The Starling

Year 14, Day 316 - 11/12/22 - Movie #4,283

BEFORE: I'm sorry if you're disappointed that my next film isn't "Ambulance", with Jake Gyllenhaal carrying over.  I considered it, but then I didn't see from there how to get to my Thanksgiving films, which are going to link to my Christmas films, eventually.  I can only follow one link a day, so that means there are often three or ten links that I DON'T follow, and tonight the link to "Ambulance" is one.  I have to look at the big picture right now, which films are going to get me to where I need to be in a week or so?  This one fits the bill.  (I just realized that "Ambulance" links to tonight's film, so I COULD have squeezed it in, but then again, I don't have any spare slots for the year, after I added "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", they're all spoken for.)

Edi Patterson carries over from "The Guilty". 

THE PLOT: After Lilly suffers a loss, a combative starling takes nest beside her quiet home. The feisty bird taunts and attacks the grief-stricken Lilly. On her journey to expel the bird, she rediscovers her will to live and capacity for love. 

AFTER: Well, I've got my loose theme for the week, this week's films are about redemption, and getting over things and chance encounters sparking those things, perhaps. This was seen in "Kajillionaire" when a family's chance encounter on an airplane with a young woman who had an interest in con games led to a confrontation between the daughter and her parents over the way she was raised without love or emotion, but it also led to the daughter getting over that, maturing and finding a relationship.  And in "The Guilty", a chance encounter with a woman who called 911 led to the main character, a demoted policeman, coming to terms with his misdeed and finding a form of redemption in admitting to his guilt.  And in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", Al's chance encounter with a traveling accordion salesman put him on the road to fame and fortune.  I'm not joking here, that happened in the film, and in real life, too.  

In this film, after a brief intro with a couple, Lilly and Jack, painting a bedroom for their newborn child, the story flashes forward to some future time, when the husband is in a mental institution, having had a tough time dealing with the death of their child.  Lilly's grieving too, but in a different way, and she's trying to hide it, but not doing a good job of that. While her husband is recovering (we later find out exactly why he was institutionalized, but it's not hard to guess why) she's also dealing with the loss of him, in a way.  Her husband's doctors also suggest that Lilly should see some kind of therapist, and they recommend someone close to her home, who turns out to be a veterinarian and former shrink.  At first this seems like a big mistake, like how could the doctor who recommended him not check to see if he was still practicing?  Wouldn't they check that sort of thing before giving out his number?  

It seems like I should call a super-huge NITPICK POINT on this little wrinkle in the story.  Like, so how could this recommendation error happen in the first place?  The doctor who recommended him claims to be an old friend, but then, why isn't she aware that he became a veterinarian?  It doesn't make any sense, she either knows him or she doesn't, and if she knows him she should know this very important detail about him.  Also, in real life aren't psychology and animal medicine two very, very different medical specialties?  I mean, sure, people quit being lawyers sometimes just so they can open a BBQ restaurant, or they stop being police officers and buy a bar.  Times change, people change, but still, somehow this seems like a very weird leap, from shrink to vet.  I'm not really buying it, because it seems like some screenwriter just threw it in there because Lilly needs therapy at the start of the film, and an animal expert near the end of the film, so sure, let's just give one character expertise in both fields and hope that nobody notices. 

By meeting with Dr. Fine - Larry Fine, but there's only one "Three Stooges" reference in the whole film (NITPICK POINT: Hey, writer, why give him the same name as one of the Stooges if you're not going to DO anything with that?). Dr. Fine is a great name for a therapist, though, he could have really marketed himself with that. "Need peace of mind? Come see Doctor Fine!"  or "I'm Fine, but how are YOU?" - these slogans write themselves, but the movie just doesn't go there. So I'm treating this as somebody's writing short-cut, a cheap way to get the story to go where it needs to go.  Lazy writing, though. 

By meeting with Dr. Fine, Lilly forms a friendship but also engages in a form of therapy - at least she's talking to SOMEONE, even if it's just a veterinarian.  So she learns about the stages of grief, and she finds the strength to clear the baby furniture out of the house, and she starts to do some odd jobs like gardening, only to be constantly attacked by an aggressive songbird, the starling of the title.  After being attacked by the bird several times in her yard, she takes to wearing a football helmet as she works on the garden.  I'm not quite sure what the bird stands for here, but at least the gardening is a great metaphor for recovery from grief, plus it's a worthwhile hobby that produced nutrition, food for the soul, the feeling of accomplishment.  The gardening as metaphor at least works, but I still don't know what the damn bird represents.  

After a few months of non-therapy therapy, Lilly is frustrated with the fact that her husband took the easy route, not just trying to kill himself but also dropping out of society, and then when he doesn't allow her to see him for a while, that's the sign that Lilly's got to work even harder to convince him to eventually get well and come home, because at some point in the grieving process, you've got to move on and get back to some kind of normal life.  Sure, take some time, by all means, but you can't just stay inside forever, as we all learned during the lockdowns.  OK, so maybe we missed two Halloweens and one Christmas, isn't it time for us all to get back to our normal lives, or our new normal lives? 

NITPICK POINT: Lilly is so bothered by the bird that she puts out poisoned bird seed.  This doesn't kill her tormentor, but it does kill a different bird, and she feels terrible.  But then a little later in the film, she's back to trying to kill the starling.  Huh?  Didn't she learn anything from the terrible feeling she had when she killed that other bird?  Also, at one point we learn that the starling is just trying to protect its nest, which has three baby birds in it.  But then we never see those baby birds again, what happened to them?  More to the point, why would Lilly try AGAIN to kill the starling after she saw the babies in the nest?  Wouldn't those baby birds starve if she killed their parent?  I understand she may not be acting rationally, but still it's a problem that I can't really follow her logic here. 

I think there's the germ of a good story here, but it needed some more work before being released to the world.  Somebody really needed to look at the script and say, "Wait, is this really what we want to say, and how we want to say it?"  Is it OK for a wife to be MAD at her husband for trying to kill himself?  If he's mentally ill, then he's not really responsible, and he needs to be cared for, not berated for his actions.  Do we want to make a film where everyone's just drowning in grief, is that really what people want to see when they go out to the theater?  Are we suggesting that people shouldn't spend thousands of dollars on therapists, but instead they should just go have a talk with their veterinarian?  It's just a bunch of oddly mixed messages in the end - I kind of see where they were trying to go here, but it's just not the best way to get there. 

Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Nines"), Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Daveed Diggs (last heard in "Soul"), Skyler Gisondo (last seen in "Time Freak"), Laura Harrier (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Kim Quinn (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Loretta Devine (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Jesse Garcia, Emily Tremaine (last seen in "Otherhood"), Dickson Obahor, Ravi Kapoor (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Owen Atlas, Gustavo Gomez (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Carla Gallo (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Yvette Freeman (last seen in "The Last Word"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Scott MacArthur, Joshua Funk, Lauri Johnson (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Don McManus (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Cynthy Wu (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Tom Everett (last seen in "xXx"), Jenica Bergere (last seen in "Safety Not Guaranteed"), Veronica Falcon (last seen in "Voyagers"), Brock Brenner (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Isla Sellers (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Nancy De Mayo (last seen in "Love, Simon"), Jeanne Carr, Elisabeth Röhm (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 mispriced items at the grocery store

The Guilty

Year 14, Day 314 - 11/10/22 - Movie #4,282

BEFORE: Well, I don't know if there could be a clearer sign that the pandemic is essentially over - beyond me not needing to wear a mask the whole time I was down South last month.  I was on the subway today at about 3:30 pm, and it was PACKED, and this was a train going into Manhattan, not coming out.  So people aren't just back to work, they're working afternoon or evening shifts, or late night events - this was on a Thursday, so who knows, maybe Thursday's back to being a night where people want to go out and have fun again. (Remember FUN?). Or maybe there's another reason why everyone was going into the city, I don't know - but six months ago on a Thursday in the afternoon, I would have almost had the train to myself.  Plus, the theater where I worked just dropped the vaccine checks for external events, but they're going to keep it in place for school events, and the mask mandate is still in effect, but change is definitely in the air. Let's just hope that six new COVID variants aren't. 

Da'Vine Joy Randolph carries over from "Kajillionaire". 

THE PLOT: A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch is conflicted when he receives an ermergency 

AFTER: This is the kind of film that I expected to see a lot of, made during the pandemic, in that a lot of this film features just one actor in one room, who needs to be on the phone a lot.  Look, the pandemic was rough on Hollywood, I get it, and there are SAG members who need to WORK just to keep their memberships active, and thus films still need to be made, people still need to be hired, or else they could lose their spot in the union, and then good luck getting back in.  Once you're out, if you can't get hired for jobs, because you're no longer in the union, then how are you going to get your required jobs to get back in?  The film industry might be a lot like the construction industry in some ways, there are probably people on the payroll for every movie who didn't DO anything, but they're on the roster and the payroll and then they get to keep their union membership, provided they're current on their dues.  It's a weird system, for sure. 

There's a famous actor who rented out the theater I work at, just to show his friends a film he directed during the pandemic, and it was along these same lines, it's about a helpline volunteer who fields calls from people who are depressed and lonely - I won't mention the name of the film or the actor, because the film may not get released or go anywhere, but it's the same kind of project, something that could be filmed in one location with most of the actors LITERALLY phoning in their performances. If you don't have the cast list handy, you can play "Name That Voice" or some kind of identification game similar to "The Masked Singer" or the game I play where I try to identify the actor doing the voice-over in every commercial, usually it's Jon Hamm or Donald Sutherland, but sometimes it's Jeff Bridges or John Goodman.

Anyway, this film follows a night in the life of a police officer who's had some kind of incident a few months prior, and it's the day before his court appearance in that case.  He's working at a 911 call center, which I guess is some form of punishment or rehab or work-your-way-back kind of position, which only seems weird because don't they HAVE 911 operators already, and don't THEY have some kind of union?  Or shouldn't there be some kind of special training involved in becoming a 911 operator? That seems like it might take an entirely different skill set than the one needed to be a police officer - I mean, a 911 officer very rarely needs to shoot a gun or disarm an assailant, but they do need to be attentive and compassionate and be able to think quickly and respond by asking the right questions.  Cops also need to be attentive and responsive, but in a different way, know what I mean? I'm just saying that I'd like to see the paperwork that proves that some research was done here, that a police officer might be put to work as a 911 operator, like maybe if they were short-staffed or something?  Otherwise I'm not really buying it. 

What the film wants us to believe is that one incoming emergency call, and the way that the (former?) police officer responds to it somehow transforms him, he really focuses on this one call from a woman who seems to have been taken hostage, and sets out to "solve" the crime, which really isn't something that a 911 operator usually does.  Most of the time the operator will get the caller in touch with the fire department, or arrange for an ambulance or cop car to be sent to their location, and that's it.  Most 911 operators aren't trained to "solve" or stop crimes, they're just the go-between. Usually, unless somebody needs to make a film about a person in one location who needs to make a lot of phone calls to solve a problem.  But then isn't this like cheating, in a way?  People used to make this kind of film to save money on production costs, now they make this kind of film to get around pandemic filming hindrances. 

Well, hey, at least the case turns out to be much, much more complicated than it first appears, so there's that, and the police officer gets a new outlook on life out of the deal, even though that may come at great cost in the end.  But I'm still not sure that I'm buying into any of this. 

Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "End of Watch"), Christina Vidal (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Eli Goree (last seen in "One Night in Miami...", Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Oscar Balderrama, Becky Wu, Bret Eric Porter, Maurice Webster, and the voices of Riley Keough (last seen in "The Runaways"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Purge"), Christiana Montoya, David Castañeda (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Beau Knapp (last seen in "Death Wish"), Edi Patterson (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Paul Dano (last seen in "The Batman"), Gillian Zinser (last seen in "Savages"), Terence J. Rotolo, Bill Burr (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Dillon Lane (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Marlene Forte (last seen in "The Way Back"), Jaime FitzSimons (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Aileen Burdock (last seen in "Bright"), Jonathan Hunt. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 recurring headaches

Kajillionaire

Year 14, Day 313 - 11/9/22 - Movie #4,281

BEFORE: Well, two things are filling up, my schedule and my DVR.  The DVR for TV shows, not the one for movies, the movie one I'm actually making progress on.  I'm behind on half of my TV shows, like "The Amazing Race" and "CSI: Vegas" and "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", and about two years behind on "Chopped", still.  And I don't have any free nights to make progress on TV shows, because most of my co-workers at the theatre are unavailable this month, on vacation or working other jobs, so a lot of shifts have come my way.  Which is great, I can't wait to collect more hours over the next few pay periods, and since I think the whole place will slow down around the holidays, I need to work the hours now, because I can't work them then.  So, I'll say YES to any shift that comes my way, and my movie-watching schedule for November is drastically reduced anyway, just 15 films to watch in 24 days.  

The plan is to drive up two weeks from today and visit my parents for Thanksgiving, but drive back on Saturday before the big traffic rush on Sunday, so I should have some time that last week of the month to really focus on TV shows, because I won't be watching movies then.  I just have to cram in ENOUGH TV each week to keep the DVR from filling up, because then I will miss shows.  And then I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead, so until then I'll just continue burning the candle at both ends and the middle. 

Evan Rachel Wood carries over from "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story". 

THE PLOT: A woman's life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they're planning. 

AFTER: Wow, what a difference a day makes - just yesterday (OK, two days ago) I was watching "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" and thinking I was watching a contender for Best Film of the Year.  For me, obviously, all things regarding "best" and "good" are subjective, and one man's trash is another man's treasure, and all that.  But now my next film wasn't to my tastes at all, and I can't even figure out where exactly it's coming from or what it's trying to say, and so it may be a contender for "Weirdest Film of the Year", and there have been some WEIRD films watched this year. "Boss Level" and "Cosmic Sin" were weird films, "Dune" was a weird film. But I mean the films that are just, like oddly weird - I don't want to say BAD, but they come at you from an odd angle, like "Romance & Cigarettes" or "House of Gucci". Not like "Willy's Wonderland", more like "Prisoners of the Ghostland", know what I mean? You just have to scratch your head and think, "Huh, this must have meant something to somebody at some time, but I'm just not picking up on what they're laying down here. 

I've watched indie films, don't get me wrong - I've been to Sundance three times and mostly enjoyed myself, even though I watched some head-scratchers there. I haven't seen any other films by Miranda July, though, and now I don't think I'll be seeking any others out, because this was just so beyond odd that I couldn't even understand it. There's this family of con artists, father, mother and teen daughter, and the teen's really the brains of the outfit, she keeps coming up with these schemes to raise large sums of money, when her parents are happy just winning small prizes in local raffles and flipping them to other people for cash.  The family lives in a converted office building or something, they don't sleep in decent beds but sort of crash in cubicles on the floor, and they're constantly avoiding the landlord so they don't have to pay their rent.  And then every day at certain times pink suds seep through the walls from the soap factory next door, and they have to gather the suds in buckets and wipe down the walls.  Good god, why, WHY to any and all of this?

Nobody really lives this way, do they?  What purpose does all this serve, what can we as the audience learn from their situation?  Nothing, as far as I can tell. The relationship between parents and daughter is strained because they're all incapable of expressing complex emotions like love, or they've made a conscious decision to NOT feel those things, because reasons?  Are they too afraid how much it will hurt if the family breaks up?  That's a terrible reason to not express love for your family members.  

The family flies to New York, using tickets they won in a contest, just so they can run a scam at the airport where the daughter pretends to lose her luggage, but the parents have already walked out of the airport with her bags, and she then files a claim to collect the insurance policy she had on the luggage.  Look, I've noticed that people at the airport used to give a shit and check the tickets of people claiming bags of the conveyor belt, but they stopped doing this at some point, and I haven't seen security at bag check in years.  You can land at an airport and claim your bag AND someone else's, which is weird because security is so tight when you BOARD the plane, and then it's completely lax when you get your luggage.  But you didn't hear it from me.  

Anyway, the daughter, whose name is Old Dolio for some other reason that makes no sense. at all, then earns over $1,500 from the airline for them "losing" her luggage.  (If an airline exec watches this film, then you'd better believe they'll have officers stationed at baggage claim in the future...). This money was supposed to pay the family's back rent, but somewhere on the flight back the parents meet a young woman who they enjoy speaking with, and they convince her to help them find a new scam, since she works for an optician that makes deliveries to elderly patients, and somehow this leads to them all stealing stuff from the apartments of those senior citizens.  First, though, there's an awkward attempt at a threesome between the parents and the new girl, and this is another terrible idea, so the less said about that, the better. 

The new girl, Melanie, notices the emotional rift between the parents and their daughter and sort of inserts herself into the middle of it, I couldn't really tell what was going on here, either, except that Old Dolio is in some kind of arrested state, she's not properly emotionally developed because of the way her parents raised her, so she's vulnerable to the first person who comes along to cater to those emotional needs, I guess?  And then I can't tell if this was another manipulation, or some twisted form of love, or just another business transaction in the end.  Old Dolio's parents vow to change their ways, and shower their daughter with all the birthday presents they never gave her, in an attempt to win her back, but knowing them, this is probably all just part of a bigger scam to get that airline money back.

Does anybody really live like this?  Do people fly from Los Angeles to New York City to do a little dumpster diving and then fly back home?  Are there people who look at a dying elderly person and try to accelerate the timetable on their inevitable demise just because they've got a lot of stuff they can steal and sell to Goodwill?  Am I supposed to hate this family, or feel sorry for them, or see myself in them?  I just can't figure it out. And even if Old Dolio finally gets engages in some emotional growth or learning and determines that she needs to get away from her toxic parents, find an adult relationship and grow the hell up, so freakin' what?  What does it all mean in the end?  Nothing?

Look, I had my life upended by the pandemic, as many people did.  I was forced to change careers, and ultimately it was sort of a wake-up call that I couldn't keep living the life I had, and I had to start something new.  Among other things, I became more keenly aware of the conversion of my time into salaried hours, and since I'm in my fifties, I'm worried about that, because there may be more days behind me now than ahead. I kind of maybe agree that we're all just slaves working for the almighty dollar, and there's no way off the hamster wheel that feels right, so we just keep going around it, hoping that the scenery will change one day.  But even those depressing notions seem more positive than the vibe of this film, which really harshed my mellow, man. I mean, thanks for being a link in my chain and all, but I can't move away from this whole story quickly enough. 

Also starring Richard Jenkins (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Debra Winger (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Gina Rodriguez (last heard in "Scoob!"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Kim Estes, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (last seen in "The Lost City"), Rachel Redleaf (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Randy Ryan (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Mark Ivanir (last heard in "The Adventures of Tintin"), Diana-Maria Riva (last seen in "What Women Want"), Betsy Baker (last seen in "Oz the Great and Powerful"), Michelle Gillette, Susan Berger, Adam Bartley (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Michael Twaine, Andrew Hawkes, David Ury (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Matthew Downs (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Samantha Cardona, Zachary Barton, Jeffrey Nicholas Brown, Ben Konigsberg (last seen in "Lady Bird"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 small earthquakes (were these meant to be symbolic of something, or just a typical L.A. occurence?  Another baffling question with no answer...)

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Year 14, Day 311 - 11/7/22 - Movie #4,280

BEFORE: This year, at New York Comic-Con, I got to meet Eric Appel, the director of this film, and of course after he introduced himself I asked the single most awkward question ever, because I really really wanted to know the answer.  I just thought that the short film this is based on was like the funniest thing ever, so I needed to know what it was like to direct a feature film based on a short film, like wasn't that a difficult spot to be in?  Not really, because Appel also directed the short film, with Aaron Paul playing Weird Al, and Mary Steenburgen and Gary Cole playing Al's parents.  It was comedy gold, lightning in a bottle perhaps, and then plans were made to turn that short into a feature, or to treat the short as the trailer for the feature, or words to that effect.  I suppose the next most awkward questions then would have been, "Why mess with perfection?  Why not just leave the short film alone?" but I managed to hold myself in check and not press the point.  

So now I've been watching the hype for this build over the last month, and for me, it's at a fever pitch - so when I realized I could squeeze this one into my chain within the first week of release, well, I just had to do it. Sorry, Billie Holiday, I'll try to get to your bio-pic next year if I can.  A parody bio-pic about Weird Al Yankovic supersedes all other plans, and is getting fast-tracked right to the top of my list, because I am the target market here.  So Daniel Radcliffe carries over from "The Lost City". 

THE PLOT: Explores every facet of Yankovic's life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like "Eat It" and "Like a Surgeon" to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle.  

AFTER:  I usually scan through the celebrity birthdays each day, hoping to occasionally land on somebody famous celebrating a birthday while also appearing in the film I'm watching that day.  No such luck today, but as I'm sure you're probably aware, November 7 is the birthday of Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, the acclaimed French symbolist writer whose Romantic works were often infused with mystery and horror, and who believed that the imagination has within it more beauty than reality itself, existing at a level in which nothing real could possibly compare. It's also the birthday of Albert Camus, whose writings contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism, which seems like an appropriate thing to celebrate after watching this film.  It's also Marie Curie's birthday, but who cares?  What did SHE ever accomplish that was meaningful and important? 

You have to be really in-the-know to get ALL the jokes here.  Fortunately, I am in the know, because I happen to be somewhat Yankovic-adjacent, which actually was one of my career goals.  Yep, I went to NYU film school, studied animation, and worked on as many music videos as I could in the late 1980's and early 1990's, just on the off chance that I could get myself closer to "Weird Al" Yankovic.  For many years, this plan did not work, so I sidestepped into the world of independent animation production, and one day my boss got the call to animated a music video for a major, major recording artist who turned out to be Kanye West.  It seems that famous auteur filmmaker Michel Gondry had been hired to make a music video for "the artist now formerly known as Kanye" and had spent a few million doing a stop-motion video in the Macy's Manhattan flagship store after hours over the course of several weeks, and the result was a breathtakingly beautiful and super-expensive masterpiece that Kanye absolutely hated.  So he scraped together a few thousand in pocket change and hired an animator to make a replacement video.  

A few months later, Weird Al decided to hire a bunch of animators to make videos for all of the songs on his album "Straight Outta Lynwood", and he came very damn close to NOT hiring my boss to animate on, only because he'd recently made that other video for Kanye.  So I saw my dream of getting close to Al come to fruition, but it was a close one, it almost didn't happen, and then three years of film school and 17 years working in the film industry would have been a complete waste of my time. JK.  But then on the next album my boss got to animate a second music video for Al, and this led to backstage passes for me and two co-workers at a concert at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on Al's birthday, October 23, in 2011.  I got my photo taken with Al at the meet-and-greet, and I was so star-struck that I couldn't speak, which only ever happened to me that one other time - and I've been celebrity-adjacent a LOT, I would daresay more than the average person. 

Like Al himself, I grew up listening to the Dr. Demento syndicated radio show, where of course he got his reputation as the King of Parodies. It makes sense, if Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, then the person who parodies him should become the King of Parodies, right?  But again, you have to be in the know and if you've done your homework, you'll know that Alfred Yankovic is possibly the most ironicially nicknamed person in show biz, because he's such a straight arrow - no drinking or drugs, no profanity on his records, and he's a vegetarian to boot. Happily married for over 20 years, and with a college-age daughter, the only vice I'm aware of is being the owner of what is perhaps the world's largest collection of Hawaiian shirts.  So he doesn't fit the typical rock-star image, and yet his career has spanned over 40 years now, and he's outlasted many of the artists that he's poked fun at.  Chalk that up to clean living, I guess, or the main goal of bringing joy and happiness to the world through music - there are worse ways to spend one's time, for sure.  

But the director didn't let any of that get in the way, he assured the public that he did absolutely no research into Al's history or life when co-writing this film with him.  Essentially the movie ITSELF is a parody of the "Dark Side of Fame" genre, and there are shout-outs to films like "A Star Is Born", "The Doors", maybe even "Showgirls".  Of course this is all in fun and nothing is meant to be taken seriously at all, which must be incredibly liberating from a production standpoint - the film doesn't have to be accurate, it only has to be funny.  Truly anything can happen in this alternate Yanko-verse, as long as that cardinal rule is observed.  And even if you buy into the film as a true bio-pic, because it carries some air of truthiness about it at first, then by the time Al is single-handedly waging an armed rescue of his girlfriend Madonna from the compound of Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar, at some point you're bound to realize that almost nothing is real.

Self-reflexivity also reigns here - the closing song, in addition to pointing out that as a new song, it's automatically "eligible for Oscar consideration", drives home the point that this film is 100% accurate, except for the part where Al turns down the invitation to perform with Queen at Live Aid, because he absolutely, for sure, did that thing and by the way, he totally rocked Wembley Stadium in the process.  But if I've got any concern about this format, it's the fact that there might be a few people out there who are NOT in on the joke, and might actually believe Al when he states in an introduction to the film that everything is 100% true, which might be the biggest falsehood of all.  I'm only concerned because as a nation we're still getting over the last administration, which was famous for promoting "alternative facts" and claiming premature victory over the COVID pandemic, manipulating the minds of Americans through conservative media outlets, holding phony media events with faked props, even changing weather maps with markers just to try to make reality conform with the mistakes made by the Commander in Chief. It's the old joke about how you can tell that a politician is lying, because his lips are moving.  So I'm like 99% on board with the fudging of facts in Al's back-story, and that 1% of me that's having a bad reaction, I blame that on Trump and his entire entourage of deplorables. 

Parody vs. satire - what's the difference?  I'm going to defer to the man himself, because by Al's rules, a parody song is one where he just changed the words, like "My Sharona" becoming "My Bologna", and "I Love Rock and Roll" turning into "I Love Rocky Road".  The song was about one thing, and then usually Al's version is about food, or TV or being nerdy.  But then with "Smells Like Nirvana" he started working with satire, as the changed lyrics ended up being about the original song and the band Nirvana, and thus became a commentary on itself, thus satire. Also, parody is allowed much more latitude when it comes to copyright violations than satire is, but as we all know, Weird Al ALWAYS gets permission from the songwriters to make his parodies, despite what Coolio once claimed.  Parody tends to imitate a specific work in a humorous way, while satire tends to use humor to comment or criticize an aspect of society.  But some works can be both, like SNL's "Weekend Update" segment, which is a parody of a typical newscast in format, but also offers up satire by giving criticism or comments on the events of the week. 

The film is so wild and out there that it's potentially NITPICK POINT proof - it's impossible to take anything in the movie seriously, so why even try?  Why complain about something that's not trying to be true or accurate in the first place?  Anyway, Weird Al's fame is possibly even WEIRDER than what's depicted here - I mean, mostly less weird, but also weirder in some ways.  If you've ever been to a Weird Al concert (and I've been to three of them) maybe you've seen the clip reel they play of the best Yankovic cameos from the world of movies and TV shows - who else can claim on their resumé the unique combination of appearing as himself (or versions of himself) in "The Simpsons", "American Dad", "Scooby-Doo", "Robot Chicken", "30 Rock", "Johnny Bravo", "The Drew Carey Show", "The Naked Gun", "Spy Hard", "Tapeheads", "The $100,000 Pyramid", "Rock & Roll Jeopardy", "Cupcake Wars", "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", "Circus of the Stars" and "The Goldbergs"?  Also, he played Ted Nugent on "Reno 911", Adolf Hitler on "Drunk History" and characters on "Bojack Horseman" and "My Little Pony".  It's Al's world, the rest of us just live in it!

(Still, my favorite Weird Al moment came after his name had been floated as a possible candidate for being inside the Peacock costume on season 1 of "The Masked Singer". On the night of the finale, Al sent this message on Twitter: "I can't wait to find out if it's me!"  Classic.)

in this alternate Weird Al Yanko-verse, the song "Eat It" was not a parody of a song written by Michael Jackson, but this intentionally false narrative is designed to make us believe, just for a second, that Weird Al wrote the song, and MJ stole it later.  Obviously this is played for humor, and to create a disconnect in our brain that shocks us, but for a while I reasoned this out as "Naturally, the film wants to put some distance between Al Yankovic and Michael Jackson, because of the allegations which have since come to light."  But no, this wasn't really the case, it was just done to be funny - but I would have understood if someone were trying to remove all references to the notorious "King of Pop".  So it's a funny bit, but then there's something evil deep down inside of me that is kind of reminded of Trumpism again, like this is maybe just one or two steps away from "My inauguration crowd was the biggest ever."  I'm really trying to not connect those dots here, I swear.  

Maybe it's just that Election Day is tomorrow, and I've been watching too much MSNBC. I thought maybe this film would help get my mind off of things, but that was only partially successful.  I shouldn't hold it against the film "Weird" if I'm stressing out over the midterms.  I'm very sorry, Al, but you know it's been a tough couple of years lately. 

I could write another whole essay JUST on the cameos in this film, mostly concentrated in the pool party scene.  Plus I could get into a debate over whether that scene is referencing "8 Mile" or "Amadeus" (maybe both?). But it's all too good, almost, and I don't want to spoil anything - just go watch the film, it's streaming for FREE so what are you waiting for?  Then call me later and we can discuss it together, OK? Oh, right, nobody calls each other any more. Text me, then and we can get into it. I'll tell you about that time I requested a Spike Jones song on the hotline and Dr. Demento said something very awkward about my mother...

Also starring Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Evan Rachel Wood (last seen in "Thirteen"), Julianne Nicholson (last seen in "The Love Letter"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Horse Girl"), "Weird Al" Yankovic (last seen in "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary"), Will Forte (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Thomas Lennon (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), David Bloom, Richard Aaron Anderson, Jack Lancaster, Spencer Treat Clark (last seen in "Glass"), Tommy O'Brien, Arturo Castro (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Keanush Tafreshi, Andrew Steven Hernandez (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Paloma Rabinov (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Scott Aukerman (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Johnny Pemberton (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Jonah Ray, Jeremy Bolm, Dean Sharpe, Nina West (last seen in "Starring Adam West"), Julie Chang, Jimmy Walker Jr. (last seen in "King Richard"), Trenyce (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2"), James Preston Rogers (last seen in "Pixels"), Erin O'Shea, Paul Riley Fox (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Jacob Lawrence Kreiss, Lisa Margaroli, Gordon Tarpley, LeChristopher Williams and the voices of Deidrich Bader (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Eric Appel

with cameos from Lin-Manuel Miranda (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Patton Oswalt (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Michael McKean (last seen in "The Meddler"), Dot-Marie Jones (last seen in "The Boondock Saints"), Jorma Taccone (last seen in "I Used to Go Here"), Demetri Martin (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Paul F. Tompkins (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Akiva Schaffer (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Jack Black (ditto), Emo Phillips, David Dastmalchian (last seen in "Dune" (2021), Quinta Brunson (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Josh Groban (last seen in "The Hollars"), and the voice of Seth Green (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). 

and archive footage of Madonna (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Dr. Demento (last seen in '"Zappa"), Mick Jagger (last seen in "Count Me In"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), David Bowie (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain"), Don King, Queen Elizabeth (last seen in "King Richard") and Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"). 

RATING: 8 out of 10 artists who got the "Yankovic bump"

The Lost City

Year 14, Day 310 - 11/6/22 - Movie #4,279

BEFORE: Originally this was going to be the slot for "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", with Rob Morgan carrying over from "The Unforgivable" - and then Da'Vine Joy Randolph would carry over to "The Lost City", but the plan has changes so that I can fit in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" tomorrow.  Also, from December's plan I'll have to drop "A Shock to the System", a Michael Caine film airing on Tubi, because my count's been one film over for the year for months now.  One film had to be jettisoned, and now TWO films have to go if I'm going to make room for tomorrow's film - but I've been very aware for a while which films I can drop without affecting the chain, in this case if I drop "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", the chain's just going to seal the breach around the hole, because now Sandra Bullock carries over from "The Unforgivable". This is why I design my plans like this - usually I know that I can drop the middle films in a three-film or four-film chain with the same actor, but this was a special case, that a film was bookended by two Sandra Bullock films.  I'm back on course, heading for Christmas - heck, I was never OFF course, I'm just making one less stop, right? 

THE PLOT: A reclusive romance novelist on a book tour with her cover model gets swept up in a kidnapping attempt that lands them both in a cutthroat jungle adventure. 

AFTER: Obviously, tomorrow I'll be talking much more about parodies, but this film is also a parody of a sort, it pokes fun at the whole "adventure" genre, which now includes everything from the "Indiana Jones" and "Tomb Raider" franchises to the "Jumanji" sequels, and I guess "Romancing the Stone", "Jungle Cruise", "Tarzan", "Conan".  Without getting too far into the sci-fi stuff like "Jurassic Park" and "King Kong" movies, what do we call the group of films that is specifically concerned with the archaeological and jungle stuff?  IMDB's got a list of "archaeology-adventure" films, and that's probably the best I can hope for, but that also lumps in films like "National Treasure" and "The Da Vinci Code", and so I'm just not sure that we're all agreeing on where the cut-off might be. "Timeline"?  "The Goonies"?  The genre seems to be all over the place, or at least the list of films is. 

On top of all that, this is an adventure film, but also a comedy, but also a romantic comedy.  There sure seems an attempt to be all things to all people, or for a screenwriter to hedge their bets by touching all the bases.  Probably some corporate strategist figured out that men like adventure films, women like romance and kids like slapstick comedy, so that motivated them to sort of Frankenstein all these elements together and create something for the whole family.  Damn it, that shouldn't work, but I think somehow they got lucky here and put together a very watchable movie that also ticked all those boxes.  Huh. 

There are digs at authors, too, especially romance/adventure novelists, and the long blond wig that the cover model wears to play Dash McMahon when he poses for the art is probably a dig at Fabio, who appeared on all those many romance books a few decades ago. Yeah, it's probably better to poke fun at things when they're popular, and not thirty years later.  If you weren't around during the 1990's, and I know some of you weren't born yet, I'm talking about Fabio Lanzoni, who posed for photos in 1987 that were used to create cover art for romance books, starting with "Hearts Aflame" by Johanna Lindsey.  This led to a career as a male model, a few TV and movie roles, a notable commercial for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter", and then one day he rode on a roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Williamburg, VA, and somehow a flock of geese was passing by the ride, and one bird got hit by Fabio's face, and I swear I am not making this up. Fabio is retired from modeling and show biz now, but he's got that typical American success story, where you can be famous for just about anything, provided you're the best or best-known in that area. 

But the downside is that "The Lost City" is also a story that starts with writer's block, and if you've hung around The Movie Year for any length of time, you probably know how much I hate those.  Loretta Sage not only has writer's block, but she's dealing with the death of her husband, so she's been a recluse for some time (as many of us were, during the pandemic).  Finishing the latest "Dr. Angela Lovemore" book means that she'll have to leave the house, go out on a book tour, and to make matters worse, her agent has also booked the cover model for Dash, Alan Caprison, on the same tour.  Alan has a secret crush on Loretta, while she can't stand how he acts when they're on stage together, always ripping his shirt off and such.  As you can probably guess, these two are most likely going to end up together, because opposites attract, and hate is not the opposite of love, plus male lead and female lead thrown together, you do the math. 

Loretta gets kidnapped by a weird billionaire, who believes that the information in her novels (based on research she did with her late husband, an archaeologist) will help him find a secret treasure on an island he just bought, and Alan witnesses the tail end of her kidnapping, and sets out to rescue her, with the help of a more accomplished action hero guy, a former Navy SEAL and CIA agent.  This guy, Jack Trainer, is trained for combat and, unlike Alan, has the skills to rescue Loretta.  Also, unlike, Alan, Loretta connects with him on a mental and personal level, and it looks for a short time like there's an interesting love triangle developing.  But no, the story sees fit to remove Jack from the equation so that Alan and Loretta are basically stranded, and have to work together to survive and get back to civilization, if possible. 

The two hold their own, but accidentally stumble upon some information that suggests there might really be a treasure, and they could possibly find it before the mad billionaire does, so they have to try.  Well, at least there are some nice reversals in the plot, I'll give it that - every time you might think you know where this story is headed, they change it up and turn it around or upside-down, but narratively speaking, that's a good thing.  Who wants to predict at the start where a film's story is going to end up, and be right about it, where's the fun in that?  And this movie IS a lot of fun, I enjoyed it despite at first thinking it wasn't going to be that enjoyable.  

Also starring Channing Tatum (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Daniel Radcliffe (last seen in "Lost in London"), Da'Vine Joy Randolph (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Oscar Nuñez (last seen in "The Proposal"), Patti Harrison (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Bowen Yang (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Stephen Lang (last heard in "The Nut Job"), Joan Pringle (last seen in "Best Friends"), Hector Anibal (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Thomas Forbes-Johnson, Sli Lewis, Adam Nee, Raymond Lee, Anthony Alvarez (last seen in "Frida"), Marcy Jarreau (last seen in "The Last Word"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 sleeper holds

The Unforgivable

Year 14, Day 309 - 11/5/22 - Movie #4,278

BEFORE: Well, of course, as soon as I listed my links for November, I jinxed it.  I was then going through the cast list for "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", and I realized that I CAN work it in this week, by pure coincidence it fits rather neatly between two films that I already had on the schedule, two films with Da'Vine Joy Randolph, but each film ALSO features one star from "Weird".  That seems a bit like divine providence to me, the linking gods set up a spot for a film I really want to see, without giving me much advance notice. 

The problem is, I'm already one film over the legal limit for the year, assuming I stick to that schedule - so in order to add ONE, that means I have to drop TWO.  I'd been going back and forth about which one to drop, and now that decision is off the table, because they've both got to go.  Well, I guess that makes the choice easier, right?  Don't feel bad for the dropped films, because I sure won't, and they both link to several other films on the list, so there's a great chance that I'll get to them next year, while they're still readily available. 

Viola Davis carries over from "Disturbia". 

THE PLOT: A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past. 

AFTER: Well, we've had some pretty dark days here at the Movie Year - I'm speaking in terms of the tones of the movies, a lot of real downers lately, with not an uplifting film in sight.  Sure, part of that was due to the themes of the horror chain, and obviously many horror films focus on death and torture and demonic possession and other dark-side matters.  Fun films are on the way, I assure you, I just re-jiggered things to make sure of it.  But we had a whole week of complicated edgy relationship stuff ON TOP of the horror, and that stuff will drag you down.  "Colossal", "The Invisible Man", "Us", "Candyman" and then "DIsturbia" and a "Matrix" film?  Jesus, does anybody remember laughter?  That movies are supposed to be, you know, FUN?  The one bright spot was "Love and Monsters", which really stood out because it didn't take itself too seriously, and it proved that even a post-apocalypse film can be entertaining. 

But to get to more fun stuff, I've got to make it through this downer of a film, which details a woman trying to put her life back together, or build a new life, after serving 20 years in prison for, what, murder?  Manslaughter?  It's a long time in this film before we get to see exactly what happened years ago via flashback, when Ruth Slater's father killed himself, and cops came to their rural Washington house to evict her and her five-year-old sister, Katie, who Ruth essentially raised herself until their father's death.  

We go through all the steps with Ruth, meeting with her parole officer, living in a halfway house, trying to get a carpentry job, falling back on a job in a fish-processing plant, and then eventually meeting with an attorney to try and track down her sister, who's now 25 and has only vague memories of her life before the incident.  Katie's adoptive parents don't want to allow her any contact with Ruth, so this becomes a very thorny issue, as an ex-con, what rights exactly does Ruth have to get back in touch with her family, it turns out very few as long as Katie is regarded as a "victim" of the incident.  Ruth had written Katie thousands of letters over the years, and presumably the letters have gone unread, possibly even destroyed.  

At the same time, a certain contingent of people have set out to make Ruth's rehabilitation very difficult, even impossible, by calling her up and yelling "Cop Killer!" at all hours of the day, plus the two sons of the sheriff who died in the eviction stand-off follow her around in shifts, trying to determine how they're going to get some payback.  Just as Ruth is starting to make progress by getting a carpentry job building a facility to help the homeless, all of the other situations start to come to a boil, and then Katie's adoptive sister manages to make contact with Ruth at the worst possible time. 

Sandra Bullock is listed as a producer here, and I can't help but think this was made with some hope of getting her an Oscar nomination, that's one main reason why stars have production companies and qualify as producers, because they're trying to nurture projects that will increase their chances with the Academy, but this film kind of went nowhere, either because it got a limited release due to the pandemic, or it wasn't entertaining enough, or hey, maybe it was just a very crowded year for Best Actress nominations.  It's all a marketing guessing game, after all, nobody really knows which films are going to connect with the Academy voters.  Nominations went instead to Jessica Chastain, Olivia Colman, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart, and since I haven't seen all of those performances, I'm not really in a position to comment. BUT, probably at least one of those nominations maybe should not have happened (I'm thinking Kristen Stewart as Princess Di) and just maybe, Bullock should have been in there with a nomination for "The Unforgivable".  But also just maybe, this attempt to get a nomination was just a little too blatant. 

I will say it's nice to see Vincent D'Onofrio in a non-villain role, Lord knows that after playing Goren on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" for so long he went deep into a bad-guy thing, with evil roles in "Jurassic World", "Fire With Fire", and as Kingpin in "Daredevil" and "Hawkeye".  Here he plays a lawyer who helps Ruth out, and it's a nice change of pace.  He plays villains very well, though, but it's good to see him switch things up. And hey, the actor who played "The Punisher" in the Marvel Netflix series is here, too - though I don't think the Punisher actor and the Kingpin actor have any scenes together here.  The most useless bits of trivia on the IMDB page these days tend to be "three of this films actor's have been in Marvel movies..."  Dude, every single actor in Hollywood has now been in one Marvel project or another, get over it. 

NITPICK POINT: Part of the terms of an ex-convict's parole are to not interact with other ex-cons. I think this is fairly standard - but if Ruth's parole officer keeps sending his clients to work in the same seafood factory, isn't it inevitable that at some point, a couple of those ex-cons are going to, you know, interact?  It seems like if this is a parole violation, there should be some kind of check in the system to prevent this, like, I don't know, maybe the P.O. should stop sending his parolees to the same workplace?  By the same token, whether or not Ruth has any rights to contact her sister should have been made more clear, I think - either she has the right to do this or she doesn't, it shouldn't have been such a gray moral area, maybe?  

NITPICK POINT #2: Ruth gets punched out by a co-worker at the seafood processing plant.  Was this someone she knew from prison, or did someone get a job at the plant JUST to get close to her and try to beat her up?  Neither one really makes sense, because if that's a fellow parolee, that person just earned herself a trip back to prison, and if it's just a regular person, why do they go right back on the line to a job that was just a cover story?  And everyone just goes back to work, as if one employee didn't just try to beat up another - hello, where's the manager, and why are there no repercussions for a worker starting a fight in the middle of the work day.  Also, why attack her at a job where she's very likely to be holding a very sharp knife in her hand?  From every angle, this incident is not very well thought out. 

I'm not sure that there needed to be a twist at the end, and I'm not sure that twist managed to serve the purpose that it was intended for.  That's about all I can say about it without giving it all away. But there's sort of an underlying reason why the twist doesn't really make sense.  

Also starring Sandra Bullock (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "King Richard"), Richard Thomas (last seen in "Taking Woodstock"), Linda Emond (last seen in "The Professor"), Aisling Franciosi, Emma Nelson (last seen in "Where'd You Go Bernadette"), Will Pullen, Thomas Guiry (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Jessica McLeod, Rob Morgan (last seen in "Mudbound"), Andrew Francis, W. Earl Brown (last seen in "Scream"), Neli Kastrinos, Orlando Lucas, Jude Wilson, Patti Kim, William Belleau (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Viv Leacock (last seen in "This Means War"), Toby Hargrave (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Bobbi Charlton, Cynthia Loewen, Sarah Kelley, Aaron Pearl, Janet Walmsley. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 fish heads