I Could Never Be Your Woman

Year 16, Day 34 - 2/3/24 - Movie #4,635

BEFORE: A day off today, after working a double yesterday - a normal shift at the animation studio and then a screening of an episode of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" at the theater, with a reception after.  Seemed a bit excessive for people to watch a show that they can see at home, if they have Paramount+, so I'm thinking that maybe most people don't have Paramount+.  I have a way I can get it for free, because it merged with Showtime or something and I pay for Showtime already and now i found out there's a way I can get Paramount+ for free because I pay for Showtime, I just have to create an account and then sign in using my Spectrum cable information.  I'll do it just for my wife, so she can watch the "Picard" series at long last, and then maybe I can watch "Star Trek: Discovery" season 2, because I only watched Season 1, which they ran on CBS at one point to try to get people like me to sign up for Paramount+, but now I WON'T do that, just to spite their stupid marketing techniques.  Oh, sure, the first season is free but if you like it, now you have to pay for more. Umm, no I don't. 

Out to Long Island today to hit a Chinese buffet for lunch, and then some old-fashioned mall-walking - it's free if you don't buy anything.  But then I'm back to the theater tomorrow morning. 

Paul Rudd carries over from "Over Her Dead Body". 

THE PLOT: A mother falls for a younger man while her daughter falls in love for the first time. Mother Nature messes with their fates. 

AFTER: Already I don't know how I'm supposed to judge one romantic comedy over another, and I'm only three days in, that's not a good sign.  I'm already burned out on the topic - yeah, sure, they fall in love, that's great, I hope they learn to overlook each other's faults and come to accept each other as they are, which means then they also learn to accept themselves, that's great too. But I think I like ones that maybe have something new to say, something I maybe haven't seen too many times.  I haven't seen too many films where there's a big age difference between the two lovers, and even if that's there, it's usually an older man and a younger woman, right?  Not too many films have the older woman dating a much younger man.  

Rosie is a 45-year old TV writer and show-runner on the hit TV comedy "You Go Girl", and she discovers the young(ish) actor Adam in an audition, and realizes he's a natural on camera.  She also develops feelings for him, though he's 28 and she's - well, she admits to being 40, it's a funny scene where she keeps admitting she's older and her age keeps going up, and he keeps admitting to being younger and younger.  But she only gets to 40 and he's 28, but really, is she 12 years older than him or 17 years older?  Won't he eventually find out that she's 45, not 40? How long can she keep that lie alive?  Also, isn't age just nothing but a number, who cares if she's a few years older than him, in this day and age?  Anyway, at the time this film was released, Paul Rudd was really 38 and playing a character who was 28, and Michelle Pfeiffer was really 49 playing a character who was 45. She's really only 11 years older than he is. 

It was weirder for me to watch these actors make out because they both play characters in the MCU, he's Ant-Man and she's the original Wasp, but the mother of the current Wasp, who is dating the current Ant-Man.  So it's like he's making out with his girlfriend's mother, and she's kissing her daughter's boyfriend, kind of, and that just doesn't seem right.  Also, Paul Rudd doesn't seem to get any older, no matter what, at least not yet. And at least Michelle Pfeiffer is still working, a lot of actresses her age have given up on trying to get good roles, or they're waiting until they're old enough for the roles that Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep used to get. I don't know, I really don't want to get into the whole thing about there not being enough roles for older women - so more actresses should become producers and make sure there are roles for older women like them, I guess.  Haven't the old sexist producers been forced out of the business by now?  

Anyway, they all work on this fictitious sitcom, and this is supposedly based on director Amy Heckerling's experiences while directing the TV series "Clueless", which also starred some of the same actors, like Stacey Dash and Twink Caplan and Wallace Shawn.  Paul Rudd was in the movie "Clueless" but not the TV show, and the movie came out way back in 1995, if you really want to feel old.  And one presumes that if the female writer/producer of a sitcom should happen to fall in love with a younger actor working on that show, they should probably keep that relationship a secret, for fear of suggesting that one's sleeping with the other to get ahead in the business or worse, using their power or influence to have sex with the other.  But if they're both into the relationship, there really should be no problem there, I mean, they're both consenting adults, one's just more adulter than the other. 

Rosie also is divorced and has a 13-year old daughter.  She's still friends with her ex-husband, who's had at least one other wife, but he left Rosie for a younger woman, which I'm sure happens a lot. but still, it's a NITPICK POINT to me.  If a guy who looked like Jon Lovitz was married to a woman who looked like Michelle Pfeiffer, it doesn't make much sense that HE would leave HER, based on their looks alone, I'd say SHE would be more likely to leave HIM.  A guy who looked like Lovitz should thank his lucky stars if he found himself married to a woman that beautiful. Right? Just me?  

Rosie's daughter, Izzie, meanwhile, just got her period and is attracted to a boy for the first time.  Naturally, she's wise beyond her years, but also is completely clueless when it comes to matters of the heart, and unfortunately her divorced mother is so cynical about love that her advice toggles between being dismissive and useless to a girl in middle school.  Still, she's trying to be supportive and point her in the right direction, knowing that the first cut is the deepest, or something like that, so she's bound to get her heart broken by Dylan, but at least it will be a learning experience, and everyone's heart needs to build up some scar tissue, to some extent. 

Izzie does have a talent for writing parody songs, by changing the words of say, Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did it Again" to reflect a more modernist take-down of Spears' outdated image and the sexist motifs present in her music videos.  Later she performs the song "Moronic", a parody of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic", which takes aim at George W. Bush and Michael Jackson.  She is, in her own way, like a teen girl Weird Al Yankovic.  Which leads to an obvious question, why is there no teen girl version of Weird Al Yankovic?  Why is there no one else who ever tried to follow his career path, who, if anyone, is the number 2 modern song parody artist in that genre?  There's nobody, he's like a unicorn or something, and he's never had any competition in the marketplace.  Sure, there's Richard Cheese and also Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, maybe you can consider the Dan Band (seen in the film "Old School") but all of these acts just perform well-known songs in different styles, whether that's rock songs in lounge style, or soft songs in a punk style, but I'd hesitate to call any of their work parodies, they're just fun cover bands.  

Anyway, we're here for the romance tonight, and I'm down with Rosie and Adam getting together, despite their age difference.  The only real problems are caused by Rosie's insecurities, and also her secretary planting fake evidence on Adam's phone that he's been cheating on Rosie with Brianna, the star of "You Go Girl".  Once Rosie realizes that she's been punked, it should be smooth sailing, even if that show gets cancelled and Adam gets cast in a pilot for a new sitcom, he would at least get his favorite writer hired on that one. 

This film was never released in theaters, and went straight to video release in 2007, but then later it found a second life on premium cable, which is where I discovered it.  Apparently it was mostly filmed in the U.K., not L.A., well it does have a number of cameos from British TV actors.  Tracey Ullman plays Mother Nature, for example, the embodiment of Earth goddesses and fertility, who has imaginary conversations with Rosie about aging and dating issues.  And it's Saorsie Ronan's debut film.  It seems like some parts were also filmed in Pasadena, CA, which is where "Over Her Dead Body" was also filmed.  

Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "De Palma"), Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "See How They Run"), Tracey Ullman (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Jon Lovitz (last seen in "Trapped in Paradies"), Sarah Alexander (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Fred Willard (last seen in "Salem's Lot"), Stacey Dash (last seen in "Clueless"), Yasmin Paige, O-T Fagbenle (last seen in "Black Widow"), Twink Caplan (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"), Rory Copus, David Mitchell (last seen in "Greed"), Mackenzie Crook (last seen in "In Secret"), Steve Pemberton (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Phil Cornwell (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Simon Kunz (ditto), Graham Norton (last heard in "Soul"), Ed Byrne, Jayden Berry-Garvey, Iddo Goldberg (last seen in "Driven"), Noah Lee Margetts, Archie Panjabi (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Ben Bennett, Chike Chan (last seen in "Everest"), John Paul Horsley, Peter Polycarpou (last seen in "Evita"), Ashley Luke Lloyd, Troy Gentile (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Cassandra Bell, Joe Montana, Victoria Chalaya, Jed Bernard, Mike Knox (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Melanie Martin, Owen Stanley, 

with cameos from Olivia Colman (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Sally Kellerman, Wallace Shawn (last seen in "Maggie's Plan"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Black Adam"), 

and archive footage of Anne Bancroft (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), David Cassidy (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Madonna (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Benito Mussolini (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Jaleel White (last seen in "Hustle").

RATING: 6 out of 10 prank calls made to celebrities

Over Her Dead Body

Year 16, Day 33 - 2/2/24 - Movie #4,634

BEFORE: One romance film down, about 40 to go.  I say "about" because I still have to go through my list of films newly available on streaming platforms, and you never know, I might find a new romance film that wasn't available until now, and if so, I might be able to work it into the chain at the last minute.  That's what happened with tonight's film, initially I was going to to straight from "Boys and Girls" to "Loser" as both films have Jason Biggs, but then this one came to my attention, and I realized it could be dropped in-between.  So Jason Biggs carries over tonight, and then "Loser" will follow in two days, because there's ANOTHER film tomorrow that got dropped in at the last minute, also. 

I can't do that too many times, because there are 44 days until St. Patrick's Day, and I think I've only got 2 empty slots between here and there - plus I need 3 or 4 days to get from the end of the romance chain to something very Irish.  Still, that's two empty slots I could fill, or I could take a little break, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Just Like Heaven" (Movie #3,463)

THE PLOT: A ghost tries to sabotage her former boyfriend's current relationship with a psychic. 

AFTER: I know, I know, at first glance this seems to be a very stupid film, about a man's dead wife's ghost interfering in his new relationship - and it is, really.  But then you take a second look at it and you realize - well, OK, you probably also determine it's a silly stupid film.  But on your THIRD look at it, you might see there's something kind of clever among all the nonsense.  Sure, ghosts aren't real, and I know ghosts aren't real because when Harry Houdini died, he promised that if there were ANY sort of afterlife, any way for him to send a coherent message back to his loved ones from the Great Beyond, he would find it.  And he was a very clever, very tricky man, so if he couldn't get a message back from Heaven, then there is nothing after this life and also ghosts aren't real.  Yet the majority of people on this planet believe in something beyond this plane, whether that's heaven or hell or limbo or God's waiting room is TBD, but in the meantime, sure, why not ghosts?  They also have a very popular sitcom on CBS.  

But think about this, if this were a film about an alive woman medding in her ex's new relationship, we would hate that character, because her actions are petty and spiteful and foolish, not to mention a waste of time - the relationship is over, you both move on and maybe try a little harder to make the next one work.  Or maybe you spend some time apart and realize how much your lives suck without the other person in it, and you get back together and try to make the best of it. But usually you both just move on and try to get over each other. 

Ah, but the ex here is DEAD, she's a ghost who finds herself unable to move on to the next spiritual plane, because her goals in life were not met, there's some unfinished business, some task she needs to perform.  She doesn't get the full briefing from the angel she meets in the white limbo Purgatory room, because she spent her time complaining about not being dead, misunderstanding the situation, and wondering why the angel doesn't appear to have wings - which is ironic because that's kind of how she died in the first place, arguing with the ice sculptor over why the angel ice statue he made didn't have wings.  Still, she's somewhat sympathetic because she never got to fulfill her dream of getting married and also continuing to be alive. 

This film may have set the record for the earliest death of a main character, I'd have to check on that, but I'm not sure how to Google it.  Trying to think of other movies where a character died in the first few minutes of a film, but I'm only coming up with "Dressed to Kill" and then of course Drew Barrymore in the first "Scream" film, and other actresses in the opening scenes of the "Scream" sequels. Jesus, at least Patrick Swayze's character in "Ghost" got to take a pottery class before he died. I guess you can count "Sunset Boulevard" where we see the main character floating in the pool at the start, but then the movie flashes back to tell us how he died, so does that really count?  They just moved the end scene of the movie to the beginning, really.  Ah, here we go, I'll Google "Movies that Begin with the Main Character Dying" - OK, "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Killers", "The Lovely Bones", "Watchmen", "The Crow", "Citizen Kane" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever". OK, that turned out to be a bit easier than I thought it would be. Also, SPOILER ALERT for "Citizen Kane".  The Comedian's not really the main character in "Watchmen", though, it's more of an ensemble piece, but yeah, OK, Black Panther 2.

There are, however, inconsistencies all over this film about whether Ashley really has psychic abilities.  At first Henry's sister brings him to a psychic and everyone (but Henry) knows that Ashley really has no psychic powers, but his sister has slipped the psychic some information that only Kate would have known, it's all with good intentions to give Henry a message from his dead ex-almost-wife that it's time for him to move on and start dating again.  But then Kate's ghostly form appears on the scene and only one character can see her, and it's Ashley the psychic!  Now, does Ashley suddenly REALLY have psychic ability, or does Kate the ghost WANT to be seen by her?  Neither one really makes sense, because Kate can't quite figure out how her ghost powers work, not at first, anyway, so how would she suddenly have the ability to be seen by a person of her choosing?  

Kate first appears to Ashley as a prospective new client who wants a reading - so that means Ashley can't distinguish between a real live human and a dead ghost trying to appear to be a real live human.  So Ashley DOES NOT have psychic powers, which one presumes would include being able to tell a live person from a spirit.  But yet she DOES have psychic powers, because she is having a conversation with a ghost that nobody else can see.  This is quite a paradox, she both does and does not have psychic ability, or the powers she has are very specific, there's a very narrow range of what she can and can't do.  Yeah, basically her psychic powers are whatever the screenwriter needed them to be.  

But don't you think that if Ashley, a complete stranger to Kate, can see her then wouldn't Henry, her boyfriend of several years and almost-husband be able to see her too?  I mean, they already had a mental, physically and perhaps spiritual connection already, isn't that what love is, at the heart of the concept?  Or does love not really exist except as a social construct and an abstract representation of our dreams and wishes projected on to another person?  Discuss.  NO, screw it, let's assume that love is REAL, just intangible because Henry loved Kate while she was alive and forgave her for acting like a Bridezilla, come on, she just wanted things to be perfect at her wedding, because you maybe only get one of those.  Or in Kate's case, almost one. 

You can probably guess where all this is going, Ashley and Henry start to like each other during the phony (and then later real) psychic sessions.  They usually go out to grab a bite together after, and then they start thinking of other places they like to go together, things to do together, one thing leads to another, and then before long they're dating.  Kate, however, is VERY opposed to this, and decides to use her newfound ghost powers to make Ashley's life a living hell.  Instead of saying "BOOO" like a normal ghost or rattling objects or moving things around the room, Kate learns to make a lot of fart sounds when Ashley and Henry check in to a hotel together.  Yeah, that's a classy ghost.  Kate also makes a fake P.A. announcement about a gas leak while Ashley's showering at the gym so she decides to run out of the locker room while still naked. More inventive, but still very petty. 

So Ashley pretends to be very very sick, in order to keep Henry away so that a ghost will no longer be mad at her.  Temporary solution, because she can't just stay indoors forever and Henry's going to keep calling, no matter what.  The only way to solve this little love triangle with one dead corner is for Kate to (eventually) realize that she's not still on Earth to keep Henry from dating someone else, she's there to help him transition toward dating someone else.  Right, only through sacrifice and thinking of others can one cleanse their own soul, and therefore be worthy of a place in heaven.  Gad, it's corny but it is really the only way out of the corner that some poor writer painted themselves into.  But it's a darn shame that in the end, the ghost has to resort to talking through a PARROT to get the other two characters together.  Really, couldn't there have been some other way, any other way?  It's a big NITPICK POINT because this isn't the way parrots work, they have to hear a phrase hundreds of times before they can mimic it, what you see on display here is really some kind of advanced savant parrot. 

And Jason Biggs really gets the short end of the stick, playing the fourth corner in the love triangle, namely someone who's not even considered part of the geometric equation at all.  Then his reveal late in the picture makes it very, very difficult to like his character, and that's all I have to say about that. 

Look, I have a feeling that if this sort of film keeps appearing in the countdown, it's going to feel like a VERY long February. Even though it's the shortest month, my romance chains usually tend to be longer than 28 or 29 days, if the topic didn't bleed into February then I really would never make any progress from year to year.  This year I'm scheduled to stay on this topic until March 11 or thereabouts, but thankfully they don't ALL have to be rom-coms, I'm hoping a romantic tragedy could turn up, or even a romantic thriller or romantic action movie. Could happen. 

I'll get back to Jason Biggs in 2 days, I'll get back to Lake Bell in about 30 days, and back to Stephen Root a few days after that.  Instead I'll follow the Paul Rudd link to the next romance movie. 

Also starring Eva Longoria (last seen in "Unplugging"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Lake Bell (last seen in "No Escape"), Lindsay Sloane (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Three Christs"), WIlliam Morgan Sheppard (last seen in "Lassiter"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Blended"), Ali Hills (last seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Deborah Theaker (last seen in "A Series of Unfortunate Events"), Natalia Safran (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Andy Kreiss (last seen in "Mr. Deeds"), Ben Livingston (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Jack Conley (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Kali Rocha (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Colin Fickes (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Armen Weitzman (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Bru Muller, Richard Tillman (last seen in "Superhero Movie"), Freddy Andreiuci, Brooke Bloom (last seen in "White Noise"), Edith Fields (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Heather Mazur (last seen in "I'm Not Here"), Misha Collins, Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Species"), Sam Pancake (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Antonio D. Charity and the voice of Jeff Lowell. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 dates with "cat ladies"

Boys and Girls

Year 16, Day 32 - 2/1/24 - Movie #4,633

BEFORE: Getting a late start today because I had to take a bus across town and hit this pork store in Queens, where I've been getting my cold cuts since I discovered pork stores during the pandemic. It's a chance to buy German cold cuts, which I enjoyed at my grandmother's house as a kid, and I've rediscovered head cheese and bierwurst and ham/bologna and tongue, which are all awesome, but a bit off-putting to some people.  I can't get enough, though, and while this particular pork store is Polish and I don't know the Polish names for these cold cuts, I manage to get what I want - however the place is closing down for good in two days, after about 85 years in that location, leaving me to find a new supplier.  But this was the best one within walking distance, I know a good one we can drive to in Queens and another good one on Long Island, but the other one I can walk to just doesn't have as great of a selection.  Now I can walk through the neighborhood and see all the places I used to shop, like restaurants where I had dates with an ex-lover. 

It's time to change gears and switch over to romances, not necessarily all romantic comedies, because there are some dramas in here too, I need a mix of comedy and tragedy to kind of keep myself on an even keel.  Try watching 30 love-based comedies in a row, I can promise you will go just a bit crazy - too much of anything is bad for you, I think. OK, so this year the target number is 41 films before I switch topics, and I need to leave enough time to get to something Irish-based for St. Patrick's Day.  No problem, if I can keep my wits about me. 

Claire Forlani carries over from "Precious Cargo" and here are the links that will get me to the end of February, and remember we've got an extra Leap Day this month:  Jason Biggs, Paul Rudd, Twink Caplan, David Spade, Jorge Garcia, Cloris Leachman, Michael St. Michaels, Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, La La Anthony, Nia Long, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Coyote, Shane West, David Koechner, Julie Hagerty, Zoe Chao, Tig Notaro, Nora Dunn, Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Seth Meyers, Kristin Chenoweth and Jennifer Lopez.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Down to You" (Movie #4,038)

THE PLOT: A friendship is put to the ultimate test when two best friends wind up in bed together. 

AFTER: This film is from the year 2000, and like pork stores, I just think they don't make romantic comedies like this any more, today's films are more like "Blockers" and "No Hard Feelings", and so this kind of qualifies as a quaint antique, like "She's All That" or "Down to You", and man, that was two years ago when I last did a Freddie Prinze Jr. chain?  I guess this one kind of fell through the cracks back then, you have to imagine I would have worked this one into the February 2022 chain if I'd had a copy at that time.  And Jason Biggs is in three films this February, seeing both him and Alyson Hannigan in the same movie reminds me that I've never seen the "American Pie" films, and I may have to deal with that someday.  No time this year, but maybe in the future. 

Seeing Bruce Willis yesterday also reminds me about "Moonlighting", the crime-romance-comedy series from way back that kept the "Will they or won't they" suspense going for what, three seasons? Five seasons total, but once the two lead characters slept with each other, the show was never really the same, why bother after the question got answered?  So that same structure is in place in "Boys and Girls", the male and female lead circle each other for the whole film, they confide in each other as they date other people throughout college, and then only near the end of the film do they really consider each other as potential partners.  "When Harry Met Sally", same pattern, but that took place over a longer period of time, I think.  Remember, men and women can't possibly be friends, because the sex always gets in the way, UNLESS they're both seeing other people, which means they CAN be friends, especially if they need to comfort each other after breakups.  

Umm, yeah, SPOILER ALERT, same end result, the two become such great friends over the years that they eventually realize that they can't live without each other, but first they lead themselves to believe that getting together would be "settling" for second best, but then a realization that there's nobody out there better for them, and if you're going to have to form a permanent bond with someone, you might as well pick somebody you're already friends with, someone who knows you better than anyone else.  

You can't make a film like this these days because it was a different time back then, if you titled a film "Boys and Girls" today, there's a segment of the population that would have a fit, like why is your film only focused on straight people?  Why is it all about boys dating girls, and why are there no gay people in your film?  Note that there is one woman in this film who tries to kiss another woman, but she's not gay or bisexual, she just got caught up in the moment, and then once she spoke to her therapist she realized that she was only acting that way because she was afraid of losing her friend as a friend, she wasn't really attracted to women, because Jeez, that would be terrible and also the scriptwriter wouldn't know how to handle that. Anyway if you had a gay character back then the whole film would have been ABOUT that, you couldn't just have a minor character act that way without it being the focus, and also causing a whole fuss. 

We know that we want Ryan and Jennifer to end up together, from the first time we see them on a plane together, meeting when they're about 12 years old, and already they seem much older than they are, Jennifer can talk about her period and she wants to know if Ryan masturbates, like jeez, didn't they JUST MEET?  And they're already so comfortable with each other, but it's just not the right time for them yet, then they meet again while attending rival high schools that play each other in the big sport-ball game, she's the homecoming queen for her school and he's the gopher mascot for the other team.  They're comfortable with each other again, Jennifer reveals that she doesn't believe in true love or monogamy - well, to be fair there are a LOT of people to date in this world.  She wants to go out for coffee, but he's still not ready. 

They meet again at college, UC Berkeley, I think, where he's a freshman studying engineering and she's a junior studying Latin, what career can you possibly have with that degree?  He lives in the dorm with a roommate, Hunter, who can't decide on an identity or even his first name, and she lives off-campus with her musician boyfriend, who breaks up with her shortly into the new semester. So she moves in with her friend Amy, who dates a guy named Ryan, and that turns out to be the SAME Ryan she met on the plane as a kid.  Well, to be fair there are a LOT of people named Ryan in this world. 

For the next two years, they can never QUITE get on the same page, as Ryan dates Heather, who approached him at a party, and Jennifer also goes through a number of boyfriends, and also her friend Amy tries to kiss her, but the movie simply has no time to get into that, as I mentioned. Hunter spends his time trying to be a ballet dancer to meet girls, and when that doesn't work he comes up with lying about his backstory to pick up women in bars, before eventually realizing that it's easier to just be himself, whoever that is. Ryan becomes the first person Jennifer calls to rescue her from bad dates by pretending to be her brother and running into the restaurant because there's a family medical emergency.  But they never take their relationship to the next level, until one night they do, only Ryan forgot to break up with Heather first. Whoopsie. Then by sleeping with Jennifer he realizes what's been missing all this time, only Jennifer doesn't really feel the same way, or at least she pretends not to.  Damn, why does this all have to be so complicated?  It's exhausting, right?  

Look, at least this film thought to ASK some of the difficult questions about relationships - like, how much of it is random chance and how much of it is fate, that two people keep finding themselves in each other's orbits?  Certainly any college setting has a limited pool of people to date, plus there are only so many colleges in California, etc - but if either of these people had decided to move further away for college, we just wouldn't have had a movie.  I really didn't date outside of my own dorm at NYU, and that was the problem, I was just being lazy - but once I went to eat at the cafeteria a few blocks away, and ran into someone from my comedy writing class, who lived in a completely different dorm, well then things started to fall into place. So yeah, I get it, you bump into someone, share a meal, talk for a bit and then that little encounter changes your path and you're booked into a relationship for the next seven years or whatever. 

Other questions, does love really exist or is it just our imagination?  I mean, is it a basic human emotion, or merely a social construct that helps us pass the time?  I'm not saying there's a valid ANSWER here, but hey, at least somebody's asking the questions.  And your answers at any given time just might depend on whether you're currently in a relationship or if you just got dumped.  And who hasn't been dumped, or been the dumper?  They both kind of suck here, but that's really kind of the point. 

And then graduation is looming, so that kind of forces the issue, I get that, too.  In a few months Jennifer's senior year will be over and she's either got to make a decision to stick around, or take that job in Italy and that will be that.  But she's on her way to the airport when the shuttle van passes that hill that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge, where she and Ryan had that talk together.  She heads back to her apartment, only to find that Hunter's now sleeping with Amy, oh, and Ryan's catching a plane back to L.A.  Oh, if only she had stayed in that shuttle van that was going to the airport!  Can she make it to his airplane in time, and trade in her ticket to Italy for a ticket to L.A.?  Umm, sure, only it's pretty unlikely that the same airline would have flights to both places, and that she'd have to spend anything under two hours in line switching her tickets.  NITPICK POINT, just saying. 

NITPICK POINT #2 is that if they're going to college in Berkeley, they wouldn't be THAT close ot the Golden Gate Bridge - like, that wouldn't be a place that Ryan would go to think, because it wouldn't be that convenient.  They could more likely see the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, maybe. 

Also starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (last seen in "Clerks III"), Jason Biggs (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), Amanda Detmer (last seen in "You, Me, and Dupree"), Heather Donahue (last seen in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"), Alyson Hannigan (last seen in "My Stepmother Is an Alien"), Monica Arnold, Matt Schulze (last seen in "Mr. Brooks"), Brendon Ryan Barrett, Raquel Beaudene, David Smigelski, Blake Shields, Gay Thomas Wilson, Tsianina Joelson, Tim Griffin (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Brian Poth (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Lisa Eichhorn (last seen in "About Time"), Lee Garlington (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Susan Kellermann (last seen in "Where the Buffalo Roam"), Kylie Bax (last seen in "Get Over It"), Kristy Hinze (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Ines Rivero (last seen in "The Devil Wears Prada"), Renate Verbaan, John X, Kristofer Mickelson, Matt Carmody, Richard Hillman (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Timi Prulhiere (last seen in "Dear God"), Eric Rutherford, Steve Comisar (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Sean Maysonet, with a cameo from Carrie Ann Inaba. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 burnt cookies

Precious Cargo

Year 16, Day 31 - 1/31/24 - Movie #4,632

BEFORE: Last film for January, so you know what that means, I've got to start compiling some statistics.  Here's the format breakdown for this month's over-packed line-up:

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Song of Names, Clockwatchers, Mafia Mamma, John Wick: Chapter 4, The Whale, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, Senior Moment, Babylon

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Wolfpack, An Imperfect Murder, Far From the Madding Crowd, Under the Silver Lake, Precious Cargo

7 watched on Netflix: The Dirt, Stowaway, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, The School for Good and Evil, Maestro, The Machine, Extraction II

3 watched on Amazon Prime: All the Old Knives, Tár, She Said
5 watched on Hulu: The Worst Person in the World, Bergman Island, Quiz Lady, Jesus Henry Christ, Dream Horse

1 watched on Disney+: The LIttle Mermaid (2023)
1 watched on Tubi: Framing John DeLorean

2 watched on a random site: Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists, The Darkest Hour
32 TOTAL

And the actor/actress with the most appearances in January is Toni Collette with five, so she's off to an early lead, though I doubt she'll be in the running after the documentary block comes and goes.  We'll see - but tied for second place with three appearances each are Alec Baldwin, Joe Chrest, Laurence Fishburne, Carey Mulligan and Tim Roth.  Sorry, Brendan Fraser and Jimmy Tatro, I had to cut your third appearances. I'll try to reschedule those movies. 

Daniel Bernhardt carries over from "Extraction II". 

THE PLOT: A crime boss tries to make off with loot that belongs to another thief. 

AFTER: Tonight's film comes to us from E.F.O., or Emmett/Furla Oasis Films, and they basically cornered the market on Bruce Willis action films that you've probably never heard of.  They booked him solid for about 6 months back in 2015 for, let's say, maybe 100 1-day shoots on many action movies, and then somebody had to organize the shoots and plan the locations and costumes so that he didn't have to work more than 1 day on any movie, then they probably took their time shooting the rest of the movies with the cheaper actors.  It turned out to be a smart move, because a couple years later he retired from acting for medical reasons, and their company was sitting on dozens of unreleased action films that were already in the can.  OK, I'm not sure that's how it went down, but I know they maximized his time and two years ago I watched a metric ton of those films, like "Fire With Fire", "First Kill", "Hard Kill", "Acts of Violence", "Reprisal" and "Extraction" (only, not the "Extraction" with Chris Hemsworth, different movie.)

They're all, well, not great.  None of them could ever hold a candle to "Die Hard", but hey, same actor, right?  And they all feel like they were kind of thrown together, or like somebody didn't spend much time working on the script, assuming there WAS a script.  Seriously, go take a look at Bruce Willis' filmography between 2015 and 2022 and you'll see how profilic he was during that period, and you've never heard of any of those films either, unless you specifically focus your attention on the cheap, schloko action genre, like I did for a while.  Tonight's film must have slipped through the cracks, I missed it during my Bruce Willis-thon, but recorded it last fall when it was airing on either HBO or Cinemax.  And it's, well, not great. 

I could spend my time picking apart the storyline, but is there really a point to doing that?  Nobody really cared when they were putting it together, so why should I bother tearing it down?  OK, I can't resist.  It's about Jack, a guy who we meet in the middle of a weapons deal, just before his client tries to rip him off and then also shoot him.  But Jack's got an ace in the hole, a sniper positioned out of visual range who has instructions to shoot the client if the deal goes south.  Well, sure, that's one way to win every business deal, I guess - and of course now Jack gets to keep the money AND the weapons, assuming there were any weapons on the boat to begin with, and does that even matter?  Jeez, I want to like this guy but if he's dead-set on killing off his clients how is he going to get any word-of-mouth recommendations?  Let's call that NITPICK POINT #1, he can't get any repeat business. 

He's still pining over his ex, Karen, who shows up just when he's taking his new relationship with veterinarian Jenna to the next level, if you know what I mean.  Darn those exes, always showing up pregnant at the worst possible times.  But Karen needs his help with a job, a heist, a smash & grab that will help her win big, it's the big score to end all big scores - but the problem is, she stole the idea from the Big Boss, who thought of it but then backed out, and he feels that if Karen goes forward with the heist, he's still entitled to his cut, which is now 100%.  Yeah, that's a tough negotiator, and so Karen has to pull ANOTHER heist to raise enough money to pay off Filosa and still have something for herself.  Or, and I'm just putting this out there, she could just NOT DO THE JOB and then she would owe him nothing.  Let's call that NITPICK POINT #2 - if it's not financially worth it, if you'd lose money doing the job, then, umm, maybe just don't do it.  Well, that would save us all a bunch of time.

But no, they move forward with the armored car heist, which involves making the armored car stop, then dragging it away with a tow truck as if it's an incapacitated vehicle.  Umm, sure, if the police were looking for a missing armored car, they probably wouldn't think to stop that tow truck that's TOWING AN ARMORED CAR.  Yep, that's N.P. #3.  There's still a security guard in the armored car, so they get him out by filling the armored car with water.  Yeah, I don't think that would work - N.P. #4.  But here that somehow works, and the crew gets the diamonds.  Karen goes back, though, because there's something else in the armored car, and it's a little device that looks like an iPad, and it's the key to unlocking a safe.  Right.  I'll let you slide a little here, but I'm watching this closely...

The safe is on board a plane, which is going to land at an army base for refueling, which takes about 15 minutes.  So Jack and his crew have to figure out a way to get ON to a military base, distract all the soldiers who are guarding the plane, get ON the plane, crack the safe, get OFF the plane with the contents, and then somehow get out of the military base unscathed.  So many things that are impossible here, so there are about 6 more N.P.'s piling up, when OH!, they've got a perfect distraction, just drive an ice-cream truck on to the base, it's just that simple, only God knows it has no right to be.  

Against all logical reasoning, this plan seems to work, only there's not enough time to crack the safe open, so they do the next best thing, but some plastic explosives under it so they can blow it out of the army plane in mid-air.  Yeah, even if they could quickly calculate how much Semtex they would need to blow the safe OUT of the plane, without blowing the plane UP completely, there's still a big issue here, namely that the safe lands in the ocean, and although they have a crew member in a boat nearby, they never explain how he got the safe up from the sea floor - that crane's not big enough and there's no sign of a giant magnet or any kind of flotation device, the next time we see the safe, it's on the bed of a truck.  GIANT NITPICK POINT, and I guess the director just thought that nobody watching would even notice this.  Well, I did, so there. 

Bottom line, this is completely ridiculous and simply cannot be taken seriously at all.  I guess it's meant to be fun, though it's not really funny at all - but still, I am an accidental programming genius, because there's relationship stuff mixed in among the heist hijinks - will Karen and Jack get back together again, or will Jack try to patch things up with that cute veterinarian, after they used her medical practice to save the life of his crew member that got shot?  Are you Team Karen or Team Jenna?  Jack knows that Jenna is the more stable choice, but Karen is wild and exciting and gets him into trouble again and again - plus, she's rich now!  Still, she's the dangerous one, maybe stick with the vet, there's less history there. 

The real romance chain starts tomorrow on February 1, but this at least made for a decent thematic lead-in.  Umm, yeah, I meant for that to happen, let's go with that!

Also starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar (last seen in "Heist"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "De Palma"), Claire Forlani (last seen in "Meet Joe Black"), Jenna B. Kelly (last seen in "Acts of Violence"), Nick Loeb (last seen in "Extraction" (2015)), David Gordon (ditto), John Brotherton (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Lydia Hull (last seen in "Arsenal"), Tyler Jon Olson (ditto), Christopher Rob Bowen (ditto), Sammi Barber, Torrie Wilson (last seen in "Marauders"), Kirkland Shepherd, Ashley Kirk (last seen in "Vice" (2015)), Mackie Burt, Laura Kaufman, Chris Sileo, Jean-Claude Leuyer (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Sam Situmorang.

RATING: 4 out of 10 spark plugs not used for their intended purpose

Extraction II

Year 16, Day 30 - 1/30/24 - Movie #4,631

BEFORE: Just two action films stand between me and starting this Movie Year's romance chain, it's all set, it all came together just exactly almost as I hoped it would, and so I just need to get the adrenalin pumping a couple more times before we slow things down and take them nice and easy, celebrating love in all its crazy mixed-up beautiful and awkward forms.  But let's blow a few more things up first, OK? 

Dato Bakhtadze carries over from "The Darkest Hour".  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Extraction" (Movie #3,664)

THE PLOT: After barely surviving his wounds from his mission in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tyler Rake is back, and his team is ready to take on their next mission. 

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT for "Extraction 2", also the end of "Extraction".

If you're playing along at home, tonight's mystery country that half of the cast comes from is Georgia.  Not Russia, not the Soviet Union, I think there's a part at the end that was set in Austria, but half the cast here is Georgian, so there's zero overlap with the two movies this month that starred Russian actors.  Of course not, because I love making things more difficult for myself.  In addition, they also shot some scenes in Armenia and the Czech Republic, because why not? 

The first "Extraction" film was set mostly in Bangladesh, and it sure looked like the main character was dead at the end, but then that film became a huge hit on Netflix, so it turns out he was only "mostly" dead, and the first half-hour of this sequel shows him being rescued and given medical attention, then there's a long sequence where he's in the hospital and doing physical rehab, cuz that's such a good use of screen time. Well, at least they were trying to be realistic, because getting shot in the neck and then falling off a bridge into a dirty river would probably require a lot of recovery time, and most movie franchises wouldn't take the time to show you that. 

The plan is for Tyler Rake to go back to his cabin, watch TV with his dog and just try to be happy for the rest of his days, but come on, that's just not in the cards for him.  Too bad, he deserves some down time after everything he's been through, but one day a mysterious stranger shows up at his cabin in the middle of nowhere and has a job for him.  He's not inclined to take it, until he finds out that the job is to extract his ex-wife's sister, who's married to a very bad man in Georgia, who's somehow both very powerful AND also in prison and he's decided that the best way to keep his wife and children safe are to keep them in his prison cell, which makes absolutely no sense.  I mean, if he's so important and powerful then why is he in prison, doesn't he have enough power and influence to keep himself out of there?  And if there's another faction of criminals in the prison who are trying to kill him, then why bring his family there to keep them safe, instead of, say, sending them to another country for a while?  It's just a dick move made by a control freak, I guess. 

So the gangster's wife and kids need to be extracted, that's right up Tyer's alley - I'm reminded of the "Taken" franchise where Liam Neeson's character kept losing family members to criminals, first they took his daughter, then his wife and himself in the sequel, and then in "Taken 3" - well, nobody remembers, do they?  I think I was the only person who watched that last one. But nobody told the gangster about the extraction, I guess, and he didn't really like what was happening when he realized his wife and kids were participating in a jailbreak, which fell right in the middle of a prison riot.  Finally, the movie kicks into highest gear and stays in it for a very long time, as the prison riot leads into a van chase which leads into a train-based escape and an assault on that train from the villain's forces, now led by the villain's brother (Tyler's ex-sister-in-law's brother-in-law?).

It's meant to look like one continuous shot, through the prison break and the van chase, right up to the end of the train chase. Umm, I think?  That would be impressive if they pulled it off, but then also maybe a little less so since "1917" tried to do this for the entire movie. I'm guessing that visual effects allowed for cheating in both cases, and if you look hard enough you can probably see where the seams are, where two shots were stitched together or there was a break originally but movie magic allowed the action to continue, sort of interrupted. (It's 21 minutes long, but took 29 days to shoot...) Damn, but it was still probably a lot of work, I wish this were the kind of thing that the Visual Effects Guilds would learn to appreciate, however it all falls under editing, which at its best is something of an invisible art form. 

Everyone seems to be in the clear when they leave Georgia and make it to Austria, where they can all relax for a while in a beautiful skyscraper that turns out to be a terrible place to hide because there are floor-to-ceiling windows made of very breakable glass and also the top floor is very high and you'd hate to see a battle take place there because it would really suck to fall from there or be thrown off from there.  So guess what...  It turns out that these Georgian gangsters can also travel to Austria and track our heroes down, and then when it's all over, Tyler and his team are on the hook for operating shadow ops in a very beautiful peaceful country, because apparently they didn't ask permission to hide some extracted Georgians in Vienna, and then all this had to happen, plus a beautiful new skyscraper got absolutely ruined. Not to mention that church, which admittedly was undergoing repairs, but still - a church!  

So Tyler and his mercenary handler end up in jail, but not to worry, the mysterious stranger who hired them in the first place, who works for an even more mysterious stranger is willing to arrange their release, provided they agree to make "Extraction III".  Oh, yeah, it's gonna happen.  What country's buildings will they destroy next time?  

Also starring Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "Rosewater"), Adam Bessa (last seen in "Extraction"), Tornike Gogrichiani, Tornike Bziava, Olga Kurylenko (last seen in "The November Man"), Idris Elba (last seen in "The Gunman"), Tinatin Dalakishvili, Andro Japaridze, Mariami Kovziashvili, Marta Kovziashvili, Daniel Bernhardt (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Irakli Kvirikadze, Levan Saginashvili, Megan Anderson, George Lasha (last seen in "Spectre"), Patrick Newall (last seen in "Kate"), Hector Andreu, Craig "Chili" Palmer, Ahmad Alhadi, Jenn Kirk, Tako Tabatadze, Vano Dugladze, Travis Gomez, Matt LaBorde, Dustin Stern-Garcia (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Shahaub Roudbari (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Justin Howell (last seen in "The Man from Toronto"), Rayna Campbell, Hristo Dimitrov, Jordan Le Goueff, Sam Hargrave (also last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Demetre Kavelashvili, Giga Shavadze, David Chogovadze. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 fake passports

The Darkest Hour

Year 16, Day 29 - 1/29/24 - Movie #4,630

BEFORE: The title of this alien invasion movie is very similar to that film about Winston Churchill that Gary Oldman won an Oscar for a few years ago, but this film actually came out first, back in 2011.  I recorded this on my DVR about three years ago, and it's taking up too much space, it's got to go. 

But wait, do you want to guess which movie my DVR really recorded?  According to the cable guide and the movie listing on my DVR, it was supposed to record the 2011 sci-fi film "The Darkest Hour", but it actually recorded the Gary Oldman film from 2017 - I should have known when the movie recorded was almost two and a half hours long, instead of just 90 minutes.  But that means the WRONG film has been taking up space on my DVR for three years.  It also means someone at the cable channel is NOT paying attention to which movie they're running, and they get confused when there are two movies with similar names.  I went through this before with the 1995 movie "Kicking and Screaming", directed by Noah Baumbach, every time I tried to record it, it turned out to be the 2005 film "Kicking & Screaming" starring Will Ferrell.  Will the people who work for Starz and Showtime and Cinemax please start paying attention to which movies they are airing?  

Max Minghella carries over from "Babylon", assuming I can find this 2011 sci-fi film streaming somewhere, or at least on the pirate movie site that saved my neck with "The Myth of Fingerprints" last Thanksgiving. 

THE PLOT: In Moscow, five young people lead the charge against an alien race that has attacked Earth via our power supply. 

AFTER: I'm in luck, this movie was posted on the pirate site I've been using, but I want to point out that I ONLY use the site to watch a movie when it is NOT available on cable, and not streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Roku, Tubi, Plex, or Freevee,  OK, so I've been known to use it when a film is on iTunes or YouTube for $3.99 and I don't want to pay for it.  What's the harm?  I'm not going to post the name of the site because I don't want it to get shut down. Look, I know the new Aquaman movie is posted there, but I'm not going to watch it there, because it will be on HBO probably in about a month anyway.  Same goes for "The Marvels", as soon as it's on Disney+ I'll work it into the chain, I've got plenty of movies to keep me busy.  So I only go to the pirate site in emergencies, when I have to watch a certain movie to keep the chain going, and I can't find it anywhere else. 

Also, programming note, I know I could have watched "Barbie" right after "Babylon", the Margot Robbie connection was almost too obvious to ignore - and then "Barbie" could have connected to "Dumb Money" via America Ferrera, and then "Dumb Money" could have brought me to tonight's film, via Olivia Thirlby, obviously.  I chose to not do that, however, because I'm not that into the "Barbie" film, I'd just be watching it to see what all the fuss was about, and also I don't have a way to add two more days to January, and I have a destination in mind for February 1.  It's going to take three more steps from here, and I only have three more days. 

What a weird month it's been, right?  And my linking has been like totally next level, connecting a romance film with an all-Norwegian cast to a World War II drama with a mostly Polish cast, then a horse-racing film with mostly local Welsh actors (and one Aussie), then a Mafia comedy with an all-Italian cast (and that same Aussie) before passing by a UK stop-motion film, a classic romance with an Irish-English cast, and then two films with half-Russian casts, "The Machine" and this one, and they didn't even share any Russian actors?  Why do I make things so difficult for myself?  The greater the risk, the greater the reward, is that it?  (And let's not forget "Tar" and "The Little Mermaid", which both had multi-culti cast members from all over, German and Asian and Hispanic and Eastern European.  It's been like the United Nations around here. 

Tonight we're back in Moscow on a trip with two young software engineers, who arrive to find their Swedish business partner has given their pitch to the city for a software app for them and cut them out of the deal.  Oh, well, live and learn, might as well hang around for a few days, catch whatever nightlife Russia has to offer, meet some girls and wait for the aliens to attack.  Wait, what?  Talk about a travel nightmare, the two men, the two women they met AND the guy who stole their business idea end up barricaded in the nightclub's prep kitchen for a week, thankfully there was enough food down there to sustain them.  When they emerge they find that the city is nearly deserted, the aliens have killed, eaten or disintegrated nearly everyone, and unless they can figure out how to hide in plain sight, they'll be next.  

Fortunately, these guys are super-nerds, like, aren't all software engineers super nerdy?  So they figure out that these floating alien balls of light don't have eyes, so they must be "seeing" by using electricity, and if they can hide behind glass or solid non-metal objects, the aliens can't see or sense them.  This at least gives them a chance to learn if there are any other survivors out there, and when they see a light on in a nearby apartment complex, they head for it.  Except the jerk-off business man who stole their idea doesn't make it, the aliens get him, but he totally deserved it, we didn't like him, anyway. 

The now-foursome meets a Russian who's turned his apartment into a Faraday cave, because it keeps the aliens from finding him.  He's also built a microwave gun that he thinks will disrupt the aliens so they can then be harmed, also if they find any leftover food along the way in abandoned apartments, the gun's also great at warming it up.  Together the four wayward Americans make their way to a group of Russian amateur militia, who are holed up in a library (I think, based on the big card catalog in the background) and they share information about the submarine that's coming to town in a few days to rescue any survivors, the location's being broadcast on all the Russian radio stations, also the message is #1 on Russian Top 40. 

So it's another team-up to get across the city in time for the submarine pick-up, but essentially this alien invasion film just follows the same formula as "The War of the Worlds", or "Independence Day" or, well, all of them.  The aliens invade, they kill thousands of people, but a few survivors band together to find out what the aliens' weakness is, and then, by golly, we've got a chance at taking our world back.  It might have been more interesting if I hadn't seen nearly the exact same scenario play out in "Captive State", "District 9" and so many others. It's too bad, we never really find out WHY the aliens invaded, like do they want our water, or our food, or our women?  Maybe they're here for our movies!  Nah, they probably just want to eat our women. 

This was probably made during that brief period where the U.S. had good relations with Russia, namely after the Soviet Union collapsed, but before Putin took charge and turned it into the Evil Empire again.  Those were the days, right? 

Also starring Emile Hirsch (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Rachael Taylor (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Joel Kinnaman (last seen in "The Informer"), Veronika Vernadskaya, Dato Bakhtadze (last seen in "Ben-Hur" (2016)), Gosha Kutsenko, NIkolay Efremov, Georgiy Gromov, Artur Smolyaninov, Anna Rudakova, Pyotr Fyodorov, Alya Nikulina, Igor Nesvetaev, Mariya Romanova, Irina Antonenko, Sergey Kroshkin. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 upscale stores in the Moscow mall

Babylon

Year 16, Day 28 - 1/28/24 - Movie #4,629

BEFORE: Jean Smart carries over from "Senior Moment", but this film has such a large cast that it's one of those "Time Bandits" time-hole movies, from here I could link to just about anything, so I've got that weird sinking feeling, why watch this film NOW when I could be saving it to get me out of a linking jam, somewhere down the road?  I almost feel like I'm wasting it, but it's been on the DVR for a while, taking up too much space, so I also desperately want to get it off the list. 

I remember there was some Oscar buzz for this film when it was released in December 2022, like they held a lot of guild screenings for it, but with a running time over 3 hours, that was maybe a bit of a tough sell.  It didn't make the studio much money, the worldwide gross was half the budget, so somebody LOST a bundle on this one.  It did get three nominations, but in the minor categories like costuming and production design, notably NONE for the cast. Umm, that's not really a good sign, but still, I'm intensely curious about what this film's got going on. 

THE PLOT: A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood. 

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT for the plot of "Babylon", but you've had over a year to see this one - still, don't say I didn't warn you. 

I just saw something the other day on one of the entertainment clip shows that discussed how "Babylon" is the story of a trumpet player who becomes famous as he rises through the ranks of Hollywood productions. Umm, no it's not.  I mean it is, but that's just one of the five main intersecting storylines here, so it really sells the movie short, and it means whoever wrote that did NOT watch the movie, and I'm guessing many other people also avoided this one, partially because of the long running time.  This might have worked better as, say, a series on Netflix or Hulu, and I'm shocked that it didn't end up as one, instead it demands over three hours of your time, and today's audiences just don't have that kind of attention span.  Sure, they'll watch an 8-hour Hulu series that's broken up into 1-hour episodes, but not a 3-hour movie, even though that's shorter in the long run.  

There are five main characters who are followed through the "Golden Age" of Hollywood (and it turns out it was called the "Golden Age" because people back then liked to have other people piss on them at kinky parties, allegedly) and they are:  Jack Conrad, an A-level actor who goes through a succession of four or five marriages; Nellie LaRoy, an ingenue actress who will do anything to get into movies, and then anything after that; Manny Torres, a resourceful delivery guy anxious to work on movie sets; Lady Fay Zhu, a hyphenate dancer-singer-sex worker-editor-director of Asian descent; and Sidney Palmer, that trumpet player who eventually starts appearing a series of musical films.  But it's a long road for all of them, lots of twists and turns and setbacks on their journeys.  And all this takes place during the Age of Excess, there are drugs and alcohol and sexual encounters and lavish parties where all three come together. 

Right from the start, Manny is tasked with delivering an elephant to a party at producer Don Wallach's house, because nothing says extravagance like an elephant, right?  The problem is that his mansion is up on top of a mountain, so how to get the pachyderm up there?  The truck sent to carry the beast is not up to the job, so Manny and another man find themselves behind the truck, trying to somehow push it up the mountain road, which proves to be impossible.  But while they're back there, the elephant, whether out of fear or necessity, starts crapping out the back of the truck, and the other worker gets literally covered in elephant crap.  Yeah, that kinds of sets the tone for the whole movie, there will be more vulgar humor and disturbing bodily functions to come.  If you thought this was going to be a classy film about Old Hollywood, as I did, well, you've kind of come to the wrong place. 

Nellie tries to crash the same party (instead she literally crashes her car into a statue outside, and then blames the statue) and Manny lies to the bouncers to get her in.  Their friendship is formed, and they'll encounter each other several more times before we get to the end.  Sidney is playing trumpet at this very same party, of course, and Jack's there, too, breaking up with his wife because he refuses to speak in English, only Italian for some reason, and she's had enough of that.  Surely there must be another reason for her to divorce him, but no, this is what we get. Manny shows Nellie the room where the drugs are stored, and this is a bit like giving a flamethrower to an arsonist - but an actress overdosed upstairs, so thank God there's an elephant coming to the party, because Manny realizes they can use that as a distraction to get the body out of there.  Meanwhile, Nellie is cast from among all the partygoers to replace her, so she's got to be on the set bright and early the next morning, which of course does not stop her from partying, not in the least.  Manny gets lucky, too, he's assigned to drive the very drunk Jack Conrad home, and Jack taps him to be his new personal assistant-slash-fixer. 

And we're off, to the set where about five silent movies are being filmed at the same time (hmm, not sure that's how movie sets work...) and one of them is a giant gladiator action movie, where nobody is a professional stuntman, so a few of the soldier extras end up getting stabbed for reals.  Umm, OK, we'll assume that there was a bit of trial and error in the old days, but this might be taking things a bit too far.  Also there's a full orchestra on the set, providing the music as an inspiration for the battle scene, but I don't think this was part of the making of any silent movie, I mean, it's SILENT, why did they need an orchestra?  They could have just used a gramophone, right?  Sure, it sets up the non-sensical image of gladiators and horses trampling the woodwinds section, but come on, that never really happened.  This is about when I realized that nothing in this film could possibly be taken seriously - yet this wanted very badly to be a serious film, and you can't have these Mel Brooks-style sight gags in a film and still be a legit drama.  

On another part of the set, Nellie goes through make-up and costuming, several times, and then is tasked with appearing in a Western (?) movie, where she has to flirt with several guys in a saloon and then dance seductively on top of the bar.  Then when the woman who rescued her from poverty comes in, she needs to cry on cue.  Nellie's got this one down, the dancing and the crying and she even takes her top off, which she wasn't even asked to do - really, she goes above and beyond, has sex with everyone on the set even though it isn't that kind of movie. But hey, she's a giver and she's trying to get ahead in a tough business. 

The gladiator picture gets stalled when the horses trample the last of their ten cameras, though you'd think that after breaking say, five cameras the crew might learn to take better care of the equipment, but that's just not the case.  So Manny is sent to drive back into L.A. from the desert in order to get another camera, before the sun goes down, and before the director completely loses his mind.  Hundreds of extras are standing around in gladiator armor, with nothing to do - it's not like you can just cancel the shoot for the day and get everyone back tomorrow, no, of course not.  The only person really working is Jack, who's in his tent trying to write and produce his next film, but also getting very drunk at the same time.  Manny finally makes it to the camera rental house, waits for their only available camera to get checked back in, and then races back to the set so they can finish the scene, using the last few rays of sunlight.  Give me a break - but this does cement Manny's reputation as a problem-solver. 

Manny is then sent to New York City to catch a screening of "The Jazz Singer", starring Al Jolson, which was the first film to synch sound with its images - because back then there were only a few million people in NYC, and therefore nobody else who could tell Jack Conrad what that was like.  This makes no sense, either, because didn't they also screen that film in L.A.?  Nah, I guess it's not a big movie-watching town...  Suddenly everyone's world is rocked because they have to all learn to make movies a new way.  Yeah, this doesn't make sense either, because it's not like a switch suddenly got flipped, the change-over was no doubt more gradual than this, but whatever.  Hollywood movies regard the invention of synched sound as something akin to the moon landing mixed with the cure for polio, and it couldn't possibly have been that big of a deal.  

But these are the jokes - the first film that Nellie's in with sound being recorded is a huge disaster, first she says her lines too loudly, then she's too quiet.  There are too many noises on set, and anytime a P.A. sneezes then everyone goes into a panic.  The microphones are put in certain places and the actors are given stage directions based on that, then the actors miss their marks and the directors learn that the mikes can't be moved without taking a half-hour break. Why is everyone on set suddenly so bad at their jobs?  Why does this cause everything short of three nervous breakdowns and a full-on fist-fight?  Is this supposed to be funny, it's every crew person's nightmare!  I didn't find it funny at all, there's simply no way that introducing microphones to a movie set would cause this much chaos.  The acclaimed producer Don Wallach shows up on set, witnesses all the chaos and doesn't fire anyone?  That's the most unbelievable part of this whole scene, he should have fired EVERYONE and brought in a new director, cast and crew who could, you know, actually perform their jobs.  

Nellie keeps working, although it's determined she doesn't have the proper voice for acting in movies with sound - (Je-SUS, why do directors keep re-making "Singin' in the Rain"?) but she deals with her situation by gambling, taking a lot of drugs, and going to these lavish parties, and same goes for Jack Conrad, who's got another new wife and spies an audience laughing at his latest movie performance.  Nellie also visits her mother in an asylum in New York, and hires her father as her business manager, but he just wants to open a restaurant with her earnings, and fight a rattlesnake during the next drunken party.  When he falls down drunk, Nellie takes his place, wrangles the snake, but also gets bitten by it.  She's saved by Fay Zhu, who cuts the snake's head off with a knife, then sucks out the poison from Nellie's neck - and this makes Nellie fall in love with her, and I don't think that's how lesbians work either, but I could be wrong.  I mean, whatever floats your boat, great, but we couldn't just have two women love each other naturally because that's the way they are, we had to create this whole weird scenario with a rattlesnake to make this happen?  

More time passes, and Sidney the trumpeter is seen again, he's been working with Manny to star in music-based films for the black audiences, but during one production it's determined that there's some kind of lighting issue, and the other musicians hired for the film have darker skin than he does, so the director asks him to use cork to darken his skin so he won't look lighter than the other cast members.  At first he refuses, because asking a black man to wear blackface make-up is incredibly racist, however if he doesn't do it, then the other cast members will be fired and he'll be responsible for other African-Americans losing their job.  So he relents and performs in the make-up, but then quits soon after that.  Again, I'd like to know if this is anything close to a real-life situation, because it kind of feels like the film is bending itself over backwards to depict something that probably never happened, because it feels like the most vulgar, insulting thing that someone could possibly imagine happening, and what's the point of that? 

Same goes for the next party that Nellie attends, which is not the type of drunken sex-party where she feels at home, it's a real classy party at the mansion of William Randolph Hearst, and when she feels nervous and out of place, she tells a very raunchy dirty joke, then screams at everyone in attendance, goes to the buffet and hand-feeds herself some of the food, and then leaves the party and feels sick, though whether it's from the food or her actions, we're not sure.  Oh, she could just lean over the balcony outside and throw up, but instead for some reason she goes back into the party and vomits all over the host.  There's simply no reason for this to happen this way, it just means some screenwriter REALLY HATED William Randolph Hearst - it's also not funny in any way, but just disgusting, like many of the key moments in this movie.  

Meanwhile, Jack meets with Elinor, the gossip columnist, and she informs him that his career is essentially over.  She wrote in her column that his popularity has declined, his star has faded, but the good news is that even fifty or a hundred years later, he'll still be alive (sort of) on film.  People will still watch his movies and like him and want him to be their friend, even though he's very dead.  Jack does not deal with this well, and after saying goodbye to Fay Zhu, who's leaving for Europe, he excuses himself from a hotel party, kisses his fifth wife, then goes back to his room and shoots himself.  Sure, the clear message here is that once Hollywood is done with you, life is worthless and has no meaning.  It's not like you can take the money you earned over the years, or sell your mansion and go live out your days in some small town in Colorado or Idaho and NOT be famous, that would be ridiculous.  Nope, better to just end it all, how stupid. 

The end-game of the story starts with gangsters threatening Nellie's life because of her massive gambling debts - she turns to Manny, who wants to just put her in the car and drive to Mexico, where they can get married and start over, but as you may have guessed, that would be just as ridiculous and impossible as Jack walking away from movies, it's not going to happen.  So Manny comes up with a scheme to raise the $85K she owes and enlists the help of the on-set drug pusher, The Count, to raise the money.  But dropping off the money means going to one more underground party, and this one has a live crocodile and a giant wrestler who eats rats, so really, you can't say this movie didn't aim low, it did that at every opportunity.  I won't give away the other details of the payoff here, but things go South and Manny is forced to flee L.A.

That's hardly a happy ending, but I guess that's where we find ourselves because over time, the life expectancy of everything is exactly zero, but then what's the appeal?  Why go to work in Hollywood at the magic factory where happiness is made if nothing's going to go right and we're all going to die?  Manny comes back to L.A. 20 years later, and catches a screening of "Singin' in the Rain", and all the memories come flooding back to him.  (Je-SUS, why do we keep coming back to "Singin' in the Rain"?  I mean, it's an OK film, it's fine, but it's no "Citizen Kane".)

And umm, why, exactly, didn't the movie START with this, and then have the whole movie told in Manny's flashback instead of having a separate second set of flash-backs at the end, some of which are flash-forwards to modern fimmaking, which Manny wouldn't even have the capability of remembering, because they haven't happened yet?  As is, this just looks like another example of Hollywood promoting itself and sucking its own dick, like those cuckoo clocks in Geppetto's workshop that somehow have the more modern Disney characters on them, in an appalling display of self-promotion? 

In the time it takes to watch this, you could just watch "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" again, which also has Brad PItt as an aging, disenchanted actor and Margot Robbie as a young, up-and-coming but ultimately doomed starlet.  And at least Quentin Tarantino had something to say that wasn't just based on vulgar bodily functions, even though that film got a little off-track at the end, at least it started out well. 

Also starring Brad Pitt (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Margot Robbie (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo (last seen in "Overlord"), Li Jun Li (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Lukas Haas (last seen in "Contraband"), Olivia Hamilton (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Max Minghella (last seen in "Horns"), Rory Scovel (last seen in "Dean"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"), Tobey Maguire (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Flea (last seen in "Count Me In"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Eric Roberts (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Clerks III"), Samara Weaving (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Spike Jonze (last heard in "Sing 2"), Telvin Griffin, Chloe Fineman (last seen in "White Noise"), Phoebe Tonkin, Troy Metcalf (last seen in "Shrink"), Jennifer Grant, Patrick Fugit (last seen in Cinema Verite"), Pat Skipper (last seen in "Seabiscuit"), Kaia Gerber, Cyrus Hobbi, Karen Bethzabe, John Kerry, Sarah Ramos (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Alexandre Chen, Taylor Hill, John Mariano, Mather Zickel (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Albert Hammond Jr., Joe Dallesandro (last seen in "Sunset"), Marc Platt, Sophia Magaña, Terry Walters (last seen in "Thanks for Sharing"), J.C. Currais, Jimmy Ortega (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Shane Powers, Hansford Prince (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Cutty Cuthbert (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Robert Morgan (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), E.E. Bell (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Sol Landerman, Karina Fontes, Cici Lau (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), David Lau, Zack Newick, Bob Clendenin (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Carlos Nuñez, Laura Steinel, Danny Jolles, James Vincent, Richard Clarke Larsen, Anthony Burkhalter, Karolina Szymczak (last seen in "Hercules"), Sean O'Bryan (also last seen in "Cinema Verite"), David Ury (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Katia Gomez (last seen in "Get Hard"), Vanessa Bednar, Carson Higgins, Frederick Koehler (last seen in "Domino"), Spencer Morgan, Yissendy Trinidad, Anton Hedayat, Hayley Huntley, Christopher Allen, Alex Reznik (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Ireland Sexton, Andrew Hawtrey, Jonathan Ohye (last seen in "Book Club"), James Crittenden, Robert Beitzel (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Walker Hare, Douglas Fruchey, John Macey, Oscar Balderrama (last seen in "The Guilty"), Tef Baker, Moises Chavez, Anna Chazelle (last seen in "First Man"), Anna Dahl, Lucie Hamanova, Daniel Holm, Natasha Kalimada, Kennedy Porter, Andrea Ramos, Zhan Wang

with archive footage of Jean Hagen (last seen in "Adam's Rib"), Al Jolson, Gene Kelly (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Debbie Reynolds (ditto), Donald O'Connor (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "The Protégé"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 members of the USC football team