Poor Things

Year 17, Day 263 - 9/20/25 - Movie #5,147

BEFORE: I've still got a little bit of time before the October horror chain starts - I can chip away at that list of Oscar winners and Oscar-nominated films, because really that should be the polestar here, any time there's a chance to work one of those in I should take it, otherwise what the heck am I doing here?  I'll still have like 28 films left on that list from 2024, but only like 8 from the previous two years. 20 films left from 2021, that's proving to be a tough bunch of films to get to - like "Coda" won Best Picture but I have not been able to get to it. Of course, the fact that it's on Apple TV doesn't help, that's like the one streaming service I can't get to, not without signing up for a free trial and then cancelling, again.

Ramy Youssef carries over from "Mountainhead". I took so long getting to "Poor Things" that the director went ahead and made another film the next year, so I'll get to that one tomorrow, as there's a few people who will then carry over. 

THE PLOT: An account of the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. 

AFTER: Of course I made it a top priority to get to this movie, once it appeared on Hulu - but those were just good intentions, because it took me what, 18 months to get to it? February of 2024 it premiered on Hulu, and well, I've been busy or the linking just wasn't there, take your pick. I suppose it didn't help that I dropped "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" in to the horror chain last October, that took away Willem Dafoe as a possible link. Plus this film wasn't listed as a horror film, and isn't it? Kinda sorta? I mean, we're talking about a brain transplant into a dead body and re-animating that, how is that not the "Frankenstein" story, just gender-swapped and turned into an elegant-looking dark comedy? Mad scientist, check. A creature who is only marginally self-aware and causes harm to others? Check. 

But, of course, there are massive differences - just as Mary Shelley took the Prometheus myth and changed it all around to make "Frankenstein", that book was possibly just a jumping-off point so Yorgos Lanthimos so he could take it in a completely new direction. I'd love to know the workshopping or the focus group that brought this story to life - was it "What if the monster was a woman?" or "What if Frankenstein's monster had the brain of a baby?" or "What if you dated a reanimated corpse, what would happen?" And there's an entirely different point to telling this story, like "Frankenstein" was all about how science could get out of control, and how the scientist was the REAL monster because he messed with the natural order of life and death. 

There's maybe a little bit of that left here, like a vestigial amount perhaps, because the scientist is named "Godwin" and Bella just calls him "God" for short, ah I see what you did there, the symbolism of science replacing religion or at least being in contrast to it. But we're not here for that, because really the elevator pitch is "What if Frankenstein were a sex comedy?" and all the valid points about the absurdities of human relationships kind of spins out of control from that. Plus throw in body horror, steampunk and absurdism and you'll realize there's really a lot going on here. 

Somebody thought a lot about this, if you put the brain of a baby in the body of a woman, how would she act? How would she walk, how would she dance (other than poorly) and how would she relate to other humans? How much would she understand about life, and how long would you be able to keep her sheltered before she wants to go out and explore the world. What happens when she discovers gourmet food, alcohol, and sex? What could possibly go wrong, other than everything? Really, I'm there for it, and I kept thinking back to the director's previous film, "The Lobster", about a society where single people are sent to dating camps and if they can't find their mate within 30 days then they are surgically turned into an animal of their choosing, which is of course bonkers, but the story had something to say about relationships and how ridiculous it is to expect EVERYONE to find their person in a particular amount of time. Look, it happens when it happens, you can help it along but you can't force it. Also, it's really OK to be single if that's what life has in store for you, or the way you want to live, you don't have to kill yourself if you're not partnered up. That was my take-away, other answers may be possible.

So I think, amazingly, there's some semi-decent relationship advice we can find here, even though NONE of us have dated a person who was dead and then got a brain transplant from a baby and got re-animated. Right? But if we just think of her as someone who is bad at relationships because she just doesn't know any other way to be, this suddenly becomes a lot more relatable. Remember when you awkwardly discovered about touching yourself? You had no idea what you were doing, you just know it felt good and you wanted to keep doing it. Same time the first time you had a partner, maybe you had a lot of uncertainty, but similarly it felt good for you and your partner, and you wanted to keep doing it. Now just remove all the hang-ups that were placed on you by your parents or religious leaders or teachers - or, possibly, all of the above - and you kind of get Bella Baxter, she's like a kid with a new toy and she wants to keep playing. "Furious jumping" she calls it, and she wants more with different people, and she's not bound by any moral code. I almost wish we could all be that free, but I know it would be chaos. 

Without morality, she's got no concept of what "cheating" is or why it's bad, same goes for promiscuity, STDs, self-control, politeness, embarrassment, shame - without these things, you have to figure sex would be more rampant and life would be better, across the board, right? Mainly because you'd be having sex whenever possible and then not getting into trouble in other ways, there just wouldn't be time. Plus sex is kind of like exercise so you'd probably slim down because of boning all the time, plus less time to eat. Oh, yeah, Bella also eats a lot of luxurious food, again, no self-control, so let's assume that all that sex keeps her fit and one problem kind of takes care of the other. 

But by definition, she's also a sociopath, because she doesn't care what other people think of her, or how she's hurting her fiancé by having sex with other people, running off on adventures with another man. Also, this isn't fair to Duncan, the other man, because here he is having all this sex with her and he didn't know she was even engaged. Now Duncan knows he can't have Bella, not fully, and it drives him crazy. Literally, he ends up in a looney bin. But before that she leaves him alone, gives away all his gambling winnings, and they get stranded in Paris without any money. 

This leads Bella to a rather fancy establishment where she finds work, only it's a whorehouse. Well, when you remove all the moral guardrails, logically it's a place where she can make money doing something she LOVES to do, and as long as the hours aren't too strenuous, sure, it seems like a perfect plan. She can even meet a whole bunch of interesting people and work on her social skills, which have been lacking, let's face it. But eventually she gets bored after she's had sex with everyone in Paris, male or female, so finally she has enough money to go back to London (?) and check in on her creator, God, only to find that he's dying from cancer. 

There's a lot more to the story, I've really only scratched the surface here, and this one runs deep. I really want to learn more about how this wacko story came to be, because I think it's got a lot to say, metaphorically. Am I reading it right? I honestly have no idea, perhaps it's so rich in meaning that different people are going to see their own experiences reflected back to them, or things that remind them of relationships they had, and so I think different people are going to walk away from this film with different inspirations. Maybe I can say that about a lot of movies, but it feels really applicable here. Maybe you were the faithful one while someone who had no moral code cheated on you, or maybe you were the cheater and you blew a relationship up and moved on when it felt right. Maybe you just THOUGHT about it but you agonized over the implications so much that you stayed too long, and you fantasized about burning your life to the ground and started over. We've all been in situations that were maybe close to what's depicted here, at least in spirit even if the details don't all line up. 

In the larger scale, what is life but a journey during which we learn something new at each stop on the itinerary from the people who we meet there?  Some destinations will be to our liking, in other places we may not be so well received, but if things don't go your way, you can always move on to the next stop or you can always end the trip and head back home, it's up to you. You're the captain of your own ship, ideally, and you need to be in charge of where it's going, if not then other people are going to determine that for you, and you may not be as happy. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. Punch a higher floor. Cut the bad people out of your life and move on, or give them a transplanted animal brain if you're feeling particularly vindictive. 

I think I'm right here, but I'm going to go to IMDB and Wiki to check, the film is about living by your own rules, not the ones that everybody says you have to follow. Right? I'm a little concerned only because so many young people right now are already DOING this, like sure, I support trans rights and people becoming influencers and breakfastarians and furries and atheists and whatever else they can think of, but then I'm only worried about what's going to happen when everybody gets to live the life they want to lead and they STILL don't feel satisfied. What happens then? I have no idea but something tells me I don't think I want to find out. 

But in the meantime, this film feels like Mary Shelley and John Waters and Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam and, OK, while we're at it, Woody Allen and David Cronenburg all came together and made a steampunk sex comedy with a bunch of body horror in it. And somehow all of that...works? I can't explain it. What do you get when you mix "Frankenstein" and "Alice in Wonderland" with "Emmanuelle"?

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (director of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", "The Favourite" and "The Lobster")

Also starring Emma Stone (last seen in "Cruella"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Christopher Abbott (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Kathryn Hunter (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Vicki Pepperdine (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Margaret Qualley (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Hanna Schygulla, Keeley Forsyth (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), John Locke (last seen in "Cyrano"), Kate Handford, Owen Good, Damien Bonnard (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Tom Stourton (last seen in "Barbie"), Raphael Thiery, Wayne Brett (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Carminho, Jerskin Fendrix, Jack Barton, Charlie Hiscock (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Attila Dobal, Attila Kecskemethy, Vivienne Soan, Istvan Goz (last seen in "The Debt"), Jeremy Wheeler (last seen in "The Brutalist"), Laurent Winkler (ditto), Patrick de Valette, Boris Gillot, Yorgos Stefanakos, Hubert Benhamdine, Laurent Borel, Gabor Patay, Andrew Hefler (last seen in "Season of the Witch"), David Bromley (last seen in "Tolkien"), Roderick Hill (last seen in "Infinity Pool")

RATING: 8 out of 10 oysters at the raw bar

Mountainhead

Year 17, Day 262 - 9/19/25 - Movie #5,146

BEFORE: Well, it's sure been a crazy week, right? Even crazier if you watch the news - and some of us are old enough to remember when there was only ONE kind of news, and it was called "The News". Now we have liberal news, conservative news, fake news, AI generated news, news from corporations owned by billionaires, and we're not even getting into content here, just the slants and the decisions made to kill certain stories, which is really just another form of censorship. But it's like the black mold in our nation's house, is the thing that you don't see that is allowed to grow and fester and it will, eventually find its way into the foundation of the house, meaning that we'll all either have to move or burn it to the ground and rebuild. 

Maybe we'll remember that this was the week that free speech was put down, because we now have a country where the government is able to shut down any TV show where the material makes fun of the ruling party or the commander-in-chief, and this is 20 different ways of wrong, like we knew it could get this bad but we all didn't want to believe it. But you madmen just had to. re-elect him and blow the whole thing up, didn't you?  I will keep broadcasting as long as I can, but we're in a "Lord of the Flies" situation for sure, I myself have written posts that mock the President, many in limerick form, so I've hidden behind the veil of anonymity for exactly this reason, they can't shut me down if they don't know who I am. 

Anyone who said they would move out of the country if Trump got re-elected and then did NOT follow through is probably regretting that decision right now. He's got a goon squad that can pop up in any city he doesn't like, he can get anyone cancelled for saying bad things about him, meanwhile he can continue saying bad things about THAT person, or anyone else, with no repercussions at all. That hardly seems fair. Also he gets to choose which parts of the Constitution he wants to uphold and defend, and which parts he gets to ignore. Again, doesn't seem right, but what do I know, I'm not a Constitutional scholar, just someone who said this day would get here eventually.

During the first term we gave up our freedoms voluntarily because of the pandemic - the right to assemble, the right to pursue happiness, the basic liberty of leaving the house just to run around the corner to get a sandwich, but we did this because it wasn't safe. People did not like it, I get that - but now we're losing the right to watch what we want to watch, say what we want to say and believe what we want to believe, because of one man with a fragile ego. People SHOULD not be liking this at all, I'm just wondering now when someone's going to do something about it. Sad to say, it's still not safe out there, and I don't imagine it will be for some time. 

Hadley Robinson carries over from "The Boys in the Boat". After this I'm going to go stock up on some toilet paper, it might be that time again. 

THE PLOT: Four tech millionaire friends reunite during worldwide economic turmoil. 

AFTER: This is a film designed to prove to you that the 1% of the people who own about 31% of the nation's net worth aren't just part of the problem, they ARE the problem. I guess there will always be a top 1%, no matter how you slice it, but come on, you know who I'm talking about, people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, some guy named Larry Ellison and so on. They've got their money in all sorts of companies across technology, social media and e-commerce, and really the only thing that can lessen their fortunes, as we've seen with Bill Gates and Bezos, is divorce without a pre-nup. So they are vulnerable, just saying. 

We don't know what they do with their time, we don't know where they go when they want to kick back, we don't know if they gather together and play poker in beautiful mountaintop hideaways, and we don't know if they have any feelings or soul left if there is hardship or disaster somewhere else in the world. Is there any trace left in them of the humans that they used to be, or does nothing really matter to them, which would technically fit the definition of sociopaths? When the excrement really hits the fan, would they be there to help or would they just sit back and watch the world burn, while figuring out what land they could buy on the cheap after the collapse of society? Probably the latter, right?  

This was supposed to be a semi-regular poker night, four long-time friends who also happen to be rich CEOs in the tech world - and they're NOT supposed to be talking business at this mountain hideaway, the three rules are "no deals, no meals, no high heels". Meaning leave the women at home (sexist) and only food that's portable, like sandwiches (meal-ist?) but these guys can't stop being who they are, just by getting together they see ways that one guy's new app could really be useful if he partnered with the other guy's business, they can't just turn off who they are, plus they also go on a hike to the top of the mountain so they could write their net worths on each other's chests and also scream their secret non-regulatory desires into the open air as a way of manifesting them. And they're friends, so there's totally no competition or shaming of the guy who's only a multi-millionaire and NOT a billionaire. Yeah, right, because that's totally what happens. 

One of the guys runs an AI company, so one guess over who's responsible for the chaos around the globe. Somebody in one company used his app to depict the citizens of another company killing and raping people, and now things have turned to crap, and wars are popping up, and people are dying FOR REAL over fake news, but no, I don't think we need to do anything, this is just the marketplace going through a correction phase. Pass me another sandwich, would you? Guys, this COULD happen, we have the technology now to make a deepfake AI video of one world leader declaring war on another world leader, and do you really believe that we could somehow fix that before the missiles start flying?  And the flip-side of this is that we could have video of some other world leader doing something very very BAD, like killing a nun or raping a child, and they can then just say, "Oh, that's AI" and we won't be able to prove that it's NOT. 

Great, welcome to the future, everyone, I hope you brought enough sandwiches. Remember a few weeks ago when Putin got caught on a hot mike talking to the premier of China, and what they were discussing was the possibility of harvesting organs from common folk so that they could live forever? This is where tech is heading, and there are very few guardrails on that now, too. Meanwhile our own government has gutted the Department of Health & Human Services and fired everyone who thinks that vaccines are a good idea and don't cause autism. Scared yet? Remember that in the before times Trump disbanded the pandemic crisis response team, a year or two before we had an ACTUAL pandemic. Why, it's almost like one thing caused the other, or at least made it a whole lot worse, but that's crazy, plus I could get shut down for just suggesting that, so I would never draw that completely correct conclusion. 

Meanwhile, back at Mountainhead (which they point out rhymes with "Fountainhead", but I wish I knew enough about Ayn Rand to see the implications there...) three of the tech bros are tossing out ideas for the future, maybe getting to a point where society can go "post-human", like maybe with the right moves now, in ten years we could get to a point where someone's consciousness could be uploaded to a computer or live in the cloud or something, which would mean they would kind of live forever. This is very attractive to one of the billionaires because he has a disease and despite his doctor saying he could live 20 more years, he feels his days are numbered and wants to take steps to be that first guy to live on digitally. 

After discussing a few other scenarios (including shrinking people down to tiny size, like in that movie "Downsizing"), they realize that the fourth guy's technology is counter to this bizarre future plan, but in a way that I didn't quite understand. I guess these sociopaths actually want to accelerate the growing chaos around the world so society will fully collapse and they can replace it with a global technocratic dictatorship - you know, like you do. But Jeff's app, Bilter, is the fact-checking app, kind of like the counter to AI, like it can tell you what's real news and what is fake news. Well, that kind of goes against the plans of the other three guys, so they determine that they have to kill their friend Jeff - again, like you do. So I guess this is supposed to be a comedy of sorts, as these three privileged CEOs have no idea how to kill somebody, or what to do after that, like how do they hide the body or how do they disguise the fact that Jeff was stabbed or suffocated or had a bowling ball dropped on his head? It's a little funny that they have no idea and they don't let that stop them, but then when you think about it, it's not really funny at all. 

I guess whether you view this as a comedy or as a horror film really depends on what happens in the future - so I have to leave it for the next generation to decide. Perhaps once you put all this out into the world, reality will follow suit, life will imitate art in some fashion. Or this will be regarded as a warning sign and people will take steps to ensure this never happens, it's really tough to say.  

Directed by Jesse Armstrong (writer of "Downhill")

Also starring Steve Carell (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Cory Michael Smith (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Ramy Youssef (last heard in "Wish"), Daniel Oreskes (last seen in "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999)), David Thompson (last seen in "Win Win"), Ali Kinkade, Ava Kostia, Alex Pena, Amie MacKenzie, Larkin Bell, Capri Eaton, Emmi Eaton, Andy Daly (last seen in "Unfrosted"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 smoothies

The Boys in the Boat

Year 17, Day 261 - 9/18/25 - Movie #5,145

BEFORE: OK, it's Thursday but another weekend is coming shortly - I just have to work one more shift tonight then it's a 3-day weekend so I can catch up, or at least not fall behind. I still have my free day in September left, I'll probably use it next week, not this week, unless using it this week makes any actor's birthday line up with the calendar. I've been close a couple times lately but close doesn't count, does it?  

Robert Morgan carries over from "The Accountant 2". It looks like this film will satisfies two of this month's running themes, sports & back to school. Well all right then, a twofer should save me a lot of time, even though it really doesn't. This also feels like the kind of Oscar bait that should have received at least one nomination, though it looks like it didn't end up getting any. Well, it wasn't for lack of trying, at least, I saw a bunch of guild screening inviations for this one, so someone thought they were sitting on a gold mine. 

Speaking of nominations, I sped through the Emmys last night, skipping over nearly every acceptance speech (except Colbert's and Oliver's) and nearly everything else that wasn't a list of nominees. Got through the whole thing in under an hour. Oh, also I watched the "In Memoriam" segment because I'm not a monster, also I wanted to see if any stars died that I missed hearing about. 

THE PLOT: A 1930's set-story centered on the University of Washington's rowing team, from their Depression-era beginnings. 

AFTER: Well, we're back in the Great Depression, time of "Of Mice and Men" and farm laborers and such. What a terrible time to be in your twenties and not be able to afford to go to college. Did colleges lower their tuition back then when most people had no jobs and less money? I kind of doubt it, but I have no real way to look that one up. We see everyman Joe Rantz living out of an abandoned car in a junkyard because he can't afford both tuition and an apartment. Honestly I don't know how anybody lived through those dark times, I've been on partial unemployment myself for months now and I'm living sort of month-to-month. Oh, I've got a savings account but I don't want to touch it, that's for a REALLY rainy day, like a pouring thunderstorm, so I just keep putting money in my checking account every week and then it's all gone again after the first of the month. 

Joe's behind on his tuition at the U. of Washington, but his buddy Roger comes up with a plan, all they have to do is make the rowing team and then the university pays them room and board, and I guess then they get sort of a de facto scholarship? That part's a bit unclear, it seems more like the college pays the athletes but then they have to give the money back in tuition, that kind of makes no sense. But whatever works, I guess, now all they have to do is make the 8-man squad, get chosen out of the 60 or 70 people trying out and everything is jake, easy street, the bee's knees or the cat's pajamas. Come on, it's rowing a boat, how hard could THAT be? 

Well, funny story, crew is really one of the hardest sports out there, the rowers are pushed to their physical limits and beyond, they require twice as much oxygen as the human body can take in, and the amount of calories they have to expend is almost incalculable, so I guess that's why they pay them, so they can afford extra food so they'll have enough energy to propel this damn boat. I can't say the sport really makes much sense, like I don't run or job but I can see the human body getting conditioned to running to the point where someone can run a marathon, that's an individual effort, but putting 8 guys on a thin boat and expecting them to act in perfect rhythm to move a boat with 8 guys on it faster than that other team can, this is a form of madness, right? I can see putting two men in a boxing ring and expecting them to beat the stuffing out of each other until one man drops, that sort of makes sense, but this is off-the-charts berzerko. 

Why do we even need crew, after they invented boats with motors? I guess some people still ride horses, even though cars exist, but is this still a sport or just a nostalgia thing? Like, it sure seems like a lot of unnecessary work now, just get a boat with a motor on it and then you DON'T HAVE TO ROW ANY MORE. What? This is still somehow in the Olympics?  So if something is completely unnecessary in life we just turn it into a sport? Like horse racing and javelin and skeet shooting, they took something that used to be important for human survival and now people just do it for fun and as some kind of challenge? That's pretty stupid. Like time moves on, we don't treat people with leeches and potions any more or cast demons out of people who just had epilepsy or something, so I propose we don't need so many sports, and it's high time we started cutting some of them out of the college programs. You can start with crew and then we can cut some of the track & field events, I'm fine with that. 

Another funny story, the coaches pick the "right" 8 guys and then figure out the best positions for each one to sit in on the boat, and the master boatwright for the school goes above and beyond and builds a really, really nice hull and Joe stays late after practice to help paint it or put varnish on it or whatever, because the boatwright is kind of like the father he never had, so with the extra care and the fast boat and the perfect team working in perfect rhythm, they actually manage to win some races. Why, this JV squad is even better than the varsity squad, sure, I get it, that kind of happened to me at NYU when I made the College Bowl team (trivia, not football). Our JV squad, with me on it, was better than some other college's varsity teams, it happens. But then the coach wants to send the JV squad to the Poughkeepsie Crew event, which is where the U.S. Olympic team finds its best squads, and the dean throws a fit. Look, just say the Varsity squad sucks, this is all easily settled - or just have the varsity squad race the juniors, wouldn't that be the easiest way to settle this? 

Other questions persist - how did they get the boat to Germany for the Olympics? Did they have to buy like 8 extra seats on the airplane to fit the boat on there? Or did the airline make them check their boat? That's a precision piece of engineering, that rowing hull. You can't just put that on the conveyor belt and trust the baggage handlers with that? No, this is a serious question, how did they get the boat to Germany, they didn't exactly have FedEx or DHL back then. 

Also, I don't really understand the strategy, if the crew can do 40 strokes a minute, why then would you have them row at any other speed? A race is all about speed, what is the benefit, if any, of not rowing as fast as you can, all the time? I guess maybe they get more tired, sure, but the race doesn't seem that long, why isn't it go faster, faster, faster all the time?  You never hear about a jockey trying to win with a strategy of going slow at first to lull the other jockeys into a false sense of security, that seems ridiculous. Like I get why some car racers want to stay in second place for parts of the race, because they're drifting behind a faster car and then saving on fuel by cutting down resistance or something like that. But please, tell me, exactly, what benefit is achieved by not asking a rowing crew to row as fast as they possibly can. 

Also, why is the rowing event, or any sport, broadcast on the radio? Nobody could see it, everyone was just relying on what some commentator said to know what happened. I wonder how sports made it through that difficult time before television was invented, you would think that radio would have been considered a poor substitute for going out and watching that sport live, why do I never see anyone in movies complaining about not being able to see the game? Nobody was unhappy with just HEARING the sport happen? I would think the inability to watch the sport probably caused ticket sales to increase, but what am I missing here? 

Anyway, you can probably guess what happens at the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Berlin and attended by Adolf Hitler. I happen to know that there is a whole group of actors out there who bear some resemblance to Hitler, or have Hitler-shaped faces or are known by casting directors for their ability and/or willingness to portray Hitler. I know this because I once had to cast an actor in a film to play Hitler, and got a large response to the casting call. Some of them even have their own Hitler outfits, which means they're ready, willing and able to play Hitler on short notice, and I wonder if this ever causes any problems in their personal lives, like do they have to explain to friends why they have a Nazi officer's uniform in their closet, or do they get strange looks when they pick up their dry cleaning? Just asking. 

Directed by George Clooney (director of "The Tender Bar" and "The Midnight Sky")

Also starring Joel Edgerton (last seen in "Kinky Boots"), Callum Turner (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumblebore"), Peter Guinness (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Sam Strike, Thomas Elms, Jack Mulhern, Luke Slattery (last seen in "Late Night"), Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Thomas Stephen Varey, Joel Phillimore (last seen in "Tolkien"), James Wolk (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Hadley Robinson (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Courtney Henggeler (last seen in "Friends with Benefits"), Chris Diamantopoulos (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Glenn Wrage (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Edward Baker-Duly (last seen in "De-Lovely"), Adrian Lukis (last seen in "Judy"), Dominic Tighe (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Alec Newman (last seen in "The Snowman"), Andrew Bridgemont (last seen in "The King's Man"), Jack Staddon, Jacob James Beswick (last seen in "1917"), Jyuddah James, Frankie Fox (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Sam Douglas (last seen in "Tár"), David Stoller (last seen in "Disobedience"), Austin Haynes, Nicholas Cass-Beggs, Johnny O'Dowd, Nick Tajan, Ian McElhinney (last seen in "Zoo"), Laurel Lefkow (last seen in "Fair Play"), Tyler Davis, Kirsty MacLaren, Tom Claxton, Lucy Appleton, Daniel Philpott, Wally Wingert (last heard in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Lucas Allermann, Jaymes Butler (last seen in "The Brutalist"), Milo James, Callum Macreadie (last seen in "Here"), Christopher Parramore, Jerry Ronson, Chris Wilson (last seen in "Attack the Block")

RATING: 6 out of 10 coxswains

The Accountant 2

Year 17, Day 260 - 9/17/25 - Movie #5,144

BEFORE: It's a recovery day - sleep late, have a couple sandwiches, maybe watch the Emmy Awards broadcast even though I saw plenty of spoilers, but I can probably speed through the whole thing in an hour if I fast-forward through all the speeches and the nonsense. Age-wise I'm at the point where if I have a lot of physical activity, you know, like work, then I have to take a day off after working two, and during that day my legs need to be elevated most of the time - sitting in a chair will wear out my legs faster than standing will, and I realize that's not good. But it's kind of why I gave up my desk job, to try and get some circulation back in the lower limbs, 30 years of sitting at a desk five days a week did some damage, and the old spare tire around the waist probably didn't help. But I've seen what happens to me in 20 years by looking at my parents, so I know someday I won't be ambulatory at all, if I live that long. C'est la vie - sure, I could change my habits but where's the fun in that? Kidding, sort of. 

J.K. Simmons carries over from "The Union". I should probably re-read my review of "The Accountant" from a few years ago, or perhaps I'll just dive right in. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Accountant" (Movie #2,775)

THE PLOT: Christian Wolff applies his brilliant mind and illegal methods to reconstruct the unsolved puzzle of a Treasury chief's murder. 

AFTER: Right, I remember now, the Accountant character is kind of special-needs, or neuro-divergent, or somewhere on the spectrum. Not autistic per se, but there was some kind of childhood trauma mentioned in the first film, and/or the fact that his father wasn't very accepting of his son's condition, so instead of comforting him or telling him he was loved, his father chose to train him on all martial arts and modern artillery as some kind of male-bonding exercise. I guess maybe he figured if his son had no social skills, the best place for him would be in the military? That doesn't really follow. So I guess that's how you end up with a lead character who's a bizarre mix of Batman and Rain Man. 

Christian Wolff (not his real name, just one of countless aliases he uses) is also an expert in forensic accounting, computer coding, and art collection - in the last film he had a trailer full of priceless artworks that he accepted as payment instead of money. Oh, and he apparently has no moral compass because he'll work for the mob or a foreign country that is America's enemy, as long as they pay him. But in the sequel we find out what he's been doing with all his money, not just investing it, but also funding a brain hospital and research center called Harbor Neuroscience, which helps teens with their afflictions and then puts them to work doing research for the Accountant. They scan through hours of surveillance camera footage, they do his hacking, and the Man in the Chair here is Justine, a woman who leads the team of brilliant teens that have similar neuro-divergences to his own, and she speaks through a computer. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong there?  He could probably just use ChatGPT and get similar results.

This film opens with scenes of Raymond King, former director of FinCen, trying to track down a missing family of immigrants from El Salvador, he contacts a mysterious female assassin for help, but she refuses. However, she warns Ray that he's been followed and before long he's in a barfight after armed men show up to kill him. The Accountant must have taught Ray these cool tricks about how to use the room you're in as a weapon, or grab an enemy's gun hand and use it to kill that guy's partner. Hey, J.K. Simmons is in GREAT shape for a guy his age, so I guess then his character is, too - he kills all the guys who attacked him in the bar, but then gets shot when he runs out into the street. But he carved a message in his arm first, which reads "Find the Accountant". 

Marybeth Medina, he woman who took Ray's old job (and became the Accountant's new contact in the first film) is called to I.D. the body, and she sees the arm note. She manages to get word to the Accountant that she needs help, as now there are two mysteries to solve, where is that immigrant family, and who killed Ray? She sets up one of those big "murder board" walls of photos with pushpins and string connecting the things that might be connected, and then the Accountant gets to work thinking.  He manages to figure out where the family must have crossed the border in order to end up in Los Angeles.  

Christian contacts his brother, Braxton, who he hasn't seen since the first film, and they start working their way up the chain of illegal immigration in L.A., starting with a pizza restaurant and factory that Christian immediately determines is laundering money because their records show they sold WAY more large pizzas then the number of pizza boxes they ordered. So they're getting a payoff, in addition to hiring immigrants to make pizzas. Braxton is a mercenary and assassin, so they're both not above using torture to get answers, but Marybeth decides she can't work that way, so their partnership is dissolved. But they continue working the case, just from different angles. Marybeth checks out a hospital where she thinks the missing immigrant mother may have been taken after a car accident, only to find that her brain was so damaged that it basically rewired itself, suddenly she could play master-level chess and she had intense combat skills, the doctor calls it acquired savant syndrome, where she has no memory of who she was before, but suddenly can do all these new things as a trade off. 

Savant syndrome is a real thing, and it may also be the condition that the Accountant has. Savants tend to excel in one domain, such as mathematics or art, but also have weak social skills, or be impaired in other ways, such as autism or a brain injury, so according to Wiki at least, the events of this film may be possible. Extremely unlikely, like one in a million people, but possible. 

Meanwhile, Braxton's handler tries to hire him to kill Marybeth, but he refuses the job. Later Christian sees the message on his brother's phone and realizes that Marybeth's life is in danger, and if his brother turned down the job, someone else might have been hired to kill her. So he speeds to her house on a motorcycle, and finds her engaged in a fight with that same mystery woman that Ray King talked to in the bar, so hmm, what's going on there? 

Also meanwhile, Christian and Braxton use the neuro-divergent think tank (and a few drones) to locate the prison in Juarez where they think the boy from the photo is being held. They drive the Airstream to Mexico JUST in time to arrive on the day where the prison guards are digging a mass grave and are about to kill all the kids. NITPICK POINT: Come on, they've had these kids locked up for months, if the kids had no value as ransomed hostages, why didn't they kill them a long time ago. No, that's the day, like the evil immigrant prison employees picked a date on the calendar a month in advance, you know, because they needed time to plan. Give me a break. 

Anyway, the brothers shoot up the prison and save the kids, especially the one they were looking for, who's bound to qualify for a job working at Harbor Neuroscience as another autistic kid with a dream. Look, it's a stretch, sure, not only that the Accountant was able to figure out all this stuff, but that he and his brother put aside their differences, enacted a plan to fix everything and kill all the bad men, and then followed through. But if you just want to think about this as if it's as close as we're ever going to get to a Batman & Punisher team-up movie, you know, I'm fine with that, too.

Directed by Gavin O'Connor (director of "The Way Back" and "Warrior")

Also starring Ben Affleck (last seen in "Gigli"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Allison Robertson, Alison Wright (last seen in "The Accountant"), Daniella Pineda (last seen in "Plane"), Robert Morgan (last seen in "Babylon"), Grant Harvey (last seen in "Save the Date"), Andrew Howard (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Yael Ocasio (last seen in "Reptile"), Lombardo Boyar (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Michael Tourek (last seen in "Citizen Ruth"), Fernando Chien (last seen in "Sun Dogs"), Abner Lozano, Talia Thiesfield, Presley Alexander, Nik Sanchez, Corwin Ireland, Avery Taylor, Vincent Juskalian, John Patrick Jordan (last seen in "Mank"), Kristen Ariza, Jeremy Radin (last seen in "The Way Back"), Betsy Baker (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Alan Barinholtz (last seen in "The Oath"), Alberto Manquero, Todd Stashwick (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Cassandra Blair, Megan Grano (last seen in "Bombshell"), Catherine Adell, Liesel Kopp, Monica Bhatnagar, Alain Ali Washnevsky, Matt Linton, Joe Holt (last seen in "Far from Heaven"), Erica Johnson, Dominique Domingo, Charlie Bodin, Paula Rhodes (last seen in "To Leslie"), Robert Keith, Heidi Amundson, Beatrice Naomi Nathanson, Ramon Cortes,

RATING: 5 out of 10 Bingo balls

The Union

Year 17, Day 259 - 9/16/25 - Movie #5,143

BEFORE: OK, I'm definitely going to be posting THIS one late. I had to work late on both Monday AND Tuesday nights - Monday was my own fault because I was supposed to lock up the theater at midnight, however the tent build outside continued until 2 am and I just figured I was supposed to supervise the whole build. However, there was a note on the calendar listing that told me when I should close the theater, and I didn't think to check that. In my defense, usually when I'm told to work until "closing" that means I'm there until the event or activity is declared over, like the guests are gone and the host is gone and the cleaners have finished cleaning. The building of a tent was the activity, so I just figured I was supposed to stay until that was completed. My bad. So I didn't get in last night until after 3:30 am, because the trains just run less often then, I got on a train and had to wait about 30 min. for it to move. 

Tonight was the bigger event, the reason the tent was being built, it was the premiere of a new Netflix series called "Black Rabbit", which I can't endorse or disavow, I didn't see it, I was working outside all night on pedestrian duty, crowd control and watching celebrities get out of the SUVs delivering them to the black carpet. I happen to know one actress from this show personally, but I didn't see her attend. Then I had to stick around after the screening to make sure the tent was taken down, first to allow the guests to exit the theater safely, and then because the tent needs to go away, it's not a regular feature at the theater, they just build one to hold the press line for premiere events.  But I've seen workers dismantle these tents much faster, so I suspect tonight's workers were being paid by the hour. I got home a bit earlier this time, at 1:30 am. So today's film was watched on Tuesday morning, but I'm probably posting early early on Wednesday, like a couple hours after midnight. I'm still not going to use my free day, because there's another premiere event next week, too.

Mark Wahlberg carries over from "Mile 22".

THE PLOT: Construction worker Mike is thrust into the world of espionage when his high school sweetheart, Roxanne, recruits him for a high-stakes intelligence mission. 

AFTER: Wow, what a difference a day makes!  This film and "Mile 22" have a lot in common, like they're both about these U.S. "shadow" agencies that are even more secret than the CIA, and in both films Mark Wahlberg is on that team. They both have the old veteran "man in the computer room" character, just played by Malkovich in one film and by J.K. Simmons in the other.  Then the second lead in both is a female agent with a complicated relationship history, but who has ultimately chosen the intelligence career over family. So how come one film sucked so bad and the other one was quite entertaining? Story, story, story, and last night's film had almost none, it was five minutes of story with a bunch of shoot-outs in between. Also, character development, today's film actually remembered to include some. 

Here Wahlberg plays Mike McKenna, a man who's still drifting through life and working a menial labor job, but one day his high-school girlfriend walks back into his Jersey hometown bar and recruits him for that shadow organization, she's desperate since the agency just lost a bunch of members in a botched operation and she remembers how Mike was a star athlete, also pretty smart and well, she loved him at one point. But she tranquilizes him and brings him to London, where he's given the chance to join what they call "The Union", an agency made up of the people you'd least expect, blue-collar workers who are then trained in martial arts, weapons, and whatever else might be needed for espionage work these days.  

The Union needs a new agent, someone nobody has seen before in the field, to take place in an auction for intelligence that turns out to be the names and home addresses of all U.S. spies and field agents around the world. Well, sure, who wouldn't want that, especially if they wanted to create a mailing list and send all those agent promotional religious literature or offers for new rain gutters, but probably what bidders have in mind is something a lot more harmful. But if the Union can get someone in that auction, they can either buy back the intel, or, better plan, trace the phone signal back to its source and force the seller to give the hard drive back, that way nobody evil gets it and also the U.S. saves money on the auction, that's a win-win.  Only, the country's already a few trillion in debt, what's a few million more? 

Mike gets the two-week crash course in espionage, stunt driving and hand-to-hand combat, where usually they would train a new agent over six months. We can only hope it's enough, when combined with his high-school athletic background and his, umm, wait, what were his other skills again?  Right, he doesn't have any, because he's supposed to be the "nobody" that the bad guys didn't see coming. So his lack of skills is actually a bonus skill, if you look at things that way. 

If you figured out that Mike and his old flame Roxanne are going to re-connect and have feelings for each other, DING, you get a gold star, also you've probably seen a movie or two before, it's not that hard to predict where this one is going. But before that, they've got to drop off the money to get a special phone to participate in the auction, then when the phone gets dropped in a sink during an ambush by another interested party, so they have to steal a phone from one of the other parties interested in bidding on the drive with the intel. The Union succeeds in getting another country's bidding phone, however their communications operative is compromised (maybe don't always put the surveillance team in a box truck or van, just saying) and then their London skyscraper headquarters is blown up, so they figure there must be a double agent or a leak on the team.   

Finally the auction arrives and the Union is allowed to bid with the CIA's money - however if they should have the highest bid when the auction ends, well, let's just say there goes America's GDP, of course the country's not likely to go bankrupt (not again, anyway) but things will be tighter. Like, who needs the Department of Education, anyway? Whatever they've been doing for the last 50 years isn't exactly working, now, is it? Really, though, they only need to keep the auction alive so that their computer expert can trace the call, and Mike and Roxanne are on a motorcycle ready to speed to the location of the call - it's not like somebody can reroute their phone signal through other cities or other countries, right? RIGHT? 

Of course there's a twist, I figured out what it would be during that initial botched operation in Trieste.  Predicting who really wants all those agent's names and addresses is quite easy if you don't assume too much from what we're shown in that operation that went South.  But can Mike and Roxanne take control of that drive and get it where it needs to be?  Can they also figure out who the mole is in the organization before Mike needs to get back to New Jersey for his friend's wedding? Yeah, probably.  

OK, but can they clear their "man in the chair" when he's being framed for being the double-agent, and can they deal with Roxanne's past when her ex, also an agent, turns up?  And do these two crazy kids have a future together, and probably at least one sequel film? I guess we'll all have to wait to find out. But it's a VAST improvement over yesterday's film, or else it just looks really great by comparison. 

Directed by Julian Farino

Also starring Halle Berry (last seen in "Boomerang"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Mike Colter (last seen in "Plane"), Alice Lee (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Jessica De Gouw, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (last seen in "Marlowe"), Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Dana Delany (last seen in "Freelancers"),  Lucy Cork, Patch Darragh (last seen in "The Apprentice"), James McMenamin, Juan Carlos Hernandez (last seen in "In America"), Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Man Up"), Adam Collins (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Julianna Kurokawa, Kai Martin, Alex Merry, Steven Mullins, MJ Lee, Ben Bishop, Liz Ewing, Riley Neldam, Alex Brightman (last seen in "Here Today"), David Brooks (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), Andrei Claude, Christopher Brand, Ninette Finch (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Borna Miljavac Purgar, Anthony Goes, Jen Jacob (last seen in "Begin Again"), Christian Yeung.

RATING: 7 out of 10 Lost Boys in a production of "Peter Pan"

Mile 22

Year 17, Day 258 - 9/15/25 - Movie #5,142

BEFORE: John Malkovich carries over again from "The Survivalist", this will be it for the Malkovich movies this year, but he was in a couple back in February and June so he should do all right in the year-end breakdown, which is getting closer, day by day. 

And yet it's still technically summer, if you go by the solstices and such, the fall equinox is still a week away, so we should all be on a beach somewhere, maybe, it's still warm enough outside, but hopefully that will change. I need to start growing my mustache back, put the glass back in the front door and take the screen out, and get ready to switch from iced coffee to hot coffee and from beer to cider. Perhaps when I get to the film about high school football, that will be the best time to make all the change-overs - because then horror films will only be about a week away.

THE PLOT: A small team of elite American intelligence officers, part of a top-secret tactical command unit, try to smuggle a mysterious police officer with sensitive information out of Indonesia. 

AFTER: Wow, this film really is quite the hot mess. There are action scenes, of course, but really the bare minimum of story to get us from one shoot-out to the other. It's like some screenwriter just couldn't be bothered with character development, plot twists, motivation for anyone to do anything, and not only is there no third act, there's barely even a second one. Well, the good news is that this underdeveloped movie won't waste too much of your time, just 90 minutes. 

And really, we wouldn't want anybody to HURT themselves trying to explain anything here, just by all means, let it happen and then later we can all look up the storyline on Wiki and figure out what you were going for. Who are the mysterious man and woman who seem to be listening to every conversation? I couldn't tell if they were on our side, or their side or somebody else's. Then there's Mark Wahlberg's character, who is explaining everything that's happening AS it's happening, but who is he explaining it to? Certainly not us. Is he being interviewed later about how things went down? Because that's probably not a good sign. Or is he meeting with another party about the thing that he just authorized, does he have to meet with his higher-ups every 10 minutes and justify all of his actions? Or are we looking at a split-timeline thing and those are scenes from the future debriefing? 

The rest of the film is as follows: shoot-out, then Mark Wahlberg yells for a bit. Next shoot-out, Mark Wahlberg yells some more. Then they go on the big move, to transport their informant from the embassy to the airport, only there's a shoot-out and it doesn't go well, so naturally Mark Wahlberg has to yell some more. Repeat as necessary until the ending, which isn't really an ending, it's more like a stoppage, but thank god for stopping, even if it's a bummer of an ending. Boy, characters played by John Malkovich are REALLY having a bad week, that's like four in a row, but who's keeping score? Oh, right, I am. 

I didn't quite understand how this elite team functioned, at the start of the film they did an operation in some idyllic American suburb, but it was a house full of Russian agents, and Mark Wahlberg's character was the lead operative in the field and John Malkovich's character was the lead "man in the chair", the head of the team of operatives collecting information on their computers and relaying it to the field team.  Then, all of a sudden on the next mission the team is in Indonesia? What? How? Why? And they're still being led by Malkovich and the same team of people with computers, but are THEY in Indonesia too?  Or are they still in the U.S.?  Because then there would be a data lag with the team being on the other side of the world, plus it would be day in one place when it's night in the other, and that just wouldn't really work, the computer team would have to work from like 9 pm to 9 am to support the team in Indonesia, right? 

Then we have the low-level Indonesian cop who somehow has the information the team needs about where the 6 parts of missing radioactive cesium are, only he WON'T tell them until they put him on a plane to the U.S. Also, he's put the information behind some kind of code-wall and he won't give them the code, and time is running out, the information is also being destroyed, they only have a limited amount of time to agree to his demands, and that sounds like blackmail of a sort, and I thought that we don't negotiate with terrorists. I guess we do if they're also martial arts experts that the Indonesian government wants to kill, which makes absolutely no sense at all. I mean, we only trust this man because the enemy wants to kill him, but that by itself should not make him trustworthy, because the enemy of your enemy could also be working for another one of your enemies. You see what I'm getting at? 

OK, so let's say you have to get this informant to the airport from the U.S. Embassy to the airport, where a plane is waiting, and it's a 22 mile trip. Do you put him in a black SUV (with U.S. license plates!) and your whole team with guns and drive him down the road, with your computer team messing with the traffic signals so you get all green lights? Hell, no!  That's exactly what they'll be expecting you to do!  No wonder the motorcade gets ambushed, it's the most obvious and obnoxious and American thing to do. Why not use a helicopter? You could have him there in five minutes, long before anybody who wants to kill him could find a bazooka to blow the copter out of the sky. Whatever you need to do, do it fast and DON'T tell anybody about it. 

Or you could put the guy in a crate, label the crate "Warning: Dangerous Snakes Inside" and load the crate on the back of a truck and just ship him across town to the airport. It might take a little longer, but nobody would be expecting this. This is the same method they use to get Taylor Swift to the stage or to get Natalie Portman into Comic-Con, because you can't just walk these people to wear they need to be, not in this climate. If JFK had been shipped across Dallas in a crate he might still be alive, just saying. No, by all means put him in a convertible limo and keep the top down when everyone in Dallas hates his guts, you Secret Service morons. 

Directed by Peter Berg (director of "Spenser Confidential")

Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Faye"), Lauren Cohan (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Iko Uwais (last seen in "The Expend4bles"), Ronda Rousey (last seen in "The Expendables 3"), Carlo Alban (last seen in "Whip It'), Natasha Goubskaya, Lee Chae-rin, Sam Medina (last seen in "Snitch"), Keith Arthur Bolden (last seen in "Till"), Jenique Hendrix, Billy Smith (last seen in "Air"), Myke Holmes, Emily Skeggs (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Terry Kinney (last seen in "The Little Things"), Brandon Scales (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Poorna Jagannathan (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Peter Berg (last seen in "A Midnight Clear"), Elle Graham (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Nikolai Nikolaeff (last seen in "Bruised"), Ariel Felix (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Tom Astor (last seen in "News of the World"), Kate Rigg, Lourdes Perea, Tatiana Ronderos, David Garelik, Alla Greene, Vince Canlas (last seen in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"), Sean Avery (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Mark Freeman Schotz, Cedric Gervais (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Trevor Gretzky (last seen in "Cosmic Sin"), Rich Rutherford, Alessandra Gaia Williams (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), with archive footage of Barack Obama (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Rather")

RATING: 3 out of 10 hard drives in a safe, for some reason (like, why not just password protect them?)

The Survivalist

Year 17, Day 257 - 9/14/25 - Movie #5,141

BEFORE: Well, after unsuccessfully trying to find our spider a new home on Long Island, we're just staying in today. The work week will be here soon enough, why not give another day over to video games and YouTube/Instagram? That's right, I'm on the 'Gram now and I've re-connected with some people who I haven't spoken to in a while, just by following them, which is what passes for human interaction these days, I guess. Look, everybody kind of lost touch with each other during the pandemic, it's really past the time to try and figure out who's still alive and if so, where exactly they are, both physically and mentally. I still know a lot of people who work in animation production, if I should ever want to get back into that game, we'll see. I really just got clear of it all and I'm still trying to get my head together. 

There's so little time left in this year, though - under 60 movies to go until Christmas, which really means two months' worth of films, even though it's going to take me almost four months to watch them. I'm not going to slow down until November, which kind of works because by then I hope to be working at Nets games, and I learned that basketball season starts in late October, and goes until - well, I should probably look that up, too. Probably somebody on the web knows. Ah, mid-April. I guess between the NBA and the WNBA that basketball is now year-round, or close to it? 

John Malkovich carries over again from "Of Mice and Men". I know the Emmy Awards are airing tonight but I'm just going to record the ceremony and speed through it tomorrow, I watch so few TV shows now, and even then, nothing that's likely to get nominated except for my late-night shows. I can't possibly avoid spoilers between now and when I can watch the show, because now everybody posts everything on the 'Gram as soon as it happens and doesn't care about spoilers, it seems. 

THE PLOT: A year and a half after the fall of civilization due to a viral outbreak, a former FBI agent is forced to protect a young woman immune to the disease from a dangerous gang leader hunting her. 

AFTER: Just as we can kind of tell which books and movies were written during the Great Depression, like "Of Mice and Men", someday we'll be able to look back on movies and instead of wondering why there were so many made about viral outbreaks and apocalypses and say, "Oh, right, this was written during that pandemic."  So we won't expect those movies to end well at all, because we'll understand that writers and everybody else were going through a tough time, and none of us knew when it would be over, or if illness, mass hysteria and isolation and also toilet paper hoarding was just going to be our new normal. 

I'm going to keep this short tonight, because I wrote so much about "Of Mice and Men" yesterday, and for this film, there's just not a lot of THERE there. It's a pandemic story, there were a few of them before COVID and there were a lot more after, and I have to imagine that a ton more of them are still on the way. Again, the whole thing is colored by the fact that we were in the middle of something that we didn't really understand. Wait, that's from "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney. Nobody toured during COVID, not even McCartney, because all the concert venues were closed and nobody could congregate. So there were no big concerts, also restaurants were closed, though here in New York even when diners were closed within the city limits, they were open on Long Island. So that's when we started driving out there regularly, also there was a casino we could go to out there and we also discovered an open-air antique fair and a lot of half-closed shopping malls. But we also found a bunch of Chinese food buffets, which was good. I love buffets - we went to a bunch of buffets in Vegas a few months before lockdown and also got to see "Hamilton" live. And hey, they're finally going to play the "Hamilton" movie with the original cast in theaters. I think I might still have COVID-brain, because I'm doing a Trump-like "weave", or maybe I've just got Instagram brain-rot now. 

There are two interwoven stories here, one has Ben Grant, the lead character, facing off against a group of cultist marauders who want to take control of a woman who showed up on his doorstep, seeking help. The cultists believe that she is immune to the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, which has gotten way out of hand in the near future. They want to breed her to create a generation of followers who won't all get sick and die, like the majority of the U.S. population, including the President. So we're kind of in an alternate-present here, or maybe just a future that didn't come to pass, which is something I've seen a lot of this year. 

The second story (the film kind of toggles back and forth) is set a couple years earlier, just as COVID is taking over and people were starting to figure out what it was. The earlier story shows Ben Grant and his father discussing what they need to do to secure their Pennsylvania ranch, and we learn that Ben used to be a cartographer for the FBI, but now he's turned into a survivalist prepper nut, kind of right on time though. After they discuss what they think is coming, Ben's father ends up getting killed by people seeking supplies, I think. Look, it's just as well, the way they stitched the two stories together was very confusing, like they were set in the same location, so even if you understood it, there was the feeling that Ben's father was dead, then alive, then dead again, then alive again. Why would anyone structure a story this way? 

Anyway, Ben turns out to have a special set of skils, and the marauders are more untrained and unfocused, so I kind of know who I'm betting on there. Malkovich shines as the crazy cult leader whose underlings are happy to work and die for him, he's got that strong personality that makes you believe that even when he's wrong, he's right, so you know, maybe he's right about this woman being immune to COVID. Only, he's not, because she starts getting sick. There's a reason why this rumor about her started, and it has to do with the government's non-solution to the crisis, which was to put healthy people in camps, you know, to protect them. What I remember about the early days of the COVID-19 shutdown was that a lot of theories were floating around about how to maybe respond to the crisis. And because the proposal to put the sick people into camps didn't really test well, it felt a little too much like something Hitler would suggest, so instead they settled on everyone just isolating where they were, like, just stay at home for a few months, sure, why not? But that probably was the best idea that wouldn't sound all Nazi-like. 

Here was the real problem with the advice we were getting at the start of the (real) COVID pandemic, once society landed on the "stay at home" solution. Since the virus was believed to be airborne, they got the masking advice totally backwards. They said when you were at home, isolated with your family, you didn't have to wear a mask, but if you went outside, or ran to the store or wanted to have a smoke or just get some air, you should put a mask on. Totally backwards, almost - I mean, sure, if you left the house you were slightly more at risk, sure, but we later found out that the virus wasn't just floating around everywhere, if you wanted to go outside and go for a job or get some fresh air or walk the dog, that was most likely FINE as long as you stayed 6 feet away from other people. But inside the house with your family, that was probably a better place to wear the mask in case ONE person in the family got COVID, that way they wouldn't infect the whole rest of the family, the three or four people they were isolating with. Close contact, sharing indoor air, that's what killed a bunch of people, so it should have been "mask up while inside with your loved ones, but outside, eh, probably OK if you stay away from other people".  

Think about all the extra damage that was done by kids infecting their grandparents, or somebody cooking for their kids and accidentally giving them COVID while they were eating together.  I mean, nothing was going to change until there was a working vaccine, sure, but we maybe could have gone back to something close to normal a lot quicker if we'd had better masking advice, also if everyone wore the masks correctly, which a lot of people didn't do. We were calling them "chin diapers" for a while because people had to wear them, but also wanted to breathe unrestricted and, well, probably learned that you can't have it both ways. Well, I guess we'll be better prepared for the next pandemic, like what happened to COVID-21, 22, 23 and 24? What came after the Delta variant? And if it happens again, can I collect extra unemployment again, or was that a one-time deal? 

Directed by Jon Keeyes (producer of "Bandit" and "Alone Together")

Also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers (last seen in "From Paris with Love"), Ruby Modine (last heard in "My Love Affair with Marriage"), Jenna Leigh Green (last seen in "You Again"), Julian Sands (last seen in "Naked Lunch"), Thaddeus Street, Jon Orsini (last seen in "The Assistant"), Rob Dubar, Obi Abili (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Tom Pecinka, Simon Phillips, Charlie Sara (last seen in "Bandit"), Peter Anske (ditto), Cailyn Peddle and the voice of Lori Petty (last seen in "Cadillac Man")

RATING: 4 out of 10 news reports on the radio (still a thing?)