Freakier Friday

Year 18, Day 9 - 1/9/26 - Movie #5,210

BEFORE: Yep, it's a DOUBLE Freaky Friday, I bet you didn't see that one coming. So if you find your Friday extra Freaky this week don't blame me, the linking dictated it. What, was I going to watch this recent sequel on Saturday? I should say not. Here's the deal, I have to work tonight at the sportsball game and then the movie theater early on Saturday morning, I mean like 6:30 am I need to be there with the keys and open up. So there's no time for a movie tonight, I'll need to go to sleep at like 10 pm if I want to wake up in time tomorrow. So it made sense to stay up late on Thursday night/Friday morning and watch a double, that way I'll be tired when I get home tonight and MAYBE I can fall asleep early. Yeah, right, but that's the plan anyway. 

Jamie Lee Curtis carries over, and a whole bunch of other people carry over too. So I'll be ahead in the count, which I don't want to be, maybe I'll just skip non-freaky Saturday and watch a movie late after work tomorrow and call that the Sunday movie. 

THE PLOT: 22 years after Tess and Anna endured an identity crisis, Anna now has a daughter and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might strike twice. 

AFTER: I'm sure there's a story behind WHY it took 22 years to make a sequel, I just haven't looked it up yet. If the delay was a rights issue, or if they were waiting for Jamie Lee Curtis to be available again or be hot after winning an Oscar, or perhaps they were waiting for Lindsay Lohan to become normal and un-canelled again, I'm not sure. Apparently Curtis and Lohan have been friends for decades, so that had a lot to do with it, then those L.A. wildfires apparently burned down some of the original locations, but that was another motivating factor. They were going to go straight to streaming with this one, but then the "Barbie" movie proved that the nostalgia market is huge right now. And sequels are also hot, the long-awaited "Spinal Tap" sequel finally got made, "Spaceballs 2" is in the pipeline, now all I really want is a sequel to "Strange Brew". "Stranger Brew"?

Well it's good to know that once you gain understanding with your mother, there will simply never be another conflict between you and her in the future, everything is going to be just ducky for the next 22 years and then some. Yeah, right. 

Who are we, as people? I mean, are we just flesh-bags full of chemicals and is consciousness just an illusion? Or are we the brains walking around in those bodies, but brains that die when the body breaks down and can no longer supply us with nutrients? Or are we our collection of memories stored in those brain cells, the sum of experiences that dictates our personalities and responses to the stimuli of the outside world? Could we be that unique combination of all three elements at once? This is just a thought experiment triggered by watching several of these "body-swap" movies in a short period of time, there may be no correct answer here. But I think if you lose your physical health, or your brain function or your memories, it's kind of like a tripod with a missing leg, the thing's just not going to stand up for very long. 

Sorry, the movie's not really about the science, of course it's fantasy science which is something of an oxymoron. We don't have body-swapping in real life, not yet anyway, so why the hell are there so many movies about it? 

Anyway, it's 22 years later and Tess and Ryan are still together, which means Mark Harmon agreed to make the sequel. Anna is now a single mother, so, umm what happened to Jake? We'll get there eventually, but not right off. Anna's daughter Harper goes to the L.A. high school that you've seen in like a thousand movies...she has an enemy rival there, Lily (much like Anna did in the first film) but Anna and Lily's fighting causes an accident in the chemistry lab, so their single parents are both called in to the school, and they meet and (of course) fall in love. Six months later, Anna is getting ready to marry Eric, Lily's widower dad, and so the two rivals are about to become step-sisters, and Lily wants to move back to London, and Harper does not want to leave L.A. 

So history doesn't really repeat itself, but, you know, sometimes it rhymes. Another wedding week in the family means that tensions are going to come to a head, the younger teens aren't getting what they want so of course they hate their parents, meanwhile the parents think that the kids are out of control and don't appreciate everything they do for them, which may include moving the family to where they think is the best place to live. Really, it's a wonder why Anna and Tess don't see the problem brewing with Harper and Lilly, and send them out to have lunch at that Chinese restaurant...

Thankfully, there are no magic fortune cookies here, no older Asian ladies with mystical knowledge of how to induce body-swapping, and in fact Mama P. and Grandma Chiang are too busy shipping their Asian foods out around the country, so they must have cut a deal on "Shark Tank" or something - they only appear here to tell us that they're WAY too busy to get involved this time. So instead the plot has to bring a psychic in as entertainment for the bachelorette party, and when the palm reader determines that the teens futures are fractured, and they need to change their souls and destinies, nobody realizes that the ensuing earthquake means that a body swap is in the works. This time FOUR people switch bodies, in groups of two and two. Harper and her mother Anna swap, and Lily swaps with her step-grandma, Tess.  

OF COURSE this happens on the day of the next wedding rehearsal dinner, plus Anna's client's big concert and also Tess's pickleball championship game. Doesn't everybody overpack their personal schedules like this? I know I often have to work a Nets game, followed directly by a gig house managing the Videogame Awards, so I empathize. But it's very clever how the two big stars we want to see, Curtis and Lohan, are now playing the younger girls inhabiting their bodies, so the older actresses get to act like stupid teenagers who are on a mission to sabotage the wedding, and they do this by tracking down Jake, Anna's ex-boyfriend who also had a thing for her mother. Umm, sure, that'll work. 

Meanwhile the actresses we don't care as much about get to go serve in detention because Harper and Lily got in trouble for turning the school bake sale into a food fight. Then since they need to act as if they're older people in younger bodies, they go off on a scooter ride across L.A., during which they get to eat anything they want, because hey, no repercussions and also enjoy that they can do physical things again, like fall off a scooter and not break a hip. Hey, if that's the way you want to spend your body-swap, you do you, but it's just all that imaginative. They could have gone skydiving or bungee-jumping or experimented sexually in all kinds of ways - no, wait, it's a Disney film. Scratch that. 

After the teens (eventually) learn the error of their ways, Anna still has to help her music client get through her big concert, but it all works out, and there's a surprise reunion of her old band, Pinkslip, at the same time. Again there's the same problem with the guitar playing because Anna's not in her own body, she's in Harper's body, but this time there's a more elegant solution as "Anna" invites her daughter onstage to play the guitar. Geez, it's so simple I don't know why any of the other body-swap movies with rock concerts thought of that. 

What we can see here is each generation becoming more and more entitled - this causes much of the clashes between the generations, and really this is where we find ourselves IRL. Tess is a psychologist, she worked hard for that degree, she works hard at her job, she writes books, promotes her books on talk shows. Her daughter Anna is a music producer, that's still a job but come on, how hard can it be? She just makes sure her label's artist is ready to go on tour and has everything she needs to write and record music. Anna and Eric's daughters are super-entitled, Harper just wants to surf all day and Lily wants to be a fashion designer but I bet if both could just be on TikTok as a career they would totally do that. And if they have to be in detention or move to London it's like the WORST THING EVER and life is completely unfair and why can't they just do what they want to do, all day, every day? 

All of this, of course, leads to the question - can there be an even "Freakier Friday"? Or a "Freakiest Friday"? And if so, how long will it take to get that made, another 22 years?  And how much more super-entitled can the next generation get? 

Directed by Nisha Ganatra (director of "The High Note" and "Late Night")

Also starring Lindsay Lohan, Mark Harmon, Chad Michael Murray, Christina Vidal, Haley Hudson, Rosalind Chao, Lucille Soong, Stephen Tobolowsky, Ryan Malgarini, Chris Carlberg, Danny Rubin, Amir Derakh (all carrying over from "Freaky Friday" (2003)), 

Julia Butters (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (last heard in "Turning Red"), X Mayo (last seen in "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain"), Vanessa Bayer (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Jordan E. Cooper, June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Bachelorette"), Mary Sohn (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Santina Muha (last heard in "Wine Country")  Aryan Simhadri, George Wallace (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Sherry Cola (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Kylah Davila, Nell Murphy, Noen Perez, Valentina Garcia, Jimmy Bellinger (last seen in "Blockers"), Ahmed Bharoocha, David Miranda, Helena Grace Kennison, Steve Crystal, Chloe Fineman (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Elaine Hendrix (last seen in "Superstar"), Gigette Reyes, Kiran Deol, Venk Modur, Reasha Honaker, Danielle Bux, Jaden Carson Baker (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Jai Ganatra, Eli Wolfensohn, Micah Wolfensohn, AJ Danna, Emiliana Mia Gavoni, Julien Worsham, Naomi Fogarty, Neel Mathoda-Shahi, Katherine Curcio, Aracely Ortiz, Kimberly Bigsby, Bruce Seymour, Akshya Mahindru, Naomi McPherson (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, Suzy Shinn, Max Kuehn.

RATING: 5 out of 10 album covers from the 80's

Freaky Friday (2003)

Year 18, Day 9 - 1/9/26 - Movie #5,209

BEFORE: Yes, I know I've taken a strong stance against these "body-switching" movies in the past. There's no body-switching in the real world, so I've regarded them as bits of narrative fluff that serve no purpose, and have preferred to stick to more realistic things, such as superhero movies. But then right there, I'm some kind of hypocrite, right? Anyway the door kind of got opened by "13 Going on 30" and then in December I caved on "Family Switch", so really, I blame Jennifer Garner for all of this. It's like on "Law & Order" when a lawyer loses a case because they accidentally mentioned the evidence that they themselves didn't want to come forward. So I'm caving in, I saw that by programming a couple films in January with Jamie Lee Curtis, there was an opportunity here - and seeing that the chain would put this film on a FRIDAY, well come on, that just sealed the deal. I can't pass up a tie-in like that - so "The Thursday Murder Club" ended up on a Sunday, that's a small price to pay. Let's hope the chain knows what it's doing here. 

Jamie Lee Curtis carries over from "Borderlands". 

THE PLOT: Dr. Tess Coleman and her daughter, Anna, do not get along with each other. However, things take a turn when, in a freak accident, they switch bodies and are forced to live each other's lives. 

AFTER: OK, sure "Family Switch" was a lot of things, primarily a Christmas movie, but I see now it owes its whole existence to "Freaky Friday", which itself owes its whole existence to the 1976 version with Jodie Foster. (Oh, sure, THAT one I've seen. No reason to revisit it.) I forgot, there was also that body-switching body-horror film "Freaky", and same. If we didn't have THIS 2003 remake, then we just wouldn't have THAT. So much like my Instagram account, we're also celebrating #FlashbackFriday today and going back through the mists of time to when Lindsay Lohan was a teenager, before all the troubles began. This film kind of represents the career high point for her, it was her most successful film, and she got the award for Breakthrough Performance at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards. I don't remember what exactly happened after that, but she had fashion deals and record albums and eventually she opened a Greek beach resort, but also she had a reputation for being "difficult" to work with and went through some form of career suicide. I can look into this further but not right now - it looks like the chain's going to bring Lindsay around again in February so if the turning point was the 2006 film "Just My Luck", we can discuss that then. 

The original plan was to have her play a Goth girl here, creating that much more contrast between her and her mother, but then they changed it so she played a teen rocker, in conflict with her more conservative psychologist mother. It must be a nightmare having a therapist for a mother because you'll always be wondering if she's analyzing you, plus she probably always wants to talk about your feelings. Jeez, you probably just want to make it through the day at high school and not get in trouble again. Teen Anna here is always in trouble at school, despite her best efforts the teachers seem especially harsh and also she's feuding with her former friend Stacy, but things start looking up when she meets hot motorcycle boy Jake in detention. 

NITPICK POINT: Anna somehow manages to get detention twice in one day - once for calling her English teacher a dictator after he gave her an "F" for her essay on the book "1984" and then again after she pelted Stacy with a volleyball in gym class. OK, first of all, what school gives detention in the MIDDLE of the day? We see her trading lunches with the teacher in charge of detention - isn't detention an after-school thing? (I wouldn't know...). Wouldn't having detention in the middle of the day cause her to miss a class, and wouldn't teachers be too busy with classes to host detention then? Can't she just serve her sentences concurrently after school is over? 

Anna's mother Tess is also getting married, three years after the family lost Anna's father. Ryan seems great, no issues there except that he hasn't really connected with Anna yet. It's the busy week before the wedding, there's the rehearsal dinner and the catering still needs to be finalized, this would be the WORST possible time for some kind of cosmic body-switching lesson to come around, so yeah, guess what? Anna and Tess learn the hard way not to eat fortune cookies during an earthquake, or something. We all know that ancient Chinese magic can manifest itself if your family orders too many appetizers, right? Just get the egg rolls and the crab rangoons and move on, you don't need chicken wings if you're going to be ordering sesame chicken later. Jeezus, is this what we thought about Chinese-American restaurant owners in 2003, that they hold the secrets to magic body-swapping rituals? This is worse than those racist Calgon commercials where water softener was described as an "ancient Chinese secret" at the laundromat.

Anyway, you know the drill, at midnight the Chinese magic kicks in, and mother and daughter wake up in each other's bodies, and there's a long panic where they can't quite figure out how this is happening and why. More importantly, how do they fix it? The fortune cookie says they won't switch back until they gain the understanding they lack, namely they need to see the world from each other's perspective for a while, and this involves the mother going to school in her daughter's body and the daughter going to work in her mother's body and scarring her therapy patients for life. Also Anna suddenly has access to credit cards and goes on a shopping spree and glam-up that will have no financial repercussions for anyone ever. Anna also gets to drive the family sportscar, so yeah, umm, where's the downside here? Weren't we supposed to be learning something? 

Anna (as her mother) goes to a parent-teacher conference and learns that her little brother secretly looks up to her. OK, making some progress. Tess (as her daughter) totally understands "Hamlet" but still gets an "F", proving that Anna's teacher really is out to get her. They each try to sabotage the other's relationships, but Anna's got a good reason, she just doesn't want to be kissed (or more) by her future step-father - and Tess doesn't think Jake is right for Anna, but the more time she spends with him, the more she connects with him, so maybe she can soften on this point. Did we mention he rides a motorcycle? Everything's scheduled to come to a head when Anna's band has an audition at the House of Blues on the SAME night as Tess's wedding rehearsal dinner. Does this really all take place on one Friday? It kind of feels like a lot, maybe three days worth of plotline is packed into one very freaky Friday, just me? Don't forget that there was also an appearance on a live talk show to promote Tess's book, what could possibly go wrong there? 

Anna's bandmates try to kidnap her from the rehearsal dinner - of course they don't realize the person they're kidnapping currently has no musical talent. But cool new Dad Ryan solves things by pointing out that the kids need to come first, so Anna SHOULD skip out on the dinner, and Tess should go too, because that's an event that's important to her daughter. One big problem, though, Anna can't play the guitar because the musical talent is in her mother's body right now. Poor Tess is up on stage and doesn't know how to rock - but Anna unplugs her amp and plays the guitar solo backstage, and this is a clever solution. However, NITPICK POINT, wouldn't the crowd be able to tell that her amateurish strumming doesn't match up with the music? The band probably wouldn't be hired if the judges thought the guitar solo wasn't being played live. 

I remember that "Family Switch" got this plot-point wrong, there's a holiday concert at the end where the father (Ed Helms) is playing guitar. But at this point in the film the son's soul was inside the father's body, and the father was the music teacher, the son in the father's body should NOT have been able to play the guitar. OK, most people probably wouldn't notice or care, but I did. 

All is set right when they return to the rehearsal dinner, and having seen things from the other person's perspective, understanding is achieved, forgiveness is possible, and acts of selflessness allow the Chinese soul transfer to be reversed - and the guests barely notice the accompanying earthquake. Well, it is Los Angeles so everyone's probably used to a little tremor now and again. And it's OK that Anna impulsively cancelled the catering for the wedding, because they know a restaurant that does catering, just hold the fortune cookies, please. 

Really, this could have been a lot worse, in so many cringey ways. 

Directed by Mark Waters (director of "Head Over Heels" and "Just Like Heaven")

Also starring Lindsay Lohan (last seen in "Mean Girls" (2024)), Mark Harmon (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Harold Gould (last seen in "Beloved"), Chad Michael Murray (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), Stephen Tobolowsky (last seen in "Murder in the First"), Christina Vidal (last seen in "The Guilty"), Ryan Malgarini (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Haley Hudson (last seen in "Marley & Me"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "Together Together"), Lucille Soong (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Willie Garson (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Dina Spybey-Waters (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Julie Gonzalo (last seen in "Must Love Dogs"), Christina Marie Walter, Lu Elrod (last seen in "Beautiful"), Lorna Scott (ditto), Heather Hach, Chris Carlberg, Danny Rubin, Hayden Tank (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Cayden Boyd (last seen in "Dog"), Marc McClure (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Chris Heuisler, Jeffrey Marcus (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), William Caploe (ditto), Lee Burns (ditto), Jacqueline Heinze (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), Mary Ellen Trainor (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Erica Gimpel (last seen in "King of New York"), Daniel Raymont (last seen in "Rough Night"), Veronica Brooks, Amir Derakh,

RATING: 6 out of 10 platinum credit cards

Borderlands

Year 18, Day 8 - 1/8/26 - Movie #5,208

BEFORE: I'm not a big sports guy, as you may know, but I've watched a bunch of sports movies, as you also know. And I'm working two or three days a week at a big sport-ball arena, the one in Brooklyn. I was warned in advance that the Brooklyn Nets SUCK and so I'm trying my best not to get too attached - but they did beat the Denver Chickie Nuggets on Sunday, a fact that some people who work in concessions did not even realize. We're much too busy to, you know, WATCH the game, much in the same manner that I work in a movie theater and I'm much too busy to watch what we're screening - or, you know, I'm eating my dinner while the film screens. But then last night a very close and exciting game against the Orlando Magic Kingdom, it looked like the Nets would lose by just three points but someone scored a three-point shot just before the buzzer and the game went into overtime. The situation repeated, OT was almost over when the same player hit ANOTHER buzzer-beater with three seconds left in the game, and that put the Nets on top. I had to punch out, I can't be accused of being on the clock just to see part of a basketball game for free - so I left with two seconds left and the Nets ahead by two, they got this, right?  

Oh, very wrong, one of the Magic players scored the THIRD three-point buzzer-beater of the game and the Nets once again found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Again, not a sports guy but something tells me that the games don't get closer or more exciting than that, if you're a fan you probably went through a whole roller coaster of emotions. So yeah, this is me not getting too attached.  

Cate Blanchett carries over from "Rumours" and today's film just HAS to be better than that one. This completes her three-day residency at the Movie Year, she makes the year-end countdown and I think you can probably guess how I'm going to get to "The Naked Gun" from here. 

THE PLOT: An infamous bounty hunter returns to her childhood home, the chaotic planet Pandora, and forms an unlikely alliance with a team of misfits to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe and open the planet's vault. 

AFTER: One interesting thing about my new part-time job is that I had NO idea how varied the audience is for a basketball game. Basketball is an American sport, I know it was first played in Springfield Massachusetts, invented by a P.E. teacher named James Naismith. But it's nationwide and somewhat international now, of course if the Denver or Orlando team plays in Brooklyn, I would expect fans of those teams to come to the game, including a few who maybe travel around the country. What I wasn't expecting was to meet people from all around the world who want to see a Nets game while they're in NYC, and they're willing to pay for the seats and snacks and then they come to my station to buy beer. Thank God it's craft beer that I believe in, I'm not sure if I could sell Bud Lite or Michelob or something, that's kind of against my religion. But when there's a language barrier, I'm not bad with French (4 years in high school) or German (2 years, plus a German grandmother) and over the last four years I've picked up some Spanish from the porters who clean the movie theatre. "Basura" means "garbage" and "cucina" means "kitchen", so I sort of started there and thanks to Sesame St. I knew the numbers one to ten. "Poquito" is a little bit, and of course I can say "buenas nochas" or "mañana", I also now know the words for "raccoon" and "squirrel", beyond that I can just use Google to translate. I spoke German to a guy from Austria last night and was able to recommend a lager beer to him, and a couple weeks ago there was a guy from Norway and I know exactly two words in Norwegian, I can say "beer" and "bottle opener". That's come in handier than you might think, more than, say "hello" and "goodbye" for me. (I knew a guy from Norway in film school, and yeah, we drank a lot of beer together.)

So I know a little bit in a bunch of languages, and that reminds me of "Borderlands". I see bits and pieces from a lot of different franchises reflected here, there are parts that remind me of "Star Wars" (bounty hunters, rolling droids, Imperial-like soldiers) and there are parts that remind me of "Mad Max" (desert wasteland, rolling truck convoys, big muscular maniacs wearing various face masks). Other parts feel like bits from "The Fifth Element" or maybe "Avatar" (wasn't the alien planet in that film also called Pandora?) and throw in a little bit of the X-Men (cosmic woman with fire-bird powers) and this is a real mish-mash. Yes, of course, I know this is based on a video-game, but not one I've played so I really don't know how much of the alleged theft from other franchises was done in the course of making the game, and how much is new old stuff borrowed to make this film. Does it really matter? 

Of course I WANT to like this, but I maybe know just a bit too much about what's copied from those other franchises and re-assembled and re-purposed there. I mean, I guess if you're going to steal, you steal from the best and you cobble it together as best you can, even in "Star Wars" you can put together a spaceship or a pod-racer from various parts and it might fly when you need it to, but also break down when it's most inconvenient. See where I'm going with this? This film does move very fast and some parts are very entertaining, but I have a feeling that if I start to pick it apart it won't be hard to find some break in logic that will halt my enjoyment very fast. The motivations of Lilith's mother in sending her away from Pandora is one example, this story proves to be quite fluid, and the film can't really decide if Lilith being cast out by her mother and raised by space miners was a good thing or a bad thing. 

The film was a financial bomb, Lionsgate lost like $80 million on this, but all the promotion increased sales of the video game, so same conundrum, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Can it be both? Does one balance out the other? Did people not want to see Cate Blanchett in an action role as a gunslinger? Well, she was in that one Indiana Jones film, so she's done action pics before, however her main body of work is in drama, and you might think a silly video game sci-fi film would be beneath her, but apparently you would be wrong to assume that. Hlaf of the cast seems more like the type you'd cast in a comedy, so all of that kind of tracks. But again, as with "The Out-Laws" trying to nail a heist film, comedy film and romance film all at once, it's hard to be so many things at once. Here it's action, comedy and sci-fi all rolled together and overlapping - can you imagine "Mad Max: Fury Road" also trying to be funny? That just wouldn't work. I'm trying to be very nice with my rating but being so derivative and also not focusing on one genre are some pretty big drawbacks to overcome. 

Directed by Eli Roth (my former SDCC booth neighbor, director of "Knock Knock" and "The House with a Clock in Its Walls")

Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "Martha"), Edgar Ramirez (last seen in "The 355"), Jamie Lee Curtis (last seen in "Haunted Mansion" (2023)), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "Barbie"), Florian Munteanu (last seen in "Creed III"), Janina Gavankar (last seen in "Encounter"), Benjamin Byron Davis (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Olivier Richters (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Gina Gershon (last seen in "Blockers"), Ryann Redmond, Bobby Lee (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Haley Bennett (last seen in "Till"), Steven Boyer (last seen in "Hustlers"), Attila Herrmann, Hunter Troy Rothwell, Harry Ford, Paula Andrea Placido, Riana Emma Balla and the voice of Jack Black (last seen in "Dear Santa")

RATING: 5 out of 10 holographic face masks

Rumours

Year 18, Day 7 - 1/7/26 - Movie #5,207

BEFORE: I recorded this film to go on a DVD with tomorrow's film, maybe I didn't look very closely at it while I dubbed it, because I'm clueless. But it seemed like a political thriller set at the G7 conference, so there's that. There's another film called "G20" on Amazon Prime but my linking system can't get me there, but also there's "Heads of State" and "A House of Dynamite" which are also about global crises and I've got both of those on the docket for January, somewhere in between "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme". I believe in the linking system and sometimes it takes me on these paths with running themes....

Cate Blanchett carries over from "Black Bag". 

THE PLOT: The leaders of seven wealthy democracies get lost in the woods while drafting a statement on a global crisis, facing danger as they attempt to find their way out. 

AFTER: The poster for this one says it's like "Dr. Strangelove" meets "Night of the Living Dead", but I've got a different opinion. To me, it's more like "London Has Fallen" meets "Save Yourselves!", if that makes any sense. It's a bunch of silly nonsense, really, and it's not put together in a good way, because there's so little information here about what's happening to the world that we the audience are never really sure. The world is supposedly "on fire" while the world leaders are at the G7 conference, but what does that mean? Is it literal or figurative? The emergency in question seems to have some of the characteristics of an alien invasion, zombie apocalypse and/or climate disaster, without being any of those things outright. As a result, the film just did not hold my attention, and I fell asleep halfway through. I woke up, rewound, found where I left off and then promptly fell asleep again. So I had to finish the last 30 minutes of the film in the morning, which is never a good sign. 

This seems to be loosedly based on some version of reality at first, I mean the German president is a woman (Schmangela Schmerkel) and the Canadian President is something of a ladies man, prone to affairs - while the U.S. President is just very very old and in his second term, yet he casually mentions that he wants to be President for the next 100 years. Gee, that reminds me of somebody but I can't QUITE figure out who. I'll admit that I have no idea who the president or prime minister of France, Italy, Japan or even the U.K. are right now, so I guess no comment. Wait, Macron, is he still the President of France? OK, that's one more point for me. 

But if "Black Bag" was the thinking man's film about international intrigue, this one, by contrast, is rather stupid. The world leaders at the G7 conference start their work drafting a statement about the current international crisis, but you may notice the film never really tells us what that crisis IS. Then night falls and their wait staff and other attendants sort of disappear, and again, no explanation. Their phones suddenly don't work, or perhaps there's nobody left in the world to contact, again, this is quite unclear. The wind blows away the French President's notes and he goes to chase them, returning HOURS later, covered in mud. WTF?  Meanwhile there's tension because the Canadian Prime Minister and the U.K. Prime minister had an affair at the last G7 and well, for one of them it was just a fling. So the Canadian guy turns his attention to the German Chancellor, god forbid he go one world summit without getting some action. 

There's thick fog in the woods, and some kind of groaning or chanting coming from somewhere. In the first part of the film they hinted at what's to come by showing the excavated bodies of "bog people" who fell into the swamp a thousand years ago, but the swamp somehow preserved their mummified bodies but softened the bones, so they're all floppy. Say, you don't suppose... who had re-animation of the dead on their 2024 bingo card? Things get even weirder when the group finds an enormous brain in the woods and the missing President of the European Commission, who can suddenly speak Swedish and talks about the coming of "Astrid", who is also the Night Queen and will correct (perhaps destroy) the world. Right, it's a lot to take in, plus it doesn't make any sense and then the movie changes course and kind of forgets all about this little narrative path. It's maddening how the film is firing in these different directions without telling us anything about anything. 

Well, the group of world leaders somehow manages to get out of the woods and back to the compound, only there's no staff, still no phone service and the world is apparently still on fire.  They all get their complimentary swag bags, which thankfully have snacks in them, and they manage to finish the goal of the summit, which is to release a statement on the current world crisis - but it's a collection of different random thoughts pieced together, and in the end it doesn't make any sense at all. Gee, that's just like the film itself. It's notable that whenever the screenwriters don't need a character any more, that character commits suicide. Very sloppy work, somebody just didn't know what to do with their own creations, and suicide is the easy way out, so to speak. 

I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm currently headed straight (OK, not straight) for "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme". Better days and better movies lie ahead, hopefully. 

Directed by Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin

Also starring Roy Dupuis, Denis Menochet (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Charles Dance (last seen in "The First Omen"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "Here"), Rolando Rovello, Takehiro Hira (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Alicia Vikander (last seen in "Son of a Gun"), Zlatko Buric (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Tomi Kosynus, Ralph Berkin (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Alexa Kennedy,

RATING: 3 out of 10 aluminum blankets

Black Bag

Year 18, Day 6 - 1/6/26 - Movie #5,206

BEFORE: Pierce Brosnan carries over from "The Out-Laws" and becomes the first actor with three confirmed appearances, so he'll make the year-end countdown, and then Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis should be joining him soon. It's WAY too early to think about the end of 2026, but I'm taking some steps to make the year-end processing a bit easier, it took about four or five days of my time in December, thank God I wasn't working a lot. Anyway the goal for this year is to work more at both jobs, or maybe get a new FT, so maybe I can't spend so much time on year-end matters come December. 

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I came in contact with Pierce Brosnan last year - well, almost. He was at the theater where I work for a preview screening of a TV show called "MobLand", not any of the movies I watched this week. I was a few feet behind him as he greeted fans and signed some autographs, Tom Hardy did the same thing about half an hour later. I was reminded of this because I'm going through my photos from last year, downloading the good ones from the cloud to my computer, so I can then delete them from my phone. Which I think then also deletes them from the cloud, but it's OK because I already have them saved in two places, on Flickr and my hard drive. 

THE PLOT: When an intelligence agent is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband - also a legendary agent - faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage or his country. 

AFTER: Most movies about spies would have us believe that they lead lives of action and danger - shoot-outs and car chases, undercover sting operations, wearing disguises and raiding hideouts, stuff like that. But what if the opposite is true?  What if the life really entails a bunch of meetings, conference calls and expense reports, turning in your receipts at the end of the week or sifting through mountains of bank records, trying to spot illicit accounts? You know, like a regular boring JOB? Then there are dinner parties, office birthday parties and the tedious business of trying to keep straight which co-workers are sleeping with which, so you don't say anything that's TOO offensive about anyone?  I guess it's possible - either that or somebody challenged Steven Soderbergh to make a boring movie about espionage, and he accepted. 

The central characters here are married - to each other - and they both work in the intelligence game, or counter-intelligence, whatever that is (it's either spies vs. spies, or it's the process of being dumb, not sure). But how does THAT work, exactly, they've both got busy schedules and they can't work the same operation, obviously, there could be a conflict of interest or they'd be tempted to favor their spouse's well-being over the goals of the operation, and therefore the nation. So the very nature of their profession means they can't talk too much shop at home, so therefore keeping secrets from each other is kind of the default setting. One's always jetting off to some other city on the DL and can't divulge details about it, simply because one is not the superior officer to the other and everything's on a need-to-know basis. If there's anything they can't tell their spouse, they just say it's in the "black bag".  

The implication here is that this includes affairs, and the foil characters here (the ones who are NOT married) all seem to have multiple sex partners, on and off the job, and even when there's a committed relationship between two agents it's not exclusive, so everyone's cheating on everyone else and they all just take it in stride, like it's part of the job. Unless someone who's been cheated on decides to stab her boyfriend in the hand with a steak knife during a dinner party. Umm, I don't think she's cool with it. Also, the agents report for regular psych exams, there's like a therapist on staff so they can all work this stuff out, except the therapist herself is sleeping with one of the agents. (It's that red-hot actor from "Bridgerton", so yeah, I get it, but that's probably still some kind of ethical and/or HR violation.)

Unless it's a comedy, there's really nothing that kills the forward motion of a narrative film like a therapy session - and there are a few of them here. Same goes for polygraph tests, those are also known momentum killers or just plain time-fillers. Which again leads me to think that somebody SET OUT to make a boring spy movie, even more boring than "Bridge of Spies", and that's saying something. Sure, this is right up Soderbergh's alley, but essentially this is the "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" of spy movies. Maybe that should be "Sex, Lives and Satellite Surveillance", which is a terrible name for a movie BUT it's accurate. 

The plot here (what there is of one) involves a software program code-named Severus. Rather than being a "master code hack" thing as I've seen many times, it's a bit of malware that's designed to get past nuclear security and force a meltdown or something. It was made by the good guys (UK) but once it's out there, that means it can be bought by the bad guys and used against the good guys. Great job, guys. 

George Woodhouse in counter-intelligence has been given one week to figure out which of five agents leaked the software, and naturally one of those five is his own wife. George first invites all of them over for dinner and suggests a party game that gives him some insight, but then when his wife takes a sudden trip to Zurich and won't give him the details (they're in the "black bag", right?) he starts to wonder if his wife is the leak, and spies on her meeting with a Russian dissident by using a satellite. It looks like she's selling the malware, but is that really what's going on? Or is she being set up? Quick, set up polygraph tests for everyone! And schedule another dinner party, with another nasty party game!

It turns out you can have an action film that's high-energy or a film full of intrigue that explores personal deceptions and motivations, but you can't really have both, can you?  How many car chases did we miss out on so we could have a very long dinner party scene?

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (director of "Side Effects" and "No Sudden Move")

Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Gustaf Skarsgard (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Tom Burke (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Marisa Abela (last seen in "Barbie"), Regé-Jean Page (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "Street Kings"), Kae Alexander (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Martin Bassindale (last seen in "Here"), Megan Kimber, Paul Bailey (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Bruce Mackinnon (last seen in "The Duchess"), Orli Shuka (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Daniel Dow, Ambika Mod, Alex Magliaro, Summer Knox

RATING: 5 out of 10 easter-egg references to James Bond films

The Out-Laws

Year 18, Day 5 - 1/5/26 - Movie #5,205

BEFORE: Pierce Brosnan carries over from "The Thursday Murder Club", but we'll see Celia Imrie again (great to see her name above the title, BTW) in February if the plan holds. I can't really see after just five days where this year is headed, but it's definitely in fine shape, I don't have many issues with this line-up so far. Give it time, though, I'm sure I'll find something to complain about. 

THE PLOT: A straight-laced bank manager is about to marry the love of his life, but when his bank is held up during his wedding week, he starts to believe his future in-laws, who just arrived in town, are the infamous Ghost Bandits. 

AFTER: This is one of those films that tries to be a bunch of different things at the same time - it's a comedy film, it's an action/heist film, there's a bit of romance/relationship stuff because there's a wedding with two sets of parents. The two families are VERY different, of course, because therein lies the comedy. The lead character is caught in the middle because his own parents are so normal and his fiancee's parents are so mysterious that he's never even met them, supposedly they're living with some tribe in the Amazon, but they resurface for their daughter's wedding, of course. 

But is their story just a bit unbelievable? All that Owen really knows about them is that they have a storage unit in town, and Owen, maker of craft projects and video collages, innocently calls the storage place to see if he can get some photos of his future in-laws - but this inquiry alerts some very bad people who know the missing McDermotts, and they suddenly arrive in town, a few days ahead of schedule. They were going to fly in the night before the wedding and leave right after, which is another bit of suspicious behavior. Owen also happens to be a bank manager, and his wife's parents have a lot of questions for him about the bank's security systems. Sure, maybe they're just making idle conversation, but when two masked people with their builds rob his bank the next day, Owen starts putting two and two together. 

This puts him in a difficult spot, if he tells his wife he thinks her parents are bank robbers, that could be the end of the relationship, even if he's right. If he turns them in to the FBI agent, he could be held complicit in the robbery, because he accidentally told them everything they needed to know. Screenwriting is all about choices, of course, and this could have gone down two ways, there's one movie if they ARE the Ghost Bandits, and there's another movie if they are not. Umm, which one has the most comedy potential? Exactly. It turns out the McDermotts have been on the run because they owe money their crime boss, who never got her cut from their last job. Which explains why they've been in hiding all this time, it was to protect their daughter. Yeah, I know, the logic isn't really there to support this decision, like we care about our daughter so much we're going to stay out of her life?  Another possible solution would be to stop robbing banks, but I suppose that's out of the question. 

The million dollars that they owe the mobster has risen to five million over time, that's how interest works with these unsavory types - also, you know, inflation because have you seen how expensive everything is these days?  You almost do need to become a bank robber to supplement your income these days - I know I'm working two part-time jobs and it feels like I'm always running out of money. Once the mobster learns the Ghost Bandits have a daughter, naturally she kidnaps Parker to insure she gets the money she's owed within the next week. Oh, if only the Bandits knew somebody who has enviously studied the security systems of all of the competing banks in town. Wait a sec...

Owen finds himself participating in a larger heist, but only to save his fiancee. Again, there's a narrative choice to be made here, because one option would be to have the Ghost Bandits turn themselves in to the FBI and flip on their crime boss. But option B, to proceed with yet another heist that goes incredibly, impossibly sideways has much more comedy potential, so really, that's not much of a choice at all.

I may give this film an extra point for the syntax of the title, it's a great play on the word "in-laws" considering that the potential in-laws are also potential out-laws. I'm reminded of a gag in an animated feature called "The Tune" which had a nonsense song about a town called "Flooby Nooby" with a bunch of crazy characters. One was a transvestite guy who lived on the edge of town and the song lyric was "Burt's in the outskirts, in skirts." 

Directed by Tyler Spindel (director of "The Wrong Missy")

Also starring Adam Devine (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Ellen Barkin (last seen in "The Man from Toronto"), Nina Dobrev (last seen in "Then Came You"), Michael Rooker (last heard in "Superman" (2025)), Poorna Jagannathan (last seen in "Awake"), Richard Kind (last seen in "18 1/2"), Julie Hagerty (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Blake Anderson (last seen in "Dope"), Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), Lil Rel Howery (last seen in "I Love My Dad"), Dean Winters (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Laci Mosley, Dan Jablons, Sunny Sandler (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Jackie Sandler (ditto), Peggy Walton-Walker (last seen in "Queen Bees"), Mo Gallini, Betsy Sodaro (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Cale Schultz, Paul Eliopoulos, Setaleki Manu, Reyn Doi (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Josh Bolla, John Wesley Randall, Gigi Bermingham (last seen in "Alex & Emma"), John Winscher, Montrel Miller, Zele Avradopoulos. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 action figures (aww, why didn't I have Chewbacca at MY wedding?)

The Thursday Murder Club

Year 18, Day 4 - 1/4/26 - Movie #5,204

BEFORE: I was able to squeeze in the "Stranger Things" finale yesterday afternoon, since I had nothing else going on. Who the hell releases horror-themed stuff on Christmas and New Year's? It's so out of season... Anyway they really dragged out this last season, especially the final two-hour episode which was full of flashbacks to previous seasons, so yeah, about half an hour of story stretched out to two hours, and they also screened it in theaters? Who the hell pays to see something on the big screen they can see at home on Netflix for, well, not FREE but for what you're already paying for the streaming subscription? It's madness, but hey, it's over and now I never need to watch that show again. 

Jonathan Pryce carries over from "The Penguin Lessons" and I'm back on movies that were NOT made in Argentina. I'm posting late today because I had to go work at Barclay's on Kids Day as the Nets played the Denver Nuggets - and I had subway problems both going there AND coming home. On the way there, the G train was partially out for track work and I had to take a shuttle bus for the last four stops, so I figured I needed to come home a different way, so I took a train into Manhattan to get home, only to find that the L train was out because somebody was hit by a train in Brooklyn, and really there's no other way to get home from there, so I had to just sit on the platform for an hour and wait it out, adding an extra hour to my journey. Well, I've got the next two days off so I can stay up tonight and blog before getting to the next film. 

THE PLOT: Four retirees spend their time solving cold case murders for fun, but their casual sleuthing takes a thrilling turn when they find themselves with a real whodunit on their hands. 

AFTER: Since most network shows are still on hiatus, I may need to find another streaming show to binge this week, now that I'm done with "Stranger Things". Maybe "Ms. Marvel" or "Ironheart", I back-burnered those a while ago. But the streaming show that I would compare today's film to is "Only Murders in the Building", and I'm all caught up on that one. I know this movie is based on a book, but it reminds me of that Steve Martin/Martin Short show, where amateur sleuths work together to solve the murders around them, logically this film could then be called "Only Murders in the Retirement Home", only what do they call a retirement home in the U.K.? It seems they use the terms "care home" and "nursing home" (like we do) and it's not some weird word like "nappy" or "lorry" or "geezer flat". 

I'm also reminded of last year's film "Queen Bees", where Ellen Burstyn's character moved into a nursing home and found that James Caan, Jane Curtin and Ann-Margret were all living there. Is that what happens around Los Angeles, are the old folks homes filled with actors who can't find work any more? It's often hard to tell what happens to the actors who can't find work any more, maybe if they saved their royalties they can stay in their homes, but as they grow older, they also may find they need more access to medical care, so, you know, I guess maybe there are nursing homes for some actors. You know, character actors and bit players. Look, I'm one to talk, I'm in my late 50's now so in 10 years I could easily be ready for some kind of assisted living. My parents are both 84 now, what am I going to do if I live that long? I can't move in with my kids because I don't have any. 

Anyway, the Thursday Murder Club is a group of four people from diverse backgrounds who get together once a week and try to solve cold cases. There's a fifth member who used to be on the police force, but she's in the hospice wing and basically comatose. (Narratively, this could be important later.) We join the other three members as they induct a replacement, Joyce, a new resident who's a retired trauma nurse, and could give some needed insight to the injuries depicted in crime scene reports. The other members are Ron, a former union leader, Ibrahim, a retired psychiatrist, and Elizabeth, a former MI-6 agent, and yes, all of the skills from their former professions are important here. I like that, because the retired people (well, the ones without dementia, anyway) still remember their previous lives and everything they've learned over the years is still important and potentially relevant. 

They're solving crimes and looking for some kind of new connection to the police force, at a time when the men who own the retirement home they live in apparently want to redevelop the property into luxury apartments, and they don't want to wait for all the old people to pass away first. So there's trouble brewing, and when one of the three owners is found murdered, it becomes very urgent that they help solve the crime, because that man's share of the property reverts to the other owners, and this could change the balance of power, assuming there was some disagreement between the owners over the future of the care home. The easiest thing to do would be to assume that one co-owner killed the one who wanted to block the sale, but can the Thursday Murder Club prove it? 

The Club befriends Donna, a local constable who was sent to the care home to deliver a lecture on home security, and they turn her into their "woman on the inside" to get details of the crime scene that they can pore over. But then during a protest against the re-development, a second co-owner of the property also dies suddenly, making every single elderly resident, including the members of the club, into suspects. Ron's son Jason, a boxing champion, has also been known to have done some odd jobs for the building's mysterious owner, who happens to be a known criminal that essentially disappeared years ago. It's easy enough to assume that both murders are connected, but are they? Or should the Murder Club be investigating them separately? And how much can the Club learn from the police and the care home handymen, just by giving them cakes? God, this would be adorable if it weren't all so murdery and such. 

Things manage to get more confusing before they get sorted out. Why is there a body buried in the cemetery on top of someone else's coffin? Why do the building owners take the passports away from the immigrants who work for them? And who keeps sending out threatening notes to the Murder Club, along with bouquets of flowers? And can Elizabeth's husband both crack the case AND also remember that he cracked the case? 

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to schedule this film on a Thursday - it's the luck of the draw, but I hope to make up for that this coming Friday. Now, can we get cracking on a sequel to this film before everyone involved gets too old? 

Directed by Chris Columbus (director of "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two" and "Rent")

Also starring Helen Mirren (last heard in "Barbie"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Naomi Ackie (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Daniel Mays (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (last seen in "Man Up"), Tom Ellis (last seen in "Players"), David Tennant (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Geoff Bell (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Paul Freeman (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Death of a Unicorn"), Ingrid Oliver (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Joseph Marcell (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Martin Bishop (last seen in "The Hustle"), Ruth Sheen (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Susan Kirby, Shane David-Joseph, David Garlick, Gary Bates, Will Stevens, Russell Barnett, Nic Lamont, Everly Klann, Jarreau Antoine, Vanessa Bauer, Richenda Carey (last seen in "The Protégé"), Stan Pretty, David Burton, Sonia Elliman, Rashford Angus, Anah Ruddin, Jacqueline Clarke, Imogen Leaver, and the voice of Darren Richardson (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw").

RATING: 7 out of 10 people in water aerobics class

The Penguin Lessons

Year 18, Day 3 - 1/3/26 - Movie #5,203

BEFORE: This Movie Year has started with a distinct focus on Argentina, my first three movies were all made and/or set there, this makes sense because as you'd expect, the linking system has grouped the films with Argentinian actors together - so I've learned that the country seems to have its own film industry and corresponding set of actors. Good to know. But one of the two British actors in this film will be my link back to US/UK films and we can proceed from there. 

Alfonsina Carrocio carries over from "Society of the Snow". 

THE PLOT: A disillusioned Englishman goes to work in a school in a divided Argentina in 1976 and finds his life transformed when he rescues an orphaned penguin from the beach. 

AFTER: Before I get really into this, I want to point out that there are TWO penguin-related films on my list. Today's film is about a teacher in Argentina who rescues a penguin and that transforms his life, and the other film ("My Penguin Friend") is about a fisherman in Brazil who rescues a pengiun, and, shocker, that transforms his life. Today's film just happened to come up first in the linking system, and there is NO direct link to the other film, or I would schedule that one tomorrow, for comparative purposes. Today's film has Steve Coogan, who's always a welcome sight here at the Movie Year, and the other film stars Jean Reno, who, well, can go kick rocks. (He knows what he did...)

Seriously, I do like Coogan, though - "Tropic Thunder" was probably the first film I saw him in, back in the day, but I maybe didn't pay TOO much attention to him until he was in "Night at the Museum". Then of course there was "The Trip" and "Philomena" and since then he's been an easy program, if he's in a film, it makes the list. Hell, I even endured "Hamlet 2" and "Joker 2", but it all paid off last year when I finally caught up with him in "The Lost King". (Steve, if I can call you Steve, maybe avoid sequels that don't have "Despicable Me" in the title. Just a thought.)

With the exception of Stan Laurel, he's best at playing these "stuffed shirt" types, upper middle-class people who have some authority (but not too much) and who have to then complain as the world is falling apart around them. It's the "Basil Fawlty" school of comedy (RIP Prunella Scales, BTW) and then once you have the character, you've got to make him the "man in the middle", there are people under him (hotel workers, for example) that he needs to control, and people above him (hotel reviewers, food critics) who he has to kiss up to, and OF COURSE he's going to mess things up while trying to fix everything. That's comedy. 

Obviously I set this chain up weeks ago, I had no idea that I would wake up on January 3 and find out my country has invaded Venezuela. Yes, I realize that Argentina and Venezuela are at opposite ends of a very large continent, but the storyline here might be somewhat applicable to current events. "The Penguin Lessons" is set in Argentina in 1976, after the coup d'etat that removed Isabel Peron from power, and a military junta had been installed, which would remain in power for the next seven years, with the next democratic election held in 1983. During the reign of the military and dictator Jorge Videla, it's estimated that 30,000 young people, opponents of his regime, were made to disappear. Look, I don't know what's been going on in Venezuela (I'll look it up after I post today, I promise) but I have a feeling that history has been sort of repeating itself in a different country. But this is what's been going on in AMERICA too, anyone who's been critical of the President is on an enemies list somewhere, and our glorious leader has been doing everything within his power (and a few things that aren't) to make their lives miserable, or ship them to somewhere else. 

Which makes this film super relevant to current events in both North AND South America. For those who cannot remember what happened under Nixon and Reagan, shame on you, because it's all happening again, and it's worse than ever before. Nixon had Vietnam and Reagan had El Salvador and Nicaragua, and now Trump's got Venezuela, and anyone who had "start a war to distract from the Epstein files" on their 2026 bingo card is one step closer to winning. But let's get back to Argentina, because today's film gives us a ground-level view on what happened right after the military junta filled the power void. 

Tom Michell takes a position as an English teacher (and assistant rugby coach) to a bunch of entitled Argentinian school-boys, they don't want to learn or even listen to him, but Michell, doesn't care, he's getting paid - plus you get the idea that he just wants to disappear from his own life. Personal tragedies and all that - so when a bombing forces the school to shut down for a week, he decides to visit Chile for a week with another teacher to maybe meet a lady or two. (For the love of God, PLEASE don't take a plane over the Andes, it doesn't end well.). Tom and his wingman meet a pair of ladies at a dance club, and while strolling with Carina on the beach, they encounter a penguin who's been beached after an oil spill. To impress Carina, he takes the penguin back to his hotel and they do the good deed of cleaning the oil off the bird in the bathtub. It's a great ice-breaker, but before things go too far, Carina reveals she's married and has to leave, while Tom gets stuck with a penguin who won't leave his side. 

He tries to ignore the penguin, he tries to toss it back to the sea, and finally he has to return to Argentina, and finds himself trying to smuggle the penguin back with him. This puts him in contact with Chilean officials, who gradually transition from "You can't take the penguin, we will arrest you." to "You must take the penguin, or we will arrest you." This is a quite nimble bit of comedy, I'm not saying it's logical but it gets the film where it needs to go.  The penguin needs to be at the school to be a figurative "fish out of water", just as Tom himself is. 

After comedic misguided attempts to hide the penguin in his apartment, the bird ends up being the world's greatest ice-breaker, his maid wants to care for it, his fellow teacher uses it as his therapist and it becomes the thing that grabs his students' attention and forces them to study. And while Tom teaches his students about metaphors, the penguin itself becomes a metaphor - not only for Tom (the other "fish out of water") but also later a metaphor for Sofia, who has been captured by the military police and imprisoned. Tom gets an opportunity to give the penguin to a zoo, but that means it will have to live in quarantine for several weeks, and that cage looks a little too much like a jail cell, and reminds him of Sofia. Sofia reminds him of something else, of course, but that's another story. 

If you crossed "Mr. Popper's Penguins" with "Dead Poets Society" and threw in a bit of "Marley and Me", you might get something like this film. But then, I've probably said too much there, haven't I?  The thing about all pets, even penguins, is that they don't live forever in the human world, and having lost one of our cats at Thanksgiving, the message here kind of hit home. But we have to remember, if we take in a stray animal, they'll probably live longer under our care than they would in the wild, assuming we're protecting them properly. And it's better that we had the time together with them that we did, even if it felt short. When they pass on we are sad, but we should be happy about the fact that we are sad. I know that doesn't make sense, but it should. 

The bottom line is, you've got to "put the penguin in the pool". Well, it's not exactly "carpe diem" but it's what we've got to work with here. 

Directed by Peter Cattaneo (director of "Lucky Break" and "The Rocker")

Also starring Steve Coogan (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Julia Fossi, Jonathan Pryce (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Vivian El Jaber, David Herrero, Bjorn Gustafsson (last seen in "Spy"), Brendan McNamee, Joaquin Lopez, Hugo Fuertes, Miguel Alejandro Serrano, Almar Miranda, Nicanor Fernandez, Gera Maleh, Micaela Breque, Florencia Nocetti, Romina Cocca, Juan M. Barreiro, Osvaldo Ayre, Tomas Pozzi (last seen in "Risen"), Ramiro Blas, Liam Mayne, Ana Carolina Parisi, Josefina Montserrat.

RATING: 7 out of 10 sprats

Society of the Snow

Year 18, Day 2 - 1/2/26 - Movie #5,202

BEFORE: Before I forget, let me talk about what went down on New Year's Eve - I booked a gig working check-in at a prominent chain restaurant in Manhattan, for reference sake let's just call it "PinaColadaBurg". I'm an events guy now, I have five years experience in that position (plus 25 years before that doing random events here and there) so I figured I could make some fast money while the movie theater is still on winter break. And New Year's is the biggest event night of all, I figured there had to be work somewhere, so I found it. I even qualified for a leadership role, mostly because I showed up early for the interview (I've got them all fooled, I tell ya - I clean up good and play the part of "responsible person" very well).  

Then I found out that although the restaurant is a few blocks south of Times Square, it's within the zone that the police block off for the big annual ball drop - if you're a New Yorker like me, you usually watch this on TV and probably have a rule about never, ever going there, because that's for tourists and suckers. Well, I'm not a tourist or a sucker but I found myself scheduled for an event next to the event with the biggest crowd anywhere, and, as I've always assumed, the most chaos possible. 

SO with dollar signs in my eyes, I bundled up in layers and headed for the one place that I swore I would never go, Times Square on New Year's Eve. I knew the location because my comic book shop is right across the street, and I had been invited by the event manager to join her on a walk-through of the space the week before. I figured any knowledge I could gain from seeing the space or talking to the staff would be useful, but all the prep in the world could not have prevented the chaos that ensued. Long entry lines, bitter cold, and confusing ticket structure was the start of it, then there were multiple problems with random people sitting where they weren't supposed to, guests demanding services they were entitled to but hadn't received, and very confusing instructions from the event organizers - like, is re-entry allowed or not allowed? You know, it doesn't matter, because even if it's not allowed, people are very entitled these days and they're just going to do whatever they want. 

The worst thing that happened was that even though the TVs in the restaurant were all tuned to the ball drop, and champagne was handed out to everyone at 11:45, somebody realized that the actual live event was happening just a few blocks away, and it would be really great if they walked outside with their champagne and experienced the majesty of the event live, in person. So suddenly 200 of my guests were walking out of the event with drinks in hand (umm, it's illegal to drink alcohol outside in NYC) and then they expected to walk back in right after midnight (umm, you guys all just left your coats and purses unattended) and this created an instant logistical nightmare for anyone working the door (umm, me). Well, I couldn't hold back a crowd of 200 entitled tourists who were not satisfied with standing in a restaurant and watching the ball drop on TV, but guys, if you want to be like a New Yorker, that's what we do, we watch it on TV even though it's happening just a few blocks away, because come on, we're inside, we've got food, we've got drinks, we're safe and we're getting the best possible view of the event thanks to the magic of television. I'm sorry, but if you choose to go outside into the madness of Times Square with a drink in your hand, I can't be held responsible. I'm just one man in charge of a team of people trying to control the chaos of an event. The good news is that nobody got hurt, I think most everyone had a good time, and next week I'm going to get paid, if this company doesn't disappear overnight and screw me over. 

When it comes to events, I'm now used to being the first one there and the last one to leave, and that was the case on New Year's Eve, I was there until 1 am, at which point I had to walk the bag of supplies back to the main office, a few blocks away, turn in the time sheet for my team, and give my handler some kind of event wrap-up. I didn't get home until 2:30 am, after navigating the piles of trash and puke in Manhattan and then avoiding the party at the roller-skating rink in Bushwick. I caught the re-broadcast of the ball drop on CNN at 3:00 am, which is, again, how a New Yorker should experience the event, and then slept for a solid 8 hours, THEN worked on New Year's Day at the Barclay's Center. This feels a bit like a work schedule that would take down a normal man, but I seem to have recovered OK. 

Francisco Bereny AND Toto Rovito carry over from "The Games Maker". Now, these two films were released 10 years apart, so I think I can assume that the pool of Argentinian actors is just not that large. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Alive" (Movie #461)

THE PLOT: The flight of a rugby team crashes on a glacier in the Andes. The few passengers who survive the crash find themselves in one of the world's toughest environments to survive. 

AFTER: First off, I would never compare my recent stressful experience on New Year's Eve to the tragedies and hardships that were endured by the passengers on this Uruguayan airplane that crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972. There's no comparison, their struggles over 71 days in the extreme cold highlights perhaps the worst conditions that anyone ever encountered, and it's a miracle that 29 of the 45 passengers survived the crash, and that 16 people ultimately made it to safety, after 2 people hiked for 10 days to find help in Chile. That being said, I can kind of relate in some small way after spending 6 hours working in a freezing hotel lobby and going 18 hours without eating anything. When I'm in "event mode" I'm just too busy and stressed-out to eat, plus I'm not supposed to eat event food, unless the event is over and I'm sure that all of the guests have eaten their fill before me. So yes, I've recently been cold and hungry and under pressure, but it was all transitory, my inconvenience was nothing at all compared to what the survivors of Flight 571 endured. 

It's cold here in NYC today (again, no comparison) and it's snowed twice already (again, a mere inconvenience) but there are like 30 inches of snow in Buffalo and Syracuse - you know what, those people are probably used to it. They made their choice, I mean, who decides to live in Buffalo, they must be out of their minds. We had snow in NYC the day in mid-December that we left for the cruise, sure, it was a little difficult to get to the Brooklyn port because of snow and traffic, but come on, we knew once we got on the boat things would probably get better, as we were heading for Florida and the Bahamas. Barring any "Carnival poop cruise" situation, things were looking up as we were getting out of the cold for a week. That's really the whole point of "Society in the Snow", we are shown the tragedies and hardships and very difficult decisions that these crash survivors endured, and the only thing we can do in response is be glad that this didn't happen to us, and also be thankful for the things we have and the ways our lives have been improved by our technologies and our current living conditions. If you've got a warm home, access to food and you have someone special to share your days with, really, you're doing all right. Appreciate that through no fault of your own, things could be a LOT worse, you could be marooned on a deserted island with no food or water, or you could be stranded on a mountaintop in the freezing cold and debating the ethics of cannibalism. 

So yeah, I'm feeling hashtag-blessed - it's a privilege that I got to sleep in today, get up and go get us some breakfast sandwiches, and then spend some time discussing movies with you. After that I've got nowhere to go, nothing to do today, just going to pay some bills, check e-mails, play some phone games and maybe my wife and I will go out to dinner later, because she really hasn't seen much of me over the last two days. That's our deal now, I go out and work a ridiculous, mostly nocturnal schedule and she stays home and works a 9-to-5 (OK, 9-to-3) remotely. Having a meal together or even watching a TV show together is hard to come by and requires some coordination, but it can be possible. 

My theater job first brought me in close proximity to a screening of this film. For a few months straight I worked the Tuesday night film appreciation class, which is mainly an older crowd that pays the school for the privilege to come to the theater once a week, and a professor with connections manages to arrange a first-run or preview screening, often with the director or a screenwriter or a casting director there for a Q&A session after. In December 2023, the class screened "Society of the Snow", with perhaps unanticipated results - again, it's an older crowd that's paying to be there and they very much want to be entertained and informed, usually with a light comedy or drama ("Song Sung Blue" was a recent choice). Some people in the crowd were not prepared for such a stressful action movie about a plane crash, so they got upset. A few people walked out of the screening and left, others sat in the lobby and just wanted to sit in silence for a while, so as the house manager I comforted those people who just couldn't handle it, that's fine, everything is OK, you don't have to go back into the theater if you don't want to.

I get it, even the idea of a plane crash is stressful, to see it on the big screen and feel the vibrations from the speakers, it's a lot. Again, hashtag-blessed that I got to witness this from the comfort of my living room, sitting in a recliner with access to a box of cookies and a glass of soda. And then there are scenes later in the film that were designed to make viewers feel claustrophobia, once the plane wreckage sinks into the snow some people were buried and had to dig themselves out, others weren't able to - so there are graphic depictions of people dying, and this can be tough to take. Scenes with people enduring starvation, wondering when their bodies are going to fail them, and then debating whether it makes more sense to stay put and starve or hike to safety and potentially freeze to death. We can't really fault the screenwriters since this all really took place, again I think the only response is to appreciate what these people went through and be thankful we have what we have and hopefully never have to go through anything like this ourselves. 

OK, that being said, this film is two and a half hours long - I have no right to complain about that, either, because what is two and a half hours out of MY life, compared with spending 71 days on a mountain-top without food or any heat source or any hope of being rescued soon? Oh, sorry, do you not like watching sub-titles? How terrible that must be for YOU that you have to read words on the bottom of the screen while you're watching your movie. Maybe you should just move on, because you're kind of missing the whole point here. Look, I read subtitles during EVERY movie because I'm half-deaf in one ear and it's just easier, OK? But sure, let's talk about YOUR needs as you eat popcorn and candy while watching a movie about people starving to death. 

Look, I don't want to get too much into the details of this film, as you can just read about Flight 571 on Wikipedia, also this is the THIRD filmed version of this story, I watched the terrible Hollywood adaptation, "Alive", way back in 2010 - that's over 15 years ago now. The only thing I want to point out, from a narrative point of view, is that I thought the early church scene was very clever, the Bible reading involved the Last Supper, where Jesus broke bread and told his disciples to eat it, as if they were consuming his own body. That's some really adept fore-shadowing there, considering what happens later on the mountain after the crash survivors run out of crackers and chocolates. Honestly, I got out of Catholicism when I learned that church dogma still officially believes that during every service, the bread (hosts) and wine ACTUALLY turns into the body and blood of Jesus. Sorry, I thought that was just a metaphor, but no, the priests REALLY believe that their congregation is eating Jesus. That's way too heavy for me, man, it's church-sponsored cannibalism and thanks, but no thanks. You guys go on without me, I'm good, I had a big breakfast, man. 

If I'm grateful for anything else today, it's that I was finally able to link to this film, and that it only took me two years. Now, if not for "The Games Maker", I could have just started the year with this film, that would have been another way to go, but I didn't have to. And thankfully, impossibly, somehow there's a path from here back to non-Argentinian, more mainstream movies. Really, with my method of watching movies, this is about as hard as it gets, and you know, all things considered, it's not that bad. Life is good, the chain method works and more often than not, it allows me to watch every movie at what turns out to be the perfect time. #blessed (but not in a religious way, in a humanistic effort-pays-off way).

Directed by J.A. Bayona (director of "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" and "A Monster Calls")

Also starring Enzo Vogrincic, Agustin Pardella, Matias Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi, Diego Vegezzi, Fernando Contigiani, Esteban Kukuriczka, Francisco Romero, Rafael Federman, Valentino Alonso, Tomás Wolf, Agustin Della Corte, Felipe Gonzalez Otaño, Andy Pruss, Blas Polidori, Felipe Ramusio, Simon Hempe, Luciano Chatton, Rocco Posca, Paula Baldini, Emanuel Parga, Juan Caruso, Benjamín Segura, Santiago Vaca Narvaja, Federico Aznarez, Agustin Berruti, Alfonsina Carrocio, Jaime James Louta, Juandi Elrea Young, Jerónimo Bosia, Giselle Douaret, Agustin Lain, Julian Bedino, Federico Formento, Laularo Martin Bakir, Tea Alberti, Lucas Mascareña, Maximiliano de la Cruz, Juan José Marco, Mariano Rochman, Esteban Pico, Pablo Tate, Virginia Kauffmann, Francisco Burghi, Daniel Antivilo, Ezequiel Fadel Hinojosa, Gustavo F. Sasco, Carlitos Páez, Tomás Friedmann, Roberto Suarez, Constanza Del Sol Giraudo, Gabriela Quartino Tilve, Sergio Armand'ugón, María Elena Pérez, Julio Lachs, Camila Chieza, Franco Rilla, Ignacio Martinez, Ramiro Rutz, Sandra Américo, Claudia Trecu de Lucia, Susana Groisman, Julieta Marcus, Clara Roibal Camino, Clara Ibarra Vierci, Lorenzo Bigliardi, Carolina Steinhorn, Belen Giannini, Camila Giannotti, Sofia Lara, Verónica Perrotta, Rogello Gracia, Álvaro Armand Ugón, Sara Bessio, Noella Campo, Berch Rupenian

RATING: 6 out of 10 phone numbers of girls in Santiago to contact for a good time