Havoc (2025)

Year 17, Day 144 - 5/24/25 - Movie #5,028

BEFORE: Tom Hardy carries over from "Venom: The Last Dance", and I won't say that I met Tom Hardy, not exactly, but he did come to the theater a couple months ago for the premiere of "Mobland", which is a crime series on Hulu, and we screened the first two episodes, I think. I was on outdoor detail, which involves keeping an eye on the crowd and making sure nobody trips on the ramps that help people get from the sidewalk to the street because there's this giant press tent blocking the sidewalk. Both Hardy and Pierce Brosnan came out to meet fans that were being kept in a holding pen of sorts, and so Tom Hardy was a few feet in front of me while he was signing autographs. OK, so it's not a thrilling story but it happened, I took a couple of pics and for once you could really tell that it was the celebrity I saw. For me that's a big deal, usually my pics are blurry or you can just see the back of a celebrity's head.

I know I used Tom Hardy as a link already this year, but I needed to watch "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" to get to "Dune: Part Two", and at the time "Venom: The Last Dance" wasn't available yet, so I've had to circle back - just like I can't follow the Luis Guzman link out of this film, and it looks like I'll get back to him and use him as a link in June. 

I think I've got the Doc Block finalized now, HBO just aired the new doc about Pee-Wee Herman last night, I was able to scan quickly through Part 1 just to get a quick cast list and therefore figure out where it can fit into the line-up without me having to move a lot of other things around. That's a definite must-watch, along with the one about Yacht Rock, the one about the South Park creators renovating that Mexican restaurant, and the one about the Star Wars holiday special. Oh, it's SO going to be a fun block this time around, I've made sure of that. Coming June 25 (or so) through August 7 (or whenever) to a blog near you...also starring Faye Dunaway, Martha Stewart, Christopher Reeve and a bunch of other stars.

THE PLOT: After a drug deal goes wrong, a bruised detective must fight his way through the underworld to rescue a politician's estranged son, unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.  

AFTER: Well, it's a bit of the old ultra-violence today, this is another one of those movies where everybody seems to know martial arts, everybody's got a gun but seems to prefer some kind of hand-to-hand combat with cleavers or knives, and everyone seems to have 100 bullets in their gun and (almost) never needs to reload. That last part seems to be bothering the most people, because as a result there are like a million bullets fired in this film overall, and at some point you'll probably be thinking it's a bit excessive. Basically everything's over the top here, but are the plot points believable?  Well, probably not, there have to be SOME cops in the city who aren't corrupt, the main character is probably meant to be the hero here, but he's clearly been in trouble with his superiors before due to favors he's done for a politician, who is probably also corrupt, and we know this because he claims to not be. It's the Trump era, after all. 

I'm not sure where this story is set, I GUESS it's supposed to be NYC, what with the corrupt politician (We see you, Mayor Adams...) and so many dirty cops, but I couldn't pin down any of the locations.  Plus there's a lake cabin setting near the end of the film, and I don't know one lake that close to New York City. Maybe upstate, but it just wouldn't be that close. It turns out this film was shot in Wales - the one in the U.K., but they NEVER mention what city they're in, so is it supposed to be Anytown, USA?  They sure went out of their way to TRY to make this look like New York - but it just doesn't, the buildings aren't high enough and the train yards and car repair lots just look a little TOO shitty.  Also, we don't have THAT many elevated trains in NYC, and they don't travel between buildings like that. So, maybe Chicago? Not sure. 

The son of that dirty politician gets involved with the Chinese gangs, he's part of a crew that's assigned to steal a truckload of washing machines, only the washers are filled with drugs. Well, that's one way to do it, I guess. To stop the police car that's speeding after them (in a wild opening chase scene that looks partly CGI, for safety reasons) the crew drops a washer out the back, stopping the police car but critically injuring a cop. Coincidentally, that cop turns out to be a friend of Patrick Walker, the lead character and slightly less corrupt cop.  The other police on the scene are the much more corrupt cops, so you have to wonder whether they were trying to stop the truck so they could get the drugs themselves.  

The Chinese gangster who hired the crew turns up very dead, and the crew goes missing, so the hero cop and the more corrupt cops all race around the city to find the politician's son. Walker has the inside track because he's paying off an informant, a secret doctor for the Chinese mob, and one person missing from the scene had been shot several times. So Walker gets to the politician's son (and his girlfriend) first, but only by minutes.  Both the corrupt cops and the Chinese gangsters show up a few minutes later, and there's a giant shootout at the club. Again, some people prefer knives and cleavers and good old-fashioned martial arts, you'd think that once the guns came out that would be the weapon of choice, but you would be very wrong, guns just aren't all that cinematic, I guess. 

The mother of the dead Chinese gangster shows up and gets her little brother, another Triad boss, into the mix. The best theory at this point is that the crew that stole the washers killed the gangster, but when Walker asks them about it, they say it was the gang of corrupt cops. Well, when the Chinese mob is hunting you, they may not be willing to listen to reason, so you know what, why not just leave town while you can?  The little brother Triad boss turns up at the hospital, for example, to kill the cop who's in a coma and that seems like overkill at that point.  He's almost stopped by Ellie, a rookie cop who got assigned to work with Walker, only then she got re-assigned to work with the more corrupt cops.  But she starts to see the corrupt cops for what they really are, and she kind of goes back over to Walker's side, which seems to be the lesser of two evils.  

Ellie goes to see Walker's ex-wife and of course he's not there - that seems to have been the problem during his marriage, that he was never there - but she learns about that lake cabin, and figures that's probably where Walker is hiding the crew members that simply EVERYONE is looking for. Before long, everyone turns up at that lake cabin, and it's giant shoot-out number two, only not everyone's going to be walking away from this one. Vincent, the leader of the corrupt cops but tries to escape by train. (NITPICK POINT: Who the hell puts a train yard so close to a lake cabin? Seems unlikely...). Walker catches up with him, and that's the end of that. As reinforcements arrive, Walker strongly suggests that Ellie arrest him, but she doesn't, and we never find out if he just goes back to work at the precinct, or if he's in trouble for helping wanted fugitives escape, or killing gang members, or just owning the world's most unlikely located lake cabin. Well, maybe whoever sold it to him said it was lakefront property, and Walker fell for it. 

I'm giving myself the day off tomorrow - because I want the next film to line up with Memorial Day, it's fine, I need to have a break day every now and then, I've got to get some comic books to my storage unit and also catch up on logging some comics in, I've got them piled up all over the place and a three-day weekend is the best time to deal with that. Back with my Monday film on Tuesday, probably, then I've got to go work another premiere event.  There is another film on my list with the same title as this one, and I'll be getting to that one, too, in just a couple of days. 

Directed by Gareth Evans

Also starring Jessie Mei Li (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "When Trumpets Fade"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "How It Ends"), Justin Cornwell, Quelin Sepulveda, Luis Guzman (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Michelle Waterson, Sunny Pang, Jim Caesar, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Yeo Yann Yann, Serhat Metin (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Richard Pepper, Megan Lockhurst, Richard Harrington, Gordon Alexander (last seen in "Lift"), John Cummins, Narges Rashidi (last seen in "Speed Racer"), Astrid Fox-Sahan, Jeremy Ang Jones, Aaron Ly, Lockhart Ogilvie, Albert Tang, Tom Wu (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Jill Winternitz (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Jack Morris, Alan Leong, Jennifer Armour, Clarence Smith, Stacy Sobieski, Jon-Scott Clark, Kage Jakubiec, Bailey Cameron, Christopher Maleki (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Joe David Walters

RATING: 5 out of 10 terrible Christmas presents

Venom: The Last Dance

Year 17, Day 143 - 5/23/25 - Movie #5,027

BEFORE: I went on a linking tear yesterday, actually most of the hard work was already done, because I've maintained a separate list of documentaries I have (or are available to me) that I also WANT to watch, and that list is already in linked form - although honestly there's so much overlap in appearances (thanks to archive footage) that there are probably a million ways those films could be organized. I can get into more details when the time comes, but I at least had those films in SOME order that I was OK with, and wouldn't you know, those 40-plus films are already arranged in a circle, the last one links back to the first, so I can enter the list from any starting point and go in either direction, which also would then determine the ending point at the same time. So at this point it's just about getting to Father's Day and then looking for the nearest on-ramp to the Doc Block, then figuring out if I'm OK with the exit. Because before I get in, it's good to know that I've got a way out.  

So I linked to Father's Day - I maybe got the date a bit wrong, looking at an actual calendar might have been a good idea, because this year it's on June 15, not what I thought. I've got plenty of films about fathers, so linking to one wasn't a problem at all - in fact, I linked to SEVEN, five of which are in a row. As long as one of those lands on June 15, I'm good. But I kept going, as there was one entrance to the Doc Block right there - but it didn't place an appropriate film on July 4, which is important. Sure, i could tear apart the whole doc chain and piece it back together in many different ways, but it was easier to just add three more films to the mix and get a new entry point, two more directions and two more chances, and I found that a film about 'Murica lined up almost exactly where I wanted it to be, so there, it's done, the Doc Block is connected.  

There are still one - no, wait, two - OK, three more docs that I want to add to the mix, but then that's it. I'm programmed through to August 5 (or is it August 8?) and this will almost entirely clear the documentary section of the list. And like I said, there's a ton of overlap - if a film becomes unavailable, I'll just skip it and move on to the next possible connection, as there's bound to be one. I could work hard and move all the films about rock stars together, all the films about actors together, and so on. But what would that get me?  Let's not rock the boat, I only just made it sea-worthy.  And I only had to move ONE film from May's line-up to August to get a good outro, more on that in a few days. 

Rhys Ifans carries over from "Nyad". The other bonus seems to be that I've got all FOUR outstanding Marvel movies programmed now, so let's start crossing those off. And once i get to mid-August, I can figure out my horror chain and how to get there, at that point another Movie Year will be almost completely planned out. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" (Movie #4,161)

THE PLOT: Eddie Brock and Venom must make a devastating decision as they're pursued by a mysterious military man and alien monsters from Venom's home world. 

AFTER: Honestly, who remembers what happened in the last Venom movie, that was like almost 900 movies ago!  Just me?  Really, it's only been three years our time and ZERO years in the Venom-verse.  This movie picks up right where the last film (and "Spider-Man: No Way Home") left off, with Venom being sent through a portal from the MCU back to his universe, the, umm, Venomverse?  Sony-verse?  It's apparently the same universe as "Madame Web" and "Morbius" and maybe "Kraven", but it's one without a Spider-Man, at least so far. Which means that this Eddie Brock went to the MCU for no reason, it was some kind of cosmic clerical error because he can't possibly know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man if he lives in a universe that has no Spider-Man and only lesser villains. Who the hell is in charge here?  Is this all going to sort itself out during "Secret Wars", or will that just be an excuse for Marvel to re-cast every single character when the biggest names in show-biz turn out to be unavailable?  

I mean, this movie is probably fine, but isn't it just more of the same? It feels like some writer just reviewed the plotlines of the previous two films and extrapolated where to go next, using all of the exact same pieces, but once you do a painting or a jigsaw puzzle once, don't you kind of want to do something different the next time?  OK, Venom goes to Las Vegas, big deal, but it just leads to a stupid dance number (?) with the woman who ran the deli in San Francisco, and does that even make any sense?  Right after that, we're back to a secret army lab where someone is trying to weaponize the symbiotes, but we've seen all of that already!  

I went back and re-read my review of the 2nd Venom film, and there I predicted that the next un-logical place to go with Venom's story would be to adapt the "King in Black" crossover, which was where Knull got free from his Klyntar prison and invaded Earth, turning it into a planet full of symbiotes, wouldn't that be something?  Blacking out the sky, giant symbiote dragons, all of the world's heroes coming together to defeat the evil power. It felt like this third film WANTED to go there, it introduced Knull as a character, but then didn't do anything with him. HUH?  Isn't this the last film in the trilogy, if you don't have Venom fight Knull in this one, when's it going to happen? NEVER?  You can't just tease me with the creator of the symbiotes being held captive in an intergalactic prison and then NOT release him to ravage the Earth!  

Instead, Knull sends his Xenophage aliens to Earth - through a portal of course, which saves a few hundred light-years of travel time - but enough with the portals already, too!  They were a cool story device to get Eddie Brock to the MCU (and back, for some reason) - so portals that only transcend space seem kind of lame compared with the ones that connect to the multiverse. What's worse, this all seems to be done just to show what it would look like if Venom battled the alien from "Alien", or perhaps more accurately, the Acklay seen on Geonosis in "Star Wars: Episode II". Just me? 

The Xenophage is trying to get the "Codex" which is part of the Venom/Brock hybrid being, and they explain what a "codex" is by saying it was formed when Eddie died in the previous film and Venom used it to bring him back to life. This doesn't make any sense, how can using it create it?  Anyway, there's a symbiote codex in the comic books, but it's a completely different thing - this one can be used to break Knull out of captivity, which would probably be a BAD thing, so either Brock or Venom has to die in this film to make that impossible.  But in the comics, a codex is created within a human host whenever a symbiote bonds with it and then later separates. It's a residue of genetic information that allows the former host to connect with the collective hive-mind. The hive-mind is therefore able to preserve the consciousness of the host as a sort of "afterlife", like a copy on a back-up drive, so this way the writers can kill off a character again and again, so the story never needs to end, which is important for comics to survive as a medium. 

So why would Venom merging with Eddie Brock, or bringing Eddie back to life, create some kind of key that would unlock Knull's prison on Klyntar?  My guess is that this will become important in the NEXT Venom film, if there is one, and it's really too bad they couldn't make this important NOW, this film could have been a lot more relevant, instead Venom battles the xenophage aliens on the site of the U.S. military testing lab, and well, that's it. There's another character left over from the previous film who's bonded with another symbiote, and two different people who work for the military get bonded to other symbiotes, but it hardly matters - the film didn't even bother to give those characters cool names like Shriek or Riot as before. Which suggests they won't be around for very long.  Sure, there's a family of hippies who Venom encounters, traveling to Area 51 to see aliens before the place gets shut down, but this is a very long sub-plot that ultimately goes nowhere, too.  

Eddie finally makes it to New York, but who cares, because there's no Spider-Man there for him to become the arch-enemy of. Maybe he can hang out with Morbius or Kraven or Madame Web, but if he's never going to be part of the Sinister Six and battle Spider-Man, I'm a whole lot less interested. Knull should really take over this planet and turn everybody into symbiotes, because it's really dullsville, when it could be Knullsville. The closing credits show various Earth animals hosting symbiotes (in addition to the horse that Venom bonded with during the movie) so maybe that's a hint of things to come.

The Venom comics did an even weirder storyline over the last couple of years, where Brock's Venom did some time-traveling and met a bunch of characters who allegedly were all future versions of himself, the main one being a villain named Meridius. So apparently Venom's going to live forever, but undergo various metamorphoses, and changing his name to Finnegan, Bedlam, Wilde, Tyro and then finally Meridius, but thanks to some kind of timeless limbo garden that Meridius rules over, all of these characters can interact with each other and fight each other (only they can't kill each other, because time travel). Rarely has there been a more confusing storyline in comics books, with a main character fighting all of his future selves, most of which don't even talk, because that would make things even MORE confusing. It all came to a head about a year ago in a crossover called "Venom War" where these character all came to Earth at the same time and battled each other, and Spider-Man (wearing the Venom symbiote again) and Eddie Brock's son, Dylan (who also was Venom for a while).  

At least this storyline cleared the decks somewhat, and now we're back to having just ONE Venom in the Marvel Comics, but it's not Eddie Brock, because now he's got the Carnage symbiote, or something. But now there's going to be a whole Venomverse, too - kind of like how there's a Spider-Verse, and all the Spider-Men and Spider-Women hang out together or fight each other or both, only this will be all the Venoms from around the multiverse together in the same comic book.  Just when you think the multiverse is completely out of hand, the Marvel writers do something like this that just makes it MORE - not better, maybe worse, but definitely just MORE. Maybe it sells comics but enough, already. 

The movie Venom is still a weird character because it's not really a hero and not really a villain, and it does bite some (bad) people's heads off, and we're not sure if that makes Eddie Brock a cannibal or not, like, umm, where do the heads go?

Directed by Kelly Marcel (writer and producer of "Venom: Let There Be Carnage")

Also starring Tom Hardy (last seen in "Furiousa: A Mad Max Saga"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Kinky Boots"), Juno Temple (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Reid Scott (ditto), Peggy Lu (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Cristo Fernandez (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Jared Abrahamson, Hala Finley (last seen in "Unplugging"), Dash McCloud, Andy Serkis (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Jack Brady (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Ivo Nandi (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Jake Allyn (last seen in "Sweet Girl"), Otis Winston (last seen in "Plane"), Jacob Tomuri (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Brooke Carter, Fflyn Edwards, Elizabeth Cook, Martin McDougall (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny")

RATING: 6 out of 10 dogs rescued from a dog-fighting ring (the best thing Venom does in the whole movie)

Nyad

Year 17, Day 142 - 5/22/25 - Movie #5,026

BEFORE: Today's film comes with a story, and I have to go back to February 4 of last year. Biden was still President, the world wasn't on fire, Lizzo was overweight, it was a different time, OK?  Oscar campaigns were still going on, and there were guild screenings at the theater where I work, and while Emma Stone would win the Best Actress Oscar for "Poor Things" a few weeks later, at the time Annette Bening was still eligible for "Nyad", so there was a Netflix-sponsored screening of the film for the SAG or PGA, but come on, it was really a push for the Oscars. 

Now, as a general rule, I'm not supposed to interact with the panelists - often I'll sneak a pic while they're on-stage, but that means I could end up with a blurry photo of the back of someone's head, and I later have to convince people that's a shot of famous person, but really, it could be anybody.  But this was a special case, Annette Bening was going to be interviewed after the film, one on one, by Kathleen Turner - and Ms. Turner had a foot injury, she was walking with a cane and had a medical boot on. So in my role as house manager I have to anticipate problems before they happen and think up solutions - how were we going to get her on-stage?  So I approached her in the green room and proposed the use of the ADA elevator, which we use to get people in wheelchairs or with walkers to their seats. But the elevator goes one level higher, past the front row seats and all the way to the stage.  

So my task was to convince these two famous actresses that I knew what I was doing, that this room that looked like a tiny dark closet was really a lift that would take them to stage level, and that I would be waiting at the top to open the gate and let them out on to the stage. I guess I looked serious and trustworthy because they complied, and at the right moment I activated the elevator, which is slow and makes a lot of noise, also there's a bright light that turns on automatically when the elevator reaches a certain level, plus the audience could see them after a time, so really, it was a rather grand entrance.  And after they got to their chairs on the stage and then I had to remind Ms. Bening that the chairs were in a particular position and should not be moved, I got to step back and take a photo of them - of course, you can only see the back of Kathleen Turner's head, and I still have to convince people that's her.  But I think I did right by them, and the Q&A went well, all things considered. 

Erica Cho carries over from "The Benefactor". I'd say here that Annette Bening was probably ROBBED last year when she didn't win the Oscar, but honestly, I haven't seen "Poor Things" yet, so saying that would really be influenced favoritism. Those are probably the most famous people who I've seen use that elevator, but it's still not the weirdest reason I've used it, that would be for a giant statue of an ostrich, but that's another story.

THE PLOT: The remarkable true story of Diana Nyad, who, at the age of 60 and with the help of her best friend and coach, commits to achieving her life-long dream: a 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida. 

AFTER: To say I'm flying blind here would be an understatement - I can't swim, I don't swim. But I can't really fight worth a darn either, and that doesn't stop me from watching movies about boxing. Well, look I don't play any sports, so I'm flying blind with any sports movie. So I appreciate everything this movie did to inform me that what Diana Nyad did was a really big deal. Pointing out that the distance from Cuba to Florida is over 110 miles at best, and that's the equivalent of FIVE times the swim across the English Channel, which itself is a pretty big deal.  And Diana Nyad succeeded in doing this in 2013, at the age of 61, which is also incredible. It took her 53 hours, that's over TWO DAYS without a break, even for sleeping. We're watching that show on Food Network called "24 in 24" and it features chefs competing in cooking challenges for 24 hours straight, but imagine going TWO DAYS without sleeping and swimming that whole time. It seems impossible. 

Nyad had first tried this feat in 1978 at the age of 28, and in that attempt, she had covered 76 miles of swimming, but kept getting pushed off-course toward Texas - so those 76 miles were apparently not in a straight line, and worse, she was swimming inside a shark cage for protection. Doctors removed her from the ocean on her third day of swimming because the strong winds and waves were slamming her against the shark cage - but she decided to try again 33 years later, as she felt the need to finally cross this accomplishment off her bucket list. Or really, it seemed more like a "Fuck it" list, at the age of 61 she just wanted to say that and really go for it. As someone who's 56 and feeling like I've been kind of put out to pasture, maybe I need to take a page from Nyad's book and try out for "Jeopardy!" again or something, I kind of have a little extra time right now.  If I wait any longer I'll be eligible for the Seniors Tournament, which, you know, might not be such a terrible idea. 

Anyway, let's get back to 2011, when Diana decided to enlist her best friend (and former romantic partner? Not sure...) as her swimming coach, and really take another run at this long-distance swimming thing.  This time she assembled a whole support team of about 25 people - navigators, medical personnel, shark experts, weather experts and boat crew. Research by the weather experts said that the best conditions would occur in July or August, so they assembled in Key West and waited for the right starting moment, which came on August 7.  No shark cage this time, instead her crew used electronic devices that sent out a signal to repel sharks.  They were also standing by with tennis balls mounted on metal rods as a back-up. A medical reaction to a painkiller given to her for shoulder pain caused her asthma to flare up, so that attempt was stopped after 29 hours. Another attempt six weeks later got called early because of jellyfish stings and currents that pushed her off course. 

The following year, another attempt started on August 21, 2012 - but similar problems from jellyfish stings, and two storms also ended her swim on the third day, however she had covered more distance than ever before.  Finally the team came back together in last August, 2013 for one more attempt, because "why not?" at that point.  No shark cage, but with a full protective suit and mask to prevent jellyfish stings, no NSAID pain relievers, and thankfully no storms, so being able to take full advantage of the ocean currents, that proved to be the winning formula. She reached the beach in just 53 hours, having trained for a possible 60-hour swim.  And they were very careful to not let any spectators touch her, she had to come out of the water and on to land for the journey to count. Also she was not allowed to touch the boat that traveled along next to her, or any of her team members, the governing board apparently has very strict rules. (It's the World Open Water Swimming Association, which yes, has the acronym WOWSA. Like, wowsa!)

Unfortunately, it seems that WOWSA has refused to certify her 2013 Cuba-to-Florida swim, something about incomplete observer logs, or discrepancies in the crew reports concerning her food and water intake, I don't know, can't we just give a senior citizen a break, here?  Nyad swam for 48 hours straight to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy, plus she once swam around the entire island of Manhattan - 28 miles - in a record-setting 7 hours and 57 minutes. I don't think I could even walk 10 miles in that amount of time, jeez!

I sort of identified with her coach, Bonnie Stoll, who according to this film, quit after her 2012 attempt but then came back for the 2013 swim because she didn't know what else to do with her life. I just quit my career in animation after spending 31 years working for an independent animator who was always JUST on the edge of being successful, and I felt I couldn't wait any more for him to get his act together and make some real money. I kind of felt that if he would just take my advice and get a real agent, he'd be better off, but he didn't like that idea, so I bailed out. Watch, with my luck he'll strike it rich and sign a big distribution deal three months from now, but that really petty part of me kind of wishes he'd realize that's not going to happen and just close down the studio. Really, I would take it as a personal compliment if he couldn't survive without me - I guess I'm still waiting to find out which way that one's going to go.  Honestly, I just got tired of struggling with fundraiser after fundraiser, comic-con after comic-con and never QUITE being able to get enough money to catch up on paying off his debt. I tried, I really did, and now, unlike Bonnie, I'm determined to find something else to occupy my time. 

During her long swims, Nyad was known to dissociate herself from her situation, and thus swim in something like a hypnotic state - it makes sense, swimming for so long has got to be incredibly boring and tiring, and perhaps entering this state could be seen as some kind of substitute for sleep. I find myself in a similar state on long car trips, so thank God I'm usually not the one behind the wheel. But this state is used in the film to show the audience flashbacks from Nyad's past, it's a very sneaky way to get some non-linear storytelling in there.  

Part of this covers her childhood, when as a teen swimmer competing, she was molested by a noted swim coach, and of course the movie falls just short here of suggesting that there might be a correlation between the sexual abuse by a man and her sexual orientation later in life. I suppose that would be too easy of an answer, as this is a complex issue and many people now believe that (what we used to call sexual preference, then sexual orientation and now) sexual identity is determined at birth, but as you might imagine, I'm not so sure. This is a complex issue and it would be very non-PC of me to suggest that there's a correlation between trauma that occurs to a teen and that teen's behavior later in life - however, some studies say that the rate of sexual abuse reported by LGBTs is 3 to 8 times higher than the rate among straights. For all we know, though, the rate of sexual abuse could be the same across the board and straight people just don't report it as much. 

Directed by Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Also starring Annette Bening (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), Rhys Ifans (last seen in "Mr. Nobody"), Karly Rothenberg (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Jeena Yi, Luke Cosgrove, Eric T. Miller, Garland Scott (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Anne Marie Kempf, Carolyn McCormick (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Marcos Diaz, Johnny Solo (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Nadia Lorencz (last seen in "Jackpot!"), Ethan Jones Romero, Hanler Rodriguez, Harraka Eliana, Marcella Acuna Baez, Sophia Hernandez, Katherine Klosterman (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Toussaint Merionne (last seen in "The Lost City"), Katherine Montes (ditto), Tisola Logan, Orpha Salimata, Jose Mota Prestol (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Samantha Gordon (last seen in "American Fiction"), Lilo Grunwald, Anna Harriette Pittman, Belle Darling, Pearl Darling, 

with archive footage of Diana Nyad, Johnny Carson (last seen in "The Last Movie Star"), Fidel Castro, Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Andy Kaufman (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Nikita Khrushchev, Kate McKinnon (last seen in "Barbie"), Ed McMahon (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here")

RATING: 6 out of 10 guests at the surprise birthday party

The Benefactor

Year 17, Day 141 - 5/21/25 - Movie #5,025

BEFORE: I'm having difficulty getting back in the swing of things - I was away all last week and that was just too much down time, I'm not used to being at home all day, every day. It doesn't help that the theater is essentially closed all week because of the upcoming holiday weekend. Really, I need something to do with my time besides watching movies and making plans to start organizing some comic books, only I never really get around to that. Going anywhere or doing anything fun would involve spending money, and I don't feel comfortable doing that right now, being under-employed - so I'm sleeping later and later and I don't think that's helpful either. I feel like I'm stuck in a cycle that I can't get out of - at least yesterday I applied for 7 or 8 jobs, but I didn't hear anything back yet, that's going to take some time.  So I'm doing what I can to pass the time at home, catching up on the season finale of "The Amazing Race" that I missed, and then there's "Survivor" tonight, not much else to do. 

Dakota Fanning carries over again from "The Equalizer 3". 

THE PLOT: A philanthropist meddles in the life of a newly-married couple in an attempt to relive his past. 

AFTER: OK, it's another weird one tonight - this is a film about a guy with a lot of personal problems, but he hides them really well, because he uses his wealth to do so. These problems are hidden from the audience at first, too, so it takes a while for us to realize that this person might not be what he seems - still, there's the feeling that something is bound to tear down the facade at some point, but we all have to play the waiting game. 

Yes, there was a car accident in the past, and Francis Watts survived, but he lost his two closest friends, a married couple, Bobby and Mia. "Franny" and Bobby were working together to build a hospital for sick children, we presume that the work went forward without Bobby, the medical expert, Francis saw the process through, but what kind of toll did that take on him, what was the personal cost?  

Years later, he gets a call from Olivia (aka "Poodles"), the daughter of the couple, and in reconnecting he finds out that she is pregnant and married to Luke, a doctor. Immediately Francis offers her husband a job, before even meeting him, and then before you know it, he's got them moving back to Philadelphia and he's bought the house Olivia grew up in, so that she can raise her child there. The noble gesture just seems a bit too generous, and it leads us to wonder if the benefactor might have another agenda, or if he's just trying to make up for the mistakes of the past. 

Francis also appoints Luke to the hospital's board and offers to pay off his student loans, which again, seem like grand gestures made with good intentions, and again, lead us to wonder if there might be more going on than is initially evident.  Perhaps Francis just needs someone to talk to, or maybe he's just got control issues, but when we start to see signs that he never really got over the trauma of the accident, and might be using certain substances to deal with the mental and physical pain, a clearer portrait of the lonely billionaire starts to emerge. He may not be psychotic, but at the very least he's some kind of addict. Also, NITPICK POINT, for someone who says he prefers to be alone, Francis sure seems very clingy, 

Sure, there was potential here for a much darker story, but this film never set out to be like "Fatal Attraction" or even "The Proposal", clearly there were directions that it could have taken but didn't, it chose a much more subtle path to make its point.  The downside there is that it might seem boring when you think of how restrained it turned out. Not a lot happens, that is, eventually Francis admits that he needs to go to rehab, and that's that. This definitely feels like the kind of movie you should watch, provided you've seen over 5,000 other movies and there just aren't too many other choices left.  

Directed by Andrew Renzi

Also starring Richard Gere (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "How to Deal"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Theo James (last seen in "How It Ends"), Brian Anthony Wison (last seen in "Glass"), Justin Goncalves, Dennisha Pratt (last seen in "Paranoia'), Matthew Daisher, Michael Daisher, Roy James Wilson (last seen in "Good Time"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Mona Lisa"), Robert Kelly, Jeffrey Cousar, Matt Myers, Edward Rendell (last seen in "In the Shadow of the Moon"), Lyssa Roberts (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Erica Cho (last seen in "Spoiler Alert"), Terez Land, Erica Lynne Arden, Ian Bonner (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Deidre Washington.

RATING: 4 out of 10 colorful scarves

The Equalizer 3

Year 17, Day 140 - 5/20/25 - Movie #5,024

BEFORE: Well, this is a bit weird - I'm not following the Queen Latifah link, because obviously  she's not in tonight's movie, but she DOES play "The Equalizer" on TV.  Remember that the movie franchise is based on an old TV show, which starred Edward Woodward, but then they turned it into a series of movies with Denzel Washington. And then while the movies were still being made, someone else also re-booted the TV series at the same time. So it's a franchise in two mediums simultaneously, which I don't think is supposed to happen, I can't think of one other franchise that's active on TV screens and movie screens at the same time. (Sure, there are Marvel cartoon shows like "Spider-Man" and the Avengers happening concurrently with the MCU films, but I don't think that's quite the same.  Maybe "Star Trek" or "Superman" qualifies, there was probably a Star Trek series airing at some point while the senior citizen cast was making films.

Anyway, Dakota Fanning carries over from "The Secret Life of Bees" since Queen Latifah doesn't. Hey, she co-starred in movies with two different Equalizer actors... If you think these coincidences are weird, just wait, I've got a doozy coming up in a few days - two different films with the SAME title (released 20 years apart) will be viewed within a three-film span.

THE PLOT: Robert McCall finds himself a new home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do - become the local protector by taking on the mafia. 

AFTER: OK, I'm back from my travels and I'm back on my late-night movie watching schedule. When I combine my nocturnal nature with the fact that I've been subsisting most of this month on event food, I realize that my lifestyle has come to resemble that of a raccoon. A large percentage of what I ate in May came from food that other people didn't finish or were about to throw away - either from my wife's plate when she felt too full to finish, or from a presentation at the theater when there was leftover food. I'm calling this the "Trash Panda Diet", perhaps I could market it. The problem, though, is that I'm developing a more panda-like body type, so I think maybe I need to cut out the regular meals and ONLY live on the leftovers from the catered events. It sure is cheaper than eating food from Popeye's or Taco Bell four times a week - but visiting Waffle House several times last week probably didn't help. Last night's dinner was five small slider burgers left from a WNBA event - but I didn't eat anything else when I got home at 12:30 am, so I'm still putting yesterday in the "win" column, as the five sliders (probably?) added up to just ONE regular-sized burger. No events for me this week, with the holiday weekend coming up so I'm returning to regular human food, but still, I need to get the portion sizes under control somehow. 

Really, it's a case of mind over matter - can I train myself, after all this time, to maybe just eat enough to survive, and not overeat, which is bad for me in the long run?  I've done it before, but it requires striking a difficult balance. Which brings me to "Equalizer 3" which faced a similar task in delivering an action-almost-packed movie, if that makes sense. Really, this film shouldn't be wall-to-wall action like a James Bond or John Wick film, they've taken time before to show us WHO Robert McCall is and WHY he does what he does. Sure, he can take out an entire room full of bad guys by doing that thing where he grabs one guy's gun and makes him shoot all his friends, then himself. But also there has to be a purpose in doing this, even if we don't really learn what the purpose is until very close to the ending.  

We usually don't question James Bond's motives, because the instructions are vague but also clear - take out the super-villain with the secret lair and a bunch of lasers who is threatening to destroy the world. HOW James does that is really up to him, if he thinks he can accomplish that by sleeping with the villain's girlfriend, and getting tied up to a big bullseye with a laser pointed at him, that's fine, James, you do you. We'll trust you when you say it leads to the proper result.  But the Equalizer is held to a higher standard, he has to act according to a moral code, and if that means dropping a dime to the CIA on an Italian smuggling ring, that's what he's got to do. Here he not only has to topple the first domino, he's got to see that the next one falls and the one after that, to insure that the good citizens of Altamonte get to live their lives in peace and the members of the Camorra mob end up dead. He's got the skills to make it happen, so basically the bad guys are all dead here, they just don't know it yet. It's hard work, though - did you think the situation was going to equalize itself?  Not likely.

So McCall does that thing where he takes down a whole winery full of bad guys by himself. But he does get shot in the process, and after failing to get away, due to a loss of blood, an Italian policeman finds him in his car and delivers him to Enzo, a doctor who saves his life. Even better, he doesn't report the shot man, only that he performed surgery on a man who "fell down" (well, he's not wrong, Robert did fall down after getting shot) and hoping that he's saved the life of a good man, and not a bad man. Enzo also lets Robert live with him while he recovers, and they become friends, also Robert falls in love with the quaint little town and decides to stay a bit longer. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong here?)

After his anonymous call to the CIA, a team of operatives learns that the winery was a front for a drug-smuggling operation, also the source of major cyber-attacks, and also I think they caused the pandemic and rigged the last election (no, not the 2020 one).  Meanwhile a group of mobsters is forcing villagers on the Amalfi Coast to sell their property cheap so they can build fancy hotels, probably using their drug money to fund the construction, which would itself be a form of money laundering, perhaps.  So it's three crimes at once, these guys are very efficient and they don't fool around - but maybe that's how you turn your criminal empire into a legitimate business one, aka the "reverse Trump" plan.  Then down the road they probably lie about the square footage of the properties, reducing it when it's time to pay taxes and also increasing it when they're trying to get bank loans. Classic. 

Where the mobsters make their big mistake is by firebombing the fish store where Robert shops, and man, he really liked those fish.  Also, they beat up Gio, who was the policeman who saved Robert's life in the first place.  These mistakes are made by Marco, the younger brother of the head gangster, but Robert simply has to kill him, because you don't mess with the Equalizer's friends or his fish. Wait, what?  No, that's right, don't mess with his fish.

But now Vincent, the lead mobster is really mad because someone killed his brother - so he drives into town and starts beating up Gio again, and threatening to shoot everyone until his brother's killer steps forward. Meanwhile the CIA are closing the noose on the gangster's operation, so really, Robert just needs to keep him occupied for a while, he's going down one way or the other, but you know, the CIA has rules and regulations they have to follow. If Robert could just get the drop on him, this really could go a lot faster.  Robert reveals himself, but avoids dying because all the citizens whip out their phones and start filming Vincent. Hey, Robert loves Altamonte, and it looks like its citizens love him back, he gets to live another day.  

Before Vincent can plan a return visit, the Equalizer sneaks into his mansion at night, and takes down his bodyguards, one by one.  Now he's a sitting duck, I guess he got a little too reliant on his underlings to protect him, and now Robert just needs to figure out what method of killing him would be the absolute most ironic one to use.  It's going to happen, and it might be painful or it might not, it might be slow or it might be quick, but it really only feels like justice if it's ironic, like rain on his wedding day or a free ride when he's already paid. The CIA also claims victory by shutting down the drug-smuggling ring and the terrorists it supported, but also the Equalizer gets a new friend in the CIA and a new place to live in Italy. In exchange, he just has to give up tea for coffee and American football for soccer, but hey, we all have to make sacrifices. 

"Equalizer 3" is the last film planned for this franchise, they completed the trilogy after COVID and that looks like a wrap, but hey, never say never. This sequel took in more than double its budget, so that's considered a success and they may choose to greenlight another one - they're also talking about making a prequel with either another actor or by de-aging Denzel, so we'll see. I guess the TV show just had its series finale, but honestly I wasn't following it - I sure didn't have time in 2021 to pick up another show.  

Another weird tie-in with current events tonight, as President Trump claimed about a week ago that he just invented the word "equalizing", with regards to the balance he wants to bring to drug prices in the U.S. when compared with prices in other countries. Umm, then I'm not sure how three movies and 2 TV shows used the word before, if he only invented it last week. Even if his proposed stupid equalization works, though, it won't bring down drug prices in the U.S. - instead he wants to increase the drug prices in the other countries, which doesn't help U.S. citizens at all, and also would be something that he couldn't even begin to be able to control. Just saying.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua (director of "Shooter" and "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali")

Also starring Denzel Washington (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Eugenio Mastrandrea, David Denman (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Gaia Scodellaro, Remo Girone (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Andrea Scarduzio (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"), Andrea Dodero, Daniele Perrone, Zakaria Hamza, Manuela Tasciotti, Dea Lanzaro, Sonia Ben Ammar (last seen in "Scream" (2022)), Alessandro Pess (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Adolfo Margiotta (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Niccolo Senni (last seen in "The Young Messiah"), Giampiero Rotoli (ditto), Bruno Bilotta (last seen in "Mafia Mamma"), Jay Natelle (ditto), Adriano Sabrie, Salvatore Ruocco, Marco Giuliani, Simona Distefano, Mauro Cremonini, Agostino Chiummariello, Mariarosaria Mingione, Marco Cicalese, Doris von Thury, Diego Riace, Lucia Zotti, Giorgio Antonini, Massi Furlan (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Simon Rizzoni, with archive footage of Melissa Leo (last seen in "Alone Together"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 pain levels

The Secret Life of Bees

Year 17, Day 138 - 5/18/25 - Movie #5,023 - MOTHER'S DAY FILM #4 ??

BEFORE: Honestly, I wasn't too sure about this one, I mean, clearly it gets me to where I need to be next, and with three Marvel movies coming up on the schedule, anything that gets me one link closer is kind of a done deal. But does this count as a Mother's Day film?  From the synopsis it seems like the main character's mother is absent from the film, however she spends some time learning about who her mother is, or was. I suppose that counts, it's on the theme of mothers and the connection to the daughter.  

The programming decision over WHEN to watch it got taken away from me, though, when it was the night before we were scheduled to drive to North Carolina, which was on Mother's Day, and I hadn't packed yet. Well, I did go out on Friday night (to see a movie, that review is pending) so that's on me, I suppose. During the week in N.C. I didn't really have time to watch a movie, what with visiting my folks and hitting the Waffle House a few times and also there was an agricultural fair at the State Fairgrounds, if I had any time at night I spent it keeping current on my late night talk shows so my DVR at home wouldn't fill up, also the last four or five episodes of "Daredevil: Born Again", which I started watching during the cruise back in March. Well, I crossed something off the list, anyway, it was just a Marvel TV show and not a movie.  

Anyway, I'm back in NYC as of Sunday 5/18 and there's a clear path to the end of the month, even if I haven't programmed to Father's Day yet.  I wasn't going to watch a movie until Tuesday but let me watch the left-over film from the Mother's Day chain and then I can get another five films in this week. Queen Latifah carries over from "End of the Road". I've got another two films with her on my list, but they're not really on theme, so my gut says to hold off on them, I may need one for connections later on.

THE PLOT: In 1964, Lily, a lonely teenager, flees from her home and reaches a small town in South Carolina.  Once there, she finds herself in the company of the Boatwright sisters, who introduce her to a new world.  

AFTER: There's some strange stuff in this film, like Lily Owens grows up in a peach orchard with her father, T. Ray.  Her father is abusive to her, as he blames her for the death of her mother, or maybe he's just mad at the world and takes it out on her. When Lily doesn't follow his rules he makes her kneel on the floor on some spilled grits, which seems like an odd punishment. Why waste food, why not just hit her?  It seems very specific, but I'm just not familiar with this as a form of disciplining a child. 

Their housekeeper, Rosaleen, decides to register to vote now that the Civil Rights Act has been passed, but she gets in trouble after several racist white men harass her on the way to voter registration, and she decides to fight back. Her reward is getting beaten up, and while I'm sure that stuff like this went down, it's still questionable why this character couldn't have just held her tongue and not reacted to the harassment. Not blaming the victim, just wondering why she couldn't just walk away and then go quietly to register to vote and get her revenge that way.  Lily decides to run away AND break Rosaleen out of the hospital to accompany her.  It's a bit tough to say if she had Rosaleen's best interest at heart here, or she just wanted to bring her housekeeper along to take care of her on her travels. 

The goal here was to set Lily's journey against the background of the Civil Rights movement, and again, that's a bit weird to try to tell THAT story from the P.O.V. of a white girl. Lily follows her mother's path to Tiburon, SC, based on one photo in her mother's scrapbook, and somehow miraculously finds August Boatwright, who runs a local honey farm and also was her mother's nanny long ago. It's a bit of a stretch to think that one photograph and a label on a honey jar gave her all the information to track down the EXACT place that her mother went when she left her father. Then after a time spent with the Boatwright sisters, Lily's eventually able to start asking questions about her mother's history.

Lily has romantic feelings for Zach, who is an African-American teen who's the son of one member of the local prayer group, it makes sense because he also works at the apiary, and they collect the honey together, but this feels a bit forced. Lily knows that she lives in the very racist South and therefore she can't be seen dating Zach, but they do it anyway, they just enter a movie theater through different doors but AT THE SAME TIME so really, they're not fooling anyone. After they're seen sitting together in the "colored" section of the theater, Zach gets rounded up and roughed up for dating a white girl. Notably Lily does not apologize to him for not being careful enough, which seems like an odd omission. 

Zach's kidnapping, however, proves to be too much for one of the Boatwright sisters, May, who has some condition where she is too sensitive emotionally, and leaves messages in a wall of rocks on the farm as a way of dealing with her problems. Wow, Lily's presence at the Black Madonna honey farm is really a disaster for the family, and again, not a good look that taking care of a white girl causes so much pain and suffering for the black family.  She doesn't really seem all that sorry about the damage done, because it's all in the cause of her learning about her mother, and apparently there's simply nothing more important in the whole world than that. 

The film could have made more of a connection between the habits of the bees and the relationships between the people.  I'm betting there was more of this in the novel, but it got lost in translation to a screenplay.  Why tell us so much about how the hive defends the queen bee unless this is some kind of metaphor for what's going on in the world of humans?  Is Lilly the queen bee and are the Boatwright sisters supposed to be the bees that defend her?  That analogy doesn't really work, and making the white girl the "queen" is kind of a bad look.  Cooling the hive, using smoke to calm down the bees, gathering the honey, which is sometimes purple, this is all important information about beekeeping, but what's the connection to the larger story?  

Who DID kill Lily's mother?  Is Lily's memory of shooting her own mother accurate?  That's a weird thing to have in the story, because Lily loved her mother and wanted desperately to go with her and be with her, but shooting her would tend to interfere with that plan.  Was it an accident, was she trying to shoot her father but missed?  I guess that would be a hard lesson to learn, don't play with guns, kids.  Still, it's all muddled and weird, like what are we supposed to take away from this, don't shoot your own mother?  If so, we get that.  But it feels like there were more dots here that needed to be connected.  

Further proof that it's "all about the white girl", when Lily has her breakdown, and she's really mad at her mother for what happened in the past, she goes into the honey house and starts throwing jars of honey at the wall. Now she's messing with the Boatwright family's profit margin by destroying their inventory.  That family's been nothing but kind to her, they took her in and they protected her and filled her in regarding her mother's back-story, and now she's going to waste their product?  What an ungrateful little white girl - why not direct that anger at her abusive father rather than her dead mother? 

NITPICK POINT: Does somebody want to tell the prayer group members who worship a statue of a Black Virgin Mary that this was probably the figurehead on a slave ship, and that its "black power" fist salute was probably just to enable the statue to hold a lantern?  I just don't have the heart to break it to them, but they probably should know.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (director of "The Woman King")

Also starring Dakota Fanning (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Respect"), Alicia Keys (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Paul Bettany (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Hilarie Burton Morgan, Tristan Mack Wilds (last seen in "Red Tails"), Nate Parker (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Shondrella Avery (last seen in "Domino"), Renee Ford Clark, Sharon Conley (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Nicky Buggs, Jasmine Burke (last seen in "Ride Along"), Emma Sage Bowman, Emily Alyn Lind (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Addy Miller (last seen in "Dark Places"), Taylor Kowalski, Bob Hungerford (last seen in "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy"), Richard Todd Sullivan, Chris Moore, Bill Oberst Jr., Cullen Moss (last seen in "Dear John"), Dan Beene (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Joe Chrest (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Robin Mullins (last seen in "Safe Haven"), Dan Cox (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Walt Elder (last seen in "Gifted"), Quentin Kerr, with archive footage of Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 elderberry flowers (it turns out that nobody really knows what turns some honey purple, though)