A Thousand Words

Year 17, Day 165 - 6/14/25 - Movie #5,048 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #6

BEFORE: I'm due back at the Tribeca Film Festival today, tomorrow is the last day of the festival but today is my last shift. So I won't be home until very late tonight, I may have to post late. There's a whole different vibe at the festival since there are just a few screenings left, it's not too crowded and an even odder mix of celebrities is expected to show up today. I just want to get through my 14 or 15-hour shift and then re-assess things. 

Eddie Murphy carries over again from "Mr. Church". 

THE PLOT: After stretching the truth on a deal with a spiritual guru, literary agent Jack McCall finds a Bodhi tree on his property. Its appearance holds a valuable lesson on the consequences of every word he speaks. 

AFTER: This is just a weird, clunky movie, it feels half-written because the premise doesn't really make much sense and it doesnt really wrap everything up that maybe needs to be wrapped up, so there's no way that the ending could possibly feel satisfying. When it starts it doesn't feel like there's a destination in mind, you'd think that would take the pressure off because it doesn't NEED to go to a specific place, but by the end it feels like picking a better destination probably would have been a good idea. 

It should be simple, and for a lot of films, it is - set-up the situation, introduce a problem, plot twist in the late second act, the outlook is darkest before the dawn, but the quest still gets finished only not in a way you might expect. From the very start here, this story has problems - Jack McCall is a literary agent with the "gift of gab", he can talk quickly and manipulate people to bring about the results he wants. BUT he's also got trouble at home, his wife wants to move to a bigger house because she feels like she moved into her husband's bachelor pad, AND they have an infant son, and Jack wants nothing to do with changing diapers or taking care of the baby. These things are not connected very well, it's not like he's having marital problems because of his job, or he's an absent father because he's so busy, he's just fundamentally broken because he's not cut out to be a father, possibly because his own father ran off, as evidenced by his elderly mother in a nursing home, who has dementia and mistakes Jack for his father Raymond whenever he visits.  

After an encounter with a spiritual guru who Jack wants to represent, in order to have success in the self-help section of the bookstore (I guess?) Jack finds that a magical tree has sprung up in his backyard, and he is somehow spiritually connected to the tree, whatever happens to the tree happens to him, and whenever he speaks, a number of leaves fall off the tree, the same number of words that he JUST spoke out loud - and when the leaves are all gone, it's assumed that Jack will die, only nobody can confirm this because it's never happened before in the history of trees. We can assume that the guru is somehow behind this, trying to teach Jack some kind of lesson, although it's a very oblique one.  Was talking too much the exact problem?  I'm not sure, it's more like Jack was just being a neglectful husband and father, and someone who placed too much emphasis on work and success, but it's a little hard to pin this down, and I fail to see how talking less is going to make him a better person, except in the most abstract sense. 

Additional problems arise due to Jack's bonding with the tree - someone waters the tree and he appears soaked during a business meeting. Someone tries to poison the tree (who poisons a tree?) and Jack appears stoned during a business lunch.  But the biggest problems of all, of course, arise because he can no longer communicate with people the way he's used to doing. (Writing words down on a note-pad isn't a good work-around, because those words also cause leaves to fall off the tree.). So Jack is reduced to using charades-like pantomiming to order coffee at Starbucks, and animal noises or messages from action figures for most other interactions.  

And for some reason, he can't bring himself to say "I love you" to his wife when it really, really counts because that would be too many words?  I can kind of see the screenwriter's point here, nobody knows how much time they have left to live, therefore we don't know how many interactions with each person we will have, how many opportunities to say the things we should say, so therefore we all should be motivated to make every word count, and take every opportunity to tell the people we love how we feel.  But the way the film gets there is SO terribly clunky, it almost feels like there should have been a much easier way to make this point.  But then, I don't really know what that would be, without being too obvious. So I guess we kind of end up where we need to be, but the dots just aren't connected that well, which makes me wonder if the trip going the long way to get there was worth all the effort. 

Directed by Brian Robbins (director of "The Perfect Score")

Also starring Kerry Washington (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Clark Duke (last seen in "The Last Movie Star"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Allison Janney (last seen in "How to Deal"), Ruby Dee (last seen in "American Gangster"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "Queenpins"), John Witherspoon (last seen in "Boomerang"), Kayla Blake (last seen in "Four Christmases"), Lennie Loftin (last seen in "Logan"), Alain Chabat (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), Ted Kennedy, Eshaya Draper (last seen in "Cadillac Records"), Emanuel Ragsdale, Jill Basey (last seen in "Horrible Bosses 2"), Greg Collins (last seen in "Cellular"), Lou Saliba, John Gatins (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Mitchell Fink, Edi Patterson (last seen in "The Starling"), Emily A. Burton, Tracy Mulholland (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love"), Leonard Earl Howze (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Winston J. Rocha, Bethany Dwyer, Sara Holden (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F", Raquel Bell (ditto), David Burke, Jeff Kahn (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Matt Winston (last seen in "The Core"), Daniel Hepner, Eric Archibald, Philip Pavel (last seen in "Scream 2"), Phil Reeves (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Kamala Jones, Kaius Harrison, Brian Gallivan (last seen in "The Informant!"), Steven M. Gagnon (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Katheryn Cain (last seen in "Blended"), Lauren Schuchman, Ted Kennedy, Jane Bartelme, Sarah Scott Davis, Skip Crank (last seen in "Faster"), Floyd Levine (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Bunny Levine (last seen in "La La Land"), Brian Norris, Kineret Bismut, Ariel Felix (last seen in "Plane"), Justina Machado (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Ariel Winter (also last seen in "The Last Movie Star")

RATING: 4 out of 10 breadsticks

Mr. Church

Year 17, Day 164 - 6/13/25 - Movie #5,047 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #5?

BEFORE: Based on the synopsis, I'm not sure this film qualifies for this week's topic - I mean, who cares, really, it's not like we're saving babies here. Still, I'm going to need a ruling from the judges over whether a film about a surrogate father really counts. We're heading into the big Father's Day weekend, after all, and plot points are important. I'm only halfway through this Eddie Murphy chain and I want to make sure I put the films in the right order so that the most appropriate one lands on Sunday. These little details matter - OK, not really. 

Eddie Murphy carries over again from "Boomerang". 

THE PLOT: A unique friendship develops when a girl and her dying mother retain the services of a talented cook - Henry Joseph Church. What begins as a six month arrangement instead spans into fifteen years and creates a family bond that lasts forever. 

AFTER: The career of Eddie Murphy is full of peaks and valleys, for every "Dreamgirls" there was a "Norbit", and for every "Beverly Hills Cop" there was a "The Golden Child". "Trading Places"?  Meet "Best Defense".  "Shrek"? Meet "Meet Dave". You see where I'm going, right?  None of it was Murphy's fault, he didn't write or direct the terrible films on his resumé, but he did make choices over which films to do. Actors can't possibly predict which films are going to connect with the audiences, though, often they do bear the brunt of the bad press that results from the failures. At some point, however, it feels like Mr. Murphy got a bit more selective, and every couple of years when he was in a "good" movie, it felt like a comeback - only he never really left, did he?  He just voiced Donkey again in a "Shrek" sequel and was probably laughing all the way to the bank. Then of course, he disappeared again for a bit after making "Mr. Church" and the real comeback tour started in 2021 with "Coming 2 America". 

This ended up being a mostly endearing film about a single mother and her daughter, who end up treating a cook as a member of their family, only to have him do the same in return for Charlie, the daughter, later in the film.  But of course, it was designed to pull on our heartstrings from the beginning, because it's all about people who need people to take care of them. I guess that's one reason people have kids in the first place, to take care of them when they're older. But Marie Brooks is a single mother to Charlie, who's 10 years old and nobody's expecting a 10 year old girl to care for her mother when she has breast cancer and maybe 6 months to live. So Marie's former boyfriend (not Charlie's father) hires Mr. Church to cook for them, and Marie ends up living longer than expected, perhaps due to the nutritious and delicious food that Mr. Church cooks, or perhaps it's a desire to stay alive long enough to see her daughter go to prom and graduate from high school. 

Mr. Church also instills a love of reading, because he keeps a collection of classic novels at hand at all times, however Mr. Church is also very secretive about his personal life, once dinner has been served and he's off the clock, his life is his own, and we don't really learn anything about that part of his life for a very long time.  Once Charlie graduates and is accepted into Boston University, Mr. Church helps her with the gift of a car and tuition money that was supposedly saved from years of using coupons to buy groceries.  Only, come on, nobody who saves money at the grocery store actually puts that money aside, they just use it to buy more groceries, right?  Even if the bill was less than you thought it would be, you go back and you grab that box of cookies or cereal or that steak you had your eye on, but you thought was too expensive. 

Charlie also has to learn to drive, because that's the only way she can afford to get to Boston, by learning to drive that car. (However, NITPICK POINT, it probably takes like a week or longer to drive from L.A. to Boston, and that means 7 nights of motels, 7 days of meals, plus gas, plus any repairs to the car along the way - when you factor all that it, it's probably cheaper to get a plane ticket to Boston, isn't it?). Things go well at Boston University, Charlie's course work seems to be going well, though friends and roommates come and go, somehow she's able to get a part-time job, afford an apartment and still keep up her studies - but then she drives back to L.A. three years later, because she's pregnant.  She finds Mr. Church, I guess she knew where he lived because his address was on his letters to her, but still, that's an invasion of the privacy he demanded, for her to just show up on his doorstep. 

I don't see why being pregnant precludes Charlie from finishing college, she was just one year away, after all. But she apparently wants to be back home, safe with Mr. Church and getting all up in his personal life. He still wants his privacy, however Charlie can't seem to follow this rule at all. Also there's one night a week where he comes back from the club very drunk and yelling loudly at nothing in particular. 

Some things here are very unclear - like, who is the father of Charlie's baby? Obviously some Boston college kid, one she doesn't have any romantic connection to, so also, what is it with women in this family, they have children with men they don't love, also they can't seem to form any romantic relationships that last. Charlie went to prom with Owen, but then nothing really happened between them after that, they re-connected after she came back from Boston, when he was now a doctor in the L.A. area that she took Mr. Church to, but what, no sparks then, either?  Also her relationship with Landon (the weird guy who taught her to drive, and also took her to the hospital when she got hit by a skateboarding kid) is another non-starter, so Charlie just chooses to be a single mother like her mother was, because it makes her comfortable? Not really a good enough explanation, unless she's just bad at relationships and gave up.

Fast forward five years and Mr. Church is getting older, and Charlie and her daughter Izzy are still living with him. Charlie works as a waitress in a diner, well, at least that's a job that won't go away. When Mr. Church becomes too ill to cook, Charlie learns that she has the ability to cook, from all those years of watching Mr. Church do it. Umm, great, so why didn't she ever do it before, then?  Cooking is a skill that you practice, you learn by doing, you don't learn it just by watching. Even if you watch a hundred YouTube or Instagram videos about how to cook something, you'd learn better by just getting a recipe and following the instructions, you learn from your mistakes as well. Same goes for playing piano, you can't learn it just from watching someone else play, you have to sit at the piano and practice and slowly get better and better. 

I just got the ruling back from the judges - this film can NOT count as a Father's Day film, even though Mr. Church acted a bit like Charlie's surrogate father. I've got to limit the topic to fathers and step-fathers and adopted fathers only, father figures not allowed. Yes, the world is full of blended families and adoptive families and all of that is great, but I've got to regard "surrogate father" as an oxymoron here.  Sorry.

Directed by Bruce Beresford (director of "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding")

Also starring Britt Robertson (last seen in "Scream 4"), Natascha McElhone (last seen in "Laurel Canyon"), Xavier Samuel (last seen in "Elvis"), Lucy Fry (last seen in "Bright"), Christian Madsen (last seen in "Divergent"), McKenna Grace (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Natalie Coughlin, Madison Wolfe (last seen in "On the Road"), Lincoln Melcher, Kathleen McMartin, Sara Shearer, Kelly Lester (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Michael Leone, Thom Barry (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Dakota Lustick (last seen in "The Holdovers"), Dora Winifred

RATING: 5 out of 10 matchbooks from Jelly's

Boomerang

Year 17, Day 163 - 6/12/25 - Movie #5,046

BEFORE: Eddie Murphy carries over from "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" and I don't think this one's on topic for Father's Day, but it's kind of fallen through the cracks a few times and I just want to hide it here and cross it off the list, OK? 

THE PLOT: A successful executive and womanizer finds his lifestyle choices have turned back on him when his new female boss turns out to be an even bigger deviant than he is. 

AFTER: I feel like I should have some sort of non-numerical "mulligan" score in my rating system, something that kind of says, "Well, I'm way out of the target market or demographic for this one, plus it didn't really speak to me and it's also very off-topic for me this week, so no score."  Because that's where my head is at, I guess this is a romantic comedy for lack of any better term, but it's from 1992 and simply ALL of the dating rules have changed for everybody since then, regardless of ethnic group or sexual orientation or any other measure of anything. This is pre-internet, pre-smart phone dating, like what even IS that?  How did people ever survive in that world, when you couldn't just look up when a movie was playing, you had to go find a newspaper?  Or you couldn't make a restaurant reservation by pushing some buttons on your phone, you had to GO THERE in person and put your name on a list - geez, it's like the stone age. 

But I guess in the end, dating is dating and sex is sex, and it's all complicated and confusing and you had to ask somebody if they liked you, rather than read what they posted about you on X or Instagram. And I guess you had to look somebody straight on in the face and ask them out, instead of just texting "U up?"  Really, it was a different time, I can't stress this enough.  In today's film, an advertising executive acts like a serial dater, he's successful and he's got dozens of women in his little black book (don't even ask, just remember nobody saved numbers on their phones) but he had a habit of breaking up with them once he realized that some of them had nasty-looking feet. Relatable, but if I'm being honest, everyone's feet are nasty. Everyone's. So I think he was just using this as an excuse to never commit to any one woman.  

Marcus' company gets acquired by a cosmetics company, Lady Eloise, which seems a bit unusual, I can't recall any instance of a make-up company just right out BUYING an advertising agency, I guess turning it into their in-house marketing department? It's a bit odd, when he was talking about a "merger" at the start of the film, it was confusing, because a merger is usually between two similar companies, one company buying the other is a totally different thing. Anyway, the merger/purchase is on and Marcus spends a night with the company's founder in order to get ahead, then he finds out she's just a figure-head and has no real power. Oopsie. 

Next Marcus meets Jacqueline in the lobby, and after he comes on to her, he realizes she is his new boss. Oopsie again - but the whole film is kind of like this, Marcus just moves on to the next woman in line when things don't work out. He just keeps having sex to try to get forward in the company, and that's not cool by today's standards, maybe it was never cool to begin with. I mean, he's having sex with women to try to GET power, that's maybe not as bad as using his power to have sex with women, but perhaps it's a fine line between the two, safe here but only by a thin margin.  

After a few business trips, he finds himself in a relationship with Jacqueline, however she ignores his feelings, manipulates him by using sex, and keeps trying to control him by dictating the terms of the relationships. Well, it's ironic because that's usually what HE does to women, tries to control them and not commit to them, and maybe he needed to be on the receiving end of that to learn his lesson. OK, we've reached the moral lesson of the film, he can just move on with his life and try better next time.  Only that's NOT the end of the film by a longshot, but perhaps it should be. 

Next he's propositioned by Helen Strangé, a big weird Grace Jones-type model played convincingly by Grace Jones. However, he turns her down because he's trying to be faithful to Jacqueline, only the model then gets very mad, because she heard from Jacqueline he was a great lover, and besides, who turns down a model?  Marcus gets very upset that Jacqueline bragged about their affair to someone else, then his work begins to suffer, to the point where his boss (and lover) has to tell him to take some time off, and really, that should be the end of their relationship right there, hell, he shouldn't even BE in a relationship with his boss, it's a terrible conflict of interest.  

During his downtime, Marcus spends time with Angela, who's dating his friend Gerard, who's been slow to "seal the deal" with her. Marcus also hosts Thanksgiving dinner, where Angela meets Gerard's parents, and it's all very awkward, but right after that, Angela stays to help clean up and ends up sleeping with Marcus. It makes sense, they both like "Star Trek", that's kind of important, and Marcus is on the rebound, eager to have a real relationship with someone who isn't his boss, it's just too bad he has to steal her away from Gerard, who's already upset that Marcus gets "all the women". Well, Gerard, you snooze, you lose. So Marcus is with Angela now, lessons learned, end of story, hey, it all worked out. Only AGAIN, that's not the end - 

Marcus overhears Angela downplaying their relationship on a phone call with Jacqueline, and the next time Marcus sees Jacqueline, they sleep together again, and this is one main reason why you should never hang out with your ex. Angela is upset that he stayed out all night and rapidly figures out where he's been, so she quits AND breaks up with him, leaving Marcus with one final lesson and one last decision to make.  Now he's got to apologize to both Gerard AND Angela, and try to mend all the fences. So many fences. But if he can do that, finally maybe there can be a resolution here. It's long overdue, though, I just don't understand why Marcus had to screw up so many times just to learn to treat women better.  Why couldn't he just do that in the first place, it would have saved all of us so much time!

Directed by Reginald Hudlin (director of "The Ladies Man")

Also starring Robin Givens (last seen in "Head of State"), Halle Berry (last seen in "The Program"), David Alan Grier (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Martin Lawrence (last seen in "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"), Grace Jones (last seen in "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy"), Geoffrey Holder (last seen in "Doctor Dolittle" (1967)), Eartha Kitt (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Chris Rock (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Tisha Campbell (last seen in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"), Lela Rochon (last seen in "The Big Hit"), John Witherspoon (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Bebe Drake (last seen in "Anywhere But Here"), John Canada Terrell (last seen in "The Five Heartbeats"), Leonard Jackson (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Jonathan P. Hicks (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), Irv Dotten (ditto), Tom Mardirosian (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Melvin Van Peebles (last heard in "Freakonomics"), Rhonda Jensen, Alyce Webb, Louise Vyent, Frank Rivers, Angela Logan, Chuck Pfeiffer (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Raye Dowell (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Reginald Hudlin (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Warrington Hudlin, Andre B. Blake (last seen in "Marry Me"), Kenny Blank (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Daryl Mitchell (ditto), Khanya Mkhize, Gene “Groove” Allen (last seen in "What's Love Got to Do with It"), Olga Merediz (last heard in "Spellbound"), Tracy Douglas, Shirley Kirkes Mar (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), with archive footage of Michael Jordan (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), William Shatner (also last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Leonard Nimoy (last heard in "Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists"), DeForrest Kelley (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project") and James Doohan (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 watches for sale outside the Apollo Theater

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Year 17, Day 162 - 6/11/25 - Movie #5,045 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #4

BEFORE: Another day at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday, working behind the scenes, just keeping the traffic flowing, doing head counts and maintaining event notes. I spotted David Morse and Aisha Tyler hanging out in the lobby before screenings, and then later on the red carpet Brendan Fraser was there with Ellen Burstyn and director Darren Aronofsky, for an anniversary screening of "Requiem for a Dream". I'd met Aronofsky twice before, like really met him and talked to him, once in a movie theater in Boston a long time ago, and then again at the New York Comic Con in 2007. I do kind of miss the old job, where I occasionally met famous directors and actors at Sundance or other events, but at the newer job I see more celebrities overall, however there's just no direct contact. Still, my life list has probably tripled in size since starting the theater job in 2021, and more is better, right? 

Luis Guzman carries over from "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island". 

THE PLOT: Axel Foley returns to Beverly Hills after his daughter's life is threatened, for a family reunion that includes old pals John Taggart and Billy Rosewood to uncover a conspiracy. 

AFTER: This is another film that I did not intentionally program for Father's Day, I selected this just as an Eddie Murphy film, and one that would lead me to more father-based films of his, but it's accidentally perfectly on theme, as Axel Foley visits his estranged, adult daughter, who's a lawyer practicing in Los Angeles. Well, it's been 40 years since the first "Beverly Hills Cop" movie and 30 years since the last one got released, so sure, it's possible that he might have an adult daughter now, but it's still weird that there was no mention of a daughter before, and can you be a lawyer at the age of 30?  She had to have been born RIGHT after the end of "Beverly Hills Cop III", and was Axel even in a relationship then?  You can cram this character's back-story into those missing years, but it still feels a bit forced.  

It feels like somebody wanted the franchise to return to form, sure, maybe the third film felt a little bit off-track, but does that justify using the exact same soundtrack here as was heard in the first film?  Seriously, in the first 30 minutes of this sequel we hear "The Heat Is On" by Glenn Frey, "Shakedown" by Bob Seger and "The Neutron Dance" by the Pointer Sisters. And you know that "Axel F" theme by Harold Faltermeyer won't be far behind - did nobody write any new music since 1984?  Does somebody get a discount if they go back to the same artists and songwriters?  Or is this just a quick short-hand way to try to evoke the feeling of the first film?  I'll bet even the biggest fans of this franchise would have been OK with never hearing "Neutron Dance" again, just saying.  

Look, it's been a while since I watched any of the "Beverly Hills Cop" films, I think maybe I watched the first one the most over the years, and maybe I watched the third one once?  Don't worry, all the old characters are back in action for (maybe) the last time - Taggart, Billy Rosewood, and Chief Friedman back in Detroit. Even Serge shows up, he was that fashion designer who talked funny and the filmmakers believed that he was very popular somehow.  I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it, just add the adult daughter, her ex-boyfriend who is also a cop, and a bunch of corrupt policemen who deal cocaine, which is another throwback to the 80's. We couldn't find a more recent drug than coke?  Not fentanyl or meth or semaglutides?  Botox? (It is Beverly Hills, after all...) Ketamine's having a moment right now, why not that?  Right, we don't want to mess up the 80's throwback vibe.  

I feel like this franchise did the dirty cop thing already, though - and I didn't have any trouble guessing who the big villain here is, I guessed it from just one glance at the cast list, and you probably will too. You just don't hire THAT actor unless you're going to give him a big role and let him play a villain, it's kind of like "X-Men: First Class" in that regard. Axel Foley probably figured out who the dirty cop was five minutes after he got off the plane from Detroit, what took him entirely too long, however, was figuring out that his friend Billy had been kidnapped, for some reason he had to leave unanswered voice mails for FIVE DAYS before he even considered that possibility.  

Axel's daughter is in danger because she's representing a client accused of murdering an undercover police officer, and Billy Rosewood contacted Axel because of that, and apparently he's the one with evidence that proves her client is innocent, because the dirty cop drug and money-laundering cartel is really responsible. Only now he's missing and nobody else knows where the evidence is.  After the film's second destructive car chase through city streets, Axel is arrested, even though he should be a legendary honored guest in Beverly Hills by now. The fact that he isn't is something of a NITPICK POINT, like he should either be on good terms with the L.A.P.D. or not, the story can't have it both ways. To create the conflict, Taggart needs to be an honest precinct captain who somehow believes in the wrong people, and that's the plot straining itself by bending over backwards to make this happen. 

The fences all need to be mended here - between Taggart and Rosewood, between Axel Foley and his daughter, Jane, who doesn't even use his last name, and jeez it might have just been simpler if we could have started the story in a better place, everyone just could have gotten a lot more done instead of having to take all this time to re-hash their past mistakes.  Same thing with Jane and her ex-boyfriend, Detective Abbott. They've got to fix THAT relationship, too, so why don't we just have one big therapy group for everybody so they can all get over themselves and get some police work done, OK?  This is even worse than "Bad Boys: Ride or Die", with all this family stuff getting in the way of locking up the criminals. 

Eventually Mr. Foley acts like a Dad again, even if it's for the first time. In the big climactic shoot-out, he jumps in front of his daughter and takes a bullet for her. It's a nice gesture, even if it means the rest of the movie is going to be hospital scenes while he recovers and he may not be headed back to Detroit at the end. Good, because apparently everyone in Beverly Hills tends to forget about him when he's not there. It might be well past time for Axel to retire from police work and just move to California for good, as both the actor and the character must be in their 60's. 

Directed by Mark Molloy

Also starring Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (last seen in "Havoc" (2005)), Taylour Paige (last seen in "Brothers"), Judge Reinhold (last seen in "Gremlins"), John Ashton (last seen in "Middle Men"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "I Do... Until I Don't"), Bronson Pinchot (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Belushi"), Damien Diaz, Mark Pellegrino (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Christopher McDonald (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Tony Jones, Ed Cali, Brandon Edward Butler, Kyle S. More (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Kenneth Nance Jr. (last seen in "The Front Runner"), D.A. Obahor (last seen in "57 Seconds"), Jon Lee Richardson, Bee-Be Smith (last seen in "Bulworth"), Keith Pillow, Christopher Matthew Cook (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part One; A Child of Fire"), Princess Elmore (last seen in "Till"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Father Stu"), Daniel Kaemon, Walter Belenky, David Rowden, Joseph Aviel (last seen in "Divergent'), James Preston Rogers (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Chantal Nchako, Bria L. Murphy, Giovannie Cruz, Sean Liang, Natalie Ford, Deon Griffin, Suzanne Ford (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Nasim Pedrad (last seen in "Desperados"), Sarah Abrell, Affion Crockett (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 car doors knocked off by a snowplow

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Year 17, Day 161 - 6/10/25 - Movie #5,044 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #3

BEFORE: I'm going to allow this one to join the others and be classified as a Father's Day film - it wasn't planned that way, but by coincidence it does seem to fit with the theme. A young man has to team up with his stepfather to find his grandfather on the Mysterious Island, so I think it fits, since step-fathers are also fathers. Grandfathers are also fathers, but hey, they have their own day, which is in September, but maybe I can accommodate them here as well.

Josh Hutcherson carries over again from "57 Seconds". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (Movie #526)

THE PLOT: Sean Anderson partners with his mom's husband on a mission to find his grandfather, who is thought to be missing on a mythical island. 

AFTER: Wow, it's been a long time since I watched the first film, 14 years I think. This sequel came out two years after that, and for some reason I just couldn't be bothered to follow up. Something popped the film back up on my radar, I guess it was running on cable again, and I thought, "Well, why not?" and a few days later I realized how important it would be to my linking -it's funny how stuff like that works out. 

This film feels like it's aimed at a very specific age group, because if you're an adult you might find everything very ridiculous, but if you're too young you might not get the references to "Gulliver's Travels" and the Jules Verne novels, so maybe like 13 to 15 years old is the target demographic?  Some things came straight out of the novel "The Mysterious Island", like Captain Nemo storing his Nautilus submarine at this island, the book was planned as a semi-sequel to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", even though the movie serves as a sequel to the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" film from 2008. (In an odd coincidence, Brendan Fraser was at the theater I work in tonight, interviewing Ellen Burstyn after an anniversary screening of "Requiem for a Dream". 

Look, things don't have to really make sense if the film is a lot of fun, and well, this one TRIES very hard to be a lot of fun. Sometimes it succeeds, I guess, but the 3-D effects often get in the way, Of course you can't see 3-D effects on your home TV, so now the reason for an electric eel speeding RIGHT toward the camera is gone, however the image is locked in now and can't be changed. Same goes for the underwater boulders, the torpedo fired from the submarine, and the berries bouncing off of The Rock's pecs. (I wish I were kidding about this.). 

This island is also a place where big animals are small and small animals are now enormous, however this seems like a very inconsistent ecosystem. If the elephants are the size of cats and the lizards are the size of dinosaurs, how did this come about?  Did evolution work differently on this island, wouldn't that have produced entirely different animals rather than ones we know which are just sized differently?  Do the giant bees eat tiny elephants?  And if the bees are bigger than people, how big are the birds that eat the bees? And how can they fly if they're that big?  Also, NITPICK POINT, if the island sinks every 140 years, doesn't that kill off all the mammal and insect species that live there? Tiny elephants can't suddenly become aquatic for a few decades while they're waiting for the island to rise up and become dry land again, thanks to some rotating tectonic plate or whatever. 

I think this was the first "jungle" movie with The Rock in it, and then later on came two "Jumanji" films, plus "Rampage" and then "Jungle Cruise", but here is where the trend started. Right? 

Directed by Brad Peyton (director of "Rampage", "San Andreas")

Also starring Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Michael Caine (last seen in "A Shock to the System"), Luis Guzman (last seen in "Havoc" (2025)), Vanessa Hudgens (last seen in "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"), Kristin Davis (last seen in "Couples Retreat"), Anna Colwell (last seen in "Blended"), Stephen Caudill, Branscombe Richmond (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Walter Bankson (last seen in "The Conspirator")

RATING: 5 out of 10 tiny elephants

57 Seconds

Year 17, Day 160 - 6/9/25 - Movie #5,043

BEFORE: Just two weeks to go now until I start my Doc Block, then I'll be on docs for a month and a half - really, a lot can go wrong in a month and a half, all it takes is one person NOT being in a movie but also appearing in the IMDB cast list to throw me off. But I've got back-up connections a lot of the time, and I've been very careful about placing the docs in a very specific order to minimize the risk. Two iterations ago the documentary list was a little higgledy-piggledy, the order made sense to me but with regards to subject matter it kind of zigzagged all over the place. With the most recent additions some things needed to move around, and I think that kind of helped make it more organized, now it starts on actors, moves to politics, a quick stop on sports before moving over to rock music, then after a detour to animators and illustrators it's on to comedians, I'll wrap up with a mixed bag of a reality star, a newscaster, a film director and a film composer.  I hesitate to say that it's the "best" line-up I could put together, but now I think it makes sense both internally and externally.  

(If any film festival organizers are paying attention, I am available for hire....that's the dream job, anyway)

John Hutcherson carries over from "Five Nights at Freddy's".  

THE PLOT: When a tech blogger lands an interview with a tech guru and stops an attack on him, he finds a mysterious ring that takes him back 57 seconds into the past. 

AFTER: I'm chipping away at the time travel movies, but it is not easy, they can be very difficult to link to.  I've been trying to get to the sequels to "The Butterfly Effect" for over a decade, there's just no carry-over between them, and even treating them like horror movies wouldn't help at this point - if a film links to one "Final Destination" film and one "Saw" film, that's just not going to do it. I lucked out and one of my romance films this year turned out to be a time-travel film (umm, I think) but I'm not telling you which one, because the film didn't lead with that, and no spoilers. Then there's "Paradox", "Synchronicity", "Time Cut", "Omni Loop" and four or give others, I may have to design a chain specifically for the purpose of linking these together if I want to get them watched.

But that's a problem for another day - "57 Seconds" is a time travel film set in the world of billionaire tech moguls and pharmaceutical companies, two CEOs are at war with each other because one single-handedly created the opioid crisis that killed Franklin's sister, and the other wants to solve America's health problems by selling everyone a metal arm-band, kind of like a FitBit only it somehow makes you want to eat right and exercise more, but no, it's not mind control or anything like that except somehow it probably is.  Even if it's just tracking your fitness level and caloric intake and blood sugar level and transmitting that data to some kind of central server, isn't that bad enough? 

Anton Burrell (aka the "good" CEO) wants to make everyone healthier, while of course collecting all their sweet, sweet data points, but what about accidents?  People can still die in car crashes, plane crashes, freak skateboard accidents, but he's got a plan for that too, because the next generation of the Tri-Bands are going to use quantum crystals to stop accidents before they happen, or rather right after, by making sure they then DIDN'T happen. Gee, that sounds a lot like rewinding time, or how Nicolas Cage could look one minute into the future in the movie "Next" and then quickly change what was about to happen. It makes sense, Josh Hutcherson's film yesterday echoed the Nic Cage film "Willy's Wonderland" and now this, so probably he's planning to appear next in a film where he has to steal the U.S. Constitution from the National Archives because it has a treasure map on it. 

After saving Burrell from an assassin, tech blogger Franklin secures an interview with him, but also finds a strange ring on the floor after, which he soon learns can send him 57 seconds back into the past, which is really just enough time to fix one mistake, at least most of the time. But with repeated uses (thankfully the ring doesn't take 7 minutes to recharge) he can test many different ways to solve a problem, and only keep the one that worked. Somehow this tiny ring effects all time everywhere in the universe, and of course scientifically that's impossible, because of, you know, the continuum of space-time, at best it would only be able to create a localized time fluctuation that would radiate out from him at the central point, but it would take minutes to reach out and affect time across the planet, and who knows, perhaps repeated uses would poke some kind of hole in the fabric of the universe, and well, that's probably not good.

Franklin definitely heard Burrell talk about "quantum crystals" during that interview, but he never really puts two and two together here and figures out that it's Burrell's ring - because then he'd have to give it back, and he's having too much fun winning casino games and testing out sex moves on his girlfriend, much like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" when he robs the armored car and tries to impress Andie MacDowell. Sure, that's basic human nature, right, what can time travel do FOR ME?  But eventually once he's got the money and the girl, he sets his sights on the Big Pharma exec who killed his sister. 

Sig Thorensen (aka the "Bad" CEO) offers Franklin a job once he sees how "lucky" he is at the casino - sure, because the pharma companies often recruit from casino footage, right?  If he can win roulette four times in a row, surely he can write some positive articles on the web about the company that made addictive painkillers (?). Franklin takes the job so he can bring the company down from the inside, but after a couple months his girlfriend is wondering about his motives. Well, sure, she still thinks he's making money from the job, because Franklin hasn't clued her in about the time travel ring. If she knew he used the ring to make her fall in love with him, would she still love him?  I guess we'll never know.  

Once Franklin finally has the dirt on Thorensen, and makes it public on the Jumbotron at a sporting event (this also makes no sense) the CEO takes off in his private jet, with Franklin along for the ride. The ring turns out to be pretty useless when the plane's about to crash, because it can only rewind 57 seconds and the plane ride is much longer than that. Whoopsie.  

The ending is somewhat reminiscent of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", and the ring is like the everlasting gobstopper. Franklin should have given it back to Burrell when he had the chance, in other words. Now he doesn't get to run the chocolate factory, but, well, it turns out he doesn't even want to. Time travel turns out to be just as addictive as painkillers, which I think is some kind of a mixed metaphor, but I guess we'll never really know that for sure either. There's so much here that never gets explained properly, like who is that weird guy in the hood, and WHY is that weird guy in the hood. If he's a precog, then why do we even need the time travel ring? 

Directed by Rusty Cundieff (one of the directors of "Movie 43")

Also starring Morgan Freeman (last heard in "Conan the Barbarian" (2011)), Greg Germann (last seen in "Sweet November"), Lovie Simone (last seen in "Monster"), Bevin Bru, Sammi Rotibi (last seen in "The Forever Purge"), Mark Jacobson, Griff Furst (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), D.A. Obahor (last seen in "The Starling"), Jeff Chase (last seen in "Transporter 2"), Aaron Jay Rome (last seen in "The Dirt"), Marcus Lyle Brown (last seen in "Eve's Bayou"), Kenneth Kynt Bryan (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), Lucius Baston (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Matthew Jayson Cwern, Mary Drew Ahrens, Valerie Lamb, Thomas P. Vitale, Rusty Cundieff, Jaida Standberry, Daniel Louis Rivas (last seen in "Sid and Nancy"), Robert Tre Francis, Gage Nelson

RATING: 4 out of 10 police cars on the runway

Five Nights at Freddy's

Year 17, Day 159 - 6/8/25 - Movie #5,042

BEFORE: Guys, yesterday at Tribeca Film Festival, things were just plain crazy - the rain poured down for a couple hours, completely soaking the red carpet, which was in a tent outside the theater. The theaters were cool, but the A/C unit in the lobby wasn't working right so that meant it was not only super humid, but way too warm, and even though I wasn't wet from the rain, I was inside sweating most of the day, since I only work there, I can't afford a ticket. (Anyway, who needs a ticket when I have a backstage pass?) Seriously, though, I worked a 15-hour shift and got home after 2 am, we had 7 screenings at the theater so all day long we were either moving people in, moving people out or fixing broken things while waiting to move the next group of people in or out, I forget which. I need a day just to recover, so thankfully I'm only working like every other day.  

Celebrities were all around, I was standing a few feet from Riz Ahmed, so there's another Star Wars actor for my life list (I already have his autograph on a "Rogue One" 8x10) but also Lily James was there, Paris Hilton on the red carpet, and I saw Peter Gallagher and Michael Gandolfini in the lobby. The last film of the day was "The Trainer", directed by Tony Kaye, and well, people were either very entertained by it, or very confused, maybe a little of both. But before that film screened, I saw Colleen Camp as she came to the show, now most people might not recognize her because it's been a few years since "Clue" and she doesn't really look the same as she did in that film. It's OK, people get older, even actresses, I met Annette Bening and Kathleen Turner at that screening of "Nyad", and I didn't expect them to look like they did in "The Grifters" and "Body Heat".  

Speaking of which, Mary Stuart Masterson moves forward in time 37 years as she carries over from "At Close Range". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Willy's Wonderland" (Movie #4,093)

THE PLOT: A troubled security guard begins working at a shuttered Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and during his five nights on the job, he realizes that something is wrong with the pizzeria and discovers the truth about its animatronic characters. 

AFTER: Sure, this may count as a horror film, and I usually confine those to October, but that rule only stands firm until I need one of those films to make the connections I need to make. I remember watching one of the "Alien" films outside of October, several others over the years, so all rules are made to be broken, if needed. This is why I've got all my horror films on a separate sheet, so I can start making connections among them to try to pre-determine which ones will help me form a good chain this October, and any films that DON'T connect to other horror films, well, they can be moved easily, like a loose brick that's needed in another part of the wall. I did learn too late that this film DOES connect to "Renfield", but it's OK, I'm going to try to watch that film this year, and I've already got it secured on both sides in a potential chain.  

I did work at a screening of this film on Halloween in 2023, for the Visual Effects Society, but they also open up their screenings to the students at the School of Visual Arts, so a lot of them came in costume to celebrate Halloween by watching a movie before, I assume, going out to party - well, they're too old for trick or treating, so why not?  They seemed to have a good time, so I felt good about adding this film to my list - and better to watch it now than to let it sit on my list for three or four Octobers while I try to link to it. 

But even back in 2023, I was thinking, do we really NEED a second film about demonic, out-of-control animatronic animals at a shuttered pizza restaurant that's clearly a riff on Chuck E. Cheese's?  We already had "Willy's Wonderland", and I just figured that would be the last word on that topic, especially considering that it was a film with Nicolas Cage where he battled those demonic robots and never spoke a word during the whole movie, thus accidentally perhaps creating the quintessential Nic Cage action movie?  Aren't we just gilding the lily now if we allow there to be a second horror take on Chuck E. Cheese robots?  

Well, I'm glad to report this is a completely different film, with a different take on those robots - the two films just used the same jumping-off point for inspiration, and Nicolas Cage is nowhere to be seen tonight. Anyway, "Five Nights at Freddy's" is based on a video-game, which itself was based on Chuck E. Cheese's, so yeah, totally a different animal. Instead of Cage, we have Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt, a man raising his young sister after the death of their parents, however he's haunted by the memory of his little brother being abducted years ago, and being unable to stop it. His brother was never found, neither was the man who took him (gee, I wonder if that fact will be important later...) and Mike can't seem to hold down a job as a security guard, because he's overly cautious and mistakenly accuses a father of being a kidnapper.  

But if Mike doesn't have a steady job, then his aunt Jane intends to file for custody of his sister, Abby, and threatens to prove to social services that she can provide a better life for Abby, however Mike suspects that she only wants the monthly custody payments. Either way, he takes the job guarding the abandoned, shuttered pizza restaurant at night, but can't quite understand why the building's owner won't sell it OR re-open it AND still spends money to maintain it and protect it. I admit, there are a few properties like that in NYC, one was the "Goodfellas" diner, not far from where I live, which was prominently featured in that Scorsese film, as well as several more recent movies ("Going in Style" for one) however it's only been used as a set in the last decade, it hasn't served any food in a long time, but the owner refused to tear it down because of nostalgia, and also the parking lot made a good place to park illegal RVs. Well, it finally burned down about a month ago, so that's that, I guess. We still have the other diner seen in that film (the one with the "Airline Diner" neon sign) but that's been a Jackson Hole burger place for years.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Freddy Fazbear's. There is an explanation why people want to leave the place alone, it's because of all those missing kids. Wait, what?  That should be a reason for the local populace to tear the place down themselves, or at least call for their elected officials to do so. Again this doesn't make sense, because if some bad nastiness went down there years ago, it makes more sense to bulldoze the place than to spend money maintaining it, guarding it and just letting it take up space instead of re-developing the property. Right? So really, it's a mystery why this place is still standing, but hell, I say that about Chuck E. Cheese's, too, which somehow survived bankruptcy and still has 676 locations worldwide, only fewer than 50 of them still have some kind of animatronic show. I've never eaten in one because I don't have kids and I live in the pizza capital of the world (sorry, Chicago) so there's no need. Anyway I was born too soon, all we had was McDonald's play-places. 

While on duty at night, Mike seems to be vulnerable to falling asleep and dreaming about his lost brother, there's something about the place that sparks these dreams. A new twist to the recurring dream is that he meets five children who run away when he tries to ask them for information, hmm, could they be connected to the other missing kids from the past that the attractive police officer conveniently mentioned?  Soon after, we learn that Mike's babysitter is on his aunt's payroll, she's been hired to find evidence that Mike should lose custody, only there is none, so Aunt Janet sends her and her brother to vandalize the pizzeria so Mike will get blamed for not preventing this, lose his job and Jane can file for custody of Abby. (How can you tell when a broken-down pizzeria gets vandalized?)  It doesn't work, however, because the animatronic characters protect the restaurant and kill the vandals - ah, so something clearly is up here, but what?  

No spoilers here, but maybe that helpful police officer knows more than she's saying - also there aren't that many characters here, so it's not TOO difficult to figure out the real villain, it's kind of like on the first 20 seasons of "Law & Order" if there was a notable actor listed in the credits, it was a safe bet their character would turn out to be the murderer. There's also a reason why this could fit in with Father's Day programming, but I'm just not going to label it as such. There are a few twists and turns along the way, and a fair number of jump-scares - and this film MADE money, there is also a sequel planned for, damn, later this year.  Maybe I should have held off - nah, it's better to cross this one off, especially if the sequel's coming in December, that's after the usual horror month. Better to watch this now and worry about the sequel later. 

Directed by Emma Tammi

Also starring Josh Hutcherson (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard (last heard in "Scream" (2022)), Kat Conner Sterling (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), David Lind, Christian Stokes (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), Joseph Poliquin (last seen in "Project Power"), Grant Feely, Asher Colton Spence, David Houston Doty, Liam Hendrix, Jophielle Love (also last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Michael P. Sullivan (ditto), Tadasay Young (last seen in "The Hunt"), Wyatt Parker (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Lucas Grant, Jessica Blackmore, Garrett Hines (last seen in "Strays"), Ryan Reinike, Theodus Crane, Julia Belanova, Lisa Mackel Smith, Xander Mateo, Matthew Patrick, Bailey Winston, Gralen Bryant Banks (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), Cory Williams, Victoria Patenaude

RATING: 5 out of 10 colored markers