Vivo

Year 14, Day 106 - 4/16/22 - Movie #4,108

BEFORE: Lin-Manuel Miranda carries over from "In the Heights". I originally wasn't going to include this one here, but I just found out a few days ago that LMM makes a cameo appearance in tomorrow's film, so that created an opportunity to drop this one in here - it's an extra, I'll have to double-up to still get to my proposed Easter film in time, but I'm hoping this will be worth it. 

I didn't want to abandon this one, create another "orphan" - I was going to go straight on from "In the Heights" to tomorrow's film, but since I'm trying to get to all these random animated (randomated) films, let's take a chance and drop another one in.  This one also had a screening at the theater where I work, it was on a double-bill with "In the Heights", so I had a feeling that Lin-Manuel might show up, only he didn't.  BUT, he did come a few weeks later with tomorrow's film, which he directed.   

THE PLOT: A kinkajou spends his days playing music in Cuba with his beloved owner Andrés, but when tragedy strikes after a letter from the famous Marta Sandoval, inviting her old partner to her farewell concert, it's up to Vivo to deliver a message that Andrés never could: a love letter in the form of a song. 

AFTER: Eh, I don't know about this one. I passed on the opportunity to watch this when it was on the big screen, and maybe that was the right call.  This was pitched to Dreamworks Animation way back in 2010, and then that company restructured in 2015, leaving this film without a home.  Sony Pictures then picked it up in 2016, and put it on their release schedule for December 2020 - only when 2020 rolled around, most theaters were of course shut down.  I get it, pandemics happen and plans change, so they made a deal to put it on Netflix with a quick theatrical release in July of 2021.  Like all of us over the last two years, this film's been through a lot.  

But Lin-Manuel's always been part of the process - Dreamworks set the ball rolling with him shortly after the success of "In the Heights", the stage version. Then shortly after Dreamworks dropped it and Sony Pictures acquired it, "Hamilton" took off, so somebody must have felt like they hit the lottery.  Beyond that, I really don't know the timetable for the animation, it was fast-tracked in 2016, but the cast wasn't announced until April 2021. That doesn't seem to leave a lot of time to animate the characters to the voices, so I suspect that the dialogue was recorded much earlier, and teams of people were working on the animation for months and months in relative secrecy.  

And, well, it's a bit of a mixed result.  Some of the characters here are just weird, some of them have really scrunched-up faces and I'm just not sure if that's a chosen style, or just represents a weird way of doing things.  The lead young-girl character is presented as a bit of an odd duck, like she's got purple hair and is portrayed as a "creative" type, but she's also socially awkward and fairly clueless about how annoying she is to most people.  Like, is this a conscious effort to appeal to the kids with ADHD or the social misfits?  Generally speaking, "annoying" shouldn't be a character trait when you're trying to create an appealing film, but maybe it's a whole new world out there, and the social misfits are now in charge?  Gabi is a musician, or at least she thinks she is, plus she's a horrible singer, but doesn't realize it. Wait, am I supposed to LIKE her?  OK, I guess perfect kids with perfect voices are stuck-up and annoying in their own way, so I guess the take-away here is that all kids are annoying.  I can get behind this, but it's just weird to see it stated like that in a film. 

The Sand Dollar girls (a trio of over-achieving Girl Scout types) are also annoying, but in a different way.  They stand for aggressively selling cookies, aggressively recycling, and aggressively saving the environment.  They're "Mean Girls" in uniform, basically, so I didn't really like them either - where are the nice, average, relatable kids who aren't so hyper and aggro?  I guess they don't exist in this world.  (No boys, either, so I guess the animation world is now girls only, which seems like maybe they've over-compensated for the patriarchal past?). 

Anyway, the main plot concerns a kinkajou voiced by Lin-Manuel (if there was a screenwriter or studio executive who wagered that LMM couldn't find a rhyme for "kinkajou", that person totally lost...) who's got some musical ability, and performs with his owner (sorry, adoptive parent, we can't show people "owning" animals any more, it's out of fashion...) Andrés on the streets in Cuba.  This is also tricky narrative ground, because it calls to mind all those organ-grinders of the past who used monkeys to collect money on the streets, and that's one step away from enslaving an animal, right?  So this has to now be depicted as a musical "partnership", to avoid people protesting the film. 

It's all a bit odd, because this film very quickly runs into the "Chewbacca problem".  Most animated films have talking animals, sure, but they talk to and understand each other, you can't really have humans and animals talking to each other, because this isn't "Dr. Dolittle", in the end.  So Vivo the kinkajou is singing in English, the audience can understand him, but the humans in the film can't.  A couple of times in the film, we hear him chittering, and this is the way he sounds to the animated people.  OK, so he's not singing a duet with Andrés, not really, but then what IS he doing?  Chittering in time with the music?  Umm, so what?  That's not really much of a performance, then, is it?  So, is Vivo intelligent like a person or dumb like an animal?  It can't be both.  So we draw a line, the other animals can understand him, but the people can't, then that still doesn't fall in line with the film that we're being shown, where we the audience can understand him.

I know it seems like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but later in the film, it's VERY important to the questline that Vivo and Gabi get on the same page, like HOW do they get there and figure out the answer to the problem if they can't talk to each other?  I guess they just wave their arms and shout at each other until they somehow land on the solution?  Fundamentally, it just doesn't WORK.  I've spoken at length in the past about how problematic the language barrier between Han Solo and Chewbacca is, and even the "Star Wars" movies can't really decide how it all works - the books and the "Solo" movie just made it even more confusing. 

Then we kind of get to the real problem with the story here - it's very sad, because just as Andrés is planning to go from Cuba to Miami and re-connect with his musical partner, Marta, the worst possible thing happens to him. Yep.  Life's like that sometimes, and so Vivo gets it in his head that he needs to make the trip himself and find Marta, to deliver that song Andrés wrote for her, only he's a kinkajou and he doesn't know how to do that.  To be fair, Andrés never would have been able to bring his pet kinkajou with him to the U.S., and the film just sort of brushes this aside, it's a huge plot-hole (NITPICK POINT).  There are quarantine rules, animal bans, import laws, etc - and these do come up later, when mentioned by the Sand Dollar girls, but they should have been a consideration right from the start - how was Andrés planning to work around them?  

Vivo gets around the rules by stowing away in Gabi's instrument case, but wouldn't that have seen searched by airport personnel, as a piece of luggage?  Wouldn't someone from TSA have noticed the animal hidden behind the accordion?  Plus, now the film tells us that the rules are there for good reasons, but hey, if you think you can smuggle in an exotic animal, by all means, give it a try.  That's a weird message to send out to the kids.  Also, defying your mother and escaping from home to ride a bus across Florida without adult supervision is a darn good idea.  Umm, no, it's not, and how the heck did this get approval as a plot-point?  

In desperation, the movie then has to throw up a bunch of obstacles, like Gabi & Vivo missing the bus, falling off a bridge (!!), building a raft to get off the ship they landed on, and traveling through the Everglades, nearly getting eaten by a giant snake (!!) just to follow-through and get to Miami.  None of this HAD to happen, if only Gabi could have reasoned with her mother like a rational human, explained the situation about the song, and stressed the need to attend that final concert. So many things wrong with this, like making Gabi's mother the antagonist just because she wants to protect her daughter, making it OK for Gabi to act out, run away and put herself in danger, sneak into a concert hall without a ticket, and then ultimately there being no repercussions for all this bad behavior.  Gabi might be in the right here, but she's right for the wrong reasons.  Bad messages for the kids, all around - there simply had to be a better way at the script stage to deal with these things.  If there's a sudden rash of kids running away with kinkajous to sneak into concerts, you'll know who to blame.  

On top of that, it's just so sad - maybe there could have been a better way, like have Andrés get sick instead of, well, you know, and Vivo then needed to make the trip alone because Andrés couldn't fly.  Maybe then there could have been a point to this whole journey across Florida, instead of just making sure Marta knew that Andrés had feelings for her, only now it's too late.  Just saying. 

Also starring the voices of Ynairaly Simo, Zoe Saldana (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Gloria Estefan (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Nicole Byer (last seen in "Other People"), Katie Lowes (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Rich Moore (ditto), Olivia Trujillo, Lidya Jewett (last seen in "Wonder"), Christian Ochoa, Gloria Calderon Kellett, Leslie David Baker (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Paloma Morales, Danny Pino, Alex Lacamoire, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Tessie Santiago, Brandon Jeffords.

RATING: 4 out of 10 croquetas

In the Heights

Year 14, Day 105 - 4/15/22 - Movie #4,107

BEFORE: It feels like this one's been a long time coming - last summer I worked at an AMC Theater in Manhattan, and this film hit the screens a few weeks after I started working as an usher, so even though it played fewer times per day than most features (because of the longer running time, nearly two and a half hours) it still feels like there were hundreds of times that I had to wait for the post-credits scene on this one, before I could sweep up that theater.  Business was great for a while, a lot of people came out to see this one (my wife, huge Lin-Manuel fan but she stayed home and watched it on HBO Max, which was a new thing at the time) and the musical theater fans also tended to be very neat and clean, so usually not too much trouble to clean the theater.  But man, I know every little beat in that closing sequence with the cameo of Christopher Jackson as the Mr. Softee ice cream truck man. 

Stephanie Beatriz and Olga Merediz carry over from "Encanto" as Hispanic half-week continues, and we get ready for Hot Latin Summer.  The temperature in NYC hit 80 yesterday, and it's still only April.  We're still trying to get our windows fixed so we can open them, if it doesn't happen soon, we'll miss all the nice weather and go straight to A.C. weather, and the need to open the windows for fresh air will be gone...

THE PLOT: A film version of the Broadway musical in which Usnavi, a sympathetic New York bodega owner, saves every penny every day as he imagines and sings about a better life. 

AFTER: Again, I'm way out of my comfort zone with this one, I tend to stay only within Queens, where I live, and Manhattan, where I work.  But Washington Heights is UPPER Manhattan, like above 133rd St., and I rarely even go to the Upper East Side, for that matter I hardly ever go above 42nd St.  There's a whole world in every NYC neighborhood, I get that.  But if I'm looking to have fun, I'll go to Coney Island.  If we really want to explore a city, we'll go on vacation, drive across a few southern states or our last excursion was a "casino crawl" in Vegas. What does Washington Heights have to offer me, besides bodegas and crowded streets?  OK, so there are probably some great restaurants up there, I love Dominican food and Cuban sandwiches are great - but I can get great Dominican food in Sunset Park or even Bushwick, why spend subway fare?  

My wife is the expert on all things Lin-Manuel, even the stage musical production of "In the Heights", so this morning before I left for work we had a brief discussion about the obvious (to her) changes made to adapt the musical for the movie screen.  For starters, I'm guessing that several things needed to be cut, because the musical is probably a three- or four-hour production, and the movie's just two and a half.  Little things, maybe, like Nina's mother got cut out completely, but I'm not noticing her absence, like her father's character is a bit more sympathetic as a widower.  And she said that Abuela Claudia's song and departure takes place earlier in the stage musical - no spoilers here in case you're unfamiliar with the storyline, but her song is very connected to a major turning point in the plot, you just have to wait longer for it in the movie.  

Every character in this neighborhood has a little dream, a sueñito, and they range from opening a new nail salon to getting a job in the fashion industry, to Usnavi saving up to buy his father's old bar back in the Dominican Republic, so he can fix it up, leave NYC and work in his homeland.  To do this he has to maintain his family's bodega and keep turning a profit, which would be very difficult to do if there should be some kind of neighborhood emergency, such as a summer blackout.  (The film totally telegraphs this happening, it's always "two days until blackout", so I'm not really spoiling anything here...)

Meanwhile, Nina returns to the neighborhood after dropping out of Stanford, she didn't feel like she fit in, she encountered racist classmates, plus she found out that her father sold half of his taxi business just to pay for her tuition, and she doesn't want to burden him any more.  This is very similar to the family dynamics in "Encanto", where Maribel couldn't figure out her place in the world, due to the lack of an obvious "gift", and her resulting conflict with her grandmother. I'll confess that this hit home for me, last night after watching "In the Heights" I had that dream where I was back in NYU Film School, moving back into the dorm and then realizing that I had no ideas for making movies, and immediately started questioning whether I belonged there. 

The other characters are Benny, who works at the cab company owned by Nina's father, Sonny, who is Usnavi's cousin and works at the bodega, and Vanessa, who Usnavi wants to date but can't seem to get the courage to ask out.  In the background of everything are references to the DACA immigration policy, for the "dreamers", and this colors everything like Sonny's inability to leave for the D.R. with Usnavi, because he's undocumented, and Nina's eventual desire to go back to college, so she can work to change society and make things better in the U.S. for immigrants.  

Also in the background is the fact that Usnavi's bodega apparently sold a winning lottery ticket, and there's much speculation around the neighborhood about who bought it - there's a song in which all the main characters talk about how they'd spend that money, if they had it.  Which makes some sense if EVERY character also bought a ticket, but a little less sense if they didn't. Just saying. But the winning ticket-holder doesn't come forward, and I really was beginning to think that the director just forgot to get back to this.  Silly me, but this is one of those things that got moved in the adaptation - in the stage musical, the next song reveals the winner, but here, you've just got to be patient.  

I've got a bit of a NITPICK POINT here, I was always led to believe that the store that sells a winning lottery ticket is entitled to a bonus, I guess this encourages retailers to sell more tickets, and also keep things honest.  So I wondered why Usnavi and Sonny weren't talking about how much their bodega might get as a bonus for selling a winning ticket.  Well, it turns out that there's no bonus in New York state for retailers, so that's that.  BUT, I was also led to believe that a store owner is banned from turning in a winning ticket, and that's to help prevent dishonestly, like a customer could ask for assistance from a retailer to determine if they have a winning ticket, and at that point the shop-owner could lie, say it's a losing ticket, and turn the ticket in themselves.  But, I guess the director here maybe considered that, because of what ends up being done with the ticket.  

Any other changes from the stage musical seem relatively minor, like having Usnavi and Vanessa argue after going to the club, instead of Benny and Nina. Benny and Nina seem to be the central couple of the stage musical, but here there's a little more focus overall on Usnavi and Vanessa.  Benny and Nina get one spectacular dance number, however, where they appear to defy gravity and dance up the side of a building near the end. It kind of reminded me of the old "Batman" TV show in the 1960's, where they would show often Batman and Robin climbing ropes up a building, and a guest-star would talk to them from a window.  Clearly they just turned the camera on its side for some really low-rent visual effects, and the background was fake perspective to complete the illusion.  Now I wonder if "In the Heights" used the same trick, or if the visual FX were much more high-tech, green-screened or CGI or whatever.  

The pool scene also stands out, with the overhead camera creating one of those big tributes to Esther Williams movies, also giant Busby Berkeley dance numbers from the 1930's.  The other big dance scenes, like ones with large numbers of people in the streets, eh, I can take 'em or leave 'em, but the pool dance number and the side-of-the-building number are the big pay-offs. 

I also find the name of the character "Graffiti Pete" to be hilarious, though it was probably unintentionally so. It's an example of an "unfinished rhyme", because it would be so easy to call the character "Graffiti Petey", which would rhyme. The comedy slasher film "Club Dread" featured another example of this, because in that film there's a local legend about a killer who uses a machete and his last name is Colletti, however the nickname for the character turns out to be "Machete Phil", and not the very obvious rhyming nickname.  

Also starring Anthony Ramos (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Melissa Barrera, Leslie Grace, Corey Hawkins (last seen in "6 Underground"), Jimmy Smits (last seen in "The Jane Austen Book Club"), Gregory Diaz IV (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Daphne Rubin-Vega (last seen in "Jack Goes Boating"), Dascha Polanco (last seen in "The Irishman"), Noah Catala, Lin-Manuel Miranda (last not-seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Mateo Gomez (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Marc Anthony (last seen in "Man on Fire"), Patrick Page (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Olivia Perez, Analia Gomez, Dean Scott Vazquez, Mason Vazquez, Delila Ramos, Valentina, Christopher Jackson (last heard in "Moana"), Susan Pourfar (last seen in "Irrational Man"), Ilia Jessica Castro, Ariana Greenblatt (last heard in "Scoob!"), Seth Stewart, the voice of The Kid Mero and cameos from Maria Hinojosa, Luis A. Miranda Jr., Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda.

RATING: 6 out of 10 taxi cabs (and maxi pads)

Encanto

Year 14, Day 104 - 4/14/22 - Movie #4,106

BEFORE: John Leguizamo carries over from "Gamer", and this is a big shift, I realize, from an action-based movie over to animation.  But I've been falling behind in this category, and there's a chance for me to catch up with the chain I've devised. I can start with this film, which just won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature of 2021, and next week I can work in two more of the nominees.  If I stick to the plan, by the end of May I will have watched four out of the five (one's a real bitch to link to, so it's out) and I've got a couple non-nominated animated films to work into the mix as well.  Here's to catching up. 

Like, I doubt even John Leguizamo himself would watch "Gamer", then follow it up with "Encanto", that's how different they are. Then again, maybe he would, I don't know.  Hispanic Heritage Month doesn't start until September, apparently, but here at the Movie Year, it's going to be Hispanic-American Appreciation week - well, OK, half-week. But it'll definitely be a half-week with some Latin flair, leading up to Easter.  Today, April 14, is Pan-American Day, which commemorates the founding of the International Conference of American States, so there's that. 

THE PLOT: A Colombian teenage girl has to face the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers. 

AFTER: OK, I'll admit I was skeptical about this one, before it won the Oscar, anyway - like, how great could it be?  And we already had "The Book of Life" and "Coco", so do we really need another Latino-based animated film for kids?  Well, of course I don't want to sound racist, so I have to fall back on thinking that if the market is there for another one, then, sure, by all means.  Maybe there's more to Hispanic culture than just the Day of the Dead, after all, since both previous Latin-o-mation films centered on that same idea.  So of course I'm going to try to give this one a fair shot, it's earned at least that.  

AND, it turns out that it's very, very entertaining.  There are all kinds of thrilling, magical things that take place, there's a wider look at the culture of South America beyond the food (though, there is food-stuff here, too) - there simply must be more to a culture than rice and beans, after all. I've been to Colombia - Cartagena, while on a cruise in 2013. I can't say that we really got a wide look at the culture, I think we visited an old Spanish fort and a large church, saw a bunch of street art and then passed by a Biblioteca, which just called to mind all those Spanish classes in junior high that I didn't take.  Meanwhile, the only Spanish my wife knows, besides the word for "shoestore" is this sentence: "My fishing gear is in the kitchen."  You probably won't be surprised to learn that the need for this phrase rarely comes around - so far, once.  

But there's a lot to like about "Encanto", it's so charming, yet also insightful into the very complex dynamics of an extended family, like how the grandmother (abuela) runs everything, and is respected by all but also could be seen as strict and overbearing by the younger ones.  And there's an impetus for everybody to be just so, the pretty one is made to feel like she can't be anything but perfect, and that's just too much pressure to put on anyone.  The strong one, Luisa, also feels the pressure to keep working hard for the benefit of the family and the community, and that's also too much pressure, it turns out.  Then there's Bruno, who's conspicuously absent, but everybody keeps talking about how they don't talk about him, which is something of a contradiction.  

Of course, it's a giant, (mostly-)happy blended and multi-culti family, which Disney Corp will tell you is a very forward and inclusive way to make a film, and the fact that the more races you put in a film only increases its market potential is just a giant coincidence.  Yes, it would take a very cynical person indeed to look at this film and just see how a mix of Latino characters, plus a few Caucasians, plus a few people of African descent, would be able to make money in so many different market sectors and foreign countries. Jeez, I would hate to be THAT guy.  

Oh, I almost forgot, nearly the whole family has super-powers.  Sorry, "gifts", magical "gifts".  Any resemblance to a team of superheroes is also quite coincidental, only it isn't.  Disney/Pixar has pulled this trick before, when they copied most of the Fantastic Four's powers (gifts) and re-assigned them to The Incredibles, only gender-switching some of them so you might not notice. Strength, invisibility, super-stretchiness, and...well, the super-speed was a twist.  But if it were one-for-one then everybody would notice, not just me.  So when Jack-Jack got multiple powers, but one of them was for sure the ability to control fire, well, I wasn't really surprised at all, the Human Torch's powers were the only ones missing.  I need to double-check the timeline, but I'm still convinced that Disney bought Marvel Comics just to squash a potential lawsuit. 

And, they're at it again - so many of the super-powers (sorry, GIFTS) displayed by the Madrigal family felt so familiar, that I couldn't help but think of the X-Men.  Again, it's not one-for-one, like nobody has Wolverine's claws or Cyclops' eye-beams, but there are a LOT of X-Men out there.  Luisa has super-strength, like Colossus, Pepa's moods affect the weather, like Storm, Camilo can shape-shift, just like Mystique, and that uncle that they don't talk about has precognition powers, notably seen in Destiny (an X-villain) and others. I get it, there are only so many different super-powers out there, and repeats are inevitable at some point. And to be fair, one Madrigal has super-hearing, and I don't know any X-Men with that power, and another can talk to animals, there's probably an X-Man out there who can do this, but nobody's coming to mind. 

But they live in a magical house, (and it's a bit unclear if the house gives them the gifts, or vice versa) which of course reminds me of the X-Mansion, aka the Charles Xavier School for Gifted Students.  The Madrigal house is basically alive, always growing and changing, which seems like a combination of the Danger Room from the old X-Mansion, and the mutant island of Krakoa, which is where they currently reside.  The island is alive, can do just about anything, and was the featured villain way back in Giant-Size X-Men #1, but they've since learned that the island is itself a mutant, and makes a great place to live outside of the human civilization.  

So yeah, a lot of this feels familiar to me because I've spent so much time reading the X-Men comics, and coming to terms with life at the X-Mansion.  But the central character here is Maribel, who never received a special gift from the house, and doesn't feel like she fits in with the rest of the family.  There are several possibilities for WHY she has no gift, it could be that normal humans (muggles?) marrying into the family is diluting the genetic code, making the gifts impossible for some. It may be that the tension between Maribel and her grandmother has a lot to do with it, again we don't know for sure if the gifts are coming from the house or the grandmother.  And it's possible that Bruno's disappearance from the family has something to do with this little mystery, but that's all for Maribel to find out on her personal journey.  

The songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda also go a long way toward making this film more than just an X-Men rip-off.  They're so good that they played TWO of them during the recent Oscar show, and one of those wasn't even nominated for Best Song!  In a year, no less, where they were trying to cut down on the show's time!  (Umm, yeah, my tip would be, only stick to the five nominated songs...). I've been "Hamilton"-adjacent on every car trip for several years now, and my wife and I did get to see the show just a couple months before lockdown began in 2020.  He's been on quite a roll since then, and in fact he's all over the next few films.  Sorry if you were expecting "West Side Story" during Hispanic Appreciation Half-week, it's nearly all Miranda-based.  So I'll have more to say about LMM this week, including how I got in the same room as him a couple months back.  He's not in "Encanto" as a voiced character, but I've still got my linking covered for the next few days.  

Also starring the voices of Stephanie Beatriz (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Maria Cecilia Botero, Mauro Castillo, Jessica Darrow, Angie Cepeda, Carolina Gaitan, Diane Guerrero, Wilmer Valderrama (last heard in "Onward"), Rhenzy Feliz, Ravi Cabot-Conyers (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Adassa, Maluma, Rose Portillo, Noemi Josefina Flores, Juan Castano (last seen in "The Wilde Wedding"), Sarah-Nicole Robles, Hector Elias (last seen in "Envy"), Alan Tudyk (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Olga Merediz (last seen in "One for the Money"), Jorge E. Ruiz Cano, Alyssa Bella Candiani, Paisley Herrera, Brooklyn Skylar Rodriguez, Ezra Rudulph, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 dancing donkeys

Gamer

Year 14, Day 103 - 4/13/22 - Movie #4,105

BEFORE: Gerard Butler carries over from "The Game of Their Lives", and I guess life is back to normal in New York City, or as normal as it gets, anyway.  People were riding on the subway today almost as if nothing had ever happened, I know because I was one of them.  Of course, I took yesterday off so I had some time to recover and mentally deal with it all, but you know, life has to go on, people still have to get to work the next day, and really, if you think about it, with everybody on high alert and on edge and being THAT much more aware of their surroundings, there really couldn't BE a safer time to travel around this city.  There were probably more police on the subway today than ever before, so there's that - and the odds against there being two shootings in a row on consecutive days are astronomically high, so that's another sigh of relief. 

Plus, THEY CAUGHT THE GUY today, a little over 24 hours after the incident.  Clearly the NYPD had some things to prove, that this city is safe (by and large) and if you shoot up the subway, you WILL be caught, and quite quickly, too. I can only imagine the rush that was put on this manhunt, it was either find this guy right away or watch all the progress made in tourism dollars since the pandemic (sort of) ended go right down the tubes.  

I'd hate to think that we, as a city, as a country, as humans, are so jaded now after watching so many people die in a pandemic, after watching terrorists crash two planes into two buildings and kill 3,000 people, that we just go right back to normal-ish after a tragedy.  I kind of worry what that says about us in the long run, so let's just chalk it up to the fact that New Yorkers are tough, and we get right back up on the horse, but first we pause to help the fallen.  Yeah, let's go with that because I need to be able to sleep at night, too.

THE PLOT: In a future mind-controlling game, death row convicts are forced to battle in a "Doom"-type environment. Convict Kable, controlled by Simon, a skilled teenage gamer, must survive thirty sessions in order to be set free.

AFTER: That's four for Gerard, and that's enough. I had hopes that things would get better after "Geostorm", but it didn't happen - the films kept getting worse, mostly, and this is like the bottom of the barrel. Most of the time, I couldn't even tell what was happening on the screen, or what was SUPPOSED to be happening, I guess.  How can I tell if the director succeeded at what he was trying to do, if I couldn't even tell what that was in the first place, I ask you?

This is just action-movie first-shooter porn, really, with no purpose or story or plot - just a video-game like scenario enlarged to Hollywood-size with real-looking visual effects.  But that's it, there's nothing really to think about or deduce or anything that would make you say, "Huh, yeah, I guess life is funny like that sometimes..."  It's just shoot-em-up, blow-it-up, dirty action.  Come on, man, read the room!  This movie's timing is terrible, to be on the schedule one day after a mass shooting here in New York City!  Sucks to be you, "Gamer", I'm just not in the mood for your antics. 

Look, I don't know what inspired this movie, whether it was "Call of Duty" or "Second Life" or "The Sims", I can't remember which of these were popular back in 2009, maybe all of them.  But the premise here is that the best gamers in the world are able to take control of the bodies of death-row inmates, and run them through video-game like scenarios, only with REAL weapons, real explosives, real danger.  So one false move and they COULD die, like for reals.  BUT if they manage to survive for 30 sessions, the inmates win their freedom - and all of America gets entertained, in the end.  

BUT, the game is more rigged than "The Masked Singer" is. (Oops, sorry, you didn't really think that the audience votes on that show are COUNTED, did you?  Bad news, that show is so easy to fox, since no audience members see how everybody votes.  I don't believe the 2020 election was stolen, but I'm fairly sure this FOX TV show's voting is crooked.)  The secret plan is to allow Kable to live for 29 days, get the maximum ratings possible for his last show, and then make sure he dies. Whoops, sorry, no freedom for you, Kable. It's really dastardly. 

But Kable is somehow able to connect with the teen controlling him, Simon.  Or maybe it's the other way around, maybe Simon figures out how to talk to Kable, I'm not sure.  Either way, Kable asks to be in control on Day 30, so he can really cut loose, insure his survival and win his freedom.  Umm, OK, but if the teen gamer is really the bad-ass he claims to be, what makes Kable thinks his odds will increase if he's in control of his own body?  Like nearly everything about this film, the reasoning is very, very unclear.  

Meanwhile, in addition to "Slayers", there's another game going on, using the same body-takeover technology, it's called "Society".  Like an X-rated version of "The Sims", it allows people to earn money by allowing others to control their bodies, and people pay for that privilege, to dress the players up, make them interact and (most likely) have sex with each other.  Somehow this is legal in the future, or the big billionaire behind the tech paid off enough lawmakers to make it legal, but that doesn't make it any less disgusting. You might say this is a logical extension to web-cam porn, or OnlyFans, but with people having no control over their own bodies, it sounds way too close to rape mixed with prostitution.  So, umm, HOW is this legal, exactly?  And why are all the controllers portrayed as male, ugly and fat, while the people being controlled are all the hot chicks?  Yeah, don't answer that, I think I know already, but I still don't like it.  

While Kable (aka John Tillman) works toward his release, his wife is a controlled player in the "Society" game, so she's forced to have sex with other players, to earn money to get their daughter back, or something - again, really unclear - or who knows, maybe she just likes it?  Meanwhile there's an underground organization called the Humanz, and they're trying to disrupt both games, because they believe that this technology will one day be used to control everyone, not just the gamers.  But the exact plans of the Humanz are, you guessed it, very unclear. 

The world watches as Kable appears to die, only the feed cuts out, the death isn't broadcast. Why?  It's unclear. Simon, the controller, is labeled a "cheater" and his accounts are frozen.  Why? Again, it's unclear.  The inventor of the brain nanites technology turns out to be the man who adopted Kable's daughter. Why? Unclear, unclear, unclear.  But the Humanz were right, he does want to take over the world and make everybody his puppets.  Why?  Umm, unclear?

Finally, all the important characters end up in one place - Kable, his Sim-porn wife, their daughter, the inventor of the tech, and the gamer teen who's been controlling Kable.  Will the inventor be able to make Kable kill his own family, or will the teen regain control of Kable's body and make him kill the inventor?  Honestly, it's a toss-up, but how in the hell did it all come down to this?  If this is gaming in the future, honestly, I want no part of it.  We already have porn actors who are willing to do just about anything you can imagine on camera, there's no need to invent brain nanites just for the extra thrill of controlling other people and making them do dirty stuff they wouldn't ordinarily do. That's just nasty.  And then to take that same concept and apply it to violence, instead of sex - that seems even worse, doesn't it? 

Also starring Amber Valletta (last seen in "The Family Man"), Michael C. Hall (last seen in "The Report"), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Logan Lerman (last seen in "Shirley"), Alison Lohman (last seen in "Matchstick Men"), Terry Crews (last seen in "Middle Men"), Ludacris (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Aaron Yoo (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Michael Weston (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Milo Ventimiglia (last seen in "She's All That"), Zoë Bell (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "The Night Clerk"), Johnny Whitworth (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Keith Jardine (last seen in "Running With the Devil"), Joseph D. Reitman (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), John De Lancie (last seen in "Reign Over Me"), Jonathan Chase, Keith David (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), James Roday Rodriguez, Maggie Lawson (last seen in "Cleaner"), Sam Witwer (last heard in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Mimi Michaels, Ashley Rickards, Jade Ramsey, Nikita Ramsey, Ariana Scott, with cameos from Lloyd Kaufman (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Efren Ramirez (last seen in "Employee of the Month").

RATING: 2 out of 10 dirty user names

The Game of Their Lives

Year 14, Day 102 - 4/12/22 - Movie #4,104

BEFORE: I was supposed to get up early today and go back to Brooklyn, to the FDNY training center so I could get my fire guard certificates updated with the correct address.  I tried to get up at 9 am, but something told me to sleep in, largely a desire to not get up at 9 am.  Shortly after 11 I was awakened by an alert on my phone, and I swear for a minute I thought that maybe it was a robocall from the President, telling me that a comet is coming to destroy the planet, and I'd been selected for transport to shelter. (I'm still not sure if that would constitute "good news".)

But it wasn't that, it was an alert about a shooting incident on the subway in Brooklyn - not where I needed to go, but at the station where I used to travel to, twice a week, during the before-times.  I doubt I would have been in direct danger had I gone to Brooklyn this morning, but the whole subway system is probably messed up with closings and delays, so any travel would be a potential nightmare, plus, oh, yeah, there's still a shooting suspect on the loose, so maybe it's not a good day to leave the house, and accidentally sleeping in turned out to be a solid plan.  Nope, I can't adult today, I need TV, comfort food and coffee, plus no more news today.

Look, I get it, the pandemic is essentially over, everybody wants to get out of the house, start living their lives again, we can go to bars and movies and festivals, see friends and try to pick up where we left off.  But after two years, there's also a lot of pent-up emotion and aggression, so there's a small percentage of people who've felt inactive, and watching protests and insurrections just isn't enough - that dark part of them wants to get out and commit random acts of violence, invade a Balkan country, whatever.  But it's just NOT a good idea, and those things just don't end well, so it's best to keep those urges under control, I think.  Or is that asking too much?

Gerard Butler carries over from "Greenland". 

THE PLOT: Based on a true story, this film tells the tale of the 1950 U.S. soccer team, who, against all odds, beat England 1-0 in a World Cup match in Brazil. This story is about the family traditions and passions which shaped the lives of the players who made up this team of underdogs. 

AFTER: OK, so I'm not a fan of soccer, I barely remember anything about playing soccer when I was a kid (always enforced by gym teachers, never by choice) I don't even care about the World Cup - which I guess takes place this year but in November, not June, because somehow it ended up in Qatar, which is entirely too warm of a venue for soccer unless it's November, and I think there's a whole hinky scandal about how the event ended up in Qatar to begin with.  (Bribes were made, FIFA's being investigated, it's a whole dust-up...). I mean, sure, let the Games begin, knock yourself, just don't ask me to care about it - I just sat out TWO Olympics in the past 12 months, because honestly, who cares? There was a pandemic, maybe you heard about it, we've all had bigger concerns than the sport.

But soccer (futbol) is big money, at least in countries that aren't the United States - congrats to the U.S. women's soccer team, though, for winning pay (and back-pay!) equal to the men's salaries.  It makes sense, because they've at least won a championship or three, and the U.S. men's team never has. Never.  Still, they keep trying, and the USSA or whatever keeps trying to get boy soccer to catch on in America, and that notion is no longer adorable, now it's just kind of pathetic. Just me? 

So OK, we can't make a movie about a U.S. men's championship team, because one just doesn't exist, so let's make a movie about a team from 1950 that won ONE game against the U.K.?  Seriously?  So, their record was 1 and 7 that year?  How does that warrant a movie?  Is this like a "Bad News Bears" or "Major League" type situation, help me out here. Ah, it's the "ragtag bunch of has-beens and never-weres" coming together as the melting pot of Americans should, to get revenge for the British Imperialism of the 1700's, I guess.  Man, talk about holding a grudge.  The hotbed of U.S. soccer post World War II was apparently in St. Louis, and those men were mostly of Italian descent, but apparently couldn't cut it in organized crime, as seen in places like New York and Chicago.  So, OK, soccer it is - and St. Louis apparently had a reporter dedicated to the soccer beat, which by itself should tell you something about how exciting it isn't to live in the St. Louis area. I've never been there, I'm sure it's nice, but come on, soccer? 

Gerard Butler stars as Frank Borghi, the team's goalie, but Butler's Scottish!  How did THAT casting come about - I'm sure he's got soccer experience, being from the U.K., but is this where we find ourselves, some casting director is convinced that the audience can't tell the difference between a Scottish actor and an Italian one?  He's got dark hair and he's ethnic, so, umm, close enough?  I'm kind of insulted for Italians, and I'm merely IBM (Italian By Marriage).  

Also, six American men from the Midwest are asked to play on a team with a black immigrant, and not one of them has anything remotely racist to say about that?  Of course, this was a very different time, so I find this very hard to believe.  Civil rights has come a long way, but I would have trouble believing this if it happened TODAY, let alone in 1950.  And Italian men?  You'd better believe that several of them were muttering "Moulinyan" to themselves... It wouldn't even really be their fault, it would have everything to do with how they were raised, probably by racist parents - but depicting this would interfere with the portrayal of these athletes as perfect humans, so it's conspicuously absent.  

From a technical standpoint, this film was a bit of a rush-job, shot in just 49 days, with a budget that got reduced by the studio from $65 million to $27 million, obviously because somebody believed that a soccer movie wouldn't sell in America.  The running time then was cut from a planned two hours and ten minutes down to one hour and forty-two.  Really, all they had time for was the one game, forget about filming the entire journey of the team through all of the World Cup games, which I think now uses a Round Robin format - but in 1950 the U.S. team went on to play against Spain and Chile in their matches after the UK game, they lost them both and were sent home.  Or, more likely, they stayed in Brazil for the rest of the two weeks and just drank and partied their asses off.  

According to the IMDB, this film also plays a bit fast and loose with reality, even with the framing device, which shows an older Dent McSkimming (that St. Louis soccer reporter) telling the story of the 1950 squad to someone at the 2004 MLS All-Star Game, only that would have been impossible, since McSkimming died in 1976.  Also, the captain of the U.S. team was Scotsman Ed McIlvenny, not American Walter Bahr.  Geez, what other facts did this film get wrong?  It's all in the name of telling a good story, but if you're going to say "Based on a true story", why not at least TRY to be as accurate as possible?  

Whatever, clearly nobody cares because it's soccer - the film grossed under $400,000 and cost more than $20 million to make, so I'm not the only person who doesn't think this game was such a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. 

Also starring Wes Bentley (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Jay Rodan, Gavin Rossdale (last seen in "Zoolander"), Costas Mandylor (last seen in "Cosmic Sin"), Louis Mandylor (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Zachery Ty Bryan (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Jimmy Jean-Louis (last seen in "Joy"), Richard Jenik, Nelson Vargas, Craig Hawksley, Bill Smitrovich (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Patrick Stewart (last seen in "The Wilde Wedding"), Terry Kinney (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), John Rhys-Davies (last seen in "Time Lapse"), Maria Bertrand, Marilyn Dodds Frank (last seen in "The Watcher"), Thomas Charles Simmons, Julie Granata, Mike Bacarella, Tia Marrie, Richard Gutierrez, Mike Nussbaum, Nino Da Silva, John Harkes, Tom Brainard, Tim Vickery.

RATING: 4 out of 10 orange slices

Greenland

Year 14, Day 101 - 4/11/22 - Movie #4,103

BEFORE: Gerard Butler carries over from "Geostorm", and this chain is sponsored by the letter "G".  Remember that from "Sesame Street", when we were kids?  The show would be "brought to you" by a couple of letters and a number, and that didn't seem weird at all, that a letter would be a major sponsor of a kids show?  Even at a young age, we were conditioned to expect that a soap brand or a toothpaste would be, through the power of advertising, be making our favorite game show or soap opera possible, and capitalism was already so ingrained that it didn't even seem weird to me, not until I was much older, that an episode of Sesame Street would be sponsored by the letter "M" or the number "6'. But for some reason, NOW it seems strange to me, like as an adult. Yet also a little bit cute and endearing, I suppose. 

I'm going to include this film here, because it's a film with Gerard Butler, and it plays on some of the same themes as yesterday's film, where weather meets global cataclysm, I'm guessing - but it's a shame that I can't use this one to link a couple time travel movies I've been trying to get to, it shares actors with both "Project Almanac" and "Synchronicity", and now if I want to get to those films, I'll have to find another way.  I made a little bit of progress on that topic last year - "Tenet", "Palm Springs", "Bill & Ted Face the Music", "Time Freak" and "My Future Boyfriend", and this year I followed up with "The Adam Project", but right now I don't see a way to work more films in, and there are a few to get to.

THE PLOT: A family struggles for survival in the face of a cataclysmic natural disaster. 

AFTER: OK, this film still counts as a recent release, so I'm issuing a planet-wide SPOILER ALERT tonight, if you don't want to know what the natural disaster is that's threatening all of civilization in this film, please STOP, turn around, go no further.  You can SORT of guess it from the poster, but before I confirm what it is that's got everybody so uptight, TURN BACK NOW. 

OK, still with me? You've either seen the film or you don't care, so yeah, it's a comet. Or, rather, a bunch of comets, with one REALLY big one at the end.  If you're deep into astronomy you know that a comet is different from an asteroid, they're both different from a meteorite, but really, at the end of the day, do you really care about the fine distinctions when any or all of them are capable of crashing into the Earth and ending life for us, like one did for the dinosaurs?  Oddly, there was something in the news TODAY about somebody finding shards of that asteroid at a fossil site in North Dakota, although scientists think that the crater that was formed is somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.  (Today is also the anniversary of that asteroid crashing into Earth, exactly 65 million years ago. Don't believe me? OK, prove me wrong...)

However, this film didn't actually get released in the U.S. in December 2020 as planned, you guessed it, because of another disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic.  It did get released in some other countries, ones that opened up movie theaters early, but in the U.S. it went straight to digital release, and is now on HBO Max and AmazonPrime.  

Set in the near future (?), the film shows the collapse of American society, the chaos that ensues when the public learns that the comets are coming, and that most people will probably not survive. I mean, yeah, this make sense, you can't make a two-hour film about the crash itself, it's really the build-up to it, there's your storyline, all drama is conflict, so let's show the conflict.  At first the government announces that none of the comet fragments are even large enough to reach Earth, in fact, it should all burn up in the atmosphere, so get your friends together, look up in the sky and enjoy the show!  Then some citizens, but not all, start getting robocalls from the White House telling them to report to designated military air bases, for transport to shelters at a secret location. Yeah, this won't lead to people turning against each other, no sirree...

As we've proven over the last few years, we are a nation filled with conflict, and if there isn't some, we'll make some. What are we protesting/rebelling against?  As James Dean once said, "Well, what have you got?"  It started with the Boston Tea Party, continued with the Civil War, remember the Maine, women's suffrage, prohibition, Vietnam protests, civil rights marches, Kent State, right on up to Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, vaccination & mask protests, and the Capitol Insurrection.  (Yes, I realize I'm mixing a bunch of different political views and causes here, but work with me for a moment.). It makes perfect sense that the general U.S. populace would then find fault with the process of selecting certain citizens to be protected by the government, so once they realize the end is near, anyone not partying their ass off in their final days ends up looting, rioting, or protesting at the air bases.  

In the middle of all this, the recently re-connected couple of John and Allison Garrity, along with their son Nathan, get the robocall, and are told to report for transport to shelter. There's a ton of traffic, with people either driving to the airbase or just plain evacuating to random locations, but when they get close to the air base, they have to abandon their car, because the freeway's essentially a parking lot.  But they accidentally leave their son's insulin in the car, John goes back to get it, meanwhile Allison is told that their son can't be saved, because he has an illness.  Well, I guess this is one way to cure diabetes, just let the comet take care of those people - we won't have any kids with peanut allergies in the future this way, either. It's a solid plan. 

One thing leads to another, mistakes are made, the couple gets separated, and then can't reconnect.  Nobody gets on a plane, and the rest of the film is basically the family trying to connect after this separation, and heading for an agreed-upon meeting point.  At one point, their son is basically kidnapped by a couple who wants to use his ID bracelet to get themselves to safety, but they're unable to pull this scam off.  Again, this is America, where any government system that's put in place is immediately something that everyone tries to take advantage of. Remember those COVID PPP loans?  They're still trying to track down the money that was given out to people who didn't need it, who bought cars and boats with the money they were supposed to use to retain their employees. (Not my boss, I helped him get a loan to stay in business, and I made sure that the payroll paperwork was properly filed, so he didn't have to pay it back. 100% legit.)

Anyway, Allison manages to find their son, and they eventually meet up at her father's ranch in Kentucky, and they learn that her father doesn't want to be saved, he's led a long life and is fine with dying on his ranch, as God intended.  He's a tough old bird, but my money's still on the comet. Eventually the Garritys talk their way on to a private plane, and they make it to the not-so-secret location of the government shelter. (The title of the film is a giant clue, can you figure it out?). 

OK, here come the NITPICK POINTS, though I think not as many as I had for "Geostorm".  Clearly the government has had a plan in place for this for some time, because they built an underground shelter that could house a few thousand people for months, and that just doesn't happen overnight.  But why build one when they could just commandeer a site that's already made, like Fort Knox or Mammoth Cave?  Why start from scratch?  Also, who devised the selection process and programmed all the robocalls?  All of that takes time, but it seemed like it was ready to go.  

Here's the other problem - N.P. #2 - from what I know about Greenland, there isn't much "land" there, it's mostly ice, right?  I saw a map once that showed what Greenland would look like if all the ice melted, and it would just be a thin ring of islands, the rest is ice frozen on top of water, or so I've been told. So, umm, that's maybe not the best location for an underground bunker, if it's mostly ice and not bedrock.  Just saying.  

I think the bits about the selection process were spot on, though - Gerard Butler played a house-builder here (and that was a LOT more believable than him playing a weather satellite network inventor...) and think ahead just a bit, who are they going to need after the comet crashes?  They'll need people to rebuild society, so a house builder makes perfect sense, not a famous architect or skilled engineer, just a builder.  Though they probably needed to save a few engineers, too, along with teachers, scientists, IT guys, and people who know how to farm and cook.  Famous chefs, don't need 'em, but if you can bake bread or brew beer or work a grill at breakfast, good news, you can probably get on the list.  Authors, actors, guitarists, they're a dime a dozen, and maybe there's no need for them in the new society.  But we're going to need ham radio operators, truck drivers, and a whole bunch of mechanics.  It's something to think about, for sure. 

Another thing that this film got right was a proper sense of scale - meaning that when you see something very BIG, just because of its size, it's going to appear to be moving very slowly, even if that's not the case.  Think about the movie "King Kong", or any big monster movie - if Kong was depicted as moving at regular-sized ape speed, he wouldn't look right.  The early visual effects artists learned that if you slow a movie monster down, he tends to look enormous.  What bothered me about "Geostorm" was the depiction of very big things moving very quickly, then they didn't look real.  The buildings shown toppling over in Hong Kong were falling about as fast as small dominoes do, and that just looked unbelievable, and ridiculous.  Big spaceships in "Star Wars", like the Star Destroyers, when not moving in hyperspace, also move very slowly, and that gives a sense of scale, especially when compared with the fast-moving Millennium Falcon.  So the comet here, although we know it's probably moving at a fair clip, is shown making little progress in any one shot, because it's SO big, and also SO far away.  This heightens the suspense, too, of course, but in terms of outer space, size is all relative - planets move rather quickly, all things considered, but they're so enormous that they don't appear to be moving at all, especially when you're standing on one. 

But for the subject matter, I'm a bit torn on this one.  My first feelings while viewing it included thoughts like, "Don't I have ENOUGH stress in my life already?" and "Come ON, I watch movies to have a good time, not to watch the world get destroyed!"  But, as always, there's another way to look at things.  One reviewer praised this film, saying that you will probably stop worrying about COVID for two hours, while you watch this.  To each his own, I guess. 

Also starring Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Roger Dale Floyd (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "Miss Firecracker"), David Denman (last seen in "Puzzle"), Hope Davis (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Andrew Bachelor (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Merrin Dungey (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Gary Weeks (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Tracey Bonner (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Claire Bronson (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Madison Johnson (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Holt McCallany (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Randal Gonzalez (last seen in "Green Book"), Scott Poythress, Mike Senior, Okea Eme-Akwari, Joshua MIkel (last seen in "Extraction"), James Logan, Randall Archer, Suehyla El-Attar Young (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Al Mitchell (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Marc Gowan, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 juice boxes

Geostorm

Year 14, Day 100 - 4/10/22 - Movie #4,102

BEFORE: Ed Harris carries over from "Eye for an Eye" and I'm back in Gerard Butler-land for a few days before I have to pivot and head over to Easter-ville. It's Sunday today but I have to put in a shift at the theater, for the first time in nearly a week.  Got to get those shifts where I can, because who knows if they may start to run out again.  But also, I've got to keep making progress on my movie list, at the same time.  Really, it's all about finding that balance.  

THE PLOT: When the network of satellites designed to control the global climate starts to attack Earth, it's a race against the clock for its creator to uncover the real threat before a worldwide Geostorm wipes out everything and everyone. 

AFTER: Wow, I can NOT believe how absolutely ridiculous this film is.  Not that I expect a Hollywood action movie to present a fair argument over the risks our planet faces if we don't do something about climate change, but still, this is so far removed from reality, I don't know if I even have time tonight to properly do it justice and tear it apart.  At some point, I'm going to have to stop, because I have to start watching tomorrow's film before it gets too late.  

Here's the big one - this is set in the near future, after devastating destruction caused by worsening weather patterns - floods, wildfires, thunder snow, hotter summers and colder winters, and finally the U.S. Government, working in conjunction with other countries, finally puts a plan into place.  BUT - bad news, here's the plan: let's not reduce our carbon footprint to prevent climate change, let's not lower our dependence on fossil fuel and foreign oil, let's not develop wind turbines and solar panels and take advantage of the FREE energy that our sun produces every day that's more than sufficient to power all our devices and heat our homes, but instead....

Let's build a network of satellites around the Earth, so they can use some form of mystery technology - I don't know, beams or radiation or something about moving molecules around - to just ZAP away any weather that we don't like.  Tornadoes? ZAP them away!  A blizzard? Just ZAP it away?  How does it work, you might ask?  Well, get used to disappointment, because we're just NOT going to tell you!  And I guess we'll just make sure that the weather is great for everybody, every day, and who could possibly find fault with that?  More to the point, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Better still, let's put the U.S. Government in charge of the whole project, because they're always SO efficient, that Congress really knows how to come to agreements over what needs to be done and how that should be funded, and the U.S Government would never, NEVER be involved in some kind of crazy scheme to take advantage of the less developed nations, right?  Or interfere in foreign governments to tell them how their countries should be run, that's never happened before, either, right?  

But don't we NEED the rain?  Like, you know, crops and stuff?  Don't we need winter, isn't it just built into the fabric of our Earth, because of the tilting of the planet's axis and all that?  Also, who decides what the weather SHOULD be in every single location on the planet, and where are they getting their data from?  Also, what happens to the "bad" weather, does it get sent somewhere else?  Also, please, again, how does it work?  We've been told for years about the "butterfly effect", where if an insect flaps its wings in one country, it somehow causes a hurricane somewhere else, so I'm not buying the idea that you can just point a beam at a tornado, make it disappear, and there's not some horrible repercussion down the line somewhere else.  This is just NOT how weather works, you can't just wish it away and make every day better, everywhere.  

Of course, we've got politicians now who think that you can fight hurricanes with nuclear weapons, or just change the weather predictions by drawing the lines on a map differently with a Sharpie, the big plan in this movie to control the weather would seem to make just about the same amount of sense.  Sure, meteorologists are always taking their best guesses, but they're also frequently wrong - do we want to put THEM in charge of really deciding what the weather SHOULD be?  That's a bit like putting the cart before the horse, no?  

All right, now let's get to the littler NITPICK POINTS: 

Jake Lawson, the man who invented (or designed, or built, it's not that clear) this network of satellites, and then got FIRED by his own brother, who works directly for the White House (it's a whole long back story, I guess) gets called back into service because something's going wrong with the system. (Gee, who could have predicted THAT?). It seems there's an Afghan village that got frozen somehow (and covered up, again, who could have foreseen the U.S. government would be capable of THAT?) and also, in Hong Kong, a satellite causes temperatures to increase so much that fire rises up from beneath the Earth's surface. Umm, yeah, right, put a pin in that one for a second...it's just not possible.

When Jake arrives at Cape Canaveral to go back to the space station and get to the bottom of things, we see one Space Shuttle taking off, but hey, that's OK, he can just catch the next one.  HUH?  The fact that space shuttles are taking off practically on the hour to take people to the International Space Station - is this really the best use of space shuttles?  And he's the ONLY passenger on the shuttle? What a waste - couldn't they just run the shuttles daily, and ferry like 12 astronauts and techs up to space at one time?  How is this helping our energy problem, by wasting all this rocket fuel, plus aren't we littering the oceans or Earth's orbit with all these booster rockets?  Maybe they cleaned up all the plastic out of the oceans, but now they're filled with rockets?  Meanwhile, we've filled the whole sky with satellites, doesn't that block out the sun, to some degree?  Plus now we're filling Earth's orbit with tech and more trash, that can't be good, either.  

Jake's brother, Max, is the guy who works in the White House, and he's involved with a Secret Service agent - which they keep pointing out is against the rules, they're at the very least supposed to disclose this relationship, because it compromises the integrity of the separation of powers, or makes the government more susceptible to bad people kidnapping one of them, holding them hostage and making the other give up state secrets.  So they KNOW all this, but they keep living together and sleeping together anyway.  Terrible idea - it's necessary as a plot point later on, but that doesn't make it right, for the reasons just stated.  If there's a rule against them dating, it's not OK to have characters say, "OK, we just won't follow the rules..."

Back to Jake - the guy who designed the satellite tech that somehow controls the weather, who's spent months and months aboard the space station, but still doesn't know his way around the place, and mixes up the doors?  Well, is he smart or stupid?  Does he put his shoes on the wrong feet or something?  I guess Einstein sometimes left the house without pants, so this is something we'll just have to reconcile somehow.  

This film then turns into a sort of "Whodunit" with the suspects all being aboard the space station - or perhaps in the White House.  Nobody can be trusted, because the conspiracy could reach as far as the highest levels of government - sure, we know NOW that the President can't be trusted, but nobody figured on that when they started shooting this film, in 2014.  That's maybe the one thing they got right here, the story turned kind of Trump-like but Obama was still President when this was written.  

If they can't stop the satellites in time (umm, and why can't they just turn the system "OFF"?) then all of the dicey weather things happening will eventually unite and form one giant Geostorm, and then it's game over for the Earth, I think?  I suspect this bit of writing was just to create a ticking clock that the hero characters just had to beat, though. Global weather is a very complex thing, and it really stretches the truth to think that it can be predicted, down to the second, when your local meteorologist basically gets so many predictions wrong, every damn day.  

And then when they do beat the clock (come on, that's not a spoiler, you knew the good guys were gonna win here) the weather everywhere returns to "normal", like somebody just flipped a switch. Gotta call a final whopper of a NITPICK POINT here, because you don't just set a bunch of tornadoes and tsunamis and ice storms in motion and then POOF, they're gone just because you rebooted the system. I can see the bad juju weather dying down eventually, but it just can't possibly be instantaneous.  Come on, already, give me a break. 

Also starring Gerard Butler (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Jim Sturgess (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Abbie Cornish (last seen in "Bright Star"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "My Dinner With Hervé"), Alexandra Maria Lara (last seen in "Downfall"), Robert Sheehan (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Eugenio Derbez (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Adepero Oduye (last seen in "Widows"), Amr Waked (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Daniel Wu (last seen in "The Man With the Iron Fists"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Richard Schiff (last seen in "Fire With Fire"), Talitha Bateman (last seen in "Love, Simon"), Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Tom Choi (last seen in "Red Notice"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "The Seagull"), Jeremy Ray Taylor (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween") , Gregory Alan Williams (last seen in "Brightburn"), Drew Powell, Daniella Garcia, Ritchie Montgomery (last seen in "The Whole Truth"), David S. Lee, Richard Regan Paul, David Jensen (last seen in "Mudbound"), Derek Roberts (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Randall Newsome (ditto), Judd Lormand, Corey Mendell Parker, Sean Paul Braud, Randy Havens (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Douglas M. Griffin (last seen in "Freelancers")

RATING: 3 out of 10 tidal waves in the desert (and the water came from...where, exactly?)