we can't have?  

I chuckled a bit when there was a shoot-out in public, and Garrison held up his badge to the people nearby and shouted, "Secret Service!"  Umm, dude, that's not how it's supposed to work.  You're supposed to work in secret, right, dude?  Garrison's a guy who's been working since the Ronald Reagan shooting, and never aspired for upper management, or even crew leader.  I feel you, Garrison, don't get ahead of yourself, just put in your time, don't make waves and count the years until you can get out alive.  Sleeping with the First Lady is apparently enough of a perk to keep him motivated, good gig!  

Along the way, we learn some pretty cool stuff, like the fact that the Secret Service can outwit a terrorist just by flipping a coin - the Director always has two crews of cars ready, and two possible paths for the President to take, and decides with a quarter at the last second.  Because there's just no way that an organized terrorist group could attack from two directions at once.  Also, we learn that a gunman can get away from an active shooting scene just by changing his jacket and putting on a hat. Right.  OK, so they may have taken a few narrative shortcuts here, but I still think this film might deserve to not stay under the radar.  Maybe it's the name, it's just so generic, this needed a better title, like "In the Line of Fire" or "Absolute Power" or even "Olympus Has Fallen".  Was that the problem?  A less boring poster might have helped, too.  

Also starring Michael Douglas (last seen in "Class Action Park"), Kiefer Sutherland (last seen in "Flatliners" (2017)), Eva Longoria (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Kim Basinger (last seen in "Third Person"), David Rasche (last seen in "Just Married"), Ritchie Coster (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Blair Brown (last seen in "Dogville"), Kristin Lehman, Raynor Scheine (last seen in "Man of the Year"), Chuck Shamata, Paul Calderon (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Clark Johnson (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Raoul Bhaneja (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Yanna McIntosh, Joshua Peace, Simon Reynolds (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Geza Kovacs, Jasmin Geijo (last seen in "The Art of the Steal"), Danny A. Gonzales, Jude Coffey, Gloria Reuben (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Stanley Taylor, Mung-Ling Tsui, Conrad Coates (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Taborah Johnson, Jackie Burroughs (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), with archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Too Big to Fail").

RATING: 5 out of 10 polygraph tests 

Rememory

Year 13, Day 238 - 8/26/21 - Movie #3,921

BEFORE: Martin Donovan carries over from "Aftermath", and here are the linked actors who are going to get me through the rest of the summer season, and September as well: Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, James Corden, Ron Funches, Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Rooker AND Steve Agee, David Denman, Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Asa Butterfield, Aubrey Reynolds, Barry Watson, and Fred Willard.  I realize that's only 16 actors, and there are 24 movies between now and October 1, but some of those actors will be in three or four films.  And I found my path to connect with Fred Willard, so that means horror films will be here before you know it.

THE PLOT: The inventor of the Rememory machine, which allows people to see their memories as they actually were, dies in his office. Was it murder? Sam Bloom investigates by using the machine "borrowed" from the inventor's wife by looking at the memories of others involved. 

AFTER: You might think that the loose theme for the week is something about loss and grief, and it is, from Sarah Connor grieving for her son in "Terminator: Dark Fate", to Blake trying to get back his lost love in "Killing Gunther", and of course Roman AND Jake in "Aftermath".  That trend continues tonight, but another loose theme is "Films that I first found on Netflix, but scrolled off from that service before I could get to watch them, so now I have to rent them on iTunes".  Hey, that can be a valid theme.

This is set in some near future, where a tech guy has built a company based on his machine that can record and play back people's memories as if they're movies.  This is a bit crazy, everybody knows that tech guys build companies around electric cars and sending themselves to space.  Through sessions that are part psychotherapy and part re-traumatizing people, the company has been putting test subjects through the wringer in order to capture their best and worst memories on little glass slides, because hey, what's more durable than thin pieces of glass?  

The tech guy is found dead in his office one night, and it's up to a mysterious little person, Sam Bloom, who lives in a boathouse down by the docks (this becomes important later when it's time to dramatically start throwing things into the ocean) who showed up for the launch of the memory machine to investigate his murder.  It was murder, right?  I mean, there were bullet holes in the wall, but not in the body, go explain that one.  

Somebody steals the memory machine, but Sam Bloom steals it back, and he starts going through the glass slides from the test group to figure out as much as he can about their memories.  He also starts using the machine on himself, so he can record the traumatic car crash that took the life of his rock star brother, and it's very important that he find out what his brother's last words were.  The movie tells us that the device can show people their memories as they really happened, not filtered through years of misinterpretation, emotion and other memories that might have gotten in the way, this is the pure, uncut memory.  

But the device also has a flaw, using it has a strange effect on the subject - digging up those old memories can cause hallucinations, which can make it difficult to tell the present from the past, plus if the memories are really good, they could become addicted to watching them, and if they're bad, they get re-traumatized.  One test subject killed herself, and that was just from looking at her old tweets.  

Sam Bloom tracks down some of the test subjects, from piecing together their glass-slide memories.  What's weird here is that he then makes little miniature figurines for each one, so he'll have a visual represenation of the compiled data.  (A little person working with miniatures, I see what you did there...). He could just write everything down, but where's the fun in that?  But NITPICK POINT, it takes time to build and paint these little figurines, and that's time that could be spent, you know, solving the case.  

I suppose there's a larger point to be made here about whether we all just become a collection of memories at some point.  One character looks back on the book she didn't write, the large family she didn't have, and suggests that maybe at some point we're all just big balls of regret over the paths we never took and the things we never got around to doing.  Well, which is it, are we memory piles or remains of unfulfilled dreams?  Like yesterday's film, "Rememory" just wants to put every character in a constant state of grief and guilt, then just leave them there. 

The catalyst here is a car crash, just as yesterday's was a plane crash.  In both cases, the accident has repercussions that last for years, decades even, and no matter what happens, people have to learn to deal with that accident, because there's no changing it.  Viewing the trauma again or remembering it better serves no purpose, so when they say that the memory changes or fades over time, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Even those final words from Sam's brother turn out to be a non-starter, no great revelation was forthcoming. 

The art seen in a gallery scene is from photographer Brandon Kidwell, who's known for his double-exposures, and also designed the film's poster.  What's really weird is that I play a game on my phone called Color by Number, and that exact image of a man's head combined with another image of him walking through a forest, popped up in the game just a few days ago.  What are the odds of that? 

And hey, it's the year of Dinklage again, just like it's also been the year of Ingrid Bergman, the year of Oprah and the year of Chris Messina.  Time travel, prison movies, civil rights, serial killers and superheroes, it's definitely going to be a weird time trying to parse this all out in late December.  

Also starring Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Julia Ormond (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "Like Crazy"), Henry Ian Cusick, Evelyne Brochu (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Matt Ellis (last seen in "Good Boys"), Colin Lawrence (last seen in "Dreamcatcher"), Chad Krowchuk (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Gracyn Shinyei, Scott Hylands, Courtney Richter, Kathryn Kirkpatrick (last seen in "Okja"), Carrie Anne Fleming, Andrew Herr (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Jordana Largy, Stefania Indelicato.

RATING: 5 out of 10 trips to the beach (which everybody seems to regard as a fond memory, but I just don't get that...)

Aftermath (2017)

Year 13, Day 237 - 8/25/21 - Movie #3,920

BEFORE: Some excitement at the movie theater last night, a man came in the lobby, being chased by another man - the theater's in NYC's eclectic Greenwich Village neighborhood, so really, anything's possible.  The first guy shouted that the second guy had a gun (he didn't) and ran past me, either to go upstairs or out the rear exit.  A co-worker of mine stopped the second guy, who was holding out both his empty hands, to prove he had no gun, and though he clearly wanted to pursue the first guy, he left the building before long.  By the time a security guard or manager got to the lobby, the situation was defused, but still, it was quite scary to have someone (again, falsely) claim that someone else had a gun, and could be an active shooter.  I put in my notice, and I've got one more week on the job, and I can't wait to get out of there, it can be a crazy place. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger carries over again from "Killing Gunther".  Today's film came to my attention on Netflix, but I took too long to link to it, because it's no longer available there.  I know there's usually a two-year window, but sometimes it seems like some movies disappear from that service ahead of schedule. 

My timing is a bit spot-on, Arnold's making headlines this week for his anti-anti-maskers rant, calling people "schmucks" if they don't wear masks and protect themselves during this most recent wave of the COVID-pandemic.  It's cost him at least one sponsor from his body-building competition (which is held in Columbus, where this film also takes place) but he's not wrong, anybody who doesn't wear a mask for their own safety, and the safety of others, or is still on the fence about the vaccine, is a schmuck - by the dictionary definition of "schmuck", which is a foolish, stupid or contemptible person.  

THE PLOT: Two strangers' lives become inextricably bound together after a devastating plane crash. 

AFTER: This film follows the technique of "parallel editing", relating the stories of two men in turn, first one and then the other.  Most commonly, like 99% of the time, the two stories told via parallel editing are bound to intersect, and in those rare cases where they don't, the audience can feel cheated, because they're so used to seeing such meetings take place.  The technique is perhaps poorly named, because in geometry, parallel lines never meet, but in storytelling, parallel STORY-lines usually do.  

The first part of the story centers on Roman, an older man who's about to become a grandfather, and he's working at a construction foreman job in America, but he sounds like he's from Europe - you know, maybe Austria or something.  His wife and his pregnant daughter are flying in to Columbus, only the plane doesn't arrive on time, and when he inquires, he's ushered by airline personnel to a private back-room.  Uh-oh.  He finds out that their plane has crashed with another plane in mid-air, and it's unlikely there are any survivors.  

Against all rational advice, Roman deals with his grief by volunteering at the crash site, and you'd think they'd have a better way to screen the volunteers, other than just asking, "You're not related to any of the crew or passengers, are you?"  Or you'd think that the FAA or whoever would have a list of trained professionals to do this job, who might be more well-equipped.  But let's give the film the benefit of the doubt for just a moment.  Roman tries his best to continue on, but he's consumed with grief and finds it hard to get back to any normal routine - and you might be wondering at this point if Schwarzenegger was the right actor to cast in this role, because it does seem to require someone with a serious acting ability.  

Roman's offered a payout to settle his lawsuit against the airline, but refuses to take it, because all he wants is some form of apology, which nobody seems able to give to him.  

The second story starts with a day in the life of Jake, an air traffic controller.  Yep, another uh-oh moment, and you can probably guess where this is going.  There are technical problems in the control tower, Jake's given one too many planes to handle after one is diverted from Pittsburgh, and two planes are accidentally put on a collision course.  The film perhaps falls JUST shy of saying that he's at fault, he did get distracted and miss one key bit of conversation from a pilot, but the airline reviews his efforts and tells him that the accident wasn't his fault.  

Still, Jake is also consumed with grief, and also guilt.  The news reports start to draw their own conclusions about what might have gone wrong, whose fault it was and Jake's home gets spray-painted with words like "killer" and "murderer".  Jake also finds it hard to function or return to a normal routine, and his relationship with his wife and young son are affected.  It's a rare plot point where a woman wants to separate from her husband in order to SAVE the marriage, not end it - but Jake needs some time to work through what happened, and even takes the advice to leave town and get a new job, under a new name.  Whatever you have to do, I guess. 

But, as I said before, it's inevitable that these two men will collide in some fashion, even if it's just sitting next to each other on a bus or something.  The story (allegedly based on a real incident, but one that took place in Germany in 2002) demands that the two main characters need to meet, even if it's just to look each other in the eye and settle things.  One year later, after a memorial service and victims' monument dedication, Roman contacts the woman who wrote a book about the plane crash, and asks her to put him in touch with the air traffic controller.  

Obviously, something happens, and I won't reveal it here, but you can look up the actual incident if you really want to.  But then maybe it becomes clear why they hired Schwarzenegger for this role - it becomes a different sort of story at that point.  The conflict between the two men is perhaps mirrored by the mid-air collision of the planes.  It's not that their paths were destined to intersect, but it's another form of accident that their lives crossed in this way, and the repercussions of one little error in the control tower are far-reaching, even years later.  The real-life Roman, named Vitaly Kaloyev, was Russian, and what happened to him was very different than what happened to his fictional counterpart.  

The nature of the story might be one reason this film disappeared from Netflix, or maybe it's the title - I've also got another film, "The Aftermath", from 2019 on my list, and there's also a horror movie titled "Aftermath" released in August 2021.  I know that a movie title can't be copywrighted, but so much confusion in the market place doesn't help any of the parties involved.  But it looks like I won't be getting to the 2019 film "The Aftermath" this year, so I've got no problem keeping the films separate. 

Also starring Scoot McNairy (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood"), Maggie Grace (last seen in "The Jane Austen Book Club"), Kevin Zegers (ditto), Martin Donovan (last seen in "Tenet"), Judah Nelson (last seen in "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"), Hannah Ware (last seen in "Shame"), Mariana Klaveno, Larry Sullivan (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Jason McCune (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Glenn Morshower (last seen in "Dark Places"), Christopher Darga, Dani Sherrick, Keith Flippen (last seen in "The Mule"), Teri Clark Linden, Lewis Pullman (last seen in "The Ballad of Lefty Brown"), Mo McRae (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Kevin Murray, Danny Mooney (last seen in "Whip It"), Chloe Stearns, Joy Corrigan, Philip Winters.

RATING: 4 out of 10 "Welcome Home" signs

Killing Gunther

Year 13, Day 235 - 8/23/21 - Movie #3,919

BEFORE: That's it for the sci-fi and superhero stuff, for a while anyway - my late nod to Comic-Con season is over, but I've still got "The Suicide Squad" and a couple other super-hero-ish films coming up in September.  Plus more time-travel, a couple of Westerns, and I may finally watch "Cats", so it's bound to be a weird month.  

My new job is still in a bit of limbo, so I haven't quit my job at the movie theater yet - but I have to confirm my last date there before Tuesday, when they draw up the schedule for the following week, which begins on Friday.  The target date to be clear of the old job is still August 31, but there's no for-sure confirmation yet that the new job will start September 1, so I'm still a bit stuck.  AND the movie theater just happened to hire back the porters, those are the cleaners who know what they're doing, instead of the ushers, who, umm, don't - myself included.  SO, my job became a whole lot easier, just about one week before I'm planning to leave.  I was ready to bet that the porters would come back the day AFTER I quit, but what did I know?  I believe in Murphy's Law, that's for sure. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger carries over from "Terminator: Dark Fate", this is the middle of three films with him in them.  Working with sets of three is even easier than programming in pairs, because it gives me even more options, and if needed, I can cut out the middle film if my chain is running long.  There are perhaps half a dozen "middle films" left in the year, which I can re-schedule should the need arise - right now I think I'll only need to cut one of them, but you never know. 

THE PLOT: A group of eccentric assassins are fed up with Gunther, the world's greatest hitman, and decide to kill him, but their plan turns into a series of bungled encounters as Gunther seems to always be one step ahead.

AFTER: I think sometimes it's all about tone, because at some point filmmakers have to make an important decision, like is this film going to be a goofball, ridiculous comedy, or are we going to try to play things a bit straight?  The decision to go with a "mockumentary" approach here might have been a solid one, because if this film were just a little bit goofier, it would be so over-the-top that it wouldn't be believable at all, it would just be stupid.  And if this were just a little more serious, it might pass for a real action movie, just a somewhat silly one.  It's right down the middle here, but that mockumentary format both DOES explain how we the audience are getting to see the secret moments of a group of hitmen, but also DOESN'T explain why they would allow themselves to be filmed doing assassinations for pay, which are, you know, just a bit illegal. 

So the story sort of has to bend itself over backwards to accommodate this, as Blake, the leader of the group has some kind of grudge against the mysterious Gunther, and we assume at first it's because Gunther is so successful that his rep is showing up all his competition, and they're having trouble finding work because Gunther gets it all.  We later find out that Blake's hatred for Gunther is intensely personal, and has to do with a love triangle, Blake's girlfriend (who was ALSO a hit-man, err, hit-woman) left him for Gunther at some point - though she claims she didn't know Gunther was ALSO a hit-man at that time.  It's a very specific set of circumstances that led to this vendetta, apparently.  Still, does all that justify Blake hiring a camera crew to follow around HIS crew, to document their efforts to take Gunther down?  Hmm, I'm still not sure - in the end it only explains how WE get to see all this take place, and most movies don't even worry about that sort of thing, they just rely on the omniscient camera that's nowhere, yet also everywhere it needs to be to tell the story.  (Another topic for discussion - does the presence of an in-story camera crew make it easier for an audience member to suspend disbelief, or does it just get in the way, by making the audience THINK about the fact that they're watching a movie?  Discuss.)

Gunther is also everywhere and nowhere, and I can't help but think about the logistics of filmmaking, especially when there's only ONE A-list actor here, and he's not seen on camera until the end of the film.  Sure, the whole story is built around the team tracking Gunther down, so the story makes a bit of sense, but also, when you've hired Schwarzenegger for a low-budget indie comedy, you probably only have him for one or two days, max.  So all of his scenes have to be filmed together, and every other actor's schedule has to be more flexible.  Arnold's a trouper, though - he probably had to do a dozen costume changes during his 2-day shoot, just to make it look like he was in more scenes than he actually was.  For the majority of the film, whenever the team encounters Gunther, he's either too far away for the camera to see his face, or he's obviously being played by a stuntman, who's wearing a hoodie pulled up over his head, or some other method is used to cover up the fact that THAT isn't Arnold. 

It's also possible that Schwarzegger came out of retirement, after years as the "Governator" of California, and wanted to get back into filmmaking, but was out of shape or out of practice.  Yesterday's film, "Terminator: Dark Fate" also may have used a number of different techniques to make it look like Arnold was doing things as the T-800 that he didn't really do.  They can use stuntmen with similar builds and then just put Arnold's face on that other body now.  (There was a guy competing on "World's Worst Cooks" on the Food Network who had previously worked as Schwarzenegger's body double...). Some actor named Brett Azar was used in both "Dark Fate" and "Terminator Genisys" as the stand-in for the youngish cyborg Arnold, then they just used CGI to change his face.  Here, they just used a stuntman in disguise, most of the time. 

Blake's team keeps falling apart, though - they seem to be their own worst enemies, and part of that comedic technique seems to carry over from the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, like "Best in Show", "A Mighty Wind" and "Mascots", where everything that can go wrong, will.  One hit-man has a robotic arm with intense crushing power, only it tends to clench up when the battery runs out (gee, I wonder if that will turn out to be important later on) and another hit-man doesn't even believe in using guns, he prefers poison, because he always vomits when he sees blood. Umm, OK, but his skills aren't going to come in handy when the team goes up against someone with sniper rifles and grenade launchers.  There's also a set of brother-sister twin assassins from the Balkans, but they're more interested in visiting Disney World than completing the mission - and there's Blake's mentor, Ashley, who's been in the game so long that he's very old and keeps having heart attacks.  These are the jokes, people. 

Donnie, the team's explosive expert, rigs the car that Gunther's most likely to use after a meeting with his contact, but something goes wrong and literally every other car on the street blows up instead.  Is Donnie that incompetent?  No, it seems that Gunther's just always aware that the team is after him, so he rigs the odds in his favor, all the time.  It's fairly easy for him, both because the team is THAT disjointed, and also, he's that good.  You know, master of disguise who can somehow make himself look and sound like an older black woman who's three feet shorter.  Hey, it's not THAT much harder to believe than the "false face" tricks they pull off in the "Mission: Impossible" movies, is it?  But no, Arnold Schwarzenegger can't really SOUND like anybody but himself, can he?  Be warned, if you make it through this entire film, you'll be made to listen to him sing a country music song.  The SONG is great, it's a clever ditty called "Earthquake Love", but the singing - not so good.  (Sample lyric - "She's the only woman who can make my bed rock / Try to catch my breath, here comes the aftershock!")

There's a ton of in-jokes here, like lines that were straight out of "Predator" that I didn't pick up on, and after Gunther gets away, there's a disappointed reaction - "He got to the chopper..."  I just checked the notes on IMDB to confirm that yes, Schwarzenegger's salary made up 20% of the film's budget.  And Taran Killam left "Saturday Night Live" in order to make this movie - was it worth it?  I'm not sure. It only had a short release in 2017, when it made under $200,000 at the box office.  You can decide for yourself, but you'd better hurry, the film's leaving Netflix on August 31. 

Also starring Taran Killam (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Hannah Simone, Peter Kelamis (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Aaron Yoo (last seen in "The Wackness"), Paul Brittain (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2"), Amir Talai (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Steve Bacic (last seen in "Wonder"), Ryan Gaul (last seen in "Father Figures"), Allison Tolman (last seen in "Krampus"), Cobie Smulders (last seen in "Results"), Aubrey Sixto, David "Squatch" Ward, Amitai Marmorstein, Jake T. Roberts, Scott McNeil, Alex Duncan, Chad Krowchuk (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Rebecca Olson, Hyuma Frankowski

RATING: 5 out of 10 obscure karaoke songs

Terminator: Dark Fate

Year 13, Day 234 - 8/22/21 - Movie #3,918

BEFORE: Diego Boneta carries over from "Monster Hunter".  I could have had Mario De la Rosa carry over from "Hellboy", but his role in this one was deemed a bit too small - he plays "Mexican Cop #1" or something like that.  I'll resort to that sort of thing if necessary, but I'd like to avoid it if I can - major roles, or at least named characters, whenever possible.  For that matter, I could have had Mackenzie Davis carry over from "Irresistible", but it wasn't really an option - "Irresistible" was really a "mortar" film, not a brick, it was just there to help me get to "Black Widow" at long last.  This is how my mind works, anyway.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Terminator Genisys" (Movie #2,314), "Terminator Salvation" (Movie #486)

THE PLOT: An augmented human from the future and Sarah Connor must stop an advanced liquid Terminator from hunting down a young girl, whose fate is critical to the human race. 

AFTER: I've already hit time travel as a topic a couple times this year ("Tenet", "Bill & Ted Face the Music", "Palm Springs", "When We First Met") and more movies are on the way, scheduled for late summer.  I've got a backlog of them, but most of the smaller ones are very difficult to link to, and then quite ironically I never seem to have enough time to get to them.  By the same token, I would have loved to re-watch some of the other "Terminator" films in preparation for this one, but, well, you know.  But it seems like that wasn't necessary, this one picks up its narrative threads from "Terminator 2" and none of the sequels that followed, which are now regarded as if they never happened. 

SPOILERS AHEAD for "Terminator: Dark Fate" - proceed no further unless you're caught up on this franchise!

Future is always in motion - now I have to go and try to figure out where this "Terminator" movie diverges from the realities and visions of the future we've seen before in the franchise.  All that traveling back from the future that the Terminator robots did to prevent certain things from happening didn't work, because the forces of good stood against those Arnie-Bots and Robert Patrick-bots and kept the bad things at bay, so that John Connor could grow up and lead the resistance.  Then "Terminator Genisys" happened, and they took the John Connor character in a terrible new direction - you just don't DO that to a character.  So after all that, letting John Connor grow up turned out to be a BAD idea?  

So there was another Terminator that got sent back to the past to try and kill John Connor AGAIN, and it looks like that one succeeded, because he's not really in this film, he's no longer part of the timeline, and his mother is still dealing with his death, even though it was years ago.  And we the audience have to deal with a new terrible future, one without SkyNet, but with a new overarching enemy, Legion, which might just be SkyNet with a new name, it's tough to say.  But somebody in the future is still building Terminator robots and sending them back to the past to kill key figures that will be important to the resistance.  

From a time-travel perspective, it's a little weird to think about the motivations of characters we can't see - especially when those characters are trying to change the past.  If you're in the future and you change the past, you might alter the timeline and make things worse, so care has to be taken to really focus and try to make things better, from your perspective.  This is because it's so easy to accidentally change the timeline in a way that means you no longer exist, and then where will you be?  Nowhere?  The fact that somebody sent a Terminator robot back sort of implies that they lose the overall battle against humanity - but they still have the resources to build and program a killer robot AND send it back in time?  

Then there's the paradox angle to deal with - we have this time-traveling killer robot, we have the resources to send it back in time, and we want to use it to change the past.  BUT, that could create a timeline where we DON'T have a killer robot, or the resources to send it back in time, and then, like, who sent the killer robot back to change the past?  Nobody?  OK, so it didn't happen, and now we're back where we started.  Fall back on the Hitler analogy, if you go back to the year 1889 and kill Hitler when he was a baby, then maybe you create a timeline where there was no Hitler, then there was no need to send somebody back to kill him, so in the end, you didn't do it, because it didn't need to be done.  So therefore you didn't do it, and baby Hitler becomes adult Hitler, so this whole endeavor just doesn't work, it goes around and around. 

This is why storytellers are falling back on the "alternate timeline" or "parallel universe" stand-by.  OK, we changed the past, now we're living in a different present, with many possible futures.  Great, it makes it easier to keep a franchise going, but does it bear any resemblance to the way the universe really works?  

Speaking of that - this is how franchises work, OF COURSE Arnold Schwarzenegger is in this one, playing a robot from the future.  This was probably the worst-kept secret in movie history, like he's RIGHT THERE on the poster, which most people see in the movie theater before the film starts.  So it's not much of a reveal in the movie when he shows up, yet it was filmed that way, as if it was going to be a big surprise.  Instead, we've known all along, so there's no surprise at all (yawn).  There are other surprises and reveals, but this just couldn't be one, if the promotions department insists on telegraphing it like this.  

Arnold's character here, one of (many?) T-800 robots seen in the franchise, is called "Carl" - you know, to distinguish him from the other robots who look exactly the same when they have their human-skins on.  But was this particular T-800 seen in any of the other films?  It's possible this is the same T-800 seen in "Genisys", and he came back in time to kill John Connor (again?) after he saw what the writers did to him in that film.  Death would surely be better than THAT.  But they never make this plot point clear, because then that would acknowledge that "Genisys" happened, and the filmmakers obviously don't want to do that.  Again, the worst thing about time travel seems to be the grammatical tenses involved - how do you refer to an event that happened in your past, but everyone else's future, and thanks to your time-traveling actions, now will NEVER happen, because you changed the timeline?  As Douglas Adams once wrote, that' the "Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive", and nobody really knows how to conjugate that. And that's just if you're the time traveler, for anybody else in the timeline, how do you refer to an event that was going to happen to you but now isn't, being described to you by someone who WAS there, but in an alternate future?  

Anyway, there's lots of action here to distract you from the complications of time-travel and grammar, they have to ALMOST kill the Rev-9 several times before they accomplish it, repeating as necessary until the end of the film.  Like the T-2000, this robot can turn into liquid metal and re-form, only it looks less shiny and more like black oil or ink when he does that.  He also has a robot skeleton inside, and he can split into two entities, the skeleton and the liquid metal guy, so he's like the Certs of the killer robot world, he's both a candy AND a breath mint.  Floor wax AND dessert topping.  There's a bunch of IBM commercials going around now that talk about a "hybrid" approach, being used by banks and factories and such, but then they never really describe what their hybrid is.  Sounds like a bunch of jibber-jabber, but this Terminator really is a true hybrid, and the heroes have to kill BOTH of him.  Umm, I think. 

Meanwhile, the old T-800 robot, aka Carl, has a significant other in Texas, even a stepson - he's learned how to mimic human emotions and fake his way through a relationship.  And he sells and installs drapes, oh, how the mighty have fallen.  Next you're going to tell me he's got a drinking problem, a second mortgage and a boat up on wheels in the yard.  Get it together, man.  It's no wonder when Sarah Connor & company come knocking on his door that he jumps at the chance to go with them.  Even though Sarah says that if he survives the mission, she's going to kill him herself - he's probably aching for the sweet release of death.  

What fans apparently didn't like about this film, in addition to the killing of John Connor, was the emphasis on female heroes.  Get over it, haters, the future is female, from the augmented humans to the aging mothers with weapons to the young women who can survive plane crashes by jumping into an ejecting Hummer with a parachute that then lands on a dam before falling into the spillway and sinking.  Men have no idea.

Also starring Linda Hamilton (last seen in "Terminator Salvation"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Mackenzie Davis (last seen in "Irresistible"), Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna (last seen in "Bernie"), Tristan Ulloa, Ferran Fernandez, Alicia Borrachero (last seen in "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian"), Manuel Pacific, Enrique Arce, Fraser James, Tom Hopper (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Stuart McQuarrie, Steven Cree, Georgia Simon, Mario De La Rosa (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Stephanie Gil, Daniel Ortiz, Blair Jackson (last seen in "Tower"), Phillip Garcia (last seen in "Okja"), Tarnue Massaquoi, Cleveland Berto, Christine Horn (last seen in "The Way Back" (2020)), Pete Ploszek (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Mark Weiler, Kacy Owens, Stephen Oyoung with archive footage of Edward Furlong (?) (last seen in "Pet Sematary II"), Earl Boen and the voice of Aaron Kunitz.

RATING: 7 out of 10 bags of potato chips