Blue Bayou

Year 15, Day 203 - 7/22/23 - Movie #4,498

BEFORE: It's been five years since I stopped going out to the San Diego Comic Con, but somehow my brain still knows what week it is.  I had a huge stress dream this morning that was a mix of a comic-con and my job at the movie theater - in the dream my boss screened his finished movie at the theater, and a huge crowd turned up.  There was going to be a director's panel on stage after the film, and I was prepared to be asked up on stage to answer questions, but then the panel didn't happen and we went straight into selling books and other merch, so the crowd formed this big line to buy stuff.

But then my boss told me he couldn't sell any books because he forgot to bring small bills to make change, so just as I started taking the plastic off of these coffee-table books we sell so he could sign them, suddenly the books were gone.  And I saw my boss arguing with the theater managers, saying he wanted more money for his appearance fee - or he was going to walk out, which is really stupid because there was this big pile of books and he could have made a lot of money by selling the books, but instead he pulled a diva move and cancelled the merch sales.  So the event was suddenly over, but there was still a big pile of books that I had to get back to the studio somehow.  

In retrospect, I did two things yesterday, I paid for our table at New York Comic-Con this October and then I swung by the theater on the way home to check on the status of the roof work.  That's a bad combination, plus I read a news article about how SAG actors aren't allowed to promote their films during the strike, so that means almost no acting celebrities at San Diego Comic-Con this year, and panels and autograph sessions are being cancelled.  Man, if I paid money for a ticket (which I never have) I would be really pissed off and probably demand some kind of refund.  And the SDCC JUST came back last year after the pandemic, during which the convention center was used as a place to store San Diego's homeless population.  What a downer.  They'd better settle this strike fast, before we realize how much of America's economy depends on actors promoting their crappy movies and driving up the box office.  

Alicia Vikander carries over again from "Earthquake Bird". 

THE PLOT: As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home. 

AFTER: I thought this film might be something like "Minari", but it's not, it's really its own thing.  There's some kind of loophole in the U.S. immigration policy when it comes to adoptions.  Foreign children who were adopted by U.S. couples are somehow not considered full citizens, even if they came to the U.S. when they were very young and raised as Americans for nearly their whole lives.  So if they get into trouble as an adult, there's the very real likelihood that they could be deported back to the country of their birth, even if they haven't lived there in decades, have no family there and they don't consider that country as their "home".  

The film shows the case of Antonio LeBlanc, who is of Korean descent but identifies as an American, talks like an American, acts like an American, and even has a bit of a criminal record, which is very American. (Right?). He's married to an American woman, so you'd think that would make him a citizen, but no, when the trouble starts that's not much help, as the spouse of an American he could apply for a green card or work visa, steps toward becoming a naturalized citizen, but that would take months, plus he didn't know that he needed to DO that, and also that process just became much more difficult now that he's in trouble with the law.  Again.  Fighting government red tape is also something that's very American.

The problems start with the fact that his wife has an ex-husband, Ace, the father of her daughter, and he disappeared from their lives for years.  Now Ace wants to see his daughter, spend time with her, which is his legal right as a parent, even an absent one, only the daughter, Jessie, does not want to see her father, as she considers Antonio to be her dad in spirit.  Well, that's all well and good, but technically it's not up to Jessie, Ace has the legal right to see his daughter, and letting the young girl dictate the rules produces problems for Antonio.  Ace happens to be a policeman, and Ace and his partner find the couple arguing in a grocery store, and decide to harass Antonio.  When he fights back, it's a big mistake because then he can be charged with civil disobedience, assaulting an officer, and more.  Yeah, the cops crossed the line here, they let Ace's personal issues conflict with police business, and sure, racism's involved, too, but the bottom line is that Antonio gets arrested, it's his word against the cop's, and that leads to a hearing on his deportation.  

Hiring an immigration lawyer to defend him in court doesn't come cheap, it's $5,000 just to start, and then the bill could increase from there.  Antonio says that he'll ask his boss at the tattoo parlor for an advance, but since he owes her money, that's probably not going to work.  So he hooks up with his old gang and gets back to stealing motorcycles to raise the money.  Sure, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with that plan?  It's not like he got arrested for stealing motorcycles before.  Oh, wait, he did.  And if Antonio's appeal and hearing don't go well, if the judge rules against him, not only will he be deported, but also barred from ever returning to the U.S. Maybe that's justification for stealing motorcycles, but viewed another way, the risk is just too great.  

There's so much back-and-forth here that by the end of the film that all gets a little tedious, when the marriage turns to off-again, on-again, and the plan to either leave the U.S. voluntarily or take the big chance with the merit hearing keeps changing.  For God's sake, just pick one plan and run with it, at some point as a viewer I don't even care which plan.  Let's just move this thing forward and stop being all wishy-washy about it.  Instead Antonio forms a friendship with a female Vietnamese immigrant with a terminal illness, who suddenly wants to get some tattoos before she dies, and is willing to pay top dollar.  Antonio doesn't feel right taking her money, even though he's got a $5K legal bill to pay (logically this doesn't follow, dude, take her money and put it toward the immigration lawyer's fee!).

NITPICK POINT: Oh, if only Antonio had a connection at I.C.E. - but it's not like there's an I.C.E. officer who comes into the tattoo parlor very often to get work done on his back tattoo.  Oh, wait, there is.  Why is this plot point not important until the very end of the film?

Who knew that Alicia Vikander can sing?  I guess she's not usually called upon to do this in a movie, but she did a very acceptable version of "Blue Bayou" at the party scene.  It's maybe a bit odd that the band made up of Vietnamese people knew this song, but then again, I guess it's considered a standard now, so maybe?  

Also starring Justin Chon (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Mark O'Brien (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Linh-Dan Pham (last seen in "Mr. Nobody"), Sydney Kowalske, Vondie Curtis-Hall (last seen in "Harriet"), Emory Cohen (last seen in "The Gambler"), Geraldine Singer (last seen in "Mudbound"), Toby Vitrano, Altonio Jackson, Truong Quang Tran, Ivy Vy Le, Sage Kim Gray, Renell Gibbs (last seen in "Heist"), Jacci Gresham, Martin Bats Bradford (last seen in "When We First Met"), Tyler Henry, Susan McPhail (last seen in 'Breaking News in Yuba County"), Sylvia Grace Crim (ditto), Rhonda Johnson Dents (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Jim Gleason (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Brad Blanchard (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Josef A. Pons.

RATING: 5 out of 10 ingredients in cajun sausage

Earthquake Bird

Year 15, Day 201 - 7/20/23 - Movie #4,497

BEFORE: Alicia Vikander carries over from "Beckett".  I've got five films with her all lined up and ready to go, but at the last minute I decided to switch the order around.  As long as I have the right film at the start and finish of this little mini-chain, it doesn't really matter, so then why not take the opportunity to think and link thematically, just a bit?  I'll put the two films that have missing person plot points next to each other, and then two Asian-themed films next to each other.  Nothing thematically matches "The Green Knight", really, but I can then put it next to the last film, and while they don't share another actor besides Vikander, then two actors who are brothers will be featured in films next to each other.  I'm not sure why this makes me happy, but it's OK that it does, I guess. 

THE PLOT: An enigmatic translator with a dark past is brought in for questioning after an ex-pat friend, who came between her and her photographer boyfriend, ends up missing and presumed dead.

AFTER: It's another missing person story tonight, that seems to be another repeating theme this year - also, similar to the style of "Come and Find Me", this one jumps around quite liberally in time.  At the start of the film, Lucy gets news that they may have found a body part of the missing person in the bay (notably without saying what body part that might BE...) and then the story snaps back to the past to show how Lucy first met her Japanese photographer boyfriend, Teiji, and then once things between Lucy and Teiji moved to the next level (which took some TIME, man, Japanese men don't like to rush into things, I guess...) Lucy also meets Lily, who is from America but new to the country and needs someone to show her around and get her settled.

Yep, maybe you guessed it, this sets up the classic romantic love triangle, because eventually after the three people hang out, go dancing and then head off for a fun (?) weekend on Sado Island (jeezus, it's got "SAD" right there in the name...) for some cliff-walking and animatronic displays of Japanese mining techniques, Lucy notices that Teiji is taking a lot of pictures of Lily, and he's not taking so many pictures of HER any more.  Sorry, girlfriend, it's clearly over, Teiji has moved on, but it seems you're having difficulty doing the same.  To be fair, maybe it wasn't the best idea for a couple and their female friend to all share one room at the weird Japanese B&B where they sleep on the floor with no mattress.  Just saying.  There's a lesson here, even if you're on a budget, spring for two hotel rooms, or at least one with a double and a cot over THERE, instead of one king bed for all three people to sleep awkwardly in.  Again, just saying. 

OK, maybe, just maybe, nothing happened between Teiji and Lily, but Lucy has a very vivid dream that she's kissing Teiji with Lily in between them, and then you can imagine where the dream would logically go next, either Teiji would kiss Lily or Lucy would kiss Lily, or I don't know, maybe all three could just have some good times together, would that be so wrong?  I thought people from Sweden were very liberal and free-thinking, but Lucy doesn't seem to enjoy the thought of an open relationship, or a three-way, or whatever this might turn into.  Teiji, meanwhile, seems to be trying to pull off the impossible (according to "Seinfeld") girlfriend swap, where he just starts hooking up with his girlfriend's friend and hopes that his girlfriend is either OK with that, or gets the message and gets out of the way.  

Perhaps the problem is that Lucy's a bit messed up - she revealed her secrets to Teiji, including the fact that her first sexual experience was with her school friend's father, after that she thought she was pregnant and told the guy, he either drowned himself or was in a boating accident shortly after that, and - funny story - turns out Lucy wasn't pregnant at all.  So, yeah, umm, that happened.  Also, when she was a child she knocked down one of her brothers after they teased her, and he hit his head and died.  OK, Lucy might be more than a bit messed up from her past, and generally speaking, I don't recommend cheating on her, because she's just not going to react well.  

So, honestly, it makes some kind of sense that the Japanese police would want to question her after Lily's disappearance, she was the other corner of that love triangle, after all, and she resented the fact that her boyfriend mentally checked out and moved on to the next girl, and the next girl was Lily, literally the next girl over on that big floor sleeping space.  Meanwhile, Lucy's also dealing with the fact that she watched an older lady die after falling down a flight of stairs when she came for tea at Ms. Katoh's house.  

Look, it can't really be much of a mystery when there are this few characters, and if the police are questioning Lucy, then in true "Law & Order" fashion there's probably a twist, so if she didn't do it, there aren't too many other possibilities here.  A film like "Glass Onion" or "Death on the Nile" will at least keep you guessing just because there are so many people who COULD have done it.  There's a free little tip for you budding screenwriters if you want to do the whole solving a murder thing, maybe leave a few more doors open and have a long list of potential suspects.  Again, just saying. 

I didn't realize they had so many earthquakes in Japan - is that a thing there?  Everybody seems to know what to do, but this story of a bird that sings right after an earthquake ends is a bunch of bull, it's just based on an old Japanese myth or maybe an urban legend.  Most likely there are birds singing all the time, but I'd imagine that right after an earthquake everything and everybody is very quiet, because they're waiting to find out if there will be an aftershock - and during that quiet period, it's possibly just a bit easier to hear a bird chirping, because everything else still is relatively quiet.  I'm not sure if this qualifies as a NITPICK POINT, or just a popular myth that needs to be debunked. 

Also starring Riley Keough (last heard in "The Guilty"), Naoki Kobayashi, Jack Huston (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Kiki Sukezane, Ken Yamamura (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014)), Akiko Iwase, Kenichi Masuda, Kazuhiro Muroyama (last seen in "Kate"), Yoshiko Sakuma, Naomi Urushibara, Chiaki Yamamoto, Chie Izumiyama, Riku Takahahsi, Misa Matsuoka, Crystal Kay, Adelaide Young, Nikita Savilov, Yaeko Kimura (last seen in "The Wolverine"), Niclas Ericsson, Dennis Falt with archive footage of Michael Douglas (last seen in "Something Borrowed").

RATING: 5 out of 10 pine cones

Beckett

Year 15, Day 200 - 7/19/23 - Movie #4,496

BEFORE: Boyd Holbrook carries over from "Vengeance".  He's also in the new Indiana Jones film, but I'm not ready to watch that one just yet.  I mean, I may watch it about two weeks, but I'm not going to post the review until September, it's better for the chain that way.  But sometimes the same people keep popping up again and again, like I used Karan Soni as a link in July, and I'm going to use him again as a link in August, sometimes that's just how these things go.  I've got another way to link to "The Dial of Destiny" when September rolls around.  But after this, Alicia Vikander's going to get me all the way to Movie #4.500.

Right now I'm still figuring out how I'm going to see "Asteroid City" before it disappears from theaters, it might disappear after movies like "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" open up.  I'm going to take a chance and try to see "Asteroid City" next Tuesday, when only one theater in Manhattan will still be playing it - I bet I can probably get a killer seat. 

This one's on Netflix, don't know much about it - but I've made great strides in chipping away at my Netflix list, it's down to just about 115 titles, but that includes a couple comedy specials and a series or two, so probably about 110 movies. 

THE PLOT: Following a tragic car accident in Greece, an American tourist finds himself at the center of a political conspiracy and on the run for his life. 

AFTER: And what do I do on my nights off from watching movies, you might ask?  I am trying to slow my pace down and only watch 25 movies in July, after all.  Well, honestly, I watch more movies - but ones I've seen before, so they don't count.  In preparation for the new "Indiana Jones" movie, I watched both "The Last Crusade" and "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" - the latter was the FIRST movie I reviewed for my blog, WAY back in 2009, and I don't think I'd watched it since, I've been too busy.  (There's no need to ever watch "Raiders" or "Temple of Doom", because I've seen each one like a thousand times, like the original "Star Wars" trilogy.  I could probably re-watch any of those movies just by closing my eyes, seriously.). And I've also recently re-watched both "X-Men: First Class" and "X-Men: Days of Future Past" because they're both awesome, and, well, OK maybe that's preparation for the new "Deadpool" movie, let's go with that. 

But damn, seeing anything with John David Washington in it makes me want to re-watch "Tenet", which I only watched once, about two years ago - what a GREAT film, you can keep "Oppenheimer", just leave me with "Tenet" and "Interstellar" from the Christopher Nolan filmography.  OH, and his "Batman" trilogy for sure, I'm probably due for a re-watch of "The Dark Knight Rises", I only watched that one once, too.  Maybe I should give "Inception" another try while I'm at it, too.  It couldn't hurt. I saw a co-worker watching a piece on YouTube about how they filmed the hallway sequence, and I felt the need to clue him in about both Fred Astaire AND Lionel Richie using the same technique to dance on their respective ceilings.  Hey, I'm hear to educate, no judgments for sure.  

By no means is "Beckett" a total mind-bending effects driven film, like "Tenet" was - but really, what else is?  By comparison, "Beckett" is a very simple film about a guy who's being hunted down across - Greece, right?  And he's not really quite sure WHY everyone is trying to arrest him or even kill him, but it's got something to do with what he saw when he crashed his car into a house.  And it's also got something to do with an upcoming election in Greece, since for some reason the boy he saw in that house is also on the poster for the rally of this liberal politician, what could that possibly mean?  I think it means that based on this film and "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent", the only thing that screenwriters really know about European elections is that they can be heavily influenced just by kidnapping a politician's family members.  Umm, that's just how it works over there, right? 

See, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for everybody wanting to kill Beckett - but I wonder why he doesn't ever jump to the conclusion that maybe everybody in Greece is really racist. Like, imagine if they were trying to shoot and stab him just because he was black?  Man, that would be a very different film.  No, the story never goes there, which is a good thing, but still I wonder why HE never thought that the violence was racially motivated. Lots of old and conservative people in Greece, just saying.  

NITPICK POINT: Beckett goes back to the house that he crashed into with some pills, and he's so despondent over the accident that it seems he's going to kill himself.  But then someone fires a gun at him, and he runs away - when just a minute ago, he was ready to commit suicide.  Is that really what it takes to snap somebody out of their depression, just take a shot at them, so they'll quickly rediscover their will to live?  I'm not sure it works that way - if he were really suicidal, why wouldn't he just sit still and allow himself to be shot?  I can't really tell if this sequence of events makes sense or not.

Beckett relies on the kindness of strangers to make his way to a train station, so he can get back to Athens and reach the U.S. Embassy - but the police are everywhere, and most likely the people who helped him out ended up being injured or killed by the cops - just what, exactly is going on here?  And then even once he reaches the embassy and shows his passport, can he even trust the diplomats inside to keep him safe, or are they also in on the conspiracy?  There hasn't been a character on the run this confused about what's going on since "The Fugitive".  And in a similar fashion, it's going to take a lot of effort for the main character to clear his name, and he can't even turn himself in, because he's seemingly committed crimes in the process of saving himself.  

This makes two films in a row where the local police are seen as essentially useless and/or possibly also corrupt. I can't help but wonder if either of them, or both, were filmed during the "defund the police" movement back in 2020.  Just a thought. 

Also starring John David Washington (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Vicky Krieps (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Alicia Vikander (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Maria Votti, Panos Koronis (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Lena Kitsopoulou, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Filippos Ioannidis, Omiros Poulakis, Marianna Bozantzoglou, Andreas Marianos, Yorgos Vasiliou, Olga Spyraki, Marc Marder, Spyros Dimitrakakis, Ilias Pistikos, Nikolas Kounelis, Thomas Sketzas, Kostas Siradakis, Makis Papadimitriou, Abe Cohen, Sana Garner, Daphne Alexander (last seen in "The Ghost Writer") and the voice of Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness").

RATING: 6 out of 10 beehives on a Greek hilltop

Vengeance

Year 15, Day 199 - 7/18/23 - Movie #4,495

BEFORE: Well, the good news is that I skated on jury duty - I was there at the County Courthouse in Jamaica, Queens for only half a day, I was called as part of the third group of the day, but they told us that the cases we were going to interview for had been reassigned, so they were letting us go before lunch, which was weird, like aren't there always other cases that need jurors?  I didn't want to question it, I just took the win and the $40 for the day and got the certificate that said I did my civic duty, and couldn't be called again to serve for the next 6 years.  So I only lost one day of work, but that's OK because I'm on partial unemployment, so it's kind of like the fewer days I work this week the better, as I'll get more money from NY State.  Kind of a win-win, except I lost half a day to sitting in a giant juror holding pen.  

I also re-scheduled an appointment for today to get my hearing aid fixed, but now I wish I'd waited until the lunch break yesterday to do that, because I could have made the appointment today and then gone to see "Asteroid City" before it disappears from theaters.  It's already on digital platforms for $20, which is also weird because the movie is still in theaters.  I don't plan to review it until September, but I'm just not sure if by then it will be streaming on Peacock or something, or available on iTunes for $3.99 or $5.99.  Again, if I'm really stuck I could always buy the DVD from Amazon, same goes for "Guardians of the Galaxy 3".  But you know, going into Manhattan and buying a ticket, even on discount Tuesday, plus two subway fares plus a large popcorn does add up to MORE than $20, so maybe I should just buy it digitally in September, even if the price doesn't come down.  We'll see. 

Issa Rae carries over from "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

THE PLOT: A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels to Texas to investigate the circumstances of her death. 

AFTER: I think this film also played at the theater where I work part-time, though I don't remember if it was part of the Tribeca Festival last year or if it was a stand-alone screening for one of the guilds. I just checked, it was at the Tribeca Festival last year.  I didn't want to see any of the film, because I wanted to save it for personal viewing at home, plus I'm not allowed to watch the festival films, not when people are paying top dollar to watch them.

But I was expecting another sort of action-thriller movie, one where the main character gets a gun and learns to shoot and single-handedly works his way up the chain of the people working for the Mexican cartel until he gets to the kingpin who also murdered the girl who was the love of his life - this is NOT how "Vengeance" plays out, thank God.  For starters, Ben didn't even consider Abilene his girlfriend, she was just somebody he hooked up with a few times, he kind of barely remembers her.  Her family, however, thinks he was her serious boyfriend, and they kind of take him in to their family while he stays behind after the funeral to investigate her death.

But it's all in a self-serving way, Ben is also a podcaster and he knows that true crime podcasts are big business these days, and they have been for a while among the white people.  So he's in it for the STORY, and he does nothing to correct Abilene's family when they assume he loved their daughter and he has good intentions toward solving her death.  Abilene's brother, Ty, wants to just get a gun and go after the drug dealer he thinks is responsible for killing her, but since she died from an opioid overdose, Ben goes into the story thinking that it can't be that simple, that somehow the ignorance of society regarding drug use is to blame.  And people keep saying, "She wouldn't even take an Advil", so clearly something seems amiss about her death at a place called "the afterparty", where a lot of locals seem to end up after overdosing. 

Ben does work his way up the chain, but through interviewing people for his podcast, which I have to admit I haven't seen before in a film as a way of solving a crime.  It's very trendy, right?  He even interviews Sancholo, the dealer that Ty wants to kill, and gets his take on the situation.  Also there's a music studio mogul in town, who tries to help local singers make their first albums, he's another person that Abilene was connected to, as she was a budding musician herself.  The initial draw of the West Texas landscape is its beauty, but the more time Ben spends there, he finds that his initial assessment was perhaps correct, it's a desolate place where people have a tendency to not face the truth about themselves or their neighbors, and instead like to create conspiracy theories and blame society's factors for their own misfortunes. 

Ben also goes to his first rodeo - something I did back in 2017, when I went to Texas for the first time. I kept hoping that somebody would ask me if it was my first rodeo, because saying "Well, it ain't my first rodeo..." has become synonymous with claiming to be experienced in some way, and you almost never hear anybody express the opposite, that it IS their first rodeo.  I know, one is figurative and one is literal, but therein lies the ironic humor.  Anyway, I remember going in to the rodeo thinking it was going to be fun and exciting, and really, it just seemed like an excuse for guys on horses to torture young cows, so I wasn't all that into it.  Ben has a terrible time at his first rodeo, but for a very different reason.  

Ben also tries to learn what Abilene's family loves about Whataburger, even if they can't quite express their reasoning to his satisfaction.  I guess it's a Texas thing - they can get their burgers any way they like, but really, you can say the same thing about Burger King, or Roy Rogers with it's stand-alone fixin's bar, if you can still find one (I hope there's still one on the Jersey turnpike, on the way to Atlantic City...). The first thing I did when we hit Dallas in 2017 was to eat at a Jack in the Box, because I hadn't been to one in years.  I only ate there when I had an extra day in San Diego, I think.  But my wife didn't really care for the food there, it was just OK to her.  We didn't really hit our food stride on that vacation until we hit a BBQ restaurant at the Ft. Worth stockyards and then visited the Texas State Fair outside of Dallas. 

On the next trip to Texas in 2018, we also went to Austin, San Antonio and Houston before driving all the way to New Orleans.  The grandmother in this film talking about the Alamo (and Ben not realizing that Mexico won that battle) reminds me a bit of what happened to me there.  We went through all the historical displays at the Alamo museum, and I learned that not everyone died there, the Mexican army allowed the women and children who survived the battle to leave and travel to Gonzales, to help spread the word that Santa Anna's army had become unbeatable. A few days later, when we were in Houston and on a tour bus, our guide related an incorrect fact, that the Mexicans had slaughtered everyone, including the women and children.  So I found that I had to pull the guide aside after the tour and correct him, turned out he was a Texas history major who had been given incorrect information.  They say "Remember the Alamo" but I guess there's no impetus to remember it correctly. 

Anyway, it was a dumb move because the survivors traveling to Gonzales sparked a rush of people joining the Texian army, and a month later the Mexican Army was defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto, leading to the formation of the Republic of Texas.  There's your vengeance, right there. 

Also starring B.J. Novak (last seen in "The Founder"), Boyd Holbrook (last seen in "The Host"), Lio Tipton (last seen in "Lucy"), Ashton Kutcher (last seen in "Down to You"), Dove Cameron (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Isabella Amara (ditto), J. Smith-Cameron (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Eli Abrams Bickel, Louanne Stephens (last seen in "Dr. T & The Women"), John Mayer (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Clint Obenchain (last seen in "News of the World"), Zach Villa (last seen in "Destroyer"), Tony Sedillo, Rio Alexander (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Ben Whitehair (last seen in "Gold"), Grayson Berry (last seen in "The Marksman"), Micah McNeil, Avalon Stone, Ryan Hammond, Chevel Shepherd, and the voice of Terry Gross (last seen in "The Beaver").

RATING: 6 out of 10 deep-fried Twinkies

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Year 15, Day 197 - 7/16/23 - Movie #4,494 - viewed on 7/11/23

BEFORE: Well, I watched "The Flash" first because I was afraid it was going to disappear from theaters, it got labeled as a disappointment for Warner Bros, it "only" made $225 million or so. My next trip to the theaters on a Discount Tuesday brought me in for the new "Spider-Man" animated movie.  There are two more films I want to see in theaters before they go away, I think I have to hurry with "Asteroid City" now, and then of course there's Indiana Jones.  I'm not planning to review those films until September, so there are alternate ways I could watch them if they disappear, but I don't want to take any chances.  I also want to get to "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" before the summer is over - they haven't released the official streaming date, but the rumors are for mid-August.  If that's not accurate and they release it on Disney Plus in September instead, well, I could always buy the BluRay from Amazon, so at least I'm covered there.  

Karan Soni carries over from "Unicorn Store".  I'm caught up on DC Comics movies, now I've got three Marvel movies to watch this summer, starting with this one. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (Movie #3,176)

THE PLOT: Miles Morales catapults across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles must redefine what it means to be a hero. 

AFTER: OK, I told you we would get here, even if I couldn't come directly here from "The Flash".  There were probably a dozen other ways to get here, because this film has such a HUGE voice cast, and some of these actors have been popping up recently - it turns out there was one movie that could have connected this film with "The Flash", but that movie was called "Dope" and I just hid it between two Forest Whitaker movies, because I didn't realize I needed it.  Hindsight is 20/20, but if I had just dropped "Dope" from that chain and moved it AFTER "The Flash", with Kiersey Clemons carrying over, I could have gotten here sooner - but then I wouldn't have need to find "The Bubble", so come on, who's to say?  Maybe things happen for a reason, and there are no mistakes, just happy accidents. 

I do read Spider-Man comics still, but not the Miles Morales ones - I never read the books set in the "Ultimate" universe that he was created for, before that universe somehow ended and he moved over to the main Marvel Comic Universe (Earth-616) - honestly, I still don't know how he made the transition and the other Ultimate heroes didn't, but I think this summer there's another crossover planned, and the rest of them are coming.  Also, in the past few months they've been doing another "Spider-Verse" storyline in one of the Spider-Man books, and it's an obvious cheap way to tie-in with this movie and maybe sell some more copies.  Marvel called this one "End of Spider-Verse" but that's highly unlikely if the multiverse stuff sells comics.  

Everything's a multiverse now, the dam burst and there's a flood of multiverse stuff, going back to "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", which then got followed by "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and "The Flash".  Did this all start with "Into the Spider-Verse"?  That movie did win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, so naturally you would expect a bunch of similar movies to follow in its footsteps.  But of course, I had my issues with all of them, because the multiverse only works however the screenwriters want it to work, and we've got no proof of parallel dimensions or realities other than our own.  Also, I kind of like the reality where there's one Spider-Man, his name is Peter Parker, and I know most of his villains - why is that suddenly not enough for people?  Shouldn't one universe have enough space in it for all the stories that the writers want to tell?  Back in the early days of Marvel, they used to have a comic book called "What If?" where they told the alternate stories, like "What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four" or "What If The Spider Had Bitten Someone Else?" but nowadays it seems like every story that COULD happen does happen, just in a different dimension.  And, umm, how is it exactly that people can move between the dimensions?

Plus, what is the nature of time/dimension travel in the Marvel Multiverse?  Are the timelines like strands of spaghetti in a bowl, like in the "Flash" movie?  Or are there a billion possible futures for each moment, and the key events are juncture points for the timelines?  A key figure in "Across the Spider-Verse" is Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O'Hara, who is a version of Spider-Man in the future.  Whose future?  Is he from the future of Earth-616 or from a different one?  They never say - but since he's not a version of Peter Parker, there should also be dozens of versions of Miguel O'Hara, too.  Right?  There are so many Spider-heroes seen here that there should also be multiple Spider-Gwens and Spider-Mileses, in addition to the Jess Drew Spider-Woman, the Hobie Brown Spider-Punk and Pavitr Prabhakar as Spider-Man India and Peni Parker as SP//dr, and so on.  Why is there only one of each of these, when there are many takes on Peter Parker?  

(The first film introduced some weird takes on Spider-Man, like Spider-Man Noir, and then of course there was Spider-HAM, who comes from a world without humans, where cartoon animals are super-heroes and villains.  It gets much worse here, with Spider-UK, a cowboy version called Web-Slinger, then Lego Spider-Man gets in the mix, Spider-Byte from a VR world, and there's even a sentient car that looks like the old Spider-Mobile, only his name is Peter Parkedcar. Ugh, because we needed more Dad jokes in the Spider-Verse.)

The first film also introduced "Spider-Gwen" (officially she's "Spider-Woman" here, but the comics have used the other name) and sure, Miles misses her after she goes back to her proper reality - the first 20 minutes of the "Across the Spider-Verse" focus on her, as she has a falling out with her father (who blames her for Peter Parker's death) and decides to accept the invitation to join the elite group of dimension-hopping Spider-People who face off against threats to the fabric of the multiverse.  Spider-Man 2099 seems to be in charge of the efforts, or at least a version of Spider-Man 2099 from Earth-928, and I guess this makes sense because he's so far in the future that everything to him is in the past, and I guess he can just look back into the timeline and see what needs to be fixed?  But again, time travel and dimension travel are two different things, and the fact that the Vulture here came from a Renaissance-like present should confirm that.  (The comics just had the heroes in the Savage Avengers go time-traveling, and they visited the year 2099, so does that mean that they went into THEIR timeline's exact future, or did their time travel create an alternate one?  Again, it's very unclear.)

What's even weirder is the fact that apparently people can cross over between the animated Spider-verse and the live-action Spider-movies.  We see the efforts of the Spider-Society to capture dimension-hoppers and return them to their proper realities, one of them is a live-action Prowler played by Donald Glover, and at other times the Spider-Society uses images from the Maguire & Garfield films to illustrate points.  OK, so in an animated multiverse, they don't think it's weird to interact with a live-action reality?  They're 2-D and the other reality is 3-D, so how does that all function?  I have a feeling that if I could go to a 4-D reality, I wouldn't know which way is up, so this is all very weird. THANK GOD that every single universe has a J. Jonah Jameson who is played by J.K. Simmons!  He must be the anchor point in the multiverse.

 

Also, I've got a problem with Spider-Man 2099 talking about "canon events", like there's a point in every Spider-hero's life where somebody important to them dies, and this puts them on the path to being the hero they need to be.  In one way it's like saying "Into every life a little rain must fall", but at the same time, it comes a little too close to characters being self-aware that they ARE characters in a story.  Sure, the Flash learned this the hard way in his movie, that he wasn't able to prevent his mother's death and anyway, he shouldn't have even tried, because that's the event that made him want to be a hero.  So it's kind of the same thing here, only it's so much more blatant and it means the characters know too much about how their universe works.

Thankfully, they remembered to put in a villain - you might be surprised how many superhero films forget this, especially when they've got so much else going on.  (The first "Suicide Squad" film forgot, and for a while it looked like the second one was going to, too...).  The use of The Spot, a for-sure B-level Spider-Man villain, is a bit of genius here, they just amped up his powers a bit and gave him the ability to teleport between the realities, even the live-action ones.  But they left us kind of hanging here, as The Spot seeks out more "holes" to really become powerful, but now we'll all have to wait until the next "Spider-Verse" movie to find out if Miles can get his act together and work out his own problems in time to rally the team and defeat the evil power. 

(Voice casting for The Spot was also quite brilliant, dare I say "Spot on"?)

NITPICK POINT: Same as in the first film, Miles Morales attends a specialty NYC high school, but also lives in a dorm.  Nope, NYC high schools still do NOT have dorms, and even if they did, they wouldn't offer one to a student whose parents have an apartment within the city limits, he would be asked to commute.  Obviously the writers needed a place for Miles to live where he could change clothes, and not always be sneaking out of his parent's building, but it still doesn't make sense for a high-schooler to live on campus.  

NITPICK POINT 2: Disrupting a "canon event" can cause a whole universe to collapse?  Why?  How could the death of any one person be so important that the whole reality implodes, especially when there are universes where Peter Parker has died, yet the whole world keeps on turning?  Plus, it's a minor character at best, that person may be important to that hero, but why does the universe care so much about one person not dying that it just gives up?  WTF?

One thing that IS very interesting is the animation styles used here - in many cases the different Spider-heroes are animated differently, some move at different frame-rates and others seem to be backed up with changing swatches of color, and this is quite a clever way to depict that they all come from different universes.  I can't name another animated feature where the characters sharing the screen at the same time were all created with different processes.  The animation staff was HUGE, obviously, and so this all became like one big ani-jam, maybe with each character drawn by a different person or team.  It's enormously vibrant, but perhaps also a little bit distracting?

I've got jury duty starting tomorrow morning, so no movie tonight/tomorrow - this works to my advantage, since I'm trying to space my movies out.  Back in a couple days. 

Also starring the voices of Shameik Moore (last seen in "Dope"), Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Luna Lauren Velez (last seen in "Swallow"), Jake Johnson (last seen in "Paper Heart"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "The Promise"), Jason Schwartzman (last heard in "Sing 2"), Issa Rae (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Daniel Kaluuya (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Shea Whigham (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Greta Lee (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Swan Song"), Amandla Stenberg (last seen in "Colombiana"), Jharrel Jerome (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Andy Samberg (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Rachel Dratch (ditto), Jack Quaid (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Ziggy Marley, Jorma Taccone (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Elizabeth Perkins (last seen in "28 Days"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Ayo Edebiri (last seen in "How It Ends"), Nicole Delaney, Nina Lentini, Atsuko Okatsuka, Peter Sohn (last heard in "Lightyear"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania"), Lorraine Velez, Nic Novicki, Taran Killam (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), Metro Boomin, Josh Keaton, Sofia Barclay, Danielle Perez, Yuri Lowenthal (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Mike Rianda (last heard in "The Mitchells vs the Machines"), Kimiko Glenn (last seen in "Like Father"),

with cameos from Donald Glover (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Peggy Lu (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage")

and archive footage of Tobey Maguire (last seen in "The Good German"), Andrew Garfield (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Cliff Robertson (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Denis Leary (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course")

RATING: 8 out of 10 Jeff Koons balloon dogs