Swan Song

Year 14, Day 162 - 6/11/22 - Movie #4,165

BEFORE: My second day working at the Tribeca Film Festival, or at least just ONE of its venues.  They sure do employ a lot of people, or perhaps they're volunteers, but that's kind of great for me, because those people are doing most of the work around the theater, and all I have to do is supervise them, it's easy-peasy, sort of.  It's still a LONG shift, I pulled 12-hour shifts twice this week, and that's still exhausting, plus I'm eating the majority of my meals at the theater via take-out, so I have to eat relatively cheaply, or else I'll spend all the money I'm making at this job just on the food while I eat, working at that job.  Staying home is cheaper, because then I don't spend money on take-out, but then I earn less - so, it seems I need to spend money to make money.  

Now, big problems last night trying to watch "Swan Song", which I thought was on Hulu.  But then I had trouble signing on to Hulu, because suddenly our Sony Playstation (which I use to watch Hulu and Netflix on the big TV) demanded that I do a system update, but after the update, I couldn't sign back in because I didn't know the Playstation.com password, and without that, Hulu wouldn't work.  Sure, I could watch Hulu on my phone, but that's so SMALL compared to the BIG TV.  

Then I double-checked, and found out "Swan Song" isn't even on Hulu, it's on Apple TV.  There is A film titled "Swan Song" on Hulu, but not the right one - that one stars Udo Kier and is about a hairdresser walking across town or something.  Both films with the same title were released in 2021, so I guess that's how I got them mixed up.  OK, so then how do I watch the right "Swan Song", or will I have to find another film to link to that matches back up with my chain?  I'd rather not do that, I just got my chain from here to August all worked out - but I joined Apple+TV last year, just to watch that film "On the Rocks" with Bill Murray, and then I quit right after, so they couldn't charge me $4.99 per month.  You don't suppose they'd let me have another free trial, do you?  

Mahershala Ali carries over from "Eternals". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Replicas" (Movie #3,678), "Never Let Me Go" (Movie #4,141)

THE PLOT: In the near future, a terminally ill man explores a heart-wrenching, emotionally complex solution to save his wife and son from grief by duplicating himself without them knowing. 

AFTER: Yes, it worked, I can't believe it!  Apple TV+ let me sign on AGAIN for another free trial, and as long as I quit within the first 7 days, there will be no charge.  Of course, the fine folks at Apple probably believe that once I see how much great programming is on their service, and how simple and convenient their service is to use, I'll sign up for $4.99 per month - or perhaps they're betting that I'll forget to quit and they'll get at least one or two months of subscriber fees out of me.  SUCKERS!  I quit the free trial immediately after watching "Swan Song", and if there's another movie on their service, I'll just sign up for another free trial!  So, umm, why does anybody PAY for this service, when they can just have one free trial after another - I've had two so far, maybe I'll go for three if I need to!  Jesus, does this scam work for all the other streaming services, too?  Why pay for ANY of them, just keep free-trial-ing them out of business, I say...

Anyway, now you know, you don't have to pay for Apple TV+, and there are TWO movies named "Swan Song" that were released in 2021.  Buyer beware - make sure you watch the one you want.  Seriously, one of these films should have changed their title, to avoid confusion in the marketplace. 

"Swan Song" is kind of the reverse, or "answer film" to "Never Let Me Go", which was about a bunch of clones that were raised to (eventually) understand that they were going to die.  "Swan Song" is about a man who realizes that he's going to die, so he pays a company to create a clone of himself, which will take his place.  I guess they're both riffing off the same theme, in a way.  

This is set in the future, which of course is always tricky, trying to do a little guesswork about the advances of technology, with a projection based on the current state of tech that we have today. Good news here, we're going to have those driverless cars very soon, and they'll just take us wherever we need to go, just like Uber but without the Uber drivers.  And most everyone will be working from home, so that's maybe a pandemic-based projection.  And we're going to have clones, but as stated above, they have a very specific purpose, to replace the terminally ill.  I suppose this is somewhat logical, if you need a new heart they can transplant one, if you need a new ear they can now grow you one on your arm or something - you just have to wear long sleeves during the process so you don't gross everybody out.  Cloning here is just the ultimate transplant, in a way, they just grow a whole new YOU and copy the memories over.  And if things work out, they just mind-wipe the last couple of weeks, so the clone doesn't remember waking up in the lab and meeting its original template person.  

I guess there are ethical questions here, or maybe philosophical ones - these were first raised in the film "Multiplicity", only that was a comedy, and this one isn't.  If the clone is grown from the host's DNA, artificially aged to match the host, and then implanted with all of the host's memories, is the clone the same as the host? Yes? No? I don't know?  While both of them exist, one is the original and one is the copy, so no?  But the same genetics, the same age, the same memories?  That's where things get tricky.  And if the clone replaces the original in the family, sleeps with the host's wife and she can't tell the difference, is she cheating on her husband?  

In this case, where the host has a terminal illness, the swap has to be made before he dies, that's the whole point here, to reduce the trauma to the family, so that life can continue for them as before. But is this really the BEST idea, in the long run?  There's no guarantee that clone won't die tragically some other way a month later, like get run over by a bus or drown in a swimming pool or get eaten by a shark - there are no guarantees in life, after all.  His wife and son still might need to face this same problem later on, so they could just be kicking the problem down the road, instead of solving it. It's tough to say. 

Plus, we're dealing with a very specific set of conditions here, Cameron has a terminal illness, and medical science can't FIX the illness - he's having seizures, so let's say it's a brain tumor that wasn't caught in time.  The clone can be created without the tumor, but creating the clone can't be cheap - so is the money better spent on making the clone, or curing Cameron's condition?  I just want to see the paperwork on this, that's all I'm saying. 

Regardless, this is thought provoking, because it gets into how far a person is willing to go to give their family a better life - after the swap, Cameron has to watch his family from afar, knowing that's another version of himself spending time with his wife, raising his son - it's him, but it's also NOT really him.  Could you remove yourself from the equation if you determined that's what was better for your family, and then spend your final weeks or months in isolation, without the people you might rely on for support at the end of your life?  Another really tough question - this whole film's like a giant thought experiment, I suppose. 

Also starring Naomie Harris (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Awkwafina (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Nyasha Hatendi (last seen in "Replicas"), Adam Beach (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Lee Shorten, Dax Rey, Jayr Tinaco (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Jessica Hayles, Mikayla Lagman, Celia Aloma, Luke Camilleri.

RATING: 6 out of 10 contact lens cameras

Eternals

Year 14, Day 161 - 6/10/22 - Movie #4,164

BEFORE: OK, one 12-hour shift at the Tribeca Film Festival down, several more to go.  But only one more before we drive to Atlantic City for a couple of days, starting Sunday.  Very excited because we haven't been there in nearly THREE years, and who knows, the place may have changed a bit since we were last there.  Anyway, if I can get through tomorrow and find time to pack, I can relax for a bit, have a little more time to watch some streaming shows after playing the slots and hitting the buffets.  

But it's tough when I get off of a 12-hour shift and look forward to getting home to watch a movie, only to find that movie is OVER two and a half hours long.  Any movie that long needs to be about World War II or the Titanic sinking - if not, then it probably needs more editing.  Am I right?  

Salma Hayek carries over from "The Hummingbird Project".  And this is CATCHING UP WITH MARVEL MOVIES, Part 2. 

THE PLOT:  The saga of the Eternals, a race of immortal beings who lived on Earth and shaped its history and civilizations. 

AFTER: OK, there's a big problem with The Eternals as a movie.  Actually, a few big problems, and the first is that I don't read this particular Marvel comic book, never have.  I've picked up some info about their characters when they've guested in my regular books, but for the most part, I'm not familiar, and I've never been invested in their particular story arc.  Jack Kirby created these characters a LONG time ago, and he basically ripped off the pantheon of Greek Gods, like Ikaris is based on Apollo and Thena was based on Athena, Phastos on Hephaestus, and so on. Makkari sounds a bit like Mercury, and I know it's not a solid one-for-one, like not every Eternal has a Greek counterpart or vice versa, but the connection is obviously THERE.  Sersi is perhaps based on the witch Circe, a minor Greek myth character who was a sorceress in "The Odyssey", Ikaris's name may come from Icarus, the human who flew too close to the sun, and so on.

I'm not sure why Jack Kirby didn't just write about Zeus, Apollo, Hermes/Mercury, Poseidon, Hades and such, those characters are non-copyrightable, so they pop up now in "Percy Jackson" books and other adaptations, they're FREE and just sitting there, so why not?  The problem with Marvel Comics, though, is that some other writers DID use the Greek Gods, especially in the stories featuring Hercules, who spent time on the Avengers.  So then in the Marvel Universe there was a bunch of Greek Gods sitting in the sky, or Mount Olympus or whatever, and also a bunch of copycat Eternals, many of whom were based on those Greek Gods, there was a fair amount of overlap.  Then on top of THAT there were the Asgardian Gods, because Thor needed a back story, so that means Odin, Loki, Freya, Balder and such get thrown into the mix, but just how many Gods ARE there in that universe?  Polytheism refers to the worship of many gods, but what's the word for many SETS of Gods?  Polypantheonism?  And then all of these Gods claimed to have created the universe, right?  They can't ALL be telling the truth - so most likely NONE of them are being completely honest, and maybe the Marvel Universe began like the real one, probably without God's help.  Sorry.

Also, I can't be a practicing agnostic in my real life while reading comics about Asgardian gods and Greek Gods and also Eternals, can I?  That kind of makes me a hypocrite where God is concerned.  So yeah, I have to call B.S. on all of it, and there's a lot of it going around, that's for sure.  For the record, it seems all Gods are welcome in the comic-book universe, because there are also the Hindu Gods, the Native American Gods, the Egyptian Gods, probably the Celtic and Mesopotamian ones as well, and then you've got the Celestials, the Elders of the Universe, the cosmic entities (like order & chaos), and then all the powerful beings from other dimensions that Dr. Strange fights, some of them might be deities as well.  Where the hell does this end, and why aren't the Christian groups losing their shit over all of this?  

The MCU movies seem to have adopted the tactic, perhaps across the board, that none of these gods are really Gods, with a capital G, they're all most likely space aliens who just have different powers.  So the Eternals are just that, long-lived space aliens, who have functioned kind of like the monolith from "2001", they're here to make sure that humans advance as a species and get inspired to create technology to improve society.  Yeah, I'm getting less interested by the minute, here.  OK, so they protect humans from "Deviants", what are those?  Just nasty looking fibrous beings, really, more aliens only they're not as nice.  Big whoop.

Plus, it's this whole big multi-culti thing that is SO blatant, SO transparent in the attempt to represent as many races, colors and sexual orientations that I want to support this, but then I just feel they've gone too far. Know what I mean?  There was a situation on "Survivor" this season, which as a show has bent over backwards to get more representation of People of Color, but then to the extent where I wonder if that's even fair now.  In one tribal council the POC's had something of a revelation, that their votes should take the years of racism into account, to the point where they couldn't POSSIBLY see themselves casting a vote to kick another person of color out of the tribe.  Well, then by default they were essentially saying "I'm going to vote out the white people," and then they're doing the exact same form of discrimination that they're trying to combat, just in reverse.  I don't know what the answer is to solving systemic racism, but I'm pretty sure it's not "Let's vote out the white people."

Does it even make SENSE here for the Eternals to, collectively, look like all the races of the world?  Remember, they're not even humans, they just happen to look like humans, and ones that are Asian, Arabic, black, Latino, and those races didn't even EXIST when they were born, or created, or whatever. So, like, WTF?  It's like those holiday for department stores at Christmas time that have to feature a multi-racial and/or gay couple somewhere in every ad, you can just imagine a diversity officer in some advertising agency just ticking off the boxes, because they believe that will financially benefit them somehow in the long run.  This is pandering of the highest order, as if the more races get featured in this superhero group, the more asses - and diverse asses at that - will end up in theater seats. Sure, make one deaf, and make one look like a trans person, or someone of indeterminate gender, that can only open up new audiences for the Marvel brand, that's the engine that's running storytelling these days, apparently.  And now I'm probably the "bad guy" for pointing this out. 

And I stand by my assertion that this did NOT need to be over two and a half hours long, this could easily have been 90 minutes or less - just cut out a few of the arguments the Eternals had over the best way to proceed, and that would have been a solid start towards cutting it down.  What even HAPPENS in this movie, besides fighting a few Deviants?  I'm not even sure.  Who's the villain?  They kind of fell into the same trap as the first "Suicide Squad" movie, that's all I'll say about it - but without a clear villain, then the whole conflict thing is extremely muddled, to say the least.  What's the goal, what's the point, the object of the quest?  Unclear. 

The Eternals find out that their Celestial commander/deity, Arishem, sent seeds into planets all over the galaxy, and the Earth is really some kind of egg for hatching a giant celestial being, which feeds off the energy of intelligence life on the surface of the planet, so the Eternals needed to protect humanity while the Celestial fetus was developing inside the Earth egg, and keep humanity safe and smart so that the Celestial could feed.  What a crock, plus, good luck falling asleep tonight, kids, knowing that one day soon, the Earth is going to crack open like an egg, and we're all going to die!  

NITPICK POINT: Sersi mentions that she and Ikarus were in a relationship together for 5,000 years, but then when we start seeing flashbacks of the Eternals living in various civilizations throughout the course of human history, they seem to get together as a couple in the year 575 B.C., which was not 5,000 years ago, plus in modern times they'd been separated for five centuries, so they were apparently together for 2,000 years, not 5,000 - they can't even keep their own back stories straight!  

I'm glad to see the characters introduced in the closing scenes and mid-credits scenes, they're all welcome additions to the MCU, unlike the Eternals.  For me, of course, maybe there are fans out there of the Eternals, but I'm just not one of them, I wish Marvel could make five more "Guardians of the Galaxy" films before a sequel to "Eternals".  Black Knight is a great addition to the mix, and so is the unseen "mystery" character - I guess Marvel won't stop making movies until every single character gets either a film or a Disney Plus series. 

Also starring Gemma Chan (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Richard Madden (last seen in "The Take"), Angelina Jolie (last heard in "The One and Only Ivan"), Kit Harington (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Kumail Nanjiani (last heard in "Dolittle"), Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry (last heard in "Vivo"), Lauren Ridloff (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Barry Keoghan (last heard in "The Batman"), Ma Dong-Seok/Don Lee, Harish Patel. (last seen in "Run Fatboy Run"), Haaz Sleiman (last seen in "American Dreamz"), Esai Daniel Cross, Harry Styles (last seen in "Dunkirk"), Alan Scott, Hannah Dodd, Adria Escudero, Sebastian Capitan Viveros (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Nikkita Chadha, Zain Al Rafeea, with the voices of Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), David Kaye, Patton Oswalt (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Green Book"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 Bollywood dancers

The Hummingbird Project

Year 14, Day 160 - 6/9/22 - Movie #4,163

BEFORE: Salma Hayek carries over from "After the Sunset", and this will lead to Part 2 of "Catching Up with Marvel Movies" tomorrow.  I've fallen very behind on streaming TV, thanks to the second job. I'm desperately trying to avoid spoilers for the first two episodes of "Kenobi", and then there's season 4 of "Stranger Things", and I haven't even started on "Moon Knight" yet, and now "Ms. Marvel" is waiting in the wings, too.  Maybe I shouldn't look for another part-time job in July, maybe I should just file for unemployment so I can catch up on streaming shows and sleep. JK. 

It's the first day of the Tribeca Film Festival, so I'm working a 12-hour shift at the theater - this may post late because I'll be home after midnight. 

THE PLOT: A pair of high-frequency traders go up against their old boss in an effort to make millions in a fiber-optic cable deal. 

AFTER: I'm fairly out of my depth tonight, because I don't know very much about high-frequency trading, or fiber optic transmission rates, or low latency direct market access, whatever that is.  Fortunately the film sees fit to have the "brain" character on the team explain the whole thing to a waitress, who's really subbing in for the audience.  Every time somebody buys stocks, they do it from a broker - they may use a computer to tell another computer what price they want to buy the stock at, and then the broker's computers all race each other to offer the person that stock at that price. If one broker's computer had a faster response rate than the others, it's more likely that the buyer will take that offer, the first one that meets his buying price with the same selling price.  That broker may only make ten cents of commission on that sale, but multiply that ten cents by a thousand or ten thousand transactions, and it starts to add up to real money.  

I used to pull a similar trick at Penn Station in NYC, when I was taking Amtrak up to Massachusetts - most people waited by the Departures board to find out what track the train to Boston would be leaving from, but I would take a quick glance at the train's number, then move over to the Arrivals board, and look for the same train number, coming in from Washington DC.  The arrivals board would have the information first, because the train has to arrive before it departs - and so I'd learn that the train from Washington was coming in on Track 8, and chances were good that it would also be LEAVING from Track 8, too, so I'd go stand by the escalator leading to track 8, while everyone waiting by the departure board still had no clue.  I got a lot of great window seats on trains with this little trick. 

For the characters here, Vincent Zaleski and his cousin Anton, the scheme is to build a fiber-optic line from Kansas to the New York Stock Exchange, that's a physical high-speed information exchange, buried under all the land in-between, which would theoretically shave the response time for a broker's computer down to 16 milliseconds, to confirm a bid and make the sale of stock happen - for a nickel, or a dime commission, but then ten thousand or a million times over.  16 milliseconds happens to be the length of time of ONE beat of a hummingbird's wings, a fact which really has no relevance, but they do bring it up.  

To accomplish this, both men have to leave their jobs working for a company that makes trading software, and which is experimenting with doing the same thing, only relaying the information over large distances via microwave towers.  And what's worse than losing two of her employees is thinking of the knowledge they may be taking with them, and possibly some of the company's coding as well.  

This all sounds only slightly more legal than that scheme in ""Superman III" and "Office Space" to collect all the rounded-off fractions of pennies from millions of transactions and compiling them into six-figure payouts.  Also, it takes money to buy the land rights for all the many, many pieces of property that lie on a straight line between Kansas and New York, assuming that this is a thing that could be done.  So Vincent had to look for investors, people with maybe $15 or $20 million dollars to spare, who could be convinced that much more money would be available after the project was completed, and whoever was using the fiber-optic line would be first in line to sell stocks to online traders and be able to write their own ticket. 

But of course there are setbacks - drilling through the Appalachian Mountains proves to be more difficult than expected, and it turns out there are Amish farmers in Pennsylvania who don't see the benefit of having messages being transmit over buried cables, and are also not motivated by the money being offered to them.  And every day they don't finish the line is another day for their ex-boss to come closer to using microwaves and making the fiber-optic cables obsolete.  Look, I'm no technical genius, but if the problem is covering the distance between Kansas and New York, with the emormous amount of money being invested in the fiber-optics and the land rights, it would probably just be easier to MOVE their trading computer closer to New York, wouldn't it?  Am I missing something here?  Hell, for the amount of money they were spending on the land rights, it would probably be easier to move KANSAS CITY closer to New York.

But that's me, always thinking outside the box when it comes to solving problems.  This is a lot of what I do at my part-time job, just solve problems relating to the screenings.  I don't exactly follow all of the rules of the building to the letter, I'm more likely to fix something quickly to keep the screening on track, and then worry about the consequences later.  Like setting up "step-and-repeats", those are the backdrops on red carpets with the sponsor logos, and stars get their pictures taken in front of them. There are several models of them out there, some are easier to assemble than others, but I've now seen a few varieties of them, and have some experience putting them up.  I'm not supposed to do this for the client, supposedly it's a liability issue, but if I can build the thing in 10 minutes, that's a lot easier than watching the client struggle with it for an hour - and me doing it keeps the event on track. So, what's the harm?  I'll only be in trouble if one of these things falls over and kills me, or somebody else, and if I do it right, that's not likely to happen. 

There are other problems that develop for our defatigable wanna-be trading brokers, Vincent comes down with a serious illness and hides his diagnosis, while Anton becomes something of a recluse in his hotel room, desperately trying to think of ways to get the 17 millisecond response time down to 16 milliseconds, for some reason that makes all the difference - and they never just think about whether the long trip is necessary in the first place.  So eh, I'm going to take a mulligan on this film. 

Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "Resistance"), Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Michael Mando (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Johan Heldenbergh (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Ayisha Issa, Mark Slacke, Sarah Goldberg (last seen in "The Report"), Frank Schorpion (last seen in "Long Shot"), Kwasi Songui (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Conrad Pia, Julian Bailey (last seen in "French Exit"), Jessica Greco, Robert Reynolds (last seen in "Warm Bodies"), Anna Maguire, Ryan Ali, Kaniehtiio Horn (last seen in "Death Wish"), Anton Koval, Trinity Forrest, Nicolas Fransolet, Tyler Elliot Burke, Clara Nicolas, Bobo Vian (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Igor Ovadis (ditto), Jonathan Dubsky (ditto), Daniel Jun, Jude Beny (last seen in "Birthmarked"), Raphael Grosz-Harvey (last seen in "Midway")

RATING: 5 out of 10 tennis balls

After the Sunset

Year 14, Day 159 - 6/8/22 - Movie #4,162

BEFORE: Well, if Batman has the Joker and Spider-Man has Venom, then for a couple years back in the 1980's, I had my nemesis, Brett Ratner.  We were at NYU Film School at the same time, and sophomore year, we were on the same crew, or we were supposed to be.  That meant we rotated positions, I was assigned to his crew when he directed a short and he was supposed to crew for me when I directed, but he never showed up for me, not once.  I don't know where he was or what he was doing, but honestly, I didn't care, I was better off learning how to make a film with one less person.  His whole attitude disgusted me, he spent every possible moment hitting on women in the park, offering them gum - that was his move.  It's the old law of averages, if you hit on 100 women then one's bound to be interested, it's a simple matter of volume - but that doesn't mean you have to hit on 100 women every day, like he did.  

I held a grudge for a VERY long time - I may forget, but I don't forgive.  So when he got caught up in the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement a couple decades later, I wasn't the least bit surprised.  For a long while I boycotted all of his movies, I still haven't seen any of the "Rush Hour" films, for example, but I had to lift the ban when he directed one of the X-Men movies, and it was the worst one until "Dark Phoenix" came along.  Today's film sort of slipped by me, I didn't realize he directed it until it was too late, it became part of the chain and now I don't have a replacement - but I'm not so petty that I can't give it a fair chance, even if it's terrible.  We'll see. 

Anyway, I got the last laugh, right?  His Hollywood career is over, he's been boycotted and blackballed for his horrible treatment of women over the years, and I hope he saved his money so he can run out of it someday.  I thought maybe if I'm in need of better employment I could try to get a job at NYU, but he's a big donor to that school, and I wonder why they haven't cut ties with him yet. I certainly wouldn't want to join any institution where he held any authority.  I saw him on the streets of NYC one time in the early 2000's and regretted not punching his lights out, though.  Still, I seriously doubt he even remembers me, I was just a little bump in his road, and he was a big pothole in mine. 

Woody Harrelson AND Naomie Harris carry over from "Venom: Let There Be Carnage". 

THE PLOT: What happens after a master thief achieves his last big score, when the F.B.I. agent who promised he'd capture him is about to do just that. 

AFTER: Urgh, this isn't a terrible film, it's just completely nonsensical - this just isn't how FBI agents or jewel thieves or anything depicted here works in real life.  Diamonds don't come in sets of threes, for example, that's not even a thing.  And FBI agents wouldn't be involved in delivering a diamond to where it needs to be, that seems like a security firm would handle it. And don't get me started on the tech involved here in taking over a car's control systems by using the VIN and a cell phone, I doubt we have that technology NOW, and this came out in 2004.  

So after stealing the 2nd diamond in a set of three (again, not a thing) thief Max Burdett and his girlfriend fly to Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and just start living there.  So to finance this lifestyle, they must have SOLD the diamond, but then they don't have it.  And if they don't have it, why would they be interested in the third one, because it's not like they could complete the set, they couldn't possibly have the second diamond any more...  Jeez, I love when I can shoot down a film's whole premise in just a couple of sentences. 

The third diamond goes on display in a cruise ship that's visiting the Bahamas - that couldn't possibly be a thing either, there are no museum-type exhibits on cruise ships.  I've been on three, and while there was plenty of tanzanite jewelry for sale on the ship, there were no diamonds on display, just to look at.  So, not a thing.  Anyway, if cruise ships DID have a museum-type display area, which they don't, it would be limited to visits from JUST the passengers - they're not going to let random tourists from Paradise Island on board the ship, that's a security issue.  They check your boarding passes when you get back on board to make sure you're a paying customer of THAT ship in THAT cruise line, I'm pretty sure nobody else is allowed on board, otherwise there would be the risk of stowaways - so another strike, this plot is just not feasible.  

Still, the film continues - Max wants the diamond, but his girlfriend says it's not worth the trouble, or at least he shouldn't try to steal it without her help - she seems to go back and forth on this point, so which is it?  Does she want to work with him to steal the diamond together, or for him to not try to steal the diamond at all?  She can't have it both ways... 

Then the FBI agent they stole the previous diamond from shows up, and he's been a laughing stock at the agency ever since their last encounter, so he's determined to catch Max in the act, even though Max still won't admit to planning another heist, or to being any kind of thief at all, even though that WOULD explain how they can afford to live in a beachside house in the Bahamas. Burdett actually befriends Agent Lloyd (or pretends to) and pays for him to have a fancy suite at the Paradise Resort, with massages and fancy food and everything.  Then they go fishing together and a bromance seems to be developing, but is it all an act?  

Then there's a local gangster who also wants the diamond, and a local police woman who wants to help the FBI agent, so another chance for romance there. But Max spends so much time obsessing over stealing the diamond, or NOT stealing the diamond, that he neglects his own girlfriend (geezus, WHY couldn't they work on this together?) and she eventually throws him out. But before that, there's an excessively complex sequence where Max DOES try to steal the diamond, while also pretending to be on a scuba diving trip with all the others.  I couldn't even follow it, it was so ridiculous. 

Thank God this film was a critical and financial failure - it broke even at the box office, which is considered a failure.  And the director NEVER missed an opportunity to get women nearly naked in front of the camera, so it's good to see Brett Ratner staying true to himself, I guess.  But just a few years later, look at all the trouble that caused him - you couldn't make this film today, there's just too many shots of Salma Hayek's tits nearly falling out of her blouse.  Hey, write what you know, I guess. Women are sex objects, gay men are punchlines - and Brett Ratner is an extinct dinosaur. 

Also starring Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Salma Hayek (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Don Cheadle (last seen in "The Family Man"), Chris Penn (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Troy Garity (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Obba Babatundé (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Russell Hornsby (last seen in "Creed II"), Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Rex Linn (last seen in "The Hunted"), Robert Curtis Brown (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Mark Moses (last seen in "Bombshell"), Michael Bowen (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Lisa Thornhill (also last seen in "The Family Man"), Joel McKinnon Miller (ditto), Alan Dale, Noémie Lenoir, Paul Korda, 

with cameos from Paul Benedict (last seen in "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Rachael Harris, John Michael Higgins (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Tom McGowan (also last seen in "The Family Man"), Kate Walsh. (ditto) and archive footage of Dyan Cannon, Phil Jackson, Karl Malone, Shaquille O'Neal, Edward Norton (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Gary Payton, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 rowdy Lakers fans

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Year 14, Day 158 - 6/7/22 - Movie #4,161

BEFORE: I'm going to try very hard to catch up today - I stayed up late watching two movies in a row, now all I have to do is post two reviews very quickly, and I'll be back on track.  JUST in time to work several long shifts at the Tribeca Film Festival, so I'll probably fall behind again, in just a couple of days.  Well, I'm trying - if I do fall behind again, I'll have a lot of time in July to make it up - just let me get to my Father's Day film on time, that's all I ask. 

Tom Hardy carries over from "Child 44". Time to play "Catching Up with Marvel Movies - Part 1". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Venom" (Movie #3,177), "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (Movie #4,007)

THE PLOT: Eddie Brock attempts to reignite his career by interviewing serial killer Cletus Kasady, who becomes the host of the symbiote Carnage and escapes prison after a failed execution. 

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT ahead, but not for "Venom: Let There Be Carnage", the alert is for "Spider-Man: No Way Home", so if you haven't seen that one yet, please skip a few paragraphs below, because it's now impossible to talk about one film without talking about the other - they're kind of intertwined. 

Now, clearly I'm getting to this film very late, and as a result I've watched the films from the Spider-Multi-Verse in the WRONG order.  If you've been keeping track, Marvel's been fighting with Sony for YEARS over the rights to Spider-Man, so as a result the three films with Tobey Maguire and the two films with Andrew Garfield were kept separate from the main MCU films like "Avengers", "Iron Man", the three Captain Americas and one of the Hulk films (?) - obviously there are more, but let's move on.  Tensions between the two companies eased this year with the formation of a movie multi-verse, in which all team-ups and crossovers are possible, as long as someone finds a way to use magic or science and a character says the word "multiverse" at some point.  This led to a film with three Spider-Men and villains from three different universes getting together, all because Spider-Man's identity was revealed, and he tried to get Dr. Strange to cast a spell to change reality.  It did not go well, except for the fact that all companies involved made more money than is humanly possible, enough to fund another multiverse of potential sequels. 

Venom got caught up in this, in a way that makes zero sense - he only appeared in the mid-credits scene, he didn't meet Spider-Man (any of them) or fight Spider-Man (ditto), he just sat in a tropical bar for a few days, drinking cocktails.  Now, what was the FREAKING point of that?  Anyway, he never should have been there in the first place, because Dr. Strange's spell only applied to characters who knew that Spider-Man is also Peter Parker, people like Dr. Octopus and Green Goblin in Universe A and The Lizard and Electro from Universe B.  There was A VENOM in Universe A who knew, but it wasn't this, the Tom Hardy Venom, it was the Topher Grace Venom.  Right?  So why did Tom Hardy Venom get teleported to the MCU?  Was there a clerical error in the Department of Multiverse Transportation?  

Now, finally, I'm getting to see the same scene from Venom's perspective, because at the end of "Let There Be Carnage", Eddie Brock takes his symbiote to a tropical beach, not only to relax but to get away from the people whose brains Venom wants to eat.  From there, they are both transported to the main MCU because of Dr. Strange's spell.  Upon arrival in the MCU, they see J. Jonah Jameson on TV, revealing Peter Parker's double life.  Immediately, the Venom symbiote doesn't like Spider-Man, and expresses a desire to eat his brain - but, where is this coming from?  This symbiote is not the one from "Spider-Man 3", so it's never even met Parker OR Spider-Man.  The key, I suppose, is the implication that the Venoms from the different universes share some kind of hive-mind, so their memories and experiences are shared throughout the multi - but really, this feels like a huge narrative cop-out.  Also a huge disappointment, to bring the characters into the same universe for basically no reason at all.

Why does Venom have to have his OWN universe?  Why does he need to live in a universe without the Avengers or the X-Men?  I mean, I guess there's no effort expended by a writer saying, "OK, so next to THAT universe, there's another one in which..."  but come on, this Venom could have easily occupied his own corner of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Verse and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.  And you can't tell me at the SAME TIME that there's a Venom in every universe and also some universes (like the MCU) that don't already have one.  Make up your damn mind, already, which is it?  It's too late to fix this, we've already seen that it's easier to just place a new character in a new timeline than it is to explain why they've existed in the MCU but have been in hiding or off-planet for the last 10 years, like Captain Marvel was.  

Anyway, it seems like MCU Spider-Man and Venomverse Venom just aren't meant to be a thing, they'll have to muddle through without each other - two ships that passed in the night between dimensions. But then, what's Spider-Man without his arch-enemy / evil twin / mirror double?  What's Batman without the Joker, or Superman without Lex Luthor, Captain America without the Red Skull?  Boring, that's what.  When the Venom character first hit the comics, Eddie Brock was positioned as Peter Parker's opposite, another journalist who wasn't above cutting corners for the sake of a story, a tabloid journalist who got the facts about a serial killer wrong, and thus discredited, and he blamed Peter Parker for revealing the truth, which got him fired.  This guy connected with the "alien costume" which Spider-Man brought back from the Secret Wars, and was bonding with him, stealing his energy and forcing him to go out on midnight villain patrol while technically asleep.  The bonding was about to become permanent but he was able to free himself from the costume in time - but then when the costume teamed up with Brock, two creatures that hated the same person came together, and Venom shared the knowledge of Spider-Man's identity, thus creating the ultimate enemy for Spider-Man. 

The 2018 Venom film took away all the most important parts of this origin story, leaving just the fact that the costume came from outer space, and the bonding with Eddie Brock.  Yawn city, where's the motivating grudge against Peter Parker, where's the rancor over losing his newspaper job, what's driving the engine, besides just a desire to eat human brains?  Sure, other stuff happened, but the fact that I can't remember any of it should tell you something.  There was a science lab. - right, the Life Foundation, there was another symbiote named Riot, and there were a bunch of explosions. That's all that stuck with me, and that should tell you something. This Venom NEEDS a Spider-Man to fight, and right now, I don't care which one. 

Instead, what they've done is put him up against Carnage, which is a sneaky trick to make Venom look like less of a villain (and more of an anti-hero), just put him up against another character who's much, much worse.  I try not to read the "Carnage" solo comics that Marvel puts out, because they're generally way too gory, and buying them would sort of justify a level of violence that I think maybe goes too far.  But I see the strategy here, Venom bites the heads off of criminals, but he does that to feed, to survive, while Carnage just kills because he enjoys it. But then who are we to say one set of killings is better than another?  Wrong is wrong, in any universe. 

What's really going on here is in the same vein, I suspect, as "Cruella", "Maleficent" and the three Star Wars prequels explaining Darth Vader's turn to the dark side.  If they can just go back to describe each character's origin story, learn why they're so messed up in the first place, surely we can justify their evil on a sliding scale, right?  I mean, Vader had a darn good reason for killing all the other Jedi, right?  Sure, and Thanos meant well, too, but finding reasons for these characters' villainous actions comes a bit too close to justifying them, if you ask me.  But just because Venom needs to ingest a certain chemical, that can't POSSIBLY excuse him biting off human heads - nor should the fact that Brock tries to limit him to killing only bad people.  Bad people all deserve to die?  No chance for due process, remorse or rehabilitation?  Guess not, but that's a weird message to send out to the kids. 

Eddie Brock is on the outs at the start of this sequel - no girlfriend, no job and just learning to live with his new roommate, the Venom symbiote.  All I could think about was the set-up for "The Odd Couple" - can two down and out characters share an apartment, without driving each other crazy?  Apparently not, especially when they happen to also share a BODY.  After the Carnage character is introduced, the man and his alien decided to separate, Venom wants to see other host bodies, while Eddie just wants some peace and quiet, and a chance to do some home repairs.  But deep down, we all know that these two crazy kids have just GOT to come back together, most likely to take down Carnage.  

They also added a girlfriend for Carnage here, someone he knew at the orphanage, who has superpowers or mutant powers, despite the fact that there are no other superheroes or supervillains in the VenomVerse.  (Again, screenwriters, make up your minds! You created this universe, why can't you be consistent about what's in it?).  This character, Shriek, is taken from the comic books, specifically a cross-over called "Maximum Carnage", but in the comics she met Carnage as an adult, not as a teen.  There's a weird interplay here because Shriek's super-power, the ability to scream really loud, also tends to damage the symbiotes, whose main weaknesses are fire and loud noises.  

There's also a police detective character, and this was extremely confusing for me - why was Eddie Brock, reporter, taking orders from a detective?  Did I miss something, was Eddie Brock a cop in the last film?  In most universes, reporters don't work for the police, so things must be really different in the VenomVerse. Detective Mulligan is someone with a past connection to Shriek, he shot her when she was trying to escape from the cops, and collectively the two villains here are united in their hatred of three characters - Cletus Kasady hates Eddie Brock, Shriek hates Detective Mulligan, and Carnage hates Venom, his pseudo-"father".  I don't know, is this enough of a storyline?  It sure doesn't feel like it - one big battle, and this film is over, but good luck trying to get a refund from your local theater manager.  The detective manages to survive the film, and seems to walk away with super-powers and knowledge of the symbiotes, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what villain he's going to turn into in "Venom 3."

Really, there's only ONE way to follow up this storyline, the next film should go all-out and adapt Marvel's "King in Black" crossover series.  In this storyline, the God of the symbiotes, Knull, breaks free after thousands of years in captivity, and comes to Earth, turning it into a planet full of symbiotes.  Epic scale, perhaps even too big for a movie, but it would be interesting to see, I think.  

There's a point in this film where Venom, released from Brock, spends time exploring the San Francisco nightlife, and all that entails. This does raise a few questions, I suppose, about the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom - are they an interspecies couple?  Or are they even closer than that, because they share a body and care about each other, on some level?  I don't know, but Happy Pride Month, Venom!  

Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story"), Reid Scott (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Stephen Graham (last heard in "Hellboy" (2019)), Peggy Lu (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Sian Webber, Larry Olubamiwo, Little Simz, Sean Delaney, Olumide Olorunfemi, Jack Bandeira (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Scroobius Pip, Stewart Alexander (last seen in "The Batman"), Christopher Godwin (last seen in "The Dig"), Reece Shearsmith (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Rosie Marcel with archive footage of Tom Holland (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Being the Ricardos") and a cameo from Sonny Ashbourne Serkis (also carrying over from "Child 44")

RATING: 6 out of 10 holes in the ceiling

Child 44

Year 14, Day 157 - 6/6/22 - Movie #4,160

BEFORE: I got word yesterday that a former colleague was in an accident in Brooklyn, he was on a moped a few days ago, waiting for the light to change, and got rear-ended by a car, driven by a woman who had no license and was high on PCP and coke.  It's just horrible, he was dragged and pinned under the car, and pronounced dead at the hospital.  We weren't THAT close, or maybe that's just something I'm saying to numb the pain of this.  Almost ten years ago, he subbed in for me when I went on a two-week vacation, but we had some of the same film production and office skills, so I didn't have permanent work for him at the time.  But he came from a town in Massachusetts that neighbors my hometown, so I felt we had a bit of a connection, though he was 20 years younger than me.  It's just bizarre, and I don't think I've felt the full weight of this yet, he was well-liked by everyone in the animation and gaming worlds he worked in - I can't make it to Massachusetts for the funeral, so I'm just going to KBO, keep buggering on. 

Gary Oldman carries over from "Mank", and so does one other actor. 

THE PLOT: A disgraced member of the Russian military police investigates a series of child murders during the Stalin-ear Soviet Union. 

AFTER: This film starts with a scene set during the Holodomor, which was a Russian invasion of Ukraine in 1933.  This was also known as the great "Terror-Famine", millions of Ukrainians died after the Soviet Union tried to starve them into surrender.  Well, I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same - just replace "Stalin" with "Putin", and this opening is as timely as today's headlines. 

Fast forward to 1945, as the Soviet army manages to get to Berlin before the U.S. Army did, and Leo Demidov, that skinny kid from the Ukraine, becomes a national hero to the Soviets after being photographed raising their flag above the Reichstag.  

Fast forward again to 1953, and Leo is a captain in the MGB, that's the Ministry of State Security, charged with tracking down and arresting dissidents.  But with everyone jockeying for position in the new regime, nearly anyone can be accused as a dissident, and it's oddly reminiscent of the U.S. McCarthy hearings, each dissident is asked to name their conspirators, which gives the MGB 8 or 9 more people to check out - and each one of THOSE people names 8 or 9 more people, so it looks like there's job security, the work will never end.  (In the U.S., you report crimes to the police, but in Soviet Russia, police report your crimes to YOU...)

Leo's rival in the MGB is Vasili, they came up through the ranks together but during the arrest of a dissident veterinarian, Vasili bungles the interrogation and kills the farming couple that was harboring the fugitive, orphaning their two daughters. Leo chastises Vasili for his actions, setting the two men against each other, and not for the last time.  (In the U.S., you give a party for your friends, but in Soviet Russia, your friends give you TO the Party...)

After Leo learns about the suspicious death of another officer's son, found dead near a railway year, he's instructed to inform the family that the death was an accident, and to mention in the report that the boy was found fully clothed, which is a weird thing to point out - so that probably means the boy was found naked, except that's not the sort of thing that's supposed to happen in the Soviet Union. Since the country is a paradise, every potential murder is classified as an accident, and since it's paradise, there are definitely no perverted pedophile child-killers roaming about - thus crime is neatly logic-ed away and basically swept under the rug.  At the same time, that veterinarian had named several other dissidents, one of which just happens to be Leo's wife - so he's forced to investigate her, and ask himself how much he REALLY knows about her... (In the U.S., your family gives you your name, but in Soviet Russia, you give your family's name...as dissidents!)

Leo's given a terrible choice, either turn in his own wife or stick by her and lose his rank - he chooses the latter, and they're forced into exile in another province, Leo is demoted to policeman, but for some reason he still has to solve the case of the serial killer who's definitely not raping and killing young boys he meets in train stations, even though that's what it sure looks like. 43 dead boys found naked and mutilated, I'm sure it's just a coincidence, right?  Well, at least Leo's got a lot of time to work on the case now. He finds an ally in his superior, General Nesterov, who uses the same "turn in all your friends" mentality to round up all the homosexual men in Volsk. Sure, that'll do it. 

Eventually, this turns into something like "CSI: Moscow" or perhaps "CSI: CCCP", because Demidov ends up using forensics and logic to piece together information about the killer - he must live near a train station, he's got an extensive knowledge of the rail network, none of the killings took place east of a certain point, so what does that mean?  Leo and his dissident wife, Raisa, are forced to work together to get back to Moscow to interview a witness.  But they're caught and sent by train to a gulag, and they have to work together again to escape the killers on the train and get back to Volsk.  This is a form of marriage therapy, I suppose. 

Leo's old rival, Vasili, returns once the killer is found, and it's showdown between the two men over the killer, and maybe over Raisa as well. I couldn't help but think of Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises" battling Rick Flag from "Suicide Squad" while Commissioner Gordon awaits the outcome of the fight.  Just me? 

Somehow, impossibly, it all works out - the killer is taken care of by Vasily, Vasily is taken care of by Leo, and he gives all credit to Vasily for solving the case.  Stalin conveniently dies and Leo is offered a promotion, but he chooses instead to establish the Moscow police homicide division, as long as he can hire his old boss, General Nesterov.  And his marriage to Raisa is stronger than ever, thanks to their adventures escaping from the gulag together - they even track down those two orphaned farm girls and try to build a family together.  It's all maybe just a little too tidy at the end of the day. (In the U.S. you solve crimes, in Soviet Russia, crimes solve YOU)

Also starring Tom Hardy (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Noomi Rapace (last seen in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest"), Joel Kinnaman (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Vincent Cassel (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Jason Clarke (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Paddy Considine (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Josef Altin (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Locked Down"), Ned Dennehy (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Fares Fares (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mark Lewis Jones (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Xavier Atkins (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Sonny Ashbourne Serkis (last seen in "Dolittle"), Kevin Michael Clarke, Petr Vanek, David Bowles, Michael Nardone (last seen in "Dune" (2021)), Fedja Stukan, Anssi Lindstrom, Joseph Harmon (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Charles Dance (also carrying over from "Mank"), Tara Fitzgerald (last seen in "The King"), Samuel Buttery, Agnieskza Grochowska, Jana Strykova, Ursina Lardi (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Jemma O'Brien, Lottie Steer (last seen in "Paddington"), Zdenek Barinka, Finbar Lynch, Hana Frejkova (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Patra Lustigova (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"), Lorraine Ashbourne, Predrag Bjelac, Ondrej Maly, Ivan G'Vera (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Vaclav Jiracek, Pavel Simcik, Heather Craney, Martin Hub, Flynn Matthews, Marie Jansova, Ivan Shvedoff (also last seen in "The Aftermath"), Romana Goscikova.

RATING: 6 out of 10 bogus coroner's reports

Mank

Year 14, Day 156 - 6/5/22 - Movie #4,159

BEFORE: This is another film that was in contention for the Best Picture Oscar not this year, but last year.  The ceremony that was 15 months ago, not 3 months ago - the one held in 2021 featuring the nominated films of 2020.  Am I making this more complicated than it needs to be?  It's always confusing because the films released in one year get awarded in the next, so out of the films that were released in 2020, one gets to be called the Best Picture of 2021, or some people refer to it that way, which I suppose is technically incorrect.  It's why some outlets fall back on "Best Picture at the 93rd Annual Academy Awards", so it doesn't get more confusing, but of course that only makes it MORE confusing, because nobody out there knows what year they gave out the 93rd Annual Awards, they have to then look that up.  

Anyway, I started this year with "Nomadland", which was awarded the Best Picture of 2020, but won the award in 2021.  Last year I only managed to watch ONE of the Best Picture nominees from 2020, which was "The Trial of the Chicago 7", but since January 1 I've been catching up, by also watching "Promising Young Woman", "Judas and the Black Messiah", and now "Mank".  "The Father" is on tap for June, obvi, so once I watch that one, I've have seen 6 out of 8, leaving just two - "Minari" and "Sound of Metal".  "Minari" is on cable now, but God knows when I'll be able to link to it - "Sound of Metal" is also on my list, but I think it's on AmazonPrime, I hope to work both of them in soon.

I've still only seen two of the ten films nominated for Best Picture of 2021, just "Dune" and "The Power of the Dog". I guess check back in with me in 12 months?  

And if I'd kept the original plan for this year's chain, and not flipped around that section in mid-May, I'd still have ended up right HERE, because then "The King's Man" would have ended up on yesterday, and Charles Dance would carry over to this one. But now, instead, Lily Collins carries over from "Windfall". 

THE PLOT: 1930's Hollywood is re-evaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of "Citizen Kane". 

AFTER:  I've seen other films about the making of "Citizen Kane", or the process of Orson Welles leading up to it - most notably there was "RKO 281" and "Me and Orson Welles", though the latter was more about a play produced at the Mercury Theater, but "RKO 281" was totally about making "Kane", if I remember right.  Christian McKay played Orson in "Me and Orson Welles" and Liev Schreiber portrayed him in "RKO 281", oh, and then there was Angus Macfadyen in "Cradle Will Rock", but I'll always fondly recall Vincent D'Onofrio playing him in "Ed Wood". Great casting, all around. 

The subject matter of this film is fairly controversial, because "Citizen Kane" is one of those cinematic sacred cows, you can't say anything bad about it, or you'll be in trouble.  It didn't win Best Picture that year, but it won Best Original Screenplay, and Oscars were given to Welles and Herman Mankiewicz for their thinly-veiled takedown of William Randolph Hearst.  But then in 1971, critic Pauline Kael suggested that Welles' Oscar was undeserved, because he didn't do any work on the script, it was all Mankiewicz.  Even if it's true, this is a waste-of-time argument, because it just doesn't matter, all that matters is whose names are on the first page of the script, and who's holding a shiny gold Oscar at the end of the ceremony.  

But Kael's assertion got some traction, and writer Jack Fincher made a screenplay focusing on Mankiewicz, his background, his unusual process, and his work on "Kane", then he died in 2003, but his son, David Fincher, eventually turned this into a movie.  Welles is dead, Mankiewicz is dead, Pauline Kael is dead (?) and same goes for Jack Fincher, and by now I don't think there's anyone still alive who worked on "Citizen Kane" in any capacity, so essentially, this is all hearsay.  The big question then becomes, does this even matter?  I guess only to anyone who thinks "Citizen Kane" is a work of pure genius, the best film ever made, but I don't know how many of those people are still around, also.  I mean, come on, "Citizen Kane" or "Avengers: Endgame", which would you rather watch again?  I know, it shouldn't be an either/or situation, there should be room enough in your viewing schedule for BOTH.  Welles got really crazy near the end, as seen in "F For Fake" and "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead", but he never made a superhero movie, what would THAT have been like? 

So this film "Mank" exists to prove this point, that the story was all Mankiewicz, and not Welles.  Mankiewicz knew simply everybody in Hollywood, but Welles was a theater and radio guy from New York, an outsider.  That's one point for Kael's argument.  Mankiewicz knew Marion Davies, Hearst's girlfriend who was the star of the films he financed, despite having zero acting ability and a strong Brooklyn accent, so she just wasn't cut out for the "talkies" when they came along (a plot point also seen in "Singin' in the Rain", aka the musical version of "Citizen Kane", only not really).  

"Mank" is set up with one of those split-timeline structures, the framing timeline is set in 1940, during the writing of the screenplay, and from there, the film flashes back to 1930, 1933-1934, and 1937, all detailing Mankiewicz's experiences in La-La Land, sort of Forrest Gump style where he interacts with Louis B. Mayer, William Randolph Hearst, Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick and to a lesser extent, Charlie Chaplin, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Dolores Del Rio. The film very kindly telegraphs the flashbacks with titles that are like script notes, saying things like "Exterior - Hearst compound at San Simeon, 1934 (flashback)". It's a little too cutesy, but honestly I wish more films would take an approach like this once they start time-jumping, it was very helpful.  Without this, it could be very confusing, and some people might be wondering why Herman Mankiewicz is in a body cast in one scene and then attending a party in the next scene without the cast.  

So, there are two stories going on at once, one set in the 1930's and one set in 1940 - in the earlier timeline we see Mank re-meeting Davies on the set of some horrible movie, but also befriending Hearst.  A year or two later, Mank attends Louis Mayer's birthday party at Hearst's estate, and everyone discusses this Hitler fellow, how dangerous the Nazis could be, and the fact that Upton Sinclair wants to run for governor of California.  In 1934, Mank and his brother Joe are working for MGM, where Hearst is funding propaganda films to discredit Sinclair, produced by Thalberg. The smear campaign is successful, as we see on election night 1934, where Republican Frank Merriam easily defeats Democrat Upton Sinclair, and Mank loses a bundle by betting on the wrong candidate.  Shortly thereafter, Mank's colleague Shelly Metcalf commits suicide, perhaps because of his work on the propaganda films, perhaps because of a recent medical diagnosis.  Either way, this appears to be the pivotal point where Mank turned against Hearst. 

Fast forward three years to 1937, where a drunk Mankiewicz crashes another party at Hearst Castle, and by this point, he's really got it in for Hearst and Mayer.  He basically gives the "elevator pitch" for "Citizen Kane" in an intoxicated rant, no names but it's super obvious who he's talking about.  Alcohol seems to be the trigger that connects the past and the present for the audience here, it's possible that Mank gets drunk every night while working on the "Kane" screenplay, and that prompts the next flashback.  Then Mank gets drunk in the past, and we return to the "present" storyline in 1940 - I'd have to watch it again to be sure, but I think this is a bit like "Quantum Leap" or "Back to the Future", with alcohol in the place of a time machine. 

This was a different time, for sure - drinking was a bit more acceptable, the phrase "responsible drinking" didn't even exist, and I'm honestly not sure if drunk driving was against the law back then.  I mean, you could still smoke in restaurants and movie theaters and on airplanes, so who cared about a little vehicular manslaughter here and there? 

Speaking of car crashes, the 1940 timeline sort of starts with one, forcing Mank to be taken to a recovery facility in the California desert, where John Houseman sets him up with a secretary to take dictation for the script, a massage therapist, and a secret stash of alcohol, aka time-travel juice. The booze helps Mank remember the important details from his Hollywood career in the 1930's, but it also slows down the process - it turns out you can't write a screenplay as quickly once you factor in 12-hour blackouts.  So Mank's up against the deadline, Houseman comes to hurry things along, but also reminds Mank that his deal is to receive NO screen credit. However, when Welles offers him a buyout, Mank reneges on the deal, and demands screen credit for what he calls his greatest work. Well, we all know how THAT one ended, both men got Oscars for the screenplay.  

Ironies abound here - "Citizen Kane" was one of the first non-linear films, and "Mank" kind of follows suit.  The film is in black and white, as "Kane" was, and uses similar filming techniques that were popular at the time, such as a driving scene with a car against a very obvious fake background.  "Mank" also uses the "day-for-night" lighting technique on the grounds of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, you hardly ever see that used any more, these days they'd just press a button and change the color of the pixels in the sky, probably.  And then there's that shot of Mank passing out and dropping the glass liquor bottle, very similar to Kane dropping the snowglobe in that more famous movie.  This is maybe a little too clever and insider-y, though.

I just don't know if it's worth all this trouble to make one little point about "Citizen Kane".  OK, so Mankiewicz knew Marion Davies, and he had it in for Hearst.  Well, they say "write what you know", so that's what he did.   Even if Orson Welles didn't co-write the screenplay with him, he was still the boss, he had to decide whether to film the script as is or change it, and that means he was involved in the writing process to some degree, and now we're just arguing over what degree that was.  It's a lot of fuss over nothing, if you ask me.

Also starring Gary Oldman (last seen in "HIitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Amanda Seyfried (last heard in "Scoob!"), Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard (last seen in "Birth"), Tuppence Middleton (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Monika Gossmann, Joseph Cross (last seen in "Untraceable"), Sam Troughton (last seen in "Sylvia"), Toby Leonard Moore (last seen in "John Wick"), Tom Burke (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Charles Dance (last seen in "The King's Man"), Ferdinand Kingsley (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Jamie McShane, Jack Romano, Adam Shapiro (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), John Churchill, Jeff Harms, Derek Petropolis, Sean Persaud, Paul Fox (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Tom Simmons, Nick Job, Craig Welzbacher, Jessie Cohen, Desiree Louise, Amie Farrell (last seen in "American Sniper"), Ian Boyd, John Lee Ames, Bill Nye (last seen in "An Honest Liar"), Flo Lawrence, Leven Rambin (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Roslyn Cohn, Mark Fite (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Craig Robert Young (last seen in "A Good Year"), Sean Donnellan, Isabel Dresden, Glenn Edward, Grace Kennedy-Piehl, Emily Joy Lemus, Marcello Padilla, Trevor Powers, Christian Roberts (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Tyler Schweer, Helen Shephard, Joanne Thomson, Michelle Twarowska, Jelly Vamvas and the voice of Ben Mankiewicz (last seen in "White House Down"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 references to Don Quixote

Windfall

Year 14, Day 155 - 6/4/22 - Movie #4,158

BEFORE: I'm finally back to where I WOULD have been on May 14, if I hadn't watched "A Quiet Place Part II", this was the film that was originally going to follow "Jungle Cruise", but I flipped this whole section of the chain around, so that the World War I and World War II films would get watched before Memorial Day.  I stand by that decision - any time I make an alteration like this to line things up with the calendar it seems to work out, however it meant I had to drop a few films, like "An Accidental Studio", and even a minor change like dropping one film could hurt me at the end of the year, there's no way to know.  Probably I could just fix a shortage of one movie now by adding another at the end, but I can't be sure. 

So now Jesse Plemons carries over from "Judas and the Black Messiah", instead of from "Jungle Cruise" and I'll link back up to the film tomorrow that originally would have followed "The King's Man".  Oh, and I dropped two other films with Jesse Plemons for time constraints, as there are only so many days in June, it turns out.  Those films are "The Discovery" and "Antlers", the judges have ruled that they're both horror films, or horror films of a sort, so some effort should be made to watch them in October.  And they DO link up with other horror films, but I've got two different chains building for this year's ShockFest, and I'm not 100% sure which one I'm going to go with.  Maybe I'll find a way to link them together, but I don't have it yet. Anyway, I think I'm still on schedule for Father's Day and July 4. 

THE PLOT: A man breaks into a tech billionaire's empty vacation home, but things go sideways when the arrogant mogul and his wife arrive for a last-minute getaway. 

AFTER: This film is from the director of "The One You Love", which I watched in February 2021, and sure sounded like a romance film, but it turned out to have a big twist that involved...well, I won't reveal it here.  But it was the kind you don't forget when you go in expecting something about love and romance, and you get THAT.  So I was all prepared to be surprised again today, but then "prepared to be surprised" is something of a contradiction, isn't it?  If I'm prepared, how can I be surprised?  

Anyway, when presented with the situation, which is just three people in a vacation getaway, one of whom is NOT supposed to be there, I started thinking about where this could possibly go, what's the angle?  Is there an angle?  There's got to be an angle...  The most illogically logical one I could think of was, maybe this is a hidden love triangle, maybe there's trouble in the marriage between the CEO and his wife, and the guy crashing in the vacation home is really her secret boyfriend, and the whole thing's a set-up to get money from the billionaire, and the more time they spend together, the more likely that all the truth's going to come out and all the secrets will be slowly revealed.  

Sure, that was possible, and it would have been fine, but that's NOT where this movie ended up going.  Yes, there was some trouble in the marriage, that's to be expected when one character is a tech billionaire and his wife runs their charitable foundation (*cough* Bill and Melinda *cough*) but it didn't feel like the wife and "Nobody" were in cahoots from the start.  (There are no character names in this film, in the credits they're just "CEO", "Wife" and "Nobody".). But Nobody is definitely in this to get some money, the best theory is that he's one of the many people who were laid off or made expendable by the CEO's various business dealings, buyouts and downsizings or corporate leveraging or deals that made other companies worthless. 

And Nobody was willing to take all the cash on hand at the house, plus a nice watch, to go away without the police being called or lawyers getting involved.  But then he spotted a security camera, and realized that maybe his problems were just beginning, if there was a digital record of him breaking in or leaving the property with a bag of cash, he'd need MORE money to get further away and start a new life off the grid.  So he comes BACK to the house, this time with the gun that the CEO supposedly didn't have, and holds the couple hostage until they can arrange to get him a bigger payday.  A windfall, if you will. 

This feels very much like the kind of movie that gets made during a pandemic, with just four actors (one of which is married to the director) and one location, though it is a BEAUTIFUL location.  This same director filmed "The One You Love" in his parents' (Mary Steenburgen and step-dad Ted Danson) Hollywood home, perhaps this beautiful Ojai, CA estate (complete with orange grove) belongs to his father, Malcolm McDowell or somebody equally famous.  But once again, it's all about the real estate.  (EDIT: Ah, it's the Casa Ojai Inn, a three-star hotel which was conveniently available during the pandemic, since fewer people were traveling and staying in hotels.)

But it's not just a film that was clearly made with pandemic restrictions in place, it's also about what happens between people when they're sequestered together for any length of time, and so that's also related to the pandemic.  How many relationships were affected by people spending more time together, in close quarters, and realizing new things about their life partners or themselves?  How many people questioned their life choices when they had to re-assess their jobs, their priorities, their relationships, due to quarantine and isolation?  Not everyone can pick up a phone and have an assistant arrange for a large amount of cash to be withdrawn from the company account and left as unmarked bills, dropped off in a bag.  Most of us had to scramble to either find a new job we could do from home or file for unemployment - and for most of us, breaking into a tech CEO's home wasn't an option, either. Perhaps the interactions of the people forced together here is an extreme example, but could it happen? 

I think the IMDB has finally figured me out - while visiting the page for "Windfall", they're showing me clips of the film I'm going to watch tomorrow.  This has happened a couple times on Netflix and Hulu, when I sign on and the first film they recommend is the one I'm about to watch.  My plan is usually so random and my approach is so scattershot, that I'm now a bit concerned. 

Also starring Jason Segel (last seen in "The End of the Tour"), Lily Collins (last seen in "Okja"), Omar Leyva (last seen in "The Gambler") with archive footage of Steve Martin (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Martin Short (last seen in "Get Over It"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019))

RATING: 5 out of 10 personal sleeping cabins by the sauna