BEFORE: Happy New Year, and happy new chain. Nobody carries over from "Ordinary Angels" because we're starting with a clean slate. Boy that would be something, right, a multi-year chain? The stuff of legends... No, we're flipping the calendar over - and let me just tell you that the calendar industry is a giant scam, I have not paid like $15 for a calendar in years, we all have calendars FREE now, thanks to our phones and the internet, so I expect the calendar industry will collapse, any day now. What we do now is just print out a blank month from the web and tape it over the corresponding month on the calendar from 2024, and we'll never have to buy a new one again. Sure, eventually we may get tired of the same cat photos, but there are 12 different ones, and do we ever remember what last January's calendar art was? I'm in my late 50's now, so no, I barely remember anything - so it's a surprise to see that cat photo from a year ago, so it's really the same as having a brand new calendar.
Anyway, I explained in the 2025 wrap-up post why I picked THIS film to kick off 2026 - it only links to ONE other film on my list, which is kind of astounding. Then again, it's a 2014 film from Argentina with only a few Hollywood actors in it, so I wouldn't expect it to connect to much. Plus, I already KNOW how I can link back to more mainstream fare in just a few days, so I've been in this situation before, just look at the films that I've watched at the start of the last few years. Last year it was "Anatomy of a Fall", a French film, which I followed with "The Zone of Interest", a German film, and I didn't see an American actor until Day 3. The year before that, I started with "The Worst Person in the World", a Norwegian film, and I linked back to U.S. movies with "Bergman Island". "Narrowsburg", "Nomadland", "Parasite", these were other January 1 films that I might NEVER have been able to get to if I didn't program them at the start of the year.
So that's the plan, start here, knock off another foreign film tomorrow with no Hollywood actors, and by Day 3 I'll be back on English-speaking movies as the linking Gods intended. Crossing off a couple tough ones feels very satisfying, and I did a LOT of that last year. I want to keep that up, already I see a way in January to knock off a film called "Walt Before Mickey", which has been on my list for absolutely forever - if it comes down to a choice between that film and "Now You See Me, Now You Don't", well, I know what I'm going to have to do. I can probably link back to the mainstream film in the future, but the small indie film, not so much. All movies are created equal, but some are more equal than others and maybe I have to seek out the weird and lesser-seen ones.
So here's the linking plan for January, as always this will be subject to change - from here Francisco Bereny AND Toto Rovito will carry over to tomorrow's film, and then Alfonsina Carrocio, Jonathan Pryce, Pierce Brosnan (3 films), Cate Blanchett (3), Jamie Lee Curtis (4), Dave Bautista (3), Kevin Durand, Owen Teague (3), Carla Gugino, Idris Elba (4), Gabrielle Union, Bill Murray (3), Daniel Steiner, Sean Bean, Tom Burke, Patsy Ferran, Tim Key, and Jesse Eisenberg (4, possibly 5). That should take me right up to the start of February, which of course is romance/relationship month - that's when I'm going to really knock off some films that have been hanging around on the list for far too long.
Usually at the start of the year I make a dedication to someone the movie industry lost over the last year, someone whose work I appreciated, and man, there was no shortage of choices this time around, like Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, Val Kilmer and David Lynch? Even the next tier down is star-studded, with Terence Stamp, Dame Joan Plowright, Brigitte Bardot and documentary star villain Dick Cheney. But with the Spinal Tap sequel just begging me to program it somehow, how could I not dedicate the coming movie year to Rob Reiner, director of so many great films like "Misery" and the New Year's Eve classic "When Harry Met Sally"? So this year's in your honor, Mr. Reiner.
THE PLOT: Young Ivan Drago's newfound love of board games catapults him into the competitive world of game invention, and pits him against the inventor Morodian, who has long desired to destroy the city of Zyl, founded by Ivan's grandfather. To save his family and defeat Morodian, Ivan must come to know what it is to be a true Games Maker.
AFTER: I had a long, complex dream the other day about quitting my job (which I did last year), leaving the office, getting lost in the hallways, finding myself on a bus, taking the bus one stop to Brooklyn, walking to the Barclay's Center, not recognizing the buildings, always thinking that if I take the next right turn I'm going to recognize the shops on the street and be where I need to be. Meanwhile I knew that I was going to show up late, I wasn't wearing the right shoes (at one point I wasn't wearing any shoes at all, but then they came back) and I was in some deep trouble. At some point the failing logic of the dream collapsed, after just one too many things doesn't make any sense, and that's when I tend to realize that I'm dreaming, then I woke up. It would be great if I could somehow keep dreaming and control the dream, I could make anything happen or at least turn failure into success, but that's just not how these things work.
This movie is like that fever dream - it's OK, a lot of movies are like that. "The Wizard of Oz" is just a long fever dream that Dorothy has while she's unconscious, and her brain really did a number on her, she has to travel down that yellow brick road and meet all kinds of crazy characters, Munchkins and a Tin Man and flying monkeys, and her task is ever-changing and ambiguous, the Wizard wants her to kill the Wicked Witch, but of course a good person would never ask you to kill someone IRL, not even an evil witch. Then when she finally accidentally does that there's no resolution, the goal is still not achieved, because it's not time to wake up or roll the credits yet. So there's MORE, and when the writers couldn't think of more tasks, they just make the Wizard fly off in a balloon for no reason. If you really try to watch "The Wizard of Oz" as a coherent narrative you're wasting your time, because the story zigs and zags all over the place and then of course, never really adds up to anything, because it was all a dream, it was never going to do anything but kill time.
This film is a lot like "The Wizard of Oz" in that regard, it takes place in a number of different locations but also moves from here to there quite randomly, as soon as it sets up young Ivan Drago in one situation, it starts working on making his life collapse in on itself so he's forced to go somewhere else, and then repeat as necessary until we've taken up 110 minutes of screen time. And unfortunately you're never going to get those 110 minutes BACK, even though you might wish you could. First he's a young school boy with a loving set of parents, but the only problem is that his mind keeps thinking up strategies for new board games, and his father has no interest at all in such things, in fact he forbids Ivan to make games. (Who hurt him?) But through a comic book Ivan learns of a company that has a competition to create games, and he submits one after another. And with each new game he submits, he rises further in the mail-in competition, until he learns that he has won the grand prize, which arrives in the mail in the form of a non-temporary tattoo, and Ivan's father becomes furious about this.
Everything changes when Ivan's parents are killed or lost in a balloon race (could happen) and he is sent to a strict boarding school (which is slowly sinking into a swamp), even though he apparently has a grandfather somewhere else who Ivan's father was estranged from. At this school he is bullied by students and tormented by his teachers, but also he notices kid playing games that are based on his contest entries - so clearly that company wasn't on the up-and-up, but what else could be going on here? He meets an "invisible" girl who lives in the walls of the boys-only school, and she introduces him to a jigsaw puzzle that contains a secret message, which tells him to tune in to a particular TV station at 2 am (he has to steal a TV set from a classroom) and when he does, he gets a broadcast message from his mysterious grandfather, who lives in the land of Zyl, the capital of making board games.
To get there, Ivan has to arrange a scavenger hunt for the other students, which makes them run all over the school as they solve the clues and this makes the whole school sink completely into the swamp, so classes are cancelled, obviously, and Ivan hops on a train to Zyl, which is only weird because nobody goes there any more. But the train conductor gives him another comic book, which tells the tale of a married couple lost in a balloon race, and how they maybe survived - so Ivan becomes convinced that his parents are alive somewhere. I mean, would a comic book lie? But the comic book also has an ad for that game-making company, the one that awarded Ivan that prize but also stole his ideas, and also just happens to be located in the land of Zyl. When Ivan meets his grandfather (who teaches him more about strategy games), he learns that the head of the game company, Morodian, was the same age as his father, in fact they were childhood friends, and Morodian might be responsible for the disappearance of his parents.
Morodian has in fact been tracking Ivan his whole life, and set up the whole game-making competition to develop a love of gaming within Ivan, knowing this would put him at odds with his father, I suppose. Well, we all come to hate what our parents stand for at some point, this is really just the other side of that, where we all throw ourselves into a career that our parents will despise, or never really understand at the very least. So Ivan does the only thing he can think of that will solve the mystery of his life, he ditches his grandfather and goes to work for Morodian. We've all been there, right? We sign on to work for the top dog in our chosen field, and then after 30 years of service and minor successes we're enormously stressed out and change careers to save what little remains of our mental health? Just me? Ivan works as Morodian's dream scribe, which means he has to take notes while Morodian talks in his sleep, just in case he blurts out any new great ideas for board games.
Ivan does have access to the secret parts of the company, though, and with the help of Fake Ivan (another weird but helpful character) he does confirm that his parents are alive and being held hostage, and his penchant for strategy does come in handy when it's time to escape the flying monkeys - sorry, the three-bodied watchmen - in the most outlandish and impossible way. And like "The Wizard of Oz", you know the end of the film is drawing near when someone flies of in a hot-air balloon.
I wish this film had been more coherent - really, it's all over the place, firing in all directions at once and then wiping the narrative slate clean every so often. So no coherent six-act structure here BUT it does star the young boy who would play Bruce Wayne on "Gotham" not long after this. I guess playing an "orphan" here and learning strategy was good training to play the future Batman. I also wish they could have gotten more into the mechanics of some of the fictional games here, but really, the story works (?) without that, so it doesn't really matter.
Directed by Juan Pablo Buscarini
Also starring David Mazouz, Edward Asner (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Joseph Fiennes (last seen in "The Mother"), Tom Cavanagh (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Valentina Lodovini, Megan Charpentier (last seen in "Jennifer's Body"), Robert Verlaque, Alejandro Awada, Vando Villamil, Maiamar Abrodos, Corina Romero, Sean Mathieson, Nicolas Torcanowsky, Yola Mtilwa, Ivan Masliah, Paula Kohan, Lucas Schweimler Ricca, Juan Cruz Rolla Knight, Francisco Bereny, Julian Zuker, Toto Rovito, Feliz Volker, Maxi Kim, Daniel Dessal, Raymond E. Lee, Ernesto Juan Reid, Gerardo Scherman, Martin Blake, Julieta Halac, Mariano Caligaris, Juan Nesis and the voices of John Emmet Tracy, Mike Clarke.
RATING: 5 out of 10 cardboard cut-outs of people that make the town look less abandoned.
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