BEFORE: Peter Dinklage carries over from "American Dreamer". It seems like AmazonPrime's system has finally figured me out, because this film popped up in the feed after I watched "American Dreamer", so finally my linking system is paying off, if the streaming services are sort of telling me where I should go next. Come on, what are the odds that I'd see THIS film posted there one day before I had a spot where I could schedule it right between two other films with Peter Dinklage? It's like a sign, so I need to follow that, even if it means I'll have to drop a film later in January, because I am NOT overcrowding this month again. That just means more down time in December when there's nothing new and good on TV anyway, except for the Holiday Baking Championship.
My only fear, though, is that this film could be necessary later in the year, and I can see where it links to other films on my list that remain unscheduled, and kind of stranded for the moment because they're not really connected to anything, so maybe I SHOULD save this one for May or June because it could be useful then. Nah, I'll figure out something else when I get there, I always do. Seriously, do I want to watch "Mrs. Winterbourne" right now, or this movie? "Brothers" just looks like a lot more fun.
I spent some time today trying to clear up some space on my phone, it looks like I hadn't gone through my photos since last January, so maybe that's an annual thing now. I had over 1,100 photos, even though I try to always delete the photos I take for work (after putting them in the house notes or e-mailing them to where they need to be) but still, we took a few road trips this year, plus there was New York Comic-Con, so I figured there was a lot that could be deleted. I used to be able to just plug my phone into my iMac and the process would be almost automatic, the photos would go into the Photos app and from there I could back-up any important photos to my hard drive. But my phone no longer talks to iTunes, and I can't download a newer version of iTunes, so I had to sign into my iCloud account and download each month's photos from there, then put them in the appropriate folders on my computer, then import them all into the Photos program from there - a round-about way to accomplish what I've been doing very easily for the last 20 years. But once I had copies of each photo both on my hard-drive and the app (and many off-site on Flickr), then I could delete them from the cloud, which then also deleted them from my phone. The other way around works, too, once they're backed up I could delete them from my phone, which then also deletes them from the Cloud. Err, I think.
THE PLOT: Twin brothers, one who is trying to reform, embark on a dangerous heist road trip. Facing legal troubles, gunfights and family drama, they must reconcile their differences before their mission leads to self-destruction.
AFTER:I suddenly realize that there has been a loose theme going on this week, and it's about mothers, more or less. Which would have been great to know in advance, because if I could have scheduled this block of films in May, that would knock off another holiday on my 2025 to-do list. But I didn't really see the theme coming together until I was already deep into it, and by then of course it's too late. The woman accused of murdering her husband in "Anatomy of a Fall" was a mother to a half-blind son, and then the same actress played a Nazi mother of five kids in "The Zone of Interest". The lead character in "Proxima" was the mother of an eight-year old girl and she worried about spending a year in space away from her, and then Shirley MacLaine's character in "American Dreamer" was a sort of surrogate mother to a bunch of kids via a summer camp that she founded. And tonight's film features fraternal twins who have not seen their mother in 30 years, because of an emerald heist, she's been on the lam and unseen for that long. I'm not sure if the theme will continue, but really, I don't think I could have used all this as a Mother's Day chain, because of where I had to schedule "Anatomy of a Fall", as the starting one-linkable film for the year.
Of course this movie is going to bring up comparisons to "Twins", the comedy from years ago where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito played fraternal twins who looked nothing alike, and one was somehow Austrian, which just isn't possible. You can say they were raised apart, but really, how believable was that film, at the end of the day? Not at all. At least here I can SORT OF buy Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as Jady and Moke, a set of mismatched twins born into a family of low-bred wanna-be criminals, they've been thinking up heists and schemes since they were kids, and we catch up with them when Jady gets released from prison and has not seen Moke in five years. Moke's got a real job in a fast-food place, as he's been trying to go straight, but Jady shows up with a criminal job that he took in order to get released from prison sooner.
Only Jady can't be trusted, not by his brother, not by the dirty prison guard who's hired him to commit a break-in at his father's business, not by anyone. He's got a whole separate job lined up for himself, and he needs his brother's help, so he's willing to lie to anyone and everyone to line up the real job, which apparently was lined up by the twins' mother, and it has everything to do with those emeralds she stole 30 years ago, and digging them up. This does eventually come to make some sense, because if Moke knew what the real score was he probably wouldn't have volunteered, putting his whole Thanksgiving dinner with his in-laws and really, his whole marriage on the line, all to help out the mother that he still hasn't forgiven or spoken to in thirty years? No, this is really how it all had to go down.
That being said, there are definitely things in this film I haven't seen before. One involves a large monkey who is the "life partner" of the woman that Jady's been corresponding with from prison, and the other involves being chased around a golf course in a backhoe that may have just been used to dig up a corpse. The scene flips the typical high-speed chase scene around, even calls to mind the chariot race from "Ben Hur", only ten times more ridiculous. In addition to "Twins", I'm getting shades of a comedy like "Dumb and Dumber" here as well. In fact there are a few things that seem straight out of a Farrelly Brothers film, at least one made before Peter Farrelly got respectable with "Green Book" and Bobby Farrelly decided that special needs teens would somehow make the best sports film.
Really, it's the same stumbling block that hampered "American Dreamer" yesterday, with the movie's plot just not aiming high enough and always looking for ways to have Peter Dinklage's character fall down and injure himself as the go-to plot point. Whether it's jokes about prison sex, getting too drink on bottomless margaritas or someone getting crushed by a Christmas tree that's on fire, well, let's just say we're not exactly dealing with Shakespearean monologues here. It's slapstick of the highest order, OK, maybe with some original elements to it, but it's still slapstick. Perhaps this works better in a lowbrow comedy than in a highbrow think-piece about modern real estate, but come on, couldn't somebody have aimed just a little bit higher? Why is there so much crime in America? Why is the prison system so corrupted? What prevents released convicts from succeeding in any other career path but stealing stuff? These are all questions for another day, alas. Now quiet down while we watch Josh Brolin fall off a motel balcony and land on a car head-first.
It just seems a little bit odd that this cast has TWO Academy Award winners (Brendan Fraser and Marisa Tomei), TWO Academy Award nominees (John Brolin and 8-time also-ran Glenn Close) and a man who won FOUR Emmys (Peter Dinklage) and this is what they all have to do to keep working? These are strange times, very strange indeed. Since the director of this film also made "Palm Springs", which was just a twist on "Groundhog Day", I would like to see if he could make something more original, or at least more better than this. That being said, it's under 90 minutes long so it won't waste too much of your time - hey, maybe you like low humor more than I do, I can be too discerning at times.
Also starring Josh Brolin (last seen in "Flag Day"), Taylour Paige (last seen in "Zola"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Calvary"), Brendan Fraser (last heard in "Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Heart of Stone'), Jennifer Landon (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "The First Purge"), Gralen Bryant Banks (last seen in "Green Book"), Andrew Joseph Brodeur, Margo Moorer (last seen in "Fled"), Brooks Indergard, Jonathan Aidan Cockrell, Joshua Mikel (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Pat Fisher (last seen in "Yes, God, Yes"), Matt Lewis (ditto), Nathan Hesse (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Ted Ferguson (last seen in "Cleaner"), Taylor St. Clair (last seen in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"), William Tokarsky (last seen in "Irresistible"), Roger Payano (last seen in "Stuber"), Samantha Binkerd, Don Stallings (last seen in "Freaky"), Alonzo Ward (ditto), Denise Arribas, Devyn Dalton (last seen in "War for the Planet of the Apes"), Monique Grant, Greg Weeks, B.J. Winfrey (last seen in "Bandit"), Swift Rice (also last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone").
RATING: 5 out of 10 overturned golf carts
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