The Lost Daughter

Year 14, Day 169 - 6/18/22 - Movie #4,173

BEFORE: I had an opportunity to see this movie back in December, there was a screening of it at the theater where I work part-time, but I was managing the screening and the panel afterwards, with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard.  Since I had to focus on making sure the guests were escorted from the green room to the theater, and properly cued to go on stage at the right time, I really couldn't perform these duties and also watch the film - so I just did my job and figured I'd catch the film at a later date, which is now here. 

Jessie Buckley carries over from "The Courier". I did figure out another way to get here, because that other film on my list with Benedict Cumbernbatch also has Olivia Colman in it, that would also link to either this film or tomorrow's Father's Day film - since I don't want to add an extra day, now I'm going to take a pass on "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain" and try to reschedule THAT one.  But my fear now is that this film is about motherhood, so I could justify dropping it, and keeping it on hand for Mother's Day next year...Nah, I waited long enough to view this one, let me just watch it and cross it off the list.  I can find more films about mothers between now and next May - the cast here is somewhat eclectic, so the chances of circling back to any of these actors seems just a bit remote. You just never know, though.

THE PLOT: A woman's beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past. 

AFTER: I guess we should all be aware of any movie that calls itself a "psychological drama", because that could mean something like "Fight Club", but it also could just be code for a film that's confusing and very inaccessible. Seriously, at the end of this film, I found myself asking, "But what was that ABOUT?"  Maybe the problem is that I've never been a parent, because the main character here watches a family with a daughter while on vacation, and flashes back to her experiences raising her two daughters, some memories that were good, and others, not so much.  But as for me, I've just got no frame of reference...

Sure, it's tough to be a mother, I get that.  It's tough to be married, too, which is why a lot of people call it quits - people sort of quit being parents, too, that's another thing that happens.  Society tends to just say, "Oh, he's a bad father" or "She's clearly a bad mother..."  but is that too simple?  Kids are annoying, parents get frustrated, I won't resort to victim-blaming, but maybe some part of me misses the time when parents could discipline their children. A kid could probably LEARN something from a spanking, that's all I'm saying, but thinking that way isn't popular and is considered outdated.  

Anyway, back to "The Lost Daughter" - Leda Caruso is on holiday in the Greek isles, when a very large family comes to the same resort, and they're obnoxious, at least at first, asking people to move down the beach so they can all sit together. Maybe it's because I live in New York City, but I'd never ask anybody to move in a restaurant or on a beach, that's not cool - we're trained in NYC not to engage with others unless absolutely necessary.  But when a young mother's three-year-old daughter goes missing from the beach, Leda flashes back to a time when she was a young mother herself, and couldn't find one of her daughters at a beach.  

As the story moves on, Leda sees other aspects of her own past reflected in the other mother.  Leda broke up with her husband and walked away from her daughters for three years, and so when she sees Nina engaged in an affair, maybe she feels that Nina's headed down a similar path that she went down, but for some reason (perhaps because she's British) Leda doesn't feel comfortable giving Nina life advice.  But, like, wouldn't that be THE POINT of her seeing her mistakes reflected in another person's choices?  Why show her being aware of another person's potential errors, if she doesn't take any steps to correct them?  In other words, so FREAKING what? 

Leda, helps find Nina's lost daughter, but then, for some reason, takes the young girl's favorite doll.  WHY?  There's a flashback that shows Leda's daughter ruining one of her dolls, does Leda feel that the universe owes her a doll, twenty years later?  Or is a symbol of a happier (?) time with her own daughters, or a symbol of her past, the lost time she spent away from her children?  It's all a bit unclear and obscure.  

Same goes for the flashbacks that show Leda's affair with a fellow professor - what is the point?  I'm trying to read between the lines here, but I can't help but think that I either missed something, or perhaps there's nothing there to miss.  What did the rotten fruit symbolize, for example?  Or the pine cone? Clearly these elements were supposed to mean something, but I have no idea what. It sort of ends up feeling like the director set out to intentionally confuse people, but I know that can't be right. 

NITPICK POINT: I know that love and relationships often don't seem to make sense, but to have a character say, "My husband is much too controlling and jealous, that's why I'm having an affair..."  Yeah, that's probably not going to help with his control issues - if anything, it's going to send him off the deep end.  It's probably better to deal with the control issues first, just saying. 

Also starring Olivia Colman (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Dakota Johnson (last seen in "The High Note"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Geostorm"), Dagmara Dominczyk (last seen in "The Count of Monte Cristo"), Paul Mescal, Robyn Elwell, Ellie Blake, Peter Sarsgaard (last heard in "Robot & Frank"), Jack Farthing (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last seen in "Faster"), Panos Koronis (last seen in "Before Midnight"), Alexandros Mylonas, Nikos Poursanidis, Alba Rohrwacher (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Athena Martin Anderson, Alma Stansil, Vassilis Koukalani, Ellie James, Isabelle Della-Porta with archive footage of Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Zeroville")

RATING: 4 out of 10 lounge chairs

The Courier (2020)

Year 14, Day 168 - 6/17/22 - Movie #4,172

BEFORE: Benedict Cumberbatch carries over from "The Mauritanian", for the last time, at least for now - I do have to point out that this is the 2020 film titled "The Courier", and not the 2019 film with the same title, which stars Gary Oldman, or the 2012 film, also with the same title, which stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  There are at LEAST two other action movies with this same title out there...

I found Benny in another film on my list, but there's no time, with only two days until Father's Day and a week until I start my Summer Music Concert & Documentary Series, I can't squeeze in another Cumberbatch film - the best I can do is reschedule it.  I can see how it could link to "Thor: Love & Thunder", which is a film I'd like to watch in August, only I'm not exactly sure if I can get there.  My Rock & Doc Block is going to take me into August, and I've only programmed about 7 or 8 steps beyond that.  If I have any time around the July 4 weekend then I can try to block out August and September, to try to link up with my October horror plans, and maybe close the gap, which would be exciting. 

I keep finding more documentaries to add to the upcoming chain - the current total is 44 films, I think it started out as a circular chain of 35 or so, and then I found a way to drop in four docs about famous chefs like Julia Child and Wolfgang Puck without changing it around at all, then I found another doc about rock drummers that slid right in, another one about stand-up comedy that found a slot between two others, and I just saw that PBS is running that doc about Brian Wilson, that also found a place in the chain quite easily.  Showtime's running a doc about George Martin's ill-fated recording studio in the Bahamas, that one simply has to be part of the mix too.  Umm, you see the problem, right?  But I'm going to try to hold fast and not make any more additions, because I don't know how many slots I'll need in August and September to get where I need to be on October 1.  Theoretically I should be able to get FROM any film with a large cast TO any other film with a large cast, but there could be a limit. 

THE PLOT: Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

AFTER: Incarceration and punishment has been a loose running theme for the week - starting with "The Bad Guys", where several animated villains got arrested for a heist and then had to pay their debt to society.  Last night's film showcased one of the many Arabic people who were held in Guantanamo Bay for YEARS without being prosecuted or properly represented, and then there was "Stuart: A Life Backwards", in which a man recounted the many times he'd been to prison over the years.  I suppose in "Dirty Pretty Things" the characters were always in danger of being arrested or deported, and while it didn't happen on-screen, you can assume that eventually somebody went to jail for organ trafficking there.  Stretching things a bit more, in the "Doctor Strange" sequel, Scarlet Witch did some bad cosmic crimes across the Multiverse, but at least she ended up paying the price. 

In the same vein, "The Courier" is a film based on a true story, about the regular businessman, recruited by U.S. and British intelligence, to travel to Moscow and come back with the evidence that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba, just a stone's throw from U.S. soil.  This is the "Rogue One" story behind the Cuban missile crisis, if you will - once upon a time, it didn't matter HOW the U.S. found out about the missiles, but we've reached the point where every minor character in this saga gets their own stand-alone movie, which turns out to be easier and cheaper than doing a huge, epic, "Midway"-style movie about the event.  If you focus on the small, you can sometimes cast some greater meaning on the large. Theoretically. 

Wynne was chosen because he didn't fit the profile of a spy at all - not the traditional James Bond type, not in the least.  He was chosen because he appeared to be a regular guy, he WAS a regular guy, and thus he'd be the last person that the Russians would suspect.  And he did have business in Moscow, he represented some manufacturing firms that wanted to do business there - look, McDonald's restaurants don't just appear in Russia, that's a deal that takes time, and a few negotiations before you can get a Big Mac there.  Yes, I know that McDonald's recently closed all their Russian locations, but they're still selling "Big Macs" at the new, rebranded restaurants, which are called Vkusno & Tochka, which means "Tasty and that's it."  OK, so it's no "I'm loving it..." but then, the Russians probably are NOT loving it.  

Wynne just had to bring back some documents with him from his business trips, and it was probably better that he did NOT know the contents of the envelopes - this way, he had plausible deniability, and he wouldn't have to lie about it, if he knew no details.  His contact, Oleg Penkovsky, was eventually investigated by the KGB - as I saw last week in "Child 44", it was normal in the Soviet Union for the KGB to interview all citizens, and ask them to turn in suspected dissidents, and anyone who gave the KGB better leads got better treatment in the long run.  People turning in others helped keep the heat off themselves, in other words.  The KGB threatened Penkovsky's family to get him to confess his traitorous activities, but in Penkovsky's mind, he was saving the world, both sides, by telling the U.S. about the USSR's missiles in Cuba.  Yeah, the KGB didn't really see it that way, and they made him reveal his contact working for MI6.  

For some reason, Wynne returned to Moscow, to try to help Penkovsky defect, but instead he was caught by the KGB and thrown in Lubyanka prison, sentenced to eight years.  Penkovsky got the firing squad, and Wynne was released by the Soviets in exchange for one of their spies. Both men claimed again and again that Wynne was just a courier, he had no knowledge of the content of the material he delivered, but that scarcely mattered.  If the spy-exchange plot point sounds a bit like "Bridge of Spies", there is a connection - Wynne was traded for Russian spy Konon Molody, who operated as the assistant to Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, who was seen as a character in that other movie. 

NITPICK POINT: Wynne spends four years in a Russian prison, and when he returns to the UK, his son looks exactly the same, like he didn't age.  I may not know a lot about children, but I know that they never look the same as they did four years ago - a kid at age 12 would tend to look different than he did when he was 8, and that isn't reflected here. 

I guess the moral of the story here is that if your country's agents contact you and ask you to be their courier, it's not necessarily going to be a thrilling spy-movie type adventure for you, you could spend 8 years or more in a Russian prison, so please factor that in when you make your decision. 

Also starring Merab Ninidze (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Rachel Brosnahan (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Jessie Buckley (last seen in "Dolittle"), Angus Wright (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Zeljko Ivanek (last seen in "Dogville"), Kirill Pirogov, Anton Lesser (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Mariya Mironova, Vladimir Chuprikov, James Schofield, Fred Haig, Emma Penzina, Keir Hills, Peter Klimes, Alice Orr-Ewing, Oliver Johnstone, Eysteinn Sigurdarson, Jonathan Harden (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Olga Koch, Richard Glaves, Ondrej Maly (last seen in "Child 44"), Jonathan Addis, with archive footage of John F. Kennedy.

RATING: 6 out of 10 ballet dancers at the Bolshoi

The Mauritanian

Year 14, Day 167 - 6/16/22 - Movie #4,171

BEFORE: OK, I'm all caught up and trying to get back in the swing of things now - I'm due to hit Father's Day right on the button, so at this point, don't tell me there's another film with Benedict Cumberbatch in it, because I just can't work it in, I just don't have the time. But now I also have three more shifts at the Tribeca Festival, and they've tended to run late, so for the next few nights, I may not get home until midnight or later.  I'll try to maintain my viewing schedule, but my posting schedule may lag a little bit. 

Benedict Cumberbatch carries over from "Stuart: A Life Backwards". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Report" (Movie #3,523)

THE PLOT: Mohamedou Ould Slahi fights for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the U.S. government for years. 

AFTER: This is based on a true story, remember those years after 9/11 where the U.S. just locked up people in Guantanamo Bay, without cause, just because they had reason to believe that removing these 800 people from society would make our country safer?  And there was this thing called the Patriot Act that somehow made this OK?  Yeah, it's hard to believe that we'd ever come to think of that time as "the good old days", but that's where we find ourselves.  

The reality is that this individual was horribly inconvenienced, incarcerated for 7 years without being charged with any crime, just being questioned, every day, for all that time.  And then when he finally was granted access to a lawyer - which felt a bit perfunctory, like they only gave him a lawyer because the U.S. government was maybe getting ready to prosecute him for something - the lawyer filed for habeus corpus, which is a request to produce the evidence being used against him, or at least the evidence of there being evidence, of which there was none.  He won his case, which meant that technically he should have been released, but at this point the new Obama administration wanted to hold him further, appealed his release, and that turned into ANOTHER 7 years before he was freed.  Yep, fourteen years at Guantanamo without being charged with a crime, so that happened - and again, this is just ONE man out of nearly 800 people who were held there. 

Even if you don't get into the waterboarding and psychological torture, that's a huge chunk of this man's life wasted, for no reason, except to make Americans feel a little more comfortable that he and people like him have been removed from society.  But if it can happen to this guy, then it could happen to ANY of us, or at least those of us who are of Middle Eastern descent.  Sure, there's a precedent, the U.S. government interred a lot of Japanese-Americans, put them in camps, away from the rest of society, just so the U.S. citizens could sleep a little more soundly at night.  But I think we all agree this too was overkill, way over the line of common human decency, and not the way that any government should treat its own people, regardless of their race. 

As a movie, though, there are big problems here, mostly because nothing happens for two hours, representing the many years of no progress being made toward charging Slahi or taking steps to release him.  This is the opposite of an action movie, it's more like an "inaction movie", when you get right down to it.  We don't even get the typical clash between two lawyers, like you'd see in any great "Law & Order" episode, and with the lawyers played by Jodie Foster (representing the prisoner) and Benedict Cumberbatch (representing the government), that's a real shame - I would have liked to see those two sparring in a courtroom, that could have been at least as exciting as Tom Cruise interrogating Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men".  Alas, it was not meant to be, because Cumberbatch's character, Lt. Col. Couch, has a crisis of conscience and his questions about the legality of this all force him to withdraw from the case. Jodie Foster's character, attorney Nancy Hollander, follows through and defends her client, even though she suspects for a while that he MIGHT be guilty.  But as we all know now, our government was torturing prisoners and coercing confessions from them, and that sort of thing really needs to be taken into account.  With enough pressure applied, anyone would confess to terrorism or murder or even kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.  

They tried desperately to save this one, by jumping around in time a bit, flashing back to the worst days of the torture, but the damage was already done by this point. 

Also starring Tahar Rahim (last seen in "Mary Magdalene"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "Motherhood"), Shailene Woodley (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Clayton Boyd, Denis Menochet (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Pope Jerrod (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Daniel Janks, Corey Johnson (last seen in "Genius"), Adam Neill, Darron Meyer, Langley Kirkwood, Saamer Usmani, David Fynn, Zachary Levi (last seen in "Shazam!"), Justine Mitchell (last seen in "Tristram Shandy"), Ralph Lawson, Stevel Marc, Adam Rothenberg, Matthew Marsh (last seen in "Unlocked"), Melissa Haiden, Zak Rowlands, Meena Rayann, Kiroshan Naidoo, Walter Van Dyk, Leon Clingman (last seen in "The Girl"), Roxy Nel, Litha Bam, Robert Hobbs (last seen in "Serenity"), Nezar Alderazi, Andre Jacobs

RATING: 5 out of 10 boxes of MFRs

Stuart: A Life Backwards

Year 14, Day 166 - 6/15/22 - Movie #4,170

BEFORE: I'm back from Atlantic City, things lined up SO well with the films that I'd watched in advance - I know, I cheat, I can't help it, but I watched 2 extra films in April and May and I sat on the reviews, because I could see IN ADVANCE where those films could slip into the chain, if my plans held up.  So my plans DID hold up, and thanks to other films with Awkwafina and Benedict Cumberbatch, they slid right into where they belonged, and I essentially took three days in A.C., to relax a bit, recharge and catch up on ONE streaming show, namely "Obi-Wan Kenobi", because priorities.  Now I pretty much have to work every day for the rest of June, at either one job or the other, and then the theater's shutting down for July due to roof repairs, and I'll either have to find another part-time gig, or file for partial unemployment and then catch up on my sleep.

It was tough to really enjoy Atlantic City, because so much of it felt like a ghost town, like there weren't tumbleweeds rolling down the Boardwalk, but it felt like a shadow of its former self, I know they've had down-times there before and bounced back, so I hope they can do it again.  No more Apple Store, no more Budakkan, and if you had a favorite restaurant there, it's even money that it's not there any more.  Now, maybe you'll like the new restaurant that replaced it, or maybe not.  And the slots weren't paying out for us - of course, the casinos can control the odds, so what are the chances they'll allow a jackpot after nearly two years of down-time?  It's not likely.  So we had a couple nice meals, and via the slots we essentially made a contribution to the city's Post-Covid Redevelopment Fund, but I think we'll give it a while before we return, now that we know that recovery is still ongoing.  

Meanwhile, I'm going to double-up today, because I still need to make it to Father's Day on time, and now I've got too many Benedict Cumberbatch films, and not enough days to watch them - I've got to drop one, but which one?  Now I'm glad I watched "The Power of the Dog" back in February, because otherwies I'd have TWO too many...Benedict Cumberbatch carries over from "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"...

THE PLOT: A writer takes a backwards look at the life of his unlikely friend, Stuart, a homeless alcoholic who experienced a traumatic childhood event.  

AFTER: It's weird sometimes to jump back 15 or 20 years, via the power of movies - this BBC TV movie aired in 2007, and it's now on the popular HBO Max service, as was "The Gathering Storm" and "Into the Storm".  These two lead actors are huge superstars now, and it feels like they now tend appear in very different movies - "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Current War" sort of feel like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum, if you know what I mean.  Tom Hardy played Al Capone, while Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing - two very, very different people.  But are they all that different?  They've both played villains in "Star Trek" movies - though in different timelines, Hardy was in "Nemesis" and Cumberbatch was in "Into Darkness", and they're both playing Marvel Comics characters, they were both in "Spider-Man: No Way Home", though they had no scenes together.  

I caught a bit of "Swingers" the other night on late-night cable, and I just couldn't believe how young Vince Vaughn was, and how skinny Jon Favreau was back then.  I get that same kind of feeling watching Hardy and Cumberbatch together in "Stuart: A Life Backwards", I mean, logically they both HAD to be young men at some point in their lives, but still, it's a bit jarring when we've come to know them so well as grown-up stars of action movies and period pieces. 

Hardy, of course, plays the troubled alcoholic homeless guy, and Cumberbatch plays the cerebral writer who's volunteering at the shelter - or the British term for it appears to be "Wintercomfort Day Centre".  Remember, those Brits have different words for everything, they call an apartment a "flat" and a homeless person is called a "dosser".  Stuart is a mentally ill person, and they call that "a nutter" or perhaps "barmy".  People in this film also said several times that he's got "all legs in the show", and I have no idea what that really means.  At one point in the film, a young Stuart is screaming that he needs to be "put in care", and I couldn't quite figure out if that was Brit-speak for a hospital, or an asylum or something else. 

But this is based on a true story, there was a real Stuart Shorter, and a real Alexander Masters who wrote a book about him, only his life story was told in reverse - I'm also not sure how you do that in book form, I guess you write the story from beginning to end and then you just put the chapters in reverse order?  There must be more to it than that.  But unfortunately we don't really get that same sort of structure from the film, because the film is very limited, we have to see Alexander meeting Stuart first, and there story has to progress forward from there - but we slowly learn more details about Stuart's life, like his diagnosis for muscular dystrophy and then he talks about his various prison sentences as he learns to trust Alexander more.  Near the close of the film, we learn about the abuse he suffered as a child, first molested by his brother and then sent off to school, where he was further molested by the headmaster.  

After that (or before, in this reverse timeline) he attended classes full of people with special needs, I guess to prepare him for his future status as a disabled person?  I don't know, so much was unclear here that this film probably sold a lot of books, people probably watched the movie on the BBC and then ran out to the book shop (which in Cockney slang would be a "fish hook lollipop") just to figure out the right order for the details of the horrible events in Stuart's life.  I'm just not sure that's how I'd want to spend my free time, that's all I'm saying.  Yes, bad things happen to people all the time, but there's not really anything I can do about it, so why dwell on it?  

The real reason to watch this one is probably to see how a method actor like Tom Hardy approaches a character with both mental and physical disabilities - how does that character talk, think, get through the day?  Is it possible to play a character who's prone to violent outbursts, someone who, at certain times in the film, is seen naked (starkers) while holding a knife, with his apartment (flat) on fire, and he's either drunk or high, maybe both, clearly a danger to himself and others, and still end up being a character worthy of our sympathy?  I'd say that Hardy does manage to pull this off, although it's probably knowing about the abuse that the character endured as a boy that goes a long way toward making this possible. 

Of course, now I also realize there was a much easier way to connect all the Marvel movies - why didn't I just watch THIS one to connect "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" with "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"?  Honestly, I have no idea - but if I'd done that, then I would have missed out on including "The Bad Guys", "Swan Song" and "Raya and the Last Dragon", among others.  Of course, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but when it comes to my movie-watching method, the winding road often covers more territory, and thus fills up the calendar between any two given dates.  

Also starring Tom Hardy (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Nicola Duffett (last seen in "Howard's End"), Claire-Louise Cordwell, Edna Doré, Candis Nergaard, Joanna Maude, Trevor Sellers, Caroline Parker, Laurence Hobbs, Giles Taylor, David Chittenden, Felicity Dean (last seen in "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells"), Sagar Arya, Lorna Bennett, Sandra Maitland, Timothy Carlton, Adam Payne, Franco Lombardi, George Nolan, Daniel McMillan, Marston Bloom, Jamie Kenna (last seen in "The Bank Job"), Steve King. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 bowls of "convict curry"

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Year 14, Day 166 - 6/15/22 - Movie #4,169 - VIEWED ON 5/17/22.         

BEFORE: This has been part of the plan all along - but I only waited about two weeks after this latest Marvel film opened to watch it.  And it played at a special screening for the Visual Effects Society at the theater where I work - only when it did, I was out sick on COVID leave.  I couldn't in good faith attend the screening if there was any chance I was still contagious - I hadn't yet tested negative, only another positive at that point.  So, I swung by the other theater where I used to work, an AMC, and I caught a Tuesday early afternoon matinee for just $6. Saw a couple former co-workers, though I might have forgotten a few names, got some popcorn, but they were in the middle of a chain-wide nachos shortage, so I only came home with nacho cheese for my wife, she had to provide the chips. 

I'd been starting to hear things about who has cameos in this film, and of course once I hear that I might as well look up the whole plot, because my brain starts building the story based on that, so every little casting announcement is essentially a spoiler, and I wanted to get around to watching it before it was too late, and that was happening very fast. So I just couldn't wait until June, I had to kind of bump this one up on the schedule, write the review early, basically I cheated. 

But if I've planned this right, both Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong carry over from "Dirty Pretty Things". And if I've planned this really right, I'm somewhere in Atlantic City right now, sitting either at a slot machine or within view of the beach, drinking a pina colada. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Doctor Strange" (Movie #2,589), "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (Movie #4,007)

THE PLOT: Doctor Strange teams up with a mysterious teenage girl from his dreams who can travel across the multiverse to battle multiple threats, including other-universe versions of himself, which threaten to wipe out millions. 

AFTER: This is "Catching up with Marvel Movies, Part 3" - so SPOILER WARNING if you haven't made it out to the theaters yet to see this one, and if not, then what have you been waiting for?  

Marvel continues to explore its multiverse, which you know, is both good and bad for me.  It's good because we're seeing a wide range of things, and up until now the Avengers-based heroes have lived in a world without the X-Men and Fantastic Four, who are conspicuously absent, because Marvel signed away the rights to those characters to other studios years ago.  BUT when Disney bought Fox a couple years ago, the theory was that it would make things easier to merge the universes, we just didn't think that it would be so literal, depicting actual universe crossover on the big screen.  Yes, perhaps you heard that a couple new Marvel characters appear in this film, and it's very cheeky to do it this way, it's almost like Disney is bragging by showing off that they got the movie rights to the X-Men back when they bought out FOX, and the rights to the Fantastic Four with the same transaction.  I think they still share Spider-Man with Sony, but they've already laid down the shared multiverse work in "Spider-Man: No Way Home". 

So that's the good - they can reboot the X-Men, there could be a Fantastic Four movie coming are way that's, you know, GOOD, after at least three other attempts that were, well, not so good.  But how are they going to do that, by physically ramming a couple of universes together?  (Yes, Marvel's done it before, in a little crossover called "Secret Wars" - twice, in fact.). That's one option, but another would be to discover that Reed Richards has been in the MCU all along, maybe he's so smart that he's stayed hidden, and didn't get involved in the Civil War or the battles with Ultron and Thanos.  But if that's the case, then WHY?  Similarly, perhaps there are no mutants in the MCU because, well, just because, but then a worldwide event could make them "possible" and then it's a chance to re-cast Wolverine and Storm and all the others.  Marvel movies have done that before, too, like when they cast younger versions of Cyclops and Storm for the prequels like "Days of Future Past".  

Then we got the "Wandavision" Disney TV series (which, umm, doesn't really air on TV), which is just as much of a lead-in to "Multiverse of Madness" as anything else, including "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and the first "Doctor Strange" film.  Scarlet Witch is an interesting character to use here, because her powers are basically whatever a writer SAYS they are - in the comics she's an Omega-level mutant, only the word "mutant" doesn't apply to the MCU, so she has to be something else, only they haven't quite said WHAT.  In the comics she once cast a "spell" that got rid of nearly all the mutants worldwide, and if she can do THAT, she can also do the reverse, I suppose, and create mutants.  But then there have been comic-book writers who have interpreted her powers differently (like John Byrne) and said that her magic spells aren't magic at all, but instead she's a mutant with the power to change reality itself.  If someone fired a gun at her, she would have the power to make that gun misfire, for example, by changing reality so that the perfect gun would have a flaw, and that would be retroactive, like the flaw would now always have been there, from the day that the gun was made in the factory.  We saw hints of this in "Wandavision", like after Vision died she just created a new reality, one in which he did NOT die, and tried to settle down in a little house in a quiet town and live a sitcom-like life together.  Also, she created two sons out of magic, or if you believe the other explanation, she changed reality to one in which she had two children.  Only clearly there were limits to what she could do - but she set out to find a reality somewhere in the multiverse that better reflected her, umm, vision of the way life should be.  

All this kind of makes her the villain of the piece, not the usual evil sorcerers that Doctor Strange is used to fighting, like Baron Mordo or the giant demonic entities like Mephisto or Dormammu, or even Shuma-Gorath.  She's a villain because she's seeking a better life for herself, not acting as a hero trying to save the world - after getting a taste of how much better her life COULD be, she'll act in any way to make that happen, even sacrificing others to get what she wants - as opposed to Doctor Strange, who's willing to sacrifice himself and the life he could be living, just to make the world a better place for others.  So he and Scarlet Witch (I don't know why there's a movement afoot to not call her by her superhero name) are like opposite sides of the same coin, or one's a dark reflection of the other.  She seeks out the Darkhold, a book of black magic that enables her to see what's taking place in other realities - there's also a version of Doctor Strange here that has been corrupted in the same way, by looking across the realities using black magic. to do so. 

Dr. Strange has allies, though - most notably America Chavez, who was introduced in the comic books in the "Young Avengers" series, on a team with grown-up versions of Scarlet Witch's magically-created children (Wiccan and Speed), the Kate Bishop Hawkeye, Iron Lad (think Iron Man Jr., but from the future, also a future villain), Hulkling and Patriot (grandson of the original, secret African-American Captain America), and later on, Kid Loki (just the original one, only smaller) and Ant-Man's daughter, Stature (like the original, only bigger).  These junior versions of the more famous heroes were introduced at times when the originals were thought to be dead, but then they got better, so for a while there were several Hulks running around, two Hawkeyes, and so on.  When she was first introduced, it looked like she was another riff on Captain America, but really, that's just her first name, there are no other similarities - instead of carrying a shield, she can "punch" star-shaped holes in reality to teleport, even to other realities in the multiverse.  Like the comic-book version, America has two mommies, so good on Marvel/Disney to include that, even if it makes the film non-marketable in China. It's kind of unclear if she's a mutant or not, or if her powers instead come from somewhere else.  She also had a crush on Hawkeye (the teen female one), and who knows, maybe this will be depicted in a future Avengers movie, or maybe they'll set up Kate Bishop with the Black Widow's sister, who can say?  I think there was definitely something between them as frenemy lovers.  

This Doctor Strange sequel was originally going to be released before "Spider-Man: No Way Home", and it's still possible that the events depicted in this one take place before that - that would explain why Stephen Strange knows so much about the multiverse when he tries to help out Spider-Man.  In the Multiverse of Madness, he learns there are other Doctor Stranges out there (Doctors Strange?), some of which are evil and some of which are dead.  I guess across the board, that's just how it goes - but it also suggests a potential cop-out way to bring back dead characters like Iron Man and Black Widow to the MCU, just substitute them with their doppelgangers from another dimension, or have a "Secret Wars"-type universal events that collapses several realities into one.  It could happen.  

But here we're also treated to a cross-universe jaunt, thanks to the powers of America Chavez - in the most relevant alternate universe, it wasn't the Avengers who defeated Thanos, it was the Illuminati, whose members included alt-Mister Fantastic, alt-Captain Marvel, alt-Professor X, alt-Black Bolt, and alt-Captain America - oh, and a version of Baron Mordo, Strange's main nemesis.  That group of heroes executed their reality's Doctor Strange for, umm, reasons and they're not very happy to see him again, or another version of him either. Then Scarlet Witch appears on the scene and, well, it does NOT go well.  It's going to take a lot more than that to convince Scarlet Witch that she's acting improperly.  There is a version of the Illuminati in the main Marvel Comic Universe, but its members are different - it's Mister Fantastic, Professor X, and Black Bolt, but also Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Black Panther and Namor/Sub-Mariner.  Note that the line-up is all male, and mostly white ones at that - this wouldn't really fly in the MCU of today.  But in the comic-book universe there's room for both the Avengers AND the Illuminati, why can't the cinematic universe work the same way?

This is probably a much BETTER use of the cross-dimensional multiverse hopping than what was seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home", which seemed to exist just to explain why we all remember three actors playing Spider-Man, and why we shouldn't discount the Tobey McGuire or Andrew Garfield movies, just because Sony appeared to do so.  How very mercenary of them, but also, how blatantly enterprising of Marvel/Disney to say that ALL the Spider-Man stories are valid, even if there's no Doctor Octopus or Green Goblin or Lizard for Peter Parker to fight in the MCU - not yet, anyway.  But to me, as with "Eternals", the best part of the movie might be the mid-credits sequence, here that teases the next adventure for Doctor Strange. 

Also starring Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "In Secret"), Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Patrick Stewart (last seen in "The Game of Their Lives"), Hayley Atwell (last seen in "The Duchess"), Lashana Lynch (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Anson Mount (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), John Krasinski (last seen in "A Quiet Place Part II"), Julian Hilliard, Jett Klyne (last seen in "The Humanity Bureau"), Topo Wresniwiro (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Sheila Atim, Ako Mitchell (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Eden Nathenson, Vinny Moli, Charlie Norton, Ruth Livier, Chess Lopez, Michael Waldron, and the voices of Adam Hugill (last seen in "1917"), Ross Marquand (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), with cameos from Bruce Campbell (Last seen in "Oz the Great and Powerful"), Charlize Theron (last seen in "The Old Guard").

RATING: 8 out of 10 cracked mirrors

Dirty Pretty Things

Year 14, Day 165 - 6/14/22 - Movie #4,168

BEFORE: Day 2 in Atlantic City, and we hit our traditional Monday morning spot, the breakfast buffet at the Borgata - some things never change, thankfully.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so why not overdo it, with two full plates of breakfast items - eggs, quiches, frittata, bacon, sausage, bagels, pastries, ham, slab bacon, and then top it all off with a biscuit covered in creamed chipped beef?  Always the highlight of the trip, no matter where else we eat, we've just got to stop in for this - and we had both agreed over the last year that the pandemic wouldn't be officially over, for us anyway, until we were sitting in the Borgata breakfast buffet together.  So, good news, for us the pandemic is done - your mileage may vary, however. 

Then (after a break) we went shopping, only to find that the nearest shopping center, the Playground (across from Caesar's Palace) was almost completely empty - the pandemic was not kind to a set of upscale shops.  The A.C. Apple store used to be there, plus a watch store, a cell phone case store, Versace home, and a bustling food court that included Buddakan.  Well, restaurants were hit hard everywhere, but with the casinos closed due to the pandemic, all of the restaurants inside or near the casinos had to shut down, too. The food court of this mall is now just a free place for people to sit down and look out at other people on the beach.  Which, if you ask me, is better than actually GOING to the beach - I mean, between getting covered in sand and risking drowning, sunburn and shark attack, why bother?  

The only store left open in the whole complex was It'Sugar, a place to buy marked up candy, both current and vintage, both boxed and by weight, so we each bought some chocolates, to help take the edge off of realizing that much of the Atlantic City we knew was gone, perhaps for good - sure, there were other people in the hotel and the casino, but nowhere NEAR the level of what we'd seen before.  Anyway, we de-camped back to our hotel, which we learned ALSO had a view of the boardwalk and the beach - we didn't open the curtains the first day, so we almost didn't even realize this!  We were staying in the part of the Bally's complex that was the converted Dennis Hotel, more on that in a bit - but by Day 2 we just wanted to have a nice dinner, watch some TV on our phones and get ready for the trip home.  We tried another new restaurant, Waterdog, and they asked us, on a MONDAY, if we had a reservation - meanwhile, we could SEE how many empty tables there were, and they're going to tell me I need a reservation?  Screw that, they should be THANKING me that I want to drop some money in their restaurant.  Just as I was about to say, "Well, can I just MAKE a reservation, then?" some smarter restaurant manager waved us in.  Apparently the whole staff is green, and hasn't yet learned how to provide proper customer service - the waiter just acted like he'd rather be somewhere else, anywhere else.  

Benedict Wong carries over from "Raya and the Last Dragon", and between him and the lead actor here, it's very clear where I'm headed next.  I don't NEED to watch this one, I could go straight into the "Multiverse of Madness", but let's squeeze one more in, get it off the list.  The only problem is, this one WAS on HBO Max when I made the chain, I swear it was, but now it's scrolled off that service - geez, was it only there for a few months?  Hey, HBO, how about giving me enough time to, you know, WATCH the movies on your service before you drop them?  That would help me out - now I had to pay $2.99 to watch this on YouTube.  (Again, I could have dropped it, but I want things to line up a certain way for Father's Day, and I may not circle back to these actors again, you just never know...)

THE PLOT: Migrants Okwe and Senay work at a posh London hotel and live in constant fear of deportation. One night, Okwe stumbles across evidence of a bizarre murder, setting off a series of events that could lead to disaster or freedom. 

AFTER: This film is set in a London hotel, so let me just take a minute and rip apart the Bally's Hotel in Atlantic City, before I proceed.  Again, we weren't booked into one of the newer rooms in the towers, we were down near ground level, in the converted Dennis Hotel, which was built in 1909 or so, and it doesn't seem like much has been done since then to upgrade the place.  OK, supposedly there were renovations done in 1929, which seems about right.  The carpets were stained, the air in the hallways was stale, and our suite made no sense.  The second room had a couch with mismatched and torn cushions - though it WAS comfortable, I fell asleep on it twice - we had two TVs, which worked, and two refrigerators that didn't.  Plenty of ice, though, so we had cold drinks, but the ice machine on our floor was out, so I had to take the elevator to another floor to get ice.  From a hotel guest's perspective, the place was something of a nightmare, but the bed was clean and comfortable, and we were only there for 48 hours, so we overlooked a LOT, because we understand the city's trying to bounce back - they still have a LONG way to go, at least over at Bally's.  But the restaurants were new, and the slots were TIGHT - as in, we lost a bunch of money, but let's hope some of that goes toward making some improvements around the hotel. 

Anyway, it could have been worse - sure, there were sketchy people roaming around the hotel, some of which insisted on making conversation, some of which checked in with paper bags for luggage, and some of which were VERY large people.  I always say that if you're old and want to feel young, go on a cruise, and if you're a fat person and you want to feel skinny, just go to Atlantic City.  And then there were also sketchy people roaming around the Boardwalk, A.C.'s version of homeless people, who will also try to engage you in random coversation - best not to engage, no matter how friendly they seem, it just can't end well.  But at least we came by car and didn't leave by bus, and we still had all our organs intact when we left.  We had a few nice meals and no luck at the slots - maybe we'll go back again in a few months, but let's see how the economic recovery pans out first. 

Oh, yeah, the organs thing - sorry to drop that in there, but it's a key plot point of "Dirty Pretty Things", the lead character finds something clogging the toilet in one of the hotel rooms, and it's a human heart, which leads to a number of questions - whose heart?  Did someone bring this into a hotel room with them, and if so, why?  And if they did, why try to flush it?  And if this is proof of a murder, then, umm, what happened to the rest of the body?  The film doesn't actually ANSWER all of these questions, but just to be safe, I wouldn't eat any of the meat pies served at the cafés around the hotel.  Those Brits sometimes serve "steak and kidney pie" without saying where the kidneys came from. Or the steak. 

The lead character, Okwe, was studying to be a doctor at one point, so he probably would recognize a human heart - but then something happened, and we gradually find out more about his previous life in Africa and New York as the film goes on. Okwe works at the front desk of the Hotel Baltic in London, but he also has a night job as a cab driver, and lives in constant fear of the British Immigration services.  So does Senay, who works at the hotel as a maid, and she lets Okwe crash on her couch during the day, after both his jobs have ended, they've got a loose romantic relationship that isn't well-defined, it hasn't been consummated because Senay is Muslim and doesn't believe in pre-marital sex, and Okwe's apparently got some issues of his own where relationships are concerned.  

And then there's all the hinky stuff going on at the hotel, where the manager Juan (aka "Sneaky") lets prostitutes use several of the rooms for their hook-ups, and then there may be other deals going on where immigrants are trading kidneys for false passports and other documents.  Sneaky's convincing people that having a kidney removed is as easy as having a tooth pulled, but nothing could be further from the truth.  And once he finds out that Okwe used to be a doctor, he tries to blackmail him into doing the operations, because he's probably better at it than the guy who couldn't tell a kidney from a heart.  Wait, is THAT what happened?  

The immigration officers are alerted to Senay because Okwe is seen entering and leaving her apartment - and it's illegal for her to rent out her apartment, or work for the hotel - geez, how's an immigrant supposed to live in the U.K. if they can't work or collect rent?  The only other option seems to be to sell (or rent) body parts, and it just comes down to which ones (and for how long).  Senay is from Turkey, which I just found out is a country that wants to change its name, or at least what people in the U.S. and U.K. call it - they want to be known as Türkiye now, to avoid confusion with the bird or the meat from that bird. Big mistake, people in the U.S. LOVE to eat turkey, especially at Thanksgiving, but come on, turkey sandwiches on toast with cheese and mayo are GREAT, like all year-round, you could do a lot worse than being associated with turkey.  It's not like your country is called "Liver" or "Squid" or "Head Cheese" (though I, personally, love the head cheese, I know I'm in the minority...).  Jeez, the next thing you know, Cuba will try to change its name because they don't want to be associated with Cubano sandwiches - or the country of Georgia will want to change its name because they don't want to be associated with American rednecks.  

So Senay is forced to quit her job, and find another one in a sweatshop, where the boss sexually harasses her.  Yes, she finds a way to turn the tables on him - good for her - but she's clearly scarred by the experience, and then on the run from immigration for real.  If only she knew somebody who could forge a passport for her, she could make her way to New York, and that would solve all her problems. (Umm, sure, right...).  Can Okwe use his skills to manipulate the situation, and get Senay, and himself, out of London?  And then, if he can, what will that mean for their non-relationship?  And how can he report what's going on at the hotel to the authorities, without getting himself in any more trouble?  

Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Locked Down"), Audrey Tautou (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Sergi Lopez (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Damon Younger, Paul Bhattacharjee (last seen in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Darrell D'Silva (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Sotigui Kouyaté, Abi Gouhad, Zlatko Buric (last seen in "2012"), Jeffery Kissoon (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens"), Barber Ali, Jean-Philippe Écoffey, Josef Altin (last seen in "Child 44"), Noma Dumezweni (last seen in "The Kid Who Would Be King"), Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "Into the Storm"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 sterilized instruments

Raya and the Last Dragon

Year 14, Day 164 - 6/13/22 - Movie #4,167

BEFORE: Everything sort of works out for a reason, right?  Running my review of "The Bad Guys", which I watched in late April, gave me the opportunity to drive down to Atlantic City for just a couple of days, to take a break from the Tribeca Film Festival.  It was actually terrible scheduling on our part, we'd planned to take a couple days off in May but then we both got COVID, and we didn't want to drive to another city and possibly infect people in a hotel before we both tested negative.  So, we moved the May trip to June, but we didn't want to go on Father's Day weekend, that might be too crowded, so we picked the weekend before - which, of course, was right in the middle of Tribeca, so I maybe lost a shift or two.  BUT, I'm going to make up for it, I'm booked almost solid for the rest of the month - July is a different story, though.

Anyway, we're in A.C. now, staying mid-strip at Bally's, and we used to drive here two or three times a year, but that was in the before-times, and we haven't been here since mid-2019, when we stayed at the Ocean and saw Pentatonix perform at the Hard Rock. Good times...  It's a whole different city now, which is kind of what we were afraid of - the pandemic really did a number on this town, where tourism is the number one money-maker, and the gambling FROM those tourists is maybe a close second.  Yes, people are still coming to the beach and the Boardwalk, but clearly not as many as before - I don't know where people are going, but it's probably not Atlantic City, not yet. And we saw a few people hit on the slots, but we both lost money - my guess is that the machines aren't programmed to pay out much, because the casinos are trying to make up for the last two years of down-time.  I was two dollars up, but very briefly, and then after I lost $80 I stopped playing, why throw good money after bad?  

But we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant named Jerry Longo's Meatballs and Martinis - the place is new, as most of the restaurants seemed to be, which means they replaced the old ones, most of which closed, either by choice or not.  It's hard to not think about all the people who lost jobs and businesses along the Boardwalk, so that just makes the whole trip kind of sad.  More on this tomorrow - I'm going to catch up on the posted episodes of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" on Disney Plus and then a movie, via my phone. 

Awkwafina carries over from "The Bad Guys". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" (Movie #4,008)

THE PLOT: In a realm known as Kumandra, a re-imagined Earth inhabited by an ancient civilization, a warrior named Raya is determined to find the last dragon. 

AFTER: I was kicking myself a bit because it seemed I mistimed things, this film could have fit between "Shang-Chi" and "The Farewell", and I'd done a whole big Asian thing in January - only I couldn't possibly have worked this one in, because it wasn't released until March 5.  So there.  But I did circle back to Awkwafina, so holding this one back turned out to be the absolute right move, because it's also going to help me connect to the "Dr. Strange" sequel.  See, what did I say, everything sort of works out for a reason, right?  And I think it was then on Disney Premier Access for a while, but free with Disney Plus after June 4 - so I couldn't have watched it much earlier than THIS, without paying extra. 

I had to break it up into two parts, however, half on Sunday night and half on Monday afternoon, because I was falling asleep - I must have been tired after the drive down to A.C. and then that big Italian meal - but also, it was very hard to focus on this film because the story is so damn complicated.  And if it's complicated to ME, an adult man, how the heck is a KID supposed to follow it?  There's an imaginary continent, it's separated into five different lands, there's a dragon gem, whatever that is, and after it breaks each land gets a piece of it, but this also allows a few thousand of these smoke-creatures called the Druun to come back and turn everybody into stone figures, only it's not everybody, it's just some people, so some of the people who didn't get turned to stone have to travel from place to place and find the gem pieces, and then it takes WAY too long for them to figure out what to do with them, if you ask me.  My head was spinning, but maybe that was from the two beers I had at New Jersey's only fully rotating casino bar.  (That will mess with your head, I assure you - try drinking and ending up in a different place than where you started, only I guess people do that all the time on trains and planes...)

Young warrior Princess Raya is the one who was supposed to help protect the Dragon Gem in the "Heart" kingdom, only when her father called representatives of the five lands together, to try to reunite Kumandra, Raya formed a friendship with Namaari, from the "Fang" kingdom.  They're the same age, they're both warriors, and they're both self-proclaimed "dragon nerds" - love is in the air, if you ask me.  But Namaari was really there to help steal the gem for Fang - so that's really going to interfere with Raya and her being besties, or girlfriends, or "girlfriends" or whatever. Girls are complicated, don't let anybody tell you differently, and two girls together are probably twice as complicated, at least. 

The gem breaks in the scuffle (and so does Raya's heart), the Druun come back and turn half the people to stone, and honestly this seems a lot like Thanos snapping his fingers and killing half the people - it's the Marvel "Blip", only in ancient Asian form.  Let's see, five gem pieces, six infinity gems, yeah, that tracks. Five years later, Raya sets out on a quest to find that dragon, who's "sleeping" at the end of one of the many rivers in the dragon-shaped water table.  She finds Sisu, the last dragon of the title, and together they visit Tail, Talon and Spine, to collect pieces of the broken gem and also add traveling companions to their ensemble.  It's the standard "rag-tag bunch of misfits" that needs to assemble, work together and use their talents to defeat the evil power.  

The last piece of the gem is in the possession of the Fang tribe, so that means Raya's got to come to terms with her old frenemy / potential love interest Namaari - awkward!  They exchange gifts, they fight, they work together, they accuse each other of being difficult.  See, I told you girls are complicated - if these were two young men they'd just punch each other a few times and then go have a beer together. Or make out, whatever, it's Pride Month after all, do what you feel.

Anyway, things don't go well between Raya and Namaari, neither one can trust the other, and Sisu gets wounded in the scuffle, so it appears that all is lost.  If ONLY this rag-tag bunch of misfits could figure out what to do with five pieces of a broken gem, though, they might have a chance.  Come on, guys, you're killin' me here, figure it out. We all know it's a Disney film, so things are going to work out, so can we hurry this along, please?  And yeah, I know they can't really show Raya and Namaari falling for each other, because the Chinese market is huge, and DisneyCorp didn't want this film to get censored there, so except for that one guy in "Jungle Cruise", and that glam fashion guy in "Cruella", Disney's policy is still "Don't Say Gay".  It's two steps forward and one step back, I suppose.  They can do female empowerment, but not two women with feelings for each other. 

But hey, there are lots of characters, five dragons and three monkeys and people from five different lands, so lots of new action figures and toys, right? 

Also starring the voices of Kelly Marie Tran (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Izaac Wang (last seen in "Good Boys"), Gemma Chan (last seen in "Eternals"), Daniel Dae Kim (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Benedict Wong (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Jona Xiao (last seen in "Gifted"), Sandra Oh (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Thalia Tran, Lucille Soong (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Encanto"), Dichen Lachman, Patti Harrison, Jon "Dumbfoundead" Park, Sung Kang (last seen in "Live Free or Die Hard"), Sierra Katow, Ross Butler (last seen in "Shazam!"), Francois Chau (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Gordon Ip, Paul Yen, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 congee ingredients

The Bad Guys

Year 14, Day 163 - 6/12/22 - Movie #4,166 - VIEWED ON 4/24/22.

BEFORE: OK, so this is only the second movie I managed to watch at the theater where I work part-time, the first one was "House of Gucci". I've passed on so many, because I'm not really there to watch movies, I'm there first and foremost as a house manager, and it's honestly rare when there's a movie I want to see AND that movie also lines up with my self-imposed rules about linking.  Generally speaking, if I don't have a slot earmarked for it, I don't sit in the theater and watch (there also has to be another house manager covering the lobby and office, or I can't do it - or I need to check the lobby every 15 or 20 minutes, like I did for "House of Gucci".)

All the guild screenings that I passed on - but I've made up for it by streaming most of those movies, like "Being the Ricardos", and "Tick, Tick...Boom!" and "Vivo" - in June I'm going to watch "The Lost Daughter", then in July I'll be watching a bunch of the films I didn't watch during DocFest, like "Jagged" and "Adrienne" and "Dean Martin: King of Cool", that's the plan anyway.  Then I'll just need to track down "Belfast", "Cyrano", "Licorice Pizza" and "The Matrix Resurrections" after they start streaming, and I'll be all caught up.  Who am I kidding, I'm never going to be all caught up.

Awkwafina carries over from "Swan Song"

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales" (Movie #4,000)

THE PLOT: Several reformed yet misunderstood criminal animals attempt to become good, with some disastrous results along the way. 

AFTER: This is a film based on a series of children's books, and I really should be keeping better notes about that sort of thing.  At the end of this year I'll be giving out bogus awards, and it wouldn't be too weird to give a prizes for "Best movie based on a children's book" as well as "Best movie based on a book for adults" and maybe also "Best movie based on a comic book" - assuming I choose to break things down that way, of course.  I guess we'll find out together. 

But this is all very clever stuff here in "The Bad Guys".  Of course it all riffs off of heist movies, it's kind of like "Ocean's Eleven" for viewers who actually are eleven.  Which is kind of weird because most kids don't seem to have an affinity for heist movies, most of which are R-rated - but kids DO know fairy tales, and they know that when a character is a spider or a snake or has a name like Big Bad Wolf, that character is up to no good.  And those characters themselves act as if they've been pigeon-holed into the villain roles, but they seem to be enjoying the criminal lifestyle - I imagine it's prettty profitable - so where's the impetus to change?  

The desire to achieve, to be better, is imposed on the Big Bad Wolf when he accidentally helps an elderly woman, he keeps her from falling down while he's picking her pocket at a gala - and this leads her to scratch his head and tell him he's a "Good Boy", causing his inner canine instincts to come out, his tail to start wagging and a strange feeling (to him, anyway) of desire to do more good things, just to have that feeling again.  Sure, it's dopamine, it's addictive, and it's released by the brain's reward center, all of this makes sense on a chemical level at least. 

Mr. Wolf ends up playing both sides for the majority of the movie, at the same time he's trying to do good, or at least better, he's planning another big heist with his gang, they want to steal the Golden Dolphin Award, which is being given to philanthropist guinea pig Professor Rupert Marmalade IV, who believes that everyone deserves a second chance, that all criminals can be rehabilitated and trained to do good things.  With the approval of Governor Diane Foxington, the Professor is given charge over the whole criminal animal gang to reform them to do good deeds. 

Wolf reveals his master plan-within-a-plan to the other members of the gang (Mr. Snake, Ms. Tarantula, Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha) - they'll go along with the training only because it puts them close enough to try and steal the award AGAIN, which then puts Mr. Wolf in the hot-seat again, he could go either way, pull off the biggest heist or call it off and get that rush again for doing something noble.  Only there are still a few more reversals to come, and not everybody is who they appear to be - this time I figured out who the real criminal mastermind was, before the film could reveal it.  

This is a weird fictional world, because it's not completely made of animals living in cities, wearing clothes like people, in the style of "Zootopia" - somehow it's a mostly human world with only a FEW animals doing this, so, umm, which is it, a human world or an animal world?  And if it's a human world with a few talking animals, why doesn't that freak out any of the humans?  They just accept it like it's the most natural thing in the world.  PLUS in this world that's part human and part talking animal, there are also non-talking pets, like a very prominent cat and about a million non-talking guinea pigs.  How come only ONE guinea pig wears clothes and has the ability to talk?  Am I over-thinking this or did some screenwriter not think about this enough?  The world in an animated film is usually weird enough, this just makes it super weird, right?  

Also starring the voices of Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Trust Me"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Zeroville"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "In the Heights"), Richard Ayoade (last heard in "Soul"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Geostorm"), Alex Borstein (last seen in "The Lookout"), Lilly Singh (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451" (2018)), Barbara Goodson, Dina Morrone, Michael Godere (last seen in "After Class"), Walt Dohrn (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour")

RATING: 7 out of 10 orange prison jumpsuits