BEFORE: It is with deep regret that I announce the demise of a trusty member of my support staff, my 5-year old Cisco DVR, Model 4742, serial number 60SA21180000F10, nicknamed "Crashie" for all of its repeated crashes and reboots over the last two years. Every effort was made to save Crashie, including three technician visits over the last month, during which time his reboot cycles were blamed on various outages and possible loose connections causing signal loss, however once these problems were solved and the crashes continued, we had to pull the plug today. It was a mercy killing, really, lately it seemed he was rebooting over and over more than he was in service, and it became impossible for us to watch an episode of "Hell's Kitchen" or "The Masked Singer" together without a crash, and that also meant missing 10 minutes of SHOW while Crashie rebooted.
Crashie died with a full drive, or at least it was at 88% before I began salvage operations to dub as much as I could to VHS, from the channels that would allow it. After creating a short stack of tapes that is now awaiting transfer to DVD, the drive was at 74% at time of deactivation, at 11:07 this morning. Crashie leaves behind a list of 68 films that I'd recorded to his drive over the last five years that will now need to be watched on other platforms. 21 of those films were still available and are now being recorded by Crashie's successor, it's going to be a busy week for them. That leaves 47 films that ARE NOT still running on cable or on demand, and I thought I'd be pissed about it, but I'm not. January's schedule remains unaffected, but my plan for this month involves a lot of Netflix and AmazonPrime movies, so there's that. Only three romance films from February's line-up are affected, I'll just have to hope they pop up on cable in February, or rent them on iTunes, or just watch them on a pirate site. I have a lot more options than I did two years ago - I kept Crashie basically on life support for the last two years because it was convenient for me, but deep down I knew that this day would eventually come. I think I'm only down 1 film from March, so really, it could have been a lot worse.
I'll keep the list of those 47 films, and at the start of each month, I'll check the programming guide to see if they're airing again, and who knows, maybe I'll get some of them back, but for films like "Q: The Winged Serpent", "The Butterfly Effect 3" and "I'm Not Rappaport", really, I don't think the chances are high. If I end up watching these on Tubi or Roku or Plex, that's fine, but honestly I don't think I'll be linking to these any time soon, not if they've been on my list for 4 or 5 years without getting watched. I've checked with the home office, and they've told me that I should NOT take these films off the list, the only way a film can come off the list is by watching it, my supervisor was very clear on this point. If my linking should take me in the direction of one of these films, and I can't find it on the DVR or the drive, I'll know that other accommodations need to be made. I might be able to request a dispensation to increase my DVR/DVD main watchlist from 225 to 250, just to have more linking options, as I recently also increased the list of films available on streaming from 325 to 350. We like round numbers around here at the Movie Year. Also, Crashie would approve.
We had some good times together, Crashie and me, like we probably watched over a thousand films together, but it's time to move on. I should probably go all streaming, but I'm not convinced that everything is available on streaming all the time, I don't think we're there just yet. I mean, I'll check streaming for those 47 films but I doubt all of them will be available, maybe I'm wrong.
Allison Janney carries over again from "Sun Dogs".
THE PLOT: As a storm rages, a young girl is kidnapped. Her mother teams up with the mysterious woman next door to pursue the kidnapper, a journey that tests their limits and exposes secrets from their pasts.
AFTER: This is the second film this week with Allison Janney playing a bad-ass military type or former spy, which is a category in the year-end breakdown. Normally you might not put "Allison Janney" and "bad-ass" in the same sentence, but why not? Maybe she got tired of playing mothers of messed-up teens, like she did yesterday in "Sun Dogs", but then her character went to NYC to train as an EMT, and that's pretty bad-ass too. She's all over Netflix, or at least in a lot of the films on Netflix that I've been putting off watching, so she's getting her own half-week now, and more power to her.
"Lou" is a pretty generic title for a film, I mean maybe it's short for Louise or Louisa or Lou-Ann, but that hardly matters. When we first meet Lou she's dug up her important papers, she's burned what she needed to burn, she's left a note for someone telling them they can sell her house, and she's prepared to shoot herself. However, we can assume that her neighbor/tenant knocks on the door at just the right time, Hannah needs help because her daughter, Vee has been kidnapped by her ex-husband, Vee's father. He's been hitchhiking his way to her and leaving a trail of bodies behind, and now he's made it to Hannah and taken his daughter.
If only Hannah knew someone with a particular set of skills that comes from being ex-military or perhaps ex-CIA and was willing to focus those skills on getting her daughter back after being "TAKEN". (Emphasis mine.). If only there were someone willing to help right this wrong, sort of an "EQUALIZER", if you will. Someone who could track this kidnapper through the woods and turn him into "THE HUNTED". Of course there's a formula here, all of these films usually feature someone who's been out of the the game for some time, but circumstances beyond their control draw them back into it. That's kind of a given - then they have to use all of their old skills to rescue an innocent person, the younger and cuter, the better. "Man on Fire", "Jack Reacher", "John Wick", they're all kind of drawing cards from the same deck. The twist here, I suppose, is that you wouldn't naturally think to put Allison Janney in the same position as a Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington or a Liam Neeson.
There are a few new twists here, made possible by casting a woman in the lead bad-ass role, but that's really all I'm willing to say about it. This could just be a simple kidnap by an absent dirtbag father, or there could me more to the story, secrets to be revealed. No spoilers, you'll have to watch it to find out. But it all goes down on this island in Washington state, and after a few fights in the woods, there's a showdown at a lighthouse. Why is it always a lighthouse, it seems? Yeah, I'm keeping track. And of course it all takes place during a terrible storm, so there's no way to reach the local sheriff by radio, not until near the end, anyway. It looks like Lou's going to have to take down the former Green Beret with an ax to grind herself, the hard way.
Even though this is very derivative overall, it's the casting that sets this one apart - maybe this is why they cast Queen Latifah in "The Equalizer" when they brought it back to TV, even after Denzel Washington had success with THREE movies in the franchise. Same goes for "Matlock", which is now a female character, too. Well, at least women have broken through the glass ceiling in CBS reboot shows. That's something, isn't it?
Also starring Jurnee Smollett (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Logan Marshall-Green (last ssen in "Devil"), Matt Craven (ditto), Ridley Asha Bateman, Greyston Holt, Daniel Bernhardt, (last seen in "Precious Cargo") RJ Fetherstonhaugh (last seen in "How It Ends" (2018)), Andres Collantes, Marci T. House (last seen in "The Mountain Between Us"), Toby Levins (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014)), Jaycie Dotin, Jacob Tazelaar, Sean Campbell (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Grayson Palumbo with archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Bandit").
RATING: 6 out of 10 tracks from that kick-ass Toto cassette tape
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