John Wick: Chapter 4

Year 16, Day 13 - 1/13/24 - Movie #4,613

BEFORE: This was the first film I was able to link to in January that made me say, "Oh, yeah, well I HAVE to go through that film, no matter what." So that's a must-watch, I suppose.  Coming up in about a week is "The Whale", and that's another one that's been on the list for a short time, but is marked as a must-watch.  Then I think one more of those the following weekend, and really, February will be here before you know it.  

But before the themed month of romance, January is an all-format month, for sure.  Norwegian films, sports movies, mob comedies, a sci-fi thriller, the Motley Crue biopic, a documentary, a World War II holocaust film followed by a quirky quiz-show comedy, and also "The Little Mermaid". Format-wise, I'm bouncing around like crazy, but if it fits in the chain, it can be part of the chain. I know what's coming, and part of me wishes I could design some kind of software that would pick the next movie for me, so I could share in the surprise, but making the chains is a big part of my enjoyment. 

Shamier Anderson carries over from "Stowaway". 

THE PLOT: John Wick uncovers a path to defeating the High Table, but before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes. 

AFTER: The theory is that the cream should rise to the top, if I program this correctly.  It's fine for me to fast-track important franchise films, or in essence schedule them more quickly than the other films, I can do whatever I want.  Anyway some films are "bricks" and others are "mortar" and I program some films I might not otherwise have watched, just to help make the connections.  That's fine, I've discovered a lot of decent films that way, going down paths that I might not have traveled otherwise.  But films like "John Wick 4" are kind of in that top tier, you put that on the list and then it becomes a game of "How quickly can I get THERE?"

This film did play at the theater, and a lot of people who work there were very eager to see it - I'm talking about a group of projectionists and sound techs, they're all super into movies (like, who ISN'T?) and so when there's a screening of this going on in the big theater, that means there may be a second screening going on in the small theater, just for management, the techs and their friends.  Sure, why not?  But then somebody still has to be working, keeping an eye on the theater while the movie is taking place, and for many shifts, that's obviously me.  I could, of course, ask to sit in on any film, but then that has to be on a day that I'm not working, which is fine, but it's an extra trip into Manhattan on my day off, and so most of the time it's not worth the effort, not when "John Wick 4" will be on premium cable or streaming on some platform that I can access within an increasingly small number of months.  OK, so really it's been almost a year, this came out in theaters in March of 2023.  It's fine, I can wait 10 months to see this, it turned out, all things at the proper time, right?  And it helps me get through January and to where I'll need to be at the end of the month, so it's all good.

What I remember, though, is how LOUD the screening was.  Even with the theater doors closed, I could stand in the middle lobby and hear every gunshot, thrown punch or explosion - but I think maybe the techs played this one at full volume so the seats would rattle from all the noise.  I remember watching an interview with the sound guy from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and he pointed out that the sounds they used for punches in that film would be used for explosions in any other film, and I think there's something like that going on with "John Wick", you're meant to FEEL this film, not just hear it. .

Look, it's not a film with complicated dialogue, nobody's going to have complicated emotions going on or moral dilemmas related to finding their biological father or anything, it's just going to be fight scene after fight scene until we get to the ending point for this chapter, then we'll pick up the battle again in "John Wick: Chapter 5".  By now we should all know what to expect from this franchise and not go in hoping that this time he's really going to find peace and work everything out, and everybody's going to get along fine. Not gonna happen. 

They put Wick through the ringer on this one - he jumps out of a window at one point and takes a five-story fall, lands on a car I think, but then he somehow gets up and walks away.  During the big traffic scene around the Arc de Triomphe I think he gets hit by a few more cars, but he also throws a bunch of enemies into cars, smashes cars into a few more guys, and of course SO much shooting.  It's John Wick vs. like 100 enemies at a time, because why have him go straight to the boss level when getting there can be so much a part of the fun?  But if anything it's TOO much action, if that's possible.  I think there are maybe 6 or 7 long fight scenes, but the movie is just 10 minutes shy of three hours long.  That's a lot of downtime, or maybe it's that the action scenes are all stretched out to be longer than they need to be.  This could have been 130 minutes if they trimmed things down a bit - but, on the other hand, if you think about it, you pay the same ticket price at the theater for a three-hour movie than you do for a 2-hour movie, so you're certainly getting MORE bang for your buck when you see "John Wick 4".  

Still, I'd cut the first half hour right out of the film, nothing really HAPPENS in it, lots of wasted time, until the High Table decides to close the Continental in NYC because it harbored John Wick last time, or something.  Umm, it's been a while since "Parabellum" so I had to look it up - John Wick was sent to kill Winston, the manager of the Continental Hotel for Wayward Assassins.  But John refused to kill his old friend, so the Adjudicator sent an army of assassins to kill them both, Winston turned on Wick and shot him, but then also secretly saved his life and delivered him to the Bowery King.  OK, got it.  Now the new Marquis of the High Table decides that the NYC Continental is no longer needed, so he blows it up - well, at least he gave everyone a warning so they could evacuate, he didn't HAVE to do that.  NITPICK POINT: A whole building in NYC blows up and nobody cares?  It doesn't even make the news?  Everyone just kind of says, "Oh, yeah, that's that crazy hotel for assassins, we always figured somebody would implode it sooner or later..."

Then this kind of becomes a rebuilding chapter in the franchise, John Wick is still "excommunicado" but he travels to the Morocco desert again to kill another Elder - I think this one replaced the one seen in Episode 3, or they couldn't get the same actor back - and then Wick hides out in the Osaka Continental, but the Marquis sends his men to look for Wick there, and also shut down THAT part of the franchise.  Assassins will now have to stay at the Osaka Hampton Inn, but they'll get upgraded to a suite for the price of a regular double room, it's a good deal. The Hilton Suites are nice, too, I think they both come with free breakfast, but book early for the best rates, and you can cancel up until 24 hours before your stay, in case you find a better deal. Don't sign up for the loyalty rewards plan, it's a scam.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, John Wick's battling back.  For some reason he needs to get back INTO the organization with the goal of getting out of it.  I'm not sure this makes sense, like once he got marked as "excommunicado", isn't he OUT of the organization?  This is what he wanted, right?  Jesus, John Wick, just move to Montana or something and work on a ranch, nobody's going to look for you there.  OK, Idaho then, just get out of town and start over.  Nope, he's got to get back IN before he can get OUT, something about clearing all of his obligations - so he goes back to the Ruska Roma syndicate and kills someone for his adoptive sister, which means that she can sponsor him for re-admission to the guild, at which point he can challenge the Marquis to a duel, if you follow the "Old Way" rules, at least.  Former Continental manager Winston decides to be his second in the duel, which means that if Wick wins, he gets the hotel rebuilt and he gets re-instated as manager, but if Wick loses the duel, he dies, too.  Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose - but come ON, it's a chance to return all the pieces to their starting positions, and things will be back to "normal" at the start of "John Wick 5" so of course that's how it's all going to play out. 

So from Osaka we travel to Berlin, where Wick has to kill Killa Harkan (kind of like the Kingpin, but really just a stunt-man in a fat suit) in a dance club that looks like an enormous car wash from the future - seriously, there's water flowing all over the place and a foam room, I think, and don't pay extra for the hot wax because that's a scam, too.  And while John Wick is throwing axes into various hitmen and bullets are flying every which way, those crazy German club kids just keep right on dancing, like it's the most normal thing to have a shoot-out in your dance club.  Yeah, I know this happens all the time in America now, but usually a nightclub shooting means the party is over and the place becomes a crime scene.  Not in Berlin, where they don't stop the music, not even to clean up all the dead bodies, it's kind of disconcerting.  

Oh, yeah, there's another assassin named Caine who works for the Marquis, and is it just me or does Donnie Yen play a lot of blind martial arts guys?  This is almost exactly the character he played in "Rogue One", no?  What's the selling point of being blind and still being an assassin, and is he very good at his job because his other senses are heightened, or is he terrible at his job because if he's too far away, he's just shooting randomly at his target?  I've got so many questions about this, because at least in "Rogue One" his character had the Force (we assume) or perhaps was just very lucky, again and again, but here I don't see how he lost his sight and still kept his job as an elite assassin.  You'd think he'd go on disability and then his bills would be covered, he wouldn't have to work again, but now, he takes his assignments in braille and then goes out and does the job, I guess he just needs a little help finding his target, that's all.  But hey, you put him in a room with the guy you want killed and he'll take care of it, somehow.  Still, I don't know why you'd hire a blind assassin when there are others available who can see their targets, just saying. 

And there's a "Tracker" who works with a dog, and dogs have always been a big part of this franchise.  It's tough to say where the Tracker's loyalty lies, like he keeps trying to kill John WIck because that's a resumé-booster, plus the bounty keeps going up, it's $20 million then he gets it raised to $30 million and then it's $40 million.  Sure, that's a tidy little sum but it's going up for ALL the assassins in Paris, too, not just the Tracker.  It kind of makes more sense to keep it that figure low, because then there's less competition, no?  When every single assassin in France is getting their instructions from the secret assassin DJ about which arrondissement Wick has been spotted in, the Tracker's got to battle his own way through 78 other guys just to have a chance of shooting Wick, when if the bounty were lower he'd be more likely to collect it.  Half a loaf is better than none, right? 

Just to prove that this film takes its sweet time getting where it needs to be - to make it to the duel, Wick has to be at a particular Paris cathedral at sunrise.  But of course there's a giant stairway full of assassins he's got to climb first - like 200 steps and it's a tough slog.  The Marquis, of course, cheated and increased the bounty on John Wick, because if Wick gets killed on the way to the duel then the Marquis wins by default.  That all tracks, but then when Wick gets to the top of the stairs, he gets thrown back down by the Marquis' underboss - and it's SEVEN stories of stairs, one after another, it takes a full five minutes of screen time for him to toss and tumble down all those flights.  Look, I'm not the most graceful person in the world, but I'd like to think that if I were falling down seven flights of stairs, I'd find a way after THREE to somehow grab a railing or brace myself against the stairs or use momentum to move to the side and get some friction from the grass.  

Then we get bogged down in the rules of dueling, but sure, I get it, there's got to be some kind of technicality that gets Wick back on top, and also some reason why the Marquis himself would participate in the dangerous part, instead of just putting his blind assassin in as his Second to take the hit for him.  Anyway, you've got to read ALL of the rules of the inside cover of the board game box if you're going to need to find a way to win.  So I approve this message. 

Also starring Keanu Reeves (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Donnie Yen (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "Barbarian"), Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Fled"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Lance Reddick (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Rina Sawayama, Marko Zaror, Scott Adkins (last seen in "American Assassin"), Clancy Brown (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Ian McShane (last seen in "Hercules" (2014)), Natalia Tena (last seen in "About a Boy"), George Georgiou (last seen in "The Mummy" (2017)), Sven Marquardt, Yoshinori Tashiro, Aimée Kwan, Daiki Suzuki, with archive footage of Bridget Moynahan (last seen in "Lord of War"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 fireballs from a shotgun (what, what?)

Stowaway

Year 16, Day 12 - 1/12/24 - Movie #4,612

BEFORE: Sports movie, family drama, mob comedy.  Yeah, I know I'm all over the place this week but tonight's a sci-fi astronaut movie, so I continue to be all over the place.  That's OK, it's what January is for, it's a free-form month if ever there was one.  Now I maybe should have thought a bit about doing Black History month early, because I'm always busy in February with affairs of the heart.  I could have set something up for MLK Day next week, but of course I forgot, I was too busy trying to get from a Norwegian drama to a particular American action movie in exactly 30 steps. 

Toni Collette carries over one more time from "Mafia Mamma", but now I'm all caught up with her films, so another link tomorrow to my first "destination" film of the year. 

THE PLOT: A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board. 

AFTER: Wow, a film with just four main cast members, and that's it - seems like a breeze, although that sort of thing tends to make films HARDER to link to and from, rather than easier, as you might think.  Fortunately I've planned for this, it's my last Toni Collette film for a reason, because it links to a film that I've been trying hard to get to, but it's already late on a Friday night as I type this, and I was out drinking with a friend so I'm still a little tipsy.  Probably can't stay up tonight to watch a full movie, maybe I opt for sleep instead of stimulation, as we're driving out to Long Island tomorrow morning. 

This is fairly standard fare for trips to Mars in the movies, right?  Something ALWAYS goes wrong, because if it didn't, you wouldn't have an exciting movie.  Imagine a film about going to Mars where the mission runs perfectly, like clockwork, nothing breaks down, everybody on the ship gets along fine, no injuries, all of their space experiments go great, and then they get to Mars and disembark, still everything going swimmingly.  How boring would THAT movie be?  So, really, we know that something's going to go wrong, it's just a question about what and when.  Hey, I wouldn't go to Mars anyway, in the last movie I saw about Mars there were dead zombie astronauts attacking the live ones. 

"Apollo 13", "The Midnight Sky", "Alien" and "Aliens", "Moonfall", "2001 and "2010", even "Armageddon", what did they all have in common?  Something goes wrong in space.  It's super common, but I'm still going to stick around on Earth until something better comes along. And my bet is that this film went into production shortly after "Gravity" became a hit film.

Here the problem is one of logistics, though, it's a simple looming fact that the spacecraft headed to Mars has plenty of oxygen for three people, but the problem there is, there's an additional stowaway and that means they need air for four, and if they don't get that, then perhaps all four of them will die as a result.  OK, but there's enough food for four, and that weird astronaut ice cream, but is this really a problem that can't be solved by any other methods that aren't so Draconian?  

Allegedly they were seeking advice and solutions from the engineers at "Hyperion", however they didn't offer up any great solutions, other than the suicide of one person to make the trip possible for all four.  But then who should be the one to make the sacrifice, if that's the best plan?  Do you pull rank and just kill the one guy who's not an official astronaut, just part of the ground crew that got stuck inside?  Or do you pick the oldest, the youngest, or the one who's experiment already failed (just saying....). This is one of those ethical dilemmas that is intended to make you ask a lot of questions, like "Who deserves to live?" and "Who should take one for th team" and "Why the hell did this spacecraft have such an awfully inconvenient design?"

Yes, there is more oxygen that the spacecraft can generate - but the back-up oxygen tank is in the OTHER part of the spacecraft, the one that's diametrically opposed from the cockpit, connected by these really long metal tubes and on the far side of the solar panels.  Why the frick would anybody store the back-up ANYTHING in a place that's so damn hard to access.  I'm sorry, but this is a NITPICK POINT of the highest order.  When they pack the Space Shuttle, they put everything they're gonna need - tools, snacks, back-up beers - right where they can access it, not on the furthest point away from the door on the OUTSIDE of the shuttle.  OK, so we need to fill two oxygen tanks in the most possibly FAR AWAY part of the ship, which isn't really even the same ship, it's another one a mile away that we can only access by space-walk and tethering and an abrupt change in gravity.  Oh, sure, and while we're at it, let's put the space-suits in a room that you have to wear a space-suit to get to, and let's put the fire extinguishers on the outside of the ship, too, because you almost never need them inside to put out a fire. 

Seriously, check out the design for the spaceship depicted in the film.  It's the absolute most un-aero-dynamic craft I've ever seen.  The solar wind resistance alone would ensure that this ship is never going to make it to Mars.  Completely ridiculous, and also I saw the design for the new Mars lander while we were at the Johnson Space Center outside Houston in 2018.  This film is super way off. The interior of this ship was about 100 times bigger than the upcoming Mars lander is going to be, but they don't really say how far in the future this is set, so who knows, maybe one day they invent space yachts after all.  According to the Wiki page, they took a craft into space, and half of that launch vehicle was connected by 450-meter tethers to act as a counter-weight for inertia-based artificial gravity.  I'm not buying it, it sounds phony. 

The good news is that one of the ship's space experiments involves using algae to create oxygen, and I suppose that would come in very handy on Mars - but the bad news is that now they need to use that ability during the trip TO Mars, in an attempt to create more oxygen on the ship.  And when that fails, the next best worst solution is to travel across those tethers and try to get the emergency oxygen from their former ship.  Damn, if only someone hadn't parked it so far away...

Sure enough, a solar storm hits, whatever that is, and crossing the tethers suddenly means being exposed to deadly radiation from the sun, for which their spacesuits offer little in the way of defense.  That's the real problem here, why didn't they bring the right spacesuits, the ones that would maybe protect them when they're outside in space?  Cool idea, no?  Why did they bring their summer outfits with the short sleeves and the Capri pants?

NITPICK POINT #2: Like many films, it appears that the astronauts still have no apparent delay in their communications with Mission Control on Earth.  But if they were half-way or even a quarter of the way to Mars, I would think there would be a delay of at least a few minutes before getting a response, and a back-and-forth conversation would take longer, possibly hours. 

Also starring Anna Kendrick (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Daniel Dae Kim (last head in "Raya and the Lost Dragon"), Shamier Anderson (last seen in "Bruised").

RATING: 5 out of 10 panic attacks

Mafia Mamma

Year 16, Day 11 - 1/11/24 - Movie #4,611

BEFORE: OK, an update on this year's Doc Block, which I thought might end up connecting Mother's Day and Father's Day, because it's just about the right size for that.  I added a couple of docs that aired on NETWORK TV, which are probably just cobbled-together interviews and archive footage about two popular dead actors, but they turned out to be just the thing for me.  I now have a 33-film linked chain of docs, for which the main entry point is Adolf Hitler.  Or, if I trim two films off one end, it's a circular chain of 31 docs, the last one happens to connect back to the first one via Paul McCartney.  This is great news for me, it means if I wait for summer I can put the "right" film on July 4, maybe, and if I think of it as a big loop, I can enter the loop via any of a couple hundred actors, who are marked in green on my roadmap.  It's like a big highway with many many on-ramps and off-ramps, and even though it goes in a big circle for a while and kind of ends back near where it started, theoretically it's connected to all the other highways, and I can go just about anywhere I want, more importantly, I can get ON the highway wherever I want, and I can travel in either direction.  That's huge, it gives me the maximum amount of freedom from a programming standpoint., and there's so much overlap I can put all the music docs together, all the comic actors together, and I have the basic framework down, so I can add to it or subtract as I see fit.  The OCD part of my brain is very happy today, but it took a lot of work to get it there. 

Now, how I get in to the docs loop and where I exit will probably depend on what film(s) I watch about fathers for Father's Day, and that just can't be worked out yet.  Or can it?  I should at least put all the films on that theme together and see if any of them link up with each other, and note which ones link to documentaries, and I can count the days between Father's Day and July 4 to see how many steps there are.  It's 18.  Yah, I just fiddled around with it a bit, and there are a few good entry points, but none of them get me exactly where I want to be - I'm going to have to wait to see where I land on Father's Day, and then look for a good documentary entry point a few steps after that.  For now I'll just color code the Rock Hudson doc and the Stan Lee doc as 2 possible starting points, but of course there are others. I could even split it up into two parts if I need to, there's that much overlap and multiple outs. 

Toni Collette carries over from "Dream Horse" and she takes the lead in number of appearances for the year.  Sorry, Tim Roth. 

THE PLOT: An American mom inherits her grandfather's mafia empire in Italy.  Guided by the firm's consigliere, she defies everyone's expectations as the new head of the family business. 

AFTER: This is the opposite sort of film, the kind that doesn't link to much else that's on my list - there are just two actresses that link to other films, a few actors who have been in other notable films, just not recently, and a largely Italian cast who may have worked a lot in Italian movies and TV shows, but that's not something I tend to watch.  So, simple solution, stash this one in-between two other films with Toni Collette in them. 

There's a lot of history involved in Italian film production, from the Fascist propaganda films of the 1930's, to the "spaghetti Westerns" made in the 1960's.  Fellini, Antonioni, Leone, on down to Begnini and Bozzetto, there are a number of famous directors, but they lack a cool "nickname" for their segment of the industry, like there's "Bollywood" for Indian cinema and "Nollywood" for African cinema. (It should be "Mali-Wood", or "Somali-Wood" but what do I know? Maybe they don't make movies in Mali or Somalia...)

Why stop there?  The film industry in Nepal could be "Nepali-wood", the one in Mexico could be "Tamale-wood", any film made in North Carolina could be from "Raleigh-wood", and damn it, I know the pronunciation isn't spot on but "Itali-wood" was RIGHT THERE.  (You just have to say "Italy" like it's "ee-TAHL-ee" instead of how we say it in America).  

Anyway, it's another "fish out of water" story tonight, as Kristin, an American woman (played by an Australian actress) of Italian descent finds out her husband's been unfaithful, JUST before getting a call that her grandfather in Italy has died, and her presence is requested at the funeral, and her ticket to Italy is paid for. (Again, many screenwriters think you can just buy a plane ticket with no notice, or just head to the airport and get one there, good luck with that...)   Once she arrives, a shoot-out breaks out during the funeral, which is a bit of a red flag. Turns out Gramps was the head of the Balbano crime family, and he'd sent his granddaughter to the U.S. as a child for her own protection.  But his dying wish was to install her as the new Don, so it's up to her to resolve a territory dispute with the Romanos. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)

Kristin has come to Italy on her own personal journey, though, based on the Elizabeth Gilbert book "Eat, Pray, Love" only that last one is replaced by the F-word, and she doesn't do much praying, it seems.  Ok, so she's there to eat and get laid, and when she meets Lorenzo, a handsome pasta-maker, it seems she's found the perfect match - but she also falls for Don Carlo, the head of the Romano family, who wants to seduce her and poison her, in some order. But Kristin accidentally switches the wine glasses and comes out on top in that exchange. 

That's pretty much how the whole film plays out, with Kristin failing upwards and getting comically lucky time and time again. She dispatches a hit-man sent to kill her because she remembers her Krav Maga anti-rapist defense training, and she applies her previous knowledge from working for a pharmaceutical company to the criminal drug operations, meaning that she lowers prices in order to increase demand, and then she even guides the family winery back into successful operations, so it's not just a front for their criminal enterprises, it starts to make wine that, you know, tastes good.  Why didn't anyone else think of that before?  The only thing that could ruin everything would be if her cheating husband turned up out of the blue, wanting to get back together with her, or at least a free place to crash at an Italian villa. 

Things go pretty well, though, which is another plot point that carries over from "Dream Horse", and Kristin makes plans to retire as Don, turning the operations over to her consigliere, but this sets off a round of protests from the other mob family, and even people in her own family who think they can run the operation better than her.  Naturally there's a big comic shoot-out between the two families and the DIA (Italian national police that investigates the Mafia) - in the old days of film, they'd end things with a giant pie-fight, and a shoot-out is now sort of the modern equivalent of that, right?  Just me?  Anyway, Kristin is arrested and put on trial, but the court can't prove that she's anything but an American woman who inherited a winery and came to Italy to eat, pray and...well, you know.  So she decides to stay, because she's found something that she's actually good at.

Oh, you just know somebody pitched this script as "The Godmother", right?  But then that must have gotten shot down in a company meeting or it didn't test well.  I didn't even pick up on the connection to "The Godfather", the orange muffins to the oranges, as symbols of death.  But it's there... and since this film actually showed two people talking on the phone between Italy and the U.S. and getting the time difference RIGHT, I'm going to be a little kind with my rating. 

Also starring Monica Bellucci (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Sophia Nomvete, Eduardo Scarpetta, Alfonso Perugini, Francesco Mastroianni, Giulio Corso, Dora Romano, Guiseppe Zeno, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Tommy Rodger (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), Alessandro Cremona (last seen in "Spectre"), Alessandro Bressanello (ditto), Tim Daish (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2010)), Jay Natelle (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Yonv Joseph, Mitch Salm, Claire Palazzo, Giuseppe Zeno, Riccardo Martini, Gianpiero Zaino, Lana Gorianoy, Michelangelo Dalisi, Livia De Paolis, Duska Bisconti.

RATING: 6 out of 10 plates of gnocchi

Dream Horse

Year 16, Day 10 - 1/10/24 - Movie #4,610

BEFORE: Toni Collette carries over from "Jesus Henry Christ", and, really, she'll be here until Friday, five films total, which should give her a good jump on everyone else, she should be leading the league at the end of January, if I'm not mistaken. Hey, Dale Dickey had a great January last year, now it's Toni's turn. 

I know nothing about this film, really I know almost nothing about maybe 3 of these 5 Toni Collette films, but I'm hitting Hulu and Netflix hard this month, trying to make some headway on those queues, but really, it's like trying to catch air, no matter how hard I try the lists keep on growing and there are literally more films streaming every month than I could possibly watch.  I've had to increase the main watchlist from 200 to 225 and the secondary (streaming) watch list from 300 to 325.  So I always have about 550 films to choose from now when I build my chains.  My fear is that if I increase that number too much, then I'll have too many choices and I won't be able to narrow them down to the "right one", but so far that hasn't happened.  Hey, I was able to build a chain from "The Worst Person in the World" to my first February film that was 27 films long, and then once I knew that it was possible to get from HERE to THERE, I found I could pad it just a little bit until it filled January, right on the nose. 

THE PLOT: Dream Alliance is an unlikely race horse bred by small-town Welsh bartender Jan Vokes.  With no experience, Jan convinces her neighbors to chip in their meager earnings to help raise Dream, in the hopes he can compete with the racing elites. 

AFTER: Well, we all love a sports story, right?  Especially when the star is an underdog and comes from behind to SOMEHOW win, just because they WANT IT MORE.  Damn, but that formula still continues to work, whether it's "Creed" or "The Mighty Ducks" or "Major League". (Yes, I didn't say "Rocky" because we all know Rocky didn't win, not in the first film, anyway, he just went the distance, but that was kind of like winning.). It''s a bit different when the sport is horse racing and the title character is, you know, a horse - but here it's the people in that small Welsh town who invested their money in the horse, just a tenner a week for two years, that's all it took, and somehow, that little horse that could went and DID because his owners wanted it more, or something.  

Sure, the odds were against these amateur horse breeders and investors, the film keeps making that point abundantly clear - so for every group of townies that breeds a superior winning horse, there simply must be at least 99 groups of horse owners who just aren't as lucky.  And Jan Vokes may have no experience or expertise in horse breeding, but she took a lot of notes on the subject, a whole notebook's worth, so that must be the secret sauce, right?  Or it's just plain luck, that's possible too. 

Oh, yeah, sorry, I suppose a SPOILER ALERT is in order, but hey, I jokingly said the same thing about the film "Napoleon".  (Or "Titanic", did anyone NOT know that the ship sinks at the end?). There was previously a documentary called "Dark Horse" that detailed how this small town grocery cashier and part-time barmaid got her husband to buy her a broodmare, and then she figured out the process of getting her horse, umm, impregnated by a male horse, which you think might happen naturally, but no, you kind of have to arrange for this AND pay for this, basically it's horse prostitution but they call it a "stud fee" I think.  Anyway don't even try to pick a horse to have sex with YOUR horse unless you have at least one full notebook full of charts and measurements and diagrams and stuff. That's the key to success right there. 

Jan and Brian have success, sort of - a baby horse is born, only its mother dies shortly after giving birth.  That couldn't possibly screw up the baby horse at all, could it?  What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Will this create a wild horse that can't be controlled because it never had the nurturing touch of a mother's love?  Or will Jan take on the role of mother figure and somehow impart all of her hopes and dreams and anxieties on to this baby horse, which the syndicate agrees to call "Dream Alliance" (except Kerby, who wants to name the horse "Kerby", but come on, that's so Kerby of him...)

And why does Jan want to do all this in the first place?  Because she needs a reason to get up in the morning, she says.  Yeah, working at a grocery store by day and a bar at night will do that to you - I've got the same problem, only it's with an animation studio and a movie theater.  You work two jobs just to have a little more spending cash, only then you're spending so much TIME working those two jobs that you rarely get out and just have fun, like you used to.  Prices keep going up and you find you've got less to spend on books and video-games like you used to, and when you do think to arrange a vacation or a weekend getaway somewhere you've got to clear that with TWO bosses, and no wonder you're tired all the time, because one job wants you in at 10 am and the other one wants you to start at 5 pm and lock up at 11.  Yeah, I feel you, Jan. 

Now, horse racing in the U.K. apparently is very different than the racing in the U.S. (Don't even get me started on their "football" - it doesn't even seem like the same sport at all!). The UK races are more like what we call steeplechases, there are barriers that the horses have to hurdle over, like who builds a track for horses to run on, and then puts up hurdles to make it more difficult?  Seems kind of stupid.  Should there be a big six-foot wall around home plate so runners from third base can't get to it?  Or why not have a big wall of fire down the center court line during an NBA game, so players have to run really fast through it so they don't get burned? Stupid, right? 

So Dream Alliance doesn't finish one race because he injures a leg on one of those hurdles, and in most instances, a leg injury means a horse has to be shot for some stupid reason, I've heard various reasons for this over the years but none of them seem to make sense, I mean we have veterinarians who operate on animals all the time, why did horses become the only animals we "humanely" kill when they sprain an ankle?  More ridiculous rules of society that make no sense, I mean you invest all this money in a race horse over the years, and then one little broken leg and he has to die?  There are no horse casts or horse crutches or horse wheelchairs?  They make little doggie wheelchairs now or dogs can learn to run on three legs, so we don't kill THEM if they're missing a leg, and haven't horses done as much as dogs over the centuries to help mankind, if not more?  Oh sure, please Mr. Horse, pull my wagon, pull my plow, help me get this mail to San Francisco quickly, but if you break a leg I will kill you in a heartbeat?  It's not fair. 

Anyway, the syndicate has to come together to decide if Dream Alliance can be saved instead of shot, and then once he's recovered, can he or should he race again?  And so they have to take a vote, but it's unclear if people are voting in their own best interests or for those of the horse.  I mean, sure, it's just a horse, but it's a horse that might be able to win another race, or it's a horse that maybe could be sold to another owner, or then put out to stud himself. But Jan has to learn that bringing in 19 other investors to form a syndicate means that she's not the only owner of the horse, the other owners want to have a say in what happens to their investment, also. Really, this should have all been spelled out in the initial offering agreement, and if it wasn't, well why not?

Well, this is a sports movie so you can expect that there's a rollicking happy ending, but bear in mind that for every horse that wins a race, there are another 8 or 9 who didn't, but you know what, this movie isn't about them, is it?  If one of them had won the Welsh Grand National then maybe the movie WOULD be about them, but they didn't, so it's not.  That's just how these things tend to work.  Deal with it. 

Also starring Owen Teale (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Alan David (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Lynda Baron (last seen in "Yentl"), Damian Lewis (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Karl Johnson (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Steffan Rhodri (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Rhys ap William, Carwyn Glyn, Sian Phillips (last seen in "The Age of Innocence"), Benji Wild, Anthony O'Donnell (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Darren Evans (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Di Botcher (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Rekha John-Cheriyan (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Brian Doherty, Ashq Akhtar (last seen in "Blinded By the Light"), Max Hutchinson, Aneirin Hughes, Nicholas Farrell (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Alex Jordan (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Joanna Page (last seen in "Dolittle"), Adam Sopp (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Peter Davison, Raj Paul, Katherine Jenkins, Clare Balding, Gerald Royston Horler, Rhys Horler, Katrina Maving and the real-life Jan Vokes, Brian Vokes.

RATING: 7 out of 10 unintelligible words in the Welsh National Anthem

Jesus Henry Christ

Year 16, Day 9 - 1/9/24 - Movie #4,609

BEFORE: Toni Collette carries over from "Clockwatchers" - both that film and THIS film were cut from the final months of Movie Year 15, so they've both been re-scheduled early in Movie Year 16, that's only fair.  Now I also hope to reschedule "Men, Women & Children" and "Graveyard Shift" also, but something had to be cut.  And last year I did manage to get to several films that had been cut time and time again, like "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", so this proves that I can get to everything, given enough time.  So any romance films that end up getting cut from February will just be tentatively booked for next year, and all horror films I didn't get to last October, well, I've got another shot at them coming up in nine months' time. 

They had the Golden Globes the other night and I feel like I should be mining those nominations and awards for material right now, as I feel like I've got nearly zero chance this year of seeing the Oscar-nominated films before THAT ceremony, which is on March 10.  Last year I watched "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in January, which was a smart move - but I had no idea it would win Best Picture at the time.  I guess "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" won the most, but I don't think "Oppenheimer" is available anywhere, and I just can't bring myself to put the "Barbie" film on my list, but I guess I'll have to at some point.  "Poor Things", "The Holdovers", "Maestro" and "Killers of the Flower Moon" are all being talked about, but I already made my January and February schedules, so I've got no spare slots between now and March 10, so what can I do, except try to clear the list a little bit so I've got space for these films when they DO become available. 

I remember that I went to see "Asteroid City" instead of "Oppenheimer" - I stand behind that choice, but now I'm paying the price for that, a little.  I focused on the films that I thought I might enjoy more, like "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" instead of "Barbie" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" instead of "Killers of the Flower Moon", so be it. 

THE PLOT: At the age of ten, Henry James Herman, a boy who was conceived in a petri dish and raised by his feminist mother, follows a string of Post-It notes in hopes of finding his biological father. 

AFTER: OK, so now I know what THIS one it about - it's a little bit all-over-the-place, but it's about people losing their family and persisting, but eventually forming a new family.  You can almost hear someone pitching this saying, "It's about LIFE, you know?"  Patricia came from a family with four older brothers, three of them died shortly after her mother died on her 10th birthday, and the fourth took off for Canada so he wouldn't have to serve in Vietnam.  All of this left her to take care of her father, who never did anything to help raise his family, as he came from that time when men didn't do that sort of thing.  Patricia became a feminist, and at some point decided to have a baby girl via sperm donor, only that girl turned out to be a boy, who was able to talk at a very early age, and also remember every moment of his life from day one, which is a condition called hyperthymesia. He becomes a child prodigy who's bullied as a "freak" but enrolls in college when he's like 10 years old, so there's that. 

At some point his grandfather pays off a nurse at the fertilization clinic to get a lead on Henry's half-sister, which puts him on the road to finding his biological father, even though these donation things are supposed to be random.  His half-sister is Audrey, who also gets bullied at her school, everyone calls her "lesbo" and her father, a college professor, did try to raise her without the influence of gender stereotypes, and he wrote a book about that, only now he realizes that Audrey's embarrassed about the book and you maybe shouldn't turn your daughter's upbringing into a science experiment. He's got the opposite problem from Henry, he has trouble remembering things, so he uses Post-It notes, the greatest invention of our time, to organize all his thoughts.  He also took his wife's last name, before she left him for his cancer doctor, and before he made donations to the sperm bank, but he's got a bad feeling that he's not really Audrey's father, because his wife was having that affair.  

Wouldn't you know it, Henry gets accepted at the SAME college where his biological father teaches, and he inserts himself into his father's life after a failed book signing, but the two bullied half-siblings bond with each other, and they each just might be what the other one needs to get by, and down the road maybe Henry's parents will discover the same thing, and together they'll be one weird little happy family bonded by random sperm donation.  But all that feels rather modern and appropriate, like who DATES any more, right?  And marriages never work out in the end, so who needs them?  It's better when you give up trying and just make things work with a person who shares some of the same attitudes as you about the hopelessness of it all. 

Meanwhile, 2011 is a great time to be alive, isn't it?  You don't need a husband to have a baby, your Muslim teacher lets you beat up your bully when her back is turned, and if you don't fit in at your junior high, just take a few standardized tests and then a college admissions officer will PAY you a stipend to attend his university.  Wait, what?  

I'm not sure about the weird attempt to get humor out of Patricia's mother and brothers dying - it's a series of freak accidents, like her mother burns up after lighting her birthday cake candles, which became even more traumatic when her father threw his whiskey on her to try to douse the flames. So she's not mad at her father for that?  The twins die in a stupid police car accident and Jimmy dies from AIDS, but the family can't even seem to talk about that last one for some reason.  Everyone has to deal with some tragedy in their life, sure, but this all seems particularly harsh and you'd think that looking through old family photos would make things worse, not better.  Near the end Patricia's oldest brother finally comes back from Canada, and Henry asks why he didn't come back after amnesty was granted to the Vietnam draft dodgers, but we don't really get an answer on that point, do we?  

But this is all about identity, embracing the things that make you unique, and if you want to be a lesbian, it's OK, and you shouldn't be bullied about it.  If you want to be a 10-year-old who goes to college, that's fine too, and if you want to form a family out of people thinly connected by biology and chance, it's all good.  That white male nurse at the clinic seems to think he's black, though, and for some reason the movie says that's OK, too. Umm, but it's not. We have to draw the line somewhere, after all. 

Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Jason Spevack (last seen in "Sunshine Cleaning"), Frank Moore (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Samantha Weinstein (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Sarah Orenstein (last seen in "The Calling"), Hannah Bridgen, Jamie Johnston, Mark MacDonald, Mickey MacDonald, Cameron Kennedy, Kevin Hare (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Rosalba Martinni (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies"), Devan Cohen, Nora Sheehan, Dewshane Williams, Aaron Abrams (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Keith Dinicol, Austin MacDonald, Mishu Vellani, Paul Braunstein (last seen in "Undercover Grandpa"), Kate Hewlett, Mark Caven (last seen in "Maleficent"), R.H. Thomson (last seen in "Vision Quest"), Adie Merrell, Kristine Fairlie (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), with a cameo from Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer")

RATING: 6 out of 10 spitballs

Clockwatchers

Year 16, Day 8 - 1/8/24 - Movie #4,608

BEFORE: Well, I burned this film to DVD last fall, and I had it next to "The Daytrippers" in the queue, because they both had Parker Posey in them - but you how this goes, sometimes I put two films together and then they get separated.  I needed "The Daytrippers" right after Thanksgiving because it had Hope Davis in it, but then I had to stay on the Hope Davis track and get to "The Special Relationship" with Michael Sheen. So there was no room for another Parker Posey film, and this wouldn't have connected to the rest of the chain anyway, unless I also included "Jesus Henry Christ" with Toni Collette and Michael Sheen, but since there wasn't room for ONE more film, let alone two, I had to trim things down.  But then when a film gets cut, I try to get back to it as soon as possible, so here it is, just 13 films later, tying up that loose end. 

Joe Chrest carries over again from "The Dirt". You may know him as Mike's dad from "Stranger Things", but he's a chameleon-like character actor who's been around for a long time, and actors like him who are very versatile and pop up in a lot of different movies are very helpful to me, connecting the films that otherwise seem to have nothing in common. Last year he popped up in ""Welcome to the Rileys", Where the Crawdads Sing", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" and "Assassination Nation", but I've also seen him in "Ant-Man", Free State of Jones", "The Blind Side" and "Erin Brockovich", among others.  "The Front Runner", "Deepwater Horizon", "Gifted", and now he's already made the year-end wrap-up again, and we're only about a week in. 

THE PLOT: The relationship between four female temps all working for the same credit company is threatened with the arrival a new hire, who lands a permanent position one of the women was vying for. 

AFTER: I'm not sure how I got from one of the most interesting foursomes in the world - Motley Crue - to one of the most boring, these four temps working at a credit company in California. I mean, they go to happy hour at the bar after work, but that's about it, one has a thing for the copier repairman so she's always breaking the machine to get his attention, but that's a bit of a lame storyline. It's not really their fault, it just feels like the writers didn't give them anything to DO. 

This film is praised for being an early "indie" film, but I just couldn't get excited about it.  It started out with some promise, with Iris, an insecure woman getting a temp job, and then she falls in with a crowd of three other temps led by very assertive "pack leader" Margaret, also there's an aspiring actress named Paula but then I think we learn later that she's not really an actress, and then there's Jane, who's engaged to a jerk but hey, at least he buys her stuff.  Then there's a whole scene where Iris' father comes to visit her and he wants her to follow up with a job at another company where he's got a contact, but that whole part doesn't really go anywhere either. Lots of loose threads and disconnected paths in this screenplay...

There's another woman who gets hired at the company, but in a permanent position, and then all the temps are jealous - well, at least something finally HAPPENED instead of all these people just pretending to type and trying to look busy until 5:00 pm.  But then there's this whole storyline about somebody in the office stealing things from other people's desks, and I thought, great, maybe this film finally has a direction. Nope. The thefts are so weird, and then figuring out who's stealing stuff is also quite weird, and then I wasn't really sure in the end who the thief was and WHY they were stealing things, and you kind of need to have a WHY, or else it's just pointless. 

Margaret suggests a one-day strike due to the temps being overworked and underappreciated, but her three friends bail on her (again, for some reason, but do we even know?) so she's the only one who didn't show up for work with no notice, so that's a fireable offense.  Hmm, some friends these women turned out to be, they turn on each other in a heartbeat.  And I'm supposed to like them?  Later (after figuring out the identity of the thief), Iris voluntarily decides to leave, and she points out that all jobs are temporary jobs. Well, she's right, I've been at my job for 30 years but I'm just starting to realize that it can't possibly last forever, it's going to end, one way or another, someday, and then I'll have to figure out something else to do.  

This came out in 1997, but you just couldn't make this film today - four white women working as temps, and all the executives are white men?  No way, a story meeting at the production company would suggest that one of the women should be African-American, one should be Asian-American, and one should be a lesbian.  And the CEO of the company should be another woman, and definitely Latina, because this way the film can celebrate diversity and also gain more ground with a larger audience. Don't believe me? Just watch "Like a Boss", which also had Lisa Kudrow in it, only Salma Hayek played the company CEO.  

I just don't think it went far enough, that's all - a few years later, Mike Judge came out with "Office Space" and really tried to push the envelope, even using some of the same ideas (like weird guy who collects office supplies) and that was a lot more successful - maybe because the unsatisfied office workers tried to DO something about their situation, and not just complain about it. 

Also starring Toni Collette (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Parker Posey (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Alanna Ubach (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Helen Fitzgerald, Stanley DeSantis (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Jamie Kennedy (last seen in "Scream 3"), David James Elliott (last seen in "Trumbo"), Debra Jo Rupp (last heard in "Teacher's Pet"), Kevin Cooney (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Bob Balaban (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Paul Dooley (last seen in "Other People"), Scott Mosenson (last seen in "The Kid"), Irene Olga Lopez (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Joshua Malina (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), O-Lan Jones (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Michelle Arthur (last seen in "Saving Mr. Banks"), Athena Ubach, Chuck Borden, Sully Diaz, Jim Wise (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Wendy Pitts, Jaime P. Gomez (last seen in "Clear and Present Danger"), Terri Hoyos (last seen in "Dog"), Brodie Nelson, Shauna Wilson, Lynn Tufeld (last seen in "Disclosure"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 punched timecards

The Dirt

Year 16, Day 7 - 1/7/24 - Movie #4,607

BEFORE: I took some time today and made another list, the Top 250 most popular features from 2023, because I want to know how many I've already seen. I went to the movie theater A LOT last year, mostly to work at them, but also I saw some movies there.  So I've got a head start on watching those movies that came out last year, or so I thought, but really, I've only seen 16 out of those Top 250.  Now bear in mind "most popular" doesn't mean "the best", nor does it means "the movies that I want to see or are most likely to watch", it's just based on the IMDB ratings at this moment.  BUT, it's something of a benchmark to let me know how far I've come, and how much further I may have to go.  

By comparison, I've seen 62 of the top 250 movies of 2022, with another 17 on the main watchlist, and probably more available on streaming, which I'm not counting.  Maybe another 30 that I'll watch streaming at some point, so that's about 110 total. I've seen 91 of 2021's top 250 films, with another 8 on the main watchlist, and let's say another 12 that are streaming that I would consider. That's about 111 total, same ratio.  OK, at least I'm being consistent.  2020 was a slow year for movies because of COVID, but I still saw 76 of the top 250, with another 5 on my list and another 5 I might watch someday, that's 86.  2019 was a BIG year for movies, I've seen 125 of the top 250, with another 2 still on the list and another 4 or 5 I might consider. 

So I'll probably spend most of 2024 watching the movies of 2023 when they become available, and then catching anything else from previous years as linking material.  During 2023 I watched 61 films that were released the previous year, so that's about 20% or 1/5 of my slots for that year. OK, that seems about right. It means I'm staying relatively current, I've got a pattern and the system works - as long as I don't need to run out and see a movie right away, I can be fairly sure that I'll catch it in the next few months when it becomes available. 

Joe Chrest carries over from "Quiz Lady" to play Tommy Lee's dad. 

THE PLOT: Based on the bestselling autobiography from Mötley Crüe, the film is an unflinching tale of success and excess as four misfits rise from the streets of Hollywood to the heights of international fame. 

AFTER: The other thing I did yesterday, before watching "The Dirt" after midnight, was convince my wife to join me for my re-watch of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story".  I rented the film on Demand so I could burn it to DVD, because I loved the film, I'm a big fan of Weird Al and also I thought she would really enjoy the humor, how the film doesn't take itself seriously at all, not even for a minute.  I can't tell you the last movie we watched together, we're just not interested in the same films, or I'll watch my movies after she goes to bed and then I can tell her the next day what I watched, if it's something she might be interested in.  But mostly we go our own ways where movies are concerned, I don't think she's been in a movie theater in years, it's got to be pre-pandemic, at least.  

And I loved re-watching "Weird", it hit even harder for me the second time, and now I can watch it whenever I want, without connecting to Roku. (She said she would watch it on Roku, but WHEN?). The problem then was that that film is a parody of ALL biopics, especially music-based ones - so how could I possible take "The DIrt" seriously after that?  Whether I'm a Motley Crue fan or not (not, mostly) is beside the point, because that Weird Al fake biopic totally crushed it, and how is any movie on a similar topic going to hold up?  Not well, at least not for me.  I was still in the vein of not taking anything seriously because that was the tone of "Weird", with Daniel Radcliffe not being a dead ringer for young Weird Al, and lip-synching (well, but still...) to Al's vocals, and completely acting in a way that the real Weird Al never did.  If you know about Al, you know he's never had a drinking problem or a drug problem and is a vegetarian and from all accounts, a super nice guy, so of course his parody bio-pic has him getting stoned, drinking bottles of whiskey, having sex with Madonna and acting like a huge conceited jerk.  It's funny because none of it is true, yet the film is marketed as if it is. 

In a similar vein, I've got to wonder about the motivations here, to depict the Motley Crue story in exactly this way.  Remember that this is based on a book written by the band members, so they may have an agenda in promoting themselves in a certain way, no matter what behavior they want to talk about, good or bad, it's going to come across as bragging, or perhaps a form of therapy, or part of their mandated community service, I'm not sure which.  Yeah, the band decided to get clean and sober at one point, because they realized they couldn't maintain the party lifestyle, and that's usually the kiss of death for a rock band.  Once they go vegan or gluten-free and kick out the band member who won't toe the line, forget it, they've got one more good album in them maybe and then the career is nearly over.  You either ride that van until the wheels come off, like Keith Richards, or get out of the business, because you're not a true rocker at some point.  

But yeah, let's talk about that, why do rockers have such a bad reputation, because come on, in your mind you're thinking about the girls and the booze and the blow and trashing all their hotel rooms, right?  I read an e-mail newsletter once in a while from a guy who used to tour with the Sex Pistols, and it's all that and more, but WHY does it have to be that way?  Why can't the heavy metal band be made of people who are pure at heart, sober guys who just want to focus on the music, are faithful to their wives and carefully save their money from their tours so they'll have a retirement fund as a safety net?  Ha ha, just kidding, that's never happened.  I watched enough documentaries about rock bands, from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead to Nirvana and I'm sure the pattern continues today.  

I think it started with Elvis, honestly, or maybe Chuck Berry.  Somewhere back then the music and the popularity and the MONEY, so much money, came together and made it impossible for successful rockers to be normal people.  When we visited Graceland back in 2017, we were blown away by how many buildings there were on the estate, from the main house to the office building where Col. Parker worked, to the building with the squash court and the pinball machines and the gun range.  My wife said, "THAT is what you get when you give a 20-year old guy a million dollars," and she was right, he was like the Justin Beiber of the 1950's.  And I don't need to remind you that the drinking and the drugs followed soon after, and if you think he was faithful to Priscilla, you're fooling yourself.  Millionaires (OK, now billionaires) get to write their own rules, and they live like there's no tomorrow, and then you follow that path through the Beatles and the Stones, you hit Motley Crue at some point, following the same pattern.  

At one point the film follows a day in the life of Tommy Lee on tour - 5 pm, wake up in the hotel room, handcuffed to the bed, with no memory of what happened the previous night.  Hang out backstage, get drunk, punch out a record executive, then play the concert, have sex with a groupie backstage, then catch the plane to the next city, do some blow on the plane, get to the next hotel room, trash the hotel room, get punched out by the road manager and get handcuffed to the bed again.  And this went on for HOW MANY tour dates?  I'm always fascinated by those tour schedules, and how they're organized, as it's clear somebody with a brain puts them together, deciding the band would go from Detroit to Chicago to Milwaukee and then over to Minneapolis.  The dates of Crue's 1989-1991 tour scroll by on the screen, and the band complains that the record company keeps adding more dates at the end, so they'll never be done.  

And so what do you THINK is going to happen, given that two band members are in (semi-)stable relationships, and are then out on tour for two years straight?  And all that time, they're keeping count of how many women they've screwed in each city.  Add in all the money they spend at strip clubs, and it's a recipe for disaster.  Show me the rock and roll marriage that has stood the test of time, I dare you - and Paul & Linda McCartney don't count. And yet some people still marry rockers, thinking their experience is going to be different?  Keep dreaming.  So how am I supposed to find any sympathy for these band members, when they spend all their money, screw around, get drunk and wasted every night and well, completely act irresponsibly 24/7 - so I'm just watching and waiting for the time when it all comes crashing down.  

Mick Mars has a degenerative bone disease, and Vince Neil has a young daughter who's sick, those are two things that could go some way toward garnering these rockers some sympathy, but if anything these plot points are de-emphasized and so everything feels out of balance.  You want my support?  Show the parts of a typical day where the band meets with a financial adviser to plan for their post-rock retirement, or when they call home to talk to their girlfriend or daughter and actually take a minute to think, "Hmm, what time is it in L.A. right now?" because you'd think after a while on their trip around the country, they'd figure out how time zones work.  Ha ha, just kidding again, they never quite figure this out. 

The best moment in the film, for me, is when Motley Crue is on tour with Black Sabbath, and they're hanging out by the pool when Ozzy Osbourne comes along, and he's flashing his privates to the other people poolside before he urinates next to the pool, and meanwhile the M.C. band members are counting how many women each one screwed in the last city.  They say to Ozzy, "Gee, it's great that you can still go out on tour and keep up with us younger rockers!"  And Ozzy says, "You wankers, I don't have to keep up with YOU, I've already LAPPED YOU!"  Oh, that's so great, I'm going to steal that whenever any of my co-workers comment about me being older than them.  And the guy they got to play Ozzy looked EXACTLY like he did in the 1980's.  

Well, OK, so this one was a bit of a struggle to get through, and I couldn't take it seriously, not at all.  But it's off the Netflix list now, which means there are only 125 films on that list to go.  Geez, I never seem to make that much progress on the Netflix list, do I?  For every film I add there, two more come along the next month and I'm starting to think I'll never clear it.  But lately it seems they're adding a lot of older films I've already watched, so that's helpful, I don't have to track those.  But will I ever CATCH UP?  No, probably not.  I'll just die one day with a long list of films that I wasn't able to get to in the time that I was given, more than likely.  Such is life. 

Also starring Douglas Booth (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Iwan Rheon (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) (last seen in "Project Power"), Daniel Webber, Pete Davidson (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), David Costabile (last seen in "Side Effects"), Leven Rambin (last seen in "Mank"), Kathryn Morris (last seen in "Paycheck"), Rebekah Graf, Tony Cavalero (last seen in "When We First Met"), Max Milner, Katherine Neff (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jordan Lane Price, Christian Gehring, Anthony Vincent Valbiro, Kamryn Ragsdale, Melanie Hebert (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Trace Masters (ditto), Courtney Dietz, Elena Evangelo, Vince Robert Mattis, Betsy Holt (also carrying over from "Quiz Lady"), Alyssa Marie Stilwell, Matthew Underwood, Aaron Jay Rome, Mark Ashworth, Avis-Marie Barnes (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers"), Eleanor T. Threatt, Kabby Borders (last seen in "Game Night"), Carol Ann Scruggs, Peter Jaymes Jr., Bernard Hocke, Alexanne Wagner, Martin Bats Bradford (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Anthony Marble (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Michael Hodson. 

with archive footage of Nikki Sixx (last seen in "Count Me In"), Tommy Lee (ditto), Vince Neil (ditto), Mick Mars, Sammy Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, Nancy Reagan (last seen in "The Special Relationship")

RATING: 5 out of 10 TVs thrown through hotel room windows