Queenpins

Year 17, Day 11 - 1/11/25 - Movie #4,911

BEFORE: Well, if I had to euthanize my old DVR and start training a new one, at least it happened during a week when most of my programming is coming from Netflix and AmazonPrime, so my viewing schedule was unaffected. I won't really feel the loss until I go to watch "Say It Isn't So" in February and I realize I don't have it, and I have to pay iTunes $2.99 for the privilege of watching it.  Am I the only person still using iTunes?  I bet I'm the only person who wants to watch movies that aren't streaming anywhere, and most other people will watch whatever their streaming service HAS, which is a different approach to movies, I'm a professional and a connoisseur.  

I got a message that this one's leaving Netflix January 17, so that means I'm hitting it at the right moment - it hasn't been a priority to get to this one, but if it's leaving the service, well the time is now, so I won't have to go looking for it somewhere else - or does leaving Netflix mean it's going to be on cable next week?  There's a pattern but I just haven't figured it all out yet.  Anyway, if you're playing along at home you have 6 more days to catch this one on the Netflix. Stephen Root carries over from "To Leslie", Allison Janney will be back in February if all goes well. 

THE PLOT: A pair of housewives create a $40 million coupon scam.  

AFTER:  When is this movie set?  Sometimes a film will give references or clues, like "Sun Dogs" was set in the years after 2001, when people were suspicious and fearful of Islamic immigrants, before they were suspicious and fearful of Mexican immigrants. That deck of cards with wanted terrorists on them is a very specific timing reference. "To Leslie" was a little harder to pin down, topics like alcoholism and winning a lottery are evergreen, and there wasn't much else to go on, no key music from the 70's or 80's, so it was kind of timeless, but with a definite 70's vibe. Maybe? Leslie was seen using a payphone, so it just can't be the 2020's. 

The Extreme Couponing trend was all over TV about 2011-2012, so that's my best guess here. I don't know if it's still a thing, I know there were some controversies about it, like some stores banned the extreme couponers because they were combining half-off coupons with double-coupon promotions, and that meant everything was basically free, and, umm, well, you can't do that. How is a grocery store supposed to stay in business?  If you read the fine print on any grocery's promotion, it will probably tell you that you can't combine offers - sure, it says that NOW, because somebody played around with the rules, which usually I support when it means that I'm the one saving money. We stayed away from our local Stop & Shop for a few years, and when we came back, not only had they changed the whole layout but there was a robot patrolling the aisles (looking for spills, they said, but COME ON) and also, coupons were digital and you needed to use a phone app. The app is quite buggy, as apps tend to be, and I was "clipping" coupons virtually, but they weren't going to my virtual wallet, so for a while I wasn't getting credit for them at the check-out. Why do I have to "clip" it if it's digital and there's nothing to be clipped? Here's a crazy idea, why not just lower the prices by 10 cents? Doesn't this phone-app system favor the people who can afford smart phones and unfairly penalize the people who can't? I guess you can still use the paper coupons if you're old or BASIC.  

My wife and I go back and forth on the grocery shopping issue, she sometimes joins one of those wholesale clubs, but then after a few times stocking up on things, there's no need to go BACK because you just bought 3 giant packs of those items you like, so the membership's about to expire and you have to wonder if it's worth another $25 to continue your account for another year. I'll go along with her and buy some apple juice and a big box of Cheez-Its, but if I really bought what I wanted there, I'd go broke. Yes, I realize that the food is cheaper overall (MAYBE) if you buy in bulk, but making me buy THREE mustards instead of one makes the whole bill more than I feel I can afford. I'd rather go grocery shopping every 2 weeks and make a list, which I feel keeps the overall expense within my price range - sure, I might be paying a little more for each individual item by not buying in bulk, but the total bill seems less at the end, plus I haven't created a storage problem at home. 

We bicker over meal planning, too, because a trip to a regular grocery store allows me to plan 6 or 7 meals and buy all the things I need to make those meals, as opposed to buying a giant pack of something I like and then hoping that I'm in the mood to eat THAT at least five times in the next month. I can get tired of anything, yes, even corn dogs. Either way, we're probably going to be too tired to cook three times next week so we'll order pizza or the good Chinese and/or go out to the diner, so I don't really have to plan 7 meals a week, probably three is enough since I work a few nights a week, during which I'll just go to Popeye's or Taco Bell. Still, she believes in the savings offered by the wholesale club, arguing that you have to spend money to save money, while I maintain I can save even MORE money by not shopping there at all. I think CostCo is probably a great boon if you have 5 kids and you don't allow them any choice at all over what they're going to eat. "Here, kids, I bought a 30-pack of frozen pizzas, so that's what's for dinner. Eat it or not, I don't care."

(EDIT: Do NOT even get me started on hotel breakfast. She treats the "free" continental breakfast as beneath her, and says we need to go out to Waffle House or IHOP for a proper breakfast, while I maintain that they've worked the cost of the breakfast into the room rate, so then if we're not taking advantage of what we've already paid for, we're double-paying for brekkies if we go out. I would rather use the hotel breakfast as incentive to get my ass up earlier and eat as much of it as possible, whatever happens to be there. After that, if she wants to hit up a real breakfast joint, I'll just get coffee or something small.)

Connie Kaminski is a former Olympic medalist (in a rather obscure is-it-even-a-sport event) who's married but unsatisfied, and deep in debt after a number of unsuccessful IVF attempts. Her best friend runs a cosmetics company that caters to people of color and makes promotional YouTube videos, however her business is cash-only because someone stole her identity years ago and ruined her credit score. (NITPICK POINT: Paying with a credit card and taking credit cards as payment are two different things.). Together they share a love of collecting, sorting and properly using their coupons, sometimes reducing that $150 grocery bill down to under 20 bucks, however this means often buying in bulk and storing the excess, and carefully buying whatever's on sale or what they have coupons for, rather than buying what they want. The "high" that they get from saving money is addictive, so they take the process to its illogical conclusion.   

Connie finds out that if she writes a complaint letter to a corporation, they will often send a coupon for a FREE item, to make up for the issue and not lose a valued customer.  So she starts writing fake complaint letters in mass quantities, figuring if she can get a free coupon for a $20 item, she can sell the coupon for $10 to someone else and clear a profit (minus the cost of the envelope, postage and her time, of course).  All of this tracks, except for the deceptive part - I've bought used books that my boss illustrated on eBay for $4 or $5 and then sold them on his web-site, signed, for $20 plus postage, and if I do that enough times, it starts to add up to real money.  

Connie and JoJo then decide to drive down to Mexico, where the coupons are printed, and get someone who works there to ship them the excess, unused FREE coupons in bulk, instead of burning them, for a cut of the profits when they sell the coupons on their web-site.  

So this is stealing, smuggling and then re-selling stolen items, and probably a few other crimes as well, but they really go through some intense mental gymnastics to convince themselves they're not doing anything wrong. This is what Robin Hood would have done, right, diverting money from the rich corporations to give to the poor, or themselves. Once JoJo's YouTube promo video skills are applied, SavvySuperSaver.com gets a ton of traffic and they're mailing coupons all over the country, and their clients get free groceries, and really, what's the harm?  Oh, right, the grocery stores. 

The loss prevention officer for one Southwest grocery chain knows that these coupons are fake, but he can't prove it, because he didn't know you could steal the REAL coupons straight off the printing press. He brings his findings to the FBI, who are, you know, a little busy what with homegrown militia groups, banking scandals, and Presidents who think it's OK to take work home from the office and store sensitive military secrets in their spare bathroom. They don't think fake grocery coupons are a threat to the nation, but once a mid-level clerk learns that the coupons are being sent through the MAIL, well, now a postal inspector gets involved, and while he might not be the FBI, he's super-serious and very efficient.  You mess with the mail, you're messing with America. 

NITPICK POINT #2: I kind of doubt that the news of over-use of the "FREE" coupons across the country would filter back to the corporations so quickly.  Most grocery store managers would see the coupon, allow the customer one free item, and then forget about it, as long as they didn't see multiple uses of THAT coupon in their store over a short period.  So would the loss prevention officer from ONE grocery chain really get like 200 voicemail messages from various big conglomerates that had no other way to investigate this issue?  It's not like the grocery stores would demand money from Proctor & Gamble because too many people used coupons on toothpaste, so how would they even know?  I think it's much more likely that someone in the customer service departments would realize that all those complaint letters that Connie wrote to GET coupons were coming from the same address, printed on the same paper with the same toner, and written in the same voice.

Vince Vaughn and Paul Walter Hauser become the comic duo that we never knew we needed, the grocery store loss prevention officer and the U.S. postal inspector working together to locate and then take down the Queenpins of couponing.  First, of course, they have to decide on the pronunciation of "coupon" because some people say it like it's got a hard "C", like "koo-pon" while other people prefer the soft "C", like "cue-pon".  They're both kind of correct, like "ketchup" and "catsup" are both still legit, only "catsup" will eventually go the way of the dinosaur.  And the cheese named "mascarpone" and the cherries named "maraschino" can both be pronounced two ways, I think we really need some kind of national forum on these liguistic problems, only nobody else seems all that concerned. 

Meanwhile, Connie and JoJo have a terrible problem, they've made TOO much money.  PayPal has in issue with them proving they're a legit business (and this seems to be set before Venmo and Zelle, so there you go, it's maybe 2012 or 2013) so they have to create a few phony identities to fool PayPal (NITPICK POINT #3, how can a phony ID prove that they're legit?) and also there's concern over the money being dirty, so how do they clean it?  Their solution is to BUY a bunch of expensive stuff, sell that stuff, then the money is laundered. They are absolutely 100% wrong on this point, because they're only creating more cash transactions that the IRS could look into for non-reported sales tax, luxury tax, etc.  Connie's husband is an IRS auditor, so you'd think she might know some of this, only clearly she wasn't paying attention, and that's played up here for comic purposes - when the pair is forced to lease an airport hangar to store their RVs and sports cars, the situation MIGHT be a little out of control.  

There's an easy way to tell if your own operation is illegal - namely, did you fill out a W-2 or 1099 form before making that money?  Or, are you currently reporting or planning to report that income on your tax return?  If not, then you're breaking the law.  For the moment, most transactions on eBay or Amazon 3rd party or payments made by Zelle are not part of the traceable income system, but eventually the IRS is going to catch up. Sure, you can make a lot of money from your YouTube channel, but if you get a document from them at the end of the year, you're going to have to report that.  The government might be behind the times, but at some point in time they'll get some people working there who maybe understand how Gen Alpha influencers make their millions, and then the party will be over, just like it will eventually end for any lottery winners who don't take steps to protect their prize.  And if you've got a secret stash of something somewhere that you don't want anyone to know about, I appreciate your moxie but come on, you know there's no way to beat the system. That's why we HAVE a system.

Also starring Kristen Bell (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (last seen in "Cruella"), Paul Walter Hauser (ditto), Vince Vaughn (last seen in "Freaky"), Joel McHale (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Bebe Rexha, Dayo Okeniyi (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Greta Oglesby (last seen in "Wilson"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Michael Masini (last seen in "Blonde"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Barbie"), Paul Rust (last seen in "Paper Heart"), Timm Sharp (last seen in "Together Together"), Eduardo Franco (last seen in "Self Reliance"), Nick Cassavetes (last seen in "Prisoners of the Ghostland"), Lidia Porto (last seen in "Dope"), Nnoema Sampson, Todd Aaron Brotze, Robert Riechel Jr., Judith Drake (last seen in "Time Lapse"), Georgia Mischak, Paxton Carville, Francisco J. Rodriguez, Ilia Paulino (last seen in "Me Time"), Sebastian Schier, Bob Glouberman, Dan Sachoff, Jason Sims-Prewitt, Jamison Webb, Jeremy Shouldis, Marc Evan Jackson, Rosie Garcia, Timothy Davis-Reed, Tommy Do, Liz Eldridge, Christian Vunipola, Michael Sung Ho, Paul Jurewicz, Rooter Wareing, Dustan Costine, Farley Jackson, Ross Kimball, Stephen McFarlane, Bill Glass, James Moses Black, Albert Malafronte, Fred Cross, Ruben Avitia, Dave Perloff, Leonard Robinson, Garrett Wareing

RATING: 6 out of 10 postal service S.W.A.T. team members (who knew?)

To Leslie

Year 17, Day 10 - 1/10/25 - Movie #4,910

BEFORE: At this time last year, I was deep into Toni Collette movies, and she ended up making 6 appearences in 2024, which wasn't enough to win the year, but come on, that's a darn good attempt.  Allison Janney carries over again today from "Lou" and so far she's in the lead for 2025 with four movies, but she's equally unlikely to hold that lead.  Still, she's due to come back for two romance films in February, and if Father's Day goes the way I think then she'll be back for seven, it will be another darn good showing.  You've got to be diverse if you want to win this thing, appearing in romances and comedies and action films is really the way to go. It's the "Paul Rudd" plan for success, really. 

"To Leslie" feels like another one of those films that flew very under the radar - it did get one Oscar nomination a year ago, Andrea Riseborough for Best Actress, but so far I haven't met anyone who's seen this film or even heard of it.  

THE PLOT: A single mother tries to reclaim her life and connection with her son after winning the lottery and spending all her money on parties and alcohol.  

AFTER: Nobody ever tells you that there's a negative side to winning the lottery, do they?  Let's start with the taxes, if you hit for one of those mega-jackpots you don't get THAT amount, they pre-take 50% of it right off the bat, which is actually a good thing because if they gave you the whole $40 million, admit it, you'd start spending like crazy and you wouldn't be thinking about the $20 million you owe the IRS at the end of the year. And then where will you be when you file your return and you can't pay what you owe?  In some serious debt, that's where.  So I think for the big jackpots they take the estimated tax amount out right off the bat, then you have to worry about everyone you ever knew hitting you up for money to make THEIR dreams come true, instead of yours.  Even if you do the "smart" thing and invest your winnings, they're no guarantee that any investment's going to pay off, so you could also lose the whole thing if you invested it poorly, or the market takes a turn.  Honestly, it feels like the only way to win at the lottery might be to never play it in the first place. 

Leslie Rowlands didn't win a super-mega jackpot, she won $190,000 and that's perhaps a more dangerous amount, not necessarily a life-changing sum of money, OK maybe there are parts of Texas where that buys you a house, but then you're a homeowner and now you owe property taxes, plus repairs from time to time, electricity, gas, water, all that you have to pay for now, where those things might have been free if you'd just stayed in the apartment and kept paying rent.  So unless you plan to flip that house in a few years for four times what you paid, that's maybe not the best investment because your whole cost of living just went up, and you spent all the lottery winnings just buying the house in the first place.  Whatever dreams that Leslie had before winning this money, she forgot about them fairly quickly and just spent it all on liquor and drugs. Now that's crazy, because I would have spent it all on comic books, which at least have a chance or going up in value, but once the liquor passes through your system, it's practically worthless.  But now we know how long a lottery-fueled binge lasts, and it's six years.  

Leslie's getting kicked out of a residential motel for not paying rent when we first meet her, so yeah, maybe buying that house with the money would have put her on a different path.  She reunites with her 19-year old son, who lives with a roommate and has an actual job, but he lays down some ground rules, no drinking, no stealing, and no sleeping with his friends or neighbors.  Well, she starts right in breaking all of those rules, maybe it's a bit like taking a kid to an amusement park and telling them they can't go on any of the rides.  After he finds the liquor bottles under the mattress, her son kicks Leslie out and she moves in with her friends, Nancy and Dutch.  They have house rules, too, but they also have a friend who spots Leslie in a bar, so they lock her out as well.  Another friend also won't put her up for the night unless she puts out, so really, ass, cash or grass, nobody rides for free. 

She sleeps next to another motel, and accidentally leaves her suitcase behind.  Sweeney, the manager of the hotel, takes pity on her and pretends to mistake her for someone who called about a job, and puts her to work cleaning hotel rooms in exchange for $7 and hour and room and board.  Well, I guess if you've fucked up your life this would be one way to start to un-fuck it, but she doesn't really get that right off, she still sleeps late and goes out drinking at night.  Eventually she realizes that this is a path to something, she's got an opportunity to get clean and that drinking might be part of her problem, not a continual attempt at a solution. Going cold turkey after a six-year binge hits her hard, though. 

Marc Maron plays Sweeney, the motel manager, fellow addict and potential love interest who helps her get clean, and damn, show me the movie that Maron isn't great in. I love all his comedy specials, and, really, I'll watch any movie he's in, from "Respect" to "Frank and Cindy" to "Spenser Confidential" and "Worth". He even did a voice in that animated film "The Bad Guys", and what do you know, he was great at that too. I wish I could link to "Sword of Trust" from here, but it would take me too far away from the path I want to be on. Maybe I can get there one day soon. 

Sweeney plays an old VHS tape of her big lottery win, and somewhere in there her son mentions that she once talked about opening a diner.  But after watching the tape, Leslie quits her job at the motel and goes out drinking again, only this time she doesn't drink.  And when Sweeney comes looking for her she hides out in an abandoned ice-cream shop across from the motel, and then at some point she realizes her old dream and wants to turn that shop into a diner, only it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of time - but hey, good news, she gets back together with Sweeney and they work on it together.  I get it, this feels like a very American dream, to open a diner, work hard and maybe turn it into something successful while you're scrambling every day to try to keep it from closing. I've thought about this myself, since I love food and enjoy creating new sandwiches, the only thing holding me back is that I have no professional training in running a restaurant, no money to invest in one and all I ever see in NYC are diners and restaurants that are open for a couple years and then close down.  So probably it's a terrible idea and I should probably stick with what I'm doing now. 

This film is set in Texas, but it wasn't shot in Texas, it was filmed in L.A. in just 19 days during the COVID pandemic, on a budget of less than $1 million.  It grossed less than half of that in theaters, but got picked up by Netflix, and then Riseborough's Oscar nomination was probably the best thing to happen for the film.  There were some claims made about the promotions for her Oscar nomination might have violated Academy rules, because it featured known actors doing testimonials about the film on social media, and that's kind of a no-no. But in this day and age, how do you know that those actors just didn't really like the movie after seeing it, and were just giving their unsolicited personal opinions to their own fans? It's a fine line, sometimes.  Also one promotion said that Riseborough's performance was better than the one Cate Blanchett gave in "Tár", and you're not supposed to do that, either, compare the star of your film to another actor in another film. 

The word-of-mouth campaign worked, and Andrea Riseborough got an Oscar nomination, however the theory was that maybe Viola Davis didn't get one for "The Woman King" because Riseborough kind of came out of nowhere, the studio that made "To Leslie" couldn't really afford to do a big proper media campaign, so they kind of did what they could do.  Still, the Academy apparently looked into it and did not disqualify Riseborough, however there was concern over using social media as a nomination tactic, but I'm afraid there's no going back, social media is here to stay and it really can't be controlled, we're finding out. 

Starts as "Leaving Las Vegas" but ends as "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" with maybe a touch of "Nomadland" thrown in for good measure. Does that make sense?  All I know is that it's Friday night and that means I get to have two beers after work, but not from a bar, from my beer fridge in the basement.  Bars are WAY too expensive, I can buy a whole six-pack for what a NYC bar might charge for two beers. 

Also starring Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Worth"), Andre Royo (last seen in "Freelancers"), Owen Teague (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Stephen Root (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), James Landry Hebert (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Catfish Jean, Scott Subiono (last seenin "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Blake Robbins (last seen in "Wind River"), Matt Lauria (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Drew Youngblood, Tom Virtue (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Lauren Letherer, Pramode Kumar (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Brandee Steger, Chris Jones, Alan Wells (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Alan Trong (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Francisco Javier Gomez, Mac Brandt (last seen in "Barbie"), John Gilbert, Juan Francisco Villa, Arabella Grant, Kourtney Amanda, Micah Fitzgerald (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Clayton Hoff, Jeanette O'Connor, Marcelo Olivas, Stephanie Wong. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 late night underwear jogging runs

Lou

Year 17, Day 9 - 1/9/25 - Movie #4,909

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

Sun Dogs

Year 17, Day 8 - 1/8/25 - Movie #4,908

BEFORE: Allison Janney carries over this time from "The Creator". I could have jumped ahead to "Killers of the Flower Moon" via Sturgill Simpson, for that matter I could have connected to that film from "Brothers" via Brendan Fraser - but either of those would get me there too early, I've got a whole month to fill up and I've scheduled that Martin Scorsese film for next Friday.  So, admittedly I'm kind of taking the long route there, I've padded the schedule this week with a bunch of films that have been on my Netflix list for too long, and wouldn't you know it, three of them have Allison Janney in them.  Great, let's clear them off, bring it on, plenty of time later this month for the bigger, longer films. I can still stay up late, my second job doesn't kick back in until tomorrow, and then when it does, it's just one day a week, things will get busier in February, I'm sure. 

What I really should be doing now is figuring out my Documentary chain for the year, now that I have the romance chain locked in. Really, there are four seasons to each movie year, and once I add in the new streaming films according to the IMDB, as more slots become available I need to be either focused on adding romances (done), more docs (should be now-ish), horror films (so I can make this year's chain in August at the latest) or Christmas films (so I'll have more endings available when I come out of October).  

I've got 12 documentaries arranged in a chain, and then another mini-chain of five, but I haven't tried to assemble the chains together yet, or connect them with all the loose docs with no cast lists yet, I've got about 40 of those.  Then maybe another 15 that have been hanging around my list for a couple years and have been resisting being linked.  Well, they'd better learn to play ball if they want to get watched...

THE PLOT: A young man determined to be a military hero ends up on a misguided adventure with his family and his new friend Tally, which leads him to the most unlikely realization of how he can courageously "save lives".  

AFTER: This is a bit of a weird one tonight, I can't really tell what category of film this was designed to live in. The main character keeps trying to enlist in the Marines but he doesn't get accepted, so it's not a war film.  The backdrop is the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, but since he doesn't get there, it doesn't really qualify that way either. The relationship he has with this girl Tally never really gets romantic, so it's a non-starter in that category too.  Not funny enough to be a comedy, not serious enough to be a drama, by all accounts it's neither fish nor fowl, so where does it belong?  Feels like a tiny off-beat festival film, so I'm going to put it in the "just plain weird" category for now, unless something else comes along this year that is similar, which is really not likely. 

Ned Chipley keeps taking a bus to San Diego to pitch his case to the Marines Recruiting office, he's apparently been there several times before but he's got a really GOOD feeling about this time, he even brought index cards with the topics he wants to bring up with the recruiter, like how many push-ups he can do and how he really wants to "save lives" and help take down the terrorists.  Sure, I get it, in the months after 9/11 there was a spike in the enlistment rates, because Americans wanted to get involved and make the world safe again, but you know what would have made the world safer?  More security at Boston-area airports. Which of course we all figured out later, and still we're all taking off our shoes and belts for the TSA, you'd think that since we haven't seen an "underwear bomber" in years that ISIS would have given up by now and we could all relax a bit. We all figured out later that the War on Terror was really just a cover for Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, to get rich, right? 

But Ned seems like a decent fellow, honest and sincere - maybe a bit TOO sincere.  And what's with the index cards that he puts in the typewriter?  Does he have that "Memento" memory problem?  Who even uses an old-timey typewriter after 2001? Besides Tom Hanks, that is. Why doesn't Ned have a computer?  (Later we see that he DOES have a computer, but it's an old one, like a Commodore 64 or something. Weird.).  Ned works at a casino, but he's a janitor there. He lives with his mother and her boyfriend, Bob, and Bob can't work as a truck driver because of some lawsuit he's filed against his former employer, so he just sits in the truck cab and talks to other drivers on his CB radio.  OK, umm, who still uses a CB radio in 2002?  

Ned finally gets some recognition from the new recruitment officer at the San Diego enlistment office, who realizes that Ned might be wound a bit too tight for military service, or perhaps he's on the spectrum somewhere and wouldn't be a good fit.  So he gives him his business card and enlists him in an imaginary service, as a "Sun Dog", his job is to work undercover and keep an eye out for terrorists in his local area, he even gives him that deck of cards where each one had a photo of a wanted terrorist, remember those?  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong here?). Ned also meets Tally, who's maybe sort of a prostitute that hangs out in the casino parking lot, we'd seen her proposition Bob earlier in the film.  And the guy she was living with in the trailer park suddenly decided he had someplace better to be, so we're never really sure if she latches on to Ned because she's just got nothing else to do.

Ned decides that his boss at the casino sort of looks like an Al-Qaeda agent from the deck of cards, so he buys Tally a camera from eBay and they start trailing him and his friends, who drive around in a white van and seem to be making many trips to a hardware store, where they buy several forms of glue and other mysterious materials. Together they report their findings to the Marine Sergeant, but it's always a bit unclear if Ned's decision that his boss is a terrorist might be motivated by something else, either natural hatred for one's boss, or racism, or maybe both.  By this time, we're all wondering what Ned's actual deal is, and that flashback of him in his high school's mascot costume getting too involved in a football game (by tackling the opposing school's running back) - well, it sure doesn't help. 

Tally gets confronted by Bob, who remembers her from the casino parking lot - and he clues her (and us) in.  Ned has ALWAYS been this way, he wasn't a soldier, he didn't get injured in a war, if anything he's mad at the terrorists because his birthday is September 11, and they took that away from him. Tally comes to the family's Thanksgiving dinner, but then everything sort of changes, Tally's experiences making videos with Ned inspire her to go to film school in San Francisco, Ned's mother decides it's time to follow her dream from long ago, to go to New York and train as an EMT. (NITPICK POINT: Why can't she stay in California and train to become an EMT there?  This kind of leaves Ned living with Bob, who's not his father and seems to be always after whatever money Ned makes. Hardly an ideal situation.)

Ned's investigation into those local "terrorists" goes horribly wrong, as we all knew it would, and he's forced to take advice from Bob once he's lost his purpose and needs to find a new one.  Bob suggests they get a metal detector and search for lost treasure, maybe they won't find Spanish gold but hey, people are always losing watches and coins on beaches, right?  He also tells Ned that he has to know his own limits and set more reasonable goals.  Ned, of course, doesn't listen and manages to put a new pipe dream together - I'm not sure this ending made any rational sense, but then again, it didn't need to.  As long as he feels he's making a difference in the world, he's doing OK, right? 

Also starring Michael Angarano (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Melissa Benoist (last seen in "Clerks III"), Xzibit (Alvin Joiner) (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden"), Ed O'Neill (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Jennifer Morrison (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Eric Christian Olsen (last seen in "The Back-Up Plan"), J.R. Ramirez, Alexander Wraith (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Niko Nicotera (last seen in "Father Stu"), Fernando Chien (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Nicholas Massouh, Eddie Diaz (last seen in "Collateral"), Solomon Burke Jr., Soledad St. Hilaire (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Tom Berninger, Al Burke, Tommy Kijas (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Bethany Walls, Ethan Michael Mora (last seen in "Don't Worry,  He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Larry Guli, Tina Gilton, Larry Krask, Jim Jepson, Deina Torres, Kenneth Beck, Hannah DePaz, Jovanny Diaz and the voice of Adam Lemnah

RATING: 4 out of 10 repeated viewings of "The Deer Hunter"

The Creator

Year 17, Day 7 - 1/7/25 - Movie #4,907

BEFORE: The Future Wars continue tonight, with a look at A.I. taking over, which was a big concern back in September of 2023 when I worked at a screening of "The Creator". I can't say if concerns have eased any since then, perhaps these fears were overtaken by the immigration threat during the election last year, and now of course we've got the fallout from THAT to deal with, like Republican buyer's remorse is a real thing after seeing the looming Cabinet of Deplorables sequel. We're going to be taking a small cruise in March, and the whole time we'll probably be wishing that we sprung for the four-year cruise that keeps you out of the U.S.A. but gets you back in time to vote in the 2028 election, if there is one. If President Coriolanus Trump allows it, in other words - if he's Dictator for Life at that point, really, all bets on the future of the future are off.  Well, at least we'll all have stronger flushing toilets, right? Worth it? 

Mackenzie Lansing carries over from "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes". There should be at least another Future Wars installments this month, but the battles won't start up again until late next week. My response time for watching "The Creator" was just 16 months, which for me is pretty darn good, I've got movies that have been on my DVR for a lot longer, but I have to prioritize, it's more important right now to figure out what our future's going to be with A.I. in it. Is it going to be useful, harmful, or just a tool for making whatever kind of porn people want to see?  

THE PLOT: Against the backdrop of a war between humans and robots with artificial intelligence, a former soldier finds the robots' secret weapon to end the conflict, an AI in the form of a child. 

AFTER: Honestly, I was kind of wondering what happened to this movie - people were clamoring to see it back in September 2023, then I guess enough of them saw it and were disappointed, so there was sort of a half-push to get some recognition during last Awards Season, then nothing. I guess it got two Oscar nominations, but only for Sound and Visual Effects, that only amounts to something in certain film-geek circles, I think. It made more than its budget, but not by much, and I think I'm right when I say that nobody is still talking about it, they've all moved on. 

The story is extremely confusing - there's a war in the future between humans and A.I. robots, but some of the humans in New Asia are helping the robots and building new ones, because they didn't get the memo about how dangerous they are. And, umm, how dangerous are they? I thought A.I. was only as dangerous as it's programmed to be - but somebody in the future programmed robots to fire guns and the A.I. cops are seen roughing up suspects.  So, those Rules of Robotics no longer apply, either somebody found a work-around or they were never programmed in the first place to never harm humans. We should probably keep that in mind.  

The first thing this reminds me of is "Blade Runner", because it shows humans and simulants (I know, replicants were something different) living side-by-side, and you'd think it would go well, but it's just not working out.  Roommates, am I right? You just want to strangle them sometimes, or blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear missile, I get it. America blames A.I. for the blast that incinerated millions of U.S. citizens, but is that what really happened?  The U.S. Defense Department vows to carry on the fight and take it to the parts of the world where A.I. is still being used.  To that end, Sgt. Joshua Taylor has been sent to infiltrate the community and he does, but he falls in love with Maya, the woman believed to have a connection with Nirmata, the mysterious architect/creator of the A.I. systems. 

After fifteen years battling the robots, the U.S. finally turns the tide with NOMAD (North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense) which is a space station with advanced radar and many missiles to drop from orbit once the ground troops can find the location of an A.I. base.  Theoretically then the troops would evacuate before the explosion, but this never seems to happen in time in this film.  Once Joshua's cover is blown, and his pregnant wife learns who he really is, she refuses to leave with him, and she dies in the explosion. 

Five years after that, Taylor has a job cleaning up the giant crater that used to be L.A., but he gets recruited by an army general and colonel for a mission to stop "Alpha O", a new A.I. weapon that might have the power to take down the NOMAD station.  They have footage that shows his wife Maya might still be alive, and might still be connected to Nirmata, and they use this to get him on board before the next infiltration.  This is kind of where the movie stops being a re-tread of "Blade Runner" and turns into a re-tread of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", another film directed by "The Creator" director, Gareth Edwards.  Well, if you can't steal from yourself, what's the point? 

Both films have a space station orbiting a planet that can destroy anything at ground level - NOMAD is really just a replacement for the Death Star here.  And both films have a ragtag bunch of survivor losers with various skills that need to work together to take down the unseen enemy - and there's a robot on both teams, "Alphie" here is very different from K-2SO but the principle isn't, can a robot rise above its programming?  In some ways this is just a "Star Wars" film that's set on future Earth instead of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

But of course, there are many big differences, too - in "Rogue One" Jyn Erso was recruited for the Rebel Alliance because of holograms suggesting her father was working for the Empire to build a superweapon, and here Joshua is recruited for a U.S. Army mission with video footage suggesting his wife was working with the A.I. to build a superweapon.  Totally not the same. And then in both films they manage to blow up a whole lot of stuff, this seems to be the director's answer to everything. 

There are some innovative things here, though, designed to make you think about the nature of A.I. and what it might look like in the coming days - the U.S. troops use these "smart bombs" that can run to where they need to be when they blow themselves up, which ideally would be in the middle of a pack of other robots.  Suicide robot bombers, essentially.  Also effective against the robots is a dog who "fetches" their own grenade back to them, and drops it on the ground where it rolls around and they can't manage to pick it up in time.  As a result, the robots stumble around looking for their own blown-off heads, which seems like a pretty poor design. Even in the future, robot building clearly still has a long way to go. 

NITPICK POINT: These robots can fire weapons and hurt humans, but they're incapable of pulling the plug on someone who's on life support, which would be a mercy killing?  That seems like a very odd place to draw that moral line.  Humans, however have no problem with killing robots or killing other humans, or sacrificing themselves for the greater good if needed.  This kind of calls into question which beings are more advanced, and why the two societies just can't seem to get along, even though one created the other. Why couldn't the humans just program the robots to be satisfied and fulfilled serving mankind, their creators, was that not possible?  Or did nobody think of doing that?  And when Alphie finally says that the goal of robots is to be free, why is the natural human response to kill something to make sure that doesn't happen?  I guess maybe there is a lot to think about here.

The ending is beyond confusing, Joshua goes from working with the U.S. army to teaming up with Alphie to try and take NOMAD down.  Obviously there's the personal connection he develops with the A.I. during their time together, but is that enough to betray his entire country?  Or is it the fact that they used footage of his wife to make him think she was still alive, and most likely that was just an A.I. that was mimicking her appearance?  But he's still holding out some kind of hope that she's alive again in some fashion, when it's just not possible - with all he knows about A.I., how can he not tell the difference between her and a simulant designed to look like her and programmed to act like her?  Or is the programming SO lifelike that it doesn't really matter? 

Also starring John David Washington (last seen in "Beckett"), Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Gemma Chan (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Allison Janney (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Ken Watanabe (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Sturgill Simpson (last seen in "The Hunt"), Amar Chadha-Patel (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Marc Menchaca (last seen in "The Alamo"), Robbie Tann (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Michael Esper (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Ian Verdun, Daniel Ray Rodriguez, Rad Pereira, Syd Skidmore (last seen in "Me Time"), Karen Aldridge (last seen in "The Dilemma"), Teerawat Mulvilai, Leanna Chea, Sahatchai Chumrum, Mariam Khummaung, Charlie McElveen, Brett Bartholomew, Jeb Kreager (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Agneta Catarina Bekassy de Bekas, Brett Parks, James Henry, Eoin O'Brien.

RATING: 6 out of 10 EMP weapons

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Year 17, Day 6 - 1/6/25 - Movie #4,906

BEFORE: Peter Dinklage carries over again from "Brothers" and finally, my first big-budget franchise sci-fi film of the year. Man, it sure was tempting to go straight to "Dune: Part Two" via Josh Brolin, but no, I've got to look at the big picture. The month is planned out, I can't skip ahead because I've got to hit 31 movies this month and NOT go over.  If I skip ahead to "Dune" I'll get to the end too soon.  That film was up for a few Golden Globes last night but I don't think it won anything.  

But I did get a list of films that were nominated or won Golden Globes and that's a great place for me to start if I want to try and push the chain toward the relevant films in this year's Oscar race. I just don't think I can get to the really relevant films in time, though, no matter what they are. I kind of programmed for the "Dune" and "Joker" sequels, and now I don't think those films are going to win much, "Dune: Part Two" might pick up some technical Oscars, though. I think I'll only have time to chip away a little more at last year's Oscar contenders, before I have to switch over to romance films for February.  So it goes. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Hunger Games" series (Movies #2,779-2,782)

THE PLOT: Coriolanus Snow mentors and develops feelings for the female District 12 tribute during the 10th Hunger Games. 

AFTER: OK, so it's been a while since I watched "The Hunger Games" - seven years already?  And I feel like I watched them WAY after everyone else, like I did with the "Twilight" films. It was back in November 2017, which was Movie Year 9 - and they were released between 2012 and 2015, so really, I only started them two years after the last one, that's not TOO bad for me. But I guess if they can come out with a "Beetlejuice" sequel 36 years after the original, releasing a prequel eight years after the main films isn't really that late. Umm, or is that early, because it's a prequel?  

This is how long it's been for me, when I first saw the previews for this I naturally assumed it was the back story of the character played by Woody Harrelson, something Abernathy?  Well, I was WAY off because it's really the origin story of Coriolanus Snow, who was the President-slash-villain played by Donald Sutherland.  OK, so they're going WAY back in time from the other films, something like 65 years, back when that old guy was fresh out of high school.  OK, I stand corrected, but a few things still make me say, "OK, but wait a minute..."

First off, it's a blatant cash grab. I know the original author went back and wrote the prequel book this is based on, so she's really to blame here - probably inspired by the success of "Star Wars: Episode I" and its two sequels, why not just snap back four or five decades and try to pinpoint the moment where the train went off the rails, it could be a whole new trilogy if the first one connects.  The second part of that is, the other trend in movies replicated here, is "if we can't go forward, let's go back" and show how the main villain got to be so evil in the first place. After Darth Vader they did it with Magneto, Maleficent, Cruella and even a little bit with the Beetlejuice character - surely every evil demon wasn't BORN that way, something had to happen to make them that way, and that's very close to saying that sure, they're bad people, but it's not their fault. They're all victims of circumstance, so society is to blame, no doubt. The Wicked Witch, Scar and (probably, eventually) Ursula the Sea Witch from "The Little Mermaid", you guys are all up next. 

But first let's deal with Coryo Snow - who's young and cocky and says things like "Snow always ends up on top" like it's some kind of family motto or something.  His father co-created the Hunger Games to punish Panem's 12 districts for a failed coup or something (HEY, today is January 6, how appropriate is that?), and they've been around for 10 years, but just like any reality TV show that's been on for so long, the ratings are starting to drop.  So the co-creator of the Games, Casca Highbottom, reveals that there will be no Plinth Prize this year (whatever that is) and instead 24 Academy students, including Snow, will be in charge of mentoring the participants of the Hunger Games, teaching them to fight or whatever in the arena, to make the contest more watchable. I guess last year everybody just slaughtered each other in boring or non-dramatic ways, where's the fun and spectacle in that? 

Coryo is assigned the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird, and she may not be able to fight, but man, can she sing. A formal request is made to give the Hunger Games something of an "American Idol" twist, but it's the future and nobody remembers that show, so the idea is voted down.  Lucy then tries to kill one of her rivals before the match even begins by slipping a snake down her dress, but the refs won't allow it, they tell her to save it for the arena.  Another tribute kills her own mentor, and that for some reason is totally legal - after a review of the play, it turns out there nothing in the rulebook that says you CAN'T kill your own coach. OK, good to know. 

Another twist occurs the day before the Games begin, when rebels bomb the arena while all of the Tributes are being shown around.  (Really weird timing here, because we just had two terrorist events in America, one was in New Orleans the day before the Sugar Bowl.). But even though Coriolanus is injured in the explosion, all of the contestants manage to live and the Games proceed as planned - a new hitch, though, Coryo tells Lucy that the bombs have opened up some tunnels in the arena, so there might be some new hiding places.  Oh, yeah, he also gives her some poison to use if things get dicey in there, which of course they will. 

The Hunger Games also have a live host for the broadcast, apparently for the first time ever.  This is Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, who possibly has some connection to Caesar Flickerman, the smarmy host from the other four films, but apparently this has not been confirmed yet, just assumed.  Again I have to claim a "mea culpa", because I just naturally assumed that Jason Schwartzman was playing the younger version of the host played by Stanley Tucci, but apparently they are NOT the same character, they couldn't be because of the 65-year difference in the plot.  Unless Flickerman is very very old and maybe had a LOT of work done.  Let's just say maybe Lucky is Caesar's father, or uncle, or namesake, really it will be up to the third film in this new trilogy to resolve.  

It's not long before the number of living tributes drops from the initial 24 to about 8 or 9, and the mentors watching via giant TV screens are, for some reason, allowed to keep helping.  Also drones are used to deliver strategic supplies, like food, water and weapons, also viewers watching at home are allowed to make "donations" to help their favorites gain advantages.  Yeah, this feels a lot like the show "Survivor" somewhere around season 36 or 37, when CBS realized that ratings went up anytime someone played an idol, so instead of the one (or two) idols in play during the early seasons, suddenly there were idols everywhere, plus steal-a-vote advantages, super idols, legacy advantages... and every time someone played an advantage, that meant the crew was going to hide another one somewhere near camp the next day.  When everyone on the tribe has an idol, suddenly they're all essentially useless, especially if they're all played at the same Tribal Council. Just saying. 

To wrap things up quickly, the mad scientist who creates the challenges releases a giant tub of genetically-modified snakes into the arena, and they put an end to nearly everyone playing the game, except for Lucy, who can apparently control the snakes by singing to them (only that's NOT really what happened here, hint hint) and so by default, she wins the Hunger Games as the last tribute standing. Coriolanus is declared the winner among the mentors, and it seems he's got a chance to get back some honor for his family, and his political career is off to a great start.  

Only that's not what happens at all, Coriolanus Snow is accused of cheating, which he did, so Casca Highbottom is kind of like Gene Wilder at the end of the original Willy Wonka movie - "You get NOTHING, you LOSE, good DAY sir!" and our future villain is sent off to work for 20 years in the Peacekeeper Brigade. Very well, he'll do his time and work his way back to the Capitol, it can be done.  Just wake up, get up, show up, punch in, pitch in, put out, punch out, go home, sack out, and repeat as necessary until an opportunity presents itself. But instead he bribes an officer to transfer him to District 12, which is where Lucy was from, and his old Academy buddy Sejanus Plinth volunteers to join him there. 

This is really where the film kind of runs off the proverbial rails, because we came here for "The Hunger Games", it's right there in the title, and the Hunger Games are declared over when there's still an hour left in the film.  What can they possibly show us in Coriolanus' career as a Peacekeeper that's as exciting as the Games?  Nothing, really.  Sure, there are rebels in District 12 and sometimes they get hanged, and when Sejanus is found meeting with the rebels, Corio sets out to find out what's really happening and promises to protect Sejanus, only he doesn't do that.  He finds Lucy Gray again, as she performs nightly in a dance club right near the military base, and they get really close, but after they run off together something happens between them that I didn't quite understand, and before you know it, he's trying to hunt down and kill the woman he mentored. But this was starting to look like something of a love story, wasn't it?  What the heck went wrong?  Oh, right, this guy needs to become a villain somehow so he can't have a relationship go well, that wouldn't get him to where we need him to be.  

The Head Gamemaker calls him back to the Capitol, and reveals that she got him pardoned for his cheating crimes and also got him a scholarship to Panem University. I guess she sees something in him, that he might be running the joint someday if he's just given the chance.  One last meeting with his father's ex-partner, Casca Highbottom, reveals that Casca created the Hunger Games when he was drunk, the idea was to show society how savage we all are, deep down, when we are forced to be. It wasn't meant to be a real thing, but then Coriolanus's father stole the idea and turned it into one. OK, good to know, but now that the ratings are up, who even cares? 

Really, I think my timing is very excellent here, what with political coup attempts and terrorist bombings and drones as plot points, but also the 2nd Trump inauguration is just a couple of weeks away, and if you want to know how we're going to get from here to the dystopian future we have looming, I can almost guarantee that the timeline we should be dreading goes straight through Trump. Nobody can say for certain what's going to take us down, climate change or microplastics or nuclear war, but considering the debate that the 2024 voters had about immigration and the fact that internment camps and mass deportations are quite possibly on the horizon, we're really not that far off now from the real Hunger Games. Just my opinion. 

Also starring Tom Blyth (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2010)), Rachel Zegler (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Josh Andres Rivera (last seen in "West Side Story"), Viola Davis (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Hunter Schafer, Fionnula Flanagan (last heard in "Song of the Sea"), Burn Gorman (last seen in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Dexter Sol Ansell, Rosa Gotzler, Ashley Liao (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Max Raphael, Zoe Renee, Aamer Husain, Lilly Maria Cooper, Ayomide Adegun, Amelie Hoeferle, Nick Benson, Mackenzie Lansing, Cooper Dillon, Hiroki Berrecloth, Kjell Brutscheidt, Dimitri Abold, Irene Böhm, Sofia Sanchez, Knox Gibson, Luna Steeples, Luna Kuse, Jerome Lance, Dakota Shapiro, Isobel Jesper Jones, George Somner, Vaughan Reilly, Honor Gillies, Eike Onyambu, Konstantin Taffet, Michael Greco, Daniela Grubert, Carl Spencer (last seen in "Rocketman"), Scott Folan (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Athena Strates (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Joshua Kantara, Kaitlyn Akinpelumi (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Florian Burgkart, Aaron Finn Schultz, Mekyas Mulugeta, Emma Frieda Brüggler, Yalany Marschner, Serena Oexle, Anni Baumann, Flora Li Thiemann (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Seyna Sylla, Aminata Lucia Yade Toscano, Levi Strasser (last seen in "The Monuments Men"), Chieloka Jairus, Tim Torok, Varvara Kanellakopoulou, Marc Aden Gray, Denise Hansen, Raphael Zari, Mona Vojacek Koper, Felix Audu, Vanessa Blanck, Kittipong Ace Cunjanagan, Samia Hofmann, Nova Just, Yuli Lam, Joan Marie Laux, Kyra Reinert, Victoria Paige Watkins, Lucas Wilson

RATING: 5 out of 10 loose floorboards

Brothers

Year 17, Day 5 - 1/5/25 - Movie #4,905

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