On the Line

Year 16, Day 342 - 12/7/24 - Movie #4,893

BEFORE: All right, we're getting down to it - the road to Christmas leads right through Mel Gibson this year.  Maybe you can guess what's coming up next week.  But seven films remain for this Movie Year after tonight, but I'm making progress very slowly because I'm so damn busy with two jobs. I'm working both days this weekend, and then I don't get a day off until Thursday, and I just booked an eye exam for that day at a new eyeglass provider in Queens, because my vision just keeps getting worse, as does my hearing.  What I really should be doing is watching as many films as I can before I can no longer hear or see them - really, it's no fun getting old.

Kevin Dillon carries over from "A Midnight Clear". 

THE PLOT: A radio host takes a call, where an unknown person threatens to kill the showman's family on air. To save loved ones, the host will have to play a survival game and the only way to win is to find out the identity of the criminal.  

AFTER: Speaking of old, Mel Gibson.  And Clint Eastwood. Neither shows any sign of retiring, but really, both should consider it, I mean, if they don't have enough money to go the Gene Hackman route than I really don't know why anybody is an actor.  If I got to be an actor and made a couple million for being in ONE movie then I'd be done, I'd probably take my ball and go home, find a small town upstate where that money would buy a house AND pay my living expenses for the next 20 years.  But nobody really DOES that, instead they try to become top-tier actors who make five million per picture, and then ten, then twenty, meanwhile their lifestyles are getting more extravagant (I assume) and they have to pay agents, assistants, alimony, child support, where the hell does it all end?  Honestly I'd love to hear about some a-level actor who puts all his money in the bank, lives in a simple one-room apartment in a small California town when he's not traveling to make movies, and then cashes in by buying up a few Starbucks franchises or something and never needs to work again.  Sure, he can make a movie a year by choice, but not because he needs to, and therefore he's more relaxed and a better actor.  But I'm betting that's just not how it works.  

Forget it, we all know that life is a never-ending treadmill and that should go double for famous people, why should they get to relax if I can't?  Screw you, Mel Gibson, I hope you never retire and have to keep on working forever.  Remember when he essentially got cancelled, after launching a film directing career, and things seemed to be going well, but then he got arrested for driving drunk and called some female police officer "sugar tits" during his arrest?  He also said some very racist things during that incident, and then a couple years later a recording of a phone call with his wife got leaked, where he said some more racist things.  That phone call led to restraining orders and domestic violence charges, plus he was blacklisted (oh, the irony) from Hollywood for almost 10 years.  

He kind of battled his way back, though, by starring in "The Beaver" and "Edge of Darkness" and by directing "Hacksaw Ridge", and since then he's made a bunch more movies, like "Daddy's Home 2" and "Boss Level", so I guess you have to wonder whether it was worth it or not.  Just kidding, he made some respectable movies, too, like "Blood Father" and "Dragged Across Concrete", so really, it's not for me to say.  But I wonder sometimes which Mel Gibson I'm going to get in any particular movie, if that makes sense.  Hey, he's 68 and still working so I guess every day above ground is a good one, he's on his third major relationship and has nine kids in total, so that's a lot of incentive to keep working, I guess. 

The movie's a tough one to review, though, because it starts out as one kind of movie and then turns into something completely different by the end, I don't want to spoil it other than to say what I just did, which is maybe too much.  What seems to be happening may not be what is really happening, and with a lot of action taking place over phone calls and over a radio broadcast, well, we all know that things aren't always what they sound like, especially over non-visual mediums.  Nobody likes a complete fake-out, and perhaps that's what we're dealing with here, you may take a lot of things for granted and then realize later on that you were way off-base, your brain helped fill in the gaps a bit because you've seen other action movies and you know how they tend to go.  

Anyway, after the part that introduces us to Elvis, the shock-jock lead character, the guy who works the late-night shift at a call-in talk radio station, he gets a call from Gary, a guy who claims to be breaking into his house in Pasadena to possibly kidnap or kill his wife and daughter.  This guy apparently has a grudge against the radio host over the way he treated a former employee, who was Gary's girlfriend and she later committed suicide, so naturally Gary blames Elvis for her death, and by the way, Gary's an ex-soldier who came back from Afghanistan with military training, which means he knows weapons and also bomb stuff.  After the fake-out when it's revealed that Gary wasn't near Elvis' house at all, things get even worse, as he's rigged the whole radio station building to explode and he starts playing the kind of games that the Joker would think up. 

Elvis, with the help of his switchboard operator and the new intern from the U.K., has to keep Gary on the line long enough to either figure out his identity or get the L.A. cops to show up and deal with him.  Yeah, good luck on that last one, he's better off taking matters into his own hands, like "Die Hard" style.  As mentioned above, there are more twists that follow so I'm going to stop describing the plot in case you want to review the film yourself. 

But let me just say that there are a LOT of things that don't add up here, for example we're not exactly sure why Gary wants to stay on the air, basically broadcasting his name and the details of his sick games and potential crimes to any law enforcement officials listening.  It's also not very clear whether the radio show has managed to stay broadcasting the entire time, or what exactly the listeners can hear from any of the parties.  The microphones seem to work as if by magic, but then, isn't the whole medium of radio and TV a form of magic, one that nobody really understands how it works?  Oh, no, wait, I'm thinking about vinyl records, nobody really knows how they work.  But radio and TV operate invisibly via waves that nobody can prove exist, and that's kind of like magic, right?  Hell, it's a movie so things work the way we need them to work, I guess. 

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "Father Stu"), William Moseley (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Alia Seror O'Neill (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Paul Spera (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Nadia Fares, Enrique Arce (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Yoli Fuller (last seen in "Good Grief"), John Robinson (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Ravin J. Ganatra (last seen in "Greed"), Yann Bean (last seen in "Jackie"), Nancy Tate, Carole Weyers (last heard in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Romy Pointet, Robbie Nock (last seen in "The Pink Panther" (2006)), Agathe Bokja, and the voices of Hallie Paquin, Anna Maryan, Rebecca Leffler. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen computers 

A Midnight Clear

Year 16, Day 339 - 12/4/24 - Movie #4,892

BEFORE: Well this linking worked out better than most, I think. Frank Whaley carries over from "When Trumpets Fade" - but also the subject matter carries over, World War II and all that.  And even though today's film was released in 1992 six years BEFORE "When Trumpets Fade", it's the logical successor because it's set in December 1944, right after the Battle of the Hurtgen forest in November that same year.  This one takes place in the Ardennes Forest, which was the setting for what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge.  I'll need to read up on the actual battle a bit more, but thematically I think I'm on point here, this film rightfully follows the previous film in all the right ways, it would be next on the World War II timeline, so a bit of luck with the scheduling.  Or a happy accident, whichever. 

THE PLOT: The Ardennes Forest, December 1944. A squad of six U.S. infantrymen is sent to occupy a house as an observation post as the German army is expected to advance through that area.  However, the Germans seem oddly friendly. 

AFTER: There's a similar point of view here as well, like "When Trumpets Fade" this film represents the new view of the futility of war, even World War II, in a post-Vietnam, post-"M*A*S*H", post-"Platoon" movie-scape.  Again, at the time of World War II no filmmaker would have dreamed of making an anti-war film, and this reverence lasted throughout the 1950's and into the first part of the 60's, and then of course everything changed.  So suddenly a World War II film could ALSO be an anti-war film, whatever that meant, and so then maybe people started to view it in a different way, I can't be sure.  But yeah, realistically, it's war, and sometimes commanding officers make bad decisions and sometimes young men die because of that.  And then there's the fact that even with good planning, not all military operations are successful, unforeseen things take place, things go wrong and results are not always achieved, and again, young men die. 

There was another film I watched a few years back called "Joyeux Noel", about a Christmastime truce between the warring factions during World War I, and that film is kind of right in line with this one, even though they take place during different wars, and "A Midnight Clear" is set 30 years later, although this film was released 13 years before "Joyeux Noel" was, so, umm, who's copying who?  This one might be the original after all.  

Again we're presented with a squad of six men, most very young and inexperienced in the ways of warfare, and the squad leader has recently been promoted to sergeant not because of his deeds of great heroism, but basically because he's still alive.  And he hasn't been able to get his stripes attached to his uniform because those symbols are in short supply and on back order - at the rate privates are getting promoted they'd probably be better just taking the stripes off a dead sergeant, or even just switching jackets with him.  What good is the chain of command if nobody can get their uniforms updated to reflect their recent promotions?  

This squad is sent to occupy a house in the forest, and keep an eye out for German patrols, reporting back whatever intelligence they can.  But on the way there the road is blocked by two frozen corpses that have been placed in the road, locked in a grim embrace.  Then once the squad settles in at the house and enjoys some sardines and wine, they go a few days without seeing any Germans, however, they can hear them at night, calling out to them - one of the U.S. soldiers speaks Yiddish, which is sort of based on German, and thinks the Germans are telling them to "sleep well", which they believe is some kind of taunt.  

When they do encounter a German patrol during the day, the German soldiers do not shoot at them, although they had a clear shot and an opportunity to aim first, but then while the U.S. soldiers are freaking out, the mysterious Germans vanish.  And when the Germans do attack one night, it's not with bullets but with snowballs.  After the Germans light a Christmas tree and sing carols like "O Tannenbaum" and "Stille Nacht", it seems that they're proposing some kind of truce, and they exchange gifts, some wine from the house for some sausages from the Germans.  

Meeting up the next day, the German squad is revealed to be comprised of some very old soldiers and fresh recruits young enough to be their grandsons, and the older soldiers are claiming to not be Nazis, just career soldiers doing their job.  They want to surrender to the U.S. troops before the next German offensive, because they are afraid of getting killed when the hostilities resume.  I guess it's possible that through attrition and five or six years of war all that was left of the German army were the very old and the very young - or at least that's who they were sending out on the advance patrols.  

However, the Germans are afraid of reprisals if their superiors should investigate their capture and it looks like they surrendered without a struggle - so the German's propose that the Americans launch a fake offensive, both sides fire their guns into the air only, and then there will be enough bullet casings around the forest to look like a skirmish took place, and that way it will appear that this squad of soldiers fought back and did not get captured willingly.  After some debate, the U.S. soldiers are on board with this deception, because what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Their mistake was concealing the true nature of the gunfight from "Mother" Wilkins, a soldier who was mentally unstable after the last few battles and from learning of the death of his child back home. At the house "Mother" had taken to occupying the top floor by himself so he could reflect on some art stored there.  Sure, because German art and poetry and music is all so uplifting and positive. JK, it really isn't.  Wilkins mistakes the fake firefight between the sides for a real one, and then starts shooting to save his squad.  Whoopsie.  Well I guess then maybe staging a fake battle wasn't such a great idea after all. 

Knowing that it would break "Mother" even more to tell him his actions led to the death of several Germans who were about to surrender, the squad decides to never tell him.  In their version of the story, Mother arrived just in time as the Germans were about to kill the rest of the squad.  So the dangerous soldier with mental health issues who acted irrationally gets a citation and is transferred off the front lines, while the squad members who were trying to do something different and save a few lives on the other side find themselves sent back to the front lines.  It would seem so very irrational if it didn't seem more like the messed-up way that military operations really go down, and that is to say that nobody really knows how and why things happen, not even the commanding officers.  And if one squad isn't operating well or reporting back the proper indication, like if they're more concerned with taking baths and sleeping in nice beds  then maybe that squad needs to be pulled off the front lines and replaced, only it appears that the C.O.s aren't seeing the problem to be much of a problem.  Anyway the Germans will be making another push in a few days, so most of these guys aren't expected to survive anyway?                             

Overall, though, I'm left wondering if the previous depictions of World War II might have been too jingoisitic and forgiving regarding the mistakes that soldiers make, and then of course the flipside of that is wondering if the post-80's depictions of war as a confusing, deadly and ultimately futile undertaking doesn't go too far in the other direction.  Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle?  

I also have to call attention to the flashback story, where the members of the recently-formed squad all search for a prostitute to sleep with just before they ship out, and instead they find a woman who is willing to have sex with all of them, but only because her boyfriend had recently died in the war, and she was one step away from killing herself.  The new recruits end up just spending the night with her talking and drinking and playing card games, and then at night she comes to each one of them and DOES have sex with all of them in turn, because damn it, that's the most patriotic thing a woman can do for her country, have sex with all of the soldiers just before they ship out.  Yeah, that's not really a big step forward for feminism, not in 1992 or even back in 1944 for that matter.  

The good news is that I've officially started watching Christmas-themed movies, this is the first of, umm, let's say four. Yesterday's film ended with Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas", because, well, it was November and that's probably what the soldiers were dreaming about, making it home by December 25 maybe.  But the whole film wasn't Christmas-themed like this one kind of is.  I don't think "Black Christmas" really counts as a Christmas film either, especially since I watched it during October.  Or does it? 

Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Peter Berg (last seen in "Fire in the Sky"), Kevin Dillon (last seen in "Poseidon"), Arye Gross (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Gary Sinise (last seen in "The Human Stain"), John C. McGinley (last seen in "Identity"), David Jensen (last seen in "Species"), Larry Joshua (last seen in "The X-Files"), Curt Lowens (last seen in "Torn Curtin"), Rachel Griffin, Timothy S. Shoemaker, Kelly Gately, Bill Osborn, Andre Lamal

RATING: 5 out of 10 grenades (hanging on the Christmas tree like ornaments)

When Trumpets Fade

Year 16, Day 336 - 12/1/24 - Movie #4,891

BEFORE: Well, since I was sidelined for most of No-Movie November, I kind of missed Veterans Day, so I guess I'll be making up for that today and tomorrow with a couple of World War II movies, now that December is here.  I was late with Black History month this year, too, but I think I've been on time for every other holiday, more or less.  

This four-day weekend went by WAY too fast, I hate to see it end. After our Thanksgiving Day buffet feast we took a pass on Black Friday, as always and instead tried to put the rooms that were disrupted by the electric outage back together.  This meant moving the bed back into place, along with some dressers, but also taking the opportunity to clean out what was behind the dressers, throw away about a dozen pairs of sneakers from under the bed, and also vacuum a little. I got some laundry done and binge-watched "Agatha All Along", I know I'm late but at least I got it done.  Then on Saturday I got out in the backyard for the second half of the fight against the Evil Vine, which had gotten so far with a new outcropping that it was growing grapes again!  Not on my watch - I cut down everything rising above the concrete, and rooted out some vines that were crawling across the yard seeking more soil somewhere.  I haven't packed up all the vegetation, it's just in a pile, but at least it's all been cut down and won't grow any more.  Then today was just for relaxing and watching a "Chopped" tournament to relax, because the next two weeks are going to be brutal.  

Dwight Yoakam carries over again from "Cry Macho". It may be two or three days before I watch the next film, I've got that kind of time. 

THE PLOT: A private in the latter days of WWII on the German front struggles between his will to survive and what his superiors perceive as a battlefield instinct. 

AFTER: Oddly, or perhaps appropriately, my linking has placed this film in December, and the subject matter is the World War II battle that took place in Hürtgen Forest, from September to December of 1944. So that would be just about 80 years ago, it apparently lasted until December 16.  It's doubtful that any of that battle's participants are still alive, even if they were 18 at the time, they'd be 98 now. At that time Paris had been recaptured by the Allied Forces, and Germans had been relegated back to within Germany.  The fall of 1944 was all about the battles leading up to the final push of World War II, but it's clear that the Germans didn't make anything easy.  (The follow-up to the Hürtgen Offensive was called the Battle of the Bulge, which is the setting for my next film, oddly enough, or perhaps appropriately.)

The Allied Forces were trying to target a dam on the Rur River, and the easiest (?) way to get to that was through the Hürtgen Forest.  With control of the dam, the Germans could released stored water and flood any forces attacking from downstream - that was the theory, anyway, or perhaps the excuse, because modern military historians now consider the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest as poorly planned and pointless, a battle that should have been avoided, especially considering it lead to about 12,000 soldiers dead on each side and another 21,000 Allied soldiers wounded.  The Allies tried again and again to capture the territory leading to the dam, but the Germans held the territory until their last-ditch offensive into the Ardennes, from mid-December 1944 to January 1945.  But again, more about that next time. 

The consensus now is that the Allied Command had underestimated the determination of the remaining German soldiers at this point, the belief that the Normandy invasion and then the recapture of Paris had basically demoralized the German soldiers, and the Allied forces on the ground in Hürtgen clearly saw something different, because the Germans were still fighting back.  Having fallen back behind the Rur dam and the Kall Bridge, it was easy enough for the Germans to keep launching mortars from a higher position while they waited for tanks to arrive for support.  Meanwhile the German defenders had prepared the forest with minefields and booby-traps, making any attack via the forest a very bad idea, no matter how many times the Allied Command forced it to be carried out.   

All of this is portrayed in "When Trumpets Fade" in a very different sort of WWII movie - most films made about that war in the 1950's and 1960's depicted strong American forces who were sure of their cause and their convictions, and all they had to do to win was to believe in democracy and have a desire to fight fascism.  But war movies changed after Vietnam, obviously, and "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" represented a change in thinking about war.  So what does a World War II film made AFTER those movies look like?  Well, I suppose that's how you end up with "When Trumpets Fade", a film where the goals of the battle are not very clear, the commanding officers don't seem to be giving good orders, and when something doesn't work, the only response is to try again with different soldiers, because the last group didn't survive.  

The film opens with Private David Manning trying to carry a wounded soldier back to safety, only the distance is too great and the wounded man is in too much pain to be carried, forcing Manning to face a difficult decision, does he keep carrying the wounded man, or does he abandon him on the battlefield, or if neither of those is a good option, what else can he do?  

Private Manning is the only survivor from the 28th Infantry's Division attempt to take the forest, and when he gets back to HQ he admits he's DONE things in the forest, meaning he might have killed his own wounded men to prevent them from being captured, when they couldn't be moved within distance of a field hospital.  Nevertheless, he survived, so he gets promoted to sergeant.  Manning points out that he's not worthy of a promotion, because he's not right in the head, and he wants a Section 8 discharge, however his commander won't give it to him, because of his now significant combat experience. As someone who knows how to survive in the forest, he's needed to lead the next unit being sent in.  Manning agrees but only because the Captain promises him that mentally unfit discharge when he returns again.  

Manning leads a squad of green privates into the forest on patrol, and one moves too quickly and nearly encounters the enemy.  Soon their whole company is ordered to make another push to take the Kall Bridge, but Manning's squad is sent with flamethrowers to go around the bridge to try to burn out the soldiers who are facing the bridge and launching mortar attacks on the U.S. forces. One of Manning's untrained men panics and starts to flee, so Manning is forced to shoot him.  Another one goes wild but somehow manages to kill the Germans with his flamethrower, so the U.S. soldiers are able to take the bridge, however then the German tanks arrive and the company is forced to retreat, losing the bridge, also one of Manning's men is killed and another is captured.  Worse, when Manning gets back to HQ he learns that Captain Pritchett, who offered him the Section 8 discharge, is no longer in command - and naturally there's no record of the promise, only a glowing review of Manning and his ability to survive.  

After a lieutenant snaps and assaults his C.O. over the losses, he new commander has no choice but to promote Manning again, despite his insubordination, but damn if the guy doesn't manage to survive and keep failing upwards.  Fearing another push through the forest, Manning and a squad leader and a medic concoct a plan to sneak away and destroy the German tanks before the next push, which would be a great idea if it also wasn't such a terrible idea.  This time Manning is the one being carried away from the battle after being wounded, and there's really a terrible ironic symmetry to it all, if you consider this is kind of how the movie started. 

In decades past, it would have been considered anti-patriotic to depict a World War II battle as pointless or to focus on the high casualty count for little strategic gain, but again, this is a post-1970's ("M*A*S*H", "Catch-22") and post-1980's ("Platoon", "Casualties of War") film, so in the late 1990's I suppose it was possible to start to look at World War II through the lens of other wars, and maybe see some parts of it in a different way.  

Also starring Ron Eldard (last seen in "Freedomland"), Zak Orth (last seen in "Loser"), Frank Whaley (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Dylan Bruno (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Devon Gummersall (last seen in "Dick"), Dan Futterman (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Steven Petrarca (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Martin Donovan (last seen in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"), Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Frank-Michael Kobe (last seen in "The Pianist"), Matthew Rutson Cooney, Brian Hicks, John Miller, with archive footage of Gen. Omar Bradley (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far") and Bernard L. Montgomery (ditto). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 "Dragons teeth"