BEFORE: Peter Sarsgaard carries over again from "The Batman", and he'll be back again in June for "The Lost Daughter", as I said yesterday. Three films with him here in April, plus "An Education" in February, plus "The Lost Daughter" means he'll make the year-end countdown, though his score could end up being just half of Nicolas Cage's. There's still a lot of Movie Year left, over 2/3, but keep an eye on Susan Sarandon, I'm just saying. She was in "Romance & Cigarettes", "Elizabethtown" and "Shall We Dance?" already, tonight makes four appearances, and I think she's got another four coming up in my planned chain, only they're not linked together. She could be a contender, that's all.
I'm doubling up today so I can stay on track for Easter, after losing a day yesterday by working both jobs and then studying for this fire guard exam. I can't keep up this pace, burning the candle at both ends, while also learning how to handle a fire in a crowded building. I suppose that seems a bit ironic, but once I pass these exams then I can have keys to the theater and I could work a solo shift and also lock up after.
THE PLOT: In the near future, an ex-jewel thief receives a gift from his son: a robot butler programmed to look after him. But soon the two companions try their luck as a heist team.
AFTER: This is an interesting little film from 2012 that I'm guessing that nobody saw at the time. Yep, opening weekend box office was just $35,000 - and it only made $3.3 million in North America - but hey, there's always cable, and a bunch of streaming services now, so no film is ever truly dead these days, you can still get eyeballs on your film, years later, if the audience is intrigued by your film's title or premise.
I'm thinking robot technology may have improved since 2012 - I went in a Stop & Stop in Queens the other day, looking for cat litter, and they didn't have the 7 lb. bag of our brand, just the 14 lb. brand (this is probably why we stopped going to that store in the first place...). BUT, the store had been redecorated, the aisles were wider, and there was a robot that was cleaning the floor, I think. I guess that makes sense, no human really likes to mop, at least not what they're paying to clean supermarkets these days, I imagine. I had to mop eight bathrooms in one morning at AMC, and I immediately changed my schedule so I didn't have to work morning shifts, which is when all the mopping gets done. Look, I signed on to be an usher, not a janitor, and this was just too much - I don't even like cleaning the bathroom at home. Who does? And you want me to mop EIGHT bathrooms before the place even opens? Uh-uh, I went to film school, and there were no courses at NYU that covered mopping. I have mad respect now for the people who do clean floors, but I still don't want to do it, so please, bring on the robots. Roombas are a thing, so we might as well make more robots to do all the things humans don't want to do, and try not to think about how that will bring on the robot uprising in a future century.
This is a film about a former cat burglar, or "second story man", and HEY, I didn't even think about the connection from Catwoman to the lead character tonight, how about that? Frank is getting older and suffering from dementia, and his daughter is traveling through Asia, while his son, Hunter, comes to visit him every weekend, sacrificing his time with his children to drive for several hours just to check in on his father. Frank then proceeds to ask Hunter how he's doing at Princeton, even though he graduated a long time ago - Frank also seems to think that his wife still lives with him, even though they got divorced 30 years ago. Hunter's solution to monitor his father, and also make sure that he exercises, is to bring him a robot.
Frank is initially skeptical, especially since the robot is programmed for activities that will also improve his cognition, like gardening, only they're just no fun. Frank decides that it would be a better use of his time to teach the robot how to pick locks, crack safes and disable alarms. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? He starts out with good intent, perhaps, like he steals a valuable copy of "Don Quixote" from the local library, because he's got a crush on the librarian, and the library is undergoing a change of service, and all the books will be transferred elsewhere while they install new computer stations and tablets, one supposes. Frank says he's going to give the book to Jennifer, the librarian, but does he really intend to do that? Or is he going to conveniently forget that, too?
Frank and his robot then target the house of the man in charge of the library renovation project, and they steal some valuable jewels. This puts Frank on the radar of the local sheriff, and it puts him and the robot under police surveillance. Frank's had a lifetime's worth of experience in covering his own tracks, but it's also possible that he's gotten careless in his old age and forgotten how to properly lay low and not attract attention. What's worse is that his accomplice has a holographic memory, it's impossible for the robot to forget anything, and that information could be used as evidence against him.
This is a clever little idea, and I don't want to say any more about the plot because there are maybe a few surprises in there at the end, one of which I'm not sure that I agree with, but hey, it is what it is. Peter Sarsgaard provides the voice of the robot, which was sort of based on the design of ASIMO, a real Japanese robot that looks a bit like an astronaut. I remember "South Park" making fun of that robot when Cartman put on a costume and pretended to be a robot named "AWESOM-O".
This one hits home a little bit, because I also went to visit my parents in Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, and my mother's also got some form of dementia, there's kind of less of her every time I see her. My father's taking care of her and they're living in an apartment-like facility, but one that caters to the elderly and also has a brain-care/memory loss center if her mental state gets any worse. I'm not sure exactly how this ends but I have a feeling that none of the possibilities are good, and my sister and I just can't drop everything in our lives and go live near them in their former house, so at least they're in a place where their needs are being met and they're near medical personnel if anything should go really wrong. Until then, my mother's just going to watch PBS and her soap operas and not really remember how she got where she is. It's too bad that this is real life, and getting them a robot isn't practical or any kind of answer to their problems, they won't even let me get them a VCR or DVD player because neither of them wants to learn how to use it, which I find ridiculous. But I guess at some point in your life you just want to stop learning things and you just want every day to be just like the last, with no more changes until the really big one at the end.
Also starring Frank Langella (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), James Marsden (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Liv Tyler (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Shall We Dance?"), Jeremy Strong (also last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Jeremy Sisto (last seen in "Thirteen"), Rachael Ma, Bonnie Bentley (last seen in "Alex Cross"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "Wine Country"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), Dario Barosso (last seen in "St. Vincent"), Joshua Ormond,
RATING: 6 out of 10 bowls of kiddie cereal.
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