Blended

Year 15, Day 168 - 6/17/23 - Movie #4,468

BEFORE: I already cut one film from this week's chain for being too romance-based, you would think that logically I should cut this one too, but since it doesn't link to anything else in the romance section of my watchlist, there's really no point in saving this one for February - it's better, I think, to treat this as a film about parenthood, and use that to tee up the Father's Day film for tomorrow.  Makes sense? 

Terry Crews carries over from "Street Kings". 

THE PLOT: After a bad blind date, a man and woman find themselves stuck together at a resort for families, where their attraction grows as their respective kids benefit from the burgeoning relationship.  

AFTER: There was a time when you could chart the Sandler family vacation schedule, since Sandler is an actor and producer who also frequently casts his wife and kids in his movies, it made sense to shoot in some exotic location, and get in a vacation on the studio's dime.  I won't go so far as to call it a scam, it's probably perfectly legit and it's more of a perk, but over time it starts to look a little scammish.  "50 First Dates" filmed in Hawaii, so did "Just Go With It" and then you had blended, which filmed in Sun City, South Africa.  So, sure, family safari - am I missing any of the family vacation locations?  If so, please let me know. 

You know who ELSE went to Hawaii?  The Bradys, that's who - as in "The Brady Bunch".  Realizing this means that this whole film is just an updated gender-swapped "Brady Bunch" where they moved the vacation to the first episode of the series.  And they took away one kid so you wouldn't notice the comparison - the widowed father is raising three girls and the divorced mother is raising two boys.  OF COURSE they're going to get together, we all know this - the "Brady Bunch" TV show just started off with the wedding so we all wouldn't have to see the awkward getting-to-know-each-other phase.  But that's where most of the comedy is going to be found, right?  Well, it was the 1960's and divorce was still a touchy subject, so the sooner they married the Bradys the better America was going to take this blended family with conveniently equal numbers of girls and boys and only one co-ed bathroom. (Seriously?). And don't even get me started on the impossible architecture of a house that an architect lives in...we need a re-boot of "The Brady Bunch" where they live in an MC Escher-like house where every closet door connects to the metaverse of alternate Bradys in other dimensions. "Every Brady Everywhere All at Once".  Somebody write me a pilot.

Back in SandlerLand, in this dimension he's Jim, a widowed father who goes on a bad blind date with this divorced mother, and for some unknown reason he takes her to Hooters, drinks her beer without telling her and then gets an "emergency" call so he can do a dine-and-ditch.  How rude!  But then he meets-cute with Lauren later on when he's trying to buy feminine hygiene products for his daughter and she's trying to buy a skin mag for her son.  Long story in both cases - but did it need to be?  They help each other out, mix up their credit cards at the pharmacy, and this places them back together again when they learn that Lauren's best friend's boyfriend, who is also Jim's boss, just broke up with her right before their planned vacation to Africa, which would have involved the two of them and his FIVE kids.  Jeez, that's seven people, and wouldn't you know it, both Lauren and Jim get the same idea, to call the guy and try to buy that vacation second-hand for their own kids, and wouldn't you know it, that adds up to exactly seven people.  It's like somebody wrote it that way or something...

What's odd is that the two families don't see each other on the plane, wouldn't they all be using the tickets that were already purchased?  No?  Wait, you can't transfer plane tickets to somebody else, so maybe this isn't really a mistake - but then again, yes it is, because then how do these two single-parent families afford the plane fare to Africa?  Any way you slice it, this is some kind of NITPICK POINT.  If you've ever booked a vacation and then had to cancel it, you know what a bitch it is to get your money back from the airlines - they just plain WON'T do it, as I found out when we had tickets to Florida, just after the pandemic hit.  They'll offer you CREDIT which you can use on another flight down the road, or maybe MILES toward future purchases but under no circumstances will they give you your money back, how the hell would they stay in business if they did that?  So that means that Dick, Jim's employer and Jen's boyfriend, had to eat those tickets or just get credit for them toward future flights.  And Lauren and Jim somehow, miraculously had to get last-minute tickets on the cheap for themselves and their collective five kids.  Yeah, keep dreaming, this only happens in the movies.

Anyway, impossible as it sounds, the two families have to share a hotel suite in an African resort, and pretend to be an about-to-be-married couple with five kids instead of two separate families, because there's probably some law in South Africa that we don't know about.  And the resort in South Africa just HAPPENS to be hosting an entire complement of blended families or ones that are about to be blended, which I don't think is a real thing that resorts do, though of course I could be wrong.  Either way, you don't suppose that sharing a giant hotel suite and taking advantage of all the fun activities that the resort offers will bring Lauren and Jim's families closer together, leading to greater understanding and maybe the possibility of a new romance between them?  Nah, how would that even happen?  Well, guess what, you're not going to believe this...

Sharing the hotel suite and taking advantage of all the fun activities that the resort offers manages to bring Lauren and Jim's families closer together and leads to a greater understanding between them and the possibility of a new romance - man, I did NOT see that coming.  Oh, wait, I totally did and you probably did too. 

The problem comes when the comedy bits just aren't set up very well - Jim's two older daughters keep getting confused for boys, but why, just because of their haircuts?  That's some weak sauce, because they look more like girls than boys, so for the joke to work they really needed to emphasize this more, maybe cast actors that looked more gender-neutral or something, but I never really felt they looked like boys, so I didn't understand why people were so confused, and then the joke never really worked.  Maybe the film was a few years ahead of its time, because if they made this film after 2020, there would be no shortage of trans actors and they could have stepped this up a notch.  Then having one daughter believe in an "invisible Mom" and another one speaking in an "Exorcist"-like voice from time to time, well I don't know if these bits qualify as funny or scary or just sad.  Is this meant to symbolize bad parenting or the weirdness of kids who are dealing with their mother's death?  It's so damn unclear because these are just comedy set-ups that go nowhere.  

At least there's a "solution" for the oldest daughter being mistaken for a boy, Lauren takes her to the salon where she gets glammed up, though her father is then horrified - why, because his dead wife was kind of butch?  This is a poorly-written excuse for bad behavior on the father's part. But a couple of things here, a father shouldn't call his daughter named "Hillary" by "Larry", even if he secretly wanted a son, this is not a cool nickname for your daughter, it only exposes his shortcomings and insensitivity.  Even if he wanted her to be on the school basketball team, it's also not cool to tell her she needs to "bulk up" and not act feminine in any way - sometimes you just have to let your kids be and figure this stuff out for themselves, and if it's bad to instill the old gender stereotypes on them (boys do this, girls do that) then its also just as bad to force the new ones on them (girls must play sports, girls shouldn't be so femme).  Just saying. 

Well, at least the father here is present, and taking an active role in their upbringing.  That's more than I can say for some fathers seen in movies, and God knows I've seen just as many lax and absent fathers in the past month than I have active ones who care. Jim doesn't get everything right here, but at least he's trying - and then maybe he did want to have sons, but if the two families then blend together, he can have a whole new set of fun teaching sports to Lauren's sons.  This part rang true and was something of a redemption for his character. 

OK so that's half of the Adam Sandler-based Father's Day weekend down, with one more film to come tomorrow.  Today's film goes out to the stepfathers and the widowed fathers and the single-parent fathers, it's their day tomorrow too.  What the hell, even the absent fathers, spare a thought for them tomorrow if not a greeting card or a phone call.  So they didn't show up for your baseball games, but you've got to forgive them one day, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. 

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Scream"), Kevin Nealon (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Bella Thorne (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Joel McHale (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Abdoulaye N'Gom (last seen in "Green Card"), Jessica Lowe (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Judith Sandler (ditto), Braxton Beckham, Emma Fuhrmann (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Alyvia Alyn Lind (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Kyle Red Silverstein, Zak Henri, Shaquille O'Neal (last seen in "When In Rome"), Dan Patrick (last seen in "Hustle"), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Sadie Sandler (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Tim Herlihy (ditto), Jared Sandler (ditto), Alexis Arquette (last seen in "She's All That"), Katheryn Cain, Susan Yeagley (last seen in "Mascots"), Aimee Ntull, Mary Pat Gleason (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Dale Steyn, Allen Covert (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Chris April, Lauren Lapkus (last heard in "The Last Blockbuster"), Anna Colwell (last seen in "Term Life"), Marissa Raisor, Ashley Pike, Casey Luckey, Rob Moran (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Michael Buscemi (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Jackie Goldston, Robert Harvey (last seen in "First Kill"), Bill Romanowski (last seen in "The Longest Yard"), 

RATING: 4 out of 10 members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Street Kings

Year 15, Day 167 - 6/16/23 - Movie #4,467

BEFORE: Well, OK, maybe this one doesn't really fit in, but I need this one to connect to the films for Father's Day weekend.  Maybe there was another way to get here, but I sure couldn't find it. I already cut two films this week for not fitting in, one was too romance-y and the other was determined to be a horror movie, but I guess I can squeeze in another crime film if it gets me to where I need to be for the weekend's movies. 

Spent all day yesterday at the movie theater, a 12-hour shift, and I've got another one just as long tomorrow, but then after the Tribeca Festival is over, I've got two months off from that job, the place is shutting down until late August.  Well, it is run by a college so naturally things might be expected to be slower during summer, but I was JUST starting to build up my bank account again, and now I've got to watch my expenses again for the next eight weeks.

Forest Whitaker carries over again from "Dope". 

THE PLOT: An undercover cop, disillusioned by the death of his wife, is implicated in the murder of an officer and must struggle to clear himself. 

AFTER: This film really wanted to be "Training Day" or "American Gangster", but it feels like it just couldn't get there.  I'm not sure Keanu Reeves had the gravitas to play an undercover cop who's grieving the loss of his wife while at the same time trying to uncover corruption in the L.A.P.D.  

I also found the plot very hard to follow - I think the point of the film is that 90% of L.A. cops are corrupt in some ways, but they can't all seem to agree on what form the corruption should take, and that's when they end up fighting each other.  Real life just can't be like this, right?  I think at one point Keanu's character and the guy he was teaming up with (played by Chris Evans) were undercover and they managed to get into a shoot-out with two guys who were also undercover detectives?  That's not supposed to happen - don't they have a code word or a secret color that they wear to let the other cops know that they're U.C.'s?  

It opens with Ludlow (Keanu's character) selling weapons to a couple Korean gangsters, and they beat him up and take the guns without paying him, they even drive off in his car - but that's what he wanted, he had a tracking device in the car, followed them to their hideout, and then came in shooting to rescue two girls that the gangsters had kidnapped.  This opening is probably the high point of the whole film, and the part that makes the most sense, it's all downhill from there.  Ludlow re-arranges the scene to make his shooting of the gangsters look justified, and then he's praised as a hero by some cops, but he's accused of being corrupt by others.  Well, which is it, or can both things be true?  

Ludlow's ex-partner has turned against him, and is most likely feeding information about him to Internal Affairs, and the I.A. guy befriends Ludlow in the hospital, claiming to be an insurance agent.  But that's just a cover to get close to Ludlow, only this is not how Internal Affairs officers work - from what I've seen on "Law & Order", they're much more direct, they'll call an officer to their office and make them fill out a report or just question them directly, they don't have to pretend to be insurance agents or some other weird thing.

Not long after, Ludlow goes to confront his ex-partner and follows him to a convenience store, just as two gunmen come in and start shooting up the place - which was weird because they shot dozens of bullets at Ludlow's ex-partner, but somehow the security camera only showed Ludlow accidentally shooting him once.  This must have been some kind of set-up, obviously, but who benefited from it?  And did we ever find out who the gunmen were, or who they were working for?  I watched until the end of the movie but I still don't understand this shooting. 

Somehow Ludlow still manages to follow the evidence up the chain to determine who's in charge.  Probably it's a high-ranking officer, right?  Isn't that how these things usually work?  Still, it was very hard for me to piece together what was happening, and who was framing who for what. I feel like I want to just take another mulligan on this one, as I'll probably forget all about this film in a couple of weeks. 

Also starring Keanu Reeves (last seen in "Sweet November"), Hugh Laurie (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Chris Evans (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Cedric the Entertainer (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Jay Mohr (last seen in "Air"), Terry Crews (last seen in "Gamer"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Common (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Cle Sloan (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Martha Higareda (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), John Corbett (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Amaury Nolasco (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), The Game, Noel Gugliemi (last sen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Michael Monks (last seen in "End of Watch"), Daryl Gates, Clifton Powell (last seen in "Ray"), Angela Sun, Kenneth Choi (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Wally Rudolph, Garret Sato (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Emilio Rivera (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Michael D. Roberts (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Jernard Burks (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Kevin Benton (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Amy Dudgeon, Kirstin Pierce, Kate Clarke (last seen in "Poseidon"), Emiliano Torres.

RATING: 4 out of 10 tiny bottles of vodka

Dope

Year 15, Day 166 - 6/15/23 - Movie #4,466

BEFORE: I'm still working at one of the theaters hosting the Tribeca Film Festival, last night I picked up an extra shift because a co-worker called out sick - after this festival the theater's closing for two months so I've got to try to get as many shifts in as possible.  I'm there all day today (Thursday) and then again on Saturday, then that might be it until late August.  Every summer job I've applied for has said "No, thanks" so maybe the easiest thing to do is file for partial unemployment, watch movies and TV until Labor Day and then go back to work at the theater, but no more movies until October 1.  That's one possible plan, anyway. 

Do I have any appropriate movies for Labor Day on my list?  "Norma Rae"? "Kinky Boots" is set in a shoe factory... or do I just find some back-to-school films like "Dear Evan Hansen" that might link to the start of my horror chain?  I've got maybe until July 4 to figure this out, but that's not a lot of time. It should be easy, nearly every movie features somebody who has a job.

Forest Whitaker carries over from "Respect". 

THE PLOT: Life changes for Malcolm, a geek surviving life in a tough neighborhood, after a chance invitation to an underground party leads him and his friends into a Los Angeles adventure.  

AFTER: Well, OK if yesterday's film fit the "Dad" part of June's theme, then maybe tonight's film fits the "Grad" part.  Malcolm is a high-school student who dreams about going to Harvard, but since he lives in a tough part of L.A., he thinks he's got to get creative to apply to Harvard.  It's all about standing out with your entrance essay, right?  I mean, he's a geek and he's smart and he's got good grades, he maybe just needs to stand out during an interview with a Harvard alumnus who, coincidentally, grew up in the same neighborhood, and also coincidentally, still has a business in the area. 

Running errands for the local drug dealer, Dom, could get in the way, however.  It starts with Dom sending Malcolm to deliver messages to a woman named Nakia, to try to get her to go to Dom's party.  But Malcolm gets smitten with Nakia, and vice versa, so there may be some more complications.  Dom also invites Malcolm and his geek friends, Jib and Diggy, to the same party at the club, and Dom for some reason insists that these high-school kids be allowed in to the club, even though they're not 21.  When the shooting starts and then the cops raid the club, Dom stashes drugs in Malcolm's backpack, expecting to catch up with him later. 

Dom gets arrested, and Malcolm gets a call to deliver the drugs to a man waiting in a car - but then Dom calls him from prison with other instructions, to deliver the drugs to AJ at a different address and to AVOID the man in the car, he's either a snitch or a killer.  The three friends manage to ditch the killer in the car and make it to AJ's house, only he's not home.  AJ's son tries to get the geeks to make a record, and AJ's daughter tries to get Malcolm to make out, but are these people on the level, or do they have ulterior motives?  L.A. is sure confusing...

Just when things are getting really crazy, Malcolm remembers that it's the day of that Harvard alumnus interview, and he's got to get across town for it. When he arrives, Malcolm realizes another coincidence, and it's the biggest one of all.  This leads Malcolm and his friends to start a new "science project" in the lab to convert the drugs to sellable quantities, and also to contact a hacker to sell the drugs on a black-market website using Bitcoin transactions, which could maybe be turned into cash later, if needed.  

When did this come out? 2015?  It was ahead of its time, I think, or maybe Bitcoin's been around longer than I thought - the good news from a narrative standpoint is that nobody understood it then, and almost as many people still don't understand it - so it can do here whatever the screenwriter needed it to do.  And we've got a lesbian character tonight, Diggy, which is great news because it's Pride Month and so far the only gay characters this month have been one minor character in "Senior Year" and two others in...well, no spoilers here.  But I've got to have more representation this month or I'll be in danger of losing my funding. 

I wish I'd gotten my act together sooner about films being released this summer - I may try and see "The Flash" which has one of this film's stars in it, but Shameik Moore is also the voice of Miles Morales in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", and if I hadn't programmed this one tonight, I could have used it to connect those two movies.  Oh, well, I'll find another way to get there. 

Also starring Shameik Moore (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Tony Revolori (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Kiersey Clemons (last heard in "Scoob!"), Kimberly Elise (last seen in "Beloved"), Chanel Iman, Blake Anderson (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Zoë Kravitz (last seen in "The Batman"), A$AP Rocky (last seen in "Monster"), Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Rick Fox (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Amin Joseph (last seen in "Freelancers"), Tyga (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Roger Guenveur Smith (last seen in "Empire State"), De'Aundre Bonds (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Quincy Brown, Kap-G, Vince Staples, Casey Veggies, Wyking Jones, Bruce Beatty (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Julian Brand, Ricky Harris (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Allen Maldonado (last seen in "Project Power"), Ashton Moio, Lidia Porto (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Larnell Stovall.

RATING: 6 out of 10 orders of cheese fries

Respect

Year 15, Day 165 - 6/14/23 - Movie #4,465

BEFORE: This may be the LAST of the films that played at the AMC in the summer of 2021, when I worked there - of course, I can't be sure. More keep popping up.  But it's been two years, surely I must have now seen everything that I didn't see then because I was busy sweeping up the theaters and emptying garbage cans.  Right? 

Audra McDonald carries over from "Wit". 

THE PLOT: Following the rise of Aretha Franklin's career from a child singing in her father's church choir to her international superstardom, "Respect" is the remarkable true story of the music icon's journey to find her voice. 

AFTER: Yeah, so August 13 in 2021 was when this opened, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it took two years for me to link to it - this just wasn't easy to get here.  When I saw that Forest Whitaker could be used as a link to get really close to Father's Day, I felt like I had to take that opportunity - I've just back-burnered this one three times, maybe.  

But now that I finally got here, I'm kind of underwhelmed.  It turns out that if you're not really into Aretha, watching this film isn't really going to change your position.  I was a big fan of "American Idol" back in the day, so naturally I'm happy to see Jennifer Hudson doing well, but then again, I don't think this film did the big business that someone was expecting it to. Yeah, I'm right, this film with a $55 million budget only grossed about $32 million, so that's a failure by some standards. 

Honestly, I found a lot to be confusing here because the film didn't exactly spell everything out - but I can always catch up by reading the factual details of Ms. Franklin's life on Wikipedia after the film is over.  She was born in 1942 in Memphis, her father was a Baptist minister and her mother was a pianist and vocalist. Her parents both had children from previous relationships as well as four children together.  The family moved to Buffalo when Aretha was two and then to Detroit when she was five.  (The film skips over montages of the family packing and moving, because that tends to make for a boring movie.). But her parents separated in 1948 and Aretha's mother moved back to Buffalo, then died a few years later in 1952, ruining Aretha's 10th birthday.  Aretha focused on learning to play piano and also singing in her father's church. 

Aretha went on tour with her father, and they spoke and sang in churches around the country - this put her in contact with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and celebrities like Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke and gospel singer Clara Ward, who then had a relationship with Rev. Franklin. At the age of 18 Aretha decided to follow Sam Cooke into the music industry, and her father acted as her first manager, he turned down Berry Gordy to sign Aretha to Columbia. There were several albums released by Columbia under the production of John Hammond, but by the mid-1960's Aretha wanted to move out of the jazz and standards genre and into pop music. It seems her income at the time was coming more from nightclub appearances than record sales. 

The film details Aretha's transition from Columbia to Atlantic Records, working with producer Jerry Wexler and recording at FAME Studios down in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. THIS is the kind of stuff I dig seeing in movies, watching a song come together via the various studios musicians just noodling around and suggesting different rhythms and beats.  If they just made a movie full of scenes like the one here where Aretha and Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section assemble the song "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You", I would maybe be so much more into this. Bu I guess not everybody is as into the studio stuff as I am, because the film then skips ahead a bit, to Aretha in concert, performing songs like "Chain of Fools" and "Think".  The song that they then show her screwing up (because she's drunk) is "I Say a Little Prayer", which of course we all know as a Dionne Warwick song, but I guess Aretha recorded it too?

The film gets into Aretha's first marriage with Ted White, which was marked by domestic abuse and also White getting into fights with the record producers and band members in Muscle Shoals, so at some point he was asked to remove himself from the recording process.  Obviously they broke up at some point, but the film shows Aretha reconciling with Ted, which seems a bit counter-productive from a narrative standpoint.  And then at some point later, she's with her second husband though the film neglects to name him (Glynn Turman) and so at that time, Aretha was the mother of four sons and also stepmother to three other children.  But the film doesn't really get into that, or who the father of her first two sons was, so I think they really glossed over a lot here, kind of like how the documentary about Mohammad Ali didn't mention all of his wives or most of his many, many children. 

Also, why mention Aretha's drinking problem and just gloss over the fact that she was often very overweight?  That seems like a bit of an odd place to draw the line, we'll talk about THIS but we won't talk about THAT.  What if the two problems were connected?  I guess she quit smoking because it was affecting her voice, but then, perhaps like many people who quit smoking, she gained a lot of weight.  She had some undisclosed surgery in 2011, but denied that it had anything to do with the weight loss that followed.  But whatever medical problem it was, isn't it better for people in the public eye to discuss these things, because that helps raise public awareness of whatever condition that is.  Just saying. 

I'm going to count this as a sort of Father's Day film because so much of the first half was about Aretha's relationship with her father, the Baptist preacher.  Also because it suits me to do so, and makes me look like maybe I planned things that way. 

Also starring Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Monster"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Freelancers"), Marlon Wayans (last seen in "Air"), Marc Maron (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Albert Jones (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Leroy McClain, Tituss Burgess (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Tate Donovan (last seen in "Rocketman"), Mary J. Blige (last seen in "Mudbound"), Kelvin Hair, Heather Headley, Lodric D. Collins, Gilbert Glenn Brown (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Brenda Nicole Moorer, Skye Dakota Turner, Kimberly Scott (last seen in "Flatliners" (1990)), Myk Watford (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Nevaeh Moore, Kennedy Chanel, Peyton Jackson (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Joe Knezevich (last seen in "Boss Level"), John Giorgio, Shaun Schneider, Zach Strum, Alec Barnes, Beau Scheier, David Simpson (last seen in "Green Book"), Joshua Mikel (last seen in "Term Life"), Henry Riggs, Drew Matthews (last seen in "Mother's Day"), Jason Michael Webb, Vance Taylor, Rachel Nicks, Christen Sharice, Eric Scott Ways, Christopher Windom, Brian Bascie, Jelani Alladin (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!"), Aba Arthur, Tyner Rushing (last seen in "The Contractor"), Hannah Lowther, Lelund Thompson, Derrick James, M. Jearl Vinot, Tony F. Charles, James E. Hammond, Thelma R. Mitchell, Leandra Ryan, Perry Zulu Jr.

with archive footage of Aretha Franklin (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Air"), John Belushi (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), George W. Bush (ditto), Bill Clinton (ditto), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Carole King, Martin Luther King (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?"), Barack Obama (also last seen in "Air"), Michelle Obama (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Luciano Pavarotti (last seen in "Sheryl").

RATING: 5 out of 10 platinum albums on the wall at Columbia

Wit

Year 15, Day 164 - 6/13/23 - Movie #4,464

BEFORE: So I know now where I want to be on October 1, and oddly, it's got something to do with Conan O'Brien.  Conan's been around the Movie Year a lot, remember he was in the last film of my DocBloc last year, "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop", even though that film was made during the PREVIOUS time he was off the air between gigs, it was still relevant.  (Now, of course, there's still a writer's strike going on, so ALL of the talk shows hosts are on break for the duration...). But what I'm concerned with now is Conan O'Brien's cameo in a particular horror film, it's an interesting way to get into the horror chain this year.  He was also in "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", and I can maybe work my way backwards from there. 

So let's see, by the end of June I should be on Movie 182 for the year, that leaves 118 slots, but if I spend 26 slots on the horror chain, that leaves me only 92 for July, August, September, November and December, which is 153 days.  Man, I've just GOT to slow down.  Last year I only watched 15 movies in November and 10 in December, but even if I do that again, I'll have 67 slots for the 92 days from July to September.  Any way I slice it, I'm looking at some down time.  Well, I've got lots of time to figure out where to put the breaks, the important thing is to calculate the NUMBER of movies between July 4 and October 1, given what I know now. 

The good news is that I know my July 4 movie and my October 1 movie now, and if you give me 63 slots, I SHOULD be able to get from any movie to any other movie, in theory at least.  So I've got the start of a plan, and it's to get from "Bulletproof Monk" to "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" in that number of steps.  Really, I can't solve a problem like that without first defining the problem, and now that I've done that, I just need to work it all out. And really, if I need 65 or 70 slots to do that, I've got the days, I'll just transfer slots over from November to September, whatever it takes to make that chain happen.  What's harder is trying to prioritize my movies, I need to pick something like "Elvis" or "Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania" that I really want to see and mark that as a midway point, that might make things easier. 

I see there's another way to get to my October 1 movie, and I should look into that because "Marcel the Shell" is not an easy film to link to.  There are two action films with Kevin Costner that might present more linking opportunities - anyway, I've got months to work this all out. For today, Christopher Lloyd carries over again from "Nobody". 

THE PLOT: A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. 

AFTER: I would prefer not to write anything about this film tonight, but that's just not an option for me, is it?  I can't link to my next film without reviewing this one - if it were the center film of a Christopher Lloyd-based trilogy, sure, I could drop it, or just pretend I didn't watch it, but it's not the middle, it's the last of three and I need the connection to tomorrow's film, so let's get this over with. 

I decided years ago that my rating would be based on how much I enjoyed a film, that to me is the primary function of film, so if my rating below seems low to you, it's a reflection that I did not enjoy watching this very much.  How could I?  It's just about a woman with stage 4 cancer, so it's NOT going to end well, and all it's going to do is remind me that cancer sucks, which I already know, which everybody already knows.  So, what's the point.  OK, so film has another purpose, which is to educate and inform - so great, I'm educated and informed about how much cancer sucks.  Look, I watch movies to get away from reality points like that, let me watch a superhero movie or a violent action film so I can forget for 90 to 120 minutes that someday I'm going to get sick and die, if I don't stabbed in the streets of NYC and I"m lucky enough to make it to 70 or 80, I'm just that much closer to the inevitable end.  

I'm not aware of cancer in my family, we're more of a heart-disease clan, but that doesn't mean it can't happen to me.  I'm overdue for a colonoscopy, last time I did that Cologuard thing where you crap in a bucket and mail that off to the lab - it was VERY difficult for me for reasons I don't want to express, but I did it.  Now I'm thinking I need to have the colonoscopy with the exam because with the Cologuard, you only find out about the cancer AFTER you get it, but a doctor can see early polyps during an exam and deal with them before they're malignant.  (Umm, this is the second film in a week where a character gets cancer, so IDK, maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?)

The play this film is based on won a Pulitzer Prize, I could take that into consideration, but that still doesn't help me ENJOY it any more - but I guess enjoying this is a little beyond the point.  But the film came out in 2001, is it too much to hope that medical science has made great strides in the last 22 years, I know cancer's still a leading cause of death in this country, but maybe things are getting a little better?  Honestly, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea what the trending cancer stats in the U.S. are. 

If I'm being honest, I see a lot of narrative shortcuts in this prize-winning story - like the fact that the cancer patient is a college professor who teaches English poetry, with a specific focus on John Donne, which allows for a lot of citings of his "Death Be Not Proud" poem, which is of course a huge coincidence here.  Another shortcut is the fact that her attending physician is one of her former students, and he had to take her poetry class to be "well-rounded" - I mean, I guess it makes sense if she teaches at a university that also has a medical school, and that's linked to the hospital where she's getting her treatment, but how many pre-med students seriously choose to dabble in English poetry?  I'm sure they might have to take a literature class as a requirement, but why THAT one?  I'm calling shenanigans on this. 

On top of that, I'm not sure about cancer treatment being used as a device here for a woman to have intense reflections about her past - having never been treated for cancer, I can't say for sure, but I'm not sure that's the way to put everything in one's life into perspective.  Or if you choose to do that, it's probably TOO MUCH perspective, if you know what I mean.  Maybe during a long hospital stay or an eight-month series of chemo someone might have time to review life's ups and downs over the years, but then again, you can also read some books or do some crossword puzzles or something.  Just saying. 

I'm going to cut this short because I'm worried about the bad karma, maybe at some point in my life I'll feel differently about a story like this, but tonight I just want to move on to the next one. I'm taking a mulligan, essentially.  I did see Emma Thompson when she dropped by the theater where I work to introduce a screening of "Matilda the Musical", but she just walked past me - what was a bit weird was that I was thinking about her ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh being in the same building just about 10 months before that, to introduce "Belfast".  But really, nobody was aware of that coincidence except for me.

Also starring Emma Thompson (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Eileen Atkins (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Audra McDonald (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Jonathan M. Woodward (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page"), Harold Pinter (last seen in "Mansfield Park"), Rebecca Laurie, Raffaello Degruttola (last seen in "The Hustle"), David Menkin (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), with cameos from Benedict Wong (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), David Zayas (last seen in "Tallulah"), 

RATING: 4 out of 10 orange popsicles

Nobody

Year 15, Day 163 - 6/12/23 - Movie #4,463

BEFORE: I loaded up my chain a bit too heavy, it's kind of what I tend to do - but I can still make it to Father's Day on time, all I have to do is drop some of the "middle" films from the groupings that feature the same actor, it's as simple as that.  One's a bit too romance-like, and the other's a bit too horror-like, so it's easy enough to table those and save them for February and October, respectively.  Speaking of October, I now have a rough plan for this year's horror chain - actually I have TWO plans, I went through the cast lists last night and came up with the two longest chains that will clear some horror films off the list.  One is 22 or 23 films long and clears off some movies that have been on the list for a LONG time, the other is 18 films long.  I'm leaning toward the first one, although right now I don't know about my employment status or vacation plans, plus there's always New York Comic-Con, so you never know, maybe I should go with the shorter one.  But if I need a full month, the 22-film chain could easily be expanded by tacking on a couple more films at the end, AND I think I can get there via an animated film already on the list, but all that needs to be worked out later.  The good news is that I have a potential starting point for October, and I should have ample slots to get there when my current plans run out in mid-July.  I'll just need to count the slots left in 2023 before then, fill in the gap, and then leave 20 or so slots for November and December, then this year's plan will be complete.  And if I have another "perfect year" that will be five in a row, I think. 

Christopher Lloyd carries over from "The Tender Bar". 

THE PLOT: A docile family man slowly reveals his true character after his house gets burgled by two petty thieves, which, coincidentally, leads him into a bloody war with a Russian crime boss. 

AFTER: Here we go, another film about a father - and after tonight, just five more films until Father's Day weekend.  I think this might be the easiest programming I do all year, because fathers are everywhere in movies - my only real candidates this time were "The Tender Bar" and the two films I'll be reviewing this coming Saturday and Sunday, I figured if I could knock those three off the list that would be enough of a nod to the holiday - everything else, like "School Ties" and "Senior Year" and "Top Gun: Maverick", "Apollo 10 1/2", "Bullet Train" and "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again" have been happy accidents.  Oh, and I had father-centric films that I couldn't even link to this year, like "I Love My Dad", "One More Time", "Imagine That", "As They Made Us" and "Dick Johnson Is Dead" - well, there's always next year. 

This is one of those ultra-violent films where the protagonist turns out to be a highly-skilled fighter and shooter (also explosives expert and keen strategist) - the kind of guy who can "read the room" very quickly and size up his opponents even faster, then use the location and found items to take those opponents down.  You know, the kind of guy that will grab one opponent and while knocking him senseless, also re-direct that opponent's gun to shoot two more of his enemies.  I haven't seen one of these in a while, I passed on the opportunity to watch "John Wick 4" because it just didn't fit in with my chain. 

But when we first meet Hutch Mansell, he's a corporate drone at his father-in-law's company, which seems to be some kind of metal fabrication shop, only he's stuck in the invoicing department, and a montage shows us that because he's stuck in a routine, the days and the weeks keep flying by, with only slight variations each day.  Wake up, take a shower, get some coffee, make breakfast for the kids, go for a run, zone out at the office for 8 hours, get another workout in, fall asleep next to his wife who's got a permanent "pillow wall" separating them.  Repeat. 

Hutch had a secret life before, which only his wife seems to know about - and the mysterious voice that comes from Hutch's radio seems to be aware of it also.  (The only question, is that voice coming from a real person, or is it just in Hutch's head?). But when two robbers break in to his house late one night, Hutch seems like he could take the thieves down with a golf club - only he doesn't - he holds back.  The police later ask him why he didn't even take a swing, but perhaps Hutch was thinking about his family, and instead was just interested in de-escalating the situation.  However, when he finds that the thieves not only took his watch but also his daughter's "kitty bracelet", well, then the gloves are off.  He tracks one of the thieves down by her tattoo, pretending to be an FBI agent with a (fake?) badge - and then when he finds them, and gets his watch back, the thieves don't know anything about the bracelet.

He leaves them be - but now he's got all this pent-up energy that needs a place to go - so when he sees a group of five drunk goons harassing a woman on a bus, he lets his talents out, and he does seem to have a lot of talents, from knives to martial arts to being able to TAKE a punch, which is perhaps a skill in itself.  It takes some effort on his part, as it should, but he manages to mess these five guys up pretty bad - how was he to know that one of them would turn out to be the younger brother of a Russian crimelord?

And so this sets up the conflict for the rest of the movie, with Hutch's irresistible force bumping up against a big Russian immovable object.  Neither one will back down, so they have to play for keeps.  When Yulian, the Russian, had his assistant research Hutch, whatever they found shocked them so bad that they quit on the spot.  This should have been a tip-off to leave this guy alone, but Yulian just couldn't do that.  So Hutch is forced to send his wife and kids on a road trip to anywhere and reveal that he used to be the guy who kept rogue government agents in line.  He was an assassin known as "The Auditor" but I guess that's not catchy enough for a movie title.  He dropped out of that line of work and tried to be normal, with a family and a dead-end job and it seems like maybe he was happy, for a time.  But I bet deep down there was a part of him that missed the action...

Anyway, the Russian sends his best men after Hutch, and Hutch takes them all down with the resources he has on hand, or he finds in the room, or the car trunk.  It's all very flippin' cool, except for the fact that we're not supposed to be encouraging violence in these woke times.  But hey, when you can put together a movie that's as cool as "John Wick" meets "Taken" meets "Baby Driver" and you can do all these cool jaw-dropping stunts and still make it believable, well, you might as well have at it and we'll worry about the effect on society later, I guess. 

Hutch probably could take down this crime-lord/oligarch on his own, but he's got some help, like his father who's in a nursing home - but he's still pretty spry and he's a veteran with a vast knowledge of weapons, too - and Harry, the voice from the radio who turns out to be another live former agent who was only pretending to be dead.  We really need a sequel now, or a prequel maybe, to explain who Harry is, what his relationship is to Hutch, and how he came to be in hiding.  You know, something like "Better Call Saul", but for this.  Call it "Nobody 2: Still Nobody", I don't care, but please, somebody get working on this. 

NITPICK POINT: Hutch is seen using an NYC transit Metrocard - but nothing looked like New York City to me, and if he lived in the suburbs north of the city or in New Jersey, then he probably wouldn't commute by bus, and even if he did, that bus probably wouldn't take a Metrocard.  So I checked the filming locations, and found out this was shot in Manitoba.  By itself this doesn't classify as an error, but the fact that suburban buses around NYC wouldn't accept the Metrocard kind of is.

Also starring Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Aleksei Serebryakov, Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Michael Ironside (last seen in "The Machinist"), Colin Salmon (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), RZA (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Billy MacLellan, Araya Mengesha, Gage Munroe (last seen in "The Shack"), Paisley Cadorath, Aleksandr Pal (last seen in "Hardcore Henry"), Ilya Naishuller (ditto), Darya Charusha, (ditto), Humberly Gonzalez (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Edsson Morales (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), JP Manoux (last heard in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Adrian McLean, Sergey Shnurov, Joanne Rodriguez, Stephanie Sy (last seen in "Flag Day"), Megan Best (ditto), Adam Hurtig (ditto), Gabriel Daniels (ditto), Neil Davison, Paul Essiembre (last seen in "The Ice Road"), Kristen Harris, Erik Athavale, Neven Pajkic, Stephen Eric McIntyre (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Rick Dobran, Dennis Scullard. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 pull-ups at the bus stop