A Different Man

Year 17, Day 151 - 5/31/25 - Movie #5,034

BEFORE: It's another month in the can, so here are my format stats for May 2025:

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): A Scanner Darkly, Citizen Ruth, The Last Movie Star, Stroker Ace, The End, Stay Hungry, Not Without My Daughter, Norma Rae, Stop-Loss, 10 Years, A Different Man

6 watched on Netflix: Trial By Fire, End of the Road, The Equalizer 3, Nyad, Venom: The Last Dance, Havoc (2025)

1 watched on iTunes: Havoc (2005)
1 watched on Amazon Prime: The Benefactor
1 watched on Hulu: The Secret Life of Bees

1 watched on Disney+: Captain America: Brave New World

1 watched in theaters: Thunderbolts

22 TOTAL

Now, I had two paths out of "Thunderbolts", if I discarded any link that led to either a horror film, romance film, or a Christmas film. This is a pretty standard way for me to narrow down my choices, though these films aren't completely off-limits, as I did program a horror film for next week, just one that doesn't connect to any other horror films, but DOES connect to my June plans. But still, it came down to either following the Florence Pugh link or the Sebastian Stan. I have three Florence Pugh films on the list, they may not be flat-out romance films but they seem a little relationship-oriented.  So I tried out the other path and managed to find links to my Father's Day material and then the Doc Block. So there's the choice, I'm watching a couple Sebastian Stan films instead.  

(Michael Shannon is in today's film, and he's in a film I marked as a possible Fathers Day film, but that would get me there too soon, Fathers Day isn't until June 15, it turns out.). Tomorrow I'll print the actor (and non-actor) links for June.

THE PLOT: An aspiring actor undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance, but his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare. 

AFTER: OK, let me back up a bit and see if I can properly explain this film's premise, because it does get rather complicated by the end. In real life there's an actor with a condition called neurofibromatosis, something in the old days we'd call a facial deformity, but now in the new age there's probably a push to call it "differently visaged" or "facially challenged". He got a job in the U.K. as some kind of TV presenter on a reality show called "Beauty and the Beast", which brought together people with disfigurements to meet people without them who were overly pre-occupied with their looks. He later appeared in a short film "The Pearson Twins" with his identical twin brother, only they're not really identical because the condition affects them in different ways. He made an appearance in that Scarlet Johansson film "Under the Skin", and was also on "Celebrity Masterchef" in the UK, though they appear to have a looser definition of "celebrity" there, because I only recognized a couple contestants, like that guy from "The Young Ones" who was also in a "Star Wars" movie, and Apl.de.Ap from the Black-Eyed Peas. 

So he's classified as an actor by the IMDB, most people in films are, even if they aren't doing any acting, like just talking in a documentary or something, IMDB uses the word because it's too hard to parse out when someone is doing something for real or not. But the lead character in this film has a similar condition, and he's played by Sebastian Stan, wearing a prosthetic to make it LOOK like he has a facial deformity. That's not too egregious, but he did kind of take the role away from a perhaps equally qualified actor WITH a deformity, but that's neither here nor there. The character he plays, Edward, also wants to be an actor, but the only work he can find in that arena is appearing in public service films about how people should treat those with conditions like neurofibromatosis, like if you have a co-worker that looks different than most people, you still need to interact with them and treat them like other humans, which means inviting them out to the bar when everyone else is going, and taking an interest in their personal lives.  

But, as you may imagine, there aren't too many PSA films on this topic made, pretty much if someone does their job well and makes the definitive industrial film about this, no need for another one. So Edward lives his life while waiting for other such opportunities to arise, in a small NYC apartment that's a fourth-floor walk-up with a leaky ceiling. There's a new tenant next door, Ingrid, an attractive woman who's a budding playwright, and they bond a little after her movers scratch up his front door with her furniture, and she has the door repainted very badly.  After they spend some time together, Edward develops feelings for Ingrid, only he's too nervous because of his appearance to take things to the next level. Meanwhile, he volunteers for an experimental treatment that could cure him of his condition, only who knows, he might be in the placebo group and nothing will happen at all. 

But after a few weeks, there are signs that something is happening, large chunks of his former face start to loosen, and over the course of a few painful days, his appearance is radically different, and a new face has emerged from beneath the old one, and after he manages to peel off a few layers of skin.  NOTE: I have no idea if this is medically possible, or if anything could happen this way, or if it should, it's not really PC here to say what's good or bad, but this is what we're told happens.  ANOTHER NOTE: I have not seen "The Substance" yet, though it's on my list, so I have no idea if THIS process is similar to the one in THAT movie, no spoilers, that one's not streaming yet, but who knows, maybe this is the male version of that story, I can't say for sure. This is just what we're told happens, so I'm working with that. 

Edward decides to not tell anyone that the treatment was a success, he decides to restart his life from scratch, change his name to "Guy" and if anyone asks what happened to Edward, well I guess he disappeared or committed suicide or something. Even when the doctors show up because Edward hasn't checked in, "Guy" says it's too late, he's missing, no, wait, he's dead and he got cremated so don't even bother trying to find his body. Anyway, it's my apartment now, so get out of here before I call the cops.  Sure, that tracks. 

Ingrid overhears that Edward has died, and then the film jumps forward a bit, to where Guy is living in a fantastic new apartment, wearing much nicer clothes, sleeping with hot women, and he's got a job in real-estate, and doing well - but he learns that Ingrid has written a play based on the life of her old next-door neighbor, a man with a facial deformity. "Guy" feels that old acting bug biting him again, so he auditions for the park, wearing a mask that was cast from his former face. He knows the character because he lived life as that person, so naturally he gets the part. It's presumed that he will wear the mask for most of the play, and then when the Ingrid character falls in love with him, he'll lose the mask so the audience can see him as she does, as a handsome man with no faults. So the play-within-the-film is kind of a microcosm of the film itself, in both cases the handsome actor wears a mask and then he doesn't.  

"Guy" and Ingrid fall into a relationship, or a situationship, and this means they both finally get what they wanted, even if Ingrid isn't aware of it. Edward wanted to sleep with Ingrid, only he didn't have the nerve, and Ingrid wanted to sleep with Edward, only she didn't have the time.  Oh, but it doesn't end there, we're just getting started...

Oswald appears on the scene, he's an actor with a real facial deformity (played by Adam Pearson, the actor with the real facial deformity) and he's nice enough, well-spoken, and very outgoing. He's everything that "Guy" is not, because regardless of the change to his appearance, Guy is still nervous and indecisive, reclusive and filled with self-doubt - you could say that maybe years of bullying and ridicule made him this way, or perhaps the point being made here is that you can change your appearance, but that won't change who you are on the inside. Guy tries his best to change, but deep down once he's successful and in the spotlight it seems he's not prepared to handle it. 

While Guy has trouble remembering his lines, Oswald is still hanging around, and he knows the lines backwards and forwards. Oswald is also charming and outgoing, and has some thoughts about the transformation scenes - meanwhile the process of creating a workable prosthetic for Guy to look like Edward (again) is also proving to be problematic.  So it's determined that Oswald should play Edward for most of the play, and if Guy can learn to do a British accent, he can just play Edward at the end, after the "Beauty and the Beast" like transformation, which again is only a metaphor to most people, even though it really happened for Edward/Guy. 

This all doesn't sit well with Guy, because Oswald is also spending more and more time with Ingrid, and he's spending less and less. He becomes jealous and starts stalking Oswald, and then he snaps and starts wearing the mask of his old face at his real-estate job, and that's turning off the clients.  After he interrupts the play one night and accuses Oswald of stealing his job, his girlfriend and his spotlight, we just know things are not going to end well, you know these love triangles rarely do.  This is described online as a dark comedy, but I'm not so sure about that, nothing's really funny about someone feeling like their life is turning to crap, especially after being given an opportunity to improve it, which they just didn't handle well. (See also "Beau Is Afraid")

Perhaps it's too raw for me, two months ago I left a job I held for 31 years, it just became too much, feeling like nothing I was doing to keep the company in business was working. No matter what I accomplished, the boss never thanked me or said I did a good job, and no matter how much money I raised in art sales or at comic-cons, the money would be spent on the company's outstanding debts and we'd be back to square one. Finally I just had to get out of there because I figured there just had to be a better way to spend my time and not be so stressed out 24/7. This morning I had a stress dream, though, so I was kind of back at the job for a couple hours, trying to raise money and then (in the dream) the boss bought all new office furniture and computers with money he didn't have, so before I could talk to him I put on my jacket and walked out. The stress is still with me, but my point is that sometimes you just need to burn your situation to the ground (not literally) and GTFO. 

"Guy" stuck around way too long here, and he watched everything that meant anything get taken from him, just because another person was more outgoing and enthusiastic. This is sad and somewhat relatable, but I'd still hesitate to use the word "comedy".  Again, no spoilers about how the real Edward / the new "Guy" fares in the end, but hey, at least there's a resolution of sorts. You can change what you look like, you can change your situation, but to a large extent, you can't change who you are at heart. Is that the message?  Anyway, at least there's a lot to think about here. 

Directed by Aaron Schimberg

Also starring Renate Reinsve (last seen in "The Worst Person in the World"), Adam Pearson (last seen in "Under the Skin"), C. Mason Wells, Owen Kline (last seen in "Life as a House"), Charlie Korsmo (last seen in "Spielberg"), Patrick Wang, Michael Shannon (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Miles G. Jackson (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Neal Davidson, Marc Geller (last seen in "Stardust Memories"), James Foster Jr., JJ McGlone, Lawrence Arancio (last seen in "Puzzle"), Billy Griffith (last seen in "The Rewrite"), John Klacsmann, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, John Keating, Corey R. Taylor, Danielle Burgos, Sammy Mena, Jon Dieringer, Malachi Weir (last seen in "Birdman"), David Joseph Regelmann, Nina White, Dena Winter, Peter D. Straus, Cameron Steinfeld, Marley Ficalora, Doug Barron (last seen in "The Yards"), Stephee Bonifacio, Allan Anthony Smith, Trenton Hudson, Sean Berman, Annelise Ogaard, Juney Smith, Lucy Kaminsky (last seen in "Together Together"), Jarvis Tomdio, Karoline, Liana Runcie, Bruce Kitzmeyer, Martin Ewens, Eleanore Pienta, Hanna Edizel, Christopher Spurrier,

RATING: 6 out of 10 whistling instructional videos

Thunderbolts*

Year 17, Day 150 - 5/30/25 - Movie #5,033 - VIEWED ON 5/9/25

BEFORE: It's a rare treat when I get to sit in a movie theater and, you know, WATCH a movie - these days more often than not I'm working in a theater and making sure that other people are having a good experience. Right now that's a bunch of students at an arts college, and the college pairs up with a guild of visual effects people to give them a theater to watch current VFX-based movies in, and in exchange, a bunch of students who maybe can't afford to pay almost $20 for a first-run movie ticket get to see those movies too. And if I'm not working the shift (as I was for "Captain America: Brave New World") then I can kind of sneak in and watch the movie, too. Hey, it's good to know people. This might be a bit easier if I had a staff ID, but almost four years in, I'm technically still a temp worker, but I'm kind of trying to work on that. I'll keep you posted, but in the meantime, I've got a FREE current Marvel movie to watch. 

If I've done this right, Disney+ should be streaming my lead-in, and Sebastian Stan carries over from "Captain America: Brave New World".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Black Widow" (Movie #3,915)

THE PLOT: After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of anti-heroes must go on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. 

AFTER: You might have noticed the asterisk on the poster, Marvel's playing a little fast and loose with the rules on this one - we've all agreed that you can't just change the name of a movie while it's playing in theaters, there's this thing called marketplace confusion. But movies do it all the time, they mess up and they realize that a title like "The Expend4bles" is really stupid, so by the time the film plays on cable some systems are rightfully calling it "Expendables 4" but some other cable systems didn't get the memo, and now half the fans out there who want to watch it don't know how to search for it on their DVR. Don't even get me started on the "Fast and the Furious" franchise and all the cutesy ways they tried to work numbers into their movie titles. Or the Divergent franchise, which couldn't decide if the third film in the series should be titled "Allegiant" or "The Divergent Series: Allegiant".  Yes, the second one has proper branding but the first one is easier to use, but my point is that despite what the focus group thinks, the studio needs to pick ONE of these and stick with it.  

The MCU has been building up to "Thunderbolts" for a while now, if you've stayed seated after the credits and paid attention to what's been going on, the cast-off heroes have been recruited for a new team, or that's what we've been led to believe. A character named Valentina Allegra de Fontaine appeared in "Black Panther 2" and was revealed to be the ex-wife of CIA agent Everett Ross, though I think in the comic books she was a top SHIELD agent and the on-again, off-again girlfriend/enemy of Nick Fury (Not the black Nick Fury, the old white one who fought in WW2 with Captain America and the Howling Commandos. I know, it's complicated.). Anyway, Valentina popped up at the end of "Black Widow" to recruit Yelena, and then at the end of "The Falcon and the Winter Solider" to recruit John Walker, the stand-in Captain America.  It sure seemed like a team was being put together, as she was collecting each movie's cast-off, and then when "Thunderbolts" was announced, it all started to make sense, she's assembling that team for her own little anti-Avengers, and I'm here for it. 

There have been maybe four or five Thunderbolts teams in the comic-book universe, the first was a group of heroes who appeared on the scene when the Avengers were presumed dead, but they were really old villains who were disguised as new heroes, led by a mastermind named Baron Zemo. Sharp-eyed comic-book users noticed that their powers bore strong resemblances to certain villains who hadn't been seen in a while, but most fans were shocked when the new "heroes" turned out to be anything but. Something odd happened to that group of villains, some of them actually became complex, somewhat likable characters over time, but you know, every comic book run ends at some point. The Thunderbolts came back with a second roster, and a third, with Avenger Hawkeye sometimes leading a team of other reformed villains. 

A few years later, Marvel tried the same scam again with a new team, only this time the fans were in on it, after the government passed legislation to register superheroes, in a storyline called "Dark Reign", this time villains dressed up as known Avengers, like Bullseye dressed up as Hawkeye, Venom pretended to be Spider-Man, U.S. Agent was the Capt. America stand-in, and so on. Norman Osborn (aka Green Goblin) had recruited another group of villains to serve as a controllable version of the Avengers.  Another group of Thunderbolts popped up during this storyline, and years later in another crossover called "King in Black", and yet another in a crossover called "Devil's Reign", set after the Kingpin got elected mayor of New York (something that just happened in the MCU, in the Disney series "Daredevil: Born Again").  

So it seems that anytime there's a big multi-title comic book crossover, there's a new version of the Thunderbolts that comes along to sell a few more books. Most recently, following a Captain America storyline titled "Cold War", the Winter Soldier put a team of T-Bolts together that bears a striking resemblance to the movie's line-up: White Widow, Red Guardian, U.S. Agent, and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, plus a few others.  They united for a purpose, to take down the Red Skull, who just never seemed to die all those times he was killed. This was actually the TWELFTH distinct line-up of Thunderbolts in the comics, and currently there's a storyline called "One World Under Doom", following a big vampire crossover in which Dr. Doom stole the title of Earth's Sorcerer Supreme from Dr. Strange, and easily took over the world. Yep, you guessed it, Dr. Doom forms a THIRTEENTH roster of heroes that for some reason does NOT resemble what's seen in their movie, but they're bound to fight the other Thunderbolts at some point. 

Anyway, the movie - it would have been very easy to unite these heroes behind-the-scenes, just say they all got drafted by Valentina to serve as a team, because of what happened in "Brave New World", but that seems like it would be a bit too easy.  So time has to be spent in this film getting them all to work together, because apparently Valentina didn't introduce them to each other, or think up a team name or get them matching uniforms.  But since she's called into a Senate hearing regarding her own impeachment, rather than go public with her behind-the-scenes attempt to employ superheroes as assassin agents, she figures the easiest thing to do would be to send each of her heroes to assassinate another, and I guess with a bit of luck they'll all die, problem solved. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? 

Well, they didn't count on the Sentry - another Marvel hero who the comic book writers kind of never knew what to do with. I guess he was designed as an old-school type of hero, with powers similar to Superman, only maybe that seemed a bit old hat, so they kind of after-the-fact wrote him into some of the older storylines, like he'd been around since the formation of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, but for some reason nobody could remember him. This originally had something to do with The Void, which is another entity that lives inside of him, as a result of him getting super-powers, or maybe it's the dark side of his personality that took on sentience of its own. Honestly, every writer handled this a bit differently, and it was often quite confusing.  Sentry was part of one Thunderbolts line-up in the comics, and one of the Mighty Avengers or New Avengers teams as well, but I don't know if he ever really caught on with the fans.  

In this film, the Sentry project was another attempt to create a super-soldier, with many people volunteering for experiments to give them powers, and all of the experiments seemed like failures, and this guy named Bob fell into a coma after getting the drug or the radiation or whatever, and his body was stored in Valentina's safe-house, which turns out to be the exact location where she sends all the heroes to kill each other in a domino-like chain.  But the Sentry gets released accidentally from his storage crate, and appears at first like an innocent bystander who needs to be saved by the anti-hero assassins. Well, those of us who read the comics knew in advance that he's not that, he's a powerful hero with a dark side that will be revealed at the worst possible time.  Really, you other movie fans should read a lot more comic books. 

But the four lone wolves get together, manage to work together to escape from the deathtrap, and then all they have to do is use their skills and powers to escape the army that's waiting outside. Pretty easy if one of them can turn invisible and hijack a truck - and thankfully once they get away, the Red Guardian arrives with his makeshift limo to pick them up. They barely have time to think up a working team name before they are pursued by the army and then rescued/captured by Winter Soldier, aka Bucky, aka Senator Barnes, (aka Revolution in the comics right now).

Once they all have a minute, it's time to talk about Bob, aka Sentry.  Valentina has bought the old lease on Avengers Tower, and is planning to reboot the Avengers team once she figures out how powerful the Sentry is. Here's where she made her mistake, because she had a team of cast-off lone wolf heroes working for her, and she never thought to make them part of a team?  Why, a ragtag bunch of failures could be JUST the thing that America needs to believe in superheroes again, why didn't she see that?  So she was going to lease out the old Avengers Tower and then start a new team from scratch?  We could have just skipped a few steps here, if you ask me, and put the team together a lot sooner.  Just saying - I was two moves ahead of her and the writers, I think. 

Anyway, the whole team fights the Sentry, and they're no match for him, he's just too powerful.  Which Valentina realizes, so she uses an implanted kill switch to shut him down, only this releases The Void. While he turns into a completely black figure and floats above NYC, his darkness spreads and starts sucking random people into it - it's almost like Thanos is back and blipped half the people away out of existence again, only it's much slower.  Unfortunately this all seems a bit too much like the first "Suicide Squad" movie, where there really was no villain and the team had to waste time by taking down one of their own members who was out of control. Sure, I get it, superheroes are more complex now and some of them have dark sides to them, but can we get some control here and focus on taking down the bad guys?  

Besides, what really happens here, who or what is The Void and why is he blipping people into another dimension where they have to confront their own failures?  What purpose does this serve?  Is this a form of limbo or hell or some kind of dream realm or nightmare realm?  Is some other entity at work here - Nightmare, Mephisto, the Watchers?  Well, let's put a pin in that one, because we're not going to find out in this movie.  Anyway, there's a big twist here which you've probably already heard about, so it looks like we'll be seeing another Avengers vs. Avengers battle, something like the comic-book crossover "Civil War II".  Why stop there?  We also need the Young Avengers, which could involve Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Scarlet Witch's 2 kids (Wiccan and Speed, seen in "Wandavision"), Patriot (Isaiah Bradley's grandson), Ironheart (coming soon to Disney TV), Stature (Ant-Man's daughter Cassie) and if you throw in a teen Hulk (Ska'ar or Amadeus Cho, whichever) then you've got a team there, too.  America Chavez maybe, if you want to follow the "Dr. Strange" sequel.  We can also have Hawkeye found the West Coast Avengers along with War Machine, Wonder Man, Mockingbird and Tigra, just a thought. 

Look, I'm glad we're moving forward, but this is the end of MCU Phase 5, and I fear that Phase 6 is just going to be a lot of multiversal crossovers, and I don't think many of the fans are going to be able to follow that - they haven't had the same training as those of us who've been reading the comics for decades. How do you explain "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe" or "Weapon X-Men" or "Spider-Verse vs. Venom-Verse" to these people?  I don't think you can - I spoke with one older comic book fan after a screening of "Across the Spider-Verse" and he didn't even know who Miles Morales was.  So the upcoming Marvel films are bound to lose some fans if the storylines are too confusing. 

The recent MCU storylines are based on comic-book stories, but now the comics are changing to reflect some of the same story beats as the movies - in that "One World Under Doom" storyline, the re-formed Thunderbolts are facing off against a new version of Citizen V (who put the first team together) and the person under the Citizen V mask is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine herself, who revealed that in her prior appearances she was an LMD (life model decoy) but now she's a real human, back and in control.  And they brought back the Red Hulk comic book for this same crossover, with Thaddeus Ross back as the Red Hulk instead of that General Maverick stand-in.  

Directed by Jake Schreier (director of "Robot & Frank")

Also starring Florence Pugh (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Lewis Pullman (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), David Harbour (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "Overlord"), Hannah John-Kamen (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Olga Kurylenko (last seen in "Extraction II"), Geraldine Viswanathan (last seen in "Blockers"), Wendell Pierce (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale"), Chris Bauer (last seen in "The Myth of Fingerprints"), Violet McGraw (last seen in "Black Widow"), Alexa Swinton (last seen in "Maestro"), Eric Lange (last seen in "Wind River"), Chiara Stella, Stefano Carannante, Gianfranco Terrin (last seen in "Live by Night"), Gabrielle Byndloss (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Regina Ting Chen (last seen in "Reptile"), Jennifer Chung, Julia Aku (last seen in "Maestro"), Clayton Cooper, Joshua Mikel (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Molly Carden, Chad Gall.

RATING: 7 out of 10 "shame rooms"

Captain America: Brave New World

Year 17, Day 149 - 5/29/25 - Movie #5,032

BEFORE: Well, I missed this Marvel movie when it was in theaters - I worked at a screening of it for the Visual Effects Society back in February, but that meant that I couldn't sit and watch it. So I had to make my plans based on the anticipated release date for streaming on Disney+, which turned out to be May 28, yesterday. So my plan worked, once I moved "The Electric State" to August that meant I could link here just ONE DAY after the film popped up on Disney. How about that for some accidental planning?  (Sure, I was thinking about getting here from "Night on Earth" with Giancarlo Esposito carrying over, but it turned out I was jumping the gun a bit.)

Anthony Mackie carries over from "10 Years". Sure, I could have delayed this by a day or two if I needed to, but I didn't need to. 

THE PLOT: Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan. 

AFTER: I've been reading the Captain America comics for 40 years now, but of course I don't expect the movies to follow them to the letter, the movies tend to aim for something a bit closer to reality, like in the comics the members of the Serpent Society are kind of more snakelike, like some of them have fangs and I think one of them has no legs, just a snake-like lower half. In the comics Sidewinder is the leader, but there are many more members, with names like Viper, Cottonmouth, Death Adder, Anaconda, Black Mamba, Puff Adder, Cobra and Princess Python. Most often they appeared in Captain America comics, but they were in a few other books too. 

There were apparently plans to have more members in this film, like Diamondback, who had pink hair and at some point tried to go straight, and became Cap's (Steve Rogers) partner and girlfriend for a while. But I guess this film was already a bit crowded, because she got edited out of "Brave New World", leaving only Sidewinder and Copperhead in the current MCU, it seems. Whatever - but across the board it really feels like someone here favored a "less is more" concept, reduce the number of villains and characters to a select few. Well, the problem with that is that less is often just less. 

There's a shout-out to the "Eternals" movie, which is surprising because that film bombed and I just figured they'd never even refer back to those events any more, but somehow this is all going to tie in to "Doomsday" and/or "Secret Wars", even the post-credits scene here hints at the realization of the MCU multiverse, where heroes will (presumably) be fighting other heroes from other worlds, or other versions of themselves, even, in a giant cosmic shake-up of sorts. Maybe you saw which actor got cast as Dr. Doom from another universe, and honestly, that reveal is causing a lot of questions that don't have answers right now, like is he an alternate-reality Tony Stark or did he change his name to Victor Von Doom, or is he something else entirely?  Let me table those questions for the time being, because maybe some answers will come in Marvel's Phase 6, and we're still in Phase 5.

Making this movie about the new metal, adamantium, and the economic trade war that it could cause kind of reminds me of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", which for some reason was focused on a trade war and a blockade and a Senate voting for a new chancellor, instead of lightsabers and spaceship battles.  That was all pretty boring stuff, who put politics into my sci-fi action movie?  Why should a similar trade war inhabit the new "Captain America" movie when we should be dealing mainly with super-villains and alien invasions?  

You probably know the big "twist" in this film, if you've seen any of the trailers or the poster, or in my case, if you've read the comics then you know what "Thunderbolt" Ross can turn into - the most ironic of things for a man who spent decades trying to hunt down and kill the Hulk. Sorry, the GREEN Hulk, I have to be specific here. But being the enemy of the GREEN Hulk, the Banner Hulk, is what cost Ross his relationship with his daughter, Betty, who was married to Bruce Banner in the comics, sort of an on-again, off-again thing, but really, Banner is an on-again off-again Hulk, so you know, that kind of works.  They'd bring Betty Ross back into the storyline of the Hulk comics on a semi-regular basis, but at some point she died, came back to life, turned into a monster herself (Harpy) and then disappeared again until another writer suddenly remembered that they forgot to bring her back yet again.  

So yeah, I knew all along where this film was going, but if you somehow avoided all of the spoilers so far, well, I'd stop reading and turn back now if I were you.  Let's just say that in the comic books there were two Hulks for a time, and we all knew Banner was the Green Hulk, but who the hell was the Red Hulk?  This was a mystery for a LONG time, I think, until it wasn't. (They're pulling the same trick right now with the new Venom, but the human identity of the new Venom is probably exactly who you think.). But since Marvel Comics have been known to repeat the same storylines over and over again, it turns there have been at least THREE different Red Hulks in the comics, one was Ross, another was another general, Robert Maverick, and one was the secret identity of Joe Fixit, who himself was another alias used by the green Banner Hulk - to say that's complicated is a bit of an understatement.  

Thaddeus Ross is a stand-in for Trump here, that's pretty plain to see.  A U.S. President with a shady past (he's ex-military, that's really the only difference between him and The Donald) who's corrupt as all hell, and also he's got an illness which he's hiding from the public. Remember how Trump's annual physical claims every year that he's 7 foot 2 and weighs 135 pounds and how he's more physically fit than most 25 year olds?  When we can all see his fat gut when he wears golfing outfits, so we know that his doctor's either insane or getting a pay-off.  Maybe both.  Anyway, Ross keeps taking phone calls from the mystery villain, which feels a lot like Trump taking phone calls from the Kremlin, and you know that he does, right?  

Let's take things a bit further here, because President Red Hulk is also a take on Trump - only Trump is mostly orange, not red, but those colors are pretty close. Hulk is big, Trump is, well, fat. Hulk is loud, and Trump is certainly loud. Filled with rage? Check. Has trouble communicating?  Sure, check.  Ready to screw Japan or any other country over by enacting tariffs and trade wars?  Double-check, and when that fails, willing to use the military strength of our armed forces to blow another country off the map?  You'd better believe it. So this really is the kind of Captain America movie that we should have expected when we re-elected the big, loud orange guy.  Sure, it looks like Sam Wilson is fighting the Red Hulk, but he's really fighting Trump, I'd bet my bottom dollar on it. 

On a positive note, Isaiah Bradley gets some more screen time here, he was a character from the Marvel TV series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" who filled in for Capt. America during the Korean War, when Steve Rogers was frozen in ice. The first black Cap, and Sam Wilson is the second, only things didn't go so well for Bradley, they experimented on him against his will, Tuskegee-style, and then he was imprisoned for the crime of freeing other black soldiers from the torture/experimentation. In the comic books, his grandson becomes a Cap-style super-hero called Patriot, but there's really no time for that character here, either, because less is less. 

This film is set in Washington, DC, but much of it was filmed in Atlanta, like the White House scenes, shot at Tyler Perry's studios in Atlanta.  The weird thing to me is that my wife and I visited Atlanta in October 2022 - and we went to a bookstore and I picked up a guide book of weird things to do in Atlanta, and I spotted a listing for a replica White House in nearby Decatur, so we looked it up and drove by it, took photos from across the street. It was a private home, built at 3/4 scale to resemble the White House, from the outside at least - the interior is just that of a normal house, like there's no Oval Office.  But if there's ANOTHER replica White House at the Tyler Perry Studios, that means that Atlanta actually has TWO White Houses, which is twice as many as Washington DC does. That's a bit odd. Perhaps the Tyler Perry studio has a set for an Oval Office interior, but not a White House exterior set?  

At the end of the film, Sam Wilson sets out to re-establish the Avengers, but other than the Falcon, which heroes are going to be on that team?  What? We're out of time?  How can that possibly be, whoever's in charge of this movie, for God's sake, MAKE the time!  Just make the film a couple minutes longer and show Sam deciding over headshots of certain heroes, who makes the damn team?  

Directed by Julius Onah (director of "The Cloverfield Paradox")

Also starring Harrison Ford (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Danny Ramirez (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Shira Hass (last seen in "Mary Magdalene"), Carl Lumbly (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Homesman"), Giancarlo Esposito (last seen in "Night on Earth"), Liv Tyler (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Xosha Roquemore (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Johannes Haukur Johannesson (last seen in "Bloodshot"), William Mark McCullough (last seen in "Arsenal"), Takehiro Hira (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Harsh Nayyar (last seen in "Freejack"), Rick Espaillat (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Todd Allen Durkin (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Pete Burris (ditto), Dustin Lewis (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Alan Boell (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Ava Hill, Marissa Chanel Hampton, Katerina Eichenberger, Mark Pettit (last seen in "Reptile"), John Mark Bowman, Katina Rankin, John Cihangir, Eric Mbanda, Josh Robin (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Sharon Tazewell, Sandra Aparicio, Ricky Robles Cruz (last seen in "Plane"), Bill Stinchcomb (last seen in "Fire with Fire"), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "The Bronze"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 heavy punching bags

10 Years

Year 17, Day 148 - 5/28/25 - Movie #5,031

BEFORE: OK, I can report back from the red carpet - sorry, BLACK carpet - premiere event for "Karate Kid: Legends". I was on outdoor duty for most of the night, which meant keeping an eye on the ADA sidewalk ramps (as pedestrians needed to walk around the press area, which meant walking in a blocked-off street lane, which meant for people with walkers or baby carriages, they needed to use these ramps) and making sure that parents could pick up their kids outside after the screening, because some parents went out for food or drinks, rather than watch the film. Also, I made sure that nobody forgot about the kids from the Karate Foundation who came in their karate outfits to see the film - and they JUST got in, 5 minutes before the screening, which was delayed because Jackie Chan was signing autographs outside. Ralph Macchio was there, too, but Jackie Chan drew the most photographs from bystanders, who stood in the street and risked getting run over to take his picture. Worth it?

The theater was a mess after - which is what happens when you let a bunch of kids in to see something and you give them popcorn, soda and candy. Sure, I was on outdoor duty but I couldn't lock up until the porters finished cleaning both theaters, and that took a few hours. So I was there until about 1 am, and this was on a Tuesday night, so getting home was a challenge, my usual subway line was shut down (they do need to clean all the stations sometimes, I guess) and I had to take a shuttle bus, did not get home until 2:30 am. At that point, I didn't want to stay up and watch a movie, besides I was super tired, so I went to bed earlier than usual, and watched today's movie in the late morning. Got to stay on track, after all.

Channing Tatum carries over one more time from "Havoc" (2005). 

THE PLOT: On the night of their high school reunion, a group of friends realize they still haven't grown up in some ways. 

AFTER: The IMDB classified this film as a romantic comedy, but I chose not to see it that way - rom-coms are a dime a dozen, after all, but films about high-school reunions are few and far-between. "Romy & Michele's High School Reunion" comes to mind, and "The D Train", and well, that's about it.  Besides, it doesn't link to much that's currently on my romance sub-list, maybe a film or two with Aubrey Plaza in it, there was probably more connective tissue before I burned off a bunch of the romances this February, like "Dear John" and "Safe Haven". Maybe I'll regret placing this one here next February when I'm having trouble connecting romances, I don't know - but with this cast, it's going to function better for me as a film that will link just about anything to anything else. Look, it's the film that's going to get me from one Marvel film ("Venom 3") to another, and those films are set in different universes, for now, anyway. I suspect a merger will occur at some point. 

No lie, at one point several of the reunion attendees went out to a car to smoke a joint, and I realized that within that car were the actors who played Star-Lord, Gambit, Falcon and Moon Knight (also Apocalypse, but again, different universe) in various Marvel movies and TV shows.  Really, I only need ONE of them to carry over to tomorrow's movie, but we'll deal with that tomorrow. Tomorrow's slot was GOING to be used for "The Electric State", with Anthony Mackie AND Chris Pratt carrying over, but that film has now been re-scheduled for August, and re-purposed as the film that will get me out of the Doc Block. That's another film, like this one, that could go almost anywhere, but I need it for a very specific purpose.  

Anyway, let's deal with "10 Years", a film that is now almost 15 years old (it happens) and honestly, I'm a bit surprised that nobody made a sequel called "20 Years" to update us more on these characters and their lives.  The big, big problem here is that we're shown a very large number of characters arriving at this 10-year reunion, and we have no idea what relationships they had with each other while in high school. So the first 2/3 of the film has to have a lot of exposition, people talking about their pasts, because we don't get to see that in flashbacks, footage of these actors from 10 years previous is not available. That means a lot of "tell" and very little "show" while we're learning all their backstories.  It does get tiresome after a while, but be honest, isn't listening to a bunch of your old school-mates reliving their glory moments a very tiresome thing?  It's almost too real here, nearly interactive because that's what you do at a reunion, you play catch-up and ask questions about how people spent their last ten years.  Or people offer up all that information, which is even worse. 

Who got fat, who got rich, who got hot?  These are questions mentioned on the poster, but even more important is figuring out who dated who back then, and who WANTED to date who, because a reunion is also a second shot at the relationships you screwed up or missed out on. Well, maybe, if you play your cards right. And a lot of these characters play it cool, they don't offer up too much information until they learn what the playing field is like, and get an estimate of how they might measure up against their old classmates. Relatable. 

However, there are quite a few cringe-worthy moments, too - Chris Pratt's character has had a realization that he was a bit of a bully back in high school, and he's changed (or at least he believes he has) so he wants to find all those people he mistreated or made fun of, and apologize to them, whether they want him to or not. He wants to put in the work, which is great, but if those people aren't receptive to it, he isn't going to let that stop him, which means, wait for it, that he's STILL a bully, only now he's going to bully those people until they like him or forgive him, or pretend to forgive him just to make him go away. Beware, it's a trap, because once they forgive him he now wants to hang out with them, or force them to hang out with him, which turns into, you guessed it, another form of bullying. And this gets worse and worse as he drinks more and more.  

True story, I got a phone call once from someone who didn't treat me great in grade school, I wouldn't call what he did bullying, though - I was bullied by others, but not him - really I was in his friend group and I was just the lowest in the pecking order, that's a different thing, I think. Anyway, as an adult he was going through the 12-step program and he'd reached the step where he had to ask forgiveness from people, so he called me, and I'd never had anyone contact me in this way before, so I wasn't sure what to do. I did think about it and I determined that however he treated me, it played a part in shaping my personality, and I felt I was in a pretty good place in life, so I told him I wasn't holding anything against him, that I'd forgiven him for whatever. I'm not going to stand in the way of anyone trying to get sober, if that's what they want to do or feel they need to do. I certainly wasn't going to demand any form of restitution - I still had to encounter him at future reunions, after all. 

Anyway, there's a lot of back and forth at the reunion, people talking with their old friends, their old flames, and if their spouses or significant others are also there, it's a chance to learn what their lovers were like back in high school.  For this crowd at this age, that means learning who was into breakdancing and who didn't go to the prom (and why) and who got married and who moved to Japan (and why).  It's also awkward that one person from this high school became a famous music artist, so he's the center of attention for a while, but then prefers to hang out with that girl from physics class that he almost had a moment with back then, but she had a boyfriend in another town or something.  

Wisely, once the reunion ends most everyone goes to a local karaoke bar, and sure, we the audience appreciate the change in venue - 90 minutes in just one location would have been too long. So it's off to Pretzel's for more alcohol, except two characters decide to follow the former prom queen home when they don't connect with her, and cover her yard with toilet paper, just like the old days. Also relatable, when you're 28 and you have your first reunion, you might be inclined to act like you're 18 again - but they get caught by her, and they have to apologize, at which time they learn the real truth about what her life is like now, she's a single mother with two kids from two different dads, and maybe Marty and AJ have been fronting too, and so for all three maybe life's not all that it could be, but hey, later they can still eat breakfast together!  

Meanwhile at the karaoke bar, Cully is even more drunk and still trying to push everyone around and his wife is completely embarrassed. Jake re-unites with Mary, and they recall that their prom night was spoiled by her dad having a heart attack.  Jake's wife Jess goes back to the hotel so he can spend time with Mary, who is now married but still wants to have that prom dance with Jake. Reeves is still talking to the reclusive Elise, and when he's pushed into singing his hit song about a girl with yellow shoes, Elise realizes that he wrote the song about her. Garrity impresses his wife with his breakdancing skills while Scotty sings, and Andre just keeps flirting with the ladies, eventually we learn that he had a long-term relationship that didn't work out, and jeez, really everyone is masking their pain with either humor or alcohol or music, so hey maybe nobody really has it together, do they?  

I'm glad I stuck with it because the film kind of redeems itself in the end, once everyone stops pretending that their lives are going great, and only then can the healing begin. There's more heart and self-realization in the last third of this film than you would expect to find in three other movies, if you can believe that. And really, you can't move forward in life until you've made peace with your past, or something to that effect. 

There is a real Lake Howell high school, in Winter Park, Florida - the director and one of the actors went to school there together, and obviously there's at least one real-life couple playing a couple, or at least they WERE a couple at the time.  Three actors also went to Julliard together, so there are probably a number of ways where art reflects real life here.  And we've got a loose theme for the week so far, in that "Stop-Loss", "Havoc" (2005) and today's film all feature footage that looks like it was shot on a camcorder, to create handheld footage of the soldiers in Iraq, the doc footage that Eric was making about the Pacific Palisades students, and the footage shot at the 10 year reunion. 

Directed by Jamie Linden (writer and producer of "Dear John")

Also starring Jenna Dewan (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Justin Long (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers 2"), Max Minghella (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Chris Pratt (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Ari Graynor (last seen in "Game 6"), Scott Porter (last seen in "Dear John"), Eiko Nijo (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Brian Geraghty (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn"), Kate Mara (last seen in "Shooter"), Lynn Collins (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Rosario Dawson (last seen in "Clerks III"), Ron Livingston (last seen in "The Flash"), Aaron Yoo (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Daniel Scott Lumpkin Jr., Lily Lumpkin (last seen in "Safe Haven"), Mike Miller (last seen in "Vengeance"), Kelly Noonan, Nick Zano (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Isaac Kappy (last seen in "Thor"), Sara Emami, Bryce Hayes (also last seen in "Dear John"), Marie A.K. McMaster, Brady Kephart, Kenneth McGlothin, Todd Malta (last seen in "The Interpreter"), Lauren Poole (last seen in "Frank"), Cat Stone, Alex Knight (last seen in "The Marksman"), Frantz Durand, Michelle Griego, Monique Candelaria, Rebekah Wiggins (last seen in "Let Me In"), Ivan Martin (last seen in "Chuck"), Antonio Spirovski, Jack Nation (last seen in "Crazy Heart"), Ian French, Juliet Lopez

RATING: 6 out of 10 fried eggs (eating them is better than throwing them at Anna's house)

Havoc (2005)

Year 17, Day 147 - 5/27/25 - Movie #5,030

BEFORE: When I plotted out the chain between Mothers Day and Fathers Day, I couldn't resist putting both films titled "Havoc" so close together - this is what I find funny these days, apparently.  Who knew that two films with the same title, released 20 years apart, could be linked with just ONE film in between?  I certainly didn't, until I started playing around with some different chains. This is film that's been on and off my radar a couple of times, though I guess once a film is ON my radar it's never really OFF until I, you know, watch it. Even if I schedule it and my plans then change, the film stays on my list, it just cycles back to the bottom until I can find a new link - though there are probably a few dozen films that I will never, ever watch as long as I maintain this linking arrangement. 

You can't see it now, but I'm getting closer to reviewing two more Marvel movies this week, let's just say this week is about both soldiers AND super-soldiers. And there's another film that was on the schedule, however I'm probably going to move it to August because now that I know where my Doc Block will begin in June, I also know where it will likely END in August, and that film seems like it will be the perfect outro to the last documentary, and give me a LOT of linking opportunities for where to go next - and that's important for when I'll be trying to connect mid-August and early October, and I don't know yet where the horror chain will start, that's kind of also a little bit important. 

Channing Tatum AND Joseph Gordon-Levitt both carry over from "Stop-Loss".

THE PLOT: Two affluent suburban girls clash with the Latino gang culture of East Los Angeles. 

AFTER: Ugh, now I know why I put this film off for so long. I think I fast-forwarded through it once just to see Anne Hathaway's nude scenes, big deal, now, I've seen what she wanted to show me, and now there's the tedious process of watching the entire film surrounding those scenes, which, let's face it, are really the highlight of the movie. 

This is a film about bored suburban California high school kids - in 2005.  They're so bored with their own lives that many of them have adopted the street culture as their own, even though they are NOT from the streets, not by a long-shot. Yeah, "wigger" culture had its moment, and that moment is long over, thank God. One thing that none of us need is more white kids trying to rap and be all "street". Remember when entitled rich white kids could just be rich and entitled and that was enough?  Those were the days...

If "Stop-Loss" was really the first film about military service that was shot like an episode of "The Real World", then this might be the first film about high-school kids that was shot like an episode of "Cribs".  No, wait, that's not right, maybe "Yo! MTV Raps"?  Nope, still not right. This is the first film about high-school kids that looks like a Vanilla Ice music video. Yeah, that's it. It's not GOOD, by any means, and you really have to feel sorry for any white kid rapping or trying to be inner-city tough, because, well, they're just not capable of it. No, not even the girls. Go be white and entitled somewhere, for god's sake, just take the win, you're just embarrassing yourself.

Allison Lang is one of those entitled white kids from Pacific Palisades, and her boyfriend Toby is a total wigger, there is a brawl between two gangs of white kids at the beginning of the film, and except for those Hathaway nude scenes, THAT might be the best part of the movie. But it can't last, which is a shame - I would for sure watch 90 minutes of white teenagers in 2005 beating the hell out of each other.  But then, of course, there would be no third act that way. 

Allison meets with her father for lunch, after reading the weekly affirmations her parents made at their therapy session, which are hanging on the fridge for everyone to see. Her father agreed to be more open, and honest, and talk about his feelings, while her mother agreed to have sex with him at least once a week. Damn, if you have to schedule it, that relationship is really doomed. Allison, of course, feels completely disconnected from her parents, they don't really "get" her anyway, or why she wants to cut class and smoke weed and maybe try crack. Well, it's good to have attainable goals, at least. While buying drugs in East L.A., Toby thinks the dealer has sold him short, so he goes back to demand some more drugs, which of course is never a good idea. Toby was lucky to be able to walk away from that in one piece. 

But Allison, for some reason, goes back, and befriends that same drug dealer, Hector. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?). She brings three of her girlfriends to a party at Hector's house, and then he tells them about a nearby motel where he and his crew usually party. (Again, #WCPGW?). Before long, Allison is dressing all "street" and hanging out in Hector's hood, pretending to bump into him. Girl, we get it, your poser wigger boyfriend is just not cutting it, but if you want to upgrade, why settle for a drug dealer?  Some people have to learn the hard way not to date bad boys, I guess. 

The next time Allison parties with Hector she brings one friend, Emily.  The girls ask if they can join Hector's crew, like they're THAT infatuated with thug life that they want to become members of the gang. Hector says that they each have to roll a die, and have sex with the same number of gang members to match the roll. Allison rolls a "1" but Emily rolls a "3". Allison starts to have sex with Hector himself, but she can't go through with it, it all just suddenly became too real.  Emily goes through with it, but panics when she realizes that all three guys want to have sex with her at the same time. I guess the gang lifestyle isn't for everyone, after all. 

Emily covers up for her actions by accusing Hector's crew of gang raping her. For the third time, you know what I'm about to say. Hector gets arrested, and members of his crew try to track down Allison and Emily to silence them.  At the same time, Toby and Emily's sort-of wigger boyfriend, Sam drive over to East L.A.  Look, we all know this is NOT going to end well, however the movie neglects to tell us exactly how it doesn't end well, all we hear is a gunshot and we're left wondering who shot who. Jesus, have some balls and tell us who paid the price for a couple of bored white girls hanging out with a Mexican gang. You can sort of tell this story was written by a 14-year old, somebody too young to realize that every story needs a solid ending. 

Or maybe this feels unfinished because the screenwriter died in a plane crash shortly before filming began. So what does this mean, they couldn't hire another writer to come up with a resolution?  How disappointing, almost like starting to have sex with somebody and then backing out at the last minute.  Then once the film was done, the producers took the final cut rights away from the director and chose, for some reason, to not release the film in theaters. Well, it was 2005 and DVDs were the preferred format, and streaming hadn't been invented yet.  Still, the only reason to NOT release in theaters is if you know the film's a stinker. 

If I'm late posting this review tonight, it's because I had to go to work in the afternoon, earlier than I thought.  Someone else called in sick so they asked me to come on shift at 3 pm instead of 5 pm.  But the event was the premiere of the new film "Karate Kid: Legends", so I got to see Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio and Joshua Johnson walking on the black carpet. I had to oversee the tent breakdown, though there was no tent, just an outdoor carpeted press area - but the breakdown of the exterior and cleaning of the theater took until after midnight, so I didn't get home until about 2:30 am.  I can still stay on track, though, I'll just watch my Wednesday movie on Wednesday morning instead of late Tuesday night.  

Directed by Barbara Kopple

Also starring Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Bijou Phillips (last seen in "Choke"), Shiri Appleby (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Michael Biehn (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Matt O'Leary (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Freddy Rodriguez (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden"), Laura San Giacomo (last seen in "Quigley Down Under"), Mike Vogel (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Raymond Cruz (last seen in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch"), Alexis Dziena (last seen in "When in Rome"), Jose Vasquez (last seen in "The Marksman"), Luis Robledo, Sam Hennings (last seen in "The Aviator"), Cecilia Peck (last seen in "Wall Street"), Josh Peck (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Robert Shapiro, JD Pardo (last seen in "The Contractor"), Terri Hanauer, Sam Bottoms (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Jon Erik, Laura Breckenridge, Alysia Joy Powell (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Richard Pagano, Samar Omar, Laurel Parmet, Tammy Trull, Jossara Jinaro, Angela Meryl

RATING: 4 out of 10 cans of soup (which nobody wants to eat)

Stop-Loss

Year 17, Day 146 - 5/26/25 - Movie #5,029 - MEMORIAL DAY

BEFORE: I took a skip day yesterday so this one would like up with the holiday - it's fine, I've sort of learned to build extras day into the schedule in case I get busy or I notice it's some actor's birthday the next day, and then I don't have to panic and double up. I've got a clear path to Father's Day - hell, I've got a clear path to mid-August - so I've got no worries. 

Well, except one, for a lot of the scheduled films I got my cast lists from Wikipedia, not the IMDB. I really should go through everything on my list and cross-reference, but with about 550 films that I'm tracking, that's going to take some time. I did it for my romance films and for my horror films already, because I didn't want to miss any potential connections, but now I've got to do that for the main list, too - because Wiki had a bunch of actors listed as appearing in today's film that were NOT listed on IMDB - because they weren't in the film. I don't know why someone edited this film's cast list to say that Jason Patric, Melina Kanakaredes and Sadie Sink are in this film, because, well, they're just not. Now I have to edit the Wiki page, in addition to everything else I'm doing. The tasks never sort of end, do they? 

Timothy Olyphant carries over from "Havoc" (2025).  Thank God I stuck to the top-listed stars when I made my connections, if I had used someone who I thought had a cameo here I would have had to re-work my linking, but the problem has now been corrected and the chain remains unbroken.  But I have to stay on my toes, if I'm relying on a connection based on archive footage in a documentary, then I may have to re-arrange the Doc Block on the fly. 

THE PLOT: A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty. 

AFTER: Maybe this film would have been a better fit for Veterans Day, not Memorial Day, but the linking puts it where it puts it. Anyway, there is a small-town parade seen in the film and at least one military funeral, so I'm going to roll with that, and say I probably can't get a more appropriate film to watch today.  

I kind of wish this film had explained the term "Stop-Loss" right out of the gate, it would have made things easier. The characters here all used it as a verb, as in "I got stop-lossed", if they could have said "the stop-loss clause" or "the stop-loss initiative" things might been clearer, but I guess either way we all had to infer what it means. It's apparently army jargon for coming to an end of a soldier's period of service, and then re-enlisting them for another tour without their consent. The main character here has been expecting to go home once he completes his tour of duty in Iraq, however the army decides for him that he needs to serve more time, because the country is at war, while at the same time the President is declaring victory in Iraq, and an end of the war. So it's something of an oxymoronic state, with the U.S. both not at war on paper, but at war in terms of having troops on the ground, battling insurgents. According to the graphic at the end of the film, this happened to about 81,000 soldiers serving in Iraq.  

Somehow there wasn't enough time to train replacement troops, or recruit new soldiers, so they just told the serving ones to stick around a bit longer. Look, I get it, if you agree to do a job for a specific contracted period of time, if that job is in an office or a factory or a florist shop, you might be happy that your boss likes your work and wants you to stick around longer, maybe you even get a raise. But if your job is a soldier in the army and you could die while doing your job, well, that's a whole other story. Right?  

The two main characters here are Brandon King and Steve Shriver, serving in the same unit, and both from Brazos, Texas.  Their town hosts their whole unit while they're on leave, hence the parade and the picnic and all that - and Shriver is the screw-up for the first part of the film, he gets too drunk and digs a foxhole in his front yard, which freaks out his girlfriend.  She calls Brandon and another soldier, Tommy, over to talk him down. But instead they put him in the car's trunk and go to the woods to shoot up Tommy's wedding presents. Yeah, it seems to be a rought thing, being married to a soldier - even if your man doesn't die in battle, when he comes home he's likely to have PTSD and therefore more liable to get drunk and/or beat up his wife or girlfriend.  

When Brandon learns that he's not going to be released by the army as planned, he goes a little crazy, punches out an MP and drives off in Steve's car.  He can only hide out at his parents' house for so long before the army finds him there, so he and Steve's girlfriend, Michelle, decide to drive to Washington DC to see if their state senator can help him out. But they only get as far as Tennessee before their car is broken into and their belongings are stolen. Brandon finds the three robbers and goes all Jason Statham on them, but suffers a head injury in the process. While at the motel in Tennessee, though, Brandon learns from another soldier on the run that there's a lawyer in New York who might be representing other soldiers who have been stop-lossed. (A previous visit to a dead soldier's family in Tennessee suggested there might be an underground group of such soldiers hanging around.)

Steve shows up to try to convince Brandon to come back to the base, he's smoothed things over with their Lt. Colonel, Boot Miller, who's agree to drop any charges if Brandon gets back in the next couple of days - meaning the two characters have switched places, Steve is now the "responsible" one, and Brandon's the screw-up. Brandon would rather head for New York to see if that lawyer can help him get across the Canadian border, however then he'd never be able to return to see his family in Texas again. And then just after paying the lawyer $500, half of the fee to smuggle him out of the country, Steve gets a phone call that Tommy, their friend and fellow soldier, has found a different way to avoid being sent back to Iraq, only it's not a happy one.  

Brandon and Michele also visit Pvt. Rodriguez in the hospital, this is another soldier from their unit who survived the ambush in the streets of Iraq, however he's now blind and missing an arm and a leg - so really, this film's got it all - dead soldiers, injured soldiers, soldiers going AWOL and those who survived their tours, only to be re-enlisted against their will.  Really, they pull as much drama as they possibly can about how hard it is to be a soldier.  Today's really supposed to be just for remembering the fallen soldiers, but we can also take a minute here to appreciate the living veterans, too, because in no way is that an easy road to walk.

Having missed out on getting up to Canada (hey, how about a refund of that $500?) Brandon heads over to the Mexican border instead (well, it is closer...) with Michelle and his mother, but he decides against deserting the U.S. and eventually gets back on the bus with the other soldiers. I get it, Mexican food is fine once in a while, but it can't compare to Texas BBQ.  

Directed by Kimberly Peirce (director of "Carrie" (2013))

Also starring Ryan Phillippe (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (last heard in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Channing Tatum (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Rob Brown (ditto), Abbie Cornish (last seen in "Geostorm"), Victor Rasuk (last seen in "Reptile"), Quay Terry, Josef Sommer (last seen in "Strange Days"), Linda Emond (last seen in "City by the Sea"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"), Mamie Gummer (last seen in "Side Effects"), Alex Frost (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Matthew Scott Wilcox, Connett Brewer, Chandra Washington, Cora Cardona (last seen in "Fast Food Nation"), Isreal Saldivar, Lee Stringer, JD Evermore (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Cory Hart (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Marie Mizener, Kasey Stevens (last seen in "Life or Something Like It"), Ricky Calmbach, Richard Dillard (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), James D. Dever (last seen in "Brothers"), Mark Richard, Laurie Metcalf (last seen in "Somewhere in Queens"), Steven Strait (last seen in "Sky High"), Tory Kittles (last seen in "Dragged Across Concrete"), Peter Gerety (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Victor Garcia Jr., Robert Farrior (last seen in "American Made"), Erik Anderson, Peter Cornwell, Spencer Greenwood, D.J. Morrison, and the voice of Margo Martindale (last seen in "Rocket Science")

RATING: 5 out of 10 tequila shots