Judas and the Black Messiah

Year 14, Day 154 - 6/3/22 - Movie #4,157

BEFORE: I've fallen a bit behind on my posting, but not on my movie-watching - OK, I fell behind ONE night, but I'm back to current, because before I was starting movies the night BEFORE the date I was counting them, now I'm watching the same day, but I'd like to double-up and get back ahead of the count, it just makes it easier to stay on track.  Too many shifts at the theater makes that difficult, but it's film festival time and I have to get as many shifts as I can, to make up for missing two weeks in May, and the fact that the theater will closed in July.  Whew, I'm exhausted just explaining that.

I'm also behind on Black History month, which I know is in February, only February is when I tend to watch romance films, and it's hard to find common ground there, romance wins out and then I play catch-up on Black History later. I got into a Latino groove in April with "Encanto", "Vivo" and "In the Heights", but the linking just hasn't taken me in an African-American direction yet this year, it's not intentional, I assure you. But here's a film about the Black Panthers tonight, then after Father's Day I should have some more material with documentaries about Dick Gregory, Rick James and that "Summer of Soul" concert.  After the rock doc block, I'm planning an Idris Elba chain, one is that film where he plays Nelson Mandela, then I'll link to the film about Venus and Serena Williams, but that's as far as I can predict at the moment. 

Daniel Kaluuya carries over from "Welcome to the Punch". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Trial of the Chicago 7" (Movie #3,810)

THE PLOT: Offered a plea deal by the FBI, William O'Neal infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on Chairman Fred Hampton. 

AFTER: I'm so behind that I haven't even finished watching all the Oscar-nominated films from LAST year, let alone THIS year.  "Judas and the Black Messiah" won two Oscars in 2021, Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actor for Daniel Kaluuya - it was a bit weird that both he and Lakeith Stanfield were nominated for Best Supporting Actor, which implies that neither was the lead actor in the film, but if they weren't, then who WAS?  But the Academy lets each actor pick which category they can compete in, which sounds to me like a bad policy.  Perhaps a neutral party should have to watch each film and determine whether a performance should qualify as a leading role or a supporting role.  It would have made sense (to me, anyway) to put Lakeith Stanfield in the Lead Actor category and keep Daniel Kaluuya in the Supporting Actor category, because that would double the film's chance of winning an Oscar, create the possibility that they BOTH could win in different categories, and then two actors from the same film wouldn't have to compete against each other - but what the hell do I know?  Nobody listens to me...

I was not familiar with the story of Fred Hampton, or Bill O'Neal, who was arrested for stealing cars and impersonating an FBI agent while doing so.  The Feds reduced his sentence in exchange for him going undercover in the Chicago Black Panthers and providing them with information.  The Black Panthers were basically a volunteer-based organization, and probably lacked the resources to do proper background checks on volunteers.  O'Neal not only gained Hampton's trust but became his driver (with a car provided by the FBI) and eventually head of security for the chapter.  Yes, the mole in the organization was put in charge of security, and therefore was responsible for determining whether there were any moles in the organization.  It might be funny if it weren't so ironic, or perhaps the other way around. 

Fred Hampton tried to unite the rival gangs and militias in Chicago, the Crowns and the Young Patriots and the Young Lords - this was kind of the original Rainbow Coalition before Jesse Jackson formed his.  O'Neal reported Hampton's plans to his FBI handler, who reported them to J. Edgar Hoover (played here by Martin Sheen).  Hoover somehow got Hampton arrested and imprisoned for stealing ice cream bars, and in his absence, a shoot-out with the Chicago Police occurred at the Black Panther Party headquarters.  O'Neal was on-site but snuck out, then after the members inside surrendered, the cops firebombed it.  O'Neal then attempted to quit his role as an informant, but his handler wouldn't let him go, the intelligence being received about the Black Panthers was too valuable. 

O'Neal was stuck in a terrible position, he couldn't quit as an informant without risking prosecution and jail, and he couldn't reveal his status to the Black Panthers, because he feared their punishment would be even worse. Hampton was released on appeal, but eventually had to return to prison, however Hoover felt that more prison time would only increase Hampton's profile as a martyr to the black cause, like Huey P. Newton, MLK and Malcolm X.  So O'Neal was then asked to supply information about the layout of Hampton's apartment, so the FBI could carry out what was, essentially, an assassination.  The title says it all - there's basically a Biblical precedent for all of this, just with the FBI playing the role of the Roman Empire, O'Neal as Judas and J. Edgar Hoover as Pontius Pilate.  

For his trouble, O'Neal received money and the keys to a gas station, instead of thirty pieces of silver. His involvement in the raid was revealed in 1973, and he entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, but returned from California to Chicago in 1984. He committed suicide in January 1990, the same night that a TV documentary named "Eyes on the Prize" aired and revealed his recruitment by the FBI in 1968.  A lawsuit over the death of Hampton and Mark Clark, another Panther's leader, was filed against the FBI in 1970 and was settled 12 years later, for $1.85 million. So there's that.

Also starring Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Dominique Fishback (last seen in "Project Power"), Ashton Sanders (last seen in "Captive State"), Algee Smith (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Darrell Britt-Gibson (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Lil Rel Howery (last seen in "Free Guy"), Dominique Thorne (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Martin Sheen (last seen in "Selma"), Amari Cheatom (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Khris Davis, Ian Duff, Caleb Eberhardt, Robert Longstreet (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), Amber Chardae Robinson (last seen in "Stuber"), Ikechukwu Ufomadu, James Udom, Nick Fink, Mell Bowser, Alysia Joy Powell, Nicholas Velez, AJ Carr, Terayle Hill (last seen in "Willy's Wonderland"), Crystal Lee Brown (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Graham Lutes, Tyra Joy Smith, Tone Tank, James Bruner, Winston Haynes, Aaron Kleiber, Brian Bowman (last seen in "Acts of Violence"), Cooper Bucha, Jermaine Fowler (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), with archive footage of Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Bobby Seale (ditto) and the voice of Malcolm X (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President")

RATING: 6 out of 10 guns in the glove compartment

Welcome to the Punch

Year 14, Day 153 - 6/2/22 - Movie #4,156

BEFORE: The theater where I work is hosting NewFest, an LGTBQ-themed festival that's usually held in October, but they've added a special week of programming for June, Pride Month, which just makes sense. More hours for me, that's fine, because I lost two weeks of work in May due to COVID. And the theater may be closed in July, so I've got to get my hours in when I can - I'll work any festival shifts that come my way.  So after I watch this film, I've got to get up early (even though my "early" is later than most people's) and work the premiere of "Fire Island", a new gay rom-com that's actually getting good buzz and has a chance at something like mainstream success.  I don't take advertising on my blog, but if I did, I'd tell you that "Fire Island" starts streaming on Hulu tomorrow, after its gala red-carpet premiere tonight. 

Mark Strong carries over one more time, from "Cruella". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Filth" (Movie #3,946)

THE PLOT: When a notorious criminal is forced to return to London, it gives a detective one last chance to take down the man he's always been after. 

AFTER: Well, now I'm mentally burned out, after a 14-hour shift, but I spent time with the fabulous cast of "Fire Island" and many of their friends, so there's that.  No, I did not go to the afterparty, I had to work the late 10 pm screening that ended at 11:55 pm. I left the theater at 12:50 and got home at almost 2 am.  And now I have to write something about "Welcome to the Punch"?  Ugh, I don't know if I can keep up this sort of festival schedule during all of June, there's at least one more film festival before the month is over, and it's the ginormous Tribeca Film Festival.  

Here goes - "Welcome to the Punch" is about Max Lewinsky, a UK police detective who came close to taking down a gang of thieves who were known for escaping from robberies on motorbikes, but in a showdown with the gang's leader, Jacob Sternwood, Max was shot in the leg, but has been tormented by the fact that Sternwood COULD have shot him dead, but didn't. 

Three years later, Sternwood's son leaves an airplane and collapses on a runway - he'd been shot, but it's honestly a bit unclear how he boarded an airplane after being shot.  How is that possible?  Like, wouldn't the TSA inspectors have seen that he was bleeding?  It couldn't have happened on the plane, so WTF?  Anyway, he's taken to hospital, but the inspectors learn that he'd placed a call to Iceland before he collapsed.  Aha, so the notorious bank (?) robber Jacob Sternwood's been hiding out in Iceland.  The police go to Iceland (wait, isn't that a bit out of their jurisdiction?) against Lewinsky's advice and sure enough, it's a trap, and Sternwood escapes, then blows up his hideout, taking out several international cops (?). Wow, just by typing out the plot, I've realized that this story is full of holes, it really makes no sense.  

Sternwood returns to the U.K. to check on his hospitalized son, but the police lay a trap for him at the hospital.  Sternwood, suspecting a trap, directs another man into his son's room (this random man had conveniently asked Sternwood for directions...) and the police grab the random stranger (but they could CLEARLY see it wasn't Sternwood...huh?) and Sternwood is thus alerted to the trap, and scarpers off. 

Meanwhile, Lewinsky and his partner are also investigating Dean Warns, an ex-soldier who's suspected of illegal arms dealing, but who was released for lack of evidence.  Lewinsky checks in with a security guard who retracted his statement implicating Warns, assuming that Warns got to him and "convinced" him to change his mind. Lewinsky's female partner, Sarah, checks out a storage facility to look for evidence, and she finds it, but Warns also finds HER, and things don't go well for her after that. 

Sternwood then sets a trap of his own, he gets an associate to leak the name of his hotel and what room he's in, then waits to see which coppers come to take him out - will it be the noble one, Lewinsky, or some of the corrupt ones.  Oh, yeah, some of the UK policemen are corrupt, and it's got something to do with Warns supplying guns to the police, but I couldn't quite get a handle on it, it might have had something to do with their weird accents.  Usually I watch films on cable or streaming with proper subtitles, but I'd burned this film to a DVD myself, so unfortunately, no subtitles to help me out.  The weird thing, they were all speaking ENGLISH, but British English, and by the time my ears got accustomed to the accents, the film was about half over. 

Anyway, Sternwood finds out his son is dead, and Lewinsky finds out his partner is dead, so there's nothing much for them to do but team up, I suppose.  Wait, WHAT?  Lewinsky's been trying to find and kill Sternwood for THREE YEARS and then once he hits town, this turns into a TEAM-UP?  This twist in the last third of the film makes even less sense than the earlier scenes with the good guys and the bad guy trying to outwit each other.  WHY would Lewinsky team up with Sternwood, just to root out the corruption in his own police department?  It hardly seems worth it, to abandon the quest to have Sternwood pay for his crimes and let him help take down corruption in the police force, in fact it's ridiculous, preposterous even.  Woof, and then there's the ending, which just subverts and betrays any reasonable logic at all. 

In 2010, the script for this film was placed on the Brit List, an industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. Hmm, maybe they got it right the first time, and maybe this film deserved to stay in the category of unmade films, it's tough to say. I'm fairly sure this isn't how police or criminals really work...  As Winston Churchill never said, "Never before in the field of British cinema have so many great British actors gathered to produce so little plot."

Also starring James McAvoy (last seen in "Filth"), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Johnny Harris (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Daniel Mays (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), David Morrissey (last seen in "Centurion"), Peter Mullan (last heard in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Natasha Little, Daniel Kaluuya (last seen in "Widows"), Ruth Sheen (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Jason Flemyng (last seen in "Hanna"), Elyes Gabel (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Robert Portal (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), Jason Maza, Jay Simpson (last seen in "Their Finest"), Seun Shote (last seen in "Dune" (2021)), Dannielle Brent (last seen in "Cockneys vs. Zombies"), David Michaels, Tom Turner (also carrying over from "Cruella"), Ray De Haan, Oliver Silver. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 flight attendants

Cruella

Year 14, Day 152 - 6/1/22 - Movie #4,155

BEFORE: Mark Strong carries over from "Miss Sloane", and here are the links that should get me to the end of this new month: Mark Strong, Daniel Kaluuya, Jesse Plemons, Lily Collins, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Naomie Harris, Salma Hayek, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina (again?), Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jessie Buckley, Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins, Frankie Faison, Kevin Hart, Eddie Murphy & Dave Chappelle, Mike Score (from Flock of Seagulls), Nick Rhodes (from Duran Duran), "Weird Al" Yankovic and Judy Gold. I think you can see from that how I'm going to cover three Marvel movies, Father's Day and then start the documentary chain, right?  

THE PLOT: Estella is a young, clever grifter determined to make a name for herself in the fashion world. She soon meets a pair of thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief and together they build a life for themselves on the streets of London. However, when Estella is hired by fashion legend Baroness von Hellman, she soon embraces her wicked side to become the revenge-bent Cruella.

AFTER: Well, this is the trend now, eventually every movie villain ever will have a film made about them that explains their origin, how they weren't always SO bad, and how maybe they're not evil but just misunderstood, and anyway, it's not really their fault, they were dealt a bad hand.  How far back does this trend go?  At least as far as the "Star Wars" prequels, which took great pains to reveal the origin of Darth Vader, he was vulnerable to the evil of the Emperor because his mother died, and because he loved Padme SO HARD that he couldn't bear to think that she might die too. (Who hurt you, George Lucas? WHO?). Since then, Disney/Marvel/Star Wars has released films like "Maleficent", and TV shows like "The Book of Boba Fett", showing things from the villain's point of view, and the more we learn, the more it's a big, complex world where nothing is anybody's fault any more, I guess.  Look for Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" and Scar from "The Lion King" to get apologetic origin stories in the future, maybe.  

"Cruella" also marks the first Disney film with an openly (?) gay character, and I guess maybe "Jungle Cruise" was the second.  This is accidentally appropriate, because LGBTQ Pride Month starts today - a gay-centric film festival also starts tomorrow at the theater where I work, and I kind of feel like Ernie Hudson in "Ghostbusters" when he said, "If there's a steady paycheck involved, I'll believe anything you say."  Of course, there have been plenty of gay-ish characters in Disney movies over the years, they just weren't OPENLY gay.  Again, look for those prequels starring Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" and Scar from "The Lion King".  What about LeFou in "Beauty and the Beast" and Li Shang from "Mulan"?  Jafar?  The male ladybug from "A Bug's Life"? Elsa from "Frozen" and Prince John from "Robin Hood"?  Just saying, they've always been there.  

Anyway, there are a few problems with "Cruella" as a prequel to "101 Dalmatians".  First of all, it's too long - no WAY should this have been 2 hours and 14 minutes, this should have been a 90-minute story AT MOST.  Connected to this might be the second problem, the constant need this film has to over-explain EVERYTHING, at least three times each.  Every little detail - are we working an angle, what's the angle, is that the angle, wait, there's no angle, OK, yes, there's the angle. GIVE IT A REST!  The entire story spends all of its time self-analyzing itself, over and over, and none of it is necessary.  Just arguing over the main character's name change, from Estella to Cruella, happens at least five times, four of which are unnecessary.  We only need her to chance her name ONCE, that's it, we get it. 

The heists and scams are also all overly complicated - there's a necklace which changes hands about 8 times, and THAT'S 6 times too many.  Steal the damn necklace, don't steal the damn necklace, I don't care any more, just wrap it up!  This could have been a simple story - Estella gets bullied in school, Estella grows up and steals things, Estella gets a job in the fashion industry, it's not what she expected, and then her life isn't what she expected, so she turns psycho, split-personality, whatever, it's a simple story that got WAY over-complicated, too many reversals, too many setbacks, misguided attempts to bring the character to where she needs to be, all to set up who Cruella De Vil is in "101 Dalmatians". But again, when you explain her bad behavior, then you kind of end up justifying it.  

It's also weird that Disney would make a film that glorifies living in an abandoned building, stealing little things, working up the ranks of pickpocketing all the way up to larger, corporate-level scams.  Is this really a great message to send out to the kids in the audience, glorifying a life of crime?  I guess that's the chance you take when you make an established villain the central character, but still, in retrospect it just seems like an odd choice.  Like at one point Cruella tries to get one up on her rival, the Baroness, by stealing her three dalmatians (ah, more foreshadowing) and then wearing a dress that LOOKS like it's made from Dalmatian skin, leading the Baroness to (incorrectly) conclude that Cruella skinned her dogs to make a dress.  She didn't, so, umm, congratulations, but clearly she THOUGHT about it - and then, as we all know, she's going to try to do that for reals in the future.

And it's another film that addresses bullying and gets it wrong - AGAIN.  How many times do I have to point this out?  If a kid is getting bullied, fighting back is never, NEVER the right thing to do.  It only gets the bullied kid in more trouble, and then that's victim-blaming.  Why can't a film ever show a kid who gets bullied and THINKS their way out of the situation?  Getting smarter is the only acceptable response - they can secretly record the bullying, and submit that as proof to the headmaster or principal.  They can befriend the bully, pay off the bully, get the bully some therapy, all of these are better solutions than physically fighting back, which lowers the bullied character to the level of the bully.  Why do screenwriters just consistently rely on "fight back", when it's just not what we want our hero characters to do, in the long run?

Oh, yeah, this film won an Oscar for Best Costume Design.  Since it's set in the world of 1970's British glam fashion, I guess that makes sense.  One highlight is Cruella wearing one flammable white dress over a non-flammable red dress, and then flash-burning one dress to reveal the other. (Another strange message to send out to the kiddies - don't try this at home.).  Estella's attempt to rise through the ranks of the fashion world looks like it COULD have been successful, if all this other stuff didn't get in the way, what a shame.  But then, that's a bit like saying Peter Parker had a promising photography career at the Daily Bugle - it was never going to be his main gig, because the Green Goblin or Dr. Octopus would always be attacking somewhere, even the newspaper office itself. 

As long as the Baroness continued to treat her employees like crap and take credit for their hard work, that's the toxic situation that turned Estella into her alter-ego, Cruella.  Cruella pulls ever-increasingly bolder public pranks on the Baroness, then hides in plain sight, right under her rival's nose, just like Petey worked for Jonah.  In many ways, this film is like "Spider-Man" mixed with "Horrible Bosses 3".  

Oh, and don't forget "Star Wars", in the same manner that "Rogue One" took us RIGHT up to the beginning of "A New Hope", this film takes us RIGHT up to the situation where Pongo and Perdita are raised by their various owners, who are destined to meet someday, fall in love and make 101 puppies, so Cruella can have her Dalmatian coat.  Man, does she know how to play the LONG game or what?  

In other news, this film is way too multi-culti, conveniently there was apparently no racism in the UK in the 1970's, but that's the way Disney movies are made now, just like that live-action "Lady and the Tramp" remake.  There's already talk of making another "101 Dalmatians" prequel - slash "Cruella" sequel, which is fine, but just please go in a different direction and stop setting up the things that haven't happened yet.  There's plenty of story ground to cover in the 1970's or 1980's fashion era without re-hashing all the dog stuff. 

But, jeez, get some fresher music - while I approve of using songs like "Bloody Well Right" by Supertramp and "Stone Cold Crazy" by Queen, most of the other songs have been used WAY too many times in commercials and other movies - like "She's a Rainbow" and "Sympathy for the Devil" from the Stones, "Time of the Season" by the Zombies, "Hush" by Deep Purple and "Fire" by the Ohio Players.  This feels like some music coordinator JUST discovered classic rock, and wanted to use all the hits.  At least for "Whole Lotta Love" and "Come Together" they used the cover versions made by Ike & Tina Turner instead of the originals.  More like that, please. 

Also starring Emma Stone (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Emma Thompson (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Joel Fry (last seen in "Yesterday"), Paul Walter Hauser (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), John McCrea, Emily Beecham. (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Kayvan Novak (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Jamie Demetriou (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Andrew Leung, Ed Birch (last seen in "Red Joan"), Paul Bazely (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Abraham Popoola, Leo Bill (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Tom Turner (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Paul Chowdhry, Sarah Crowden (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Steve Edge, Richard David-Caine, Sid Sagar (last seen in "The Batman"), Tim Steed (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), John Mackay (last seen in "Ammonite"), Nathan Amzi, Billie Gadsdon, Tipper Seifert-Cleveland, Ziggy Gardner, Joseph MacDonald, Florisa Kamara, Dylan Lowe, Harrison Willmott with archive footage of Tallulah Bankhead. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 broken champagne glasses

Miss Sloane

Year 14, Day 151 - 5/31/22 - Movie #4,154

BEFORE: OK, last film in May, 31 films watched in May, that's fine, one per day, and I'm right where I want to be, heading into June, Father's Day and then July 4 coming up. My post-holiday weekend work schedule is absolutely crazy, I don't know how I'm going to work at so many screenings and festivals and still have time to watch movies, but I'm going to try.  I may have to just sleep in July...

Here's the screening format breakdown for all of May's films:

10 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Colombiana, Infinitely Polar Bear, Reservation Road, French Exit, Snitch, Empire State, Walking Tall, A Quiet Place Part II, The King's Man, Six Minutes to Midnight

10 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Reminiscence, The Normal Heart, Never Let Me Go, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Miss Julie, Voyagers, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, The Gathering Storm, Einstein and Eddington, Into the Storm

6 watched on Netflix: Message from the King, Dumplin', The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Dig, Ava, Red Joan

1 watched on Hulu: Ben Is Back
1 watched on YouTube: Jupiter Ascending
2 watched on Disney+: Jungle Cruise, Artemis Fowl
1 watched on Tubi: Miss Sloane

31 TOTAL

Gugu Mbatha-Raw carries over from "Jupiter Ascending" - I separated this Jessica Chastain film from the others I watched in May just because I needed it here, to make the connection to the first film in June, and in the same manner, I've got another film with Gugu Mbatha-Raw in it on my list, but I'm going to need THAT one after the Summer Concert Rock & Doc Block, to make a different connection in August so I can move forward then.  

THE PLOT: In the high-stakes world of political power-brokers, Elizabeth Sloane is the most sought after and formidable lobbyist in D.C. But when taking on the most powerful opponent of her career, she finds winning may come at too high a price. 

AFTER: I had my reasons for separating this Jessica Chastain film from the rest of the herd - I was thinking big picture-style, doing this sort of thing makes the overall chain possible, and it allows me to land the right films on those benchmark holidays.  If I was very rigid and OCD about it, and I insisted on watching all the Jessica Chastain films together, then it's most likely that the linking possibilities just wouldn't be there when I need them - so I can organize all of my films by actor, but I also need to be flexible about it, and move some of them around when necessary.  

So this boring (I assumed) film about lobbyists was just sitting there at the end of the month (after I flipped the war movie section of my chain around), waiting for me, being boring.  Look, there are worse things than watching a boring film, at the very least a boring film gets me closer to a less-boring film the next day, or the next week.  So I don't mind, I'll watch any boring film just to get it off my list.  But then I realized this 2016 film is about lobbyists fighting for, and against, gun control legislation.  WHOA, suddenly this film, regrettably of course, just became super relevant, given the news from last week.  Then this film caught my attention, because it's exactly what some people think MIGHT finally happen, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.  

I'd love to see that happen - but people thought there might be some legislation in the U.S. after Parkland, and it didn't happen.  Awareness was raised, people expressed opinions, a lot of people talked about what SHOULD be done after the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High in 2018, and the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, but nothing really constructive was done, nothing changed, and then in 2022, we've had the school shooting in Uvalde, and a mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket before that. There were a DOZEN mass shootings in the U.S. just this past weekend, and 214 in the U.S. so far this year - and we're only on Day 151.  What the hell is going on?

I know, there are no easy answers - or are there?  Guns are easy to get in the U.S., so more people have them, therefore more people use them.  That seems pretty simple, but true things sometimes seem simple.  There are crazy people out there, sure, that's one part of it, plus everyone's coming out of the pandemic, they want to get out there and party and shop and go to concerts again - but why can't we do all that without people getting shot?  One of the best (only good) things I can say about the pandemic is that school shootings were way down, because kids were learning from home.  Now we've just started to try and get back to normal schooling, and all this has to happen?  Why couldn't we phase in the good things about society, like going out to restaurants and state fairs and concerts and movies and not bring back the bad things, like people getting killed while grocery shopping?  

You can probably tell where I stand on this issue - I've never owned a gun, never shot a (real) gun, never gone hunting, never fought in a war, and I've made it 53 years without killing anybody, though Lord knows there may have been times when it crossed my mind.  Yeah, I had a religious background, and that might be part of it, but there are plenty of God-fearing Christians out there who also own guns and DO have the capacity to kill, so I don't think there's a direct relationship there. It just doesn't appeal to me, any part of the gun culture or the hunting/camping/killing animals lifestyle.  Anything larger than a bug, and I'm inclined to let it live. Yes, I eat meat so I know that maybe makes me a hypocrite, but that's just where I draw that line. 

Anyway, this film is about Elizabeth Sloane, a female lobbyist who is tasked by her firm to work on leading the effort to oppose legislation that would expand background checks on guns. If I've got a NITPICK POINT here, the way that the person representing the gun manufacturers approached the lobbying firm, it seemed more like the way someone would make a pitch to an advertising firm, and I'm not sure those two things are the same.  But I know very little about lobbyists, so I have to let it slide. The gun companies want to turn public opinion against the bill by targeting female voters, getting moms against gun control.  Sloane is personally against the idea, and when she gets an offer from a rival lobbying firm to do the opposite, she takes the offer and brings key members of her staff over to her new firm.  

They do one of those visual bulletin board things where they put photos of all the senators they know are FOR the bill on one board, all the senators AGAINST on another board, and all the undecided ones on the board in the middle, then count how many votes they need to secure to get the legislation passed - thank God for visual aids or we lowly movie-viewers wouldn't be able to understand when progress is being made. 

Sloane is willing to use every weapon in her arsenal (sorry, poor use of that metaphor) to change public opinion, she sets up phony audience members at campaign dinners to sandbag senators with questions on gun control, and she agrees to debate her own boss on TV over the Constitutionality of gun control and/or the 2nd Amendment.  If anyone says that the Constitution can't be changed, that's a hollow argument, because we have amendments - everything in the Bill of Rights is an amendment, a necessary change made to the original. That document is a living, evolving thing - and it was written during a different time in history, you have to acknowledge that.  In 1789 they didn't have automatic weapons, or safe abortions for that matter - so we can't just live our lives as if nothing has changed since Colonial times.  The constitution they wrote back then was the one they needed, but as time went on, the country's needs changed, so the document had to change too.  

Sloane also learns that one of her co-workers at the new firm was the survivor of a school shooting years ago, and has dedicated her life to working towards stricter gun laws. Sloane works subtly (at first) to get her more TV appearances, makes her the face of the campaign, then outs her as a shooting survivor on live TV.  It's a bold move, but one that also treats this staff member like just another pawn in the game, which is unfortunate.  It also exposes that staff member to violent threats, people who maybe want to finish what the original shooter didn't - it's at this point that the film falls back on the metaphor that the only thing that can stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, and it's too bad that's an argument used by the pro-gun lobbyists all the time. 

Sloane's not a perfect person, she visits male escorts and takes some kind of drug, possibly speed, to avoid sleep, or help her sleep, or maintain her busy schedule, it's tough to say which. Maybe all three.  She's also prone to reaction, and willing to cut corners and break the rules, but then again, she's also always three steps ahead of her competition, so there's that.  I won't give away any more of the plot, except to say that maybe in 2016 America wasn't yet ready for background checks and any form of gun control.  Is the country ready now?  I guess we're going to find out in the weeks to come.  

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "Ava"), Mark Strong (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day"), Alison Pill (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "Shirley"), Sam Waterston (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), John Lithgow (last seen in "The Tomorrow Man"), David Wilson Barnes (last seen in "The Company Men"), Jake Lacy (last seen in "Being The Ricardos"), Raoul Bhaneja (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Chuck Shamata (ditto), Douglas Smith (last seen in "Terminator Genisys"), Meghann Fahy,Grace Lynn Kung (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451" (2018)), Al Mukadam (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Noah Robbins (last seen in "Tick, Tick...BOOM!"), Lucy Owen, Sergio Di Zio (last seen in "The Boondock Saints"), Joe Pingue (ditto), Michael Cram, Dylan Baker (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Zach Smadu, Austin Strugnell (last seen in "K-19: The Widowmaker"), Alexandra Castillo, Jack Murray (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Aaron Hale, Greta Oneiogou, Kyle Mac, Ennis Esmer, Angela Vint (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Kevin Jubinville, Anand Rajaram, Rick Roberts (last seen in "Man of the Year"), Murray Furrow, Courtenay Stevens (last seen in "Breach"), Craig Eldridge (ditto), Doug Murray (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 ethics violations

Jupiter Ascending

Year 14, Day 150 - 5/30/22 - Movie #4,153

BEFORE: Getting very close to the start of a new month now, and this holiday weekend is the unofficial start of summer, though it won't cosmologically be summer for another three weeks.  I went to RibFeston Saturday, that was summer-y, and yesterday my wife and I went out to the Brazilian churrascaria in Queens, so it's been a very meat-centric weekend.  But the Brazilian restaurant trip was re-scheduled from Easter weekend, that's where we like to go eat on Good Friday, because fewer people are there eating meat - theoretically, anyway.  But this year I was working on Good Friday, so the meal wasn't possible.  I'll give out a preview of June tomorrow, but May's been good and bad, what with both of us getting COVID and me missing two weeks of work as a result, so money's a little tight right now.  Thankfully I bought my ticket to RibFest months ago, and at half price.  Now I just have to economize a bit, until I can get paid for June's shifts, and also the freelance consulting work I'm doing for a couple of other filmmakers I know.  More about that later, perhaps. 

James D'Arcy carries over from "Into the Storm". 

THE PLOT: A young woman discovers her destiny as an heiress of intergalactic nobility and must fight to protect the inhabitants of Earth from an ancient and destructive industry. 

AFTER: Well, I avoided this sci-fi movie for a number of years, it came out in 2015, and then it was on Netflix for a while, but I just couldn't find a place for it in my schedule, so it left that service at some point.  I couldn't find it on Hulu or Tubi or whatever, so I was forced to rent it from YouTube today.  Just $3.99, but I'm supposed to be trying to save money, and not spend anything extra on movies, besides the cable bill and our Hulu, Netflix and Disney+ subscriptions.  Well, paying $3.99 is easier than finding another film that would link "Into the Storm" to tomorrow's film, the only other connection I see would take two films, and I'm already full up between now and Father's Day, so "Jupiter Ascending" it is. 

This was directed by the Wachowskis, and all I know about them comes from "The Matrix" and "Cloud Atlas" - so maybe that's why this film feels a little bit like a cross between "The Matrix" and "Cloud Atlas".  It's got some similar themes to "The Matrix", like the unlikely hero who doesn't really see himself/herself AS a hero, or feels unworthy somehow, having greatness and expectations thrust upon them.  Also, that hero is thrown into another world unlike the one that they're familiar with, and there are all sorts of new rules that they don't understand.  "Cloud Atlas" was eight kinds of crazy - I may be due for a re-watch of that film at some point - and so is this one, there are all kinds of weird aliens and spaceships and future tech (like in some parts of "Cloud Atlas").  Oh, and Earth turns out to be a big harvesting locations for an advanced civilization, and humans are the equivalent of livestock.  That's very "Matrix"-like, isn't it?  Or did I misunderstand "The Matrix"?

The human hero here is a woman named Jupiter Jones (not sure if there's any significance that she shares her name with a character from the "Three Investigators" teen novels) whose father died before she was born, and who lives with her mother and aunt and works for her family's house-cleaning service in Chicago.  She hates her daily life, so it's probably a relief for her when she's targeted for an alien abduction during an egg-cell donation, and then rescued from the "keepers" by an intergalactic soldier who is somehow half wolf.  After a flight around the Chicago skyline in an alien spacecraft that keeps falling apart or getting shot down, this soldier, Caine Wise, saves them both with his anti-grav boots.  They drive to another soldier/agent, who lives in a house that's like half bee-hive, and for some reason, Jupiter can control the bees.

Yeah, this is a weird one, but we're just getting started. Jupiter is somehow the "reincarnation" of an intergalactic matriarch/business-woman who "owned" Earth - she doesn't have that woman's soul or her memories, but genetically she is exactly the same as this deceased woman, who lived to be 90,000 years old, and then statistically speaking, somehow it's possible for Jupiter to have the same genetic make-up of her, but even if that WERE possible, which it isn't, that wouldn't make Jupiter that woman - although legally according to galactic bureaucrats, they are the same, despite having none of the same relatives, experiences or memories. 

Jupiter then has to deal with the members of the Abrasax family, all descended from the woman who was genetically identical to her, who owned the Earth and was preparing to harvest its lifeforms at some point when the planet became too overpopulated to continue.  (Uh oh...). Her descendants are a daughter named Kalique, and two sons, Titus and Balem.   But first Jupiter has to go through a lengthy amount of paperwork on the capital planet, Ores, to prove her genetic make-up and claim her inheritance, which is Earth.  Then the Abrasax kids try to take the planet away from her, Titus charms her and proposes marriage - but as a form of a business deal, he just wants to kill her after the ceremony and then inherit the planet.  Whew, thank God, it looked for a second there like he wanted to have sex with his own mother.  Caine, once again, arrives at the last second and rescues Jupiter from making a terrible mistake by marrying Titus.

The other brother, Balem, takes a different approach, he sends a giant lizard-like alien to kidnap Jupiter's whole family, and take them to, umm, Jupiter. The planet, not the person. Balem offers Jupiter, the person, a deal where she can have her family back safely if she abdicates her title, which means he'll inherit the Earth instead of her.  But then she realizes that if she signs away ownership, Balem will start the harvest, and then there won't be an Earth to go back to.  Not one with other people, anyway, and repopulating the planet would be a lot of work, so no deal.  Fine, then Balem tries to kill her, which kind of makes her regret her choice - he wants to inherit the planet one way or the other.  And yet AGAIN, it's Caine who has to struggle to beat the clock and arrive just in time to save Jupiter from a fate worse than marriage, namely death. 

Caine's arrival at the refinery (inside the "Great Red Spot" of Jupiter, nice touch) broke something, and the whole factory starts collapsing, so it's a very tense end battle as everyone's fighting everyone else, and trying to win before the giant building/city crumbles and they all get destroyed by the super-planetary storm.  Thankfully all of Jupiter's family members gets portaled out and then zapped, "Men in Black"-style, so they don't remember being kidnapped by lizard aliens. 

I don't know, this one is WAY out in left field - I'm a big sci-fi fan, sure, but this weird universe of spaceships that aren't all in one piece and vials full of human life-essences is way beyond the familiar (to me) universes of "Star Wars" and "Star Trek".  And still, with talking lizards and people who are half-deer or half-bee walking around, somehow Eddie Redmayne's character is the weirdest of all, despite being completely human.  He delivers all of his lines as if he's mid-yawn, like he's always on the verge of falling asleep or something - it's supposed to be some kind of affect that tells us he's evil, but from an acting standpoint, it doesn't work, it's just odd. 

Nice cameo from Terry Gilliam, though - he plays a bureaucratic minister deep within the paperwork-fueled capital planet, and this can only be a huge visual reference to the film "Brazil", which Gilliam directed.  So this film was once going to be linked to "An Accidental Studio", that documentary about the Monty Python movies and the studio financed by George Harrison, but that doc has so many famous people in it, from Sean Connery to Sean Penn to Maggie Smith, I'm sure I can find a place for it somewhere, if not this Movie Year, then definitely next.  Even if it just connects "Mona Lisa" and "Withnail and I", that still serves a purpose. 

Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "Free Guy"), Sean Bean (last seen in "North Country"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Douglas Booth (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Tuppence Middleton (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Christina Cole (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"), Nicholas A. Newman, Ramon Tikaram, Ariyon Bakare (last seen in "Life" (2017)), Maria Doyle Kennedy (last seen in "Sing Street"), Frog Stone, David Ajala, Bae Doona (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in "The Whole Truth"), Edward Hogg, Tim Pigott-Smith (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Jeremy Swift (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Kick Gurry, Larissa Kouznetsova (last seen in "MI-5"), Demetri Theodorou, Lieve Carchon, Oleg Nasobin, Emily Renée, Vanessa Kirby (last seen in "Genius"), Spencer Wilding (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Andy Ahrens, Charlotte Beaumont, Bryony Hannah, Samuel Barnett (last seen in "Bright Star"), Claire Benedict, Peter Yapp, John Locke (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Grant Stimpson, Sarah Crowden (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Terry Gilliam (last heard in "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"), Rupert Frazer, Simon Dutton, Tim Connolly, Tamela D'Amico, Hazel D'Jan, Thomas Gaitsch, Julie Graham, Eric Ian (last seen in "Empire State"), Charlotte Rickard, Clem So.

RATING: 4 out of 10 warhammers

Into the Storm

Year 14, Day 149 - 5/29/22 - Movie #4,152

BEFORE: Taking a quick look at historical events for May 29, it was on THIS day in 1919 that Arthur Eddington tested the relativity theory of Albert Einstein during that solar eclipse.  Damn, I was off by ONE DAY, I posted my review of "Einstein and Eddington" on May 28.  Grrr, so close, why didn't I check Wikipedia before posting?  I could have held off one day to make things line up perfectly, right?  Or I could just change the date on the review, but that feels a bit dishonest.  Let's just say it's close enough, can we do that?  Also close enough is today's film, which counts as my last war-based Memorial Day film, and Memorial Day is technically tomorrow, not today.  Geez, it sure feels like I'm consistently off by one day here, maybe this means I should have included "An Accidental Studio" when I had the chance, then both films would have lined up better with the calendar - it's a weird sign in both cases that I'm just a BIT off.  But then, I never really know until I reach the end of the Movie Year if I should have included one more film somewhere along the way, or squeezed in one too many - all I know right now is that if I come up one film short in December, I'm going to think back to the week of Memorial Day and how I could have included ONE more film, maybe. 

The best I can do right now is hit Father's Day right on the nose for June 19 and then put the "right" film on July 4, then maybe I can lose this feeling of being like 99% accurate with my timing.  Donald Sumpter carries over from "Einstein and Eddington".  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Gathering Storm" (Movie #4,150)

THE PLOT: A look at Winston Churchill's life and career at the end of World War II. 

AFTER: Well, this is pretty much a remake of "Darkest Hour", except for the fact that this BBC/HBO TV movie was made first, about 8 years before Gary Oldman won his Oscar for playing Churchill.  I think Oldman won the Oscar, at least partially, because of the amazing physical transformation into Churchill, via hair and make-up, obviously - Albert Finney also bore a remarkable resemblance to Winston, more so than Brendan Gleeson in the sequel, I daresay.  Generally speaking, for me, Albert Finney is the BEST choice for whoever it was he played - he was the best Ebenezer Scrooge, or at least my favorite, he was the best Vonnegut character in "Breakfast of Champions", the best Hercule Poirot of all the actors who played him, the best Daddy Warbucks, and by far the best Tom Jones in "Tom Jones".  He passed away in 2019, so I don't know why he wasn't cast in this sequel to "The Gathering Storm", that would have at least maintained some continuity, and made my linking much, much easier.  It's almost like the casting directors in 2009 didn't care about some guy who would be watching movies in a linked-actor pattern 13 years later. 

Ah, and I thought of the potential linking just a bit too late - Adolf Hitler.  These war movies are always using archive footage of Hitler, in "The Gathering Storm" Finney as Churchill watched a typical newsreel of a Hitler rally.  I figured there was an even-money chance that "Into the Storm" would also feature Hitler footage - and SIX movies last year used footage of Hitler, and they weren't all documentaries.  And the IMDB doesn't always list the people who appear in stock footage, I end up making a lot of suggested corrections to the IMDB.  But no, there's no footage of Hitler in "Into the Storm", it's a glaring omission - but this means I was right to include "Einstein and Eddington" as a linking film.  

"Into the Storm" basically begins with Churchill being named Prime Minister of the U.K., in addition to Defense Minister - yes, he held BOTH jobs at the same time, for a while.  P.M. Chamberlain is shown resigning (I've seen this depicted in other films before) and then suggests that Lord Halifax (who's in the room) take his place.  Lord Halifax, however, thinks that Churchill (also in the room) would do a much better job, and go figure, Churchill agrees.  Duh.

This is followed up with the Dunkirk disaster, the failed evacuation and the large private-boat rescue of the British troops from the French coast.  Instead of losing their entire army, the British people were rallied to volunteer their ships and their effort, and the majority of the U.K. troops were saved, so that they could come back later and invade during D-Day.  Churchill then rejects any idea of surrender to or parley with Germany, and instead adopts the strategy of KBO - "keep buggering on."  Because even in wartime, it's important to do the things that make you feel normal, like buggering (umm, look it up.). Churchill then gathers members of both parties together and forms a coalition government, setting aside political differences to win the war.  Gee, I wonder what THAT feels like, seeing both political parties in your country working together to solve a larger problem, like, say, racial injustice or rampant gun violence. Or even a virus that infects everyone, regardless of their political leanings...

The German planes bomb Britain, and the British planes bomb Germany - but the U.K. planes were engaged in night bombing, which didn't do much except blow up a few cows in the German fields, so the top brass encouraged Churchill to target prominent German factories, and the cities they were in.  And that's what destroyed Dresden and some other German cities, civilian casualties be damned - all's fair in love and war, remember?  Then we're shown Churchill encouraging RAF pilots just before the Battle of Britain.  This film doesn't really have a lot of time, so they had to resort to something like a "Greatest Hits of World War II" approach.  Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few...

Then we get to Churchill encouraging Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war, as the U.K. felt more or less alone.  Probably nobody was happy to hear the news about Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but Churchill may have come close to jumping for joy.  Churchill and his aides then meet with Stalin and thanks to the interpreters, there's a summit meeting about war strategy, and an awful lot of drinking is involved.  D-Day is name-checked here but not really given a lot of time, but there are other movies to watch if you really want to see what happened there.  Before long, cinematically speaking, there's news of Germany's surrender and Churchill is invited to join the King and his family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.  

But it's all downhill from there for Churchill, sad to say.  The coalition government is dissolved, even though technically the war's not fully over, it's still going on in the Pacific against Japan.  But the Labour Party gains control, and Churchill gives a radio speech comparing them to Communists, and saying they'd need to resort to "some kind of Gestapo" to maintain control.  Soon after Churchill was voted out of office, because everyone was tired of the war and just wanted to get back to normal - and Churchill represented wartime thinking.  

Churchill sort of left the public eye again, as he'd done back in the 1930's - he hung around the house, painted landscapes, fed his many animals, fought with his wife and yelled at his servants.  The problem with the film's structure, though, is that they worked in a number of these post-1945 scenes with the World War II-set scenes, it's all mixed up.  The intent was clearly to use the scenes of Churchill in retirement as a framing device, then flash back to the important war-time incidents, but it's just too much jumping around in time.  In this scene Winston and Clemmie are talking about how the war is over, then in the NEXT scene the war is still going on, and it ends up not making any sense.  Obviously the post-retirement scenes are boring, and if you had to watch all of them at the end of the film you'd walk out of the theater or fall asleep, because the war is the exciting part.  So OK, then, just add more war-time stuff and end the film with Churchill being voted out - if the retirement scenes are boring and meaningless, then why not edit them out entirely, instead of messing with the space-time continuum? 

The film also shows Churchill resigning as Prime Minister in a scene with King George VI in it, but that's a huge mistake - Churchill was out as P.M. in 1945, but he stayed in Parliament as the leader of the opposition party until 1951, at which point he served AGAIN as Prime Minister, partially under the young Queen Elizabeth II, until 1955.  It's hard to believe, but Britain's got the SAME queen today as it had when Winston Churchill served his 2nd stint as P.M.   

"Into the Storm" probably should have been split into two films, one dealing with the wartime stuff - God knows there were many other WW2 battles that didn't even get mentioned here - and then another for the Post-WW2 stuff.  Never in the field of cinema has any movie tried to do so much with so little running time....

Also starring Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Hampstead"), Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Clive Mantle, Jack Shepherd (last seen in "Greed"), Iain Glen (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), James D'Arcy (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Bill Paterson (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Bruce Alexander, Janet McTeer (last seen in "Carrington"), Michael Elwyn (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Robert Pugh, Terrence Hardiman, Garrick Hagon (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), Len Cariou (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Patrick Malahide (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Geoffrey Kirkness, Philip McGough, Michael Pennington (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Aleksey Petrenko, Andrew Havill (last seen in "The King"), Adrian Fort, Kathryn Sumner, Michael Hadley (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Emma Hamilton (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Alister Cameron, David Charles, Morgan Thomas, Patrick Brennan, Kenneth Bryans, John Albasiny, Teresa McElroy, Miranda Colchester, Mark Lingwood (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Paul Kelleher and archive footage of Laurence Olivier (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Vivien Leigh (last seen in "Gone With the Wind").

RATING: 5 out of 10 cigars