Bulletproof Monk

Year 15, Day 182 - 7/1/23 - Movie #4,482

BEFORE: Seann William Scott carries over from "Just Before I Go", and here are the links that I think will get me to the end of July: 

Jaime King, Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Khalid Laith, Michael Keaton, Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Christ Witaske, Karan Soni, Issa Rae, Boyd Holbrook, Alicia Vikander, Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, Tom Hiddleston and Jonathan Majors.  

I realize that's just 17 people, but I've programmed a reduced schedule of just 25 films, so there will be some skip days, if the plan holds.  I've got to slow down after July 4 or I'll use up all my slots for the year and then have no space left in November and December. 

I'm really late in getting to this one - like, 20 years late.  I used to live in Brooklyn and my upstairs neighbor was a screenwriter, and he co-wrote this film, so it's been on my radar since it was in production, but I just never got around to watching it.  I felt bad about it, because if you know somebody and consider that person a friend, you should really find the time to watch the movie they wrote. But I moved out of that building in 2004 and bought a house, and then just kind of forgot about this movie - it kept popping up in the cable listings every so often, though, so eventually I put it on my list and found a way to work it in.  My DVR screwed up again and recorded a VERY glitchy version of this movie, but thankfully it's still available on demand so I don't have to rent it for an additional fee.

THE PLOT: Based on the underground comic of the same name - a Tibetan monk becomes a mentor to a young street punk and tries teaching him how to protect the scroll of ultimate power from a secret Nazi organization bent on world domination.  

AFTER: In January of 2022, I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" - there also I was about 20 years too late, but in my defense, martial arts movies aren't really my bag. But it's good to go outside of one's comfort zone every once in a while.  I worked it in between "Shang-Chi" and "Mulan" and "The Replacement Killers" and "Gunpowder Milkshake" and did kind of a whole Asian thing.  It worked, in retrospect, but that's the great thing about my chain, if I'm successful for the year then it all kind of works in retrospect.  And then the OCD part of my brain is satisfied, and I don't feel the need to look back and second-guess myself and think of better ways that I could have organized things.  

So that's kind of how I still feel about this film, it's not really my thing - but hey, it fulfilled a valuable function by helping me make my connection to my July 4 film, which, spoiler alert, is another action movie - in some ways 2023 is really the year of the action movie, I've watched more movies about assassins and hit-men and secret agents than usual, at least it feels like it, and it's going to be a real bitch at the end of the year just totalling them all up. "The Contractor", "Eraser", "Wind River", "The Marksman", "Gun Shy", "No Time to Die", "The Informer", "The Gray Man" and "Domino" - and that was just in January!  "The 355", "Without Remorse", "The Card Counter", "The November Man", "The Rhythm Section", "Bullet Train", "Nobody", "Murder Mystery 2", "The Man from Toronto", "Kate" and "Come and Find Me" - man, it's been an action-packed year, and it's not over yet. 

This one's a bit different, if you took "Crouching Tiger" and mixed it with "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and set that in modern-day Toronto's Chinatown, you'd have some idea.  Who knew so many Shao-Lin monks lived in the Toronto area?  I sure didn't.  Who knew that taking care of a powerful scroll could keep you young and healthy and invulnerable for 60 years?  Who knew that a Nazi could still be alive and active in 2003, masquerading as the head of a global human rights organization?  Oooh, the irony of that one.  I might not be able to trust non-profit charitable organizations after this, because of the possibility that they may be run by Nazis. JK. 

The Monk With No Name - that's his name, so it's a bit of a paradox - protects the scroll to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.  Whoever reads the scroll could have the power to re-shape the world in their own image, meaning they can destroy the world or make it a paradise. Umm, sure.  TMWNN's been roaming the earth for 60 years just to keep the scroll out of the wrong hands.  He's also taken special precautions to protect it in the event that someone DOES steal the scroll from his bag, namely he's had the sacred text tattooed all over his body, which seems like a great plan, until the bad guys realize they can just kidnap him and then read the scroll by scanning his tattoos into a computer.  Or, you know, just maybe take some pictures - let's not make this more complicated than it needs to be.  

Along the way, The Monk finds Kar, a pickpocket who's got some martial arts moves - but he learned them all from watching Asian movies, since he works as a theater projectionist at the Golden Palace, and essentially lives in the theater's booth.  I keep telling my managers at the theater that they need to put a couple of cots up in the booth, so I could sleep over and be there first thing in the morning during festival weeks.  This hasn't happened yet, so I think they think I'm kidding - but I would totally sleep over if I needed to be there at 5:30 am to let breakfast caterers in, which has happened before.  There's probably some rule against people sleeping on school property, I guess. 

The Monk saves Kar from a street gang that doesn't want him stealing stuff on their turf - the gang is led by Mr. Funktastic, which is a great name if it's 1972, otherwise, not so much.  But in his gang is Jade, who's another martial-arts afficionado who also speaks Chinese and recognizes the Monk for what he is.  And what is that, exactly?  A guy who's invulnerable and can float on air when he fights, only because he believes that he can.  (And because he's got a special effects crew behind him that are proficient in wire-work...). This reasoning, that you can float and do amazing parkour moves just because you believe you can is like something out of a cartoon, it's why the coyote doesn't realize he's walked off of a cliff at first, and only after he looks down and realizes his mistake will he begin to plummet. 

There are three prophecies that must be fulfilled before the Monk's successor can be chosen, and he can finally go "on vacation" after 60 years of service.  The Monk notices that the prophecies seem to suggest that Kar is "The Next", however the interpretation of those prophecies are quite liberal, and they require some creative thinking to be recognized as true. Hey, rules were meant to be bent, right? 

I'm trying to be nice again tonight, not just because I know the screenwriter but because there are fewer loose ends here than there could have been, the film does eventually answer all the unresolved questions, like "How does the monk not look older after 60 years of service?".  Sure, the answer is always "Because magic" but that's acceptable for a fantasy film.  But then the biggest unanswered question is "Why do hot dogs come in a pack of 10 and hot dog buns come in a pack of 8?"  As if that's some kind of Buddhist koan or something, but do they even have hot dogs in Tibet?  I'm not so sure.  Anyway, it's not really a valid question for several reasons - first off, sometimes hot dogs DO come in a pack of 8, it depends on which brand you buy.  I usually get the cheapest ones in the store, and there are usually 8 in those, not 10 - so I don't have this problem of matching up my weiners and buns.  

The real answer, however, is not the one listed in the film (which is really a non-answer) or the commonly-held belief that they're trying to make you buy 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of buns for your cookout to make everything even out.  The answer is also NOT "because some people like to eat a hot dog without a bun" or "because some people are gluten-intolerant".  The answer lies in the fact that the two items are made by different industries, or by two different people in the marketplace, the butcher and the baker.  And back when the standards were developed, this is true now, the two industries DID NOT talk to each other and work this out. The easiest way for bakers to make hot dog buns is to use pans bake them in clusters of four, and then two clusters go into a package of eight, and that's how they set their assembly-line machines to work.  The baking industry COULD make packages of 10 hot dog buns, but they choose not to, because they'd have to reset their machines or buy all new machines.  Meanwhile, the meat-packing industry decided that the easiest thing to do was sell a pound of hot dogs at a time, and the weight of the average hot dog is 1.6 ounces, so ten fit in a pound, and so they set their machines in 1940 or so to arrange and wrap 10 hot dogs at a time.  The meat industry COULD reset their machines to make the hot dogs a little bit bigger and wrap 8 together at a time, then everything would work out, only they choose not to.  But again, some companies DO put 8 hot dogs in a pack, and those are the ones I buy.

So there's your answer, there are two industries that made decisions a long time ago and they both refuse to change, for the most part. Sorry if that's not very symbolic or philosophical, but I learned this a long time ago from the "Straight Dope" web-site, and I bring this up again because July is National Hot Dog Month - Heinz and the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (I swear this organization really exists) have teamed up to finally, maybe, resolve this issue by working with the big hot dog bun companies to firmly establish that the appropriate number of hot dogs and buns per pack should be 10.  Which is still wrong, this only shows that both industries are still unwilling to change - I might get more excited here if the news was that Heinz and the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council have teamed up to concede that hot dogs should maybe be a little bit bigger and across the board should come 8 to a pack and that would finally resolve this issue.  But clearly the meat industry is still reaping the benefits that come from selling 10 to a pack, which are - what, exactly?  More hot dogs to go around?  The chance that two hot dogs purchased will be wasted, or fall off the grill?  Fulfilling the dreams of weirdos who like to eat hot dogs without the bun?  I'm afraid we're still at an impasse on this one. Try again, Heinz.

I'll let you in on another little secret, though - if you keep finding yourself with two extra hot dogs with no buns, there's no need to go crazy and buy 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of buns, or eat the hot dog (shudder) as it is.  Just grab a slice of bread and fashion your own hot dog roll - the bun is just bread in a slightly different form!  Bread is bread, right?  You're welcome.

Also starring Chow Yun-Fat (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), Jaime King (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Karel Roden (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Victoria Smurfit (last seen in "About a Boy"), Marcus Jean Pirae, Mako (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Roger Yuan (last seen in "Dune: Part One"), K.C. Collins (last seen in "Owning Mahoney"), Sean Bell (last seen in "Against the Ropes"), Kishaya Dudley, Rob Archer (last seen in "The Man From Toronto"), Mauricio Rodas, Bayo Akinfemi, Russell Yuen (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Albert Chung, Karis Han, Suresh John.

RATING: 6 out of 10 hot dogs, of course

Just Before I Go

Year 15, Day 181 - 6/30/23 - Movie #4,481

BEFORE: OK, it's the last day of June, so here's the format breakdown for the month:

9 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Side Effects, Dog, Clerks III, School Ties, Respect, Blended, That's My Boy, Black Adam, DC League of Super-Pets, 

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Slice, Nobody, Wit, Street Kings, Just Before I Go

9 watched on Netflix: Senior Year, Bullet Train, Dope, Murder Mystery 2, Enola Holmes, Enola Holmes 2, The Man from Toronto, Kate, Where the Crawdads Sing

3 watched on Amazon Prime: Air, The Tender Bar, Hercules (2014)
1 watched on Hulu: Triangle of Sadness

1 watched on Disney+: Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again

1 watched on HBO MAX: Come and Find Me

29 TOTAL

Well, that's how you make a dent in your Netflix list, I guess. A strong showing for that platform, which is surprising because for the past few months I haven't been adding a lot of movies there, the system seemed to be not adding anything I really wanted to see.  But other than "Bullet Train" and "Enola Holmes 2", I think I probably added these movies at least six months ago or longer, I'm just finally getting around to that part of my watchlist, I guess. 

As for HBO Max, I know it just got a re-design and they claim to have the best selection of movies now, but I've been counting anything I watch on premium cable, including HBO, under "cable" and I only resort to the MAX streaming site when I have to.  In the case of "Come and Find Me", my DVR screwed up and only recorded PART of the movie, and then it was no longer available on demand, so I had to go to the streaming site, which I just don't do very often, as that means I have to watch the film on my computer upstairs, sitting at my desk, when I'd much rather be downstairs in the recliner. So all that affects the stats for HBO Max. 

Garret Dillahunt carries over again from "Come and Find Me". 

THE PLOT: On the verge of giving up on life, a guy travels to his hometown to make amends. 

AFTER: For those of us non-famous people, or people like me who have been in a couple of movies, almost accidentally, acting sure seems like a dream job.  You show up, people dress you and give you a haircut, all you have do is look presentable and say your lines.  In movies you don't even really have to memorize them, because they only shoot a few lines at a time, and somebody's also standing there to tell you what your lines are.  Then you get paid, move on to the next film and repeat until you're rich and famous.  What's the down side?  Well, there surely must be one, because so many actors seem eager to become producers and directors.  I'll admit some producing credits are honorary, like Millie Bobby Brown has producing credits now because she brought the "Enola Holmes" books to the attention of the production company she was working for, and that's how these deals get done sometimes.  It's all part of the game - but I think many actors think that there time in front of the camera is limited, like who wants to look all old and stuff on film - so they get into producing or directing for some job security. 

At some point, whether they have any talent as a producer or director is a bit beside the point, because they probably have a network of people supporting them and a bunch of actor friends they can call on to be in a film, so something good is probably going to result?  This film was directed by Courteney Cox, that's all I'm saying.  So naturally you'd expect David Arquette to make an appearance, because they were still together as a couple at the time, and she's probably friends with a lot of the other actors who were cast as well.  And the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014, so no doubt some of her connections probably came in handy there as well - I'm not saying the film didn't DESERVE to play at Tribeca, I'm just saying that nothing probably plays at Tribeca these days UNLESS somebody uses their connections.  It's just how the game is played now.  

But I have to wonder, she probably could have directed any film she wanted, why THIS one?  It's a strange film, not really a drama but not really a comedy either, maybe it's a little bit of both, but it's also a bit dark and it's about how people don't really get along with each other without much difficulty, and about how life can beat you down until maybe you think about ending it all, and then maybe you do find something else to care about and continue on.  

Ted Morgan returns to his home town to do three things - tell off the teacher who yelled at him in math class, confront the bully who beat him up on a daily basis, and then kill himself.  OK, that's one small but mighty to-do list.  But nothing really goes as planned, he gets caught up in the weird daily lives of his older brother's family, including his gay nephew and his brother's wife who spits in her husband's coffee and does some x-rated sleepwalking.  Then he meets a woman who he knew back in junior high (?) and she's married with five kids, but dis-satisfied with her life and eager to have an affair with him, for old time's sake.  Ted can't help but try and help other people with their problems, to the point where he almost forgets why he went back home in the first place.

But then he does buckle down and get to the items on his list - he finds the teacher who embarrassed him in math class, but she's living in a nursing home, and it's unclear whether she can even understand what he's saying or why he's mad at her.  Turns out Ted visited at the wrong time of day, when she hadn't had her meds yet, according to her granddaughter who Ted will no doubt fall in love with once she's done documenting his impending suicide for the local newspaper.  And then a few days later, Ted's chance to get back at this teacher goes away, if you catch my meaning. 

Ted meets his school bully, Rawly, as an adult, with the intent of doing something violent to him, but Rawly's glad to see him, and admits right off the bat that he was a total dick to Ted.  Rawly's a widower with a young son with Down syndrome, so Ted forms a friendship with him, and figures out pretty quickly why Rawly was a bully, because his father was abusive to him.  Rawly enlists Ted's help to try and kill his father, and that doesn't go as planned, either.  

Meanwhile, Ted's mother is living with her life-partner, a woman who dresses and performs as Elvis, and we don't get to hear her sing ANY Elvis songs, because the film clearly couldn't afford the music rights, so we don't even know if she's a GOOD Elvis impersonator - probably not, so maybe it's for the best that we never hear her sing.  And Ted's mom reminds him about how he and his father used to go on hunts for Wammy, the local crypto-creature that's a knock-off of the Loch Ness Monster (much like "Champy" up in Lake Champlain).  Yeah, there's a tidbit that might be important later on, the movie's just weird enough to go there.

Everything comes out in the end, including Ted's plan to kill himself, while his brother's family tries to unravel what it means to have a gay son who's self-hating because he's afraid of how he'll be treated in his small town of ignorant people - but clearly helping the current school bullies beat up his own boyfriend for being gay is not the way to go.  Umm, yeah, so happy Pride Month, everyone, I hope it was a good one. I tried to include some relevant films, I really did - still, I didn't get to "Fire Island" or "Bros", but hey, there's always next year. 

It occurs to me that yesterday's film's title and today's form an interesting little pairing - "Come and Find Me, Just Before I Go".  If you saw those two titles together on a marquee, it would almost make some coherent sense.  I wonder how often that happens on my blog - I couldn't really find any other good side-by-side pairings so far this year, except maybe "Everything Everywhere All At Once Turning Red".  Maybe "The Last Summer Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"?  or "My Best Friend's Girl, Gloria Bell"?  "The Object of My Affection, Touched With Fire"? 

Also starring Seann William Scott (last seen in "The Rundown"), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "Nobody Walks"), Kate Walsh (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Kyle Gallner (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Evan Ross (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Cleo King (last seen in "Dogville"), Missi Pyle (last seen in "Ma"), Elisha Cuthbert (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Mackenzie Marsh (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Connie Stevens (last seen in "Tapeheads"), David Arquette (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Clancy Brown (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Jack Quaid (last seen in "Rampage"), Eddie Perino, George Finn (last seen in "Time Lapse"), Griffin Gluck (last seen in "Trust Me"), Beth Grant (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Tate Berney, Ryan Hartwig, Jack McGee (last seen in "Domino"), Noah Munck (last seen in "All About Steve"), Peggy Miley (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Alisha Wainwright, Thomas Fowler, Joey Nader (last seen in "White Noise"), Lily Berlina, Andrew Gray McDonnell (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Coco Arquette, Parvesh Cheena (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Diane Ladd (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Gavin Bryson Thompson, Angeline-Rose Troy, Ellen D. Williams. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 loads of laundry

Come and Find Me

Year 15, Day 180 - 6/29/23 - Movie #4,480

BEFORE: OK, so today I was supposed to submit myself for medical research, which was going to net me a little extra cash for the summer.  I know that sounds weird, but really, it was just to test out a new anti-shingles vaccine.  I mean, I figured I needed to get this vaccine anyway, because nobody wants to get shingles, right?  My dad had it a month ago and my sister said they gave him the vaccine just a bit too late, I think he was supposed to get it BEFORE contracting the disease, which would have been preferable.  So I figured I could either book an appointment and pay my doctor for the visit, but what if I could get PAID for participating in this study instead - sounds like a win-win, right?  Well I was all set to start raking in the bucks, but last night I figured I should go to my doctor's web-site and print out my medical records, that would save some time when I (probably) had to fill out a survey with all kinds of questions about my health, that's what I did when we got the COVID vaccines, we got them early for our age group and had to bring proof of underlying conditions to qualify. 

So there on the computer screen, as part of my medical records, was a list of immunizations, and it turns out I got two doses of the shingles vaccine in 2019.  I don't even remember getting that, maybe my doctor just gave it to me when I was there for my annual physical or something.  Anyway, I had told the people running this clinical trial that I hadn't been vaccinated for this, when it turns out that I HAD.  I guess the dangers of the pandemic just wiped the memory of getting the shingles vaxx right out of my mind - or perhaps after I got the shingles vaccine, I thought, "Well, now I never have to worry about this again..." and promptly forgot about it right then and there.  Either way, I had to e-mail and withdraw myself from the clinical trial - better to find out now than to make a trip all the way to upper Manhattan and find out after they drew blood that I wasn't eligible.  Now I've got to resume the summer job hunt, I guess because there will be no money coming from Big Pharma for my service. 

Garret Dillahunt carries over from "Where the Crawdads Sing". 

THE PLOT: When his girlfriend goes missing, David must track down her whereabouts after he realizes she's not who she was pretending to be. 

AFTER: It's a weird thing to bring up in a movie, perhaps, but every year a certain number of people just - disappear. And not everyone gets found.  They just found the body of an actor, Julian Sands, I guess he disappeared during a hike and died in the woods.  Other people are never found, or their friends and family never learn what happened to them.  (Do they still put the pictures of missing kids on milk cartons?). In the best case scenario, they left their lives voluntarily, things became too much for them to handle, and they just started over somewhere else, maybe under a new name.  The other scenarios are worse, like they fell into a well or they got taken and held captive somewhere, for no purpose that can be good. 

It's clear that something has happened to David's girlfriend, because she stops answering her phone and texts and none of her friends claim to have seen her lately.  And she had such a great future working at the dry cleaners, too... Naturally David is heartbroken as time passes and he tries to put the pieces of his life back together again, but the film skips a lot of the crying and moping and second-guessing and we catch up with him about a year after Claire vanished.  Actually, there's a lot of time-jumping in this film, it's riddled with flashbacks but they're not always identified as such - unfortunately this tends to get very confusing, like Claire shows up at David's door after her disappearance, but nope, she's not back, it's just a flashback to when they lived in neighboring apartments, before they got together. 

If something is just TOO flashback-y, it can be a problem.  I'm thinking of "Sweet Girl" and a few other notable films that are decidedly non-linear, yet adamantly refuse to put up those little helpful titles like "two months ago" or "one year later", creating a jigsaw puzzle effect out of the movie's events.  Well, sure, I get that footage of David and Claire meeting each other would obviously take place BEFORE they moved in together and BEFORE she disappeared, but then why can't we see those events in the proper order?  At other times the movie is clearly messing with us, like starting off with a sequence with both of them on the bus, and they just act like random strangers to each other, they accuse each other of following them, and then pretend to act confused when they both have keys to the same house.  It's a role-playing thing, but it's structured this way for only one reason - to fool the audience.  And once a director sets out to fool the audience, that rankles me a bit, and I wonder if the later flashbacks are there for the same reason, just to fool us. 

The local (Los Angeles? Seattle?) police aren't much help, they just recommend that David put up flyers around town - but if Claire left of her own accord, or got taken by someone, flyers wouldn't be of much use in either situation.  It's only when Claire's friend from college, Buck, comes to visit, that David starts to think that there's a third possibility.  He comes home early one day and finds Buck tearing apart the furniture and busting holes in the wall, looking for something.  What could it be, and what could that possibly have to do with Claire's disappearance?  Ah, that would be telling, and I'll try to avoid spoilers on this one, because I've been remiss about that lately.  But come on, the title of the film is a really big hint, isn't it?  

All that the police can tell David is that she lied about her background - but that means maybe she wasn't truthful about other things, right?  Somehow she wasn't who she was pretending to be?  David finds clues that lead him to a shady auto shop, and then to Vancouver, and puts him in touch with people who claim to know who Claire really was - but are they telling him the truth?  And is she dead or alive?  David is in over his head, and of course makes some mistakes along the way - putting him in a room at one point with a man who I think came from Toronto.  I'll admit I've never really seen a film on this topic before, not from this angle anyway, but I'm factoring in the non-linear structure and excessive flashback-ery when I'm ranking. There are also leaps in logic, I'm not always sure how David determined THIS from learning THAT. 

Also starring Aaron Paul (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Annabelle Wallis (last seen in "Boss Level"), Chris Chalk (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Zachary Knighton, Enver Gjokaj (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Michael Kopsa (last seen in "The Professor"), Jessica Heafey (ditto), Terry Chen (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Corey Schmitt, Colleen Winton (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Alan O'Silva (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), Tim Perez (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Sal Sortino (last seen in "Watchmen"), Dean Redman (last seen in "The Layover"), Artine Tony Browne. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 broken car windows

Where the Crawdads Sing

Year 15, Day 179 - 6/28/23 - Movie #4,479

BEFORE: I'm chipping away at the Netflix queue, too - 3 of my last 4 films are on Netflix, and one was on Hulu.  But I've lost all hope of keeping an active queue on Hulu, movies just disappear from there so quickly, there's really no point.  I just make a note in my files that's something's available on Hulu, then two years later when I finally link to a movie, it's either still there or it's not, and if it's not it's probably on Pluto or Freevee or Tubi, so I'll get it one way or another. Films tend to stick around a bit longer on Netflix, I'd heard that two years was the usual term but if Netflix produced the film, it's probably going to be available there forever. Still, I'm trying to get that list closer to cleared, the count is at 115 right now, but that included a few comedy specials and some TV series that I'll probably never get around to watching.  Who has that kind of time?  Oh, right, I do, for the next two months anyway.

Harris Dickinson carries over from "Triangle of Sadness". 

THE PLOT: A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved. 

AFTER: I did work at a screening of this film, it was last July - the theater had closed for roof repairs for two months, but something went wrong and they couldn't finish the repair, so the theater opened again after two weeks. Some of my co-workers had taken other jobs but I hadn't, so I was available to go back to work in mid-July, I think this might have been the first film screened when the place re-opened.  Now it's almost a year later, and the theater's closed again to finish the roof work, and this film popped up in my chain.  Now I'm wishing the theater would open again in mid-July, but I'm not sure that's likely to happen, so I have to fill up the next two months with chores at home or whatever odd jobs I can find for the summer, because I may be sidelined from that gig until late August. 

Oh, well, can't afford to go anywhere, so it's a perfect time to stay indoors and watch movies, or go out on Tuesdays for matinee screenings and watch movies.  I can take long breaks in September, when I'm bound to be much busier - if I want to hit my July 4 movie on time, I can't stop, not even for one night.  

I'm not sure that "Where the Crawdads Sing" counts as a constructive use of my time - hell, I'm not even sure why I programmed this film, other than the fact that I worked at a screening of it and also, it's on Netflix.  This screamed "chick flick" from the get-go, not that that's always a bad thing, because I watch romance films all February and I do secretly enjoy some of them. Shhhh...don't tell anyone.  But this film can't decide what it wants to be - a romance, a crime thriller or a court-based legal drama.  Somehow it's all three, but come on, I'm going to need you to FOCUS here and pick one thing. 

By not concentrating on just ONE of these aspects, by default the movie is therefore all over the place, and I couldn't really find something to care about.  So this girl, Kya, gets abused by her father, well, back in the 1960's in the Carolinas, there maybe was a lot of that sort of thing going on.  Yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it, is there?  First her mother leaves, then her brothers and sisters take off, one by one, and she's left living with her father, dreaming of the day that her mother comes home. (She doesn't.). Eventually even her father leaves, and so she's left to fend for herself in the swamp.  She learns how to harvest mussels in the swamp, and sells them to the general store to make some money. The helpful lady who co-owns the store helps her go to school, but I don't think she stayed long, because the other kids made fun of her. She becomes known as the "Marsh Girl" around town. 

She forms a friendship with a boy named Tate Walker who fishes in the swamp, and when they're teenagers, he teaches her how to read and write.  They start a romantic relationship, but when he leaves for college, he promises to return by the 4th of July. (He doesn't.)

A few years go by, and Kya forms another relationship, this time with the local high school quarterback, Chase. Things seem to be going well, but then Tate comes back and Kya doesn't feel she can trust him.  But things don't go well with Chase, either, so basically Kya gets her heart broken twice.  Yeah, but so what, we've all been there before, right?  Kya instead focuses on drawing and writing about the plants and animals in the swamp, and eventually this leads to an illustrated book that she gets published.  This was back in the day before self-publishing, when you had to go through a company that was based in a big city.  

I should probably mention that the film started with a body found in the swamp - and Kya becomes the chief suspect in a murder trial, but then of course it takes the whole rest of the film to sort through the flashbacks and find out whether she's guilty or innocent.  Kya has the help of a retired attorney who remembers her from when she was a young girl, but apparently in this case, Kya seemed to be presumed guilty just because she was "that strange girl who lives out on the marsh" and it became a challenge to convince the jury she was innocent.  I don't know, I think this was a major time investment for a very small payoff, narratively speaking. I know I've got time to kill these days, but that doesn't mean I want to waste it on pointless stories. 

Some would consider this film a success because it earned $144 million worldwide and only cost $24 million to make - but that's only one way to measure success, isn't it? 

Also starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), David Strathairn (last seen in "Nightmare Alley") Michael Hyatt (last seen in "The Little Things"), Sterling Macer Jr., Logan Macrae, Bill Kelly (last seen in "Aftermath"), Ahna O'Reilly (last seen in "Lucky Them"), Garret Dillahunt (last seen in "Blonde"), Jojo Regina, Luke David Blumm (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Blue Clarke, Will Bundon, Jayson Warner Smith (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Dane Rhodes, Eric Ladin (last seen in "American Sniper"), Robert Larriviere (last seen in "Fire With Fire"), Ron Flagge (last seen in "Green Book"), Joe Chrest (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Sharon Landry (ditto), Michael Wozniak (ditto), Jerri Tubbs, Michael A. Newcomer (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Taylor Shurte, Grace Hinson, Charlie Talbert (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Charley Vance (last seen in "Mudbound"), Don Stallings (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Wyatt Parker, Payne Bosarge, Lillian Dorsett, Zoey Reid, Patrick Nicks, Adelaine Whittle, Emma Kathryn Coleman (last seen in "Capone"), Toby Nichols (last seen in "Trumbo"), Sarah Durn, Caroline Cole, Anna Kabis, Brad Blanchard, Leslie France, Sam Anderson (last seen in "Water for Elephants"), Kevin Clabert.

RATING: 5 out of 10 bratty schoolgirls

Triangle of Sadness

Year 15, Day 178 - 6/27/23 - Movie #4,478

BEFORE: OK, I'm crossing at least one thing off my summer "to-do" list each day I'm not working - today I figured out how to access the NYU job board, and getting in was really the hard part, now that I'm in I can just scroll through the job listings about once a week.  I also filed for partial unemployment today, so that's something, I won't get any money at first because in New York State you don't get any money the first two weeks you file, but at least this way I'll have some money coming in July to tide me over - I should still have at least two paychecks coming from the job that's dormant until late August, so I should be all right.  Plus my medical research meeting is on Thursday, so I should get some compensation from that, too.  OK, money situation semi-sorted, what else is on my list?  Right, summer movies, I'm going to sneak back to my former place of employment because it's discount Tuesday, and I can see "The Flash" this afternoon on the cheap, before Warner Bros. pulls it from theaters for underperforming.  Watch for that review on the second weekend of July, I think. 

Woody Harrelson carries over again from "Kate". 

THE PLOT: A fashion model celebrity couple join an eventful cruise for the super-rich.

AFTER: I work for a director who's a member of the Academy, and I'm not allowed to talk about what movies he voted for when it comes to last year's nominations.  But it turns out he hadn't seen that many films, because he's been working so much on his own film.  Jeez, it's not like the Academy has their own streaming site where he can just log in and watch whatever eligible movie he wants at any time of the day.  Oh, wait, that's exactly how it works, only he prefers going to the theater, getting an invite to a special screening or just showing his Academy card at select theaters and getting in for free.  I guess that's the way it should be, first choice should always be watching something on the big screen if you can, second choice would be streaming it to your TV, computer or mobile device.  But I think it's the technology holding him back, he wouldn't know how to watch a streaming movie on his phone or a computer unless someone set it up for him.

Me, I watch 300 movies a year, so I can't afford to go to movie theaters that often, I'd go broke.  How much would 300 orders of popcorn cost?  That's like $3,000 right there.  No, if I didn't have streaming services, I couldn't do what I do.  I seem to recall going to the movies a lot more often in a previous life, but this year if I only go to a theater four times, that's going to feel like a lot - provided I see the RIGHT four movies, the ones I need to fill in the gaps between the streaming movies and the cable movies, carefully curated, of course. (I really should try to get some kind of festival programming job, because I've been programming my own blog for 15 years now, you'd think I'd have gotten to be an expert by now.)

Whatever - I can't fix my life in a day or a week, no matter what I want to do or try to do, so instead I'm taking baby steps each day to try and improve things.  Like I can watch a movie a day, and by the end of the year that's a huge list - so each day I'm trying to also check something off the to-do list or take a step on each bigger project so that even if I can't cross off something today, I've gotten a little bit closer to crossing that thing off, eventually.  (I know it's a poor excuse, but I do have jury duty coming up in July, if I took a new job then I'd very quickly have to ask for time off from that job, and then where would THAT get me?).  

"Triangle of Sadness" starts out as the story of a couple, Carl and Yaya, he's a model and she's an influencer, and things are going great for her, but Carl's modeling career, maybe not so much.  We see them arguing over whose turn it is to pay the bill at the restaurant - of course it's her turn, and of course she pretends she didn't notice that the bill came, but maybe she didn't?  It's all a big mind game, but it feels like it could be very true-to-life in the way that couples argue over things like this.  Look, you pick any two people and chances are that one of them makes more money than the other, and it's going to be worked out at some point that maybe that person picks up the tab more often, or maybe picks up the bigger tabs. You can work this out to your satisfaction, but also, you've got to be a bit diplomatic about it - and I say this as the person in the relationship who makes less money on an annual basis.  As such, I would prefer to go grocery shopping more often and not order from Seamless or Grubhub every night, because take-out is always going to be more expensive in the end. But yeah, if you're in a relationship you're probably keenly aware of how often you pick up restaurant checks, and how often your partner does also - even if you share money and have joint accounts (which I don't recommend in this day and age). 

On top the money thing, people in relationships these days are also aware of the outdated nature of gender roles, and so they're always thinking about what it MEANS for the man to pick up the check, what it means for the woman to do the same, and jeez, it's a wonder that anybody gets together with anybody these days if they're always worrying about the social connotations of everything, being "woke" and all that.  I've found that a relationship is something like a car, you're both riding in it and ideally going in the same direction to the same destination, but really, only one person can drive at a time.  Hey, being a passenger is important, too, especially if you're good with directions and you want to help with navigation, or even just finding some really cool songs on the radio or YouTube to help pass time on a long car trip.  (See, I'm helping!)

In the second part of the film, the couple is invited on a luxury cruise aboard a super-yacht, where all of the guests are wealthy and their every whim is catered to, even the weird requests.  Like one wealthy lady who wants her female attendant to join her in the hot tub, and this leads to all of the ship's crew getting the opportunity to go swimming, even if they don't want to. Carl complains about one member of the crew who took his shirt off in the hot sun, and this led to Yaya being attracted to him, but Carl's complaint gets the guy fired, he has to leave the ship, but he turns out to be one of the lucky ones.  

I don't want to spoil all the things that happen on the boat after this, but there are quite a few.  Instead I want to talk about the cruises I've been on, and maybe you'll get some hints from that.  My wife and I went on three cruises in the Caribbean - this was 2002, 2007 and 2013, I think, so it was all pre-pandemic.  But on the third cruise the staff was very conscientious of hygiene, as I think there had been some incidents on cruise ships before ours. We weren't allowed to serve ourselves at the buffet for the first few days, because that meant touching the same utensils as others, instead the staff put food on everyone's plates.  Most commonly this is due to things like noroviruses, though I think there was at least one cruise ship that had people with COVID on it, and I remember after they docked people couldn't leave the ship for a month or something.  Yeah, look up the Diamond Princess on the Carnival cruise line, it was anchored at Yokohama from February 3, 2020 through at least the end of March.  Now, if I had to spend two months in quarantine, maybe a cruise ship might be an OK place to do that, as long as there's food and activities on the ship to keep you busy, but I'm guessing that most people had to isolate in their cabins, either because they tested positive for COVID or they didn't want to catch it from somebody else - so that sounds more like prison, then. Maybe a nice prison with a good view, but still prison. 

But then there was the Carnival Triumph, which had many problems in February 2013, two months before we went on a Holland America Cruise in April that year. The Triumph suffered an engine fire and was stranded at sea for a week, and during that week there was no power, so no air conditioning, no running water and so there were no working toilets and the hallways filled up with human waste.  Every deck was the "poop deck", I remember joking. Then the cruise line claimed in court that selling people tickets on their ship did not require them to guarantee that the ship be seaworthy, or that there would be enough food, or that the conditions would be safe and sanitary. OK, good to know. That ship is still in service, just under another name, keep that in mind.  We chose Holland America because the clientele tended to be older, so we'd feel a lot younger - if you want to feel skinnier, just hang out with very fat people, right?  I also felt smart playing trivia because the older people didn't know that much about modern movies and music acts.  Also, the older people are slower, so they couldn't make it to every hourly food event held on different decks of the ship, like we could. Statistically, on a cruise with so many older people, I'm guessing that an average of 1 dies on each voyage. Just saying. 

But I also remember that on our second cruise, which left from NYC (the others left from Florida) that there was terrible turbulence - choppy waters - coming back to NY from Puerto Rico.  I don't usually get seasick, but this was so bad that they advised everyone to just stay in bed and not try to walk around that day, because the boat was rocking so bad.  Sure, I'll stay in bed an extra day, we can still get breakfast sent to our room, right? 

I can't really talk about the third act of the film at all, not without issuing a SPOILER ALERT.  I can say, however, that not all of the characters of the second act are in the third act, and the situation calls for the ones that are there have to (as they say on "Survivor") "create a new society of their own", which isn't really what happens on "Survivor", instead it's just a bunch of people doing physical challenges, going without food and lying to each other.  I mean, they don't have to build roads or invent their own form of government, so it's not really a "new society", come on, Jeff, you're overselling it.  Solving puzzles, running obstacle courses and voting people out is hardly the foundation for a new society.  (By the way, I met my first "Survivor" contestant last month, working at the Tribeca Film Festival - it was Jonathan Penner, three-time contestant and fan favorite, he's also an actor and producer and he programmed some films for the festival.)

Another thing I remember about the cruises we went on was the multi-tiered caste system among the employees, which seemed to be entirely race-based.  The commanding crew was Dutch, the cruise directors and entertainment hosts were British or American, and then the wait-staff was all Indonesian, and there sure didn't seem to be much chance of people moving around between the jobs, meaning if you were Asian you were automatically a waiter or a bartender. I'm not sure if this was all as racist as it seemed, maybe they all made good salaries and sent money home to there families in Indonesia.  But in the third part of "Triangle of Sadness", this sort of thing comes in to play when those race roles, and gender roles, are reversed among the characters, by necessity and everyone seems to struggle with the new order.  That's about all I can say without giving it all away.  

I did figure out what the ending was going to be before it happened - with a story like this there are really only a couple different ways it can end.  Annoyingly the ending is also super-enigmatic, you maybe have to decide for yourself what happens at the very end, and I don't usually like that sort of thing.  But remember, most of the people here are very rich so it's OK to hate them if you want to - kind of like with "Glass Onion" or "The Menu".  Is that another recent movie trend? 

The title is very enigmatic as well, it could refer to the space between the eyebrows where a male model's frown lines might form, or it could sound like a part of the ocean, like the Bermuda Triangle.  Or it could mean something else, I guess it's up to you. 

Also starring Harris Dickinson (last seen in "See How They Run"), Charlbi Dean, Vicki Berlin, Dolly De Leon, Alicia Eriksson, Zlatko Buric (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Sunnyi Melles, Carolina Gynning, Iris Berben (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle"), Amanda Walker (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Oliver Ford Davies (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Ralph Schicha, Henrik Dorsin, Arvin Kananian, Mia Benson, Stefan Gödicke, Jean-Christophe Folly, Nana Manu, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 quotes from Lenin or Marx

Kate

Year 15, Day 177 - 6/26/23 - Movie #4,477

BEFORE: Woody Harrelson carries over from "The Man from Toronto". I'm suddenly filled with anxiety because I heard "The Flash" wasn't doing well in theaters.  I don't know if that's because of the Ezra Miller controversies or if people are just burned out on superheroes and megaverse stuff.  But I picked four movies to see in theaters this summer that will make my chain to October possible, and that's one of them.  Now I think I may have to see it in a theater tomorrow before it vanishes and doesn't appear on streaming until four months from now. I think the old chain I used to work for still has discount Tuesdays, so perhaps I should address this tomorrow - I was going to wait until Thursday when I planned to be in Manhattan with some spare time, but now I don't think I can afford to wait, not if I want my chain to remain unbroken. I hope I don't regret this - watch, if I go to the movies tomorrow then the film will hang around for another three weeks, but if I DON'T, it will be gone before Friday, I'm thinking. Of course, I could be wrong.

THE PLOT: A jaded assassin assigned to target a yakuza clan has 24 hours to find out who poisoned her to get vengeance before she dies. 

AFTER: I'm not sure why Hollywood studios are so obsessed with female assassins - does it go back to "Kill Bill", or further back than that?  "La Femme Nikita"?  I've also watched "Domino", "Hanna", "Columbiana", "Ava", "Red Sparrow", "Gunpowder Milkshake" and "The 355" in recent years, and they're all riffing off the same theme, playing off this contrast between attractive women with deadly weapons.  Now I'm wondering if this is some kind of fetish thing for screenwriters and/or studio executives, it would explain why so many films with similar premises keep getting greenlit.  But I'd wager there are more female assassins in movies than there are in real life, just a hunch.  Note that I've got two more films with female assassins (hit-women?) coming up in the next month.  Clearly a popular trend, male assassins are so last century...

I'm not saying women CAN'T do the job, I'm just thinking that most would prefer not to.  It's a tough job with a high chance of getting caught or dying, and I think neither of those are high on the priority list for successful females.  Again, just a hunch. The screenwriting stereotypes seem to suggest that this career is best for orphaned girls who start young and get groomed by handlers (mostly male) and that just lends a bit of an unseemly feeling to the concept, doesn't it?  So in the end I don't know if the portrayal of women as successful assassins is really a step forward, what does it mean for women to have broken a glass ceiling if the job still exploits them and takes advantage of them to do someone else's dirty work?  Real success would be for the women to be handlers, like in "The Man from Toronto" or even running the organization. 

Kate is cut from the same cloth as all those other female assassins, but in the mission that opens the film, she's asked to carry out a hit in Osaka while the target is in close proximity to his daughter, and that's something she's got a personal rule against doing.  Despite this, she carries out the hit, and then complains to Varrick, her handler, about it later.  She also has a night of drinking and sex with a man she meets in a hotel bar - but the next day, something's not right, she's dizzy and she fails to kill her next target, then crashes a car during the high-speed chase that results. In the hospital, she learns that she's got acute radiation sickness, and she makes it her mission to get out of the hospital with a gun and enough stimulants to keep her alive long enough to track down whoever poisoned her. 

Kate tracks down Ani (the daughter of the first Yakuza she killed, and the niece of the man she thinks is the one who poisoned her), and uses her as bait to draw out the lead gangster, but naturally there are complications along the way - nothing ever goes as originally planned, so Kate has to fight her way through several groups of gangsters before reaching the level boss - all of this is pretty standard and straight-forward, though the stunt work was all done very well. I think most assassin films I've watched, with male or female leads, feature the main character working their way up the chain until they get to face off with the gangster that they've got a beef with. 

I'll stop with the synopsis there, because spoilers, but maybe Kate finds out that there are wheels within wheels and things might be more complicated than she first thought - sure, when you've got 24 hours left to live, it might be possible to track down the person you really want to kill, but then what happens when she finds out the goalposts have been moved?  That's going to affect the timeline.

I think I'm calling another Mulligan tonight, because I'm so focused on trying to get to the movies before these films disappear that it's hard for me to focus - also there's too much going on at my first job and nothing at all going on at my second job, so I feel very unbalanced.  I'm toggling between stressed and depressed and I need to find a way to shake this off.  Later this week I go in to see if I can qualify for that vaccine study, so at least there's something I can focus on. 

Also starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Miku Martineau, Tadanobu Asano (last seen in "Midway"), Jun Kunimura (ditto), Michiel Huisman (last seen in "The Guernshy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), Miyavi (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Mari Yamamoto, Kazuya Tanabe, Cindy Sirinya Bishop, Amelia Crouch (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Ava Caryofyllis (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Gemma Brooke Allen, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Koji Nishiyama, Byron Bishop.

RATING: 5 out of 10 claw-based vending machines 

The Man From Toronto

Year 15, Day 176 - 6/25/23 - Movie #4,476

BEFORE: Kevin Hart carries over from "DC League of Super-Pets".  I should have known, after a Dwayne Johnson chain, that a couple Kevin Hart films would be in store.  They've made a lot of movies together.  Also, just about a year ago (minus one day) I was using Kevin Hart as a link to go from "Fatherhood" to "The One and Only Dick Gregory".  It's not that Father's Day was later last year, it really wasn't, but I had programmed a week about fathers (mostly) and "Fatherhood" was the back-up Father's Day movie, in addition to being my transition into the Summer Doc (& Rock) Bloc chain. 

I went and double-checked my links for the summer, and I ran into something of a snag - there's a debate over whether a certain mega-star made a cameo in a certain Marvel movie, or not.  News reports are mixed - I don't want to spoil a cameo for anybody, so I won't mention the star or the movie, but the only way to confirm for sure is to go and see the movie - then if I find out that star did NOT make a cameo, I'll be in trouble, because I was counting on using that as a link.  Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to flip two movies around, add a new film on Netflix that I accidentally learned about the other day, and somehow MISSED adding it the month it came on the service.  Then I just have to move one film from the September chain (where it was the middle films in a three-movie chain with the same actor) up to the July chain, to make a stronger link to that Marvel movie.  There, I can sleep better now, and I can start going to the movie theater next week as planned. Just keep "The Flash" in theaters for a few more days, that's all I ask, even if it's under-performing, because I can't drop it. 

I still have to double-up some time on July 4 weekend, but that should be done easily.  Spacing the rest of July's films out to include six skip days, that's more difficult for me. 

THE PLOT: The world's deadliest assassin and New York's biggest screw-up are mistaken for each other at a vacation rental cabin. 

AFTER: I'm so used to seeing Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson together, and the size discrepancy being used for comedic purposes, that it makes me wonder if this film was written for the two of them, and then "The Rock" wasn't available.  That would make some sense.  Woody Harrelson is a great substitute here for the "tough guy" role, the special agent, the guy who's usually brought in to torture people for information, but also has a secret soft side that develops over time.  Maybe Dwayne had a problem with the torture scenes, who knows? 

It's the same comedic premise, though, as "Central Intelligence" or "Jumanji", one guy is big and strong and tough, and the other guy is smaller and weaker and talks a lot.  Though they kind of flipped it in "Jumanji", didn't they, by using avatars that weren't like the humans behind them.  However, if you just look at the avatars, then the casting of those two actors certainly worked, and it's the same basic idea here. 

Kevin Hart plays Teddy, who's screwed up so many times that his friends and family just use his name as a shorthand verb for making a mess of things. "Boy, you really Teddy'ed that one..."  He's been trying for years to move ahead in his sales job at Marty's Fitness and his latest idea is contact-less boxing, so you get all of the workout but suffer none of the damage, and his boss just absolutely hates the idea.  Plus, he printed up hundreds of flyers without putting the gym's address or phone number on them.  NITPICK POINT: There's a simple solution here, just print up a sticker with the gym's address, those flyers could totally be saved and used.  But nobody asks me, do they? It's a symbol, however, of all the times he's screwed up - he just doesn't follow through on things, and I feel his pain.  (I've made a whole list of things to get done this summer, including job-hunting, and now that I've made the list, I've started avoiding everything on it.  It's a process, though.)

Teddy screws up again by not replacing the toner in his printer, so even though he bought a wonderful getaway spa resort package for his wife's birthday, he can't read the print-out of the address for the Virginia cabin he rented, and so while she's at the spa, he goes to the wrong cabin and gets mistaken for the hitman/torture expert from Toronto who's due to interrogate the prisoner in the basement, and get the information from him that somebody really shady needs.

NITPICK POINT #2: Again, there was a simple solution, the address was in the rental registration that probably got e-mailed to him, if he just checked the e-mail on his phone to find the address, really, there was no need to print out the reservation at all.  But again, nobody asks me when they write these scripts if the plot points work. 

This is what's needed to create the identity confusion, though, and this puts Teddy in touch with FBI agents who realize very quickly that he's not the Man From Toronto, but they still need him to pretend to be him, because the guy they arrested has connections, and there's a second phase of information that needs to be extracted.  Also, because Teddy wasn't operating in stealth mode, someone took a photo of him entering the cabin, and now he's identified online as the hitman in question. This might be important later. 

But of course, the real Man from Toronto shows up, and inserts himself into the operation to find out who is masquerading as him, and why he's not getting paid for the operation which has been royally screwed up (Teddy'ed) by somebody.  The real hitman sneaks on to the plane heading to Puerto Rico and he presents himself to the client, coming face to face with Teddy, who's just been pretending.  Can these men with opposing temperaments and skill sets work together to get the information for the client, and maybe come to an understanding in the process?  More to the point, can Teddy get back to his wife in time and also explain why he lied about getting fired from his job?  What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that plan? 

Thankfully, Teddy's wife's best friend shows up to keep her company at the spa, and also there are plenty of extra FBI agents to escort her around to stores and spa treatments while Teddy works with the real Man from Toronto to complete the mission.  Which is a bit far-fetched, by the way, it's got something to do with blowing up an embassy, or preventing an embassy from being blown up, and interrogating four men to determine which one has the necessary secret codes.  

Along the way, they have to contend with the Man from Miami, the Man from Tokyo, the Man from Moscow, and the Men from Tacoma.  I'm not sure how all those guys got to the Washington, DC area so fast, unless there was a hitman convention taking place nearby.  Just saying - I realize that they don't all necessarily live in the cities they're originally from, but still, it takes time to get across the country or across the globe, and this film all seems to take place over a single weekend. 

A lot of good comedy here, mixed with impressive action scenes, so I'm inclined to be nice again today with my rating.  Like many films, this one had its production delayed by the pandemic, and it was originally scheduled for release in November 2020, but then in April 2021 it was back on the schedule, with a release date in January 2022.  Considering what went down for two years I of course understand this, but I wonder if Hollywood has now caught up and released just about everything that got made late, because of course a lot of films got released in the past 12 months, and now we're looking at a summer schedule with several more blockbusters coming out - so when does the slowdown come, or are the studios spacing out the releases to cover the current writers strike?  I'm just wondering when they're going to run out of material, so I can plan ahead for that. 

Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jasmine Mathews (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Kaley Cuoco (last heard in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Pierson Fode, Ellen Barkin (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Jencarlos Canela, Ronnie Rowe (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Alejandro De Hoyos, Lela Loren (last seen in "Snitch"), Rob Archer (last seen in "Undercover Grandpa"), Kate Drummond, Martin Roach (last seen in "Little Italy"), Patrick Garrow (last seen in "Robocop" (2014)), Jason MacDonald, Kyle Gatehouse, Marqus Bobesich, Alejandro Ampudia, Darrin Baker (last seen in "My Spy"), Vijay Mehta, Philip Yang, Daniel Kash, Felipe Aukai, Tig Fong, Al Vrkljan, Gene Abella, Byron Abalos, Patricia Casey, Tomohisa Yamashita, Oleg Taktarov (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Glenn Ennis (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Justin Howell, Nathaniel Shuker, Bart Badzioch, Kyle James Butler, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 orders of durian sorbet