A Quiet Place Part II

Year 14, Day 134 - 5/14/22 - Movie #4,137

BEFORE: I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to follow the link to this film with Emily Blunt, and then that's exactly what I did.  Up until today, the plan was to follow the Jesse Plemons link out of "Jungle Cruise" instead, to a film called "Windfall", then "Judas and the Black Messiah", which is taking up space on the DVR.  But then I decided to check if I COULD fit this film in, which I really can't, because every slot between now and Father's Day is spoken for, but I'll be damned, I found a way to do it.  

What I discovered was that this film links to, umm, tomorrow's movie, which was about 20 or 21 films down in the chain, and scheduled for June 4 or so - and I realized if I flipped that section of 20 movies around the other way, "Windfall" with Jesse Plemons would connect via another link rich back to the next film in the chain, after what is now tomorrow's film - now, then, that led to a few questions, should I flip the chain around, or not?  

The negatives: to do this, I'd have to lose one film, a documentary called "An Accidental Studio" about the studio Handmade Films, which was founded by George Harrison and produced "Time Bandits", several of the Monty Python films, and others.  I've seen part of it before, but I really want to see the whole thing.  Plus there's the inertia of the whole thing, I feel like I JUST got the chain the way I wanted it, why go tearing it up and rebuilding it again?

The positives: every time I've done this, it's worked out to my benefit - look, I've got three perfect years under my belt, with unbroken chains, and I'm working on my fourth.  Even this year, where I've been constantly dropping films to make room, rescheduling things that don't seem to fit, it always works out in the end - a film I drop today could become crucial next month or next year to get me out of a linking jam.  And "An Accidental Studio" has a huge cast of stars appearing via archive footage, this could be the film that makes next year's documentary chain possible, you just never know.  

More negatives - "A Quiet Place Part II" is a horror film, and don't those belong in October, not here in May?  

Counterpoint - Who cares, I've done it before, I watched the first "A Quiet Place" film in April of 2019, in between two other Emily Blunt films, "Sherlock Gnomes" and "Mary Poppins Returns", any rigid rules about subject matter whiplash or scheduling are self-imposed, and thus made to be broken. 

The deciding factor - by switching part of the chain around, I'll basically end up back in the same place I wanted to be by June 5, so it doesn't really matter, I could do whatever I want here, and if I want to watch "A Quiet Place Part II", I should just do that - it doesn't link to any other horror movies, so if I save it for October it could be YEARS before I watch it, and I was already very late to the party where the first film was concerned.  Plus, as a bonus, the old path had a bunch of World War II-themed films that were about a week away from Memorial Day, which is May 30 this year, kind of late. By switching this section around, I'll be putting them much closer to the holiday, at least one will land on Memorial Day weekend this way.  And the two films about Winston Churchill, "The Gathering Storm" and "Into the Storm", will be in chronological order - early Churchill should come before late-era Churchill, right?  I had been using "An Accidental Studio" as a link to get them in the proper order, but this way it happens more naturally.

So, Emily Blunt carries over from "Jungle Cruise", and I'll get back to Jesse Plemons in about three weeks. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "A Quiet Place" (Movie #3,195)

THE PLOT: Following the events at home, the Abbott family now face the terrors of the outside world. Forced to venture into the unknown, they realize the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats lurking beyond the sand path. 

AFTER: With some exceptions, like when I go to the movie theater to see "Spider-Man" or happen to catch "House of Gucci" at work and things line up JUST right with my linking schedule, I kind of always feel like I'm playing catch-up.  Maybe everybody feels this way to some extent, because by the time a film gets to cable or even streaming, it could be months after it was in the theaters, so most of the people itching to see THAT film have seen it, and the rest of us are behind. Even if something debuts on Netflix or Amazon, most subscribers then have the luxury of watching it right away, but since I've decided I have to link to it, that takes some amount of planning. I'm booked until mid-August right now, so if I put something on my list today, I won't be doing another round of linking until at least July, so the chances of getting to watch a new film added today aren't great, unless it happens to link to what I'll be watching then.  So sure, suggest a film that you think I should see, maybe I'll have some time in the fall, but probably not. 

Still, I'm eager to see what's next for this family of survivors, living in the post-alien (?) invasion world, after the blind but savage creatures have killed off most of the humans.  Several of the family members, well, let's say they didn't make it past the first film, and the remaining members have to make a terrible choice, remain in hiding or take the knowledge they have about how to fight back against the creatures and venture out to find other survivors.  I guess maybe their food supply is going to run out at some point, something we've all dealt with during the pandemic, but at least we can order groceries online and have them delivered.  Their house is a relative safe zone, with noise-cancelling waterfalls and a box with an oxygen tank to keep a crying baby in, but come on, it's months later and nobody fixed that giant nail sticking out of the stairs?  Come on, you can't let these chores go, you're just asking for another accident to happen.  

What the family learns is that not everyone's dealt with the invasion that well - some surviving humans have turned very hard and they've lined their property with things like bear traps - if a person should step on one, of course they'll scream in pain, and that noise will bring the creatures, but then they creatures will only eat the loud humans, not the silent ones standing a safe distance away.  It's diabolical, but I can't help but think it's all a kind of metaphor for the "me first" attitude we've seen during the COVID pandemic.  You know that weird reasoning, "As long as the virus kills other people and not me, why should I have to wear a mask?" or "I'm not even sick, so why should I have to get vaccinated?" and those people simply won't break down their own argument long enough to realize the hypocrisy and contradictions inherent in it.  

Anyway, at the end of the previous film the deaf daughter realized that her cochlear implant device worked on a certain frequency, and when amplified, it produced a sound that the aliens couldn't tolerate.  They may be blind, but they also have superior hearing, and this actually works as a nice contrast against characters who are deaf or half-deaf, the aliens' strength is the weakness of some of the human characters, who need to keep quiet and may not be aware that they are making sounds. The aliens CAN be defeated with a combination of technology, human intelligence and the use of sign language to communicate.  Plus a handy shotgun or two.  

Regan, the deaf girl, has a plan to further amplify the frequency she's found - if she can get it broadcast over the airwaves, she can defeat the creatures on a larger scale, or perhaps get the sound of it sent out to other humans, which would spread the news that the aliens are vulnerable.  But to do that, she's got to leave her family, follow the clues about where more humans might be hiding, and hope that she's not being lured into a trap.  After finding an old friend named Emmett hiding in an abandoned steel foundry, Regan's mother requests that Emmett follow after Regan and make sure that she stays alive.  

Emmett and Regan do encounter more ruthless humans, who would sacrifice them to the aliens in order to save their own skins, but it's here where Emmett figures out another weakness of the aliens - I didn't catch it at first but it's listed in the Wikipedia plot summary, and it does make sense.  And splitting the family up here is quite dangerous, but they are able to fight on two fronts this way - however what's very annoying is how slowly the plot in this franchise moves forward, it feels like we the audience spent another week or so with this family, and very little progress was made.  Really, we're all just being set up for "A Quiet Place Part III", which is for sure in the works.  By contrast, if the plot of, say, "Independence Day" was split over three movies and you had to watch all three before there was a resolution of any kind, you'd be pissed, right?  

The first part of this movie does flash back to the day the aliens landed, or attacked from space or whatever.  And yeah, this sequence of the family first realizing they're in danger, and seeing this small town being ravaged is very exciting, in a way it's what was missing from the first film, which dropped us all into the middle of the action.  But in addition to "Part III", the franchise is also developing a whole "Day One" film, which will show the initial alien attack in greater detail.  Really, after a while this all starts to feel like one cash grab after another - but since the initial film with a budget of $17 million made over $340 million at the box office, let's just all agree that this is a money-making enterprise, first and foremost, so really, what's the motivation to stop the money train from rolling at this point?  This second film was made for $160 million, but brought in over $297 million, so all that's just motivation to keep the story going, I guess. 

Speaking of which, when does the next season of "Stranger Things" start?  Ah, May 27, got it. 

Also starring Cillian Murphy (last seen in "Sunshine"), Millicent Simmonds (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Honey Boy"), Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "Serenity"), John Krasinski (last heard in "Free Guy"), Scoot McNairy (last seen in 'Aftermath" (2017)), Alice Sophie Malyukova, Dean Woodward, Okierete Onaodowan (last seen in "Thanks for Sharing"), Zachary Golinger, Lauren Ashley Cristiano, Wayne Duvall (last seen in "The Hunt"), Barbara Singer (last seen in "Private Life"), Blake DeLong (last seen in "Tesla"), Chad Corbi, Michaela Pace.

RATING: 6 out of 10 oranges in a bag

Jungle Cruise

Year 14, Day 133 - 5/13/22 - Movie #4,136

BEFORE: Dwayne Johnson carries over from "Walking Tall", probably for the last time this year, but he's done well in 2022, this makes seven movies for him, so he's currently tied with Susan Sarandon for third place, and I'm about two weeks away from Movie Year 14 being halfway over.

This is another one of those movies that played at the AMC last summer, but I didn't have the time to watch because, you know, I was busy working at the AMC.  There can't possibly be many of those films left, I think I've seen most of them, except for "Cruella", "Respect", "Candyman" and "Dear Evan Hansen".  Oh, and "A Quiet Place II", which I wish I could link to after this one via Emily Blunt, but it's not going to be possible. 

If I can just knock off a few more of the films I missed last summer at the AMC, then I can move on to the films I missed while working at the next theater job, like "The Lost Daughter", "Licorice Pizza", "No Time to Die", "Belfast", "Cyrano", "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "The Harder They Fall". I've got solid plans to get to at least three of those before the end of this summer, the others may have to wait - hey, there will be a lot of slots in September and November/December to fill, and if not, well, there's always next year. 

THE PLOT: Feisty English feminist Dr. Lily Houghton enlists the help of the arrogrant, wisecracking riverboat skipper, Captain Frank, to guide her through the Amazon River searching for something that cannot be found, because of a centuries-old curse. 

AFTER: Wow, the judges are really split on this one tonight - this Disney film sparked a lively debate over whether it's a light-hearted action comedy in the vein of "The African Queen" with some of the stylings of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"... OR is it just a bunch of silly random plot elements collected together in a giant failure pile?  Oddly, it feels like it's somehow BOTH of those things, but how can that even be possible?  There's just too too MUCH of everything here, there's no subtlety, it's just commerce over art in the worst way, right?  Damn it, why did it also have to be fun and somewhat enjoyable, that REALLY makes things difficult for our panel of esteemed judges to come to an agreement and assign a numerical rating.

Let's face it, The Rock is always fun, and since he learned how to comedy, since the "Jumanji" films at least, he's become even more fun. He's a giant ball of positive attitude walking around, nothing can stop him, he can do anything, even impossible things, and that's before you even add on movie magic, good guys always winning and special effects lending a hand.  And Disney films are great at exactly those things, too, they've come a long way since "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again".  

But the problem here is that Disney had an agenda, too - there's a ride at their theme parks called "Jungle Cruise" that's been around for forever, and since they had such luck turning the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride into a franchise, there's impetus to do the same.  Turn the ride into the film, then if the film takes off, more people will come to DisneyWorldLand and suddenly that dusty old ride will be relevant again!  Didn't that also work for "Haunted Mansion"?   And the "Dumbo" ride?  And I think they finally got rid of the "Song of the South" characters around Splash Mountain and turned it into a new ride based on "The Princess and the Frog".  It's smart marketing, I'll give you that, but not every movie has to also be a two-hour long commercial for the theme parks, does it?  I know, probably they all do.  Just please never make "Hall of Presidents: The Movie".

They just had to give The Rock's character something memorable, so they borrowed a lot from the ride, Frank Wolff is a guy with a boat who gives tours of the Amazon, and he's got a whole section of the river set up with fake hippos and non-dangerous dangers to scare/entertain the tourists, and that ends up looking a lot like...the Jungle Cruise ride at DisneyWorld, of course.  He also has a barrage of bad "Dad jokes" that the ride operators have become semi-famous for, and it's not cute, it's not funny, this is actually the opposite of funny.  OK, so you're making a movie and you decide to put intentionally BAD jokes into the script.  Oh, better idea, hear me out, put GOOD and FUNNY jokes in the script, and maybe that would be more entertaining.  Just a thought. 

Frank's a simple guy, just trying to carve out a meager living with his boat, giving tours of the same stretch of river, day after day, just a squirrel trying to get a nut, carve out a place for himself in the world by making a (very) little amount of money.  But then this woman explorer comes into his life, hires his boat to take her and her brother to the most dangerous part of the river, and suddenly his life is flip-turned upside-down.  But just wait, later in the film we all learn the truth about him, and it's for some reason the most complicated back-story in the history of movies, I couldn't believe it or even follow most of it.  It's another quite questionable decision on the behalf of the screenwriters, with their need to overthink everything.  

The woman explorer (who has the nerve in the year 1916 to both speak her mind AND wear pants!) is searching for some rare tree petals called the Tears of the Moon, which have the abiity to cure any disease, heal any wound.  Naturally this would be a great asset to have during the Great War (aka the War to End All Wars That Didn't Do That), so also naturally there's a German (or Prussian?) Prince who's also looking for the same thing, so that Germany can win the war.  See, just like "Raiders of the Lost Ark", except it's a different war going on, and a different MacGuffin that everyone's looking for, but Germans are always the bad guys in period action movies like this. 

The movie takes a while to really get rolling - if it feels metaphorically like the boat's taking a long time to leave the docks, that's probably because that's exactly what's happening, it takes the boat like half an hour to set sail, after being delayed by a CGI jaguar, a bar-fight, and Paul Giamatti demanding more money for appearing in this film.  There's also a meet-cute, a case of mistaken identity, everybody orders dinner, they negotiate some more, the gay brother brings too much luggage - for God's sake just GET IN THE BOAT already and stop wasting my time.

Along the way, every single little point stated or fact revealed is contradicted, re-stated and then contradicted again.  If anybody in this film could just SAY something and have another person believe it, things would go a lot faster - but it's just not that kind of movie.  Even what we know about the main characters gets revealed to be lies and then we have to re-learn who they all are again, what a damn waste of words.  There's a tribe of cannibal headhunters, so we're in danger - only they're NOT who they appear to be, so no danger.  Je-SUS!  Tell me one thing that happens that doesn't then turn out to be misdirection or gets forced to un-happen so it can happen all over again...

The German prince guy finds some humans turned into statues, and when he drops river water on them, they turn back into living Conquistadors, only for some reason one of them is made up of snakes, one's made up of bees, and another is made of mud.  Yeah, special effects are great and all, but just because you can DO all this with effects, it does NOT mean that these are good ideas, from a story standpoint.  The more complicated you make these primitive curses, the more of a giant mess this story becomes.  

I don't know, there's part of me that wants to champion a movie that really GOES for it, swings for the fences, where the writers and crew ask questions like, "How many glowing pink petals can we put on a giant tree?" and "How close can we have a boat come to going over a waterfall without it actually falling over?" and "How red can we make Paul Giamatti's face look before he starts to resemble Satan himself?"  But then the other part of my brain kicks in and says that if you have to SPEND $200 million just to MAKE $220 million at the box office, maybe you shouldn't have bothered at all, probably there was a better way to use that money.  But in the long run, this is a mostly enjoyable film that's sure to increase theme-park attendance and help Disney's bottom line in the third quarter - as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, theoretically at least. 

I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the portrayal of piranhas as deadly, flesh-eating buzzsaws of the Amazon River.  It's astounding to me that people still believe this, in real life they're just not as deadly as movies and TV would have you believe.  What happened was, way back in the day, President Teddy Roosevelt visited Brazil, and for his entertainment, a bunch of Brazilians took some piranha and blocked them off in a cove, away from food, and starved them for quite some time.  Then they lowered a live animal into the river, and the starving piranhas attacked it - it was all for show, they don't always act like little Tasmanian Devil-like fish - but the legends about them have persisted over the decades.  Same thing with lemmings, they don't follow each other blindly off of cliffs and commit suicide en masse - that was all fabricated for a nature documentary made back in the 1950's by, wait for it - the Disney Corporation.  Please, look both of these things up if you don't believe me.  

Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Jane Austen Book Club"), Edgar Ramirez (last seen in "Resistance"), Jack Whitehall (last seen in "Mother's Day"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "The Phenom"), Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutiérrez, Dan Dargan Carter, Andy Nyman (last seen in "Judy"), Raphael Alejandro (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Simone Lockhart, Pedro Lopez (last seen in "The Boss"), Sulem Calderon, Stephen Dunlevy (last seen in "Rampage"), Philipp Maximilian, David Lengel (last seen in "Coming 2 America")

RATING: 6 out of 10 pink river dolphins (they WILL steal your soul, this one is true...)

Walking Tall

Year 14, Day 132 - 5/12/22 - Movie #4,135

BEFORE: When I was a kid, my parents had completely different attitudes toward movies, and both were different from the one I enjoy today - my father mostly refused to go to movie theaters, which raises a few questions for me.  I can't recall if it was because he thought the prices were high (only they weren't back then) or because he believed that every movie would eventually air on TV.  He was sort of right about this, but also very wrong - because he refused to pay for cable TV, so he was talking about just NETWORK TV and there were only three channels back then, plus PBS plus two local Boston stations.  To be fair, a lot of movies did air on TV, even those local channels aired third-run classics, there was Channel 38's "The Movie Loft" and Channel 56's "Creature Feature", so we did get to see a LOT of movies, but for sure not every movie aired on TV, so I think he missed a lot, but he didn't seem to care.  

My mother wanted to see every Disney film and every classic movie musical made since 1940, so when VHS came around, she joined that Columbia House club and assembled a collection of Rodgers & Hammerstein films on VHS, plus "My Fair Lady" and "West Side Story" and such.  She also would occasionally go out to the movies, to keep up on "Star Wars" and watch all the "Lord of the Rings" movies when they came out - also I think they'd go see religious movies about Jesus or saints and stuff, but there weren't a lot of those.  Certainly neither parent anticipated having a son who would organize almost his whole life around watching movies and helping other people make them.  

I don't know why I remember this, but when the original 1973 film "Walking Tall" aired on those local stations, she refused to watch it, or let anybody in the house watch it.  Not because of violent content or the subject matter, but just because the main character was named Buford Pusser, she thought that sounded like a disgusting name, like not a curse word but maybe too close to one, so watching that film was never going to be in the cards. Which is a bit weird because it was based on a true story, that really was the man's name. Still, I've never seen that film, never got around to it in all this time.  

Dwayne Johnson carries over from "Empire State", and yep, I'm headed straight for "Jungle Cruise", so pray for me. 

THE PLOT: A former U.S. soldier returns to his hometown to find it overrun by crime and corruption, which prompts him to clean house. 

AFTER: So maybe it's notable that this is based on the 1973 film, but they changed the main character's name to Chris Vaughn. Oddly, the real Buford Pusser was a professional wrestler, much like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - maybe he was a bit less successful, though.  In the original film he returns to Tennessee and tries to take down a crooked gambling and prostitution establishment, and ends up getting cut up badly by the goons there. This remake kept all that intact, but in addition to changing the lead's name they moved the story from Tennessee to Washington state. 

Knowing that they kept most of the rest of the story intact actually saves me a bunch of time, now I don't need to go back and watch the original, I can just watch this 2004 version with The Rock in it. And as a bonus, there's Johnny Knoxville as the goofy, annoyingly messed-up sidekick-turned-deputy, a role he would essentially repeat a decade later when co-starring with Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Last Stand". The idea's the same, there's a small town, representing America I suppose, that needs to be cleansed of its immoral elements, whether that's a drug lord or a casino or hookers and their pimps. I'm trying to ignore the underlying subtext in both cases, the fact that it takes good guys with guns to run worse guys with guns out of town - doesn't that get confusing when everybody has guns? How do you tell the good guys from the bad guys in those cases?  

Here it's also very simple - the town mill was GOOD, casino is BAD. OK, so the casino is run by shady people with loaded dice, but there are some casinos out there that just stack the odds against the players, but they win honestly, right? And then just for good measure, the casino is also run by the same people bringing drugs and hookers to town, which seems like it would be bad for business if they didn't have all the local lawmen working for them, creating a "no-fly" legal zone around the casino, because of all that they've done for the community. Yeah, a crooked casino probably doesn't give that much back to the community, except for the bribes to the cops - but that seems to be enough to keep the sheriff from prosecuting anybody for carving up The Rock. Sorry, Chris Vaughn.  

So, Vaughn does an end run around the inactive police, after he's acquitted for busting up the casino, he runs for sheriff and fires all the corrupt deputies, becoming an army of one, or rather two once he recruits his weirdo deputy with an intimate knowledge of how to take out a drug-dealing operation. For starters, you've got to arrest a low-level casino guard/drug dealer, and threaten the one thing that means anything to him, namely his tricked-out truck. That's dirty pool out in the country.  

The casino bosses and the fired deputies seek revenge by blowing up the new sheriff's truck, then hitting the police station with a few thousand bullets. Oh, yeah, they try to take his family out too, but really, you don't mess with a man's truck. And you don't turn a workplace that's a symbol of the community's artisan spirit into a meth lab. Really, if you run a casino, you should be able to make enough money with it, unless of course your name is Trump. The big mistake the casino boss made here was getting overly greedy and getting into drugs and hookers, but honestly, I don't understand why this Washington town couldn't support both a casino AND a sawmill - who says the two have to be mutually exclusive?  

Also starring Johnny Knoxville (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Neal McDonough (last seen in "1922"), Michael Bowen (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Ashley Scott (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), John Beasley (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Barbara Tarbuck, Kristen Wilson, Khleo Thomas (last seen in "Holes"), Kevin Durand (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Andrew Tarbet, Patrick Gallagher, John Stewart, Eric Breker, Ryan Robbins, Michael Adamthwaite (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Terence Kelly (ditto), Darcy Laurie, Fred Keating, Ben Cardinal, Birkett Turton, Tom Scholte (last seen in "The Core"), Mark Houghton (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), James Ashcroft, Eric Keenleyside (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Ty Olsson (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), with a cameo from Cobie Smulders (last seen in "Killing Gunther"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 broken slot machines

Empire State

Year 14, Day 131 - 5/11/22 - Movie #4,134

BEFORE: Back to work today, after a week of down-time forced by COVID-19, the gift that just keeps on giving. I went back to the office, with my boss out of town that meant there would be just one other person in the animation studio, and that's minimal risk, I suppose.  I ate lunch outside so I wouldn't have to take my mask off at all while inside, that's the best I could do.  I really had to get out of the house, feeling stir-crazy again and it's too reminiscent of the start of the pandemic, two years ago when I was furloughed for two months. It's still too early to go back to the theater and interact with large numbers of humans, I think I need to give that another week, maybe I won't be coughing as much then.  It still could be weeks before I test negative again, but I've got to just be symptom-free to work screenings, so maybe next Thursday?  

We were supposed to drive to Atlantic City on Sunday, but now that's out of the question, too, we delayed our planned trip another month, so maybe a few days off in June?  Here's hoping.  

Dwayne Johnson carries over from "Snitch".  

THE PLOT: Two childhood friends plan to rob an armored-car depository, but an NYPD officer stands in their way. 

AFTER: Well, I must admit I don't know what to do with this film today, it's just so right in the middle, genre-wise.  It's not really funny enough to be a comedy, it's not nearly serious enough to be considered a drama, and there's just barely enough action in it to be thought of as an action movie.  So it's somehow all of those things, but not enough of any ONE thing to really stand out, it's square in the middle.  Some might say "black comedy" but I think that's a cop-out, it's not really that, either.  OK, so it's a heist film, but there are SO many better heist films out there, it's average, at best. 

This is apparently based on a true story, the real Chris Potamitis served nine years for being the security guard who looked the other way when $11 million was stolen from an armored car company depository, but this film makes it seem like he was also the mastermind, the guy hired to work as a security guard who noticed where all the gaps in the company's security were, and then decided to take advantage of them.  Or, at least mention them to his friends, who took his advice on how to do just that.  The real guy appears in interview footage near the end of the film, claiming that he doesn't know where the rest of the money is, although the film seems to have a different take on that.  This robbery was even bigger than the Lufthansa heist, which was portrayed in "Goodfellas".  

There are so many extraneous characters to keep track of here, a little more focus might have helped.  Do we need to know the guys who run the Greek social club, if they had nothing to do with the robbery?  Same thing with the Colombians, why are they even THERE?  Then in addition to Chris acting as the inside man, setting up the robbery for his buddy Eddie and his mob contacts, there's ANOTHER gang of thieves that's blowing up armored cars, and they ALSO hit the yard on the same night - what are the odds?  But they strike first, and since Eddie helps out the police during the first robbery, that speaks to his character and prevents him from being a suspect AT FIRST after the second robbery.  

Dwayne Johnson is probably the best, as in most believable, actor in the film.  I can totally buy him as a police detective in the early 1980's, and he's just so natural, so comfortable playing a big, tough cop that it's easy to believe that he's not acting at all.  The actor who plays Spiro, on the other hand, is so over-the-top that I was aware every single second that this is an actor doing a campy foreign (Greek) mobster.  What a shame, The Rock just made him look like a total cartoon character. 

There's a failed attempt here to justify robbery, but look, just because life is tough and work is hard and it sometimes feels impossible to get ahead in this crazy economy, that doesn't justify taking $11 million that doesn't belong to you.  Nice try, but it's still wrong wrong wrong. OK, so you didn't get accepted to become a cop, there are a few other career paths out there before you have to resort to robbing armored cars.  What was wrong with the job as a security guard, apart from the danger, the low pay and the oppressive heat inside the trucks?  It's probably worse in jail, you've got to figure. 

Watch for an appearance by Rudy Giuliani as a character in this film - this was set back when he was an associate U.S. attorney general based in NYC, before he was the NYC Mayor, and way before he was Trump's personal lawyer. This was also back when he was married to his first wife, who was also his second cousin. 

Also starring Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Michael Angarano (last seen in "Haywire"), Paul Ben-Victor (last seen in "Monster" (2018)), Jerry Ferrara (last seen in "Sully"), Greg Vrotsos (last seen in "Middle Men"), Michael Rispoli (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Emma Roberts (last seen in "Paradise Hills"), Nikki Reed (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Wayne Pére (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Craig Leydecker (last seen in "Freelancers"), Shenae Grimes (last seen in "Scream 4"), Sharon Angela (last seen in "Broken City"), James Ransone (ditto), Chris Diamantopoulos (last seen in "Red Notice"), Lucky Johnson (last seen in "The Whole Truth"), Gia Mantegna (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Roger Guenveur Smith (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Manoli Ioannidis, Ray Gaspard (last seen in "Fire With Fire"), Lydia Hull (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Dan Triandiflou (last seen in "Selma"), Rob Boltin, Isabella Amara (last seen in "The Boss"), Eric Ian with archive footage of Tom Brokaw. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 drinks ordered at the club (all at the same time?)

Snitch

Year 14, Day 130 - 5/10/22 - Movie #4,133

BEFORE: OK, the Mother's Day programming is over, and there are just 42 days until my next mile marker, Father's Day.  So I kind of have to take a hard left turn here, back into action films, if I'm going to make it there on time.  It's actually a very mixed set of offerings between here and there, the path leads through "Cruella" and some sci-fi films, a bunch of World War II stories and a couple of animated films.  Also, THREE Marvel movies, none of which are "Morbius".  Harold Perrineau carries over from "Dumplin'". 

Quick COVID update, I'm still testing positive, so I don't know when I can go back to work.  If I were symptom-free, which I'm not, I could try to watch the new Dr. Strange movie, they're playing it at the theater where I work tomorrow, but if I can't get in the door to work, I can't get in to watch a movie either. So I'll have to try and catch a matinee in a few weeks.  

THE PLOT: A father goes undercover for the DEA in order to free his son, who was imprisoned after being set up in a drug deal. 

AFTER: Well, maybe this isn't as much of a left turn from the previous programming than I thought - this is all about the lengths a parent will go to in order to protect his son, who got caught up in drugs, and isn't that what "Ben Is Back" was all about?  Two very different movies, sure, but they have at least one thing in common. 

Man, every time I think I'm done with "The Rock", I find out that he's not done with me. I went on a tear in September 2019, where I watched eight of his films in a week and a half, from "Central Intelligence", "The Rundown" and "Skyscraper" to "Baywatch", "San Andreas" and "Rampage".  You'd think that would have been enough, but it sure wasn't.  The next year I got to "Faster", "Fighting with My Family", and "Jumanji: The Next Level", then 2021 was Dwayne Johnson-free, so that means this year, a bunch of them built up again.  He's made two cameo appearances already this year, plus one starring role, now here come four more, so suddenly he's a contender for third place this year, after Nic Cage and Bruce Willis. Ironically, he may finish fourth after his co-star tonight, Susan Sarandon, but we'll see - anything can happen during the upcoming documentary chain. 

Here Dwayne plays John Matthews, the head of a trucking company, whose son gets mixed up with drugs, then framed as a dealer when a friend asks if he can have a package delivered to his house.  PRO TIP: Never let a friend have a package delivered to your house, this could be followed by the DEA breaking down the door and swarming the place.  He tries to get his son to flip on his friends to reduce his sentence, but the only dealer he knows is his friend who already framed him, so no deal is possible. But Mr. Matthews offers to go undercover in his son's place, to gather intel on the entire operation - the Federal prosecutor is very specific that this is NOT how these deals are supposed to work.  BUT, she goes for it anyway, which is a bit like the referee checking the rulebook to determine that there's technically no rule AGAINST a dog playing basketball, or an octopus entering an arm-wrestling competition, or whatever.  

Super-conveniently, as the head of a trucking company, Mr. Matthews has something that he can offer the drug dealers - trucks. WHY did they never think to transport large quantities of illegal drugs by trucks before? This could be the secret sauce that their organization needs, to really take off and leave their competition behind in the dust.  Why, it's almost too perfect!  It's nearly too good to be true! Almost like it's a set-up or something...  The deal is set, as soon as Matthews and his nervous sidekick complete their delivery, there will be enough evidence to bring down the whole operation....

Only there isn't, and the head of the undercover squad decides to go after a "bigger fish", the head of the whole cartel.  Why knock out the local chapter when he can bait the hook for the leader of the national organization?  The top guy, El Topo, wants to use Matthews' crazy truck-delivery idea to transport something into Mexico, which seems all kinds of suspicious - don't the drugs usually come FROM Mexico, into the U.S.?  Ah, but the MONEY needs to go back to Mexico, and the funny thing about that is, once the drivers see where the money goes, their ride usually turns into a one-way trip.  There's no coming back from this delivery, unless Matthews can figure out a way to take out El Topo AND the cartel AND prevent the truck from crossing the border.  Sure, it's a tall order, but this is "The Rock" we're talking about here, so chances are he can make this happen.  

There's no question that it's The Rock's world, we all just live in it - and this is mid-career Rock, though there's no real turning point where he went from superstar to mega-superstar, because it's been such a steady climb.  But this one was released between "Fast & Furious 5" and "Fast & Furious 6", if that's any help.  After "Tooth Fairy" and "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island", but before "San Andreas" and "Baywatch".  The year 2020 was oddly Rock-free in the cinema, but hey, it was a weird year, that could just be due to all the closed theaters.  After "Red Notice" he's got "League of Super Pets" and "Black Adam" coming out, then "The King", "San Andreas 2", "Doc Savage" and the remake of "Big Trouble in Little China", so I think he'll be OK, even if I never get around to watching all those "Fast & Furious" movies. 

Also starring Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Red Notice"), Barry Pepper (last seen in "Running With the Devil"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "The Peanut Butter Falcon"), Benjamin Bratt (last seen in "A Score to Settle"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Michael K. Williams (last seen in "The Gambler"), Melina Kanakaredes (last seen in "Rounders"), Nadine Velazquez (last seen in "Flight"), Rafi Gavron (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), David Harbour (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Kyara Campos, Jason Douglas (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Richard Cabral (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), James Allen McCune, JD Pardo (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Kym Jackson, Lela Loren, Ashlynn Ross, Spencer Miller, Jayson Floyd, Benjamin Blankenship, Darnell Trotter, Tim J. Smith, Kerry Cahill (last seen in "Mudbound"), Douglas M. Griffin (last seen in "Geostorm"), Joe Nemmers

RATING: 6 out of 10 blown-out tires 

Dumplin'

Year 14, Day 129 - 5/9/22 - Movie #4,132

BEFORE: It's post-Mother's Day but here's the third of my three planned films on the topic of mothers and children, and the interactions therein. Danielle Macdonald carries over from "French Exit", where she played Madeleine the Medium. 

This one's been on the list for a while - released on Netflix in December 2018, I'm kind of amazed it's still there. I thought the average release on Netflix was two years, but I guess it's true, they keep their own "exclusive" films on the service much longer, perhaps indefinitely. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Miss Firecracker" (Movie #3,888)

THE PLOT: Willowdean (Dumplin'), the plus-size teen daughter of a former beauty queen, signs up for the Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant as a protest that escalates when other contestants follow, revolutionizing the pageant and their small Texas town. 

AFTER: Of course, I think we're overdue for a film like this, something that really takes down the world of beauty pageants and irresponsible, outdated perceptions about what constitutes "beauty" in the first place.  Every so often one of those clothing companies runs a campaign with plus-size models or hires somebody like Aidy Bryant to be in a "body-positive" campaign, but then in fairly short order the whole system kind of forgets about the message and advertising reverts to skinny supermodels once again, and it feels a bit like no progress was made.  

The fact is, as Americans our diets are generally horrible, I'd rather eat a burger than a salad, how about you?  So there tend to be a lot more plus-sized people out there than skinny people, who's got time to go work out in a gym?  Not me.  I accidentally sort of lost weight during the pandemic, I got no exercise but who can eat when the news is so stressful?  My weight at my most recent annual physical was less than it was two years before, so from my doctor's POV, I'm doing well.  I come from a long line of obese Germanic people, so I figure that as long as I'm able to walk around without a cane or a wheelchair, as long as I'm skinny enough to get out of bed, then I'm doing better than the previous generations - though I admit that's a low standard to set for myself.  

The truth is, dietary science still can't say for sure why THIS person finds it easy to lose weight and THAT person doesn't, though of course we strongly suspect it's got something to do with diet and exercise or the lack thereof, genetics must play a part too, right?  "Dumplin'" shows us a plus-size teen whose mother's managed to stay relatively thin, though the flashbacks of her aunt (mother's sister) show a larger woman - why such a big size difference between two sisters?  I don't know, maybe one knew how to enjoy life, and the other one hated herself?  Look, it's a great, big, beautiful world out there, and it's got a lot of great, big, beautiful people of all sizes, variety is the spice of life and everybody's got to work out their own relationship with food.  The more you chastise someone for being overweight, the more stress that's going to cause, not to mention the related self-loathing, and all that's going to make it more difficult for that person to drop a few pounds and get healthier, it's like the guy who's drinking to forget his problems, and one of those problems is his alcoholism.  

So Willowdean comes from a pageant family, but she doesn't have the traditional figure one sees in the pageants - BUT when she learns her Aunt Judy once filled out an application for the Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant, she gets motivated to enter the pageant herself, to prove a point to the world, I guess.  There's a line cook at the restaurant where she works who seems very interested in her, but she keeps telling herself that couldn't possibly work out, he probably only wants to be friends with her to connect with other women, or something like that.  You can probably see where this is going, maybe if she does well in the pageant she can gain the self-confidence to see herself as a person of value, someone worthy of being loved.  

Other girls are motivated by her entry to join in, one who's clueless and one who's challenging the patriarchal system, and one who's doing it ironically and/or to support Willowdean.  This loose foursome of the underserved can't quite all get on the same page, and narratively that's a bit of a problem.  Also, one girl, Millie, is larger than "Dumplin'" herself, and that kind of dilutes the message here - I'm assuming the message is that women don't have to conform to an outdated beauty standard, but honestly, it's not that clear or precise.  It feels a bit like some screenwriter started out to make a point, but then realized that pointing out all the horrible things about beauty pageants might turn off more people than it might attract, and that would be bad when trying to get an audience to tune in. 

The participant who wants to take down the patriarchy, for example, has the shaved head and wears the Doc Martens and the leather jacket, and clearly we're supposed to assume that this is someone who identifies as non-binary, or lesbian or trans or something like that.  But the movie doesn't even get into that as an issue, there's a whole other movie there, or at least a decent sub-plot, but again it feels like some screenwriter couldn't be bothered, or maybe felt that America's not ready for that, or it would turn off more people than it would turn on.  Or maybe it would have taken the focus off of Willowdean, and that might be a valid point - still, it's a glaring omission to not know the backstory and motivation of this character, why THEY chose to enter this beauty pageant and maybe try to burn it to the ground from the inside. 

Instead, Willowdean finds a flyer in her aunt's scrapbook for Dolly Parton Night at a nearby bar, and so the "loser brigade" of high-school girls talks their way into the bar, despite the fact that none of them have a fake ID, and they find a whole cadre of drag queens who lip-sync to Dolly's hits once a week, and this somehow turns out to be the answer to all of their problems.  After befriending the drag performers, they pick up knowledge of fashion, make-up, style and confidence and then apply all of this to their pageant experience.  Umm, OK, I guess that's one way to go - I think some people may find all of their answers in the world of drag, but then again, it may not be for everybody.  Well, drag queens and Dolly Parton combine to sort of save the day here, but only part of that is likely to happen in rural (red-state) Texas. 

Did the girls (sorry, three girls and one non-binary human) end up changing the pageant, or did being in the pageant change them?  It's kind of hard to tell, and therefore I think the underlying message here got very muddled.  Are beauty pageants good or bad?  It might have been nice if the film had taken a stronger stance on this issue - at first it seems like pageants are bad, because they tend to be exclusive and make some people feel bad about themselves, but then I guess if those people could just get over their inhibitions and participate, then they'll find their inner beauty queen and learn to make peace with themselves and others?  i don't know, I think I'd rather have seen them burn the pageant to the ground.  

Progress is a very tricky thing - once in a while I'll see something like a baseball pitcher missing a hand or a woman goalie in a hockey game, and I'll think, "Wow, good for them!" and maybe there's some hope for humanity, that we're not just going to get stuck in our traditional lock-step ideas over capability and standards of perfection, but in fairly short order it seems like the system finds a way to reset itself, forgets about the message and then after it seems like no progress was made.  

Also starring Jennifer Aniston (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Odeya Rush (last seen in "Almost Friends"), Maddie Baillio, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Luke Benward (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Georgie Flores, Dove Cameron (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Harold Perinneau (last seen in "I'm Not Here"), Kathy Najimy (last seen in "The Wedding Planner"), Dan Finnerty (ditto), Ginger Minj, Hilliary Begley, Sam Pancake (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Molly McNearney (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Tian Richards (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Ryan Dinning (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Andrew Fletcher, Ariana Guerra, Julia Denton (last seen in "Geostorm"), Kaye Singleton, Grace Junot, Maya Reid, Brooke Hartzog (last seen in "Hot Pursuit"), Taegen Burns.

RATING: 5 out of 10 affirmations from a Magic 8-Ball

French Exit

Year 14, Day 128 - 5/8/22 - Movie #4,131

BEFORE: OK, so yesterday's film didn't totally land on the Mother's Day theme, partially because that was also a Christmas movie and a movie about addiction - but I hope you can see that my intention was there.  All my messing around, and dropping "Ron's Gone Wrong" in at the last minute pushed this film on to Mother's Day instead, so let's see if that was a happy accident. Lucas Hedges carries over from "Ben Is Back".

THE PLOT: An aging Manhattan socialite living on what's barely left of her inheritance moves to a small apartment in Paris with her son and cat. 

AFTER: This is a very strange little film - It feels like I say that all the time, but maybe in the end I just don't say it enough.  I could point out that EVERY strange little film is a strange little film, but a lot of times that goes without saying.  But this one's really out there, man.  SPOILER ALERT, turn back now if you haven't seen this, because things are gonna get weird here. 

I can maybe see why this film didn't connect with people, it's about a rich widow and come on, who wants to feel sorry for a rich person these days?  When she realizes that she's running out of money, the solution for her is very simple - sell off the artworks and the townhouse and move to Paris.  Of course, why doesn't everybody just DO that when they're behind on their bills?  Oh, right. But Frances DID have a financial plan here, it's just that her plan was to die before the money ran out, then her mistake was to keep on living. It's an all too common one, unfortunately. That's why MY financial plan, to live forever, makes a lot more sense. If I never stop working, then I'll never need to retire, and then I won't die. 

But let's get back to Frances, who then gets on a boat to Paris with her son and cat - you're not supposed to just take your pets with you to another country, I know, there are quarantine rules and concerns over various animal diseases, but those rules are for the common people, rich folk are above all that.  But the boat scenes make it very difficult to tell when this film is supposed to take place, it could be set in the current day, or it could be set back in the 1980's, it's difficult to say because there's a timeless quality to it, nothing to anchor the film to our decade, really.  But the ocean liner (or the studio sets taking place there) present a conundrum, the dining rooms and ballrooms look very modern, but the deck chairs and life preservers look like they're from the 1930's, so I'm even more confused.  Then when we get to Paris, same problem, because parts of the city of Paris have an eternal, timeless look - so again, this could be taking place in 2020, or really, any time in the previous 50 years. The fashions, the luggage, it's all really hard to say WHEN this all is happening, assuming it's all not some dream and it is all supposed to be happening.  

On the boat, Frances and her son meet a medium, Madeleine the medium - because outside the very modern ship casino is a fortune-telling booth that looks like it's from the 1950's, or from some Woody Allen movie like "Magic in the Moonlight" or "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger".  Madeleine makes the mistake of telling an elderly passenger she's about to die, which leads to her dismissal (honestly, I don't think any cruise line ever hires psychics or fortune tellers, anyway) and this leads to Malcolm, Frances' son, to learn that on the average cruise ship crossing the Atlantic, on average, two passengers die each day while at sea.  Perhaps this makes sense given the advanced age of most cruise-goers, but still, I'd like to see the proof of this as a statistic.  Still, the big ocean liners DO have morgues, they probably just don't want you to know about that. 

When they arrive in Paris, Frances and Malcolm set themselves up in Joan's apartment, there's more space than they could possibly need, but we learn that their money is still limited, and it's a dwindling supply if they're going to maintain the lifestyle they've become accustomed to.  It seems that Frances' financial plan is back in action, she keeps referring to vague plans to kill herself in glorious fashion.  They celebrate Christmas, Frances buys her son a bicycle, and then their cat runs away for some reason, and Frances simply MUST get him back - because, as we learn, within the cat is the spirit of her dead husband, and she really wants to kill the cat and make sure he suffers, or something along those lines.  It's pretty unclear, but to find the cat they MUST locate Madeleine the medium, and to find Madeleine, they MUST hire a private detective.  Umm, sure, that makes perfect sense, I think. 

With the medium's help, they can communicate with the spirit of Frances' dead husband and Malcolm's errant father, and she manages to come to some kind of settlement or resolution with him.  They never find the cat, but I guess that's OK, because they can talk to the spirit within the cat thanks to the magic of movie voice-over dubbing.  But by this point the large French apartment is filled up with people staying over, like the medium and the detective and Madame Reynard, and I couldn't even figure out how she came into the story, I guess she's an old friend who lives in Paris, too?  Then OF COURSE Joan shows up and wants to know who all these people living in her apartment are.  Then OF COURSE Malcolm's old girlfriend shows up with her new fiancé, and everybody sleeps over and maybe finds an new partner to shack up with, and next thing you know, our little black comedy has turned into something like a classic bedroom farce, late in the game.  

There are pairings and little love triangles and Malcolm maybe wins his old girlfriend back, and Frances seems to be sharing a bed with Joan, the married woman who owns the apartment.  It's a bit tough to say if they're just two old friends sharing a bed, or if something more is taking place, the film is annoyingly vague on this point.  Not that there's anything wrong with a lesbian relationship in your golden years, especially if keeps those suicidal thoughts at bay, and it gives you something to live for.  But then there's no reason to sneak around and conceal it, is there?  It's a small apartment and everybody living there is going to find out, anyway. 

By the way, a "French exit" is a slang term for leaving without warning, like one might leave a party without saying goodbye to the host. Weirdly, in France they have a similar term, "filer a l'anglaise" but it means "to leave English style".  It comes from the military concept of leaving one's post, but I've also heard it in reference to sneaking out of someone's apartment in the morning after sex, I guess to be followed by the "walk of shame".  Symbolically, I suppose it could also refer here to dying, or committing suicide without leaving a note?

Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Valerie Mahaffey (last seen in "Sully"), Susan Coyne, Imogen Poots (last seen in "Filth"), Danielle Macdonald (last seen in "Trust Me"), Isaach de Bankolé (last seen in "The Limits of Control"), Daniel Di Tomasso, Eddie Holland, Matt Holland, Christine Lan, Robert Higden (last seen in "Mother!"), Larry Day, Christopher B. MacCabe, Vlasta Vrana (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Younes Bouab (last seen in "Queen of the Desert") and the voice of Tracy Letts (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 unattentive Parisian waiters