A Royal Night Out

Year 16, Day 111 - 4/20/24 - Movie #4,710

BEFORE: It's still a bit of a jump, but I'm staying with the topic of kings from the U.K. - from the king(s) of Scotland to King George VI and the future Queen Elizabeth.  Makes perfect sense that this would have landed on 4/20 because in addition to that other thing that gets celebrated today, it's Hitler's birthday - Adolf would have been 135 today if he'd lived, but come on, there was no way he was going to live that long.  With his diet?  Forget about it.  But that makes me think about World War II, and here comes a film about the end of all that.  Yeah, yeah, I know that Hitler died on April 30, and V-E Day was really May 8, but I'm doing the best that I can here. 

Jack Reynor carries over from "Macbeth". 

THE PLOT: On V.E. Day in 1945, as peace extends across Europe, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are allowed out to join the celebrations.  It is a night full of excitement, danger and the first flutters of romance. 

AFTER: All kidding aside, Queen Elizabeth lived until she was 96, and it's only been about a year and a half since she died - the longest reigning British monarch, the longest reigning female monarch, with 70 years on the throne. (Her grandfather was King George V and HIS grandmother was Queen Victoria.). The majority of people can't remember a time when she wasn't queen, because they simply weren't alive then.  So we probably all tend to forget that she was a teenager once upon a time, and she went by the nickname "Lilibet", and she had one sister, Princess Margaret, who went by the nickname "Horseface".  (Wait a minute, no, that's right.)

The two teens desperately desired to go out and celebrate when peace broke out in Europe in 1945, but thanks to a combination of home-schooling and in-breeding, they both were ill-prepared to be out in public.  Elizabeth kept asking everyone for directions, because she never learned to read a map, also she'd been delivered everywhere by servants her whole life.  Not a good look.  And Margaret somehow knew all the best places to dance and party, despite never having danced or partied.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  The two girls were do dumb that they ended on separate buses with no open windows, and neither one could comprehend the fact that they couldn't hear each other or communicate in any way.  It's almost painful how they're depicted as ignorant in the ways of common man.  Like, when they got separated, why didn't they just text each other, or call each other's cell phones?  Oh, right, it was 1945. 

Princess Margaret ended up drinking too much, as teen girls out partying for the first time might do, and then jumped into a fountain on her way to the nightclubs to dance the Lindy Hop, and then - funny story - ended up with a bunch of prostitutes that were on their way to the Chelsea Barracks to show soldiers a "good time".  Ha ha, it's so hilarious to imagine a British princess servicing random soldiers and being totally out of control.  (Rule 34 says there simply must be porn about this somewhere, perhaps in a Tijuana bible...).  I hate to say it, but the King and the Queen Mum were right to set them up with a room at the Ritz, at a social gathering filled with older aristocrats.  I mean, it looked boring but there was probably a good buffet.  

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was the more responsible one, even if she didn't understand how maps or buses work, at least she tried to find her wayward sister, with the help of an RAF pilot who had recently gone AWOL.  Sure, I know this night probably never happened, but it's a good enough "fish out of water" story with the future queen going incognito and interacting with the common folk.  There's a bit of a disconnect here, though, because the film also mentions that Princess Elizabeth served in the military, sort of, as an honorary second subaltern in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Services - she trained as a driver and mechanic, even if the role was mostly honorary, you'd think that a driver would at least know her way around town.

Supposedly there were two army officers assigned to be their escorts, and according to the film, those escorts were bumbling idiots who got distracted by a conga, went off to have random sex at a party and then were probably court-martialed for losing track of the princesses.  These officers never existed, and the night just didn't go down like this, but sure, it's fun to imagine.  The real story is that the princesses went out with a group of friends that were also military officers, they walked through Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Pall Mall, watched their own parents on the palace balcony, and partied until about 3 am, with no known repercussions and without the King having to make a call to cover for an RAF deserter. 

I don't watch "The Crown", but I've heard good things - my wife has watched the whole series, while I clearly don't have time for it.  I know that Season 1 begins with Elizabeth marrying Prince Philip, so this film could serve as something of a prequel to that series, but then again, so could "The King's Speech". It's a very fertile era for movies, that post World War 2 U.K. setting. 

Also starring Sarah Gadon (last heard in "The Nut Job"), Bel Powley (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Emily Watson (last seen in "The Book Thief"), Rupert Everett (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Mark Hadfield (last seen in "Belfast"), Jack Laskey (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Jack Gordon (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Tim Potter (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"), Annabel Leventon (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Geoffrey Streatfeild (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Roger Allam (ditto), Debra Penny, Ricky Champ (last seen in "Lost in London"), Jack Brady (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Jessica Jay, Samantha Baines, Emma Connell, Rab Affleck (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Matt Sutton, Anna Swan, Sophia De Martino (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Hayley Squires (ditto), Fiona Skinner (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Laurence Spellman (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Ben Hall, Ruth Sheen (last seen in "Cyrano"), Edward Killingback, Gintare Belnoraviciute (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Derek Lawson, with archive footage of Winston Churchill (last seen in "The Special Relationship")

RATING: 6 out of 10 liberated bottles of champagne

Macbeth (2015)

Year 16, Day 110 - 4/19/24 - Movie #4,709

BEFORE: I just realized I missed an opportunity to drop another Michael Fassbender film in here, because I do really want to watch "Next Goal Wins".  BUT I don't have a slot for it, not if I'm going to hit Mother's Day on time, because I already dropped in "Beast" between two other Idris Elba movies, and that put me a day behind, I think.  But that's a comedy, and it doesn't really fit in thematically between these two films this week.  

Michael Fassbender carries over from "The Killer" and I'll have to try to circle back to "Next Goal Wins", hopefully in this calendar year somehow. 

THE PLOT: Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland.  Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself. 

AFTER: Ugh, I've tried to watch versions of "Macbeth" before, and they're always a tough slog.  I try to keep track of who kills who, but then it just gets confusing because everybody's name starts with "mac" and I lose track and forget everything, until the next time somebody remakes this Shakespeare story.  Do you know how many versions of "Macbeth" have been filmed?  OK, neither do I, but I know that many many actors have played the character, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and James McAvoy.  With this 2015 version, that means EVERY actor who has played either Professor Xavier or Magneto on-screen has been in a version of "the Scottish play".  It's an actor's dream of course, but I'm not really seeing why.  

This version in particular, it's so damn MOODY.  A lot of the characters have scenes where they just sit on the floor and stare into space while they say their lines.  Surely that's not something that's common to the play, people move around on stage, they walk and they hold things and they wield weapons and stuff, but so much of this film is people just depressed and BROODING.  Ugh, so boring.  How long until the next fight scene?  Macbeth talks about how he has "scorpions in his brain", so great, he's neuro-divergent now, or clinically depressed or he's got ADHD or something.  Is that what makes him kill King Duncan?  Not guilty by reason of insanity?  

I kid, of course, because we all know that what drives Macbeth is his ambition, his need to rise to the position of power.  Ah, but the prophecy is involved, and prophecy is a funny thing - here you just have to debate if it's self-fulfilling, because the three witches (actually four here) could be changing the events to come just by telling the prophecy to Macbeth himself.  Maybe he never wanted to be king in the first place, but telling him that's what the future holds could make him view himself in a different way, and then once he knows it's possible, maybe that makes him takes steps to bring this about much sooner.  We'll never know, maybe he was going to be king one day anyway through his efforts and by winning enough battles, or however they do kings over there in Scotland.  But then he takes the shortcut and kills the king in Act II, so yeah, try telling someone they'll be President of the U.S. one day and then watch what they do - of course that's just as liable to mess somebody and screw with their brains as it is to focus them and put them on the path that will take them there. 

Act I, of course, is just the witches delivering the prophecy - they find Macbeth and Banquo after a successful battle and they say that Macbeth will be the Thane of Cawdor and then later king, and Banquo will be the father of Kings.  This is also going to screw with Macbeth's head later, because one way to read this is that Lady Macbeth will be queen, and she might be having an affair with Banquo, that would be one way for his children to become kings.  

In Act II, King Duncan executes the current Thane of Cawdor for being a traitor, and that title then passes to Macbeth.  OK, check that first box on the prophecy bingo card.  Duncan comes over to Macbeth's place to give him the good news, but while he's there, he also declares Malcolm to be his heir.  Lady Macbeth suggests they hurry along to the second part of the prophecy by killing the king.  In this film a soldier's ghost appears and hands Macbeth a dagger, so now we've got both witches and ghosts interfering in politics, great.  Anyway everybody seems to agree that Macbeth needs to kill the king, because Lady wants to be queen and really, this is the fastest way.  

Act III, more killing as Macbeth kills all the servants so no witnesses.  Macduff finds Duncan dead and Macbeth gets the crown.  Macbeth then suddenly realizes he forgot to have kids, so there's no heir to the throne and if something happens to Macbeth, the crown goes to, you guessed it, Banquo and then Banquo's son, Fleance.  Ah, so THAT'S how the second part of the prophecy comes about.  Again, Macbeth can't just relax and enjoy being king, he's got to send assassins to kill Banquo - umm, wouldn't having a son relatively quickly be an easier solution to keeping the crown in the family?  No?  I guess when all you have is a sword everything looks like something that needs to be stabbed, or something like that. Banquo is killed but his son escapes, because prophecy, and then Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost at dinner.  Lady Macbeth says her husband is unwell, and declares the dinner over before anybody even gets to eat.

Act IV, Macbeth goes back to talk to the witches, and surprisingly he's not mad at them for telling him his future, but really, he should be. The new advice they have for him is to beware of Macduff, and Macbeth will only be king until Great Birnam Wood comes to the castle.  But there's some good news, too, Macbeth can't be slain by any man who was born from a woman, so naturally he thinks he's in the clear.  Macduff flees, so Macbeth burns Macduff's wife, children and servants on steaks, and no, there can't possibly be any repercussions from that coming up...

Yeah, man those witches are MESSING with your head, bro, they tell you what's coming and then you go flying off the handle and bring about the VERY THING they told you to watch out for.

Act V is the famous part where Lady Macbeth can't seem to get the spot of blood off of her hands, but in this film, it's just her lying on the floor, feeling moody and staring into space.  What a letdown.  Then she wanders off and finds the witches, and soon Macbeth is told that she died, giving him yet another reason to brood, act depressed and then go more crazy.  MacDuff tries to smoke out the castle with Great Birnam Wood, completing the prophecy bingo card and then there's the final battle between Macbeth and MacDuff - and I think Shakespeare was the first writer to pull that "Oh, I wasn't born, I was ripped from my mother's womb" trick.  MacDuff was delivered by Caesarian section, which, news flash for Billy Shakes, still counts as being "born".  Maybe there's a lot that Shakespeare didn't understand about childbirth, just saying.  

Macbeth is confused at first when he tries to wrap his head around MacDuff not being "born", but he suddenly realizes the prophecy suggests that MacDuff CAN kill Macbeth, so Macbeth stops fighting back.  Live by the prophecy, die by the prophecy, I guess.  Macbeth allows himself to be killed, and Malcolm becomes the new king.  Fleance, Banquo's son, is still out there somewhere, so I guess he becomes king sometime later?  Shakespeare really left that plotline dangling, didn't he?  I mean, follow up on the story and if you say something's going to happen, let's see it happen!  

Look, it's been a long time since I read Shakespeare in English lit class - but maybe if you're still in school I've given you some food for thought here.  Tell your English teacher you know what a "self-fulfilling prophecy" is, and you'll be ahead of the game.  Basically the witches brought all this killing about just by telling Macbeth what might happen in the future, but really, no man should know too much about his own future, it's not healthy.  You can hope for success, you can believe that you're going to get ahead and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way, but really, if you KNOW that you're going to be successful, then you're not going to try as hard, and you'll come to believe that you DESERVE success, and then you won't take the steps that will allow you to earn it. I think that's the point of "Macbeth", or maybe Will Shakespeare just wanted to write a play with a lot of killing in it, I'm open to that concept too.

I'm going to really resist drawing any kind of Macbeth / Trump analogy here - you'd think I'd want to go that way because "Macbeth" is about the damaging effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.  But I think that would be giving Trump too much credit, he wasn't ever politically ambitious, he's just an asshole.  Plus my theory is he never WANTED to be President of the U.S., and nobody was more surprised than him when he won the election in 2016.  I think he was just running to increase his brand and his power, so he could sell more shitty products like Trump Steaks and Trump Water and Trump University - but damn if he didn't win by accident and then he found out he actually had to DO THE JOB.  What a bummer - what supports my theory here is that as President he really did as little as humanly possible, because he knew he wasn't qualified.  And it wasn't about "smaller government" or "states rights", he was just plain lazy and he wanted to play golf and eat fast food every day, so that's exactly what he did. He's no Macbeth, he's more of a Falstaff, only not nearly as jolly.  Or he's just an asshole.

Also starring Marion Cotillard (last seen in "Annette"), Paddy Considine (last seen in "Child 44"), Sean Harris (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Jack Reynor (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), David Thewlis (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), David Hayman (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Maurice Roeves (last seen in "The Eagle Has Landed"), Brian Nickels, Ross Anderson (last seen in "The King's Man"), James Harkness (last seen in "Spencer"), Seylan Mhairi Baxter, Lynn Kennedy, Kayla Fallon, Amber Rissmann, Lochlann Harris, Hilton McRae (last seen in "Far From the Madding Crowd"), Scott Dymond (last seen in "Under the Skin"), Rebecca Benson, Gerard Miller, Roy Sampson (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 banquet plates to go

The Killer

Year 16, Day 109 - 4/18/24 - Movie #4,708

BEFORE: Ugh, subway troubles like you wouldn't BELIEVE.  I live on one of the most trouble-plagued subway lines, or maybe it just feels that way lately because there's always a train somewhere on the line with mechanical problems, or one that got its emergency brakes activated and is stuck, which stops the whole line in both directions for some reason.  I've concluded there are so many problems that there MUST be someone actively sabotaging trains randomly, because it's every damn day now.  I have the NYC mass transit apps and I signed up to receive alerts for this line, so maybe it's a perception problem - perhaps these problems are constant but I'm just finding out about them more frequently now.  Last night, no lie, it took me two hours to get home instead of the usual 45 minutes, as there was a power outage that shut down the whole line, and I was just sitting at a station in Manhattan, waiting for an update that never came.  Usually I can wait these things out, and get home before the people who ditched and set out to find an alternate route home.  But this time was different, after 30 minutes I had to concede that a repair wasn't going to be announced in the near future, and thankfully I was at a station that accessed the "A" train, and I was able to take that through Brooklyn and link up with my regular line past my usual stop, and just take it five stops back.

This morning, of course I needed to leave the house by noon to get to work at 1 pm, and there was an alert at 11 am that someone had been hit by a subway train, of course, on the line I take.  So I either had to hope things could be cleaned up and back in order by noonish, or else leave earlier and walk to another subway line, at least a 10 or 15 minute walk away.  I walked by my usual stop, though, and technically trains were running again, though one took another 20 minutes to arrive, at least I could confirm it was on the way.  Still made it to work on time, but only because the train skipped stops.  

Tilda Swinton carries over from "Three Thousand Years of Longing". 

THE PLOT: After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers and himself on an international manhunt he insists isn't personal.  

AFTER: This is kind of not your typical assassin movie, since it comes from David Fincher, who directed "Fight Club", which wasn't your typical umm, fighting movie. You can expect this to be a think-piece, if you choose to look at it that way.  It's going to get inside the mind of an assassin, what are his motivations, his aspirations, his justifications for doing what he does.  How does he pass the time?  What does he think about?  What are the rules that he lives by?  Look, I'll admit that sounds a little boring, and I'll admit that I fell asleep at some point - but to be fair, I was exhausted, since it took me two hours to get home last night, and the subway ride is usually 45 minutes, tops.  We ordered a big meal of Chinese food, that also wasn't helpful, and then even though I had some Mountain Dew handy and some cookies, I crashed as soon as the sugar wore off and the film got a little slow.

I perservered, though - the rules are that if I fall asleep I need to rewind to the last thing I remember and try again, but if this keeps happening then I'm allowed to call it at some point.  But I did wake up at 4 am and the movie was over, I did go back and finish the film, which then took me until 5 am.  I would like to think that a movie about an assassin would be thrilling and exciting enough so that I wouldn't fall asleep at all, but that's just not where we find ourselves, and there are a lot of long quiet stretches between the killings, a lot of internal monologuing, sure our nameless Killer works his way up the chain within his own organization, as you would expect, to find the location of the two other assassins who attacked his girlfriend, and then the client who might still be upset with him for botching the job.  

For the record, it's not a "near-miss", because a near-miss would be a hit. Usually this is a misnomer, like two planes that almost collide, we incorrectly call that a "near-miss" when it's a miss, and according to George Carlin, we should call that a "near-hit".  But maybe "near-miss" is the correct term here, because the Killer does shoot someone, it's just the wrong someone.  He lines up the shot from the building across the plaza from the hotel, but the target isn't alone in the hotel suite, there's a dominatrix in there with him, and she moves at the last second and gets in the way of the bullet.  So the target survives, and it's not the kind of profession where you can say, "Oh, well, these things happen..." and apparently there are repercussions.  

So in a fashion similar to "Proud Mary", the Killer's only recourse is to keep on killing, even the people in his own organization, until he's sure that everyone who is aware of his mistake is dead and the client is not holding him responsible for the error.  This is somehow justified because the organization might be trying to kill HIM as either retaliation for his mistake, or to cover it up.  You'd like to think, however, that all this killing might be bad for his reputation, but the mental justification is there, it's all "Trust no one" and "Kill them before they kill you."  But it still seems like it might be a funky way of doing business - everyone's so secretive that there's no direct link of communication so he can check on his own job security.  Maybe if he didn't keep breaking his cell phones after every contact he'd have a better idea where he stands, but I get it, someone could be tracking his location or learning information from listening in on his calls. 

For a fun game, see if you can name all of the classic TV shows where the Killer got his aliases from - every time he flies there's a different name on the plane ticket, starting with Felix Unger and Archibald Bunker, and going from there...

Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Slow West"), Charles Parnell (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Arliss Howard (last seen in "Mank"), Kerry O'Malley (last seen in "Side Effects"), Sophie Charlotte, Emiliano Pernia, Gabriel Polanco, Sala Baker (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Endre Hules (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Monique Ganderton (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Daran Norris (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Nikki Dixon, Ilyssa Fradin (last seen in "Captive State"), Jack Kesy (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Eric Tolzmann, Kev Morris Sr., Andre Bellos, Lacey Dover. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 packages shipped to an Amazon locker

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Year 16, Day 108 - 4/17/24 - Movie #4,707

BEFORE: I can't believe we're already halfway through April, it feels like it just started - but at least the weather's finally starting to get nice for more than a day at a time, and that's good, unless we have another earthquake or something. All through March, it felt like we'd get three days of rain and/or clouds at a time, and we all just got used to not seeing sunlight.  That's some serious S.A.D. - season affective disorder, and I'm told that's a real thing.  I spend most of my time indoors, anyway, but I find as I'm working at the theater that I can open the side exit doors and stand there for a while, at least then I get a little fresh air.  Oxygen becomes kind of important every once in a while.  

I interviewed for a higher position at the theater, not sure if I'll get it because I'm the oldest one there, which I think is a good thing and a bad thing.  I have the most experience, but also, I'm old and I don't have as much energy as the other people who are half my age.  And yeah, of course I found a way to mention that during the interview, because my ability to self-sabotage is apparently stronger than my desire to advance in my new career.  I find self-deprecation very helpful in conversation with my co-workers, but really, I need to stop doing that during job interviews. 

Idris Elba carries over again from "Beast". 

THE PLOT: A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. 

AFTER: Of course, I remember stories about genies, from when I was a kid - you find an old lamp, polish it up, and then before you know it, some spirit floats out from inside and offers you three wishes.  Then there were TV shows like "I Dream of Jeannie" and movies like "Aladdin", all riffing on these tales from the Middle East about genies or djinns or whatever.  They're kind of like Arabic leprechauns, if you find one it's a shortcut to fortune and fame because you can wish for anything you want.  Except for more wishes, apparently, this film is very firm on that point, that you can't game the system.  COME ON, three is the agreed-upon number, and if you can't be happy after getting what you want that many times, then there's just no satisfying you.  Either way, there should be no point in gaming the system, if you could wish for more wishes then the first person who ever found a genie would never be done with the wishing, and nobody else would ever get a turn. 

Then there were like a million jokes told about genies, most of which start with "This guy finds a lamp..." and then usually ends with him asking for something vulgar like for certain parts of his body to be, umm, bigger, if you know what I mean.  Or the joke explores some weird codicil beyond the "more wishes" thing, asking for something impossible or gross or overtly sexual and , well, those jokes probably never end well either.  

But it's rare to find a dramatic non-animated film about a genie or a djinn, and this somehow is that film.  A woman who is an academic "narratologist", which is just a fancy word for a storyteller or someone who studies stories, attends a conference in the Middle East, and happens to buy a trinket from a market, and it's a little antique bottle that she happens to knock over into her sink, and it pops open and a flood of purplish gas comes out, and then there's a giant genie in her hotel room.  

(I'm open to the idea here that the lead character is hallucinating or imagining the whole thing, because before this happens she does have two encounters with demonic-looking beings, one who tries to steal her luggage cart at the airport (here in NYC we call those "homeless people") and another she imagines in the front row at her lecture.  So it's possible that this woman has gone crazy in the summer heat of Istanbul, and perhaps the Djinn character is not really there at all.  Just a theory.)

The Djinn proceeds to tell her his whole backstory, in three parts, which take place over 3,000 years, from ancient times to current day, with long long stretches where he's inside the bottle, not really alive but not dead either, conscious of the passage of time but unable to escape or do anything about his situation.  Apparently he used to work for the Queen of Sheba, and kind of fell in love with the boss, but then King Solomon came into the picture, and Solomon used magic to imprison the djinn for the first time, in a brass bottle that a bird then drops into the Red Sea.  

Centuries later, fishermen find the bottle and the Djinn finds himself in the possession of a concubine in the palace of Suleiman the Magnificent - he grants her two wishes, but there's so much conspiracy and murder in that palace that she gets killed before her third wish, which puts the Djinn into a sort of limbo state.  He wanders the palace as a spirit for 1,000 years before he can convince anyone to look in his bottle hiding place, in the spare palace bathroom. 

During the reign of Sultan Murad IV, he's finally able to get one of the palace concubines to break the stone and reveal his bottle. (The sultan's brother had a thing for very fat women, and one of them slipped and broke the stone with her body.). The Djinn tries to force her to make a wish, but he came on a bit strong so she wished him back into the bottle at the bottom of the sea.  Whoopsie.  The last part of his story takes place in the 19th century, when he's found by the young wife of an old Turkish merchant, and he grants her all the knowledge of the time, she wishes to study science and mathematics and become one of the world's great geniuses, which is not a thing that women were generally allowed to do back then, and he gets her books and they fall in love and conceive a child, but he keeps putting pressure on her to make that third wish, and again, he comes on just a bit too strong, and she wishes she could forget about him.  Whoopsie again, she not only forgets about him, but she forgets which bottle she put him in, so he's stuck again with no way out. 

The modern woman, Alithea, being a story expert herself, seems to be aware of all the pitfalls here, she treats the Djinn as if is he a trickster god, which he may well be, and she's also familiar with the stories about genies, where people didn't wish carefully, and always paid the price for being impulsive or not thinking things through.  But after listening to his tales of woe and his ability to fall in love too hard with the females he's been in the service of, and over time it seems she falls in love with him, because after careful consideration, she uses her first wish, and she wishes for the genie to be in love with her.  It's kinky, and I've never seen this angle on a genie story before.  Too bad this wasn't made as a late-night Cinemax movie, there's some story potential here - surely there must be a porn parody called "I Cream of Jeannie" or something.  

Well, before you know it they're in a relationship, and he agrees to move back to London with her and live in her flat, and they'll just get to those other two wishes someday, but for now, why not enjoy co-habitation and fine Turkish desserts and what's on the telly tonight, luv?  They settle into a routine and the Djinn helps Alithea deal with her annoying neighbors, and she teaches him about all the wonders of technology, but since he's like a giant electronic transmitter himself, it's all just a bit much for him, this modern world.  Still, while she's lecturing he's zooming around the world to learn about brain surgery and super-colliders and, well, all of the modern world things.  But soon his electric body starts to suffer ill effects of being in a city full of tech, and she has to use her second wish just to cure him.  

Eventually Alithea realizes she made the first wish out of selfishness, because love isn't something you can force on somebody, it should only be given, not taken, so she mentally gets herself to a place where she can use her third wish to free him, back to the land of genies or wherever he belongs, which isn't a very specific wish, but at least it comes from a good place.  And this is just the thing for him, though he promises to come back and spend time with her every once in a while, you know, just keep it casual, no commitments, very modern and let's-see-where-this-goes, which seems to be the best arrangement.  

I can't help but think this is all some giant metaphor for something, though I can't exactly say what.  Something about relationships, for sure, and maybe how many of them aren't exactly equal, like there can be one person who determines what the relationship is going to be, for lack of a better term that person is the alpha, and then the other might be one more likely to make sacrifices, who maybe doesn't earn as much but also doesn't mind going on more grocery runs or whatever.  There's nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, because a relationship between two alphas is perhaps doomed from the start, I think we see that in some celebrity couples that break up, you have to imagine with two strong personalities maybe that relationship became something of a competition, and that just isn't going to last.  You look at couples that last longer, maybe one is working on films while the other one cares for the kids, and they can take turns with this, work out a schedule where they rotate every six months, or whatever feels right for them.  Because if you don't have this, then sooner or later they flame out and one if them's only seeing the kids every other weekend, right? 

Or maybe the metaphor's about how if you've lived alone for a long period of time, then when you finally find a partner it can feel magical on some level, that's another way to look at this other than to just treat it as the "woman has sex with the genie" movie.  But if that's your thing, it's fine, no judgments here. Maybe it's just a simple story about a woman who'd been alone for a while and just needed some action.  If it were possible I bet you'd see a lot more people booking trips to the Middle East and searching the markets there for bottles to rub.  It's an innovative topic for a movie, sure, but I have to deduct a point for three out of the four flashbacks being so damn boring. 

Also starring Tilda Swinton (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Erdil Yasaroglu, Sarah Houbolt, Aamito Lagum, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yuksel, Matteo Bocelli, Lachy Hulme (last seen in "The Matrix Revolutions"), Megan Gale (last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Alyla Browne, Ogulcan Arman Uslu, Kaan Guldur (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Jack Braddy, Hugo Vella, Zerrin Tekindor, Anna Adams, David Collins, Burcu Gölgedar, Vincent Gil, Melissa Jaffer (also last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Anne Charleston, Danny Lim, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, Seyithan Ozdemir, George Shevtsov (last seen in "Dead Calm"), Pia Thunderbolt, Berk Ozturk, Anthony Moisset, Abel Bond, Peter Bertoni, Lianne Mackessy, Khoury Matthew, Botan Ozer, Georgiou Thomas, Arshia Dehghani, Rellim Egroeg, Lulu Pinkus, Karen Ainley, Aska Karem, Melissa Kahraman, David Paulsen, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 hotel bathrobes

Beast

Year 16, Day 107 - 4/16/24 - Movie #4,706

BEFORE: Just about one year ago, I was already into my annual Doc Block and I'd started with some sports movies - the one about Venus and Serena Williams, "Hoop Dreams", and "When We Were Kings", which was about the Muhammad Ali boxing match against George Foreman, held in Zaire, Africa and called "The Rumble in the Jungle".  Well, we've got another jungle fight tonight, only this one's between Idris Elba and a fierce lion.  Call me crazy, but my money's on Idris Elba, who carries over from "No Good Deed". 

THE PLOT: A father and his two teenage daughters find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the Savanna has but one apex predator. 

AFTER: Who knows, maybe I should have held on to this one, because it links to "Daddy's Little Girls", which is a potential Father's Day film.  BUT I'm just not sure yet which Father's Day films I'm going to be able to get to this year, the chain has not seen fit to reveal this to me just yet.  Once the oracle (really, it's just one of those Magic 8-Balls) gives me some guidance, or when I get close enough to Mother's Day, I can work out the path to Father's Day.  But since we may drive down to North Carolina for a week, I'm not sure yet how many steps need to be in that part of the chain, I'll count when we get a little closer, but there's no point in blocking it until I know how many days long that section needs to be. But thematically this one would have worked as a Father's Day film, because it's all about a dad trying to re-connect with his two daughters, while also protecting them from a giant crazed lion.  

We're always told that the female lions are the aggressors, the hunters, but this film would suggest otherwise.  The "Uncle Martin" character who's supposed to be the lion expert breaks it down a different way, that the lionesses are the food hunters, but the males protect the pack, I guess while the lionesses are hunting?  I apologize, I don't know if the term "lioness" is considered derogatory and outdated now, like "actress" is.  Do they prefer "female lions" or should I not be presuming what their gender is, based on the length of their hair?  Perhaps some of the ones without manes identify as male lions, you never know these days. Honestly I don't want to get close enough to ask them what their pronouns are, but it scarcely matters.  I still prefer actor and actress as terms, but I get that it's a little weird, we don't have lawyers and lawyeresses, or doctors and doctorettes, so why the need to have two different names for male and female actors?  I guess I'm with the gender-neutral people on this one for grammar rules alone, though.  

But anyway, of course this film is just "Jaws" with a lion instead of a shark, when you get right down to it.  And a Land Rover instead of a boat, sure. You guys make all the changes you need to the plot and scenery if that helps you believe you're breaking new ground here.  But an animal film rings the same no matter how you dress it up, just like badminton, volleyball and ping pong all hearken back to tennis.  I think tennis came first, or else doubles tennis is just team ping pong played while standing on the table, as George Carlin once pointed out.  So this is "Jaws" on land, but with a lion, final answer. 

The lion is the last remaining member of his pack, the rest were killed by poachers.  So Uncle Martin tells us that this lion could be seeking revenge, and he blames ALL humans for what happened to his family, and he's apparently killed an entire village of people as a start.  Only lions "don't do this", according to Martin, so we either have to deduce that what we know about lions is wrong, or this is a very unusual lion, one who thinks in human terms, if that makes sense.  Do animals understand concepts like "revenge" or "blame", or is it all just survival of the fittest, and killing because of hunger?  I don't know, what do I look like, a zoologist?  These questions are above my pay grade, dude. 

There's SO MUCH frantic talking between Nate Samuels and his daughters that it's very difficult for the film to build up suspense - more quiet moments might have made the film scarier, but this father and his daughters debate EVERY SINGLE ACTION they do, five times over, and that's the most wearying thing about the film.  Nobody ever seems to listen to each other, though, which might be the point, but it's also very aggravating.  If Nate says, "You two stay in the car!" you'd think that would be simple enough for the daughters to follow, but you also just know that at some point one's going to step out of the car, maybe for a very good reason, or maybe it's just to advance the plot, but it also means that every action that takes place was telegraphed by a previous line of dialogue about how dangerous it would be to do THAT VERY THING.  So great, I know your family needs to re-connect, it's evident in the fact that everybody is talking talking talking to each other and nobody is listening.  

This family goes through hell, they're tracked down again and again by the lion, who I'm guessing has an incredible sense of smell.  Every time they think they might be safe, nope, it's one of those "he's right behind me, isn't he?" moments.  Repeat as necessary until we hit 90 minutes. And it was all for what, so they could pose for a photo in front of their dead mother's favorite tree?  So not worth it - why couldn't they just learn Photoshop and pose somewhere else, and just make the photo with a computer?  It would have been a lot easier and safer. 

OK, it's slightly better and less outrageous than "Cocaine Bear", but I realize that's not saying too much. 

Also starring Iyana Halley (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Leah Jeffries, Sharlto Copley (last seen in "Hardcore Henry"), Naledi Mogadime, Martin Munro, Daniel Hadebe (last seen in "The Woman King"), Liyabuya Gongo, Thapelo Sebogodi, Chris Langa, Mduduzi Mavimbela, Chris Gxalaba, Tafara Nyatsanza, Ronald Mkwanazi, Thabo Rametsi (last seen in "The Giver"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 photographs taken by a REAL camera, not a phone

No Good Deed (2014)

Year 16, Day 106 - 4/15/24 - Movie #4,705

BEFORE: Out yesterday working at a screening of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", and since I already did a shift with "Monkey Man" a few weeks ago, and there's yet another "Planet of the Apes" movie due out in May, I don't want to alarm anyone, but we could be headed for another "Hot Monkey Summer".  Or it means that monkey pox is coming back, you never know.  Does anyone remember monkey pox?  Just me? 

At the moment I don't see anything on the horizon that would make me go buy a movie ticket.  I sat out "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" because it wasn't the right time of year, and I avoided "Rebel Moon" so far, also "Dune II" and "Civil War".  I feel like all of these films are going to catch up with me on streaming in a few months, so where's the point in buying a movie ticket?  I haven't been to the AMC I used to work at since last summer, it's a weird feeling, but I guess I've moved on.

I came home from "Godzilla x Kong" (not sure what the "x" means) and we watched "24 in 24: Last Chef Standing", which is a new cooking competition that we're SO there for, and then I got to my movie, I had this on a home-made DVD but I also checked and it looked available on demand still, which is better because captions.  But I got three minutes in and realized that was the WRONG "No Good Deed", there's another movie with the same name that came out in 2002 and stars Samuel L. Jackson.  So that wasn't going to work, watching that would break the chain, so I had to get up out of the recliner and switch to the DVD, so no captions - the other choice was to go upstairs and watch it on Hulu, but I didn't want to do that.  

Taraji P. Henson carries over again from "Proud Mary".  

THE PLOT: An unstable escaped convict terrorizes a woman who is alone with her two children. 

AFTER: OK, real simple one tonight, because there's nothing complicated about a sociopath, right?  Or is it a psychopath?  I get those two mixed up.  A guy breaks out of prison custody while he's being transported back to prison after his parole hearing, which was, shocker, unsuccessful.  This is why the smarter cities now hold their parole hearings AT the prison, or better yet, by zoom conference.  (I'm guessing, I don't really know.). Colin Evans claims to be a changed man, but then one of the witnesses speaking against him points out that he COULD be lying, and that he's very charismatic and persuasive, also a lying liar. 

After Colin escapes from the prison van, he spies on his ex-fiancée having coffee with another man at an outdoor restaurant, then follows her home and accuses her of cheating on him.  They argue, and let's just say it doesn't end well.  For her.  

Meanwhile, Terri is a stay-at-home mother, and her husband is leaving on a trip to visit his father, so Terri sets up a "girls night" with her best friend, she needs someone to talk to because taking care of their two kids is a full-time job, and her marriage isn't doing so well.  But these two people are on a collision course, because the murderer on the run crashes his stolen car near her house during a violent rain storm.  He rings her doorbell to ask to borrow her phone, and at first she follows the rules of "stranger danger", she doesn't let him in the house, she makes him call for a tow truck while outside, but then over the course of five minutes she comes to trust him, and all that safety crap goes out the window.  She lets him in the house, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Terri's friend Meg comes over, there's a lot of flirting going on, Meg is attracted to Colin but also assumes that he and Terri are having an affair.  Remember, Colin is very charismatic and persuasive, but also a liar.  And capable of violence, so this whole middle part is like waiting for the other shoe to drop - we know something bad's going to happen, but we don't know what, or when.  Eventually something's bound to set off this guy, he's just wound WAY too tight to get out of this situation without blowing his top or just asserting his macho male dominance over these women in some way.  Yep, there it is.  You can play a version of "Clue" with this one, take bets on whether it's going to be Colin in the bedroom with a gun or Colin in the garage with a knife, but you know it's going to be Colin hurting someone in some room.

Colin's cut the phone lines, he's stashed all the kitchen knives, he's mapped out all the exits, he may be psychotic but he's no dope.  Terri fights back with a fire extinguisher and tries to call for help with her fax machine (who still had a FAX MACHINE in 2014?) but this only forces Colin to make her pack up both kids and hit the road with him in the family car.  They get pulled over by a white cop and Terri does her best to signal the cop that something hinky is going on, but with her kids in the car, she can't put their safety at risk by blowing his cover.  Yeah, that situation doesn't end well, either.  

Finally there's a bit of a contrivance, as Colin takes Terri back to the ex-fiancée's place, and well, no spoilers here.  It seemed like a very wild coincidence, though, but upon further reflection maybe it all makes some sense. There's a final showdown which is a bit too much like "Fatal Attraction" only gender-reversed, and it really shouldn't be that at all, if you think about it. But I'll try not to, there's not much here that's really memorable so I expect I'll forget all about it in a few months.  

NITPICK POINT: It seems a bit odd that a man with a murder conviction could escape from custody and then NOT be the top news story, with bulletins everywhere about the man on the loose.  OK, maybe the storm was a hurricane or something and therefore it wasn't the top news story, everybody was a little busy, let's say.  But with so many tabloid shows out there ("Inside Edition", "Extra", FOX News) you'd think that this story would still dominate the headlines.  Remember those two guys who escaped from a prison in upstate New York a few years ago?  The story hit the news right away and it dominated the headlines until they were caught.  

Also starring Idris Elba (last seen in "Extraction II"), Leslie Bibb (last seen in "Running with the Devil"), Kate del Castillo (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Henry Simmons (last seen in "World's Greatest Dad"), Mirage Moonschein, Kenny Alfonso (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Tatom Pender (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Kelly O'Neal (last seen in "I, Tonya"), Mark Rhino Smith (last seen in "Acts of Vengeance"), Bobbie Elzey, Leon Lamar (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Frank Brennan (last seen in "42"), Wilbur Fitzgerald (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Dolan Wilson (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Brianna Slate. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 hastily-packed suitcases

Proud Mary

Year 16, Day 105 - 4/14/24 - Movie #4,704

BEFORE: I sort of forgot that Taraji P. Henson was in both "Think Like a Man" movies, so this little block of three more of her films is going to mean 5 appearances for the year so far, and that's enough to make her tied for the lead, along with Toni Collette and Jennifer Lopez.  As of tomorrow, that is. It's fine, I've got no problems with a three-way tie between three prolific actresses, of course that lead won't hold up through the summer, probably, because there's the whole documentary block coming, and I can see that there are people who frequently appear in docs, like David Letterman and Johnny Carson, who are scheduled to appear a lot more. It'll still be another two months before I get there, most likely. 

Taraji P. Henson carries over from "Coffee & Kareem". 

THE PLOT: Mary, a hit woman working for an organized crime family in Boston, has her life completely turned around when a professional hit goes bad and a young boy crosses her path. 

AFTER: Some things in common with yesterday's comedy, like Ms. Henson plays a mother (or mother figure) to a black teen with a dead father.  Also there are ample opportunities for her character to shoot people, which popped up in "Coffee & Kareem" more often than you might think.  But here it's totally justified by the plot, since she plays a hit woman working for the Boston mob who suddenly decides she wants out of the action, to give this mothering thing a chance and try to start making up for all the people she's killed.  The problem is, she's too entrenched in the "family" for them to let her go. 

So let me see if I've got this straight, she's killed a lot of people over the years, let's say.  But there's ONE that she regrets, out of all of them, a small-time bookie that she killed on orders from her superiors.  So she somehow tracks down THAT GUY'S son and befriends him, and feeds him and gives him a place to live so that he won't end up in jail, or just hustling on the streets of Boston.  It's all great and noble that she wants to leave this life, and go live with him in Florida or Montana or something, but it's just not that easy for her to leave this career behind.  For one thing, she knows too much, so the theory is that her "family" would kill her rather than let her walk away.  She tries to create chaos by killing "Uncle", a high-level drug dealer - maybe she thought that his death would cause a power struggle in the city, and she could slip away in the confusion?  Or better yet, somebody would blame her employers for the death of Uncle, and if her boss dies, she could just walk away?  It's a bit unclear what exactly she was trying to do.

But it seems perhaps the only way out of this killing people business is to kill more people, only she turns her sights on the higher-ups in her own organization, Benny, who happens to be the father of her ex-boyfriend, Tom, and then Tom himself.  I can't tell really if this is ironic, that she has to kill more people to get herself to a place where she doesn't have to kill more people, or if this is anything close to the way criminal organizations really work.  I just wonder if the screenwriters have any idea, or if they're just making it all up as they go. 

You WILL hear the song "Proud Mary" in this film, the Tina Turner version, of course (not the Ike Turner intro, Ike's been cancelled, for good reason...) but they make you wait for it.  It only plays during the final action shoot-out scene and also during closing credits.  I've got some issues with the song, which of course I knew first as a Creedence Clearwater song, and yes, it was written by John Fogerty.  But I didn't know until today, thanks to the closed captions, that the song lyrics are really "Pumped a lot of 'TANE down in New Orleans."  For over 30 years, I thought the line was pumped a lot of PAIN down in New Orleans."  I thought the line referred to gas, of course, but pain as a metaphor for gas seemed oddly poetic somehow.  But I was wrong, it's apparently TANE which is short for octane, and the only problem is that I've never heard anybody call gasoline TANE or even OCTANE, it's just not the way people tend to talk.  So I still like my version better, about pumping PAIN, call me crazy if you want. 

There are other questions, too, about lines like "Left a good job in the city."  Well, if the job was good, why did you leave it?  How come you never saw "The good side of the city" until you took a ride on a riverboat?  Does the city just look better from that angle, or is there something else going on?  And what about "You don't have to worry, if you got no money"?  I kind of doubt that, the people on the river have to make ends meet, too.  I'd like to hear about somebody taking a ride on the riverboat queen and thinking that everything is free, because "people on the river are happy to give."  I bet they'd find out the hard way that this just doesn't ring true - sure, it rhymes nicely, but you can't get something for nothing, no matter where you are. 

Also starring Billy Brown (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Jahi Di'Allo Winston (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Danny Glover (last seen in "Spieberg"), Margaret Avery (ditto), Neal McDonough (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Xander Berkeley (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Rade Serbedzija (last seen in "The Promise"), Erik LaRay Harvey (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Owen Burke (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Bo Cleary (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), James Milord, Alex Portenko, Gene Ravvin, Airon Armstrong, Jose Guns Alves (last seen in "Free Guy"), Kevin O. Peterson, Vladimir Orlov (last seen in "The Tourist"), Al'Jaleel McGhee, Roger Dillingham Jr. (last seen in "I Care a Lot"), Shawn Doherty, Yuri Quinnie.

RATING: 5 out of 10 hot dogs from a street cart