Fair Play

Year 16, Day 97 - 4/6/24 - Movie #4,696

BEFORE: OK, I've got a path to Mother's Day, I can rest easy for a bit.  This was a tough one, I stayed up late Friday night working it out - my first thought was, it's about 37 days until Mother's Day, and I've got about 32 or 33 films in the documentary chain, arranged in a linked circle, which I can enter at just about any point, as long as that leaves me with an end film that links to a Mother's Day film, and I've got several of those earmarked.  Last year's Doc Block started in April, and it worked out fine, but I tried several times and I could NOT get it to work this year. 

Next plan, there are about 35 days between Mother's Day and Father's Day, could the documentary chain fit there?  Yes, it can, with two or three days to spare.  It doesn't necessarily put the films in the order I want, but I've got multiple ins and outs this way, three ways to enter the chain via Mother's Day-related films, and three ways to exit the chain to the same Father's Day film.  That's pretty good, it gives me a lot of options and a little extra space to add a doc here or there, but it doesn't put the documentary I want on July 4.  So I'll keep this in mind, but now we're talking about driving down to North Carolina for a week in May to visit my parents, so that would mean I'd be away from my DVR and computer, and would not have full access to the films I have saved.  So I think I'm looking at starting the Doc Block in June, right after Father's Day, and this way if the film with "American" in the title doesn't line up with the most American of holidays, I can add a film or two until I get to a starting point that I want.  I've got all summer to fi the Doc Block in somewhere, so I like my odds that way. 

But what I do have now is the actor LINKS to get me to the end of April, and they start with Alden Ehrenreich carrying over from "Oppenheimer".  I like it, it's not so obvious as Robert Downey Jr. or Kenneth Branagh carrying over (though they're both in the documentary about Stan Lee, which was very tempting...) and then after that: Patrick Fischler, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Frank Harts, Adrienne Warren, John Boyega, David Alan Grier, Taraji P. Henson, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, Jack Reynor, Geoffrey Streatfield, Nick Frost, James Marsden, Alan Tudyk, Robert Patrick, Craig Sheffer, Joey Lauren Adams, Michael McKean, and Helen Mirren.  Good luck figuring out what movies have those actors in them, if that's your thing, and if you do, you'll see how much distance I've put between "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie".  

THE PLOT: An unexpected promotion at a cutthroat Manhattan hedge fund pushes a young couple's relationship to the brink, threatening to unravel more than their recent engagement. 

AFTER: Yes, I feel good about this path - partially because this film DID play at the theater where I work, and I did work that shift, and then I think I just kind of forgot about the movie.  Well, I put it on my list and then forgot about it, but the chain reminded me, which is fine - that's why I have a list.  Also, the cast list is NOT that big and doesn't have many name actors, so if I don't watch this now, it's going to sit on the list for like three years and then scroll off of Netflix, then where will I be? Carpe cinemum.

This is one of those "challenging" relationship films, that depicts a couple getting together and then everything going wrong, and I guess I'm glad it didn't end up in the February chain, but I probably could have found a way to make that work if I had to.  More than anything it's a cautionary tale about not dating your co-worker, because that situation is a complete minefield, and really, everybody should know that by now, what with everything that's been in the news AND all the sexual harassment seminars they make everybody take, annually, at just about every corporate job.  Those films that they make you watch, with a survey afterwards to make sure you learned something, are completely terrible, all of them.  Bad production values, carefully worded phrases to make everyone feel included, but then they end up coming across as horribly sexist and kind of judgmental no matter how they do it.  I saw one training program that used footage from the film "The Assistant" and hey, thanks for the spoilers, guys.

OK, let me try to highlight just where this relationship took a wrong turn.  I've got to say right from the start, obviously two co-workers shouldn't date for one simple reason - if either one gets promoted, they could be the other one's boss, and that's no bueno, so of course it's exactly what happens here.  Also, they're supposed to disclose to H.R. if they want to date each other, and sure, nobody wants to fill out a form, that would make the whole attraction/dating/sleeping together thing so, well, formal.  If they don't do that, though, then they have to pretend in front of all their co-workers that they're NOT attracted to each other, NOT sleeping together and now we're into lying and deception.  When a co-worker says that he's noticed the way Emily looks at Luke, Emily says, "I don't shit where I eat..." which is a catch-phrase of course, but umm, you're equating your relationship with "shitting", so that's not a good sign.  Can't we come up with a better phrase than this?  

We don't really know how long they've been dating, but things start to escalate at Luke's brother's wedding, where they have sex in the bathroom, and during that (umm, the details are probably best not mentioned here) Emily notices the ring on the floor that's fallen out of Luke's pocket.  So he's got no choice to propose, which apparently he'd been planning for some time.  Sure, because every woman wants a man to pop the question when he's kneeling on a public restroom floor, and they've just had nasty sex.  Sure, that's every woman's dream, right?  Really, he could have covered it better, said that was a fake ring or something they used during his brother's wedding rehearsal so they didn't lose the real ring.  This guy Luke doesn't really think on his feet very well.  

The real trouble starts when a portfolio manager at their firm has a meltdown and starts breaking office equipment - hey, it's a high-pressure job, we get it - and is fired.  Emily hears a rumor that Luke is going to get a promotion to replace the guy who lost it, but then the company's CEO cals her late at night - he thinks she lives out on Long Island, he doesn't know she's sharing an apartment with a co-worker - and asks her out to a private bar somewhere in FiDi, sure, nothing weird about meeting the boss at 2:00 am in a secret club.  But he offers her the promotion, he sees something in her background or personality that convinces him she's got what it takes.  

Bad news for Luke, great news for Emily, and a weird situation because they just got engaged, and they didn't tell HR about their relationship, and now SHE is HIS boss, not the other way around like they expected.  Luke feels resentment, and he starts attending a self-help seminar about being more assertive in the workplace.  He tries to get Emily into the lessons, but dude, she doesn't need help, she's GOT the gig.  Now it's all awkward and stuff because she's got to give Luke orders and hold him accountable when he doesn't follow through on things, and meanwhile he's taking this class that tells him not to take any B.S. from his employers.  Umm, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Well, a lot.  

Emily thinks she needs to be "one of the guys" and hang out with the other PMs, even at a strip club, even when drugs and alcohol are involved, and Luke's at home alone in their apartment, sinking deeper into resentment.  There's another opening and Emily tries to suggest Luke for it, so they can be equals again, but the CEO lets her know that's never going to happen, he only hired Luke as a favor for a friend, and he figures Luke will eventually quit when he doesn't get promoted, as people tend to do.  This would only be a problem if Luke weren't taking a course on how to aggressively get the promotion he thinks he deserves.  Luke's also not doing his work properly, and the company loses millions, but then Emily shorts a British company on a hunch that pays off, and earns the company millions more, and she gets a six-figure commission for that.  You'd think, hey, this is found money, like she won the lottery or something, but "mo money, mo problems", right?  They could probably move to a bigger apartment or buy a condo or a co-op, only that would be another blow to Luke's fragile alpha-male ego. 

Meanwhile, Luke still hasn't told his parents about the engagement, Emily hasn't had time to just stop and enjoy the fact that she got engaged, because the new position (and those late nights partying) are taking up all her time.  The couple stops having sex regularly, and then their families put together a surprise engagement party.  Oh, great.  They're in the downward spiral at this point, and these forces are going to tear them apart, it's just a question of exactly how and when.  Largely I think you have to put the blame on Luke here, I feel his pain because my wife makes more money than I do, but he could just learn to live with that.  If she's bringing home big bonus checks, that's a great situation to be in, why not try to relax and enjoy that?  Or get out of that stupid financial business and find something else you really want to do?  Or you know, stay home and learn to cook and maybe clean up once in a while, be like her support staff so she can do her job better and keep those bonus checks coming in?  Get the hell OVER yourself, is what I'm saying.  Or just go ahead and keep getting angrier and more resentful and more desperate, because that's a good look, and come on, it doesn't end well.

I still can't see Ehrenreich as anything but the young Han Solo - but the situqtion here is possibly similar to what happened to Han and Leia after "Return of the Jedi". After all the fighting was over, Leia's diplomatic skills would be needed by the new New Republic much more than Han's, umm...piloting skills?  Smuggling tricks?  Yes, there were novels set after the events of Episode 6, where the couple married, had two kids and found ways to be important to the new government system, but those books have been retconned out of existence now, and sure enough, when we saw Han again in "Episode 7" he'd gone back to his scoundrelly smuggling ways.  Makes sense, he couldn't take a back-seat in the relationship, he was never one for being a co-pilot, just the captain of his own ship. Err, general?  Doesn't matter, but I'd still like to know when they split, according to the new continuity.  Things went south at some point, as they always tend to do, and maybe co-parenting just wasn't in the cards, I bet a lot of the Knights of Ren came from broken homes.  (Huh, that's funny, he plays "Luke" in this movie, not "Han".)

I'm not going to get into the situations near the end, because clearly they're there JUST to be controversial, JUST to get audiences talking, or get some buzz on social media.  And the ending is really a cop-out, we don't know exactly what happens after the film cuts to black, there are several possibilities, and you'll kind of have to imagine what happens between Emily and Luke after that.  Just bear in mind that what you think happens after the credits roll could say a lot about you as a person.  I think these two are like oil and vinegar, they came together for a while and had a thing that worked out, but if they're both this self-centered, these Gen Z bastards, then ultimately no matter what happens they're destined to separate over time.  But no, go on, tell me your version of a possible happy ending here - neither character really deserves one. 

Also starring Phoebe Dynevor, Eddie Marsan (last seen in "Flag Day"), Rich Sommer (last seen in "King Richard"), Sebastian de Souza, Sia Alipour (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2"), Yacine Ramoul, Brandon Bassir, Jamie Wilkes, Freddy Sawyer, Geraldine Somerville (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Patrick Fischler (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Laurel Lefkow, Buck Braithwaite, Jim Sturgeon (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Linda Ljoka, Leopold Hughes (last seen in "RED 2"), Ivona Kustudic.

RATING: 4 out of 10 steak knives (conveniently placed)

Oppenheimer

Year 16, Day 95 - 4/4/24 - Movie #4,695

BEFORE: Gary Oldman carries over from "Murder in the FIrst", and I can't wait any longer, I've got a day off so let's finally get to "Oppenheimer", Best Picture winner that's streaming on the popular (?) Peacock platform.  

Yeah, I went back and forth on this, and at first I wanted to come here straight from "A Haunting in Venice", but then I thought, maybe delay it again so it will be Big Movie 4,700, but screw it, because you know what, it's Robert Downey Jr.'s birthday, so a special big Oscar-worthy Birthday SHOUT-out to him.  It will probably take me at least a day to write my review, or maybe one day just to go through the overly enormous CAST, so maybe I'll have to skip a day after watching this, but really, come on, if not now, then WHEN?  That's my new motto. 

I have not programmed beyond this point, which is a very unsettling feeling.  But OK, first thing I do after I post this review is figure out the path to Mother's Day.  I know where I want to go, I know how many steps it needs to take (high and low, trying to give myself a few days off in April and May) really, I just need to find the path.  The problem is, from here I can go JUST about anywhere, it links to no less than 31 films on my list.  But if I drop out the horror movies and the romances, and also the documentaries, then it's less - just 12 films, but that's still a lot.  I'm going to have to maybe work backwards from the Mother's Day films. I could watch "Dumb Money" and then "Barbie", but then I'm up against the "Barbenheimer" thing, or maybe in my case that would be "Opp-bie", and I don't want to do that. It's stupid. 

THE PLOT: The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. 

AFTER: OK, I'm just not seeing it, did I miss something?  This is a three-hour movie that had about 10 minutes of excitement to it, and then the rest was all jumping around in time, following four different threads, one of which was a Senate confirmation for a cabinet position, and the other was a meeting to renew Oppenheimer's security clearance for his job as head of the Atomic Energy Commission.  What the HELL?  If I wanted to watch government hearings, I'd tune into C-SPAN and watch whatever, but that's just not my thing.  Sorry, this was a BIG swing but also a BIG miss.  How the heck did this get nominated for Best Picture, let alone win the award?  I'm sorry, but I enjoyed "Maestro" more, the OTHER film about an older white man who cheated on his wife, but at least Leonard Bernstein DID something positive, he composed music that everyone liked, what the hell did Oppenheimer do that was productive, not destructive?  You feel my point?

I sat through THREE HOURS of this on Peacock and when all was said and done, I just didn't feel like I learned enough about what, exactly, took place at Los Alamos, and that's what I came here for, I got all excited by the fact that I loved Christopher Nolan's last two films, "Interstellar" and "Tenet", in which he got space travel and then time travel RIGHT (I suppose, if that's possible) and blew my mind both times.  Now I watch "Oppenheimer", thinking I'm going to learn about the nuts-and-bolts of atomic energy, how the team of the Manhattan Project was put together, who did what, and why, and how it all came to be during World War II, I mean, these were events that changed the WORLD, and instead I get stuck in not one government hearing, but TWO?  Bogged down in politics, when what I really wanted to see was SCIENCE.  Oh, sure, there was a little bit at the beginning, when Oppie sort of explained how stars work, they're giant furnaces and the forces of gravity and fusion are sort of working against each other, and then someday the fuel is all used up and they contract and maybe form black holes.  I get that this is the energy they're trying to re-create with an atom bomb, but how EXACTLY are the two things related, stars and bombs?  I know you can't give out really specific details in a film, because then somebody will go and try to make a bomb at home, but come on, give me SOMETHING.

Sure,  these scientists were working in uncharted territory, so they maybe didn't know themselves - like at one point Edward Teller's calculations seemed to suggest that the bomb's chain reaction would never stop, and thus engulf and destroy the Earth, but no, they double-checked it with Einstein and found out that Teller just didn't carry the "2" or something.  THIS stuff I find fascinating, if the whole movie had been like this, then no complaints from me, not at all.  But other than (sort of) understanding how an A-bomb is different from an H-bomb, really, I have to walk away being just as dumbfounded by the whole process as ever.  Meanwhile, I felt I really understood the part of "Interstellar" when Matthew McConnaughey's character was somehow younger than his granddaughter, because he'd been traveling through space very fast, and then "Tenet" was basically THE BEST movie ever made about time travel and how that all might "work" in the real world, and I stayed up all night so my brain could work out why that car was being driven right into oncoming traffic - and damn if Nolan didn't get that shit spot on.

So really, this is maybe the "Willow Effect", named after George Lucas's filmography misstep - here was the guy who created the "Star Wars" trilogy and also co-created "Indiana Jones", and then he decides to make "Willow" and most of us were disappointed because it was a fantasy film for children, and nothing like what we'd come to expect from him.  I mean, it could be worse, "Oppenheimer" isn't exactly Nolan's "Howard the Duck", but it's possibly his "Willow" - meaning it's a fine film, but only fine, it's not my cup of tea though, and it's definitely NOT what I was expecting to encounter.  

Silly me, I see a film called "Oppenheimer", and I think it's going to be all about Oppenheimer, and then it's not, big parts of it are about Admiral Lewis Strauss, and I don't know who that is, and I just don't care who that is, in the end.  Even if he was Oppenheimer's nemesis, even if he got his security clearance pulled, and even if that came back to bite him in the tuchus when he was trying to become Secretary of Commerce under Eisenhower, I JUST DON'T CARE. I'd rather shoot myself in the head than watch a senate confirmation hearing, and that's what I got here, again and again, this movie kept cutting back to it.  They could have cut out an hour's worth of footage focused on Strauss and it wouldn't have mattered, in fact I think that would have made the film better, more focused on Los Alamos and also an hour shorter.  THEN you'd have a movie.

What's worse is that "Oppenheimer" kept cutting between four (?) time periods - A) 1926 to 1938, when Oppenheimer studied in Europe, began teaching in California and got married to Kitty, B) 1942 to 1945, covering the recruitment of Oppenheimer by the government to lead the Manhattan Project and develop the atomic bomb, C) 1954, when there was a hearing before a Personnel Security Board to decide whether to renew Oppenheimer's clearance as an advisor to the AEC, and D) 1959, the Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss, which to me is the "WHO CARES" portion of the movie. (Again, Drop part D, you don't need it, you've got more than enough movie already...)

What's weird is that the scenes in 1959 are in black and white, while the rest of the film is in color.  Normally in these movies that take place over a long period of time, you'd expect the OLDER parts to be in black and white, because color film didn't exist in the early 1900's. This is how "Maestro" worked, the early Bernstein years were filmed in B&W, and also in a screen ratio similar to what was used in the 1940's, then the 1950's scenes were in color and a different ratio, and then finally the scenes in the 1970's were in better color and wide-screen, that makes SENSE. Seeing the 1930's in color and the 1959 scenes in black and white, that doesn't work for me.  According to Wiki, this was done to represent the scenes WITH Oppenheimer being first-person, and the scenes without him (the Senate hearing) being third-person.  Objective vs. subjective, but it was more confusing to me than anything else. 

Then there's ALL the editing, back and forth between the years, creating the false impression that all of these things are happening at once, but how could they be, they're happening in separate years?  The film this reminded me most of is "Slaughterhouse Five", but in that film the cutting between decades was justified, because Billy Pilgrim's consciousness was traveling between his older and younger bodies, so the movie's narrative followed him between the different eras, and we similarly pieced the timeline of his life together, even though the scenes were not presented in proper chronological order.  So I kept thinking that maybe Mr. Oppenheimer was going to end up in an alien zoo on the planet Tralfamadore and be given the power to time travel within his own lifetime, thus justifying the odd structure of the story.  It didn't happen, but I think it could have improved things, it would certainly have been less boring.

So had time become fractured, or (much more likely) did they write or film the movie in sequence, then realize how freaking BORING 90% of it was, so they decide to edit between the timelines to keep it interesting, keep the audience on their toes, trying to figure out not just WHAT is happening, but WHEN is everything happening?  I hate that, I know they didn't just toss all the film clips into the air and then pick them up randomly, but it kind of feels like it?  I know, ideally using this technique we're supposed to gain insight into the different events by seeing how they're juxtaposed against each other, and supposedly if it's done right then all the necessary information in each decade gets revealed, eventually, but only when we all NEED to know it - or again, it's just a cheap editing trick to make the boring parts seem more interesting, because they can just cut to a different decade whenever things start to lag.  But for THREE HOURS of this, after a while, doesn't it just get annoying?

I tell you what could have really worked here, if they started the film jumping between the four parts (only two of them are labelled, 1. Fusion and 2. Fission, but I just don't understand it...because there are FOUR timelines, not 2) and had an average shot length of, let's say four minutes.  Then gradually, as the first hour of the film spools out, the average shot length could be cut down to, say, two minutes per shot.  The audience might not notice it outright, but they'd get this unconscious FEELING that things are speeding up, that we're building to something, it would create an anticipation of sorts, just based on shot length alone.  Then by the end of the second hour, we're down to cuts of 20 or 30 seconds, and we're going crazy, feeling that something big is going to happen, and this is sort of what happened here, because those scenes in the 2nd hour of the famous Trinity bomb test, right before it there's a LOT of quick action cuts as everyone, soldiers and scientists, are preparing for the big test, doing the countdown, OH MY GOD what is going to happen?  Then, of course - BOOM!  or should I say (shh...shh...shh...BOOM!) because the scientists and the camera are so far away from the explosion that it is essentially silent, because light is faster than sound, and you SEE it a few minutes before you HEAR it, the film gets that right.  Then, when the sound and the pressure finally reach you, it's very loud, of course.  And this film DID also win the Academy Award for Editing, but if it deserved it, it's because of those 10 minutes of excitement, not the stupid quick-cutting between the different decades, which makes no narrative sense.  Why can't we just tell this story with the beginning at the beginning, the middle in the middle and the end at the end, or would that just be so boring and normal that we'd all just go insane and poke our own eyes out?

(EDIT: the morning after I watched this film, there was an earthquake in the NYC / New Jersey area.  Very loud, it woke me up around 10:20 am - and I couldn't help but think that if someone in the very large affected zone happened to wake up early in order to start watching "Oppenheimer" around 8 am, or maybe 8:05, they would have reached the critical moment of the atom bomb test at a time that synched up with the earthquake.  So for that person, the part that was supposed to be silent could have been very loud, and might seem interactive.  That person's mind would be completely blown, as the most explosive scene in the movie would have appeared to shake their entire house.)

The other problem here, again in my opinion, is that so much time was spent on Strauss' fall from grace that it never really explored Oppenheimer's, we do get a bit of what was going on his head, whatever guilt he carried with him for his role in creating the atom bomb that killed over 200,000 Japanese people, many of whom were civilians.  It's almost an afterthought here, but shouldn't that be the focus, on the ONLY time that nuclear weapons were used in an armed conflict, and that civilians were targeted?  OK, sure, it's easy enough to blame President Truman, but Oppenheimer and his team's work enabled that to happen.  We get ONE dream sequence where Oppie envisions the bomb's effect on people, but it's not nearly enough.  And Truman called him a "crybaby", is that enough to absolve him?  I don't happen to think so.

Yes, there's the argument that if Oppenheimer hadn't been involved, then it's possible that the Germans could have developed the bomb first, and the world would have been very different - but as the film points out, the Germans maybe never would have succeeded because Hitler didn't want to listen to Jewish scientists, such as Einstein and others.  So therefore it's "better" that the U.S. had the bomb, but is it really?  200,000 Japanese souls might disagree.  We're now in a position to blame Palestine for killing Jewish civilians, and Israel for killing Palestinian civilians, but WE did that, the United States, we killed Japanese civilians.  It was in the interest of ending World War II and saving the lives of American soldiers, but it's still a shitty thing that WE did, thanks to Truman.  And Oppenheimer.  

The other argument is that nuclear war became its OWN deterrent, and sure, I can kind of see that, once the nuclear bomb existed, and then other countries developed them, only a crazy person would use them at all, because of the mutually assured destruction response of another country.  Still, we could have done better in World War II, the U.S. didn't HAVE to blow up two cities, let alone one.  We could have demonstrated the power of the bomb by blowing up an uninhabited island near Japan, and the point would still have been made.  Or sent the message, 'Hey, you guys like Mount Fuji?  Well, maybe stay away from it next Thursday, because we're going to blow half it up, just to show you what we can do, then we expect to hear about your surrender."  Well, it could have worked.  But it was a different time, it's just shocking to see a U.S. President talk about foreigners like they don't matter, like they're not even human.  (What am I saying, of course Trump does this, all the time!)

Again, there's about 10 exciting minutes, and an hour's worth of interesting material here about what went on at Los Alamos, but that's not a good ratio for a three-hour film.  I essentially had to watch a full OTHER movie I didn't want to see to watch the stuff that I did want to see, which was to see which white male actor would be cast as which atomic scientist, who did they get to play Richard Feynman, who did they cast as Albert Einstein, who got cast as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi?  That's the fun part to me, the Senate hearing section was duller than dirt, even with the actor who played young Han Solo in it and that other guy who was in "Music in the Heart" and also "I'm Dying Up Here".  I guess maybe you can play another game where you try to figure out which member of the Los Alamos team was spying for the Russians, but really, I'm kind of grasping at straws there.  

Everybody knows the famous quote that Oppenheimer supposedly said after watching the successful test of the atomic bomb - "Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds."  And now we all won't be able to remember that without thinking of Florence Pugh, naked, and holding up a book during sex so he can read that in Sanskrit.  Umm, thanks for that, I guess? 

Maybe I'm misreading this whole movie, look if you watched it and you enjoyed it, if you voted for it as Best Picture, or you wanted it to win, or you felt that it deserved to win, that's fine.  But I have a feeling that a lot of Academy members voted for it because it FELT important, even if they didn't fully understand it or the editing wasn't very well executed, it seems like the subject matter may have outshined the method and the medium.  But I HAVE to compare it to the director's other work, which I vastly preferred.  "Interstellar" was an 8 for me, and "Tenet" was a 9, and I know this is a different film, but comparing Nolan's films, I have to rate this one less than I rated both of those, I just didn't enjoy it as much. 

But I want to close tonight with a different quote, or actually two. When I started this blog in 2009, I had an idea to add a quote from a song lyric at the end of each review, to make some kind of insightful point, and then I just never got around to doing that.  But last week I was alone in the office and I re-discovered a song mix I made a few years ago, all cover songs, which I did, and it starts with Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit" covered by Goo Goo Dolls, then follows that  with Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" covered by Everclear, and so on, ending with Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life Again" covered by Warren Zevon. Somewhere in there is The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" covered by Limp Bizkit, and also Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" covered by Scissor Sisters.  Seeing Cillian Murphy's piercing blue eyes made me think of the lyrics of the Who song though: 

"No one knows what it's like to be the bad man, to be the sad man, behind blue eyes.

And no one knows what it's like to be hated, to be fated, to telling only lies. 

But my dreams, they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be.

I have hours, only lonely, my love is vengeance that's never free."

So that reminds me of "Oppenheimer" now, and so does this song by Tom Lehrer, who was a Harvard professor and part-time songwriter and performer back in the 1950's and 60's, and he wrote several songs about the bomb and nuclear war, but one was called "Who's Next?":

"First we got the bomb and that was good, 'Cause we love peace and motherhood.

Then Russia got the bomb, but that's OK, 'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way!

Who's next?

Egypt's gonna get one, too, Just to use on you-know-who.

So Israel's getting tense, Wants one in self-defense.

'The Lord's our shepherd,' says the psalm, But just in case, we better get a bomb!

Who's next?"

There are more verses, but I think that's enough to highlight the hypocrisy of the nuclear politics, every country wanted one for themselves and didn't want their enemy to have one, not even as a deterrent, because really, in this world, it's every man for himself.  Right? 

Also starring Cillian Murphy (last seen in "A Quiet Place Part II"), Emily Blunt (last seen in "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Air"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Val"), Florence Pugh (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Josh Hartnett (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Casey Affleck (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Rami Malek (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "A Haunting in Venice"), Benny Safdie (last seen in "Person to Person"), Jason Clarke (last seen in "Child 44"), Dylan Arnold (last seen in "Mudbound"), Tom Conti (last seen in "Paddington 2"), James D'Arcy (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), David Dastmalchian (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Dane DeHaan (last seen in "A Cure for Wellness"), Alden Ehrenreich (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Tony Goldwyn (last seen in "All I Wish"), Jefferson Hall (last seen in "Tenet"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Matthew Modine (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Scott Grimes (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Kurt Koehler, John Gowans (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Macon Blair (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Gregory Jbara (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Harry Groener (also last seen in "A Cure for Wellness"), Tim DeKay (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Alex Wolff (last seen in "Thoroughbreds"), Josh Zuckerman (last seen in "Sex Drive"), Rory Keane, Michael Angarano (last seen in "Empire State"), Emma Dumont (last seen in "Nobody Walks"), Guy Burnet (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Louise Lombard (last seen in "Hidalgo"), Tom Jenkins, Olli Haaskivi (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), David Rysdahl, Josh Peck (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Jack Quaid (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Gustaf Skarsgard (also last seen in "Air"), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Beauty"), Trond Fausa, Devon Bostick (last seen in "Godsend"), Danny Deferrari (last seen in "Three Christs"), Christopher Denham (last seen in "Fast Color"), Jessica Erin Martin, Ronald Auguste, Máté Haumann (last seen in "Hercules"), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "The Answer Man"), Jack Cutmore-Scott (also last seen in "Tenet"), Harrison Gilbertson, James Remar (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Will Roberts, Pat Skipper (last seen in "Babylon"), Ryan Stubo (ditto), Steve Coulter (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Hap Lawrence (last seen in "Altered States"), Ted King (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Steven Houska, Sadie Stratton, Britt Kyle, Michael Andrew Baker (last seen in "King Richard"), Troy Bronson, Ross Buran, Flora Nolan, Alan Duncan, Christine Heneise, Brendan McManus, David Phyfer.

RATING: 6 out of 10 marbles in a snifter glass (I didn't see the point of this, either...)

Murder in the First

Year 16, Day 94 - 4/3/24 - Movie #4,694

BEFORE: Kevin Bacon carries over from "Space Oddity" - I don't know why I feel like I've never used Kevin Bacon as a link before, I'm sure I must have.  But since he has a reputation for being connected to everyone else, it just feels kind of too obvious, you know?  Like, I'm not playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" any more, I've evolved beyond that, but really, have I?  Today he's part of the quickest path to get to "Oppenheimer" without going through the "Barbie" film, so I'm going with this - but now today I really need to figure out what's going to happen AFTER "Oppenheimer", because it's causing me great anxiety to only have my schedule figured out a couple days in advance, and then nothing.  It's like staring at a big cliff that's coming up, and I can't stop the car in time, and I can't jump out either, so there's nothing I can do...but go over the side.

I'm almost 100 films into Movie Year 16, and so far very few actors have made more than three appearances, which is the threshold for getting mentioned in the Year-End Wrap Up.  Only TWO actors have five appearances - Toni Collette and Jennifer Lopez, and another two have four appearances - Brendan Gleeson and Carey Mulligan.  Again, it's going to be all about the Doc Block, and how many docs I watch, and that's going to depend on where the Doc Bloc goes, how much space can I allocate for it in May, or is there more room for it in June & July.  I've got all day Thursday to try to figure that out, but I also have to leave room on Thursday for watching "Oppenheimer", so I'd better block it out quickly. 

THE PLOT: An eager and idealistic young attorney defends an Alcatraz prisoner accused of murdering a fellow inmate.  The extenuating circumstances: his client had just spent over three years in solitary confinement. 

AFTER: I suppose this is a fine enough lead-in to "Oppenheimer", I mean, something's got to lead in to that movie with its gigantic cast, and yet somehow no lead-in is going to feel like it's enough, you know what I mean?  Somewhere out there is a movie that shares 5 or 6 cast members with last year's Best Picture winner, and then somehow I'd be OK with that, but it doesn't really matter, does it?  All I need is ONE, everything else is superfluous.  Anyway, let's get to today's film before I think about watching "Oppenheimer" tomorrow.

It's legit, this film has been on my DVR since March 2023 - so of all the paths I could take right now, this one helps me the most because it clears some storage space.  That, plus I'm burning a DVD today with three documentaries, about Little Richard, Dionne Warwick and Marvin Hamlisch, and two of those are also taking up space, and I've got to make some room somehow.  Sure, I'll watch those docs on DVD and without captions if it clears up some space from a DVR that always seems to be about 80% full, no matter what I do.  (clearing episodes of "The Masked Singer" and "Top Chef" today would also help). Plus, the movie's like 30 years old, and it's only going to get harder to link to it, so if not now, then when?

The film is (loosely) based on a true story, Henri Young was a real person, according to Wiki he was a bank robber and convicted murderer who was known for taking hostages, and after serving time in Washington and Montana, ended up in Alcatraz prison, in some kind of exchange for two draft picks and a killer to be named later.  However, the movie claims he was not a murderer before he made it to Alcatraz, and that the harsh treatment there turned him into one.  Also, the movie states that his crime was stealing only $5 from a grocery, to feed his sister, instead of committing several bank robberies.  So this is therefore considered an alternate history, due to the need to make Young a more sympathetic character, and further drive home the point that it could only have been the 3 years in solitary confinement (with a 30-minute exercise break every 12 months) that drove him insane and violent.  

It's a case where an inexperienced lawyer was trying something different (at least according to the film) by blaming the whole prison system for one man's actions, pointing out that cruel treatment from the warden and guards only leads to pent-up aggression and retaliation by the inmates, which apparently nobody in 1942 could even have considered, let alone the wardens.  Which seems a bit ironic because the same people who were saying "an eye for an eye, a life for a life" when punishing prisoners were somehow not considering that if they injured or killed a prisoner, there's just no way that could come back and bite them in the ass. Right?  

The good part of the film depicts how James Stamphill, the defense attorney, slowly won the trust of a convict who was more or less catatonic, driven insane by the prison system.  He did this by talking about baseball (after taking a crash course on the sport) and listening to Young's needs and his backstory, showing concern and taking the time to locate his missing sister, and, oh, yeah, bringing a prostitute into the prison so he could have sex. That last one seems like maybe bending the rules a bit too much, but whatever wins your difficult client over, I guess. 

It's true in both the movie and in reality that Henri Young tried to escape from Alcatraz, like most attempts it was unsuccessful, in part because one of his fellow escapees, Rufus McCain, reported the plan to the warden - this led to Young being held in solitary for three years, and then as soon as he got out, he stabbed an inmate with a spoon, and it was Rufus McCain - but I'm sure that was just a coincidence, there's no way he could have concocted that as a plan, not with so many other things to think about during his three years in "the hole".

It was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, and with so many of our American men off fighting in World War II, the defense was given over to an inexperienced defense lawyer, with no expectation that he would try to win the case by blaming the warden, the guards and society for what happened.  Also the press got involved and so the case was tried in the court of public opinion, also apparently the prosecuting attorney wasn't expecting anyone to put up a strong defense, so maybe he didn't properly prepare?  And then of course we have the singular "Law & Order" moment where the assistant warden just LOSES IT on the stand after the defense applies just a little pressure.  So, was torturing inmates the right thing to do, or the wrong thing?  Debatable, perhaps but it damn sure shouldn't have been standard procedure.  

There's also a weird conundrum here, where the accused is admitting guilt for something that he doesn't remember doing, because being found guilty would lead to the death penalty, and he would rather die than be sent back to Alcatraz, which is somehow both understandable and unfathomable at the same time.  And his attorney points this out, believing that keeping his client alive is in his best interests, only that life will most likely be spent in prison, and confinement is what drove him insane and able to commit murder in the first place.  Allegedly.  

The good news here is that Warden Glenn was charged for mistreatment of prisoners, was found guilty and never worked in a prison again.  Also bad publicity over prisoner abuse led (eventually) to Alcatraz being closed down in 1963 and turned into a tourist attraction.  And the bad news is that the real Henri Young was transferred out in 1948 but sent to a medical center/prison in Springfield, Missouri to complete his federal sentence, and then the Washington State penitentiary in 1954 to start a life sentence for a 1933 murder conviction (one that the film omitted) and he was released at age 61 in 1972.  However, he jumped parole and disappeared, but since that was over 50 years ago, and he'd be 113 if still alive, it's doubtful that he's still out there somewhere. 

As Nemo in "Slumberland" pointed out, there are all kinds of prisons, school is a form of prison, a job is a form of prison, and then eventually if you're lucky you spend your final days in a nursing home, which is another form of prison.  I don't think any of them are as bad as actual prison, but then maybe it's all relative.  But really, any place that you have to go and you're not free to leave is...well, you know. 

Also starring Christian Slater (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Gary Oldman (last seen in "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary"), Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "Mansfield Park"), William H. Macy (last seen in "Blood Father"), Stephen Tobolowsky (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Brad Dourif (last heard in "Ready Player One"), R. Lee Ermey (last seen in "Filmworker"), Mia Kirshner (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Ben Slack (last seen in "Serpico"), Stefan Gierasch (last seen in "The Champ"), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "Villains"), Alex Bookston, Richie Allan (last seen in "Meet Dave"), Herb Ritts, Charles Boswell, David Michael Sterling, Michael Melvin, Tony Barr, Stuart Nisbet (last seen in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"), Gary Ballard (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Randy Pelish, Neil Summers (last seen in "Appaloosa"), Sonny King (last seen in "Eraser"), Amanda Borden, Eve Brenner (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Joseph Cole, Richard Kwong, Gary Lee Davis (last seen in "Coming Home"), Bill Barretta (last heard in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Randall Dudley, Sheldon Feldner (last seen in "The Star Chamber"), Fred Franklin, Danny Kovacs (last seen in "Copycat"), Joseph Lucas, William Hall (last seen in "Fathers Day")

RATING: 5 out of 10 objections overruled

Space Oddity

Year 16, Day 93 - 4/2/24 - Movie #4,693

BEFORE: It's a bit of a weird time for me, with both "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" on my list, the linking possibilities are wide open - I could have, for example, linked straight to "Oppenheimer" from "A Haunting in Venice", via Kenneth Branagh.  And I could link directly to "Barbie" from today's film, via Alexandra Shipp.  But let's not be too hasty about this, because remember, the two films do NOT link to each other.  Anything they share in common because they were both released on the same day last year is merely a weird bit of marketing that went viral for no reason.  Even when the news sites or the reviewers talk about the confluence, everyone's quick to point out that there's nothing really THERE, nothing to be gained by watching the two movies back-to-back.  Great, so then please shut up about it. 

I know, I said I would get straight to "Oppenheimer" as soon as possible after the romance chain ended, and we're past that point.  But I've waited this long, I can wait a couple more days.  I could save that big film to be Big Movie #4,700, only that's also only a milestone, a thing, just because I say it is.  Oppenheimer's (the man's) birthday is April 22, but I don't want to wait that long.  Look, just give me a couple days, I'll get there - normally at this point in the month I'd be typing out my links for the month, only I don't have them for April yet.  I've been busy, OK?  And I found ways to GET to "Oppenheimer", but I haven't quite figured out where to go next, because I could go just about anywhere, and I have to make sure there's a path to Mother's Day, Father's Day and July 4 - and it's all about where I put the documentaries.  Or maybe it isn't, maybe I'll make it work no matter what, and I'm just bogging myself down in my own organization routines.  Whatever, I've got a system and I have to play it out. But in the meantime, let me pick up a few more films on the Road to Oppenheimer.

Kyle Allen carries over from "A Haunting in Venice". 

THE PLOT: A man seeks help from an insurance company to plan his one-way trip to Mars. 

AFTER: I watched most of this film at the theater, while on a particularly long Tuesday shift where there was hardly anything to do.  It's not explicitly against the rules, though it probably should feel a bit wrong, to watch a movie while at work, and also a bit wrong to watch a movie via the Hulu streaming site, when I work at a movie theater.  (Streaming sites are the enemies of movie theaters, right?). But here's the thing, and it's true of this film, and also "A Haunting in Venice" - both films screened at that theater, and I was too busy working at the screenings to sit and watch the films, that's also completely against the rules, almost.  Sure, it's maybe a bit fuzzy because I have done that, too, well technically I was "monitoring the screening" to ensure the best possible visual and audio experience for the patrons.  If there were any technical problems with the screening, of course I would be able to report them to the projectionists right away via my walkie-talkie, and that HAS happened before, it could happen again.  But sure, primarily I'm not working there to watch movies, I'm working there to make a little extra money by sacrificing shift-sized chunks of my own life, that's one way to look at it.  Catching the occasional first-run film is just a handy little perk. But thanks to my system, I could theoretically watch "Godzilla vs. Kong: The Rematch" or "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" this month, only I am NOT READY to review them, because I do this stupid linking thing - so both will probably be streaming by the time I catch up.  Catching up, right, let's call it that.  I watched "Space Oddity" during my shift because I was catching up, I think it played during the Tribeca Festival, and I was on shift then too.  Look, firefighters get to eat dinner and even sleep at the firehouse during their shifts, so me watching a movie once in a while during a 12-hour shift should be OK, as long as nothing goes wrong with the event, which it did not.  (Now I'm typing this review during another shift the next day, but that's another story...)

It can be a mysterious process - why watch THIS film, any film, instead of THAT one?  Why are we drawn to certain films, and not other ones?  Certain films are culturally important, sure, but they can't ALL be that?  And certainly if you loved "Aquaman" then you have a greater chance of liking "Aquaman 2", although that's not always the case, you might feel like a franchise has lost its way, even with the second film.  But you'll be more likely to WATCH "Aquaman 2", at least, if you liked the first one.  Then sometimes it's a genre thing, or a penchant you may have for a particular actor - I've managed to transcend most of these petty little rules, because I've determined that rather than try to decide what to watch, I can plan to watch everything, even a film I think I'm likely to hate, and then sort it all out later.  Most of the time, anyway - I still have a few franchises that I can't get into. But, never say "never", right?  "Space Oddity" has been on my radar for a long time, first because I have a friend who lives in Rhode Island, and they filmed some scenes right in his town, so I got a few reports about Hollywood people being seen around town and a veranda being built, it's a small enough town that any filming taking place there is bound to cause a stir. Then maybe a year later I saw the film listed in the program for the Tribeca Film Festival, and I thought, "Hey, is that THAT film?  The one that filmed in Rhode Island, near where my friend lives?"  And yep, it was, and they screened it in the theater where I work, and Kyra Sedgwick was there to present the film and take a few questions after.  OK, now I really had to see it, even if I did mostly forget about it until I saw it posted on Hulu when I signed in to watch something else.  Either way, mission accomplished, I tracked it and finally watched it.

It's about a family dealing with a tragic loss, the death of one child/sibling out of three, and they're each still dealing with it (or not dealing) in their own ways.  Alex has taken to training for a one-way trip to Mars, and he's serious about it, as far as we can tell - but his sister and father are choosing to not believe him, or they feel that he's not being practical and should choose another career path.  Meanwhile, his mother is just glad that he's not lying in bed all day, and seems to have found a direction in life, though it's an unusual one.  Whether this is all his way of not dealing with his brother's death is TBD.  Alex's father is a flower farmer, and tries to shoot down Alex's dream of space travel at every opportunity - which only seems ironic because his father is played by Kevin Bacon, who's famous in part for the film "Footloose", where he was the teen with the dream, he just wanted to dance in a conservative town where dancing was not allowed, and other people kept taking delight in shooting down HIS dream.  Oh, how the tables have apparently turned for Ren McCormack...sure, I know that's a totally different film, but I can't help but point out the reversal of fortune. 

Alex needs a few things before he can qualify for this space mission, he needs the local doctor to sign off on his physical and mental health, and he needs the local insurance agent to arrange a policy for him, because anything can happen on this trip to Mars, and apparently it's a one-way trip, there's no return planned because of the speed with which this new venture is planning the trip.  Some characters raise the possibility that this whole "Mission to Mars" thing is some kind of scam, and that also seems to be TBD.  This is probably what took so long for NASA to get a man to walk on the moon, they were planning a two-way trip.  Sure, anybody could have launched a rocket and sent a person TO the moon, but getting them back home was a totally different challenge.  I can almost hear the conversation behind the scenes at NASA: "Wait, you want the astronauts to survive?  And return to Earth?  Well, that's going to take us another 10 years to figure out....you should have said something about this earlier!"

Alex seems surprisingly OK with saying good-bye to his family, and he doesn't seem to have any friends, so the only thing that could possibly interfere with his plans to get married, have kids and die on planet Mars would be if he started having feelings for the niece of his insurance agent, the really attractive one who's easy to talk to and also really fun to be around.  His family all seem to like Daisy, too, so I'm sure they'd like nothing better for him to settle down and take over the flower farm, but dreams die hard, I guess.  It goes both ways, though, because if your dream is for your son to take over your farm and he doesn't want to do it, well then you maybe have to consider handing it over to your daughter instead.  Life therefore becomes this weird combination of what we WANT to do and what we are ABLE to do.  You have to have both motivation AND opportunity. Like, did I ever think I'd go back to working in a movie theater, like I did 35 years ago?  Nah, I never saw it coming, but the pandemic shook up my career and I had to re-adjust. 

Anyway it's a heartfelt notion to suggest that things may not work out the way you planned, but at least they have a fair chance of working out in some way, and that's maybe all you can hope for in this life. Will humans make it to Mars in our lifetimes?  I have no idea - we visited NASA back in 2018 and we saw the proposed spacecrafts that may take them there, but plans are just crazy ideas until they happen, as this movie correctly points out. 

Also starring Alexandra Shipp (last seen in "Tick, Tick...BOOM!"), Madeline Brewer (last seen in "Captive State"), Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Val"), Simon Helberg (last seen in "Annette"), Carrie Preston (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Arden Myrin (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Chris Jackson (also last seen in "Tick, Tick...BOOM!"), Alfre Woodard (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Andrew Polk (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Alessandra Rosenfeld (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Peter McSwiggin, Jim Boyd (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Liam Anderson, Tony Estrella, Pamela Jayne Morgan, Becky Bass (last seen in "Love, Weddings &Other Disasters"), Mary Ann Schaub, Sean Leser, Jack Hueter

RATING: 6 out of 10 baseballs hit at the batting cage

A Haunting in Venice

Year 16, Day 92 - 4/1/24 - Movie #4,692

BEFORE: Wow, another confluence, Easter Sunday was just a day before April Fool's Day, how do I work with that?  Simple, especially if this movie is (as I suspect) about false mediums and phony seances, that seems like it's going to fit in just fine.  I had this on the horror list, but it doesn't really connect to anything there, and I don't want it to just sit on that list for years while I avoid watching it.  

I worked at a screening of this film at the theater, back in early September of last year - the strike was still going on, so no stars from this film were permitted by their union to attend and promote it, so instead Disney took over the whole lobby and had a whole seance set-up going on in the green room, guests could put on masks and have their photo taken and celebrate Halloween early, plus free popcorn for everyone, to make up for no stars being there, I guess. 

So it seems only appropriate that I watch the film at the same theater, just not on the big screen, but on Hulu on the computer in the office during a particularly long, boring shift where the larger theater is being used to hold background actors for an episode of "Law & Order: SVU" that is filming down the block.  I got to have breakfast from the catering truck, which was a breakfast burrito and some home fries, so thanks for that, Law & Order: CSU (Craft Services Unit)

Kelly Reilly carries over from "Calvary". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Murder on the Orient Express" (Movie #2,901), "Death on the Nile" (Movie #4,245)

THE PLOT: In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance.  But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer. 

AFTER: Yeah, so I didn't get to meet Kenneth Branagh in September, that's OK because I'd already met him at a screening of "Belfast" during the pandemic.  He was live in person at a guild screening to answer questions about the film, and I got to cue him to go on stage, that was the extent of our interaction.  I'll take it.  Judi Dench was there virtually via zoom call, which got posted on the movie screen.  You just never know who's going to show up there, I've got a much longer list of celebrities that I've had interactions with than I had three years ago.  

All things considered, seven months isn't that much of a response time, between that screening and me actually WATCHING today's film - for me that's pretty good, it's better than having a film taking up space on my movie DVR for three years or even longer.  Plus there must be a few films on my list that have been there for longer than that, perhaps there are some films that I'll never get around to watching, either because I just don't care to, or they're very difficult to link to.  I can watch any movie I want, but sometimes it works the other way around, and I end up wanting to watch the movies that I can, if that makes any sense.  But since I haven't encountered any spoilers for "A Haunting in Venice", I may as well strike while the iron is hot, before I read some article where the identity of the murderer is revealed, and then there's little point in tuning in.  

The film takes place on Halloween (DAMN it!) in Venice, Italy in 1947. The world was still recovering from World War II, and for the franchise it's a BIG leap forward of 13 years, both previous films were set in 1934, one just after the other.  You don't HAVE to have seen the two earlier films starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, but it sure couldn't hurt, either.  All three films are based on Agatha Christie novels, and all feature a group of people who are stuck together in one place (a train, a riverboat, a palazzo on the Venice canals) when a murder is committed.  They're not infamous "locked-room" mysteries, but they're all perhaps close to that. Poirot has to interview the suspects separately and determine who among them is the killer (or killers) based on the evidence and also what he knows about the world.

The debate Poirot has with his friend, murder mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, is over whether mediums or spiritualists are real, because if they are, then ghosts are real and therefore there is an afterlife, and therefore there is a heaven and a God.  However Poirot has seen enough of the world to not believe in such things, or perhaps it's that he has never seen a medium or spiritualist who wasn't using trickery and/or effects to make people believe in a connection to the spirit world.  It makes sense, any detective would look for rational reasons to explain what are seemingly supernatural events.  Also, he has lost whatever faith he once had in God and also humanity - he's seen too much in 13 years, apparently, only we don't know exactly what. 

Ms. Oliver has belief in the medium, Joyce Reynolds, who is about to conduct a seance in the Venetian home of opera singer Rowena Drake, whose daughter died in the building a year ago, apparently by suicide after her fiancé ended their engagement, she fell into the canal - or was it murder, or was she attacked by ghosts?  The palazzo has a terrible history of being a former orphanage in which children were locked up there during a city-wide plague and abandoned to die there, and rumors claim the building is haunted by the spirits of those children, who have a vendetta against all doctors and nurses.  Wouldn't you know it, the medium served as a nurse during World War II, and another guest is a former army doctor who is suffering from PTSD, or battle fatigue, or shell shock (depending which decade you grew up in.)

Poirot sits through the seance, during which Joyce Reynolds appears to spin wildly around in her chair and channel the spirit of Alicia Drake, who accuses one person at the seance of being her murderer, though conveniently she doesn't single out that person.  Poirot easily exposes the assistants to the medium, who are concealed in the room to operate the "magic typewriter", however there's much more to unravel when someone is impaled on a statue afterwards, at which point the entire building is locked down so no one can leave.  Which they couldn't anyway, not without a boat or swimming away through the city's canals.  And during Poirot's interviews a second guest becomes dead, so he realizes that he'd better hurry, before long it's going to be just him and the murderer.  (Case closed at that point, I guess.)

All he's got to go on are the underground chamber (who knew that buildings in Venice even HAD basements?) a hidden telephone and a mysterious jar of honey in the linen closet.  Damn, that's not much, how do they add up to a murder plot or some kind of conspiracy?  And is it possible that one or two of Poirot's friends are in on it, for their own benefit?  If only Poirot hadn't suffered that head injury and started seeing hallucinations of the dead Alicia, he might be able to put it all together...

No spoilers here, because it's so much better when you don't know the ending in advance. That was my main problem with the 2017 "Murder on the Orient Express", that I had already seen the movie version made in 1974, I think I'd seen the 1978 "Death on the Nile" too at one point, but thankfully I had forgotten the solution to the mystery - so these last two films with Branagh as Poirot have been more enjoyable than the first once, because I've been able to be surprised.  I hope they make more films in this franchise, but I'm just not sure if they will.  Ariadne Oliver, as you might imagine, is a character from Agatha Christie's novels that she based on herself, and there's no reason why she can't return in another movie.  They don't have to remake "Evil Under the Sun", there are at least 40 other Poirot novels they could choose from - so why not? I don't want to read too much about them on Wikipedia, as I'd still rather be suprised. 

Also starring Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Kyle Allen (last seen in "West Side Story" (2021)), Camille Cottin (last seen in "Stillwater"), Jamie Dornan (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Jude Hill (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Ali Khan (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), MIchelle Yeoh (ditto), Emma Laird, Riccardo Scarmarcio (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Rowan Robinson, Amir El-Masry (last seen in "Rosewater"), Vanessa Ifediora (last seen in "Belfast"), Dylan Corbett-Bader, Fernando Piloni, David Menkin (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Esther Rae Tillotson, Winnie Soldi.

RATING: 7 out of 10 shadow puppets

Calvary

Year 16, Day 91 - 3/31/24 - Movie #4,691

BEFORE: Happy Easter, but it's not just Easter Sunday, it's the last day of March, so here are my format stats for the month: 

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Marry Me, Man Up, I Do... Until I Don't, Stanley & Iris, Waiting to Exhale, Nostalgia, Begin Again, The Banshees of Inisherin, Lying and Stealing, Mr. Malcolm's List, 3 Days to Kill

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Ira & Abby, Dragged Across Concrete, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Conan the Barbarian (2011), Calvary

5 watched on Netflix: Beauty, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Heart of Stone, Gran Turismo, Slumberland

1 watched on iTunes: All I Wish
3 watched on Amazon Prime: Shotgun Wedding, Book Club: The Next Chapter, Saltburn
1 watched on Hulu: Second Act

1 watched on Disney+: The Marvels

3 watched on a random site: The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers

30 TOTAL

I was supposed to try and take things easy in March, take some breaks and let some random days off into the mix, and 30 films in 31 days doesn't really represent that.  Case in point, I could have taken a whole week off between "The Banshees of Inisherin", and still ended up here with today's movie today.  Yeah, I didn't do that, maybe it was the best Idea but I just don't have that in me, scheduling and watching movies is one of the few things I look forward to every day, so I'm just going to keep doing that, apparently. I'll sleep when I'm dead, as they say.  Anyway if I'd done that I'd still have "Saltburn", "Gran Turismo", "The Marvels", "Aquaman 2" and "Slumberland" still outstanding, so there's that, they're all crossed off now. 

Chris O'Dowd carries over from "Slumberland".

THE PLOT: After he is threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him. 

AFTER: Hindsight is 20/20, of course.  I put this film on Easter because "Calvary" is the name of the hill where Jesus was crucified - allegedly, because this feels like one of those things they made up during the Crusades when British kings and queens came over to the Holy Land and demanded to know where these Bible things took place, so the enterprising people of Jerusalem probably just went, "Well, what about that hill over THERE?" and so they called that particular hill Calvary and just moved forward. I certainly don't expect the good people of the year 33 A.D. to have kept proper notes, especially since they didn't know at the time that Jesus was going to be so important to people as a concept - and then there was the fall of the Roman Empire and record-keeping no doubt went to shit, so the chances of finding the RIGHT place for a thing that maybe happened centuries ago is, you know, really remote.  

But this means this might have been a better choice for Good Friday, and also Brendan Gleeson's birthday was on March 29, so yeah, maybe I could have scheduled this better - but I was in the middle of something else on Friday, so mea culpa.  Happy belated birthday, Brendan Gleeson, and Happy Easter while I'm at it. 

I really want to know more about the story behind this movie, because it's SO much like "The Banshees of Inisherin" that of course I was maybe on to something when I had the two movies RIGHT NEXT to each other in my chain.  There's more connective tissue than just both films having Brendan Gleeson in them.  They're both set in remote Irish villages that are SUPER depressing - jaisus, guys, the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful, why is everyone such a sour puss?  In both movies, everybody in town seems to hate everybody else, or at least they all gossip about each other, and by the time we get to the end of each movie, several of the characters we've come to know and tolerate are dead.  It's like they all are sitting around at the pub, just waiting for the inevitable, and sometimes they even help it along.  Note that the Irish Tourism board wants you to know that Ireland is a fun, happy place where people sing and dance and frolic across the green fields, but both of these films tell a very different tale.

"Calvary" opens with Father James hearing confession from a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest as a child, and the abuse went on for five years, every other day.  In retaliation, the unseen confessor wants to kill a priest - not the same priest, perhaps that's impossible for him to do, so he decides he's going to kill Father James instead.  OK, so right off we know this is not going to be a very happy, positive movie.  I just realized now that this is the tie-in to the Christ story, because Christ was crucified for the sins of others (umm, everyone, so the dogma goes) and here it looks like Father James is going to be made to suffer for the sins of another priest.  

Of course, the priests talk to each other about what they heard in confession, though I think they're not supposed to - but it's a small town, so everybody sort of knows everybody and what they're all about and what they're capable of.  Father James says that he thinks he know the identity of the man who threatened to kill him, only he never says it out loud.  But as he makes his rounds through town, we realize that there's no shortage of possible suspects, everyone is screwed up and angry, for different reasons.  Father James' daughter Fiona (yes, a priest can have a daughter, if he was married before he became a priest...) comes to visit, and even she's mad at the world, she recently tried to slit her wrists, only she won't talk about the reasons why, at least not with her father, the Father. 

Jack, the town butcher has apparently hit his wife, because she's having an affair with the local car mechanic, who happens to be from Africa.  Simon, the mechanic, won't talk with Father James because he's angry about what the Catholic missionaries did to his country's people.  The other priest wants to stay out of this entire situation because he's afraid that if they side with Jack, they'll be accused of racism. 

Father James also visits Gerald, an elderly American author, to bring him supplies.  Gerald wants the priest to bring him a gun, just in case he gets so sick that he can't stand the pain any more - and surprisingly, the priest has a connection that gets him an antique gun, but I think for Gerald's own safety he never gets around to delivering it.  Then there's a wealthy banker, who's about to be investigated for financial impropriety, and he wants to make a large donation to the church, and Father James seems to be happy to receive it, only he seems to be concerned that the banker is apparently trying to either launder some ill-gotten gains, or perhaps trying to buy indulgence from his sins, using his wealth to try to acquire salvation, and that brings to mind the corruptness of the church during medieval times.  Father James would rather have the banker seek forgiveness by doing real penance, rather than buying it.

Father James also visits a man in the hospital and administers last rites, there was a drunk driving incident that injured a busload of tourists, and this one in the hospital is dying, and Father James comforts his widow.  Then it's off to the prison, where he visits Freddie Joyce, a serial killer and cannibal, who is also seeking forgiveness.  And you thought the U.S. had a lock on cannibal killers, with Jeffrey Dahmer - but just think about how much worse the food is in the U.K., and you'll maybe see why cannibalism apparently caught on there, too.  I mean, you can only eat so much bangers and mash, blood pudding and mushy peas, at least in America we have a large variety of foods from around the world, and only the most sick and/or curious people end up wondering what human flesh tastes like - in the U.K. this could be much more of an epidemic. 

After all this, somebody burns down the church, while everybody's at the pub - as if things in this town couldn't get any worse.  AND then somebody kills Father James' dog, which is something that Padraic threatend to do in "The Banshees of Inisherin", but he couldn't bring himself to do it.  Colin Farrell's character at least took the dog out of Colm's house before he burned it down.  Finally Father James can't take it any more, after his daughter leaves town he shoots up the pub with that gun he got for Gerald, and then fist-fights with the rich banker.  OK, NOW THAT'S the Ireland we all know, right?  But this town is apparently too much for even a priest to handle, the other priest quits and Father James decides to move to Dublin, only he changes his mind at the airport after seeing the coffin of the dead tourist from the bus crash.  So apparently it's back to his parish to await possible execution from one of his parishioners. It's a fine town, I suppose, but the people there need to do a lot of work on themselves. 

Now I've got to get moving, on to "Oppenheimer" in a few days, then I really have to chart a course for Mother's Day and make a decision about where this year's Documentary Block is going to go - can it fit between Mother's Day and Father's Day, or is it better between Father's Day and the Fourth of July?  More importantly, how can I avoid "Barbenheimer"?

Also starring Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "The Banshees of Inisherin"), Kelly Reilly (last seen in "The Take"), Aidan Gillen (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Dylan Moran (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story"), Isaach de Bankolé (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Knives Out"), Marie-Josée Croze (last seen in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"), Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), David Wilmot (last seen in "Breathe"), Pat Shortt (also last seen in "The Banshees of Inisherin"), Gary Lydon (ditto), Killian Scott (last seen in "The Commuter"), Orla O'Rourke (last seen in "The Witches"), Owen Sharpe (last seen in "My Left Foot"), David McSavage (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Micheál Óg Lane.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Hail Marys (and 1 Our Father)

Slumberland

Year 16, Day 90 - 3/30/24 - Movie #4,690

BEFORE: I can still make my Easter film on time, though my review may get posted on Monday instead of Sunday, it will still count.  I just have to squeeze one more Jason Momoa film into the weekend - I took a nap after my shift at the theater, so I'm all set, plus I came home with half a box of brewed coffee, so I can stay up late.  Tomorrow we'll drive out to Long Island so my wife can buy cigarettes, and we'll have a nice lunch somewhere, and then home to post. 

Jason Momoa carries over again from "Conan the Barbarian". 

THE PLOT: A young girl discovers the secret map to the dreamworld of Slumberland and with the help of an eccentric outlaw, she traverses dreams and flees nightmares with the hope to be able to see her late father again. 

AFTER: Sure, I got the response programming time for "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" down to two months, but then on the other hand, it took me fourteen years to watch the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot.  Really, though, it's been on my list and my DVR for about 10 months.  But then there's "Slumberland", which came on Netflix in November 2022, I think. So OK, a year and a half there, but to be fair, I didn't have any other Jason Momoa films to link it too, and really, that was one of only a very few options. Honestly I prefer it this way, with fewer linking choices, it really makes my task easier than, say, deciding when to watch "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie", which both present me with TOO MANY linking choices, and I can only use two for each. 

It took me just a bit too long to figure out this film's source material or inspiration, the fact that the main character is named "Nemo" was the tip-off.  It's not the PIXAR film "Finding Nemo", that would be ridiculous - no, it's the early 1900's newspaper comic "Little Nemo in Slumberland" which was drawn by Winsor McCay.  In each strip a boy named Nemo would fall asleep and then for the next few panels, he'd have part of a wonderful, magical, impossible adventure in the dream world, until he woke up in the last panel.  McCay was also an early animator, and I think pioneered the concept of delayed gratification, as in not much would happen in each strip, because the character would wake up and the adventure would be over for another week, but stay tuned because NEXT time something cool might actually happen.  Maybe.  It took YEARS for Nemo to finally arrive in the kingdom of Slumberland, at the request of King Morpheus, and presumbly McCay got paid for each strip, over all that time.  A similar technique today keeps Marvel and DC fans buying comic books, and soap opera fans tuning in, day after day, thinking today's episode might be the one where someone finishes a conversation or actually eats a meal or something. 

The strips aren't widely read today, partially because the artist's depictions of African tribesmen would be considered quite racist - it was a different time - but the innovative uses of form, lettering, panel size and intricate backgrounds with fantastical cityscapes and enormous impossible palaces must have blown the minds of people in 1905.  And the comic was probably best enjoyed after smoking reefer, so it may have created the first generation of comic-book obsessed stoner nerds.  The dream world had its own moral code, and prominently featured recurring dream-fears like falling, drowning, or growing to giant-size - would we even have the "Sandman" comics or movies like "Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania" if not for Winsor McCay?  

Flip was a character in the original comic strip, he was a green clown with a giant hat that read "WAKE UP" and he would come to disrupt Nemo's dreams, to prevent him from ever reaching the kingdom of Slumberland, thus prolonging the adventure and Mr. McCay's paychecks.  This character has carried over, only now played by Jason Momoa as a large horned man-ogre, albeit one dressed like a dandy who has knowledge about how to traverse the dream realm, from one recurring dream to another via secret hidden doors.  But he's looking for the map of the dream realm, and he believes that Nemo's father had a copy.  It's possible at first to believe that Flip is just part of Nemo's dream, as her father would relate tales of his own outlaw adventures with Flip as bedtime stories for Nemo.  

After her father is lost at sea, Nemo has dreams where she's returned to the lighthouse where they lived (I see lighthouses are back as a trend, remember that Aquaman's father lives in one...) and she finds Flip searching for the map.  With her is her stuffed pig, Pig, who is her alive companion in the dream world, and a signal that we are within her dream, and it's Pig (or the Pig part of her own brain) that locates the map among her father's possessions.  This is somewhat similar to the movie "Time Bandits", where the six dwarves had a map of all the time-doors, with a giant door in the middle representing the Time of Legends.  On this map the largest space is the Nightmare Realm, and the theory is that if Nemo and Flip can get to this dangerous place and obtain some of it's treasured pearls, Nemo could bring her father back somehow.  

Together they travel through the dreams of a small child driving a truck through a city made of blue glass, a ballroom made of flowers or butterflies where a woman salsa dances, and a bathroom where a bald man dreams that he has hair again.  Each time they have to locate the door to the adjoining realm, so it's kind of a multiverse of things people dream about, and apparently some people dream of flying on giant geese.  Canadians, right?  But they're pursued by a massive tentacled nightmare creature (tentacles seem to be another theme this week, there was an octopus in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" and a giant tentacled monster in "Conan the Barbarian") and also Agent Green of the Bureau of Subconscious Activities, who's been trying to arrest Flip for 30 years because of the way he breaks into people dreams and steals stuff. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, Nemo is sent to live in a city apartment with her uncle, who's simply the most boring person ever, he owns a company that makes doorknobs because, well, somebody has to, and she is sent to public school for the first time ever, and even though the school is full of nerds and there are plenty of nerdy clubs to join, she still sees herself as an outsider, and much prefers going to sleep in a hammock in the school's basement so she can continue to visit Slumberland with Flip and work their way toward the Nightmare Realm.  Inevitably Agent Green catches up with them and locks Flip up in prison, so Nemo has to find a way to bust him out so their dream quest can continue, oh, if only she knew someone in the real world who was an expert on doors, doorknobs and locks...

I figured out the twist long before it was revealed, even if Flip forgot his name in the real world there were only a couple people he could be.  OK, one, really.  But it's a good twist, it makes sense and there's good character growth when the dreamer is reunited with his human side.  But Flip is so shaken up that he won't travel through the final door into the Realm of Nightmares, leaving Nemo to face the dangerous place on her own, or so it seems.  Even if she gets a pearl, is it even possible to bring back her father, or is she in for a terrible disappointment if the dream world doesn't work the way she wants it to?  That's really the worst thing about our dreams, the feeling that every night we can't control them, we're vulnerable to our brain being forced to torment us with the situations and the feelings that frighten us the most.  It's too bad we can't just turn our brains off for the sleeping hours, or at least have some way to control them, to have only good dreams instead of nightmares.  (Whatever happened with that "lucid dreaming" fad, anyway?)

Really, this came off to me as similar to the early films of Terry Gilliam, not just "Time Bandits", which I absolutely loved but maybe watched a few too many times, but also "Brazil" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", which were all great films before Gilliam started making more questionable ones like "Tideland" and "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote".  But the great Gilliam fantasy films were all about how our dreams are there for a reason, they show us parts of our own lives that we want to remember, other parts that may scare us, or can be hints to things we need to work on, realities we need to face but can't seem to bring ourselves around to doing that. (See also "The Wizard of Oz", "Alice in Wonderland" and many others)

Also starring Marlow Barkley, Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "Love After Love"), Kyle Chandler (last seen in "Broken City"), Cameron Nicoll, Antonio Raine Pastore, Weruche Opia, India de Beaufort (last seen in "Run Fatboy Run"), Chris D'Silva (last seen in "My Spy"), Yanna McIntosh (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Jacob So, Izaak Smith (last seen in "Marmaduke"), Michael Blake, Humberly Gonzalez (last seen in "Nobody"), Ava Cheung, Leslie Adlam (last seen in "In the Shadow of the Moon"), Jamillah Ross, Tonya Cornelisse (last seen in "Dolittle"), Owais Sheikh, Sergio Osuna, Luxton Handspiker, Katerina Taxia

RATING: 8 out of 10 escutcheons