Head Over Heels

Year 14, Day 36 - 2/5/22 - Movie #4,037

BEFORE: This film looks like it will require at least two attempts to watch it - I had to get up early today and work at the movie theater (super-secret screening, sorry, can't even tell you what in-progress movie or which celebrity directed it and held a special event to get feedback from friends) so in order to get up early, that meant no Mountain Dew the night before.  This practically guaranteed I would fall asleep during the film, which I did - but hey, at least I got up in time to make it into Manhattan on a cold Saturday morning, and I did NOT oversleep and miss my shift. So, there's that.  Back home now in the afternoon, I'll make a second attempt to finish this film and clear it off the DVR.  

Freddie Prinze Jr. carries over from "She's All That". 

THE PLOT: A young woman is attracted to a man, despite thinking that she's seen him kill someone. 

AFTER: Man, this film is terrible - falling asleep last night right in the middle can be attributed to two factors - no caffeine to keep me awake, and the fact that the film is terrible, and the plot makes no sense.  It's full of random things, and feels like eight different movies that got stitched together, and none of them have anything to do with any of the others.  Kind of like those "New York, I Love You" and "Rio, I Love You" movies, with a bunch of short, unconnected plotlines, only in this case, all the short stories have the same actors in them, which is a weird way to go.

The first plotline concerns a woman who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it's her job to restore Renaissance paintings, only the screenwriter didn't really take the time to learn how restoring a painting works - from what little I know about it, a restorer needs to carefully remove dirt or grime or smoke from a painting that was stored improperly, or fix a damaged section, but this usually doesn't involve the restorer changing the work in any way - here we see Amanda, the lead character, basically fixing a face in the painting by creating a new one herself, based on somebody she knows, and that's probably a big no-no.  Remember that woman in Spain a few years ago who decided to "fix" a damaged painting of Jesus and it ended up looking like a monkey?  She basically destroyed a valuable piece of art - so a restorer would never be allowed to take a classic work by Titian and paint her boyfriend's face into it, that's artistic heresy, why wasn't she fired on the spot for this?  Instead her boss says something like "Nice work, Amanda!" which is patently ridiculous. 

The second plotline concerns a woman (same woman, but again, it's a stretch to see how all these things fit together) who needs to find a new apartment because her roommate is a lesbian  - this seems more than a little homophobic, plus why do the roommates have to sleep in the same bed, and why can't Amanda tell her roommate that she just doesn't swing that way, and she'd like to sleep alone without being molested, essentially.  Is Amanda just too polite to say, "Hey, maybe don't grab my tits..." which all seems a bit odd.  Amanda moves to a new apartment with four models, who don't pay anything to live there, because the modeling agency pays for it, but still they feel justified in charging Amanda $500 a month to sleep in a closet, because they've turned all the bedrooms into walk-in closets, because they're models. While I approve of making fun of vapid, dumb models, still, that's a gross generalization and probably isn't fair - maybe there are one or two smart models out there who aren't complete gold diggers, but you'd never know that from watching this film.  These girls think that it's OK to have a "waiting list" sign-up sheet outside their apartment every night, and men show up and get on the list in order to have the opportunity to take the girls out, pay for their dinners at expensive restaurants, and not have sex with them after.  The models aren't prostitutes, after all, but they will let men pay for their dinner and NOT have sex, but somehow that seems even worse than being prostitutes.  Again, the screenwriter has no concept of how models work - everybody knows that models don't eat.

The third plotline is about a woman (yep, same woman) who's had bad luck with men her whole life, we see flashbacks of a boy in grade-school leaving her for another girl, another boy in high school leaving her for another man, and so on.  (Again, this seems a bit homophobic, but this was released in 2001, a different time in which having any representation of gay people at all was a step forward.  Also, kind of a step back.). For some reason, Amanda, who's had such terrible relationship luck her whole life - hey, maybe she's the problem? - still has some kind of hope that she'll find "the one" who will make her feel week in the knees, the way she feels when she starts destroying - sorry, restoring - a painting.  She fails to realize that change comes from within, you've got to change your attitude and outlook in order to be receptive to an adult relationship when one comes along, but no, Amanda keeps blaming the men, which only proves that the screenwriter doesn't know how dating works, either.  Amanda meets Jim when the Great Dane that he walks for an elderly neighbor starts humping her - and I don't mean humping her leg, I mean REALLY humping her, like she's bent over and the dog is really giving it to her. I try not to judge, but if this is the sort of thing you find funny, you really have to ask yourself why.

This is a big problem all along in this film, a lot of the humor is really from the gutter, like a part where three models find themselves in Jim's apartment, and they hide in the shower.  Jim comes home, goes into the bathroom and, well, farts and poops, as one does, and the three models clearly are disgusted by the sounds and the smell.  It's not funny, it's just gross.  Later on, the same girls are hiding in a DIFFERENT bathroom, and two workmen come in to unclog a toilet, and from their conversation, the models think the workmen are having gay sex.  But they're not, they're unclogging a toilet, and when they do, then the toilet in the stall with the models explodes and covers them all in excrement, which again, is not funny, it's just gross.  And this isn't how anonymous gay sex or plumbing works, from what little I know about those topics. 

The fourth plotline concerns a wacky misunderstanding, because the apartment Amanda and the models live in overlooks the apartment that Jim lives in, and they can watch him exercise and babysit for the neighbors and buy candy bars from Girl Scouts, and all the while Amanda is convinced he's got a dark side, just because she's dating him. Logical?  Then her fears are confirmed because it APPEARS that Jim is murdering a woman, which like everything else in this film, just isn't funny.  This leads to Amanda and the models breaking in to his apartment to find evidence, of which there is none, so Amanda therefore is open to a relationship with Jim, despite what she saw with her own eyes, which also makes zero sense.  I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for a man appearing to commit murder, but you might be asking how a screenwriter's going to find that.  

Then the fifth plotline concerns some kind of Russian gangster who might be laundering money or dresses or diamonds or something, it's all very unclear, and he also hires Amanda to help restore a damaged Russian painting, and the why of this is also very unclear.  I swear, there are about a hundred reversals in this film, and every time you learn one little fact about Jim or the way Amanda feels about him, five minutes later that fact is either contradicted or proven to be untrue.  You may find yourself screaming at the TV screen asking for the film to resolve one thing, just one thing, any one thing.  Keep dreaming. 

It all comes together (no, not really...) at a fashion show where everybody falls down a lot - and slapstick is really the lowest form of humor, as I've said in this space many times.  This just proves my point. I will point out that the fashion icon who hires the models for this show is played by Stanley DeSantis, who I sort of knew in the real world, he had a t-shirt company on the side, and my boss once had his company make him a batch of t-shirts with a couple of his print cartoons on them.  When we sold out and tried to order more, I tried to track down Stanley's company, only to find out that he had passed away in 2005, and so we couldn't order another batch. 

This movie wanted so bad to be part comedy, part romance, part suspense thriller and part action movie, but as you might expect, in order to be all of those things, it couldn't excel at any of them, and trying so hard to be everything to everybody, it ended up being a bad comedy, a poor romance and a terrible action movie. Knowing all this now, I wish I'd skipped this one.  Live and learn, as always.

Also starring Monica Potter (last seen in "Patch Adams"), Shalom Harlow (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Ivana Milicevic (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Sarah O'Hare, Tomiko Fraser, China Chow, Jay Brazeau (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Stanley DeSantis (last seen in "The Fan"), James Kirk (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Erin-Marie Dykeman, Ben Silverman, Sam MacMillan, Betty Linde, Norma MacMillan, Bethoe Shirkoff, Tom Shorthouse, Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Scream 2"), Brenda Schad, Gary Jones (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Tanja Reichert (last seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Joe Pascual, Colin Lawrence (last seen in "Rememory"), J.B. Bivens, Jerry Wasserman, Raoul Ganeev, Brendan Beiser, Alexander Pervakov, 

RATING: 2 out of 10 throwing knives (cheese daggers?)

She's All That

Year 14, Day 35 - 2/4/22 - Movie #4,036

BEFORE: Anna Paquin carries over from "A Walk on the Moon", and suddenly my romance chain is starting to look like a repeat of last year's horror chain, as Freddie Prinze Jr. settles in for a three-film chain, and also Anna Paquin was in one of the "Scream" movies, and hey, Matthew Lillard's here, too!  It's like a horror film reunion or something!  I have to keep the two genres very separate for my purposes, which usually makes me realize that most actors are either one or the other, horror or romance, but every once in a while you find some that can do both.  Freddie Prinze Jr. is one of them, and so is his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar. 

I did say there would be some real romance "classics" in this year's line-up, and after a recent movie for a start, I went back to a film from 1996, then one from 1999 - this one was ALSO released in 1999, I'm going to hang around that turn-of-the-millennium period for a bit before I head back - er, forward.  I think the oldest romance film in this year's chain hails from 1992 - I can't really go back much further than that, because it will be hard to link back to current day again.  Still, anything's possible. 

THE PLOT: A high-school jock makes a bet that he can turn an unattractive girl into the school's prom queen.

AFTER: This is a classic, classic high-school romance, it doesn't really get much more classic than this - as in, being the archetype for showing what type of relationships that screenwriters think take place in high schools.  But come on, what writer ever got laid in high school, or even went to the prom?  Very few of them - and I thought they were supposed to "write what you know". Writers break that rule every day, they're a cowardly lot - and I bet you they were all the awkward teens in high school, they weren't the "cool kids", not by a long shot. 

But the story here, about turning the mousy girl into a hot stunner on a dare/bet, that's even more classic.  Remember "My Fair Lady"?  Same effin' story. And that itself was based on the play "Pygmalion", by George Bernard Shaw.  And I think maybe that one was based on "The Ugly Duckling" fairy tale.  OK, maybe not.  But the original Pygmalion story was a Greek myth about a sculptor falling in love with a statue he carved. Yeah, OK so a dude liked humping a statue, that's pretty lame, but then Aphrodite turned it into a real woman, so then he was happy?  

I guess you can follow that through-line all the way to "She's All That", and the many dozens of make-over knock-off films that came after, like "Maid in Manhattan" and "The Devil Wears Prada" and anything with a changing-room montage - like, you know, every rom-com. I guess maybe all this happened in the wake of "Pretty Woman" and the wave of make-overs dominated the films of the 1990's?  Like, if you didn't have a character totally change her look, what was your movie even ABOUT, I'm super-serious...  But all this was before the backlash, which happened when people realized that the message being sent out to all the teen girls was that the most important thing is to look good, and fit in.  You'll never succeed if you just wear dumpy clothes, make paintings in your basement and never go outside and interact with other humans. 

"She's All That" may be the worst offender, in that after mousy Laney Boggs falls (eventually) for the lines that Zack Siler is feeding her, in order to win his bet - she does become more social, more confident, and her art improves, she even gets a recommendation from her art teacher to go to art college!  Yeah, she totally got played by Zack and Dean, but wasn't it worth it if she can become an artist!  Plus, she'll have a horrible bullying experience and/or break-up to inspire her art in the future, it's a win-win!  

But you know what's going to happen here, right?  The guy who's been lying to her, the one who bet that he could turn the most unlikely candidate into a potential prom queen, he's going to spend so much time getting to know her during the charade that he'll become her friend, and then this leads to ACTUALLY falling in love with her.  You knew that, right?  It's basic rom-com 101.  

The other storyline, about Zack's ex, Taylor, hooking up with one of the stars of MTV's "The Real World", the unfortunately named "Brock Hudson" (shudder...) is a lot more interesting, but it's also very sad - Taylor's life becomes a whirlwind of teen sex, partying, and then realizing that Brock enjoys being in the spotlight a lot more than he enjoys being with her.  So while Laney's star is on the rise, on her way to maybe being prom queen, Taylor's reputation is in free-fall, she did it to herself, made herself unpopular just by hanging out with the wrong people and partying too hard. You can't really blame MTV for that, or can you?  

Everything else is really disjointed here - like that fact that Zack is somehow a soccer star AND one of the smartest kids in his class.  What?  How is that possible?  How can he be both those things?  Or how can the audience understand him if he's more than one thing, and not just a simple movie stereotype?  I kind of welcome this, a jock also having the fourth-highest GPA, but from a cinematic standpoint, it's also very confusing, after watching so many films set in high schools, where teens can be brains or jocks, but not both.  Why can't he pick a lane and stay in it? 

So many other things in the film are incredibly random - like, what high school has a DJ making random announcements and shout-outs all day long?  None of them, I'm guessing.  What kid roller-skates around the cafeteria offering fresh ground pepper?  It. Just. Doesn't. Happen. Who's the rich girl who pukes at the party, what's her connection to the rest of the story?  These things feel like something out of a David Lynch movie, they're just odd and they don't belong.  I could MAYBE see a group dance taking place at a prom - I don't know for sure, because I didn't go to my school's prom - but it would HAVE to be choreographed in advance, it's not like all the boys suddenly mind-melded and decided on the same dance steps, right?  

Now, of course, we've sort of progressed as a species - OK, not really, but work with me here - and we know that the best thing for Laney would have been to appreciate herself as the introverted, frumpy non-sociable type that she needed to be.  Nobody should have to conform to other people's definition of "beauty", we should recognize that there are all types, and everyone is beautiful and important in their own way.  Yes, even the screenwriters.  Some of them, anyway.

Also starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Rachael Leigh Cook (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Scream 3"), Paul Walker (last seen in "Flags of Our Fathers"), Jodi Lyn O'Keefe (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Kevin Pollak (last seen in "Middle Men"), Kieran Culkin (last seen in "Movie 43"), Elden Henson (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Usher Raymond (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Kimberly "Lil' Kim" Jones, Gabrielle Union (last seen in "Top Five"), Dulé Hill (last seen in "Locked Down"), Tamara Mello (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Clea DuVall (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Tim Matheson (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Debbi Morgan (last seen in "The Hurricane"), Alexis Arquette (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Dave Buzzotta, Chris Owen (last seen in "October Sky"), Charlie Dell (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Michael Milhoan, Carlos Jacott (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Ashlee Levitch, Vanessa Lee Chester, Patricia Charbonneau, Katharine Towne (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Wendy Fowler, Flex Alexander (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Debbie Lee Carrington, Clay Rivers, Jarrett Lennon, Brandon Mychal Smith (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), with cameos from Milo Ventimiglia (last seen in "Creed II"), Sarah Michelle Gellar (last seen in "Scream 2") and the voice of Alex Trebek.

RATING: 4 out of 10 incorrect "Jeopardy!" responses

A Walk on the Moon

Year 14, Day 34 - 2/3/22 - Movie #4,035

BEFORE: Liev Schreiber carries over again from "Walking and Talking". It's only Day 3 of the romance chain, so it's just way too early to draw any conclusions about this year's chain - I'm going to be all over the place in terms of years, I've got some classic teen romances from the 1990's coming up, I've got more recent films from this century, I've got romances set in World War II and a couple other period pieces, some based on famous novels, so really, it's going to be a mixed bag.  BUT the first three films are all about New Yorkers, so that's an interesting start.  This one's about Jewish families from Brooklyn (?) who in the past have tended to drive upstate to the Catskills for the summer.  Remember "Dirty Dancing"?  Like that, only this one's specifically set in the summer of 1969, around two significant cultural events, the first moon landing (July 20, 1969) and the Woodstock concert in Bethel, NY (August 15-18, same year!)

THE PLOT: The world of a young housewife is turned upside down when she has a summer affair in the Catskills with a free-spirited blouse salesman. 

AFTER: There's really a lot going on here, maybe even a bit too much - most likely the action should be viewed from the perspective of the female daughter (Pamela Gray, who would have been 13 in 1969, hmmm...) but really there are two stories, the journey/sexual awakening of the daughter over the summer, after she reaches puberty, and the parallel story of her mother, who got married young, became pregnant early on and never got to "play the field".  Both women are suddenly surrounded by hippie culture and the Summer of Love, and for Pearl Kantrowitz, the mother, this leads to her having an affair with a man who sells blouses out of a bus at the Catskills resort. 

Mr. Kantrowitz comes upstate on the weekends, but he's too busy in NYC during the week, working as a TV repairman, and this relates to the time period because it seems nearly everyone needs to have their TV fixed in time to watch the first moon landing.  I don't know, this part seems a bit contrived, was there really an urgent wave of TV repair that month, or did the story just need a reason for the wife to be lonely?  My suspicions suggest the latter.  Similarly, a few weeks later, Mr. Kantrowitz can't make the journey upstate because so many hippies are on the roads, trying to get to Bethel for the big music festival, so this separates them further, gives the wife another chance to fool around with her lover, but this also feels a bit contrived.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it really went down this way for one particular couple, maybe the screenwriter is drawing from a personal experience, in which case, I stand corrected.  

What really feels contrived, though, is the fact that Mr. Kantrowitz's mother claims to be a psychic, she does tarot card readings and also reads tea leaves for the other guests at the resort.  But this also seems like a cheat, a quick way for someone to learn about the affair (through a vision, right...) instead of say, catching two people in the act or hearing gossip from somebody who saw the two lovers together.  Then her vision causes her to call her son, strongly hinting that he should come upstate no matter what in order to save his marriage, thus forcing a confrontation between the husband and his cheating wife.  It's just a bit too by-the-numbers, things fall into place just a bit too easily, if you ask me.  

Young Allison, their daughter, is dating for the first time, kissing a boy for the first time, and then she figures that she'll sneak out one night to attend the big music festival - sure, she's only 14, what could possibly go wrong?  All her friends want to go, and so many people are crashing the festival, who's going to notice a few more teens walking in?  Yeah, that actually checks out.  But the worse part of the festival for her turns out to be catching her own mother lying on a blanket with her lover, smoking pot and drinking and enjoying the forbidden psychedelic music.  It's bad enough to even think about your own parents having sex, but then to catch one of them in the act of having an affair, God, that's even worse. 

 

The parents are brought back together by an accident involving their young son, and it's clear from that point that the affair is most likely over - the blouse salesman makes Pearl an offer to drive away with her in his bus, see the whole country and leave New York behind, but it's a desperate play at best, he knows he's lost her.  But then the larger question becomes, can the marriage survive - SHOULD the marriage survive, after all that's happened over the summer, and all the years of disappointment and neglect from before that?  Unfortunately, it's a non-answer here, very ambiguous, and the audience is sort of left on their own to decide how things will play out.  Showing the couple dancing to a Dean Martin song, then switching to Jimi Hendrix, isn't much of an answer at all. You can't have it both ways, after all. 

If you're a real stickler for authenticity, which I am, then the scene here at the Woodstock Festival was inaccurate - we hear both Richie Havens performing "Freedom" (which was the first song on the first day of the festival, Friday) and the announcement from Wavy Gravy about serving "breakfast in bed for 400,000", which was made on Sunday morning - these two sound clips could not have been heard on the same day by concert-goers. NITPICK POINT, I know. 

But, if it's any consolation, this is the film with THAT scene, the one with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen doing it under a river's waterfall.  And they have sex during the moon landing broadcast, too - hey, whatever does it for you, I guess. 

Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Viggo Mortensen (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Anna Paquin (last seen in "Scream 4"), Tovah Feldshuh (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Bobby Boriello (last seen in "Enemy of the State"), Mahée Paiement, Star Jasper, Ellen David (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Lisa Bronwyn Moore (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Lisa Jakub (last seen in "Matinee"), Joseph Perrino, Stewart Bick, Jess Platt, Victoria Barkoff (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Tamar Kozlov, Jesse Lavendel, James Liboiron, HoJo Rose, Joel Miller, Mal Z. Lawrence, with the voices of Julie Kavner (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Neil Armstrong (last seen in "Zappa")

RATING: 5 out of 10 P.A. announcements about the ice cream man being on the premises

Walking and Talking

Year 14, Day 33 - 2/2/22 - Movie #4,034

BEFORE: Liev Schreiber carries over from "A Rainy Day in New York", and here are the links for the rest of February, so you can get a glimpse at what's coming up:  Anna Paquin, Freddie Prinze Jr., Selma Blair, Reese Witherspoon, Regina King, Victor Garber, James Wolk, Kevin Smith, Fiona Shaw, Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Northam & Janet McTeer, Emma Thompson, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Jeremy Irons, Veronica Ferres, Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgard, Bel Powley, and Joel Michaely - that should get me to March 1, unless I find other films to drop in along the way.  

My general rule all along has been that any films I watched prior to 2009 are off-limits - but I sort of have to make an exception for "Walking and Talking" - I sort of remember watching it in 1997 or so, but it didn't really register. I got divorced in 1996, and met my future second wife that same year, so it was a crazy time.  The details of this film, for whatever reason, just didn't stick in the old memory banks, I can't really remember much about it at all.  My wife and I spent a few years just trying to remember the name of "that film we saw that one time", but neither of us could remember enough about it to look it up.  Either it was that forgettable, or both of us were distracted, I'm not sure.  Anyway, it then took a few years for me to track it down - I even watched "Kicking and Screaming" (not the soccer film with Will Ferrell, the other one that came out in 1995) in 2019, thinking that was the film, and it wasn't.  Eventually it turned up on Showtime, and I was pretty sure that it was the lost film, but still, I didn't remember much about it.  Finally, this year, it's part of the process and I can re-watch it, 25 years later, to try to figure out why it didn't stick the first time.

THE PLOT: Just as Amelia thinks she's ready to quit therapy, her best friend announces her engagement, bringing her anxiety and insecurity right back.

AFTER: Yeah, see, THIS is the kind of neurotic New Yorkers that I'm familiar with, not the type that Woody Allen likes to make films about, the film directors who feel insecure even after winning the top prize at that film festival, or the successful writers who are in a loveless marriage and can't help but pine over their wife's younger sister, while they all go out and dine at Elaine's or the Russian Tea Room.  These are the ground-level New Yorkers, the ones who rent videotapes and play Boggle and have long-distance phone sex.  And of course they all go to therapy, except maybe the one who's a therapist herself, but I think therapists also go to therapy, that's quite common.  

These people are just as self-obsessed with second guessing themselves as any of Woody's characters, they just don't have as much money.  Andrew needs to borrow money from his ex-girlfriend, Amelia, just so he can pay his phone bill and keep having sexy conversations with a woman in California he's never met.  This was pre-cell phone time, pre-internet, too - which explains why everybody had to go to the video rental place if they wanted to watch a movie. Amelia hangs out with Andrew, they're still friends after their break-up, but then she goes out on a date with Bill, who works at the video-store, though she calls him "the ugly guy" behind his back.  Yeah, that might come up as an issue later. Amelia finally wants to quit therapy because she's in such a good place, mentally, but then Laura announces her engagement to live-in boyfriend Frank, and that throws Amelia for a loop, naturally she compares her situation to her best friend's situation, and wonders why she's not engaged or married herself.  

Laura and Frank don't have the perfect relationship, though, Laura is much too controlling and Frank's a prankster, like he's given her so many prank engagement rings that she doesn't know how to react when he gives her the real one.  I've found that it's best not to joke about such things, if somebody fake-proposes to you several times, do not marry that person.  (How long ago was this movie made?  Anne Heche was straight then - this was prior to her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, then they broke up in 2000 and Heche went back to men.). Laura can't seem to stick with anything or do anything well, though - even after getting engaged to Frank she starts hanging out with a handsome male actor, so just how focused on the marriage IS she?  Then Frank and Laura have a fight and he moves out, so it looks like the wedding is off - or is it back on?  Again, I sort of half-watched this movie before (or maybe watched half of this movie before) and I still couldn't figure out which way the wind was blowing for Laura most of the time. Laura is also a therapist-in-training, and she admits that she's very bad at it.  Umm, so, then, why keep doing it? Just asking. 

The three friends head upstate to Amelia's parents cottage to make plans to have the wedding there, and Amelia gets a couple of obscene phone calls, so she calls Andrew to see if he'll come up and comfort her. (For the kids out there, men used to call random women on the phone and make sexual noises, this was back before everybody had cell phones and just sent dick pics.). I thought maybe Andrew made the obscene phone calls himself, just to get Amelia to freak out and call him for comfort, but I guess that's not the case.  This isn't the movie "Filth", after all.

Amelia and Frank get drunk together, go swimming and reminisce about their relationship - so they're growing closer, but at the same time Laura and Frank are fighting, so I guess the wedding's off?  But then the couple meets for dinner to try to reconcile, and he gives her a "gift" that isn't really a gift, but good news, he got that mole checked out and it's nothing, but again, he's a prankster, so the wedding's off again. WTF?  Who DOES this? Get married or break up, and at this point, I don't really care which, just pick one!

There are some valuable lessons here, I suppose - never let a stranger do your hair and make-up, better to let somebody you trust do it.  Never joke around about engagement rings, or bad-looking moles on your back.  And be nice to the guys working at the video store - they know both your phone number AND the kind of movies you rent.  (This last bit of advice is very helpful, should you find yourself back in 1996 again.). The rest of the film, quite honestly, is a throw-away, now I kind of understand why I didn't remember much about it the first time I saw it - there's just not much THERE there. 

Also starring Catherine Keener (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Anne Heche (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Todd Field (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Kevin Corrigan (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Randall Batinkoff (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Vincent Pastore (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Joseph Siravo (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Ritamarie Kelly, Lynn Cohen (last seen in "After Class"), Lawrence Holofcener, Michael Kroll, Isa Thomas, Amy Braverman, Miranda Rhyne, with cameos from Allison Janney (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Alice Drummond (last seen in "House of D").

RATING: 4 out of 10 answering machine messages (why didn't they just TEXT each other? Oh, right...)

A Rainy Day in New York

Year 14, Day 32 - 2/1/22 - Movie #4,033

BEFORE: Let's get to the format stats for January, now that February is here:

6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, A Most Wanted Man, The Replacement Killers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Cold Light of Day, Freelancers

2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Setup, The Man with the Iron Fists

10 watched on Netflix: Memoirs of a Geisha, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, Gunpowder Milkshake, Cosmic Sin, Reprisal, First Kill, Hard Kill, Extraction (2015), Fire With Fire, The Frozen Ground

2 watched on Academy screeners: The French Dispatch, Dune (2021)
2 watched on iTunes: The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, Escape Plan 2: Hades
4 watched on Amazon Prime: The Boondock Saints, The Farewell, Escape Plan: The Extractors, My Spy
2 watched on Hulu: Nomadland, Boss Level
2 watched on Disney+: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Mulan (2020)

1 watched on Pluto TV: Acts of Violence

1 watched in theaters: Spider-Man: No Way Home
32 TOTAL

Wow, Netflix had a really big month at my house, a larger share than cable.  That's great news for reducing my Netflix queue, but then the month didn't focus on my main watchlist, so really, my progress on opening up slots for new movies on the main list was really hampered.  I've got a long list of films airing on cable that I would like to add, but my DVR only holds so much.  All that's about to change now that I'm kicking off the romance chain - I've been storing up the movies about love and romance, I'm overstocked, and it's finally time to start crossing some of them off!  

And about that, a quick programming note, not that it matters to you, but in advance of February I went through my list, and bad news, several of the romance-based films that WERE available on streaming when I made the list are now unavailable. Well, they're still on iTunes, but at $3.99 a pop per rental, that's really going to set me back.  FIVE films that I'd now have to rent, that's 20 bucks, on top of what I'm already paying for cable and streaming services, so no bueno.  So I took a hard look at the list - there was a LOT of crossover, because certain actors specialize in the romance genre, and they make a certain kind of movie, again and again.  So over time I separated out any love-related film to a separate document, and highlighted all the links I was NOT following in a different color, so I could find them more easily, JUST in case something like this should happen.  It took several nights, but I figured out that if I abandoned a couple links, flipped THIS part of the list around the other way, removed THOSE five films that are no longer streaming on Hulu or Amazon, and added THOSE two films that are miraculously now airing on cable, I've got a re-worked plan for February and the first half of March. 

It's maybe one film shorter, but that hardly matters - it follows a new set of links, so I just needed to re-shuffle the deck, I'm still playing (mostly) with the same cards.  And this clears off about HALF of the romance films on my DVR and DVDs, a greater percentage, which is a good thing, it opens up more slots this month, which I'm sure to fill.  And it starts in the same place as before, and ends in the same place as before, which is also great - it was too late to set a new intro point, and now I don't have to expend a lot of energy coming up with a new outro, I can just move forward as planned.  You won't notice much difference, but five or six films I was going to watch have been released back into the wild, maybe I'll get to them next year, maybe I won't.  Maybe they'll be on new streaming services by then, who can say, and they won't cost me $3.99 each to watch them. (For the non-last time, just make every film available on streaming and KEEP THEM THERE. Really, who is helped by films disappearing?)   Another bonus, over the next 40-plus films, I'll only need to rent TWO films from iTunes now, instead of five.  And I still might be able to find those two for free somewhere, if I look a little harder.

Timothée Chalamet carries over from "Dune" (2021), and the beat goes on.  

THE PLOT: A young couple arrives for a weekend in New York City, where they are met with bad weather and a series of adventures. 

AFTER: OK, before you even start with me, I know, this is a Woody Allen film - and cancel culture got to Woody Allen a while back, and I approve of that. But Amazon made a multi-film deal with him just before the news stories broke, and I've literally watched every film this man ever directed, half before I started this project and then the other half in 2013, then I kept pace with his film-a-year output after that, even "Irrational Man", "Café Society" and "Wonder Wheel".  Last year I watched the "Allen v. Farrow" mini-series on HBO, which broke down all the allegations from Dylan Farrow, and I have no reason to dispute her claims. I don't know where to draw the line between artist and man, I already pegged this guy as a sleazoid just based on the fact that he married his long-time girlfriend's daughter when she was old enough. He's 87 now, so one way or the other, he's not going to be making many more movies - this is probably the last film of his that I'll ever watch, and I'm OK with that.  

I could boycott it, I probably SHOULD boycott it - but it ended up at the top of my connecting chain, it's on Amazon Prime and I saw the way I could get to it via Timothée Chalamet, either linking from "Dune" or "The French Dispatch", two recent films I really wanted to see.  Two years ago, around this same time, I had the opportunity to watch "I Love You, Daddy" on an Academy screener, just as Louis C.K. was getting cancelled, so I watched that film, with similar reservations, due to the curiosity factor alone - there is some precedent here.  Either way, I'm looking for some insight into the cancelled man's head-space, what drives these men to keep moving forward and not give up, when it seems like the entire culture is encouraging them to just stop making product and disappear, like so many have - Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein, now they're working on Armie Hammer, Chris Noth, Shia LeBeouf, Marilyn Manson and others. I'm not in a position to pass judgment, and if I boycotted everyone who the media went after for misconduct, I might be left without many movies to watch.  So I'm moving forward, of course with comments and reservations.  

We all really should have seen it coming with Woody, one of his most celebrated films is "Manhattan", which depicts his central character, played by himself, as a divorced 42-year old man in a relationship with a 17-year old girl. Say it with me, "Ewwwwww."  Just because you can get away with it, that doesn't make it right.  And if his character was a professional writer working in the TV industry, in a position of power, and she wasn't, well, that just makes it worse.  But that was  made in a different time, I'm sure this sort of thing took place frequently in the late 1970's/early 1980's, and now we know it's wrong wrong WRONG. Then when you look at Woody Allen's entire oeuvre, as I have, you come to realize that the central character is almost always a writer, director, comedian, some form of artist, always nebbish-y and neurotic in some way, often but not always played by Allen himself, yet always clearly representing him, his thoughts and feelings, his sensibilities.  Write what you know, they say - this is not uncommon, as even in classic novels like "Little Women" or other films, like "The Tree of Life", you can break it down and figure out which character represents the author/director.  These are just the two examples I keep handy in my memory.  

A Woody Allen film like "A Rainy Day in New York" is kind of like one of those dreams you have where you play every character, even if you don't realize it during the dream, but you do after you wake up and think about it.  The central character here is Gatsby, a college student who's unsure of himself, nebbish-y and neurotic, and he's already flunked out of an Ivy League college during his freshman year, and he's transferred to a smaller school in upstate New York.  (Woody started studying film at CIty College of New York in 1954, but left after one semester.) So Gatsby is Woody, but from a time early in his career, when he was unsure of his path.  Then there's a film director, Roland Pollard, who's completed a film but doesn't like it very much, and when Gatsby's girlfriend, Ashleigh, interviews him for her school paper, he starts pointing out how much they have in common - a classic pick-up technique.  Later in the film, he'll end up suggesting that he could become her mentor, she should fly to France with him, and of course it's implied that he would be sleeping with her as part of this deal.  There's no question that Pollard is another stand-in for Woody, they're both film directors in positions of power that can't wait to use that to get into sexual relationships with college-age girls.

There's more, the screenwriter of the film is Ted Davidoff, and he connects with Ashleigh at the same screening, because she loves Pollard's film, and she can be used as a device to help Pollard get his confidence back. Davidoff has problems of his own, because in the car on the way to the studio in Queens, he happens to see his wife entering the apartment of his best friend, which indicates that they're having an affair.  After confronting his wife, post-affair, the wife naturally assumes that Ashleigh is Ted's young girlfriend, and she mentions all the times that HE has cheated on HER. Ted Davidoff also represents Woody Allen, both men can't be faithful to any one woman, blame everybody else for that, and clearly they both like the younger college-age girls, too. Then we also have Francisco Vega, the popular actor at the studio - he may have a Spanish accent, but he also represents Woody, because he's a movie star who (you guessed it...) is interested in the younger journalism student.  He invites her to his trailer, takes her to dinner, gets her drunk, and before long they're back at his place and he makes his move.  Factor in the fame, the age difference and the alcohol, and this all adds up to despicable behavior - it's pretty odd that Woody Allen couldn't see it that way, though.  

The film is also another love-letter to New York, but of course only the places that Woody Allen likes to go, like the Minetta Tavern, Metropolitan Museum and the Carlyle Hotel.  Woody's band played at the Carlyle's bar every Monday night for a good number of years, so it's not surprising that he'd want to film there, and that Gatsby would know the place and everyone who works there, even though he hasn't visited in years I'm sure it's a fine place, but for some reason, Woody Allen thinks that you can easily find a high-class prostitute hanging out there, does he know something that the rest of us don't? Gatsby, flush from yet another poker game victory, considers her offer of a night of sex for $500, but instead makes her a counter-offer, $5,000 if she will attend his mother's party and pretend to be his girlfriend, Ashleigh. This could be the worst example of re-negotiation ever, if sex costs $500 then being a party escort with NO sex should only cost $200 - and he blows it by offering $5,000? That's not how anything works.  

Putting all instances of bad acting aside (I think when you sign on for a Woody Allen film, there's some kind of course you have to take, where the lead actor learns to talk internally in Woody's cadence and the lead female learns how to be wacky 1976 Diane Keaton as Annie Hall. "La-di-da, La-di-da, I'm a flighty dummy...") this film is extremely clunky at best.  Every little decision any character makes is overly telegraphed - it's a carriage ride in Central Park, do they really need to overthink it to this degree?  Ashleigh was so dumb that while meeting the actor, Francisco Vega, she LITERALLY forgot her own name.  Some people SAY they get so starstruck they forget their name, but it doesn't really happen, you always know your name. But this is a device here used to justify her pulling out her driver's license to remember her name, and pay attention here, the actor looks at it to confirm that she is over 18. Very telling. Also lazy.

It's clear that Woody's been repeating himself and coasting for some time, it's like he's stuck going over a few key moments from his career and relationships, and reliving them through his characters.  The news just broke that his latest film, "Rifkin's Festival", had the lowest box-office opening of his career, earning just $24,000 last weekend in 26 theaters.  Part of that is pandemic-related, perhaps, but he's down to just one theater chain, Landmark, that will run his movies. The distribution company probably can't promote the film without causing some kind of backlash, so let's face it, the guy's done. We're going to wake up one day and there will be a news story about him, or he'll be trending on Twitter, and that will be that, we'll all have to re-assess his place in the firmament of motion pictures, and figure out where we stand on both the artist and the man.  

A number of the actors involved, Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall, donated all or parts of their salaries from "A Rainy Day in New York" to charities and organizations involved with the Time's Up movement and anti-violence organizations - maybe that's the right way to go, I can't really say.  But this is a very insightful look into the way Woody Allen's mind works, if nothing else.  The lead character switches girlfriends very easily, in fact most of the men in the film do, as if one woman is just as good as another, it doesn't matter, as long as you're getting sexually satisfied, who cares? This probably also represents the last time he was allowed to be working with such young actresses, Elle Fanning and Selena Gomez, who you may notice are nearly always wearing short skirts, or being put in scenes where they need to change clothes or have their clothes removed. It's odd how the writer found so many different ways to make that happen, right?  

I choose for my rating to reflect the way I feel about the structure of the story, the likelihood of it all, but even then, what does this mean, that if a young couple visits New York City, they're probably going to break up at the end of the weekend, and somehow this is the city's fault?  That's a weird message to put out in the world, isn't it?  Come to think of it, you'd all better stay where you are and not visit NYC, even though the city needs income from tourism.  In terms of what this movie says about Woody Allen as a human being, well, it's pretty disgusting, kind of like how I felt about Woodstock '99.  

Also starring Elle Fanning (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Selena Gomez (last heard in "Dolittle"), Jude Law (last seen in "Genius"), Diego Luna (last seen in "Contraband"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Kelly Rohrbach (last seen in "Baywatch"), Annaleigh Ashford (last seen in "Bad Education"), Rebecca Hall (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Cherry Jones (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Will Rogers (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Suki Waterhouse (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Ben Warheit (last seen in "Joker"), Griffin Newman, Don Stephenson, Suzanne Smith, Olivia Boreham-Wing, Mary Boyer (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Ted Neustadt (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Jonathan Hogan, Rory Calhoun (last seen in "Wonder Wheel") with cameos from Pat Kiernan (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Annika Pergament (last seen in "Broken City")

RATING: 4 out of 10 Egyptian statues at the Met

Dune (2021)

Year 14, Day 31 - 1/31/22 - Movie #4,032 - VIEWED ON 1/15-1/16?

BEFORE: Dave Bautista carries over from "The Man with the Iron Fists", and he's had a good 5-film chain - well, "good" isn't really a word that should be applied to the two "Escape Plan" sequels he was in, but you know what I mean.  But with those five appearances, he's tied for FIFTH on the list of the most appearances this year - and it's only been a month!  Thanks to all the films from EFO, the leader right now, with 9 appearances, is of course, Bruce Willis.  He may be tough to beat this year, we'll have to see how things play out, especially after my documentary break in June/July. 

In second place is an actor you may not have heard of, Tyler Jon Olson, but he had bit roles in 7 of those cheapo action movies from EFO Films.  In third place, there's a tie between Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Michelle Yeoh - she definitely benefited from my last-minute additions like the TWO "Crouching Tiger" films and also "Memoirs of a Geisha".  And tied for fifth place with Dave Bautista is Lydia Hull (another bit player from EFO Films) and Willem Dafoe, who's definitely having a moment in Hollywood right now, between "Spider-Man" and "The French Dispatch", both of which I watched, plus I threw three more of his movies into the mix.  (I know, he's also in "Nightmare Alley" and "The Card Counter", but I couldn't squeeze those in - I will get to those films, only who knows when?)

I've got some last-minute issues with some of the films in the romance chain - it turns out some of them aren't available on streaming any more, which is bad news for my linking.  I'll try to move some things around and give you an update tomorrow on what I'm able to change - but I'm committed to a particular starting point tomorrow, obviously.

THE PLOT: Adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel about the son of a noble family entrusted with the protection of the most valuable asset and vital element in the galaxy. 

AFTER: Last summer, as you may recall, I worked at an AMC Theater in Manhattan, both to earn a little extra cash and to get myself moving again, and out of the house once the pandemic started to ease up - I rode the wave of the theaters re-opening in June, but the job really wore me down (so much sweeping!) so I was out of there by September. Still, I made some friends, or I'd like to think I did, among the younger crowd, mostly a bunch of teens and college-age kids also looking to score a little cash by slinging popcorn.  The twenty-something who showed me the ropes, an aspiring actor, was often seen reading a paperback copy of "Dune" and soon came to express to me that he was very excited for the film version, due in October 2021. So I found myself tasked with breaking the bad news to him, that there already WAS a filmed version of "Dune", released in 1984, and, well, it was terrible.  So bad, in fact, that even though everyone KNEW at the time the film was directed by David Lynch, he had requested that his name be removed from the film, or else the movie company chose to remove it, so that according to the screen credits, the film was directed by "Alan Smithee", which is known as a pseudonym used in the industry when a director wishes to remain anonymous. (EDIT: Lynch now says he quit and had his name removed because he didn't have "final cut" and he could tell that the studio had edited the film poorly.  But it's also possible he did a bad job directing and doesn't want to admit that.)

Years later, cooler heads prevailed, and David Lynch's name was restored to the film's credits, however, the adaptation was still terrible. I mean, if somebody told you that Patrick Stewart, Jose Ferrer, Brad Dourif, Linda Hunt, Sting and half the future cast of "Twin Peaks" appeared in a sci-fi movie, you might be intrigued, but deep in your heart, you have to just know that film CAN'T be any good.  David Lynch went on to make "Twin Peaks", "Wild at Heart", "Lost Highway", "Mulholland Dr." and then even more "Twin Peaks", confounding fans of narrative filmmaking at every turn, but still, people kept returning to the biggest question of them all, which was, "Who the HELL thought it was a good idea for him to direct "Dune"?"

It's running on Starz right now, of course, or you can catch it on Prime Video if you have the Starz add-on or plug-in - just don't expect it to be GOOD, it's so bad in its bad-ness that it might be ironically good, or go so far into bad-ness that it kind of loops around to be sort of goodish in a funny way, but it's NOT a good sci-fi movie.  They released three different cuts of the film, trying in vain to find one that would connect with audiences, but none of them did at the time.  So, naturally, a few years later, the movie developed a cult following, probably among stoners and ironic hipsters, or people who were fans of "Twin Peaks" and wanted to see those same actors in a different setting, I don't know. 

Here's part of the problem - the book is massive, like 1,000 pages long, and it's just the first book in a whole SERIES written by Frank Herbert, so there's a massive chronology that needs to be set up, there's a whole timeline of human history in the universe to wade through before the main story even STARTS, and there are dozens of characters, some have weird super-powers, special fighting abilities, there's future technology that does a lot of crazy things, and that's all before getting to the parts with flying fat people covered in boils and giant sandworms that... well, you'll find out.  

However, if you want to enjoy the 2021 remake, it's probably NOT a good idea to watch the 1984 bomb version - if you've managed to avoid it so far, you should probably keep doing that.  I regret telling my friend at the cinema about the 1984 Lynch version, because he may have been tempted to watch it, and I hope he didn't - the best thing to do after reading the book is to go straight into the 2021 film directed by Dennis Villeneuve, and I wish I had known that back in 1985 or so when I watched "Dune" on rented VHS, thinking it might be the next "Star Wars", which it was NOT. It's not like anybody said at the time, "Hey, this movie really stinks, you should probably skip it, because in about 37 years there's going to be a remake with proper special effects, and it may blow your mind, so you should probably hold out for THAT."  I messed up, I watched the David Lynch film on VHS back in the day, and that's just stuff you can't un-see, it messed me up pretty good and I don't think I ever recovered. 

Because here's the problem for me - as I watched Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the whole time I'm thinking about Kyle Maclachlan in the back of my head, how he was so young and so naive at the time, thinking this sci-fi film would be his big break.  Same goes for Oscar Isaac, I was really seeing Jurgen Prochnow as the Duke, and instead of Stellan Skarsgard as Baron Harkonnen, I couldn't help but remember how Kenneth McMillan really owned that role, flying around and leaking pus and submerging himself in tubs of goo.  

Special effects have come a LONG way since 1984, and I've got to say, the new version LOOKS great - the casting is also spectacular, with Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho and Dave Bautista as Rabban Harkonnen - those two made me think, "Jeez, I don't even REMEMBER those characters from the David Lynch version, or who played them." (It was Robert Jordan and Paul Smith, who both gave very forgettable performances.).  And Javier Bardem as Stilgar, leader of the Fremen?  That kicks ass!  He was so much better than Everett McGill (Sorry, Big Ed, I gotta be honest.). I still can't stand Zendaya, I just don't see it, sorry - Sean Young played her character, Chani, in the earlier version, so I guess maybe we'll call that a push.

But here's the other big problem, I wasn't starting from scratch here - and I usually recommend going in as cold as possible to a big-budget blockbuster.  Like I almost delayed watching "Ready Player One" because I hadn't read the book yet, but then I thought, "Eh, screw it, I'll find out everything in the book from watching the movie, or it may be completely different, but either way, I'm going to be OK."  The same applies for "Dune" in 2021, go in as COLD as you can.  Sure, read the book if you have time, but if you don't, that's OK too, you'll find out everything in time.  Just do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch the 1984 David Lynch version first, it will ruin you.  (The soundtrack is by Toto, repeat TOTO - they're a fine band, I even saw them in concert once, but their music just didn't work in a sci-fi film, from what I remember.)

What's weird is that both the 1984 and 2021 versions of the film ended up in the same place, by that I mean they both ENDED in the same place, more or less.  Neither film managed to tell the WHOLE story of that giant book in one two-hour film, but the difference is that the 2021 version is planning on doing a "Part Two", and any plans for a sequel to the 1984 film were squelched after audiences stayed away in droves.  (EDIT: Sorry, I stand corrected about the 1984 film - it told the whole story in one go, but maybe it SHOULD have ended halfway through and given the audience back their money, really, it was that bad.). Maybe there's a place in the multiverse where David Lynch became a successful sci-fi director, made "Dune 2" and secured a couple special effects Oscars - or maybe in all possible realities, that version just plain stinks.  

But as a result, I'm not qualified to judge the plot of "Dune", because I already knew it, there were no surprises for me, because I didn't go into it cold.  It looks great, the people in it look great, Jason Momoa kicks ass as Duncan Idaho, and as I said, the film ends in the place where I remember the other version ending, so there are definitely more things coming if they make the sequel, I won't spoil anything here because I know too much.  Read the book if you have time, or just wait for the sequel film, that's OK too.  This 2021 version seems like a financial hit, even during the late stages of the pandemic, it managed to make money.  Almost $400 million at last count, and don't forget, it was already on HBO Max for a MONTH. 

Oh, yeah, about that - I kept thinking I should watch this one in the closing days of 2021, but I didn't get to it.  Then when 2022 hit, and I was ready for it, it was GONE from HBO Max.  My fault, I should have just watched it on New Years Day or something, this crazy strategy of the film being released in theaters with a simultaneous month of streaming SHOULD have made it easier for me to watch the film, only somehow that made it harder.  Right after "Spider-Man: No Way Home" I thought maybe I'd also go to the movie theater to see "Dune", only it was gone. (Sure, it's in three Manhattan theaters right NOW, but I couldn't wait, how could I have known it would come back for a theatrical re-release?)

So I watched it via the Academy's streaming site, which is a bit of a no-no, because when I had time to watch it over the last holiday weekend, it wasn't available on HBO Max.  Once a film starts streaming, it should stay streaming, if you ask me - this on-again, off-again thing is quite annoying. As penance for my misdeeds, I promise to pay up to $3.99 to rent it on Demand when the time comes, so that I can burn it to DVD. Of course, it's coming BACK to HBO Max on March 10, but isn't that a little weird, premiering on HBO Max TWICE?  Jesus, just make up your minds - this strategy only penalizes the true fans willing to pay full-price for a BluRay copy or an early PPV release, but why don't those people just wait two more months and stream it again?  It makes no sense.  

I've got the day off tomorrow, maybe I'll re-watch the old 1984 David Lynch "Dune" just to remind myself exactly how bad it was.  

Also starring Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Rebecca Ferguson (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Jason Momoa (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"), Stephen McKinley Henderson (last seen in "Fences"), Josh Brolin (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Javier Bardem (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Sharon Duncan-Brewster (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Chang Chen (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), David Dastmalchian (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Zendaya (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Charlotte Rampling (last seen in "The Duchess"), Babs Olusanmokun, Benjamin Clémentine, Souad Faress (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Golda Rosheuvel, Roger Yuan (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Neil Bell (last seen in "Pan"), Oliver Ryan (last seen in "All the Money in the World"), Elmi Rashid Elmi, Tachia Newall, Joelle Amery, and the voices of Marianne Faithfull (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Jean Gilpin, Ellen Dubin (last seen in "Midway"), Joe Walker. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 ornithopters  (if I hadn't seen the Lynch version, maybe I'd give this an 8, who can say?  But I just can't un-ring that bell)

The Man With the Iron Fists

Year 14, Day 30 - 1/30/22 - Movie #4,031

BEFORE: Wow, what a January it's been, and it's not even over yet.  It's been full of ups and downs, good movies and bad, the joy of linking to a few extra, unplanned movies and then the anxiety that came after that, realizing it was now impossible to fit all my January movies into January.  Ah, but then redemption when I realized I could excise most of the Nicolas Cage films and reschedule them for March - I had that power within me all along, it just took me a while to realize it.  So then relief again when everything lined up again - it turns out watching 32 movies in a 31-day month is a lot easier than watching 37.  I've been mostly sidelined by the pandemic and a work slowdown, so I probably could have done it, but it still would have been SO much more work. Instead, my wife and I are trying to straighten up the house a bit, one room at a time, and we're forcing ourselves to throw some things away, which is not easy for either of us.

For a while there, it looked like my January chain was going to extend into February, so the initial plan was to watch this one right after Lunar New Year, but try as I might, I couldn't get it ON to the correct date - I was so focused on tomorrow's film ending up on February 5, so I could give another birthday SHOUT-out.  Now that the plans have shifted again, I guess that actress won't be getting birthday greetings from me now - BUT my romance chain will start on February 1, as it should, so that pleases me - I've got to take the small victories where I find them. 

I already watched a large number of Asian or Asian-themed films this month (China is the new Sweden) and there were many different linking opportunities that I noticed, most after the fact.  But somehow this film didn't share actors with ANY of them - that's just the way it goes.  But I've kind of been celebrating Lunar New Year all month, in a way.  Maybe there was a better way to link this all together, but since I was doing a lot of it on the fly (kids, don't try this at home) it came together the way it did, the 2022 chain remains unbroken, and that's another small victory. So the Lunar New Year begins in two days, and this is as close to that date I could schedule an Asian film. 

Dave Bautista carries over from "My Spy". 

THE PLOT: On the hunt for a fabled treasure of gold, a band of warriors, assassins and a rogue British soldier descend upon a village in feudal China, where a humble blacksmith looks to defend himself and his fellow villagers. 

AFTER: What's the connection back to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"?  In that film, there was a Mount Wudang that featured prominently in the plot, and there was an entire school of martial arts fighting that used the Wudang manual.  I kept hearing it as "Wu-Tang", though, because I'm aware of the Staten Island rap group, the Wu-Tang Clan.  And RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan wrote and directed this movie.  (Officially, the name of the rap group comes from the 1983 film "Shaolin and Wu Tang", but come on, work with me here.)

This film is also co-written and produced by Eli Roth, and "presented" by Quentin Tarantino - which probably means Quentin didn't do any work on the film, he just allowed the use of his name to get the film more attention.  My boss has pulled that trick before, you just have to call that more famous director and get the approval of his name, at minimum - it's calling in a favor, costs nothing really, but with the right person's "presentation", maybe the film can get a bigger release. 

The subject matter is not really my thing, but I've seen a few martial-arts movies already this month, so I'm grown accustomed to them, but also I'm a little bit numbed to them, so watching all the fighting and the stunts now has very little affect on me, which is a clear sign that I'm ready to move on to some other topic, anything but this. Can't we all just stop fighting for a minute, please?  Thankfully, the romance chain is starting in just two days.  Wha? How is Dave Bautista going to get us closer to romance?  (Actually, I didn't know there would be any romance in "My Spy", but there was a little. That could have been a nice lead-in, only the linking didn't work, so instead I've got to go through "Dune".)

There are so many different clans here, there's the Lion Clan, the Wolf Clan, the Hyena Clan and the Rodent Clan, so it's hard to keep everybody straight here.  Let me guess, they all have different fighting styles, right?  Then there's Poison Dagger and Lady Silk, the Gemini Twins and Madam Blossom, everybody gets to Jungle Village because they want the governor's gold, and didn't I see this same plot point in another movie - was it the "Crouching Tiger" sequel?  They're all kind of mixing together in my brain at this point, but either way, I think this movie came first. 

Even though this feels very Tarantino-like (a group of strangers all converging in one establishment, it's very "Hateful 8") there's a lot of martial arts stunt-work, a bunch of warriors defying gravity and doing cool but also impossible moves, so that of course hearkens back to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" for me.  I know, I know, there's a whole filmography of martial arts movies that I don't want to get caught up in, but we all have our own entry points to each genre. 

The only way I could take this, because even though it's set in the 19th century (?) everything is so darn impossible, is to treat this like a superhero movie, which it kind of is.  It's a martial arts movie with superheroes and a modern rap soundtrack, which all sounds a bit crazy, but that's only because it is crazy.  Bautista plays Brass Body, a fighter who can't be harmed because he's basically made of metal, he's got an exoskeleton that you can't see, except that the film shows it to us again and again, to remind us that he's somehow metallic, so punches, blades, darts, whatever, can't harm him or penetrate his skin.  That's a superhero, or maybe a supervillain, right?  

One of the freelancers who comes to town is Jack Knife, a British (?) guy who's there for the gold, but also to take on as many of the prostitutes in the Pink Blossom as he can.  Umm, yeah, that's classy.  The Lion Clan shows up to try to get the gold, but just as they arrive, the clan leader, Gold Lion, is usurped by his underlings, Silver Lion and Bronze Lion. (Hey, Olympics tie-in!). And Zen Yi, also called the X-Blade, is on the way to town, to avenge the death of Gold Lion, who I think was his father.  Other characters show up, but are killed pretty quickly - it's almost like they were introducing spare characters just to kill them in interesting ways. 

Meanwhile, there's a blacksmith who's a master of forging weapons that were also impossible for the 19th Century, but that matters little, again, the rules of reality and historical accuracy are not applied, so Blacksmith is kind of like the Tony Stark of 19th century China.  He's a former American slave who was granted his freedom, and then an unfortunate shipwreck brought him to the shores of China, where he was taken in by monks and shown the power of the chi energy and martial arts.  But he gets involved in the battle for this gold by saving Zen Yi after a battle, and since he built the weapons that killed Zen Yi's father, the Blacksmith is looking to tip the karmic scales back in his favor, so he can purchase his girlfriend, Lady Silk, from the brothel and run away with her.  Things don't go as planned, because the blacksmith is taken by the Lion Clan, they torture him for information, and Brass Body cuts off both of his arms.  He's left for dead, but found by Jack Knife, who cauterizes his wounds and helps him build new, metal hands.  Right.  And NITPICK POINT: somehow they work just like regular hands, even though there was no surgery done to connect his arm nerves to the metal hands, which wasn't even a thing back in the 19th century. 

I'm really leaving out a lot, because a TON of fights happen, more than I could really keep track of - this is when it all started to feel like a series of WWE wrestling matches, with the survivors moving on to the next opponent, and the losers dying in interesting ways.  Repeat as necessary, until there were just a couple people left - but afterwards I couldn't even remember who got the gold, because it all felt just like cotton candy, high-energy at the time but with no long-range nutritional value.  Still, a lot of work went into making this film, crafting the story and figuring out each character's back-story and motivation, even if most of those characters don't end up getting what they wanted, but instead die in interesting ways.  I guess in a way that's life, but then, what's the point? 

In the end, this just isn't my sort of movie - one reviewer, however, said this movie "may just be one of the best bad movies ever" and I'm not inclined to disagree.  I've traveled back to one of Dave Bautista's earlier films, this was made before "Guardians of the Galaxy", before "Spectre", before "Riddick" even. Tomorrow I'll tackle one of his most recent films, and then it's on to the romance chain. (I'm tabling "Army of The Dead" and "Army of Thieves" because they seem to be horror-related zombie heist films, so naturally that means they belong in October, unless I can't fit them in there.)

Also starring RZA (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Rick Yune (last seen in "Olympus Has Fallen"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "Broken City"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Jamie Chung (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Cung Le, Byron Mann (last seen in "Skyscraper"), Daniel Wu (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Zhu Zhu (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), Gordon Liu (last seen in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"), Andrew Ng (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Chen Kuan-tai, Xue Jing Yao, Telly Liu, Wen-Jun Dong, MC Jin (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Ka-Yan Leung, Grace Huang, Andrew Lin, Jake Garber (last seen in "Planet Terror"), Osric Chau (last seen in "Fun Size"), Terence Yin (last seen in "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life"), with cameos from Pam Grier (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Eli Roth (last seen in "The House with a Clock in Its Walls"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 poison blowgun darts