Turning Red

Year 15, Day 14 - 1/14/23 - Movie #4,314

BEFORE: We drove out to Long Island today, my wife's car needed an oil change and also there were some factory recalls on some parts, I guess and they needed to be replaced - not a car guy, so I don't get how that stuff really works. (Or oil changes, for that matter.). The dealer gave her a loaner car so we could drive to get some lunch while they worked, so we went to the mall nearby and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.  Before that, we walked around the mall and there was a real, open, working FYE store, that sold DVDs and Blu-Rays!  All I saw was the bargain bin at first, and that made sense, it's just been a long time since I saw ANY physical media on sale in a store.  There's still a market for DVDs!  I guess the store couldn't survive on just selling t-shirts and Funko Pop figures.  Then we walked by the food court, and it was packed!  No really great restaurants, just a ramen place and a chinese food place, some pizza.  What was weird was seeing so many people out in the open, amassed together, sharing the same space, so I guess COVID is really over.  Or it's Long Island, and people just didn't care, it's a very red-state part of New York, after all. 

James Hong carries over from "Everything Everywhere All at Once", and if you want to talk about a guy with a lot of screen credits, you've got to talk about Hong. He's got over 450 credits in the IMDB, and that may or may not be a record, but his resume stretches back to the 1950s! He was born in 1929, so he's...94 years old and still making movies, some of his credits are recent, like the three movies here in my January chain.  He was in "Chinatown" (1974), "Airplane" (1980), "Blade Runner" (1982) and the ORIGINAL Godzilla movie, the one from 1956!  He's famous for an episode of "Seinfeld", but his TV resumé includes "Perry Mason", a bunch of Westerns and BOTH incarnations of "Hawaii Five-O"!  "Kung Fu Panda", "R.I.P.D.", "Scooby-Doo", "Charmed", "Friends", "Mulan", "Dynasty", "Dragnet", you name it, he's been in it!  

THE PLOT: A 13-year-old girl named Meilin turns into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited. 

AFTER: So yeah, this movie came to Disney Plus last March, and I've been avoiding it... or should I say, it's been really difficult to link to it, and it took me 10 months. I can't tell any more, does it matter?  I think I worked a screening of it some time last year at the theater, and I peeked my head in a couple times and saw a few scenes, but naturally they didn't make much sense, because they were out of context.  But I read a few articles about the film, and of course people raved about it, because it's got a female lead character, and it deals with issues of parenting, teen insecurity, and the whole panda thing's a giant metaphor for puberty, right?  

Well, yes and no, I suppose.  I mean, it's a RED panda, and it comes from an ancient Chinese family CURSE, and the solution to get rid of it is to perform a ritual under a red moon, which is also called a BLOOD moon. See what I mean?  They're dancing all around this whole "becoming a woman" thing that's associated with puberty and menstruation.  Which as teens we're told is no big deal, but the adults make a really big deal out of telling teens that it's no big deal.  More on that in a bit, but let's deal with the giant panda in the room.  

Meilin lives in Toronto with her parents, and she's very devoted to helping them run the biggest Chinese temple in town, which is traditional but not so traditional, because it honors their male AND FEMALE ancestors, rather than the... um, Chinese gods?  I don't know how Buddhism works, either. But what do most Chinese temples honor?  Was this a narrative cop-out or a concession, or an attempt to not piss off the Christians or evangelicals in the audience?  I bet a kid wouldn't even notice this.  Anyway, Meilin's mother is very controlling (you know, because she's Asian) and over-protective, and clearly isn't ready to see her daughter grow up.  

Sure, she MEANT to tell Meilin about the family curse, but she "thought she'd have more time". More likely, she avoided this because it would have been an admission that her daughter is ready to be a young adult, and she couldn't handle that.  Her overprotective behavior also manages to embarrass her daughter, again and again.  It's one thing to bring your daughter's lunchbox to school if she forgot it, but bringing her maxipads and making a big show of it, that's just not cool.  What is it about parents that they forget how to be subtle about things?  Or are parents going to embarrass their kids no matter what they do, is this just built into the situation?  (Another thing I don't really understand, because I don't have a kid.)

Meilin finds out, after having a stressful nightmare, that any strong emotion will turn her into a giant panda (not the cute black and white kind, which are bears, but the red Chinese kind, which I think is from the raccoon family).  Naturally she freaks out, but freaking out is only going to keep her in the panda state, so she's got to learn to relax in order to turn human again.  This would only be a problem if she's at a stage in her life when she's moody and irritable thanks to hormones, right?  The film uses the term "excited" to describe a lot of different emotional states, one of which comes from after thinking of herself embraced by an older boy, but of course you can't say "horny" in a Disney film for kids.  Meilin also gets into the panda state when she sees something that's too cute, or she gets hit by a dodgeball, or she thinks about her favorite boy band coming to town - so, she's pretty much screwed, she's going to be a panda all the time. 

Fortunately she finds that thinking of her closest friends, knowing they support her no matter what, calms her down enough to transform back.  But that's kind of an emotional crutch, right?  She should learn to embrace her panda side and be proud of it, and not so eager to turn back, it's something that makes her unique and special, especially since the rest of the women in her family have gone through the ritual and put their panda spirits into red gems that hold them in captivity.  Eventually, the movie gets there when she's found out at school, and all the other kids want to see the panda, touch the panda, ride the panda.  Wow, that was an interesting turn, she went from nerdy and unpopular to the biggest conversation piece, in a good way (?). So of course she and her friends try to monetize this so they can get concert tickets.

Meilin can't get her parents on board to let her see 4*Town, so naturally she decides to defy them and sneak out to raise money for that last ticket.  Nothing good can come from that, which actually is an OK message to send out to the kids.  But then blaming her friends for the scheme that she came up with, not cool.  Then the ritual and the boy-band concert are set for the same night, so you just know there's going to be a conflict/showdown there. 

The whole boy-band / beatboxing / kid slang is really horrible here - these kids don't talk the way real kids talk, I'll bet, they talk the way adults THINK that real kids talk, which is different.  Kids don't say "You da bomb!" any more, that was out like 10 years ago.  Maybe the script was written 10 years ago?  Or kid slang changed more quickly than some screenwriter thought?  Or do they still say "You da bomb!" up in Canada?  I doubt it.  Anyway, I cringed every time I heard these four girls talk, because the adults made them talk so stupidly - and one was ALWAYS shouting, which was very annoying.  Also, the kids were like 80% GIANT TEETH, and I noticed that in just about every scene, the character design was very distracting.  Once you see that, you can't unsee it. 

So yeah, the period thing.  Do we ever find out if Meilin really DID get her period at the same time?  Her mother assumed she did, and brought her the pads, but that was before her mother knew it was the panda thing.  Do the two go hand-in-hand?  The whole "honey, you're becoming a woman" thing is bothersome to me, because as I said before, the parents also say AT THE SAME TIME that it's natural and no big deal.  Well, does it mean something, or doesn't it?  As time goes on and humans become more educated some things change, but others don't.  We still think of the heart as the emotional center of the body, but it's not, it's just an organ that pumps blood and keeps us alive - emotions are in the brain, not the heart, but you don't see brain-shaped boxes of candy on Valentine's Day, do you?  We still say "Bless you" after somebody sneezes, but we don't still believe that a person's soul leaves their body when they sneeze.  If menstruation is a purely natural process, it should be treated that way, without the emotional weight and meaning that people have added to it.  At the basic level, it's neither a blessing NOR a curse, it's just a thing that happens.  Much like how a Sweet Sixteen or a Quinceañera get celebrated in cultures, but those birthdays are just dates on the calendar, but culture has then tacked on an extra meaning to those birthdays, for reasons. 

It would be ridiculous if there were a special meaning attached to a young man's first, umm, well you know, ejaculation, so why does the first period get such special attention?  It doesn't seem fair, but then, what do I know? 

Also starring the voices of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Ava Morse (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Hyein Park, Orion Lee (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi"), Wai Ching Ho (last seen in "Set It Up"), Tristan Allerick Chen, Lori Tan Chinn, Mia Tagano, Sherry Cola, Lillian Lim, Jordan Fisher, Finneas O'Connell (last seen in "Bad Teacher"), Topher Ngo, Grayson Villanueva, Josh Levi, Sasha Roiz (last seen in "Man of the Year"), Addie Chandler, Lily Sanfelippo, Freya Fox (also carrying over from "Everything Everywhere All at Once")

RATING: 4 out of 10 dumplings (which seems to be all they eat in this film, because, you know, Asians...)

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Year 15, Day 13 - 1/13/23 - Movie #4,313

BEFORE: I swear, for what it's worth, that I drew up my schedule for January BEFORE this movie won two Golden Globes, or I should say they were won by Michelle Yeoh (Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy) and Ke Huy Quan (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture) and it was nominated for FOUR MORE.  Look, it's time to start thinking about the Oscars, the nominations voting is now taking place, I helped my boss sign in to the Academy voting site today to cast his ballot - I'm sworn to secrecy, of course. 

But my instincts were spot on, this film is now probably considered a front-runner to get an acting nomination or two, and probably ones for editing and special effects also.  It could happen, and now I've crossed off at least one contender from my list.  As I've said before, I've only got a tight window of January to watch a few likely nominees, because once February 1 hits, I'm back on the romance beat.  

Some fun synchronicity, I already determined that this year I watched a Frances McDormand movie, "City by the Sea", exactly one year after watching her in "The French Dispatch", and now that's happened again - for my 13th movie last year, I watched Michelle Yeoh in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and now on the anniversary of that, she's back in another movie.  Of course, I watched 8 movies with Michelle Yeoh in them last year, so that did kind of increase the odds a bit.  This sort of thing probably happens all the time, anyway, and it's just weird those few times that I'm aware of it.  

Ke Huy Quan got a Golden Globe for this, but where has this guy been for the last...37 years?  The last movie I saw him in was probably "The Goonies".  I can prove it, I use the IMDB advanced search function every day for every movie, to determine when I've seen each actor last (it's not 100% foolproof, because the IMDB search engine tends to ignore documentaries with archive footage...) and as part of this project, I've watched 4,313 movies in just over 14 years, and Ke Huy Quan has been in NONE of them.   I just checked, the guy doesn't have a lot of IMDB credits, so maybe he just dropped out of show biz for a while, it happens.  Welcome back, I guess?  Maybe he just had a real job for 30 years, I don't know.  (Ah, Wiki says he went to USC film school and has been working as a stunt coordinator and assistant director.)

Sunita Mani carries over from "The Death of Dick Long". 

THE PLOT: An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, in which she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led. 

AFTER: Sunita Mani had a very small role here, she just played an actress appearing as a Queen in a TV show that played all the time in the laundromat.  That's OK, small roles count and keep the chain alive.  Another actor carries over, too, the guy who played Dick Long last night appears here as a guy getting spanked in a sex room - umm, he also co-directed today's film, he's half of the directing duo known as "The Daniels".  Well, that's a step up from having sex with a horse, I guess. 

And Key Huy Quan is some kind of Jackie Chan guy now?  Good for him!  He's come a long way from being that meek, nerdy kid in "The Goonies" and the loud Asian kid in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".  Now he gets to play a meek, nerdy adult named Waymond - and also the loud Asian guy when he's Alpha Waymond.  Wait, I should explain. 

Look, this is a really simple film about people jumping between universes - there's apparently an "ALPHA" universe, which we don't start off in, our story here begins in one of many realities, where immigrant Evelyn Wang has made certain decisions in her life that led her to being a laundromat owner with a quiet husband, Waymond, who wants a divorce, and a daughter named Joy who's dating a woman and Evelyn claims to be OK with that, but she's really not.  What would Gong Gong think?  Gong Gong is Evelyn's very old father, who's visiting them for Chinese New Year. Life is constant, just laundry every day, but disaster strikes when the family is due to be audited by the IRS, who you might think would turn out to be the villain of the story, but wait, there's more. 

Evelyn's universe is invaded by a being from the Alpha Universe, Jobu Tupaki, who is jumping across the various bizarre realities and she can manipulate matter at will, or something.  Evelyn learns all this from Alpha Waymond, who she naturally confuses with her husband Waymond, except this one is from the Alpha Universe and is much cooler.  His Alpha-Evelyn died years ago, but the Alphaverse developed "verse-jumping" technology which enables people to access the skills, memories and bodies of their other parallel-universe selves by doing things that are statistically unlikely, like saying "I love you" to an enemy, licking the walls, or peeing in your pants intentionally. 

Alpha Waymond gives non-Alpha Evelyn the ability to universe-jump, and she learns about other versions of herself that made different choices, like not marrying Waymond, or becoming a kung fu movie star, or being an opera singer.  And while Alpha Waymond considers this Evelyn to be an enormous failure, all this verse-jumping slowly gives her the knowledge and skills to just maybe defeat the dreaded Jobu Tupaki, who might be a version of her own daughter, but with a splintered mind.  All of this jumping around the multiverse is no good for one's mental health, it turns out, cracks start to develop in the brain, or something. 

Jobu, meanwhile, has been searching the multiverse for a version of Evelyn who could see the world the same way she does, so it's possible that this whole film is just an allegory for the generation gap.  Right?  Every person believes that their parents just don't understand them, but then every parent probably has difficulty understanding why their kids can't be more like they are, or were.  But very few children will attempt to destroy the universe over this, by building a giant everything bagel that functions like a black hole of sorts.  That's gotta be a metaphor for something, too, right?  But what?  And then probably very few parents would jump across the multiverse and spend a few days as a rock just so they can maybe attempt to see things from their kid's point of view.  Still, you have to wonder if all of this could have been avoided if Evelyn could have just accepted her daughter as gay and told Gong Gong about it. 

The best parts for me were learning that Jamie Lee Curtis' character was named "Deirdre Beaubeirdre", because that just makes me want to say "Banana fana Fo-feirdre", like from "The Name Game", and the spoof of "Ratatouille" which probably came from somebody mis-hearing the title, but then again, in some alternate universe, perhaps there's an animated movie where a chef is controlled not by a mouse but by a raccoon, and that movie would indeed be called "Raccacoonie".  Because of course. 

What I don't usually like are these multiverse stories - when they did "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and followed that up with "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" I knew we were only seeing the tip of this dreadful iceberg.  It's way too confusing to keep track of the events of three or four universes at the same time, just as having THREE Spider-Mans in one movie didn't clear anything up, it just made the MCU continuity much, much worse.  If there are three Spider-Mans in three universes, why is Green Goblin only in ONE, and Venom is in...TWO?  What do I call the other version of Venom when he's played by Topher Grace, and in which universe is he played by Tom Hardy?  At least here they kind of get it "right" because there is or was an Evelyn and Waymond in each parallel universe - their stories may be different, but at least they all exist.  

Here I can't help but think that the universe-jumping is a big screenwriting cheat - think about it, most characters would have to train for years to get good at martial arts, but thanks to verse-jumping, all someone has to do is push a button a cell phone, piss their pants, and suddenly they've got the gymnastic skills of another version of themself, from another universe.  

I did invent a word the other day in the comic book shop, I was talking with the kid at the counter about the Avengers book, which is doing a storyline right now where the modern Avengers team up with the Avengers from the year 1,000,000 BC to fight the Multiversal Masters of Evil.  The latest Ghost Rider (aka the All-Rider) also travels the multiverse looking for other versions of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and the Captain Marvel Corps to help - and I accidentally called the characters from the other universes "multi-versions". Yeah, that kind of works. When that sticks, please tell everyone you know I came up with that. 

I also thought the name "Waymond" might be racist - you know, like that's how an Asian person might mispronounce the English name "Raymond", and I know that some Chinese immigrants take on English names when they move to the U.S. or the U.K. But there's a cameo here from a Chinese movie producer, Waymond Lee, so I guess I'm mistaken. 

Also starring Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Stephanie Hsu (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Ke Huy Quan, James Hong (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Jamie Lee Curtis (last seen in "You Again"), Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Harry Shum Jr. (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Biff Wiff, Aaron Lazar (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Andy Le (also last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Brian Le, Audrey Wasilewski, Peter Banifaz (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Li Jing, Daniel Scheinert (also carrying over from "The Death of Dick Long"), Timothy Eulich (last seen in "Swiss Army Man"), Michiko Nishiwaki, Dan Kwan, Freya Fox and the voice of Randy Newman (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 hot dog fingers (I thought this might have been a Grand Theft Auto reference - just me?)

The Death of Dick Long

Year 15, Day 12 - 1/12/23 - Movie #4,312

BEFORE: I got this one kind of by accident, I think maybe I thought it was this other film called "Dick Johnson Is Dead", only that film is a charming (or so I've heard) documentary about a woman dealing with her father's eventual death by filming him in different scenarios where he dies in various ways, I guess therefore softening the blow when he does pass away?  Anyway, I've heard good things about that film, but this is NOT that film.  Honestly I don't know what this really is, but it seemed intriguing, like a different kind of murder mystery or something. I think I used it to fill up a DVD with another film, but now I don't remember what. 

Roy Wood Jr. carries over from "Confess, Fletch". 

THE PLOT: Dick Long died last night, and Zeke and Earl don't want anybody finding out how. That's too bad, though, because news travels fast in small-town Alabama. 

AFTER: A funny thing happens when we go on vacation, or even when we drive out to Long Island, I look around at the houses and I think, "That's a nice-looking house, I wonder who lives THERE, what's their deal?  What's their job, how do they pass their time, are they married, do they have kids, do they feel happy and fulfilled?"  But I don't have much time to think about it, because the car keeps moving and soon I'm looking at a different house, thinking, "That's an even nicer house, I wonder who lives THERE, what's their deal?"  Since we're certainly not going to pull over and knock on anyone's door and ask them what their life is like, eventually I stop thinking about this.  There are millions of people in this country, and I don't have time to find out what everyone's life is like, still I can't help but wonder.  

Then we drive back into Queens and it starts all over again, only with apartment buildings instead of houses.  The highway sometimes looks right into some people's windows, and not everyone pulls the shades down or the curtains closed, so sometimes I'll get a glimpse of a silhouette walking around in an apartment - what are they DOING?  Probably just watching TV or making dinner or just reading a book or something.  Are they comfortable in their little box of an apartment, are they entertained, are they fulfilled?  How could they be if they're not in Manhattan three or four days a week, interacting with celebrities?  I just don't get it.  They're all the way out on the far side of Queens, aren't they bored?  Well, if they are, it's not really my problem.  

Watching a movie is a bit like that, it's a glimpse into the lives of people - fictional ones, sure, but the general feeling is the same, I'm passing by somebody's house and I'm looking through the window and I'm trying to figure out how they spend their time, and if they're happy about that, or if they just tolerate each day and move on to the next.  Maybe there are aspects of their lives that I'll never understand, like the compulsion to have children and then watching them grow up, to me that seems only slightly less boring than gardening, but maybe that's just me.  My point is that everybody's life is kind of a blank canvas and we all have to figure out how we're going to fill it, hopefully we all get a painting that we enjoy and don't mind showing to other people.  Not every painting belongs in a gallery or museum, sure, but art is subjective, and if you like what's on your painting, congratulations, and if you don't, you'd better find something else to paint. 

I'm dancing all around the subject of this film, because the film has really only one secret to reveal to you, and that's how Richard "Dick" Long died.  Once you find out, that's it, you can't unlearn that and it colors everything and changes everything.  Once you figure out what's going on inside the house, though, you may wish that you didn't look through the window in the first place.  So I'm not going to reveal it here, but we live in an age of wonders, you can just look up the plot summary on Wikipedia and I'm not going to stop you.  They had a woman on Jeopardy! last week who, as a rule, always reads the spoilers for a film before viewing it, and I just can't live my life that way.  Sure, she'll never be disappointed when someone tells her the ending to "The Sixth Sense" or "Fight Club", but please, tell me, ma'am, who hurt you?

I will point out that this film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival (The 2023 edition starts in exactly one week, I'm not going but I have two co-workers at the theater who are.  I haven't been since 2004.) and I don't know, Sundance has often been known for provocative subject matter, but I think you have to draw the line somewhere.  There was also a documentary that played at Sundance in 2007 on a similar topic, and either some programmer in Park City has a kink, or they're repeating themselves and they just don't care.  We get it, already, Sundance, you're edgy.

I've already said too much, if you want to read between the lines or look up what went down in this film or that 2007 documentary, you might be able to figure it out.  But then, once you do, you might wish you hadn't.  And all that stuff in the real world went down in Washington state, but this film takes place in Alabama, probably had to change the location for legal reasons.  But I have no doubt weird stuff goes down in both places, because there are some real sickos out there.  Sometimes when we're driving through a rural area, we both point out houses or barns that look really shady or are falling apart and we say, "Look, there's a real murder shack!"  Yeah, it's like that, only worse. 

There's a part of the film that I can't be sure about, but it might be a reference to one of the segments of "Pulp Fiction", and that film also had a whole section about non-consensual S&M, and while that's NOT the topic of "The Death of Dick Long", it's still some freaky gimp material, maybe it's in the same ballpark, I don't know.  But I also don't want to know.  Proceed with caution, that's all I'm saying. Maybe if somebody asks you "Do you want to get weird?" you should really consider saying no. This movie only made $37,000 at the box office, so I think the voice of the public was really heard there, saying, "Please, no more movies like this one."  Your Sundance cred doesn't mean much if nobody goes to see the movie after the festival. 

Also starring Michael Abbott Jr. (last heard in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Virginia Newcomb (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Andre Hyland (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Sarah Baker (last seen in "Thunder Force"), Jess Weixler (last seen in "Ava"), Sunita Mani (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Poppy Cunningham, Janelle Cochrane, Daniel Scheinert, Christopher Campbell, Randy Tumbleweed Smith, Nancy McLemore, Eugene Henry.

RATING: 3 out of 10 Arby's wrappers

Confess, Fletch

Year 15, Day 11 - 1/11/23 - Movie #4,311

BEFORE: John Slattery carries over from "Eraser". Hey, it's a "Mad Men" reunion tonight, because Jon Hamm is in this movie, too. At some point I did binge-watch all the episodes of "Mad Men", only I did it years after everybody was talking about it. My ex-boss swore by it, but he worked tangentially to the advertising biz, so it probably hit harder for him, I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I watched the whole series in 2018 or so?  I'm still trying to find time to watch all of "Lost", there's still some hope I may get to that before I die. 

Here's the great news - I've been all over the place so far in this New Year, I started with a film from 2019, then 2013, 2002, 2012, forward to 2018, then TWO from 2022 (!!) then WAY back to 1996, forward to 2017, back to 1996 AGAIN, and now another new(ish) film from 2022.  Tomorrow it's 2019, but then like THREE 2022's in a row!  And I promise, there's a whole bunch of films from 2021 and 2022 coming this month, just be patient. 

THE PLOT: After becoming the prime suspect in a murder, Fletch strives to prove his innocence while simultaneously searching for his girlfriend's stolen art collection.  

AFTER: I was really interested in this when I saw it pop up in the cable listings a couple months ago, because damn, it's been how long since "Fletch Lives"? 1989?  That's 11, plus 23, carry the one...34 YEARS since the last "Fletch" movie came out, with Chevy Chase in the lead role.  That's a fricking long time, I wonder if that's a record for a sequel. Umm, reboot?  Whatever, I'm glad somebody's reviving a franchise, but what took so damn long?  I guess they had to wait for everybody to forget about "Fletch Lives"?  Or the series is like ponytails for men, they're so far out of style that they're back in again?  Well, that's what I keep telling people, anyway.  

Somebody's been sitting on the movie rights to "Fletch" for ALL THAT TIME?  Or maybe it was a few somebodys - but it reminds me a bit of all these restaurants that closed down during the pandemic, and remain closed.  Really? The economy's better now, right, and nobody wants to open up a restaurant in that space?  Somebody owns that building and they are LOSING money every day that space remains vacant.  Similarly, somebody was failing to make money off the "Fletch" franchise every damn day for 34 years?  I find this hard to believe, maybe there were a few attempts during that time to get something going, but they couldn't find the right director, they couldn't get funding, the studios did a focus group and found out nobody knew what a "Fletch" was?  I don't know, but I'd love to hear the story.

Maybe they were waiting for somebody to come along with the same sort of humor, charm and arrogance as Chevy Chase had in the role. A B.S. artist, somebody who could investigate a crime and also talk his way out of every tight situation he got caught in - well, jeez, Jon Hamm can do that, right?  It's right in his wheelhouse, not just as Don Draper but I'm thinking of him as his characters in "Bad Times at the El Royale", "Baby Driver", and "Keeping Up with the Joneses", they were all suave, debonair, arrogant and right on that fine edge between upright, uptight and downright evil. AND he always looks good doing that, and I say that as a straight guy.  Hell, he even makes Progressive Insurance commercials watchable.  So great job on the casting here, I think - if anybody's going to make this character relevant again, he's got a solid shot at it. 

It's based on one of the Fletch novels, though, one that was written in 1976. So there's a chance this whole thing could feel outdated, but thankfully art heists and murders are evergreen, but then again, this story was written back when cel phones weren't even a thing.  Here Fletch leaves his usual stomping grounds of L.A. and comes to Boston, home of art museums galore, to find twelve paintings that were possibly stolen by an art dealer.  The paintings belong to the billionaire father of Fletch's Italian girlfriend, who he met several months ago while in Italy, spending time away from his ex-wives. Sure, I'll buy that. 

But not long after hitting town, Fletch finds a dead woman in his rented town house, and despite being the one who calls the cops to report the murder, he's still considered the prime suspect.  I can see the logic - if he WAS the murderer, you'd expect him to panic and try to dispose of the body.  If he was NOT the murderer, he'd call the cops and remain calm.  But a SMART murderer would do exactly what a non-murderer would do, call the cops and remain calm.  So maybe this is why the Boston police detectives don't rule him out, they might just think he's smart. 

Fletch then works the case from all angles, he meets with the art dealer suspected of stashing the paintings somewhere.  He interviews friends and associates of the owner of the town house, trying to make a connection to the dead woman. Perhaps he thinks the two crimes will meet up, somewhere in the middle. He fends off advances from his girlfriend's stepmother, who arrives in Boston unexpectedly to ask him for updates about the paintings. To Fletch's credit, he does NOT sleep with his girlfriend's stepmother, so hey, the character's showing some personal growth, I think. 

But always, always, using those fake names and cover stories when he meets new people - this could only go south if all of those people should, say, end up in the same room together and all think that Fletch is a different person.  Also, Fletch meets up with his reporter friend on the staff of the Boston Sentinel, another convert who moved from L.A., and that's when we all get our delightful "Mad Men" reunion.  I guess if they'd dropped Vincent Kartheiser or Elisabeth Moss in here, too that would all be just a bit too twee - no, just seeing Hamm and Slattery back together as frenemies is just fine, thanks. 

This murder mystery probably can't hold a candle to "Glass Onion", from what I've heard, anyway, but I guess I'll find that out in about 10 days, when I can then play "compare and contrast".  But there's a lot to like here, not just from Jon Hamm but also from Roy Wood Jr., probably the only correspondent from "The Daily Show" who really deserves to be in more movies.  Somehow Ronny Chieng has a bigger career, and I think that's a real crime.  Roy needs to get off the small screen and into more movies - the only ones on his IMDB list are this film and the one I'm going to watch tomorrow.

OH, YEAH, that reminds me, I never gave you my actor links for the month of January - geez, after figuring the month out, I went straight into it, without so much as a how-de-doo.  So, after Roy Wood Jr. links to tomorrow's film, there's Sunita Mani, James Hong, Tantoo Cardinal, Martin Sensmeier, Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Arturo Castro, Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Sam Rockwell, William H. Macy, Dale Dickey (again) and Sean Penn, and then that gets me to "Licorice Pizza".  Yep, that's 16 names for 21 films, but you can puzzle it out if you really want to.  Or, you know, just wait. 

The ending apparently sets up the next book in the series, which is "Fletch's Fortune", but after this film was under-promoted and thus underperformed last year (earned just a bit over $600,000), nobody's sure if another film in the series will be made.  That's too bad, there was nothing really wrong with this one, I hope they make another sequel, and I hope they do it before 2057. That's entirely too long to wait. 

Also starring Jon Hamm (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Roy Wood Jr., Ayden Mayeri (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Lorenza Izzo (last seen in "Knock Knock"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Tesla"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), John Behlmann, Lucy Punch (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Erica McDermott (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Eugene Mirman (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Kenneth Kimmins (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Robert Picardo (last seen in "Matinee"), Eli Neslund, Caitlin Zerra Rose, Domenico Del Giacco, Aaron Andrade, Travis Bennett, Nhumi Threadgill, Anna Osceola, Gene Amoroso (last seen in "The Company Men"), D-Tension, Elizabeth Goodfellow. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 named fish in the tank

Eraser

Year 15, Day 10 - 1/10/23 - Movie #4,310

BEFORE: Stuck at home again today, there haven't been many shifts offered to me at the theater, I realize that the school has been on winter break, but that's small consolation when I'm counting on the second income to help pay my bills.  But then, if I spend enough time at home, I'm not out working, buying lunch, paying subway fares and going to see movies in the theater, so I'm kind of saving money by just sitting at home, but it's boring.  Three days a week I'm working at the animation studio, which is always running out of money, which generates more anxiety for me - I should be used to it by now, this October I'll have been there thirty years, and it's always kind of been like this, only it never used to stress me out so much.  I'm keeping busy by selling art online to customers, which does bring in some money, but all other attempts to raise money there (by creating a web-site with a donation function, or buying a table at Big Apple Comic Con, which is a solid investment in my mind) have been nixed by my boss, so he and I have really been clashing over the best way to keep the studio in business.  He has his own ideas about how to raise more funds, and I obviously have to defer to him, however if I'm right and he's wrong that will be small consolation when the landlord locks the doors and we lose the studio space - I've decided that if that should come to pass, then I'm done there, and I tried my best to save the place, but who wants to work at a job where no one listens to your advice or ideas?  Again, I should be used to it by now, but it's really starting to bother me.  Out of desperation today I applied for a new job online, so I wonder if anything will come from that. It might be nice to make more money each week, even if I (shudder) have to work a five-day week.

James Caan carries over again from "Undercover Grandpa". 

THE PLOT: A Witness Protection specialist becomes suspicious of his co-workers when dealing with a case involving high-tech weapons. 

AFTER: This one sort of starts out believably, but by the end it becomes completely ridiculous.  Do I believe in a character played by Schwarzenegger, a U.S. Marshal who protects witnesses by "erasing" their lives, while also killing the people who are trying to kill them?  Yes, of course I do.  Do I believe that a group of other U.S. Marshals would be corrupt and involved in an arms deal with a foreign merchant, and that those Marshals would be willing to frame the honest Marshal and kill the witness who flipped on the gun company?  Eh, not so much.  

The worst offender here, however, is the depiction of the high-tech weapons, which are called E-M rifles, or electro-magnetic rifles I guess, and at other times in the film they're called "rail guns" - well, which is it?  I just checked on Wikipedia, though, and those apparently are two names for the same thing, which is a gun that uses electro-magnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles.  Umm, OK, but this film came out in 1996 and now, over 25 years later, the E-M gun is still largely theoretical, so if they're not a practical military weapon NOW, well they sure as hell weren't one THEN, either.  Some screenwriter placed his hopes on technology catching up with his script, and it just didn't happen.  Anyway, they're depicted here as laser rifles that can fire explosives that blow a hole in a person and also knock them about 100 feet back, and, well, that's just not a thing.  Also somehow they have the equivalent of x-ray vision, they enable a shooter to see through a building and find a person's skeleton, I'm guessing this is B.S. too.

Again, I like the premise here, a guy who protects witnesses is a great character and there's certainly story potential there, but mixing that storyline with an arms deal is like putting chocolate on an onion.  Unless the corrupt marshals knew all the time that the guns don't work, if that were part of the storyline and the arms dealers were pulling a fast one on the Russians, I might... nah, it still doesn't work. 

This is two days in a row where people faking their own deaths is a major plot point, like two characters did it in "Undercover Grandpa" and here it's the main engine that drives the plot.  But don't you think after a while the mobsters and other evil people would get wise to this trick?  "Hey, that guy testifying against me is going to enter the Witness Protection program, I want to try and have him killed... What?  He died?  In a weird, random accident?  Geez, that's the third time this week this has happened, what do you suppose the odds are against that?  It's really weird..."

A couple other unbelievable things here, like our hero Kruger falling out of a plane and somehow catching up with a falling parachute - NITPICK POINT #1 is that everything falls at the same rate, he can't streamline his body to "fall faster" and catch up with the parachute, the laws of physics on falling objects prevent this, I think. Acceleration is a constant due to gravity, if you drop a ping pong ball and a bowling ball at the same time, they should land at the same time, all things being equal. "Swimming" through the air to fall faster is pure Hollywood invention.  Then, of course, he manages to put on the parachute WHILE falling and never blacks out or panics from hurtling toward the ground at an incredible speed (NP #2) and then there's the plane that's approaching to try and crash into him, which is moving forward at a constant elevation, but isn't he, you know, falling?  So the plane would either have to be moving closer to earth at the same rate, or aiming for a spot BELOW him in order to crash into him - if they're on the same level plane, then he's in the clear, because he's moving toward the Earth, and he won't be at that elevation when the plane reaches him, right?  (NP #3)

It's also a HUGE coincidence that the former mobster that Kruger erased and relocated in the earlier part of the film is also the cousin of the mobster that controls the docks in Baltimore harbor where the marshals are loading the guns onto a ship - just me? 

Wait, wait, I also forgot about that same character getting shocked by a defibrillator after faking a seizure at the complex.  The doctor who shocks him with the paddles must be a rookie, because he's clearly conscious and talking, and I believe they're only supposed to use the defibrillator when a patient is non-responsive.  It's probably meant as a gag, but it's not all that funny, and the gag doesn't work because any doctor properly trained would not use that device unless it was absolutely necessary and medically the right treatment for a patient's condition.  "Oh, she just went by the beeps on the EKG..." Nope, not good enough.  

Don't even get me started on the depiction of a plane missing a door and somehow not every character being sucked out - or worse, an executive who shoots out his office window, and somehow there's a similar rush of wind like one would expect from an open window on an airplane.  Yeah, so the effects here are JUST a bit over the top....

Also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Vanessa Williams (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), James Coburn (last seen in "Hudson Hawk"), Robert Pastorelli (last seen in "Striking Distance"), James Cromwell (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Danny Nucci, Andy Romano, Nick Chinlund (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Michael Papajohn (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Joe Viterelli (last seen in "Narrowsburg"), Mark Rolston (last seen in "Midway"), John Slattery (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Robert Miranda, Roma Maffia (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Tony Longo (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Gerry Becker (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), John Snyder (last seen in "Sid and Nancy"), Melora Walters (last seen in "Venom"), Olek Krupa (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Cylk Cozart, K. Todd Freeman (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Rocco Sisto, Steven Ford (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Tommy J. Huff, Rick Batalia (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Michael Gregory (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Patrick Kilpatrick (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Camryn Manheim, Skipp Sudduth, Rick Marzan, Denis Forest (last seen in "Cliffhanger"), Sven-Ole Thorsen (last seen in "Bulletproof"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 hungry alligators (in a kid's petting zoo? Come on...)

Undercover Grandpa

Year 15, Day 9 - 1/9/23 - Movie #4,309

BEFORE: James Caan carries over from "Bulletproof" and this looks like a silly stupid spy (?) comedy, God knows we don't need more of those, but since Mr. Caan passed away a few months ago, I figured I'd throw it in here as part of a three-film salute.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The War with Grandpa" (Movie #4,293)

THE PLOT: When the girl he likes goes missing, Jake enlists the help of his grandfather and Grandpa's former special ops buddies. 

AFTER: Jeez, it's not just James Caan, this film was released in 2017, so it's just five and a half years old, and at least five of the films actors have passed away since then - Jessica Walter (who died at the age of 80 in 2021), Paul Sorvino (who died at 83 in July 2022), Kenneth Welsh (famous for playing Windom Earle on "Twin Peaks", he died at age 80 in May 2022) and Lawrence Dane (who died at age 84 in March 2022).  I'd think this was really eerie or maybe the film was "cursed" somehow, except these actors were all getting on in years, plus we did have that whole pandemic thing that affected senior citizens disproportionately.  I don't believe in the "Curse of Superman" or the "Curse of Poltergeist" anyway, I mean time passes, and into each life a little rain must fall, and everyone's story ends in much the same way.  We don't think of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" as cursed films, just because every actor who appeared in them is now dead, do we?  Still, maybe somebody could check on Louis Gossett Jr., you know, just to make sure he's still OK?

For the younger stars in this film, this was probably a great opportunity to learn from actors who had decades (and decades) of experience.  You can't put a price on that. This poor kid Dylan Everett has to go back to waiting for the call to play Zac Efron's little brother in something, and the female lead has to deal with the fact that she maybe only gets hired when Zendaya is unavailable or is asking for too much money.  Sorry, that's just how I see it. You just know the casting director was thinking along these lines, and the director probably couldn't wait for the day when "Undercover Grandpa" would be on cable and people might be flipping channels and think that they might have stumbled on an early Zac Efron and Zendaya film.

The premise is a bit ridiculous - teen Jake finally gets the chance and the confidence to ask out Angie Wagner, a childhood friend who he now thinks of romantically, only wouldn't you know it, the big party he invites her to is on the same night when his family has dinner with his senile grandfather, famous for his B.S. war stories.  But when Angie gets kidnapped because her car broke down and she accidentally saw a Krakhovian dictator drive by after he had faked his own death while on trial in Canada, his grandfather investigates the scene and starts working the case.  It turns out that he's really former military intelligence, and the made-up stories and the made-up dementia were just his cover.  He ends up calling his whole special ops team back into action, despite the fact that they're all really old and have various health problems.  

Still, they've got experience on their side, in addition to bad backs, high blood pressure and weak bladders. One last mission, and if they don't survive, eh, well, there probably wasn't much time left on their clocks anyway.  From the demolitions expert to the "king of camouflage" and the guy who makes wacky weaponized inventions, the team is ready to roll, as long as they're back at the nursing home before breakfast after the pre-dawn raid on the, umm, empty warehouse?  Actually the only real bit of comedy here is that their well-planned mission is a total failure, they all get caught during the infiltration, but maybe their fearless leader can reason with General Komenchko.  Sure, why wouldn't a crazy dictator be willing to listen to reason?  

I know, this one didn't make a lick of sense, from start to finish - but at least it was funny at times, which "Bulletproof" seemed quite incapable of being. The jokes were telegraphed from a MILE away, like you just know the fake grenade and the bogus land mines are going to be important later, right?  Who was the target market for this film, teens who wonder what their grandfathers did during the Bay of Pigs invasion?  Thank God this wasn't James Caan's last film, that would have not been a great note to end his career with.  They mentioned on Jeopardy! the other night that 2022 was the 50th anniversary of the release of "The Godfather", if I hadn't already seen the film enough times I'd say that I was due for a re-watch, that's a much better way to remember Mr. Caan, don't you think?  

Also starring Dylan Everett, Greta Onieogou (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Jesse Bostick (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"), Jessica Walter (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Paul Braunstein, Louis Gossett Jr. (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Kenneth Welsh (last seen in "The Art of the Steal"), Paul Sorvino (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Lawrence Dane, Jennifer Robertson, Jonathan Higgins (last seen in "The Boondock Saints"), David Bronfman, Timm Zemanek (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Rob Archer (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Pat Lemaire. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 secret herbs & spices

Bulletproof

Year 15, Day 8 - 1/8/23 - Movie #4,308

BEFORE: Had to do some yard work today, probably my least favorite thing, I should have done it in the fall but I didn't. We have a planter out front that usually has some nice flowers in the spring, though we didn't plant them, and a tree - but it got totally overrun with ivy, just like our backyard gets taken over every year with grape vines.  I was just going to trim the ivy that was hanging outside the planter and makes it difficult for my wife to get into the car, but then I saw how many vines there were, climbing up the tree even, and so I went crazy with the clippers, cutting everywhere I could and pulling out as many of the vines as possible.  This is a bi-annual ritual in the backyard, but I never realized I had to do this in the front of the house, also.  The vines had somehow poked through the brick mortar in some places, I'm not sure how, and had wrapped themselves around the inside of the planter about ten times more than necessary. If I didn't do something, then nothing else would have the chance to grow there in the spring, flowers wouldn't have a chance with all those vines and the tree would probably suffer as well, somehow.  Look, I know about as much about gardening as I do about basketball, which is next to nothing, but I know the ivy is an invasive species that will choke out everything else.  At least I'm pretty sure.  But it took a lot of cutting and sweeping, and that was exercise outside in the cold, so I worked up a sweat, then came inside to warm up and had the chills for a while.  Not an encouraging reaction, but it had to be done. 

Adam Sandler carries over from "Hustle".  I recently made a list of all the famous people that I've encountered over the years, in one way or another, from chance encounters at film festivals or parties or comic-cons years ago to actors and directors who have come to speak on Q&A panels after screenings at the theater where I work now.  I wanted to get it all out of my head and into a Word document before I get to the age when I start forgetting things, which is, well, now.  Of course Mr. Sandler is on that list, because he attended NYU at the same time I did, though I think he was a senior when I was a freshman or sophomore.  We lived in the same dorm but the only time I remember being in the same room was the annual dorm lottery, when students expecting to return to that dorm next year got to draw numbers for room choice.  He was, I think, appearing on "The Cosby Show" at the time, and SNL was still a couple of years in the future, but we all kind of knew around the dorm that he was on his way to being famous. That's how I remember it, anyway. The whole cast of "The State" (and later "Reno 911!") performed at a dorm 2 blocks away, and for some reason, Bianca Jagger was in my 16mm film production class. 

THE PLOT: Two criminals, Keats and Moses, end their friendship when one turns out to be an undercover cop.  Later, the two are forced to work together when Keats is assigned to protect Moses as a witness. 

AFTER: Flashing back all the way to 1996 for this one, you can tell that movie directors just didn't know quite what to do with Adam Sandler just yet.  This was pre-"Waterboy", pre-"Big Daddy", pre-"Wedding Singer" even. Yeah, this came out after "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore", but I'm willing to consider the fact that it might have been filmed BEFORE those two and some studio shelved it because it was a weird buddy cop action comedy that ultimately wasn't very funny and could have used more action as well.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this was dusted off AFTER Sandler became famous for a couple successful comedies, and to capitalize on his success, they released it to make a quick buck.  Let me check...

OK, maybe not, because the IMDB trivia says that Sandler came up with this idea to work with Damon Wayans when Wayans hosted SNL in 1994 - and a year later, sent him the script for "Bulletproof". So that would be 1995, and "Billy Madison" would have already been released, or perhaps very close to it.  My theory doesn't hold water, but then that means that Sandler had two successful comedies but wanted to switch gears and do an action film.  OK, whatever, but most of the time if actors have success in one genre they tend to stick with that, but what do I know about acting in different genres?  How does that all work out, or does it? 

But I guess that's maybe how you get a comedy that isn't very funny and an action film that's not very exciting. What's weird is that Sandler plays Archie Moses, a car thief who then wants to move up in the crime world by smuggling drugs for a guy who then launders the money through his car dealership.  Both the actor and the car thief probably should have stayed in their lanes.  No good ever comes from trying to get ahead if doing so is beyond your abilities.  And his friend "Keats", who was really only pretending to be his friend to infiltrate the drug-dealing organization, pays the price by getting shot in the head during the raid on the warehouse. Shot by Moses, the man he befriended - that should teach him, don't try to make more friends, you probably already have more than you need.  Some weird but perhaps helpful lessons in this film...

"Keats", aka Jack Carter, somehow makes a full recovery after the bullet to his brain, and not only gets a steel plate in his head as a result, he falls in love with his physical therapist, Traci.  Sure, could happen. Sometime later (the IMDB synopsis says "years later", but I'm not sure it's that long...) Moses is apprehended and agrees to testify against the car dealer/drug lord, but he'll only surrender to Carter, his former friend, and Carter is also tasked with delivering him across the country. 

So the two men fly and drive and walk across the country, making this plot feel a little like a low-rent version of "Midnight Run".  Colton, the drug lord, has people on his payroll, perhaps even some who work for the police, and so their trip is dangerous because they can't trust anyone, except maybe a very weird motel clerk near Flagstaff.  If I saw a man whose wife looked exactly like him, but with long hair, I'd naturally assume that man was a drag queen and was not actually married.  Just saying. 

There are more complications and Colton holds Traci hostage, there's a big shoot-out at the end and the guy with the steel plate in his head gets some head-butts in, so the injury actually turned out to be quite handy.  NITPICK POINT: most people who take a bullet straight on to the forehead probably aren't quite THIS lucky. Duh. And after testifying, Moses wants to go to Mexico and become a bullfighter.  Seriously?  Oh, no, this can't be taken seriously, in fact I doubt there's very much in this movie that can be taken seriously.  What isn't very simple turns out to be quite dumb. 

Also starring Damon Wayans (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), James Caan (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Jeep Swenson, James Farentino (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Kristen Wilson (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Larry McCoy (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Allen Covert (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Bill Nunn (last seen in "Idlewild"), Mark Roberts, Xander Berkeley (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Mark Casella, Andrew Shaifer (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Monica Potter (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Jonathan Loughran, Steve White (also last seen in "Malcolm X"), Bill Capizzi, Sal Landi, David Labiosa, Scott Hoxby, Paule Stewart, Sven-Ole Thorsen. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 1970's porno films