Eye for an Eye

Year 14, Day 99 - 4/9/22 - Movie #4,101

BEFORE: Up a bit early on a Saturday, to drive out to Long Island - I blocked this day off from my theater shift calendar, because there was a memorial lunch for my wife's aunt, not a blood relative but a woman who was married to my wife's mother's brother, who died years ago.  The wake and funeral were a couple months ago, but they put off the lunch until the weather got better. Today was a weird mix of sunshine and sudden downpours, but I guess that's better than snow.  Anyway, it's also a little weird that a woman who I never met died a few months back, and somehow out of that, I get a free lunch at a Chinese restaurant - but I guess that's just how things go sometimes. One day it could be my turn, if one of my parents dies then I'll have to treat a bunch of people to lunch, unless this is just a New York thing.  I've been to several restaurant meals in NYC after somebody dies, perhaps in other places there are potluck dinners or other types of things, I don't know, but here some restaurants have bereavement menus, it's a thing. I ordered the boneless pork ribs, and they gave me a sizable portion, with wonton soup and a giant egg roll, and the Chinese restaurant was one of those big banquet hall type places, and it felt like they hadn't updated the decor since 1957 or so. 

Ed Harris carries over from "Resistance", and since my Ed Harris chain is going to carry over until tomorrow, when it transitions into a Gerard Butler chain, I feel like poor Sally Field can't catch a break, where the linking is concerned.  She was in "Legally Blonde 2" back in February, and that film was needed to make a very specific connection during the romance chain, and now this film is serving a purpose here, but it's not to link to any of her other films.  I've been trying to watch "Norma Rae" for quite some time now, and it's just not happening - I thought that might make a great Labor Day film, but several Labor Days have come and gone since I dubbed that film to DVD - I also recently dubbed a copy of "Kiss Me Goodbye", which is sharing a disc with today's film, and that's a weird little ghost story / romance / comedy that doesn't seem to fit anywhere, either.  Maybe I just have to bite the bullet and program those films, but right now I've tentatively put them between an Adam Sander film that has James Caan in it, and "The Good German" with Beau Bridges in it.  That's a weird chain for sure, but oddly, I could see it becoming relevant between Halloween and Thanksgiving - but it's impossible to predict if that could work out later this year.

THE PLOT: When the courts fail to keep the man who raped and murdered her daughter behind bars, a woman seeks her own form of justice. 

AFTER: I don't know, this film feels like it hasn't aged all that well - it was released in 1996, and since then I've seen many other films on the same topic, from "Peppermint" to the "Death Wish" remake, and most of those films seem better, or at least more relevant, than this one.  If this film were a plotline on "Law & Order: SVU" I'd probably feel like it was missing something, like where's the big twist?  Not that every film has to have one, but it's nice when they do.  The big pivot point here is when the rapist/murderer gets released on a technicality, and that's not a twist, it's just a big bummer.  

After that, the big revelation is that a normal housewife can take self-defense classes and also train how to use a gun, but don't we kind of know all that already?  Was this somehow shocking, back in 1996?  I'm trying to think that far back, but honestly, I was pretty busy that year, getting divorced and trying to put my life back together.  Probably half of that year is a big blur for me, it was a time of big changes, and I probably didn't have much interest in going out to see movies.  But, I did meet my second wife later that year, so it wasn't ALL bad - and then I started seeing movies again, like our first movie together was "Big Night", but I'm getting off track.  I'm old and now I tend to ramble. 

The rape and murder of a teenage girl is a pretty shocking, and emotionally charged topic, but this film sort of chooses to deal with that by not dealing with it, if that makes any sense.  What does it MEAN in the big picture, beyond the fact that it, you know, really sucks?  The film can't just show her parents crying hysterically for a week, that wouldn't make for a good movie, so instead we see them sleeping over a friend's house, trying to get back to their normal lives but having a difficult time of it, and then attending meetings with a support group for people who've lost loved ones due to violent crimes.  I feel like maybe the film is all around it without really getting into it, which might be a choice, or perhaps an admission that nobody could possibly know how bad that feels unless it also happened to them.  Maybe if a movie really did depict the full depths of tragedy, then nobody would want to watch that?  

Instead we see a mother upset that her husband washed her late daughter's pillow, and now it no longer smells like her daughter.  Oof, now maybe we're getting closer to tragic events, but it's still just not enough. That girl is GONE, all the things she wanted to do are GONE, and she left an empty space that can't be filled up. If you can't show that in a movie, can't you at least TRY? I know, it's not really about the pillow, but come on, there must be another way. 

Karen McCann, in addition to the self-defense classes and weapons training, then starts to follow around the man suspected of killing her daughter, and she does rather a poor job of hiding, so he's on to her pretty quickly.  This leads the murderer to follow HER around, and also figure out the routine of her younger daughter, then he creepily visits her during recess.  OK, this is about when the audience realizes the guy is a complete garbage human, because he threatens a little girl just to get the heat off of him.  Threats from the police don't seem to mean anything to him, and so this leads to Karen trying to hire someone from the support group to kill him, which she suspects they've done before.  

For convoluted reasons, this doesn't work out, forcing her to come up with a more elaborate plan to lure him out, to get him to threaten her directly so she can kill him in self-defense. I can't really say this is the best plan, but I suppose the other advice, to just leave him alone, isn't really an ideal solution, either.  Clearly something must be done, if the law can't prosecute him and she can't just hire somebody to kill him - but this is the classic conundrum over how to deal with violence. Responding with violence will just drag someone down to his level, as killing a killer also makes THAT person a killer, and then where does it stop?  I also understand that Karen just couldn't leave well enough alone, because that would only lead to him hurting and killing more people, he wasn't going to stop, but still I'm not convinced this was the best solution.  

Without giving too much away here, which actually is darn near impossible, I just want to point out that not every shot needs to be a kill shot - I've never fired a real gun, or had any kind of weapons training, but I guessing that they probably teach you that you can shoot to disarm, or shoot to harm but not kill. I'm just putting that out there as a possible solution, but then I guess that wouldn't wrap things up quite as thoroughly at the close of a film. 

Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Kiefer Sutherland (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Joe Mantegna, Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Olivia Burnette, Alexandra Kyle (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Darrell Larson (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Charlayne Woodard (last seen in "Glass"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Clear History"), Keith David (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Armin Shimerman, Natalija Nogulich (last seen in "The Last Word"), Nicholas Cascone, Stella Garcia, Justine Johnston (last seen in "The New Guy"), Wayne Pére (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Joan Crowe, Ross Bagley, Jane Morris (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Cynthia Rothrock, Donal Logue (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), William Mesnik, Rondi Reed (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Eric Morris, Bob Clendenin (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain").

RATING: 4 out of 10 motions to dismiss

Resistance

Year 14, Day 98 - 4/8/22 - Movie #4,100

BEFORE: Ed Harris carries over from "Man on a Ledge", and here he plays General Patton, while Adolf Hitler, of course, plays himself.  I have to be careful and not watch too many movies set during World War II, because they all tend to use footage of him, and then he'll win the title for most appearances this year, and we don't want Hitler winning anything, now, do we? 

I've reached another century mark for movies, that means that Movie Year 14 (that's 2022 to you normies) is 1/3 over, I can't really say for sure what Movie #4,200 will be, but I think I'll be deep into the Summer Concert + Documentary series, so who can say?  Let's just hope it's something good and important.  

Speaking of important, I can't help but think this film came up in the rotation for a reason, with all the news these days about Putin and Ukraine, one can't help but think of the parallels with World War II, with Putin as the new Hitler and Ukraine as the new Poland.  I'm sure it's not just me.  

Just before watching this, on a whim, I Googled when Holocaust Remembrance Day is - and the International version was on January 27, so I'm a bit late.  But the JEWISH version, which is called Yom HaShoah, popped up as April 8, and I got really excited for a moment, what are the ODDS against me scheduling this film on Yom HaShoah?  Well, 1 in 365, I suppose.  But this Jewish day of remembrance was on April 7-8 LAST year - I guess it moves around a bit because the Hebrew calendar is different from the Gregorian one, and this year, it's going to be on April 27-28.  Oh, well, you can't blame a guy for trying to get his movie plan to line up right. 

THE PLOT: The story of mime Marcel Marceau as he works with a group of Jewish boy scouts and the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II. 

AFTER: Finding out that French mime Marcel Marceau (born Marcel Mangel) saved the lives of countless Jewish orphans in Nazi-occupied France is perhaps a bit like finding out that Julia Child and her husband did some intelligence work during World War II, (I think maybe she smuggled out some Nazi secrets inside a plate of coq au vin) or that actress Hedy Lamarr actually contributed to the invention of a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes (which later became a part of Bluetooth technology).  I'm almost afraid to watch that documentary about Rita Moreno for fear of learning that she played a part in trying to cover up the Bay of Pigs invasion. KIDDING!

But this is true, Marceau grew up as the son of a butcher, but fell in love with the silent films of Charlie Chaplin, and from that grew this new art based on pantomime.  According to this film, a lot of his techniques - the man in the box, the man walking against the wind - were developed while he was entertaining these orphans while hiding from the Nazis in various places.  It all makes sense - the invisible wall is a metaphor for Nazi oppression, right?  Walking against the wind is the daily struggle... Seriously, though, there weren't a lot of props or materials on hand, so he had to just get people to imagine them.  And they had to keep quiet, for fear of being discovered - this is why it's considered improper to laugh at a mime's performance... But, I'm never going to look at a mime act the same way, after this.  This film ended up being kind of a cross between "Schindler's List" and "Life Is Beautiful", two very popular films, so I don't know why this one didn't garner as much attention.  Ah, there's that release date - March 2020, so this film may have been another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sure, I could make a lot of jokes here, like something about how Marceau tried to warn everybody about how bad the Nazis were, only nobody could quite take him seriously, or understand exactly what he was getting at...but that doesn't seem right, so I won't do that. I never really "got" Marcel Marceau when I was growing up, I didn't see what the big deal was about mime. But his first big performance was done in front of Patton's troops, after France was liberated, and Marceau was later made an officer of the Legion of Honor, a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, and later a grand officer of the French National Order of Merit. And let's not forget that Mel Brooks ironically allowed Marceau to say the ONLY word of dialogue in his film "Silent Movie".  

When the Nazis invaded France, the Mangel family fled Strasbourg for Limoges in southern France, where Marcel's cousin Georges Loinger urged him and his brother, Alain, to join the Jewish French Resistance (or was it the French Jewish Resistance?).  Their organization of nine secret networks rescued thousands of children and adults during the Holocaust, and Marceau led children over the Alps into Switzerland, which must have been a tough run. In 1944 Marcel's father was captured by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed.  But after the liberation of Paris, Marcel and Alain joined the French army, and Marcel was a liaison with Patton's army corps due to his fluency in English, French and German. 

According to this film, Marceau and his girlfriend Emma came face to face with "Barbie" - that's Klaus Barbie, not the doll, this was the ruthless Nazi known as the "Butcher of Lyon".  His techniques included getting the French people to turn in members of the Resistance by offering favors and safe passage to the snitches.  Barbie also enjoyed torturing people in front of their family members to get people to reveal confidential information - here Marcel's girlfriend, Emma, is forced to watch her own sister being tortured, as Barbie demands information about the Resistance. Later on, Barbie investigates the train carrying Marceau, Emma and a group of Jewish children disguised as a Scout troop going on a hike, you know, over the Swiss Alps, like that's a thing you tend to do.   The central question of the film then becomes: is it more important to try to kill your enemies, possibly losing your own life in the attempt, or to try and save as many of your people as you can?  

But I want to try to connect this back to Putin and Ukraine, if I can, because really, is that situation any different?  (Anne Werzberg, Marcel Marceau's mother, was born in Yabluniv, which is in, you guessed it, Ukraine). Hitler looked over at Poland and said, "Ah, that needs to be part of Germany!" and Putin's doing the exact same thing with Ukraine.  If you're the head of a country, you don't get to just decide that the next country over is now part of yours, that's not how this thing is supposed to work. Your country's borders are already defined, that's what you get, it's the luck of the draw - if you wanted to lead a bigger country, you should have been born somewhere else. I'm no politics expert, nor do I have any say in this matter, but something's got to be done to stop Putin, sanctions, sure, but what comes after that?  I don't want World War III, but neither do I want Ukraine to revert back to Russian control, it's just not right.  

And now we're seeing footage of large groups of Ukrainians, killed by bombs that destroyed buildings, or killed while waiting for a train in Kramatorsk, HOW is this any different from the Nazis bombing Warsaw in September, 1939?  I'm also seeing news stories now about regular people on the ground in Ukraine, rescuing people from Kyiv one convoy, one carload or one person at a time, there are heroes out there, but these actions should not have been necessary in the first place.  Sure, we didn't know WHEN Putin was going to invade, but we all kind of new that it was going to happen, you don't put that many troops in place to NOT use them.  Thankfully, it hasn't been easy for the Russian army, the prediction was that Ukraine would fall within five days, and now here we are, five weeks later, and the Ukrainian Resistance is still putting up a fight.  I don't know how this whole crazy thing is going to end, but if the Ukrainians manage to come out on top, then I think that President Zelensky's has a fair chance at becoming famous, he could become the Marcel Marceau of this decade.

As for me, between this film and "The Batman", I think I've set a record for how many times a person can possibly hear "Ave Maria" sung in movies within one week...

Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "Zombieland: Double Tap"), Clémence Poésy (last seen in "Tenet"), Felix Moati (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Vica Kerekes, Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Valkyrie"), Géza Röhrig, Bella Ramsey (last seen in "Judy"), Martha Issová (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Karl Markovics (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Wolfgang Czeczor (ditto), Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey (last seen in "A Dangerous Method"), Alex Fondja (last seen in "The Take"), Aurélie Bancilhon, Alicia von Rittberg (last seen in "Fury"), Louise Morell, Philip Lenkowsky (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Edgar Ramirez (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Klára Issová, Dimitri Storoge, Felicity Montagu (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Werner Biermeier, Ryan Hadaller, Maxim Boubin, Tobias Gareth Elman, Karina Beuthe Orr, Kue Lawrence (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Red Notice"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 giant bagels

Man on a Ledge

Year 14, Day 97 - 4/7/22 - Movie #4,099

BEFORE: Boy, what a day I had - I've mentioned how I've been studying for this Fire Guard exam, which really is two tests administered by the FDNY, one is for a Certificate of Fitness for Indoor Place of Assembly Safety Personnel, and the second is for Supervision of Fire Safety Alarms.  I planned to take both exams two days ago, but then decided I'd rather see "The Batman", so I justified that by saying that re-scheduling for today would also give me two more days to study for the exams, increasing the chances of getting a passing grade.  This is the kind of argument I use when I want to procrastinate and go to the movies instead of doing the thing I'm supposed to do.  

Anyway, today I had another day off so I figured I should really go take these exams, my managers at the theater have been bugging me for a few weeks, and my head manager wrote me a letter of recommendation back on March 1 - OK, so enough dawdling, time to go and do it, right?  Now, the FDNY strongly recommends that you make an appointment online and also pay in advance, in order to save about two hours of time waiting in line.  Well, I tried doing that, but either their web-site was super-glitchy (very possible, from what I saw last year on NYC's unemployment and vaccination-based web-sites) or I was doing something dumb, and getting stuck filling out their forms.  I kept typing in my work location, but after doing that, the site kept asking me for my work location, I couldn't figure out why.  So, I figured I'd get up early today, take the subway to the test location site and just apply in person - so it might take two hours of waiting in line, I've got that kind of time, at least at the end of those two hours, I'd have passed the tests and gotten my certificates.  And, in the event something went wrong, or I failed the exams, I'd consider today a "dry run", a chance to learn more about the process, and then I'd come back next week and nail it, based on what I'd learn from failing.  

That's not what really happened today - I didn't really get up that early, I was out the door by 9:45.  Well, come on, that's early for ME but it's not early from most other people's perspective.  Then I stopped for an egg sandwich and a coffee, because I figured I needed to fuel up before standing in line and taking a test, so I arrived just before 11 am, and there was a big crowd outside the testing center.  Ah, this was bound to be a problem - NYC's pandemic recovery means that businesses are back, but city services might still be lagging behind a bit, and that means people need to take fire exams, but the staff is overwhelmed.  Well, I figured I'd wait it out, again, anything learned today could be useful next week.  Point 1 - maybe try to get up earlier, the testing center opens at like 7:45 am and the first people there were probably already finished with their exams.  I scanned the QR code and got in the virtual queue, but then spent over an hour outside before they got close to the number on my ticket.  Well, at least I was inside shortly after noon.

I'd already filled out my application the night before, so that saved some time - but my ticket number was 140, and since I hadn't paid online, I had to wait in a big room for them to call my number, and they were only on number 70.  I thought maybe things might speed up, but if anything they got slower since it was lunchtime and all of the cashiers then took turns going on break.  A smarter man might have given up and gone home, but I chose to stay, since I was already there and had no place else I needed to be.  Anyway, any time spent sitting in the waiting room was time I could use going over the study materials again - my late-night sessions weren't all that effective because that's when my brain is tired, and then going to sleep right after studying doesn't really help keep information in your short-term memory.  So three hours in the waiting room was a chance to put information about smoke detectors and fire extinguishers back in my short-term, just to have it handy for the test.  After that, I didn't want to play trivia games on my phone or do anything else that would take up brain space, so I just sat there. 

Finally, I got called to the cashier, about 3 pm - it took another 15-20 minutes for them to process my application, then I was ready for the tests.  Umm, after another bathroom break.  But THEN the tests, and I've always been good at standardized tests.  Multiple choice?  No problem, even if I didn't remember that exact information from the study guides, I'm really great at guessing the answer when given four possibilities.  I whizzed through the first test, even had plenty of time to double-check the answers I wasn't sure of, and when I clicked "Submit", the computer screen told me I had a score of 88.  Not bad at all - I last took this test over 30 years ago, I know I passed but I'll be damned if I remember my score from 1989.  

On to Test #2. I don't know if I didn't study for the second test as well, or for as long, but I was just stumped on a fair number of the questions.  Either my brain didn't register some of the information I read, or they were playing a little fast and loose with the questions.  (Overall, the study guides were so poorly written, so full of grammatical errors, that I don't see how anybody learns important information from them, but whatever.). I finished the second test with a full half-hour of time left, but I figured that if I spent too much time debating my answers, I might improve my score by going over it again, but I might also manage to talk myself OUT of a few correct answers.  So I hit "SUBMIT" to get my second score, figuring that the worst case was that I'd have to come back next week and try again, but I'd at least know more about the questions they were likely to ask.  BUT my score was a 74, which is passing - I had to score above 70, so I made it on both exams, and got to leave the testing room before some of the people who'd started taking it before me.  Sure, that's a "C" grade, but a win is a win, and I decided to take it.  

After some confusion over a lack of my workplace's zip code, they had to issue me a second set of IDs, but then they screwed up the street address.  OK, so I may have to go back next week anyway and fix this, but I still passed the exams, I can breathe easy and sort of get my life back. Plus now I get keys to the building, I can open or close the theater by myself, and they're going to reimburse me for the cost of taking the test, so it's a win all around. 

This time, it's Elizabeth Banks' turn to carry over, from "Walk of Shame". 

THE PLOT: As a police psychologist works to talk down an ex-con who is threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel ledge, the biggest diamond heist ever committed is in motion. 

AFTER: Geez, the last film had a scene on a fire escape, this one prominently features fire extinguishers being used in a heist, what are my movies this week trying to tell me?  I just passed the damn exams, leave me alone already!

Well, this film's been on my books for quite some time, but as you can perhaps guess, this is what it takes for a film to get on my radar these days, it's got to have an interesting hook, something that makes me wonder, "Hmm, how is that going to work as a movie?  OK, I'll give it a go..."  Here it's a man standing on a building ledge, how the HELL are they going to make that situation into something interesting enough to fill an hour and three-quarters?  

Well, they gave it a valiant effort, I'll give them that.  Because part of the mystery here is learning not only WHY the man is on the ledge, but WHO, exactly, is the man on the ledge?  The opening sequence shows him getting a hotel room at the Roosevelt (45th & Madison, nice area, a few blocks north of Grand Central...), eating a nice breakfast with champagne, and then...opening the window and stepping out on to the ledge.  WHY?  Ah, then the film snaps back in time a month to show us that the man's in prison, so perhaps there is a reason for everything, and over time this everything will be revealed.  OK, you got me, I'm in for the long haul - provided I can keep my eyes open, and I'll admit that was tough, because I had to get up the next morning for that damn fire exam, so that meant no Mountain Dew, or I'd never get to sleep. 

SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't seen "Man on a Ledge" and you're planning to in the future, please turn back now, to preserve the secrets that the film has in store for you.  The "Man" in the title is Nick Cassidy, though he rents the room under the name of Walker, and he's both an ex-con and an ex-cop.  There was some kind of incident with a very large diamond, and it seems that Nick was charged with stealing this diamond, and having it broken down into many smaller diamonds, I guess as one is likely to do.  BUT there's more to the story, because Nick claims that he was framed for this theft, the theft was a fraud to collect the insurance money, and he still maintains his innocence.  However, the only way that he can prove that he didn't steal that diamond is to prove that the former owner still has it, and there's only one way to do that, by stealing it. Honestly, I can't tell if that plan is very meta, super-ironic, or perhaps (and this is a long shot) perfectly logical.  Let's see, robbed guy still has it, so steal it so he doesn't have it, but that would prove that he DID still have it, before it got stolen the second time. I guess that checks out?

So, the man on the ledge is both a distraction, so his brother and brother's girlfriend can steal the diamond, and Nick also serves as a lookout, because the theft is taking place in another building nearby.  And a man standing on the ledge on the 21st floor is I guess one way to make sure that all eyes, especially the NYPD's, are on that hotel, and not any building nearby where something else it taking place.  In true Hollywood heist-movie fashion, the thieves have calculated the plan down to the most minor detail, even the ways in which the mark will act once he knows that his valuables are in jeopardy.  Also, in true Hollywood heist-movie fashion, there's some element of the security system the thieves didn't know about, and so they have to improvise a little.  Don't worry, everybody's still looking at the man standing on the ledge.  Not me, though, because I'm afraid of high places, even when they're depicted in a film.  If you're a fellow acrophobiac, perhaps this is not the movie for you.

There are probably a ton of plot-holes that would come to me over time, but after the day I had, my brain is pretty much shot.  Let's start with Elizabeth Banks as a police negotiator, I can maybe buy her as a news anchor, but come on.  Secondly, what's the percentage here of corrupt NYC cops?  What is this, Gotham City or something?  Thirdly, this film makes it look WAY too easy to escape from prison, or for that matter, to fake a diamond theft or fake one's own death.  Perhaps there's another story tangent here about how Nick was framed, but it's probably too boring to explore, so never mind.  Maybe you do really have to turn off your brain to enjoy this movie, which means that I perhaps watched it just one day too early.

Also starring Sam Worthington (last seen in "The Debt"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Filth"), Ed Harris (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Genesis Rodriguez (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Edward Burns (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Titus Welliver (last seen in "Escape Plan 2: Hades"), Felix Solis (last seen in "Arbitrage"), William Sadler (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), J. Smith-Cameron (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Patrick Collins, Afton Williamson (last seen in "Otherhood"), Robert Clohessy (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Joe Lisi, Frank Pando (last seen in "You Were Never Really Here"), Michael Laurence (last seen in "One for the Money"), John Dossett, Jason Furlani, Terry Serpico (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Geoffrey Cantor (last seen in "An American Pickle"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 red wires

Walk of Shame

Year 14, Day 96 - 4/6/22 - Movie #4,098

BEFORE: James Marsden carries over from "Robot & Frank", and I could get in trouble for watching this one here. This is kind of one of those tangential love comedies that COULD play a part in making my connections during a future February - BUT it's really tough to say for sure whether I would need it then or not. It does connect two other films that seem like romances, but those are NOT necessarily films that I'll be watching the next time my annual month of romance-based films rolls around.  So, should I save it for then, or watch it now?  Well, I have to focus on the chain I'm in, I can't let the chain break, bad things could happen.  So there you go, let's live in the moment, live for today, the chain currently being built is more important than the theoretical one I may need to build at some future time.  I've got like nine months to figure out next year's romance chain, and a lot can happen between now and then, a lot of films can be added to the list and new connections can certainly be made.  

THE PLOT: A reporter's dream of becoming a news anchor is compromised after a one-night stand leaves her stranded in downtown L.A. without a phone, car, ID or money - and only 8 hours to make it to the most important job interview of her life. 

AFTER: Well, even if a movie is terrible, and I'm not saying yet that this one is, there's still a sense of satisfaction I gain by crossing it off my list, and then reminding myself that I'll never, ever have to watch this one again, if I don't want to.  See, it is a genius system in the end, because the thing that's going to eat at you is the not knowing, being unsure if a film is terrible or not, and then spending precious time trying to determine if it's worth your while. Really, the quickest thing to do is to just watch it, I know that may sound counter-intuitive at first, but then you KNOW it's just a dumb comedy movie, it's not worth your time.  See, I spent 90 minutes watching this, but that's a finite amount of time - spending days, months, years, just wondering whether it's worth watching is the real waste of time.  I'll give up 90 minutes if it means confirming that the film wasn't worth watching in the first place.  Umm, wait a minute...  

OK, look, it's not a problem to hit a clunker once in a while - unless this keeps happening, and I somehow make it to 70 or 80 years old and then stop and think, "My God, I've wasted my life watching crappy movies!" and I've got a giant list of terrible films I've watched just STARING me in the face, and confirming the fact that I just didn't spend my time wisely, I could have been hanging out with friends, I could have had time to go out and MAKE new friends and then hang out with them, I could have spent more time with my parents... nah, you know what, movies are fine.  Even a bad movie is time spent stimulating the old gray matter, or if it's really bad, that's time for quiet contemplation - also, I can even learn something from a terrible movie, or at least I can pretend that I've learned something from a terrible movie, and that's still something, right?

This is a film about a woman and what she does when it feels like her life is coming apart - it looks like the anchorwoman job she's been chasing is about to be given to someone else, and her live-in boyfriend has just moved out, so, well, let's just say that she's having a rough week.  And then her friends want to go out to a club - initially this was to celebrate Meghan's new job, but now it looks like a chance to drown her sorrows.  Even when she tries to sneak out of the club via the fire escape, her heel gets stuck in the bars, really, nothing's going right.  

An attractive man on the street sees her plight, and climbs the fire escape to get her unstuck - they go for a walk and talk, hit it off, one thing leads to another, and they end up having, well, let's just call it a very successful first date.  But then the next morning, she wakes up in his apartment, and checks her phone messages, the other candidate for her dream job has been eliminated, and she's got a second chance to try out for the anchorwoman slot.  In her haste to sneak out of her date's apartment, she leaves behind her phone, then realizes that her car's been towed, and her purse was inside. I've got to call a NITPICK POINT here, her one-night stand drove her car to his place, but then parked it in a no parking zone right next to his building?  How did he not know the parking rules on his own block?

Ah, he's just not a "car guy" - this movie keeps coming up with reasons why things go wrong, because that's kind of the whole point, it's one of those "whatever can go wrong will" situations, and he doesn't own a car, so OK, maybe he doesn't understand L.A. parking rules.  And he was so nice to her, she doesn't want to wake him up, OK, I get it, but if a man snuck out after sex like this, you'd call him a cad, a douche, a bad dude with no manners.  So we're just going to give her a pass on this?  Just because she's got a job interview across town, it's OK to be rude to her new lover?  If she had JUST calmed down a little bit, she could have waited for him to wake up, they could have shared a nice little breakfast, and maybe then he could have been some help to her, in recovering her car, or making sure she left with her phone, or you know, just general moral support.  But no, she had to just run off in a panic, and as a result, she keeps frantically trying to find help or get to where she needs to be, and nothing seems to be working out. 

She attempts to flag down help, but a couple of cops then mistake her for a hooker, because she's in a short tight dress, it's like 6 am and she's stopping motorists.  Umm, sure, that's a simple enough mistake to make, but then WHY can't she just tell the cops that she's not a hooker?  Because then the film would be very short, I suppose - the cops would help her get to the impound lot, or they'd help her get her phone back, and things would end too soon.  By the same token, she gets caught up with some very friendly drug dealers, one of whom recognizes her as "that News at Five bitch". And they won't give her money, but they will give her some crack to sell - OK, there's just no way THAT can end badly, is there?  

Time goes by, and more things happen - Meghan has a fight with a cab driver, Meghan gets thrown off a bus, Meghan steals a little boy's bike, and so on - eventually the cops start looking for her again, and by the time her friends track her down via her GPS keychain (is that a thing?) and she's able to get the news copter guy to pick her up, she's accidentally become the news herself. She has to report on the "mad hooker" who's responsible for the crime spree across downtown L.A. - I don't know, there were so many other better ways this situation could have been resolved.  I'm not saying they'd be any funnier, but they'd just be BETTER.  Look, the main story was initially this "Car-pocalypse" or whatever it was, something about a main highway that had been closed for repairs but was then suddenly going to re-open.  She found herself RIGHT there when the highway came back into service - wouldn't it have made more sense to use the helicopter's camera to report on the situation, as "breaking news", thus proving her value to the TV station?  Just putting that out there...

Usually, a "walk of shame" happens after a romantic encounter that somebody isn't proud of, but that's not the case here, she really connected with this guy, despite the circumstances of sleeping with him just to make herself feel better.  But then if things had gone poorly and they hadn't connected, that would have been SO problematic for this film's story, because we'd either be dealing with someone who's not the "good girl" she claims to be, or it would be sex after getting drunk, so her cognition was impaired, and then that raises a bunch of other issues.  So, no, they have to be a good match, the script kind of depends on it.  It's only the appearance of being a loose woman that she's worried about - but then why not just calm down a little bit, not freak out and act casual about things?  Then nobody would even care that she slept with a guy on their first date, they wouldn't even know except SHE keeps bringing it up...

This film totally bombed at the box office - why would anybody pay to see a movie about somebody just having a really bad day?  They could just stay home and have a bad day themselves, for free.  It's become something of a mainstay on cable, though - I probably programmed it after just getting sick of seeing it so much in the listings.  

Also starring Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Brightburn"), Gillian Jacobs (last seen in "I Used to Go Here"), Sarah Wright Olsen (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "The Hunt"), Bill Burr (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Ken Davitian (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Lawrence Gilliard Jr. (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Alphonso McAuley, Da'Vone McDonald (last seen in "The Gambler"), Oliver Hudson, Eric Etebari (last seen in "Cellular"), Bryan Callen (last seen in "Warrior"), Tig Notaro (last seen in "Instant Family"), Willie Garson (last seen in "House of D"), Kevin Nealon (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Niecy Nash (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Erin Segal, Chris Conner, Liz Carey (last seen in "Movie 43"), Brandon Scott (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Eve Brenner (ditto), Ian Roberts (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Jerry Minor (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), John Farley (last seen in "The Straight Story"), Vic Chao (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Jacob Timothy Manown, Carol Mansell, Rebecca Brunk, David Winston Barge (last seen in "Zodiac").

RATING: 4 out of 10 songs in a lap dance

Robot & Frank

Year 14, Day 95 - 4/5/22 - Movie #4,097

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. 

The Batman

Year 14, Day 95 - 4/5/22 - Movie #4,096

BEFORE: Peter Sarsgaard carries over from "Human Capital", and a superhero movie is like an Oscar-nominated movie, if I have the chance to work it in, I probably should.  My problem over the last year is that I just haven't had much chance, not since "The Suicide Squad" and "The New Mutants", anyway - so I've fallen behind, I missed out on "The Eternals" and "Venom: Let There Be Carnage", all because I wanted to watch horror movies in October and a couple Christmas movies in December.  To everything, there is a season, I suppose - but if possible, let it please be superhero season now.

Actually, this was supposed to be the slot for "The Lost Daughter", I worked a screening of that film last - November? December? - where director Maggie Gyllenhaal spoke on a panel with her husband, Peter Sarsgaard, and also Dakota Johnson.  That film was Oscar-nominated for a few things, so I programmed it in as soon as possible, which turned out to be now, but since then I've realized that film is going to serve a crucial purpose, leading in to my Father's Day films.  So, that's been rescheduled, it's no longer part of this week's Peter Sarsgaard-related programming, it's needed elsewhere.  So, "The Batman" is stepping in to fill the slot, which is fine.  

Expectations are high, because in watching almost 4,100 films, I've only given out two perfect scores, for "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Rises".  I've heard good things about "The Batman", but I've also tried not to learn too much, because I want to enjoy whatever surprises might still be coming my way. Will this be a perfect film?  Unlikely, but let's find out in a special Tuesday afternoon "Bat-inee" on my day off. 

THE PLOT: When the Riddler, a sadistic serial killer, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city's hidden corruption and question his family's involvement. 

AFTER: Standard SPOILER ALERT applies - this is a film in current release, so turn back now if you don't want to read something you'd rather learn by watching the film. 

For today's film, I returned to the scene of the crime - the AMC Theater where I worked last summer, and failed to see many of last year's releases, except for "Black Widow". I'm still playing catch-up on those films that I COULD have seen for free, many are now available on cable or streaming, like "Free Guy", "In the Heights" and "Reminiscence", and I'm waiting on a few others, like "Respect". Much has changed at the AMC, like the soda machines are all working now, and there's a sign in the elevator that tells customers which theaters are on which floor - I'd only been back once in January to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home", but my last week there was so crazy, with a power outage at the theater and then a flood and power outage at home.  But today I saw a couple of the managers I used to work for, and my buddy Joseph was working the reception stand.  I paid for real movie-theater popcorn (full price, I no longer get the concessions discount) and a Coke (not a Mello Purple, but people there are still talking about my soda machine freestyle concoction) but since I attended the matinee, and I'm still a member of the rewards program, my admission price was only $6 - that's a real bargain!  But of course I blew any savings on popcorn, Coke and a box of nachos to bring home for the missus. 

This most recent Bat-Flick clocks in with nearly a three-hour running time, that's a long time to go without a bathroom break, but clearly it had a lot of ground to cover, what with a corrupt police force, the Gotham mob, a serial killer on the loose, and a budding relationship with Catwoman.  I've come to accept that every few years DC is going to dismantle their franchises, both in the cinema and in the comic books, and then jumble up the pieces and then ask a new crop of writers to put the pieces back together again, only in a different way than before.  That's just life at this point, and when I count up, my movie history has contained five different Batman actors (only counting live-action films), and during the same time three Supermans, three Spider-Mans, and two Fantastic Fours.  

Here they've done it again, they've deconstructed the Batman story and put it back together again, with an attempt to "modernize" it once again.  Just keep rebooting him until the end of time, look, it's kept his comic book published for over 80 years.  (It's been six years since the last Batman movie reboot, and about as long since DC Comics "Rebirth", which was the last relaunch of their characters.)  There's talk now of a new comic book reboot, but as for the movie reboot, it's already here, at least for Batman.  Ben Affleck is out, which I think is a bit of a shame, I didn't have any problem with him as the character.  What's a bit confusing, however, is that "The Batman" was preceded by a preview of the other DC films coming out this year, like "Black Adam" and "The Flash" and "Aquaman 2", and none of those are reboots, they're the same actors from the "Justice League" movies and "Black Adam" is a sequel to "Shazam", so why are they rebooting Batman but not the other characters?  Is this part of the most recent DC movie universe, or the start of a new one?  

I can't be concerned with all that right now, I just want to focus on "The Batman" (which borrows the same trick from "The Suicide Squad", just stick a "The" in front of your previous titles, and pretend it's a whole new ball game, you can then do whatever you want.). But today's film is actually a pretty good take on Batman - there's a real focus on detective work, and Batman is often called "The World's Greatest Detective".  He's appeared in "Detective Comics" for over 80 years, also.  But a number of films just depict him being a superhero and some tend to forget the other part of him, the detective part.  In this film we see Batman go undercover several times, he's seen riding a motorcycle out of costume while trailing someone for example.  That big black cape does tend to stand out, you know.  Also, sometimes he appears in public as Bruce Wayne, and in many ways that's a disguise, too - because Batman is the true persona and the spoiled millionaire playboy is just a character he can play when needed.  AND the film acknowledges this, which is for sure a step in the right direction.  

There's also a new take on The Riddler - he's not that goofy guy wearing a green leotard covered in question marks, which has always been very silly.  In the comic books, sometimes he wears a nice suit and hat, while on the "Gotham" TV show he just wore normal clothes, so there are different takes on him.  But here he dresses kind of like The Gimp from "Pulp Fiction", which is creepy enough right there - in addition to riddles he also deals in cipher codes like the Zodiac Killer, he also puts people in mechanical traps like Jigsaw, and he disguises his voice like he's on "The Masked Singer".  Also, he's a social media influencer with like 500 followers, that doesn't seem like much but man, those 500 followers are REALLY committed to the cause.  

This story is set back during Year Two of Batman's time in Gotham, and thus it borrows a bit from the landmark comic "Batman: Year One", namely mob characters like Carmine Falcone.  There were a few runs of Batman comic books that tried to follow in the footsteps of "Year One", but many were of little consequence, and aren't anything like the story seen here in "The Batman".  But the setting is important, because it establishes that Batman's working with James Gordon and is basically at odds with the rest of the G.C.P.D., and he's just starting to transition from taking down mob criminals to battling psychotic super-villains like the Joker - and thus the argument that maybe the worst criminals came around after Batman's debut, and this makes some people say that without the Batman, there would be no Joker or Riddler or Mr. Freeze.  Discussion point, I suppose. 

The weird thing about the Riddler is, why does he feel compelled to leave riddles for Batman, as clues to his activities?  Well, because he's an insane madman, his actions don't need to make sense, that's one possible answer.  Another answer is that the riddles are a test, a game of wits, but honestly, after a while, it starts to feel like maybe, unconsciously, the Riddler WANTS to be caught.  Another discussion point.  "The Batman" puts a nice twist on this, though, suggesting that his notes for Batman, complete with riddles, are partially because he feels like Batman is a fellow collaborator, his riddles are meant to point Batman in a certain direction, and Batman's resulting actions as a part of his investigation are intended to have a certain effect, so in one sense, Riddler feels that he and Batman are sort of working together.  They're just not, as far as Batman is concerned, but it's an interesting sign of Riddler's psychosis that he believes this.  He literally would need to be a genius to be this insane, though, or vice versa, and that's a tough contradiction no matter how you slice it. 

But the riddles or puzzles, well, they'd better be good.  I didn't want anything too cartoony, like the old Adam West "Batman" TV series, where Frank Gorshin as the Riddler was basically using the same riddles you knew from grade school - the audience for that show was mostly kids, I think, plus a bunch of older people who forgot to grow up.  I'm very glad that they didn't revert him here to using riddles like "What's black and white and DEAD all over?" or similarly child-like things.  It's always a fine line, perhaps - if the riddles are too simple, then I feel cheated, and if they're too difficult to explain, then they're over my head and I'm lest interested in the process.  But I think this film got this very difficult tone almost right (?) and of course I don't want to discuss this further, because spoilers.  

Along with the Riddler, the Penguin is a major player here - but he's not all cartoonish, either, like he was on the 1960's TV show or when played by Danny Devito in "Batman Returns".  Colin Farrell just plays him straight, like a regular mobster, only with a scarred face, and he doesn't walk or squawk like a penguin, nor is he shaped like a penguin, no tuxedo either.  So, them, umm, how did he get that name?  I'm not seeing the connection to the Antarctic bird.  And he's got a pair of TWINS working for him, so NITPICK POINT, isn't that Two-Face's thing?  Why are the twins here, they feel like they don't belong, they're in the wrong movie.

A lot is also borrowed here from "The Dark Knight Rises", which I believe is a perfect film and I think I'm definitely over due for a re-watch. Not Bane of course, or the other villain, but Catwoman (or a different version of Catwoman) was in both that film and this one.  And there's a physical threat to the entire city of Gotham, which is a little bit like the one in "Dark Knight Rises" and also different at the same time.  The one in "Dark Knight Rises" referenced Batman storylines like "No Man's Land", and the threat in "The Batman" somehow feels both original, and at the same time, like a copy of that other movie, but they just changed a couple things.  Wow, I'm hard pressed to think of a word that means both original and a copy of something at the same time, if such a word existed I could definitely use it here. Both conventional and unconventional?  Both formulaic and innovative?  I need a contronym here, a word like "butcher" or "oversight" that also means its own opposite - like "butcher" means to cut mean expertly, but if a butcher did a bad job cutting meat, you could also say he "butchered" it. 

I expect a Batman story, even one that's a reboot, to adhere to a certain key principles of the story, namely that Batman's parents were find, decent, sane and upstanding members of the community, Thomas was a doctor and Martha was a loving mother and they both did a lot of charity work and philanthropy, before they were murdered in a random mugging incident in Crime Alley.  The TV shows "Gotham" and "Pennyworth" did their best to chip away at this story, though - "Pennyworth" depicted them as secret agents working in the U.K. before Bruce was born.  And now along comes "The Batman" that tells me that Thomas Wayne was running for mayor of Gotham, and Martha spent some time in a mental institution (her maiden name is now apparently "Arkham", like the name of the asylum), and chip, chip, chip, we're continuing to dismantle the essence of Batman's origin in the name of keeping things "fresh", and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Then there are suggestions here that Thomas might also have had ties to the mob, or at least he saved the life of one key mob boss - well, he was a doctor, after all, but if you start to believe anything worse about him, then you're messing with a "sacred cow" of the Batman story.  

One key question - who the hell wants to be mayor of Gotham?  The life expectancy of a Gotham mayor is about a week and a half, between the threats from mob bosses and then Batman's super-villains. I wish I had a nickel for every time the Gotham mayor got kidnapped or killed in the comic books, and they rang that bell a few too many times on the "Gotham" show also.  I think by the last season they were even making fun of how often this happened, and you'd think there must be an emergency replacement election to replace a dead mayor about every other week, right?  

I won't even get into making James Gordon and Catwoman black, it's a controversial subject for sure, I've expressed my feelings before on multi-culti casting for its own benefit.  I've come to terms with it because, sure, it better represents the world today, but I think also I see the other side of it, it should be done only when there's a reason to do it.  Anyway, I was fine with both Gary Oldman and J.K. Simmons as James Gordon, but making the character black is messing with another "sacred cow" in the Batman story.  We had Lucius Fox, wasn't that enough? Just don't tell me that you're doing "blind" racial casting when clearly you're not, you're doing it to show how "woke" you are, and I see right through that. Zoe Kravitz was also on record as complaining about being turned down as Catwoman before for being too "urban", and clearly she feels that was code for "you're not the right color".  I see her point, but she's GOT the part now, so why is she still complaining about it? Also, haven't two other actresses of color previously taken on that role? 

Here's some more good news: Andy Serkis is FINE as Alfred, I could believe that he's an older version of Sean Pertwee from "Gotham", though neither of them look like an older version of Jack Bannon from "Pennyworth".  But this leads me to another NITPICK POINT - we know that Alfred used to be a former British soldier and the head of a security company, possibly even a secret agent - so yes, it makes sense that he would know something about codes and ciphers.  But then WHY doesn't he have any security system in place for properly checking the mail that comes in addressed to Bruce Wayne?  How can he be so dumb on just this one point?  

And then we come to Batman himself, now played by Robert Pattinson - when he's in the costume, he's also FINE, basically any one of a whole host of actors can wear that suit, and then part of the time it's stuntmen, too, probably.  But can that same actor pull off Bruce Wayne, who's now some kind of mopey millennial, who rides around on his motorcycle to emo music, wears way too much eye make-up and never bothers to brush away the hair hanging down over his face when it's wet.  Ugh, I don't know, this is not MY Bruce Wayne, that's for sure - maybe this is YOUR new Bruce Wayne but again, I just got myself used to Ben Affleck instead of Christian Bale.  I know they need to keep updating this character to appeal to a new audience every few years, and in some ways he's OK, but I just wish some things could just be the way they've always been, starting with Batman.  But as soon as I say this, I realize how ridiculous it sounds, because Batman's never been just one thing, even in the comics he's been portrayed slightly differently by each writer, and then vastly different after every re-boot, such is the way of things.  

Ultimately, my final verdict is that this is a great effort, just way too long with its three-hour running time.  Are you going to tell me that there was simply NO WAY to trim maybe 30 minutes from this film? I find that hard to believe.  You could just cut a fair number of shots a little bit quicker, and you'd excise 10 minutes for sure.  Then it's a matter of saying, "Do we REALLY need THIS bit?" a few more times and you could bring this puppy in at two and a half hours.

What's next for Batman, in both the movies and the comic books?  The comics also revived the romance between Batman and Catwoman, and they came THIS close to getting married, only it was all a huge fake-out, they didn't go through with it BUT they sold a whole bunch of comics that way, it would have been a very innovative step for both characters, but it wasn't meant to be.  Alfred's been DEAD for a few years now in the comics, I think either Bane killed him or the Thomas Wayne from an alternate universe where HE is Batman, not Bruce.  But this could change, there have been rumblings from the "Robin" comics that Damian Wayne may try to bring him back using the Lazarus pits of his grandfather, Ra's Al Ghul. And Batman's been off in Europe, fighting a new villain named Abyss and teaming up with Lex Luthor?  Probably another dodge - while all Batman's friends, like Nightwing, Batgirl, Batwoman and Huntress, were supposed to watch over Gotham in his absence, and everything went crazy (no pun intended) at the new Arkham Tower, which was the replacement for Arkham Asylum.  Boy, is Batman going to be mad when he gets back in town...

I'd love to see a really great comic book storyline get incorporated into the next "The Batman" movie - "The Long Halloween" is one, but it features a villain who's probably not movie-worthy.  They could maybe do something with Two-Face, especially if it's the SECOND movie set in the new rebooted Gotham City. The Joker's probably played out, but it's another way to go - but then so is Mr. Freeze, or Scarecrow or Poison Ivy or Killer Croc - really, there are hundreds of Batman villains, the trick is picking the right one, someone that's not too ridiculous but also not too over-used.  I would say that the villain named Hush is ripe for the picking, but they kind of mixed in elements of his origin into the Riddler's back-story here, so that might be somewhat repetitive.

Also starring Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Tenet"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Paul Dano (last seen in "Okja") John Turturro (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), Andy Serkis (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Jayme Lawson, Gil Perez-Abraham (last seen in "The Farewell"), Peter McDonald, Con O'Neill, Alex Ferns, Rupert Penry-Jones (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Kosha Engler (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Archie Barnes, Janine Harouni, Hana Hrzic, Luke Roberts, Stella Stocker (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Oscar Novak, Sandra Dickinson (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Jack Bennett, Andre Nightingale, Lorraine Tai, Joseph Balderrama (last seen in "The Current War: DIrector's Cut"), Angela Yeoh, Douglas Russell, Charlie Carver (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Max Carver (ditto), Mark Killeen (last seen in "Risen"), with a cameo from Barry Keoghan (also last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"). 

RATING: 8 out of 10 jack-knifed tractor-trailer trucks 

Human Capital

Year 14, Day 93 - 4/3/22 - Movie #4,095

BEFORE: Do you want to know what's really odd about watching nine films starring Nicolas Cage in a row?  It's the fact that it now feels strange to me to watch a film that does NOT have Nicolas Cage in it - and there were more films available to me, but I've got to move forward, Easter is coming. I might be late posting tomorrow, because I have to work both jobs and I may not be able to get a movie in - but this kind of works in my favor, because I have Tuesday off, and I might sneak out to the movie theater to see a certain superhero film. Yep, today's film links to it - I was going to go last week, but I'd just come back from Massachusetts and I really needed to sleep in last Tuesday. 

Alex Wolff carries over from "Pig". Looking back at January, I now realize this film was the quickest way to connect between "The French Dispatch" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home", so why didn't I just watch it then?  I must have missed it, or maybe that wouldn't have been enough steps, because I watched three films then in place of this one, did I not notice it as an option?  Or maybe I just really wanted to work in "A Most Wanted Man", because it got left behind after watching "Jack Goes Boating" late last year. It seems I'm always playing catch-up. By May I'll be three Marvel movies behind, four if you count the "Doctor Strange" sequel - but I'm going to catch up on three out of four between Mother's Day and Father's Day, that's the plan.  First "The Batman", then the Marvel films.

THE PLOT: The lives of two different families collide when their children begin a relationship that leads to a tragic accident. 

AFTER: I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, because it sounds like a political film, like "Shock and Awe" or "Broken City", only it's going to be about human trafficking or something like that. Then I read the description and it sounded a lot like "Carnage" or "The Dinner", with a situation that brings two sets of parents together and puts them at odds.  And it kind of is like those films, but it's also its own thing.  And that's largely due to the structure, where we see the same events unfolding from different P.O.V.'s, which is both good and bad. 

It's good because even though the film runs through some the same events several times, like the awards dinner, we learn a little more information about certain key events each time they run by, which really is the best way to do this.  If you're going to bend the rules of time and space, repeat events, show us the other side of that conversation that we couldn't here before, the audience should slowly learn the information as it's carefully divulged, this way the film doesn't throw everything at us all at once, we've got some time to think about things, and really, there's only one piece of information that we want to get at, but instead the film says, "Hold on, we're going to get there, but first, consider this bit of new information about THIS character."

But it's a double-edged sword, this technique is bad because it's so frustrating, and it leads me to wonder if this is really just a half-hour of story that gets repeated three times to make up a feature-length film.  I mean, "Pulp Fiction" kind of folded time back in on itself, too, but at least it didn't tell the same story twice, each segment was something new, and then it led us to piece the proper order of events together later. But here it feels a bit like a cheat, because we want to know who was driving the car that night, and then the first few times through, we don't learn that, and that can be very frustrating.  This feels more like, "Oh, we KNOW you want to know who was driving that car, but we're not going to tell you just yet.  For now, all we can tell you is that is wasn't THIS person, but stay tuned, you might get lucky in a bit."

Everybody here, in both families, has secrets - some they give up quite easily, others are harder to discern, but we can probably take a couple good guesses.  Drew Hagel mentions upon first meeting that he's Shannon's dad, he's divorced and re-married to a "trophy wife", and then when he learns that his daughter's boyfriend's father manages an investment fund, he can't wait to try to invest in it, even though there's a waiting list.  He also can't really afford to do so, but he fudges the numbers a bit at his own company, takes out a high-interest loan, puts the house up as collateral, because it's such a sure thing, only it turns out there's no such thing as a sure thing.  The secret that he's been hiding, in addition to not telling his wife that they could lose their house, is that he's got a history of gambling addiction, and what's investing, after all, but a legal form of gambling?  

The boyfriend's father, Quint Manning, seems to be a legit businessman, but is he?  Is the volatile market he mentions really volatile, or perhaps is he some kind of Bernie Madoff type, running a pyramid scheme?  Honestly, I couldn't tell - perhaps there's some wiggle room in the script here.  His wife is a former horror-movie scream queen, who wants his company to invest in a rundown theater that she can renovate, because then she'll have something to do beyond being an idle rich person.  Her secret is apparently that she's had a few extra-marital affairs, and is always looking for another one. 

The families come together because their children, Shannon and Jamie, are dating.  But, are they, really?  Or is there another secret that nobody's talking about yet?  Actually, there could be a few, and they may all get revealed after the accident, which followed the party, which followed the private school awards dinner.  Umm, I think that's how it all went down, remember this film messes with the time continuum just a bit, but that order seems to make sense.  And I got a bit worried because I didn't see Alex Wolff's character for the first hour, and of course I was counting on him to make an appearance, so my chain wouldn't be broken.  Oh, yeah, he shows up and his character turns out to be pretty important, so there's that. 

I don't want to say too much, because spoilers, but it's enough to know that the film eventually does get there, and all the secrets from both families are revealed.  One thing I really appreciated was that this movie had a line of dialogue that I've always wanted to hear - after Shannon made a reference to "losing her mother", she had to clarify in the next sentence with "Oh, she's not dead, we just don't know where she is."  That's kind of funny, a neat little play on words, but it would be funnier, I think, if it were about an elderly person, rather than an absent mother. 

Simply nobody saw this film in the theaters, it grossed under $10,000 worldwide.  I guess that's because of the pandemic, it's listed as a 2019 film on IMDB, but the release date was March 20, 2020 - yeah, that was JUST at the start of lockdown, a little over two years ago. Tough break - but it seems to have found a place for itself on HBO and HBO Max, perhaps.  It's not terrible, so it may be worth a go. I've got to run now because I've got to shower and study for this fire prevention test, but I'll be back posting on Tuesday, I'll just have to double up.  

Also starring Liev Schreiber (last seen in "A Walk on the Moon"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "An Education"), Maya Hawke (last seen in "Once Upon a Time.. In Hollywood"), Betty Gabriel (last seen in "Get Out"), Paul Sparks (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Freedomland"), Dominic Colon (ditto), Fred Hechinger (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), John Ventimiglia (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), James Waterston (last seen in "Dead Poets Society"), Fredric Lehne (last seen in "Tallulah"), Daryl Edwards (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Alex Yiakoumatos, Nick Yiakoumatos, Carson McCalley, Mark Blum (last seen in "Down to You"), Eva Kaminsky (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), David Gibson (last seen in "Joker"), Marisa Ryan (last seen in "Riding in Cars With Boys"), Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Loni Ackerman, Christiane Seidel. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 therapy sessions