De Palma

Year 15, Day 301 - 10/28/23 - Movie #4,577

BEFORE: Robert De Niro AND Rebecca Romijn carry over from "Godsend" via archive footage - both appeared in films directed by Brian De Palma.  De Niro was in "The Untouchables" and others, while Romijn was in "Femme Fatale". 

This might feel a bit like cheating, to drop in a documentary near the end of horror movie month, just to keep the chain alive AND to get a few more horror movies in before Halloween.  OK, if you want to call it cheating, go ahead, but maybe YOU try watching almost 4,600 movies in 15 years and devoting a month every year to horror movies AND also trying to organize all of those movies by actor, and then once you've done that, come back and tell me how easy that all was. 

I'm allowing this in because there is some precedent, two years ago I watched "Spielberg" in October, which connected two minor horror movie chains to make one big one, and now I'm doing that again.  Both docs used so much archive footage from so many movies and therefore SO MANY actors that I could basically drop this doc anywhere and use it as a link.  This fits in with the horror theme because De Palma directed the original "Carrie" film, and also slashers like "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Double".  

Sure, I could have ENDED the horror chain with this, and from here linked, well, to almost anything.  But I kept this handy in case I fell behind, if I didn't have room in October for three more movies, then sure, end on this or watch this on November 1 and that creates multiple "outs", I could get back to any other movie quite easily probably, or hook up with any planned chain that I knew could get me to Thanksgiving.  But as it is, it's going to connect "Godsend" to another horror movie, and I'm still on Plan A to get to Turkey Day.  

Still I had lots of choices, from here I could have linked to "Scream V" or the "Pet Sematary" remake or "I Frankenstein" or "The Relic" or "Dark Water" or "Life After Beth" or "What Lies Beneath" - but nope, it's going to be none of those. 

THE PLOT: A documentary about writer and director Brian De Palma.  

AFTER: For the sake of expediency tonight, I'm going to break down De Palma's career into three sections - 1) Films that are relevant to my Shocktober theme, 2) Films that are notable for other reasons, and are worth mentioning, and 3) Films that should not have even been included here. I'll start with the last category and work backwards. 

3) Look, I get it, if you're a fan of De Palma you might be really into his early and later work, but it's just ill-advised to discuss them here. If you've only got two hours, you shouldn't spend even a MINUTE discussing an early film like "Greetings" or "Woton's Wake" or "Murder a la Mod" or even "The Wedding Party".  These films SUCK, but it's OK, everybody's first few films suck, they just shouldn't be mentioned in the same review as "Scarface" or "Carlito's Way".  Any time this doc focuses on "Get to Know Your Rabbit" or "Dionysus in '69" is time taken away from "The Untouchables" or "Casualties of War" - you know, movies that people might have seen.

They couldn't get the director to admit that his early films sucked though, which is a problem.  Part of being an artist is admitting your mistakes, and that you are capable of making mistakes. Again, it's OK, as long as you learn from them, but I don't think that De Palma did, because he says things like "This film didn't make any money" or "The critics hated this one" or "This one didn't connect with the audience".  Right, because they SUCKED.  The sooner you can own that, the sooner you can move on.  The directors here (Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow) are clearly fans, or else why wouldn't they just cut these films out for everyone's sake.  Why didn't they also realize that the director is incapable of being his own critic?  Does he really look at all of his films equally?  No?  Then for God's sake, don't give them equal time.  Start with "Sisters" if you have to, and work forward from there. 

2) De Palma films worth mentioning that are NOT in the Halloween or "thriller" category include: "Scarface", "The Untouchables", "Casualties of War", "The Bonfire of the Vanities", "Carlito's Way", "Snake Eyes", "Femme Fatale" and "The Black Dahlia".  These all sort of belong to the same category, namely crime or war.  (I lump the two together on my watchlist, it's just easier.). I've seen all of them, though I barely remember "Femme Fatale" and "The Black Dahlia".  De Palma's comments on these two films don't help at all, because his words of wisdom include things like "Well, "The Black Dahlia" is the story of the Black Dahlia, you know."  No, I don't, and your insight sure doesn't help me remember it at all, could you explain it a little better, please? 

Again, the problem here is that the interviewers wanted to get to everything, so therefore they couldn't really focus on anything, and De Palma's comments don't end up shedding much light on anything.  I remember "Snake Eyes", but all De Palma wanted to talk about was the ending, how originally there was supposed to be a giant tidal wave that washed over Atlantic City, thus the wrath of God wiped out the bad guys, but also the good guys.  Deus Ex Machina and all that.  So they filmed some of that, but scrapped it for budgetary reasons, and went with the other ending, which was, umm, what again?  No, no, don't tell me, let me guess.  

"The Bonfire of the Vanities" was supposed to be this big hit, based on a best-selling novel, but for some reason everybody hated the movie, including the people who loved the book.  That couldn't POSSIBLY be De Palma's fault, now, could it?  He blames Tom Hanks, if you can believe that, because his character was supposed to be the asshole villain of the story, but audiences LOVE Tom Hanks, so sure, it's his fault. It just couldn't be that the director put the focus on the wrong things - but if the wrong actor was cast, isn't that ALSO the director's fault?  If the director forgot to tell Tom Hanks to be an asshole, same thing, that's the director's fault for not directing him right. 

"Casualties of War" is a powerful film about Vietnam, and some U.S. soldiers who rape a local woman.  (Rape is a common theme for De Palma, but I'll get to that in a bit.). De Palma claims it's the best film ever made about Vietnam, but did he forget about "Platoon"?  He also claims to not really understand the culture in Vietnam, but isn't that also part of the director's job, to understand things and explain them to the audience?  De Palma just wanted to talk about how Sean Penn acted horribly toward Michael J. Fox, but it was done to make Fox hate his character, so he could act better.  Um, sure, that's why - or maybe Sean Penn is also an asshole.

"Scarface" and "Carlito's Way" I sort of think of together, not just because they both have Al Pacino in them, but because together they're the inspiration for most of the scenes in the video-game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", from the clubs and mansions to the drugs and the chainsaw scene.  I paused this doc to show my wife Sean Penn's character in "Carlito's Way", and she said, "Yeah, that's the lawyer character from Vice City!"  It sure is.  De Palma's insights to "Scarface" included the story of how Pacino burned his hand on a prop gun, and was out for 2 weeks, so he had to shoot the other Pacino-less scenes in the film, which explains why you see the climactic gunfight from 1,800 different angles.  And in "Carlito's Way" De Palma talks only about the subway scene (I recognized that MTA station in Park Slope) and how it took all night to film it - never forget how HARD it is for a director to get that shot....

That leaves "The Untouchables", which is darn near a perfect film.  No notes.  But I already knew that the whole train station shoot out was an homage to "Battleship Potemkin", duh.  So the only real insight I got here was that Sean Connery did not appreciate filming his death scene, because he wasn't used to having to pretend to be shot in all of those James Bond films. Really?  That's all?  Man, I would watch a WHOLE documentary about the making of "The Untouchables" if I could.  I had to suffer through three minutes on "Raising Cain" to get just this?  Throw me a bone or something, here, not just a story about how De Palma was unsure about whether Kevin Costner could carry a picture.  What a damn shame. 

Oh, wait, I forgot about "Mission: Impossible", probably the most successful film he ever directed.  But note that he either chose not to direct the sequels, or was not asked to - I bet there's a story there, too, but it's another one that we don't get to have told to us.  Instead we learn there were two possible endings for the first film in the franchise, the one we got with helicopters chasing a train into a tunnel, then exploding and ALMOST slicing Ethan Hunt's neck, and the other one in which everybody pulls off their false faces and we learn that nobody was really who you thought they were, to the point of ridiculousness. 

1) OK, now let's get to the thrillers and horror movies, because 'tis the season.  "Carrie" - BOOM, the first movie made from a Stephen King story.  Again, this is worthy of a full-length doc of its own.  Points for taking a gamble on this unknown author, this Stephen King fella - did you have a feeling he was going to be huge, that 1,100 more movies would eventually be made from his books and short stories?  That should have been the first question asked, but damn, it never came up.  Instead De Palma wanted to talk about the shower scene (of course) and about what a great actress Nancy Allen was (agree to disagree but De Palma was in a relationship with her at the time) and then about how the blood seen at the end was too red, this was fake blood, and real blood tends to turn brown.  DUH, like who doesn't KNOW that?  Also, we learn where the inspiration for the hand coming up from the grave came from, but you know what?  I've already forgotten that.  "Carrie" is probably the only De Palma film with a central female character (except for "Femme Fatale") and sure, she gets bullied and pranked at prom, but then her psychic powers come into play and she kills everybody.  This is probably the LEAST sexist of De Palma's films, because the female does have power and wins against her aggressors in the end, sort of. Most other female characters in De Palma's films weren't so lucky.  

(The other big revelation here is that casting sessions for "Carrie" were held simultaneously with those for "Star Wars", which any "Star Wars" fan worth their salt already KNEW.  The same actors - Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Sissy Spacek and William Katt auditioned for both films, and the contenders were split among the two films.) 

Then there's "Dressed to Kill", in which women are followed, stalked, watched and then killed.  Yeah, it's the start of a pattern for De Palma - his early films seemed to be about women being interviewed and then asked to take their clothes off, so there's a level of sexism that maybe hit its peak in "Dressed to Kill".  Though he claims the film is really about how he followed his father around and found out he was having an affair, and that's what inspired these scenes - I'm not sure I buy it, but it does explain a lot about how De Palma feels about relationships.  De Palma also claims that killing off the lead female character in the first 10 minutes of the film is something that Hitchcock would have done (as in "Psycho") but you know, Hitchcock didn't really give off a strong feminist vibe either. Sure, it was a different time, but if your pattern is to only treat women as murder victims or rape victims, what does that say about you?  You could just tell different stories, that's all I'm saying, especially if the critics determine that you must hate women if these are the stories you want to tell. 

"Blow Out" is another film in the same genre, it's a little more interesting how a sound editor solves an assassination by using filmmaking techniques, but still, there are several female shower scenes and female murder scenes.  "Body Double", same pattern, women only seem to be used in nude scenes and murder scenes.  De Palma got some criticism over the violent death by power drill in "Body Double", but tries to explain it away here by saying that the drill HAD to be that big, in order to go through the floor so the main character could see it.  Umm, yeah, we're not buying that. 

"Mission to Mars" I'm going to allow as a Shocktober film to discuss, too, because I covered evil aliens this month in "Dark Skies", it's a loose Halloween connection, but aliens are in some horror movies like "The Thing" and "The War of the Worlds" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still".  But if I remember correctly, the aliens in this film turned out to be benevolent or human's ancestors or something, so really, it was all just a waste of time.   

I think that just about covers things, unless you're a big fan of "Phantom of the Paradise", and I understand there may be some cultist fans of that film out there somewhere.  The only thing left is De Palma's more recent films, but I'm led to believe that those suck too, so it seems like maybe he came full circle.  He started out as part of that New Hollywood generation of directors, along with Spielberg and Lucas and Scorsese and what they all really had in common was that they were all film nerds who appreciated old Hollywood techniques, and wanted to make hit movies so they could finally get laid.  (Note: the only reason for a young man to attend Sarah Lawrence College, shortly after it went co-ed, would be the high ratio of women to men, which would ensure getting involved in some kind of sexual activity, at least, that's the theory.)

And I think it worked for them, or most of them, anyway - but then De Palma sort of now feels like he belongs in that subset with Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.  Like, why would De Palma leave the country, is it just because Hollywood doesn't think he can connect with audiences any more, or were there some casting couch / "me too" incidents in his past that never came to light, and he was just being proactive?  To be fair, I don't think Woody Allen hates women in the same way, like I don't think he depicts rape and violence toward women in his films, I think he showed his hatred for women by getting into relationships with them and then choosing to act like a complete jerk. De Palma kind of gives off that same vibe, I get that he was together with Nancy Allen, and then married to Gale Anne Hurd, but then that didn't last either, and I'm sure there was a reason.  

In defense of his repeated choice of depicting women being raped and killed, De Palma explains this by saying, "You have to create these characters that you care about, and then kill them." Umm, no you don't HAVE to do that, it's a choice.  Other answers are possible.  My biggest question about De Palma that remains after watching this documentary is not why he can't admit that he had failures, but why he seemed to not WANT to be successful.  Why run away from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise if that was his biggest grossing film ever?  Second question, if you discount the stuff he "borrowed" from Hitchcock, Eisenstein and Antonioni, then what, exactly is left?  What makes a De Palma film a De Palma film, apart from the violence toward women?  Finally, why allow a director to talk so much about his own films if he really doesn't have that much to say about each one, except for a couple of anecdotes from each shoot?

Starring Brian De Palma,

with archive footage of Nancy Allen (last seen in "Robocop 3"), John Astin (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - The Don Rickles Project"), Barbara Bain (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Harrison Ford (ditto), Steven Bauer (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Angela Bettis, Genevieve Bujold (last seen in "Dead Ringers"), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Michael Caine (last seen in "A Shock to the System"), John Cassavetes (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Francis Ford Coppola (ditto), Kirk Douglas (ditto), Gene Hackman (ditto), Ryan O'Neal (ditto), Lon Chaney (last seen in "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925)), Don Cheadle (last seen in "White Noise"), Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Luis Guzman (ditto), Jill Clayburgh (last seen in "Starting Over"), Clarence Clemons (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Tony Curtis (ditto), Orson Welles (ditto), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Courteney Cox (last seen in "Scream 4"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Lolita Davidovich (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "When in Rome"), Angie Dickinson (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Billy Drago, Drake (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Charles Durning (last seen in "I.Q."), Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "Midway"), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Freejack"), William Finley (last seen in "The Black Dahlia"), Michael J. Fox (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Dennis Franz (last seen in "City of Angels"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Vincent Gardenia (last seen in "Cold Turkey"), Keith Gordon (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Cary Grant (last seen in "The Half of It"), Melanie Griffith (last seen in "The High Note"), Mark Hamill (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), George Lucas (ditto), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Elvis"), Don Harvey (last seen in "Creepshow 2"), Annette Haven, David Hemmings (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Gregg Henry (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Gale Ann Hurd, Amy Irving (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jay-Z (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Holly Johnson (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), William Katt (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Piper Laurie (ditto), Jason London (ditto), Sissy Spacek (ditto), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Grace Kelly (last seen in "Belfast"), James Stewart (ditto), Margot Kidder (last seen in "The Great Waldo Pepper"), Alan King (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Martin Landau (last seen in "City of Ember"), Janet Leigh (last seen in "The Fog"), John Lithgow (last seen in "The Bubble"), Robert Loggia (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Rachel McAdams (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Penelope Ann Miller (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "The Amityville Horror" (2005)), Greg Morris, Paul Muni (last seen in "Val"), Al Pacino (ditto), Kurt Russell (ditto), Oliver Stone (ditto), Nas, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Steven Spielberg (ditto), Kim Novak (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Sean Penn (last seen in "Sheryl"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Joe Piscopo (last seen in "Gilbert"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Jean Reno (last seen in "The Promise"), Ving Rhames (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Cliff Robertson (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Eva Marie Saint (last seen in "The Sandpiper"), Jennifer Salt, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Stan Shaw (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Deborah Shelton, Gary Sinise (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Charles Martin Smith (last seen in "Lucky You"), Dick Smothers (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Tom Smothers (ditto), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Kristin Scott Thomas (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), John Travolta (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Jon Voight (last seen in "Holes"), Craig Wasson (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Paul Williams (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "The Queen of Versailles"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 tracking shots

Godsend

Year 15, Day 300 - 10/27/23 - Movie #4,576

BEFORE: We're flashing back tonight to the long-ago year 2004, which was a very different time.  Facebook had just hit the scene, NASA landed rovers on Mars, and there was war in the Middle East.  OK, maybe it wasn't such a different time after all - but there were no iPhones yet, Netflix was still mailing out DVDs to people, and Robert De Niro was only 60 years old and had just gotten back together with his 2nd wife, after splitting up five years before, but never finalizing the divorce.  (That came about 14 years later.). Back then he only had 5 children, too, and now I think he's up to 7. 

Zoie Palmer carries over from "Devil" - but with this film and tomorrow's film, I get to add TWO more appearances this year to De Niro's growing list.  Will that be enough to give him the top spot for the year?  You'll have to wait two more months to find out!  Yep, Christmas is just two months away, and I'm already seeing holiday-themed ads on TV - but I think they should AT LEAST wait until after Halloween.  We used to take a pool in my old office about what day the first Christmas ads would start airing, and I do believe it gets a bit earlier each year.  I say just dress up as the Grinch on October 31 and kill two birds with one stone.  

It's still the Friday before Halloween, but there are hipsters out in costume that I saw in my neighborhood and also on the subway, so clearly nobody wants to wait until Monday to party - who parties on a Monday, anyway?  Take the weekend, dress up, go to a party, start drinking, why wait?  Especially if you're really into the holiday or cosplay, go get freaky - I'm just going to do the drinking part tonight, maybe pick up a six pack of hard cider, you know, for the season. 

THE PLOT: A couple agree to have their deceased son cloned, under the supervision of an enigmatic doctor, but bizarre things start to happen several years after his rebirth. 

AFTER: I do assure you that my plan is still solid - and that I HAVE a plan, and I've had one all along.  While this isn't really a "Boo!" scary Halloween-y movie, it's a thriller, and those kind of count, especially if it's a thriller where dead people and maybe spirits are involved.  But, you know, it's kind of tough to say, now, after watching if it really belongs in October.  Let's just roll with it and say that it does, OK?  

But the real big difference between 2004 and now is that back then, it seems that people were very concerned about cloning humans - as they should, because really, we've got enough people as it is on this planet, there's just no need to make extra.  Or duplicates, really, why double up, twins are freaky enough as is, we don't have to add clones to the mix. OH, right, this is another film that had one actor playing more than one role in it, I have to remember to add it to the list.  I think this makes FIFTEEN times this Movie Year where one actor played multiple roles in the same film - for various different reasons, sometimes explained and sometimes not.  But I'll print the full list in the wrap-up post for the year.  You don't hear too many people complaining about cloning these days, so I guess it just never caught on as a trend, except for Barbra Streisand's dogs, and she can DAMN WELL clone her dogs if she wants to.  

(Now, of course, we're not as worried about clones taking over the world, but we are worried about A.I. taking over the world...)

The cloning comes into this film when a married couple have an eight-year-old son who dies, and they're devastated - but they're contacted by a doctor who claims to have an institute that has perfected human cloning, and while it's considered unethical, he says that it's not impossible, and also not immoral.  That it's one of those things that most people just find a bit icky, like marrying your ex's daughter after you break up with her mother. (Still looking at you, Woody...).  To Dr. Wells' point, it's possible that nobody created an actual law to forbid cloning because up to that point, it still wasn't a possible procedure, so no need to ban it.  But since this is the same logic that allowed a dog to play basketball - "technically, there's no rule AGAINST it" - they go along with the procedure, because of the "Air Bud" justification. 

The couple does take the opportunity to move out of the city - Paul did get that offer to move to the suburbs and teach biology at a prep school - plus they know for a fact that the city is a dangerous place, it's where their son died and also where Paul got mugged by a former student.  This also prevents anyone they encounter in the future from remembering that they had a son named Adam before, and eight years later, they still have a son named Adam who is still, well, eight years old.  We had neighbors here in Queens for a few years who always seemed to have a noisy five-year-old son, and we kept wondering how this was possible for 10 years time.  I guess maybe one kid aged out of the program and we mistook one five-year-old for another, or hey, maybe one was a clone.

But then of course there's the standard "What could possibly go wrong?" question that gets asked, and when Adam II reaches the age of eight, he starts getting horrible nightmares and also starts sleepwalking.  Uh-oh.  Eight is how old Adam I was when he died, so the natural assumption is that since Adam II has outlived Adam I, the night terrors are just a by-product of him starting to live his own unpredictable life. OR it could mean that the spirit of Adam I is not happy, and is now jealous that his clone got to live longer than he did, so he's reaching out from the afterlife and causing trouble.  Well, that's not exactly the case here, but the real answer is a bit more ridiculous, and honestly makes a lot less sense than that.  No spoilers here, but I kind of wish that it WERE the spirit of Adam I reaching out from the afterlife and causing trouble.  

Big shocker - the doctor's not really who he claimed to be, and the cloning process isn't really what he pitched, either.  Adam starts having visions of a burning school and screaming children, and then he starts beating up the bullies in his school, while other kids just plain disappear.  And those long walks Adam takes in the woods keep getting longer and longer.  But what, exactly, is really going on?  

The moral of the movie, it seems, is that we shouldn't tinker with the forces of life and death, not with cloning, anyway.  Cloning is not a valid means of extending someone's life, because even if you use that person's genetic material, and try to raise the clone the EXACT same way as the original person, he's never going to BE that exact person, because he eventually will have some different experiences that make him unique.  Also, we humans shouldn't tamper with the forces of life and death, because that's unnatural.  So by extension, no artificial means should be taken to extend someone's life beyond its natural end - and by this I mean no crazy health food diets, no extensive exercise, and no cosmetic surgery, either.  You're as old as you are, don't even try to fool anybody - plus any time spent exercising to live longer is pointless, because you wasted any extra time you added by exercising.  If you take up running and that exercise extends your lifespan by, say, five years, you probably spent at least TEN years doing all that running, so really, it's a net loss. Don't even bother. 

Also starring Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Dinner with Friends"), Rebecca Romijn (last seen in "Rollerball"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Sheryl"), Cameron Bright (last seen in "Birth"), Janet Bailey, Chris Britton (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Jake Simons (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), Elle Downs, Devon Bostick (last seen in "Okja"), Munro Chambers, Merwin Mondesir (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Ingrid Veninger (ditto), Raoul Bhaneja (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Jenny Cooper, Thomas Chambers, Jeff Christensen, Deborah Odell, Jordan Scherer, Tracey Hoyt (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Leslie Ann Coles, Marcia Bennett (last seen in "Trapped in Paradise"), David Rehder, Nancy Hochman

RATING: 4 out of 10 home movies that are now sad

Devil

Year 15, Day 299 - 10/26/23 - Movie #4,575

BEFORE: OK, so I've covered witches, ghosts, zombies, creepers, serial killers, aliens, things that live in swamps, things that live under houses and things that live under stairs.  Also one serial killer, evil doctors, evil gynecologists and one Cocaine Bear. What's left at this point?  How about the Big Bad, the Devil himself?  Itself?

Bokeem Woodbine carries over again for his fourth (and final) film in this chain. Just five films left in October after this one, and 25 films left in the year. 

THE PLOT: A group of people are trapped in an elevator and the Devil is mysteriously among them. 

AFTER: Well, this is an interesting turn of events, it's kind of like a locked-room murder mystery, only the locked room is a stuck elevator, and also there's no mystery about who did it.  So then maybe it's not at all like a locked-room murder mystery.

I once worked on a shoot for a short film that was set in an elevator - I was only a production assistant, but I was tasked with finding a fake elevator car, renting a truck, picking up the fake elevator, delivering it to the set, and then showing the directors how it worked.  Maybe that was the shoot where I sort of stopped being a P.A. and started acting like a production manager or producer, I'm not sure.  But I felt sort of important at the time, because if I hadn't done all those things, then the shoot would not have been possible, likely it would have been scrapped.  

It turns out that many of the elevators you see in movies and TV shows aren't real, except maybe in documentaries.  So that means that somebody out there is an expert at building fake elevators that LOOK real, and also have doors that need to be pushed closed by hand, they're not automatic.  Also they probably have panels that can be removed on any side so that the camera can shoot into the elevator from any angle - otherwise the camera would have to be squeezed into the elevator with the actors, and you probably wouldn't get the framing that the director wanted, everything would be like a close-up, maybe too close.  I tend to notice this about elevators on film, maybe because I worked on that shoot years ago.  

(I notice mirrors in films, too, often they're fake, because any mirror shot might likely show the camera and/or cameraperson in them, at least when the camera angle is straight-on.  I first noticed this during the closing shot in "Peggy Sue Got Married" where Nic Cage and Helen Hunt were reflected in a mirror at the hospital, but the camera was not seen - and I determined the only way to shoot that was to have a rectangular hole in the wall where the mirror was, and on the other side of that hole another whole room in reverse, with look-alike actors trying to match the stars' actions.  Turns out I was 100% right, and if you watch that scene you'll see that the look-alikes' actions don't match up exactly right.  There's a shot like that in the opening of "Devil", with a mirror in the elevator reflecting the actions of the people getting into the elevator, but not the camera.  I'm betting they used the same technique, a hole in the wall with look-alike actors on the other side.)

Anyway, I've gotten completely off track - let's get back to the Devil, the main man in Hell, the driving force behind everything evil in the world, if you believe in that sort of thing.  But just as the good thing about ghosts is that their existence proves an afterlife, the good thing about the Devil is that if he's real, then so is God.  Right?  There's balance in nature, but still, the easiest answer to the question of religion is that NEITHER God nor the Devil are real.  But OK, let's assume for the sake of Halloween and this film that there is a Devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles or whatever you call him.  Do you think that he's going to have horns and a tail and be colored red all over, like in the comic books and fairy tales?  Man, you'd see him coming like a mile away, and then you'd fall back on your religious training and either avoid him, or at least you wouldn't sign anything he asked you to sign.  Right? 

So yeah, the Devil probably tried that stuff with the horns and the forked tail for a while, but don't you figure humans would catch on?  So the Devil's not going to LOOK like the devil, he's going to look like a beautiful woman or a Boy Scout or your great-grandmother, just to get you into a conversation where he can then tempt you with something, offer you your greatest desire FOR A PRICE of course.  Or maybe he sells you a cell phone plan that you can't resist because of the impossibly low price, and there in the fine print of that contract, you sign away your soul.  Yeah, that's probably how he works these days.  

This film figures a different kind of deal, something that the Latino character who works security in the building recognizes and calls "The Devil's Meeting", which is triggered by a suicide.  The suicide works as a sacrifice that triggers the meeting, in which the Devil finds him (or her) self in close proximity to a few humans, who end up killing each other because he's played upon their basest human emotions like aggression or prejudice.  But perhaps he's really just after ONE soul in particular, and this is how he gets it, through testing him - or does he get the soul of everybody in the meeting?  This part is a bit unclear - also unclear is whether this "Devil's Meeting" folklore already existed or was created just for this movie.  Because it sure seems to me like the Devil's Meeting aligns so perfectly with five people stuck in an elevator, a situation where all involved are tense and nervous and ready to resort to barbaric behavior after, say, an hour stuck between floors. 

But which one of these five people might be the Devil?  Good luck trying to guess - because it might just be the one you'd least suspect.  But then, you'd expect them to do something like that, right?  So maybe therefore the one you'd suspect first then BECOMES the one you'd least suspect.  There's a building security guard, a mechanic, a mattress salesman, a young woman and an older woman - place your bets...  Then there's also a detective who started out investigating the suicide that started the whole thing, who then turns his attention to the people in the stuck elevator who want to all kill each other for some reason.  Well, if you had to listen to elevator music for hours, you'd probably feel homicidal as well, if not suicidal.  

The detective also has a past, a tragic event in which he lost his wife and son, and who knows, that may become important later on in the film.  But there seems to be some kind of logical error in the Devil's reasoning - like it almost seems like he engineered this whole thing to get the soul of someone in particular, and he maybe needn't have bothered, because if things work the way we've been told, wouldn't he eventually get that person's soul, anyway?  Why go through so much fuss to get it, then, instead of just letting it come to him?  This story was written by M. Night Shyamalan, and I think he's known for sometimes emphasizing exciting story twists over logical story progressions.

By the way, that short film I worked on (back in 1990 or 1991) was kind of similar to "Devil", in that it also featured four people - two married couples cheating on each other, though - on an elevator with a person who turns out to be the devil.  But there the elevator was a metaphor for life, how we're all traveling up, up to eternity and some people are already on the elevator when we step on, and others leave before we get to our floor, or something like that.  Make what you will of that - but in that film, the tuba player turned out to be the devil.  For today's film, no spoilers, you're on your own. 

Also starring Chris Messina (last seen in "Air"), Logan Marshall-Green (last seen in "How It Ends"), Jenny O'Hara (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Bojana Novakovic (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Geoffrey Arend (last seen in "Save the Date"), Jacob Vargas (last seen in "Bobby"), Matt Craven (last seen in "Disturbia"), Josh Peace (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Caroline Dhavernas (last seen in "Breach"), Joe Cobden (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Zoie Palmer, Vincent Laresca (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Rudy Webb, Craig Eldridge (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Joe Pingue (ditto), Genadijs Dolganovs, Killian Grahy, Michael Rhoades (last seen in "Against the Ropes"), Kelly Jones, Jonathan Potts (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"), Alice Poon, Shannon Garnett, Kimberlyh Ables Jindra, Gage Munroe (last seen in "Nobody"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 shards of glass

Overlord

Year 15, Day 298 - 10/25/23 - Movie #4,574

BEFORE: I know that I'm still behind on sleep, because in addition to falling asleep during scary movies, and sleeping on the plane both ways, it's just not enough.  Now I have to write my blog posts very quickly, in between my post-work and pre-dinner nap and the point where I start my nightly movie that I'll probably fall asleep in the middle of.  How many damn days does it take to catch up on the sleep I missed when I was on vacation?  Jeez, it's like you start out with the best intentions, you go on vacation but then you miss sleep to catch your plane, you miss more sleep to get up and go to the State Fair, you miss sleep to go to Waffle House a few times, and now I need a week off to rest after taking five days off.  Is it just me?  It turns out I had the right idea this July and August, to just sleep in a lot instead of finding a two-month temporary job - but now I wish I could have somehow banked those sleep hours and used them now.  That's not possible, right?  

Bokeem Woodbine carries over again from "In the Shadow of the Moon".  Let me write a quick wrap-up before I have to start another movie and fall asleep on the couch in the middle of it. 

THE PLOT: A small group of American soldiers find horror behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day. 

AFTER: Hell, a Nazi zombie movie sounds like a GREAT idea.  Surely there must have been one video game made over the years with this premise, right?  Castle Wolfenstein, did that have zombies in it?  No?  Ah apparently this IS a THING in the video-game world, a couple of the "Call of Duty" games set during World War II used zombies in the enemy forces.  Then there's also the "Zombie Army" trilogy, which is a separate set of games - there's no shortage of zombies in the game world, after all, there are an infinite number of them for you to kill.

But then maybe this movie didn't take the concept far ENOUGH, because I wanted to see a whole army full of NaZombies and it just. didn't. happen.  There were a couple of Americans and one German soldier who got turned, and really, guys, come on, take it just a bit further, why don't you?  This is a MOVIE, anything can happen, think more like "World War Z" with hundreds of zombies swarming and forming big pyramids together to climb over walls and stuff.  But I guess they just didn't have the budget for it.  It's a shame, because the title "World War Na-ZEE" was RIGHT THERE.

Thankfully, our U.S. soldiers, or at least four of them who collectively come from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds and who are the last surviving members of a planeful of soldiers that crashes, are right there on the spot in the occupied town of RandomVillage, France, which just HAPPENS to be the place where the Nazi scientists have created a serum that they believe will resurrect the dead German soldiers and then allow them to continue fighting for the Third Reich forever, because they can't be killed a second time.  You may not believe this, but I have a screenplay to prove it - this was almost the plot of the proposed sequel to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", in which a bunch of the cartoon characters from the first film would have been drafted to fight in World War II because much like zombies, the toons can't die.  Think about it, how many times have you seen Daffy Duck or Wile E. Coyote get blown up by TNT, and then in the next scene, they're totally fine?  And it would have been called "Roger Rabbit 2: The Toon Platoon".  I swear I am NOT making this up, for once. 

Anyway, somehow the African-American U.S. soldier, who is somehow able to walk around in occupied France without standing out (there's got to be a NITPICK POINT in there somewhere...) manages to discover the underground lab where these unholy experiments are taking place, and while rescuing a U.S. soldier he finds there, he also grabs a very cartoon-like hypodermic needle full of the zombie serum.  Gee, I wonder if that will be important later on... Then the woman who has agreed to hide the U.S. soldiers gets a visit from the Nazi Captain who visits her nightly (of course he demands sex from her to spare her life and her family's lives, that's just the sort of thing despicable Nazis would do...) but this also gives the U.S. soldiers a chance to take this Hauptsturmführer hostage to try to get intel from him.  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)

The Nazis are also using the CHURCH of the town as their base, with the zombie lab in the church basement, while they go out and burn random villagers with flamethrowers.  You know, just for fun and all that, because Nazis.  Dead bodies from battles are brought by the truckload to the church so they can test out the zombie serum on them and resurrect the army they need to win the war.  Oh, if only there were a ragtag group of ethnically diverse American soldiers nearby who could figure out what's going on, infiltrate the Nazi base and destroy the radio-jamming church tower AND the zombie lab from within...wait just a minute....

Of course, if anything like this ever came close to happening, you have to figure that the soldiers involved would deny anything, because the world is better off not knowing just how close the Nazis were to cracking that zombie code.  But since they never really succeed at that, then the movie doesn't really come close to depicting something that could have been really visually cool, alas, it just wasn't meant to be, it seems.  What a shame, I mean, whew, that was a close one but I think they pulled it off, no Na-Zombies in recorded history to date.  And then D-Day went off without a hitch, and without turning into Z-Day.  

Also starring Jovan Adepo (last seen in "Mother!"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "Ingrid Goes West"), Pilou Asbaek (last seen in "Uncharted"), Mathilde Ollivier (last seen in "Boss Level"), John Magaro (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Iain de Caestecker (last seen in "Filth"), Jacob Anderson, Dominic Applewhite, Gianny Taufer, Joseph Quinn, Erich Redman (last seen in "Rush" (2013)), Mark McKenna (last seen in "Sing Street"), Hayley Carmichael (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Mark Rissman, Meg Foster (last seen in "Leviathan"), Ben Tavassoli, Shubham Saraf, Andy Wareham, Nick Roeten, Patrick Brammall, Eva Magyar (last seen in "X-Men: First Class")

RATING: 5 out of 10 landmines

In the Shadow of the Moon

Year 15, Day 297 - 10/24/23 - Movie #4,573

BEFORE: Now comes the toughest part of a vacation, which is trying to get back into a normal routine.  It's amazing what can happen in five days, you can go to another city and take up residence in a hotel and after maybe two or three days, you've settled into your new circumstances where you get up early for hotel breakfast (or Waffle House, in our case, because hotel breakfast sucked) and you go out and do something fun in the late morning, visit family in the early afternoon, treat yourself to a nice restaurant dinner, and then maybe watch a TV show or play some phone games while you relax.  Several of these things might be impossible to do at home during a normal two-job workday, so really it was a five-day break from reality, and a lot of time spent with people that I love/tolerate, but now it's back to the grind where I'm always running behind, always racing to show up somewhere, always balancing a spreadsheet or entering a film festival or resetting a movie theater.  

I think maybe things might slow down a bit in November/December, at least on the watching movies front, I only have to watch 13 movies before Thanksgiving and then only 7 before Christmas.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy, should be some free time to catch up on other things. Can we please have new TV episodes of something on the air by then?  Just asking. Bokeem Woodbine carries over from "Ghostbusters: Afterlife". 

THE PLOT: A Philadelphia police officer struggles with a lifelong obsession to track down a mysterious serial killer whose crimes defy explanation. 

AFTER: Standard SPOILER ALERT applies, there's simply no way to talk about today's film without, well, talking about today's film and what it entails.  Of course, I placed it here in the Shocktober chain because it's about a serial killer, and those are allowed in this month thematically, even though they're kind of on a different level from ghosts and witches and Creepers and monsters.  But they ARE monsters, of a sort, anyway, so they're right here along for the ride, unless of course I need those films somewhere else for linking purposes.  Lizzie Borden was in last year's horror chain, so naturally I was thinking along the same lines here. 

Ah, but there's a twist here, because the policeman who first notices the pattern of the serial killer here is determined to catch her, only when he comes in contact with her she seems to know intimate details about his life, and usually that would just be because the killer is stalking him or has done their research, but that's not the case here.  Then the serial killer dies in an accident, but then nine years later there are people being killed in exactly the same way.  Normally this would mean there's a copycat at work, but that's not the case here either.  Somehow the killer died nine years previously and then is killing again, so right there, it means there's some other force at work here.  It could be supernatural or it could be the other thing, and here, well, it's the other thing.  You can probably figure it out if you notice that things tend to work chronologically differently for the killer. 

Then this really is a take on changing history, the thing that most people would like to change seems to be to take Hitler out if they could, but do we know for certain that if you could erase Hitler from history that things would be any better?  They'd be different, sure, but would they be for sure better?  It's tough to say - maybe somebody already took Hitler out and then realized that didn't make things better, and if that made things worse, then maybe they changed things again and put Hitler back.  Or the simpler answer is probably that time travel isn't possible, and therefore there's no point in even discussing what one would do with it if they could. 

But of course there's a paradox involved, I've discussed it here many times, that if you could go back and take out Hitler then you've done something, however then you've eliminated in the past the need for you to take that action in the future, so assuming that you could do it, and then that you did do it, you also changed the timeline and eliminated the need for you to do it, so therefore in the new timeline you didn't/won't do it, so then it didn't get done and then maybe nothing changed after all, and we're back where we started.  This film, to its credit, tried to eliminate this paradox by having the traveler inject their victims with a special substance that could be activated by someone in the future, thus killing them remotely, and the effects of removing those people from the timeline wouldn't change the present or the near future, but it would ultimately change the far future events that were brought about by those people, in a roundabout way.  Does this make sense?  

I'm still being coy here, because I don't want to give it all away, especially if you're going to go watch this movie at some point in the future, some surprises should still be revealed upon watching it, ideally.  But let's say that a political party you didn't like took control of the U.S.  government, like, say, the Communists or QAnon.  You could then invent time travel, and go back in various increments and kill some of the key people in that movement, and thus enact some kind of social change, that's kind of the thing we're dealing with in this movie, however when you don't know the motives of the killer yet, it just LOOKS like standard serial killer stuff, but actually it's being done with a purpose, which would make sense if all those people being killed were all involved with that particular political party or organization.  But perhaps a better way to enact societal change would be to get a lot of people you agree with to register to vote.  Just saying.  

There's still, however, the paradox about technology.  One character here decides he's going to invent some of the technology that he saw the serial killer using in the past. Assuming he successfully invents that, though, does that really count as an invention if he's just basing his breakthrough on something he already saw?  Then who, in fact invented it, and when, if this guy got a sneak peek in the past at something he might invent later on, in the future?  

So ultimately this just made we want to go back and watch "Tenet" again.  Maybe I will do that in November. I'm sure I'll see some things I missed the first time around when I watch it a second time. 

Also starring Boyd Holbrook (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Michael C. Hall (last seen in "Gamer"), Cleopatra Coleman, Rudi Dharmalingam (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Al Maini, Quincy Kirkwood, Sarah Dugdale, Rachel Keller (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Ryan Allen, Tony Nappo (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Philippa Domville, Tony Craig, Gabrielle Graham (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Julia Knope, Nicholas Van Burek, Murray Farrow (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), David Macinnis, Stuart Dowling, Jennifer Graham, Gregory Miller, Colton Royce, Billy Otis, Trisha Blair, Delphine Roussel, Juan Carlos Velis (last seen in "Downsizing"), Jhonattan Adrilla, Tadhg McMahon, Edward Rendell.

RATING: 6 out of 10 basketball games on the radio

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Year 15, Day 296 - 10/23/23 - Movie #4,572

BEFORE: OK, I'm back from North Carolina, and I managed to watch ONE movie during my five-day mini-vacation, and it was this one.  Since it's still playing on Demand on one of the premium channels, that meant I could watch it through my phone, which I know isn't the BEST way to watch something, but it beats bringing a DVD player with me on vacation, then realizing there's no way to hook that up to a hotel room TV.

We traveled VERY early to North Carolina, and even earlier back today, which means I'm once again behind on sleep, and paying the price for that.  It took me about a day and a half in N.C. to recover from the flight because the only way I'm going to get on a 6 a.m. flight or an 8 a.m. flight is to stay up all night, and catch a nap on the plane.  My wife can fall asleep at 9 p.m. the night before, but after 15 years-plus of staying up late to watch movies, that's impossible for me.  

We hit the N.C. State Fair on Thursday, our second time there, so at least this time we knew our way around better, and it was easier to find the booths serving the fair food I wanted to eat.  Another fair-goer turned me on to the web-site that listed the NEW foods and where to find them on the map, so I ate a couple of deep-fried brisket and waffle balls on a stick (dipped in syrup, of course) and then found a danish stuffed with pulled pork and mac & cheese.  After that I had to track down something I ate there last year, which was a deep-fried apple pie with cinnamon ice cream (yes, that tasted as good as it sounds...) and then finally a couple of giant donuts, my wife got an Oreo-covered one and I got a Reese's Pieces-covered donut.  

Friday was my birthday, so after a repeat visit to Waffle House (we hit the W.H. 3 times in 5 days) we did some antiquing - a fitting activity now that I am an antique myself - and then dinner at a non-traditional German/Polish restaurant.  No crazy costumes, no oom-pah band, just high quality German food, but sort of nouvelle cuisine style pub food.  On Saturday we checked out the North Carolina Museum of Art, but we only had time for about 1/3 of all the exhibits and galleries, there was a LOT there.  So we just focused on contemporary portraits, Greco-Roman sculpture and then the Rodin court and garden. SO MANY Rodins!  

Of course, the main reason to be there was to visit my family, my mother's still in physical rehab after moving down there, but she might be only a couple weeks away from being strong enough to move back to my sister's house, it's tough to predict.  But we spent a couple hours with her each day, which was great, because she's back to doing crossword puzzles and I enjoy helping her with those - I fill in the harder theme answers to give her a head start, because they tend to confuse her.  And on Saturday the whole extended family went out for BBQ, and the lucky restaurant was Big Mike's BBQ in Cary, NC, where we also saw a celebrity (and veteran of 2 "Star Wars" movies) picking up a meal.  Hey, these things just seem to happen to me.  So, a successful trip overall, but I don't know when we'll be able to visit again, probably not during the holidays this year, so we'll have to work something out.  I cashed in all of my SkyMiles so the plane tickets were FREE, but I can't pull that trick again, not for a while at least. 

J.K. Simmons carries over from "Dark Skies".  With 8 horror films left in my chain, I'm going to JUST make it by October 31 and finish the theme for Halloween.

THE PLOT: When a single mom and her two kids arrive in a small town, they begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind. 

AFTER: I don't know how most people measure time, because I really mark its passing using movies and/or annual comic-cons.  So it was two NY Comic-Cons ago when I met Gil Kenan, co-writer of this film, when he came to our booth, to meet my boss.  Seemed like a very cool guy, and he told us about how they had a panel for the new "Ghostbusters" film in the main hall, and after talking about the film for a bit, in front of a room FULL of Ghostheads (one assumes) they just said, "What do you think, should we just play the movie?"  And they did, about a month before the film was due to be released, they just played the film for the incredibly eager crowd.  Well, that's one way to fill up panel time and keep the fans happy, but that's not really a smart way to sell movie tickets, to just GIVE the film away like that. Had I known, I might have gone to see that for free, instead of waiting a year for it to be on cable and then another year for an opportunity to link it into the chain.  (I'm just tired of waiting, I want to WATCH this, I know I'm stranding films like "Freaky" by watching this now, but I really don't care.)

I was really worried about this film, though, because like a lot of people, I got burned so bad by the 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot, which was basically the same film as the first one, only with the premise "Hey, what if the Ghostbusters were women instead?"  And I couldn't really take it seriously because that film just couldn't take ITSELF seriously, and with the original Ghostbusters stars playing roles that were NOT their original characters, it just seemed to be taking place in some alt-corner of the Ghostbusters Metaverse, and somehow the characters knew about the original G.B.'s, but also they kind of didn't?  It was weird and not a cool continuation of the franchise, but hey, you can say the same sort of thing about "Ghostbusters II" if you think about it.  Or you know what, maybe don't think too much about it. 

It just looked like this one was going to be "Hey, what if the Ghostbusters were children instead?" and to a certain degree that's exactly what this is, but AT LEAST this sequel/reboot acknowledges that there once were 4 characters named Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore, and they fought ghosts in NYC and they got slimed and Sigourney Weaver's character got turned into a giant dog-like demon and Gozer almost took over the Earth with the help of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.  Good times.  

I know it's tough, how do you make a new film in any franchise that both moves the story forward while at the same time acknowledges the events of the past?  You need to create some new characters, but also it's great if the old ones show up, too - at least the ones that are still among the living and not ghosts themselves.  Come to think of it, why are ghost stories scary, if the existence of ghosts proves that there is some kind of life after this one, even if some spirits spend it stuck in the human world and unable to move forward to paradise, at least this means that there IS a paradise, or at least some kind of life after death.  Ghost stories should be comforting, therefore, except for when they're about vengeful killing-type ghosts, like those seen in "The Fog".  Right?  

So I think this film almost got things right, it had new characters who find the secret underground lair of a former Ghostbuster, just when that veil between the worlds is breaking down again, and the Dead are getting ready to go out on tour again and take over the world.  If you're counting, that's THREE films this October that shows ghosts or demons coming back to the world of the living by way of a mine that was dug too deep - so see also "R.I.P.D.: Rise of the Damned" and "Antlers", or you know what, maybe just stay away from abandoned mines altogether, because they're just not safe, even before you factor in the ghosts breaking up from the underworld.

But this single mother inherits this farmhouse and land from her recently-deceased father, and is also getting evicted from her apartment at the same time, so she drives with her two kids to Summerville, Oklahoma to live in the house and also determine if her father left her any money.  But jeez, one look at these kids and you've got to figure they're the grandchildren of Egon Spengler for sure, but then it takes them like another hour for them to figure out they're the grandchildren of Egon Spengler.  Come on, please catch up, I don't have all day here.  Can I call this a NITPICK POINT?  Like, why don't these kids know their mother's maiden name?  Did she never tell them, or are they just too stupid to know what that is?  Do they know their own last name?  What gives?

After they figure it out, then the movie really starts to find its second gear - once again, the dead  ghosts are threatening to rise up and take over the world, and it's all part of the plain of Ivo Shandor, who built that weird high-rise apartment in NYC that Gozer the Gozerian bought the penthouse in - paid cash, it was a solid investment, but then the real estate bubble burst, nothing you can do about that but hold on to it until the market turns around, just rent it out and cover the monthly maintenance and maybe a small apartment downtown for you to live in while you wait. 

But then we have to have the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster thing again, and the plot maybe gets a little too close once again to the ORIGINAL "Ghostbusters" film, and you realize that this sequel isn't as groundbreaking as you thought it might be, it's just repeating elements from the now-classic original film, just putting them together in a slightly different way.  I had high hopes for Paul Rudd's character, the high-school science teacher, but then it turns out that he's just playing a different version of Rick Moranis' character from the original film.  What a shame. 

Still, it's good to see three of the original G.B.s turn out to reprise their roles, and to see them pay some kind of tribute to Harold Ramis, but when they talk about losing contact with each other and having had some kind of disagreement or falling out, you have to wonder if they're talking about their fictional characters or themselves as comedy actors who maybe don't get along with each other.  

And how DID they get that footage of Harold Ramis?  Well, it would seem they filmed Egon's part with look-alike actors (Bob Gunton and Ivan Reitman) standing in, and then they just deep-faked his facial image.  It was done with good intentions here, because Egon's hermit-like life in Oklahoma had a real purpose, he knew another ghost-apocalypse was coming and he was taking steps to prevent it, even if it meant giving up his family and friends to do so.  But NITPICK POINT, couldn't there have been a way for Egon to fight the upcoming ghost invasion and ALSO still remain close to his family and friends?  One thing does not necessarily preclude the other, so it's a little unclear why it HAD to be that way.

I understand the use of technology to create footage that can't be filmed, such as the likeness of a dead actor being computer generated and then placed on another actor's body, over their face.  And as long as the estate of that actor is fine with it, then everything's cool. However, not every filmmaker out there has the best intentions, so I think we as a whole has to keep a close watch on this, because it's become just too easy to deepfake a thing, and it's only a matter of time before somebody uses this to create evidence in a murder case, or to show a politician doing something wrong like accepting a briefcase full of money, or what have you.  Mostly the interwebs seem to be using this technology to show famous people having x-rated sex, and hey, if that's your kink, whatever gets you through the night, it's all right, it's all right, but there are boundaries being crossed that just aren't proper, and also privacy issues.  How long before somebody makes a new film with the image of, say, Marilyn Monroe and they just put her real face on the body of a porn actress to depict somebody's dirty fantasies?  

Also starring Carrie Coon (last seen in "Widows"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Bill Murray (ditto), Finn Wolfhard (last heard in "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio"), McKenna Grace (last heard in "Scoob!"), Logan Kim, Celeste O'Connor, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Respect"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "The Watcher"), Annie Potts (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Bob Gunton (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Bokeem Woodbine (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Shawn Seward, Billy Bryk, Sydney Mae Diaz, Hannah Duke, Paulina Alexis, Marlon Kazadi, Chiara Petersen, Danielle Kennedy (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Artoun Nazareth, Crystal Roseborough, Dusan Rokvic, Emma Portner, Stella Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Better Living Through Chemistry"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "French Exit"), the voices of Josh Gad (last heard in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Shohreh Aghdashloo (last seen in "Rosewater"), Sarah Natochenny, Shelby Young, and archive footage of Harold Ramis (last seen in "Air"). 

RATING: 8 out of 10 prophecies from the Book of Revelation