Black Death

Year 18, Day 24 - 1/24/26 - Movie #5,224

BEFORE: I forgot to mention that the other night, Thursday, I helped a guy get off the subway tracks. It wasn't like he fell down there or anything, he went on the tracks by choice - and he wasn't crazy, he could see a $10 bill or something had fallen down there, and he wanted it. I was sitting on a bench nearby, it was just before midnight and I heard him say, "Well, I guess I got no choice..." before lowering himself down to the tracks, and he put the money on the platform, and then realized he couldn't pull himself back up to safety, the platform was too high - there's a good lesson in there somewhere, like maybe "Don't do this."  I knew there were at least 8 or 9 minutes before a train was scheduled to come by, but you never know. I asked him if he needed a hand and I got up and offered to pull him up - kind of forgetting that my knees aren't what they used to be. What I SHOULD have done was walk over to a girder and hold on to that so I wouldn't fall down myself, but I didn't think of it, I just planted my feet and pulled him up. Thank God I outweighed him, and thank God my knee held up, because as I felt his weight, I thought for a second that maybe I'd just written a check that I couldn't cash. Also, I was coming off a shift so I was probably more tired then I'd care to admit. Good news, he was pulled to safety and I avoided being pulled on to the tracks myself. I didn't take a minute to think of a better plan, I just kind of acted, because if he had been hit by a train then I would have been a witness to that, and both paperwork and nightmares would follow, plus there would have been an investigation and the C/E line would have been shut down, and I wouldn't have been able to get home. So I guess I did the right thing?

Daniel Steiner carries over from "The Phoenician Scheme". In that film, he played an arsonist and in this film he plays a monk. I will freely admit that when building the January chain, I really only got as far as "The Phoenician Scheme" without stopping, and then I looked at what film I wanted to watch on February 1 and worked backwards from there, until I got to THIS film which happened to link up with the Wes Anderson film - maybe a lot of films would have, but this is the one I found. 

THE PLOT: Set during the first bubonic plague outbreak in England, a young monk is given the task of learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life in a small village. 

AFTER: This film is set in 1348 but it was released in 2010, well before COVID, there's no way they could have known that the world would go through another pandemic in the coming years. But I'm sure things like AIDS and ebola might have factored into creative decisions here, the ideas behind plagues and epidemics have been around for a while, if nothing else the Spanish flu from the early 1900's is something we might be familiar with. The final tally on COVID was a confirmed 7.1 million deaths, but estimates that include the non-reported cases range between 18.2 and 33.5 million, that's a lot of people but still it's only the fifth deadliest pandemic in history. Coming in at #4 is that Spanish flu from 1918-20, in the #3 spot is the Black Death (1348-1353) and in second place is HIV/AIDS, with about 45 million deaths. The top spot is held by the Justinian plague, which was bubonic plague like the Black Death, only 800 years earlier, with up to 100 million deaths. 

So the Black Death was no joke, it's possible that 60% of the European population was lost - not a great time to be alive, but if you managed to survive the plague, you maybe at least stood a chance of buying some real estate, because a lot of people didn't need land any more except to be buried in. Just trying to look at the bright side here. And we don't think this is likely to happen again, but you know what, why don't we stop cutting the federal requirements for vaccines to shreds, because why tempt fate? If we've got vaccines for more things, we should be giving them out rather than letting them sit somewhere and go bad, because what purpose does that serve? We know the COVID vaccine works, so exactly what has RFK Jr. got against all the other ones?  What happened to trying to reach herd immunity on some of those diseases, which is kind of just one step away from eliminating them altogether? 

Anyway, in this story Osgard is a young monk during the plague years, and he's got a thing going with Averill, a young woman who sought refuge at the monastery. That sounds like it's probably against the rules, but, you know, a man has needs and sometimes God just isn't willing to see to them. He convinces Averill to leave because the plague has reached the monastery and it's not safe for her there - but they set up a meeting point and she says she'll be there every day at dawn for a week, after that, she's moving on. Yeah, great girl, but her love is conditional, what does that mean? Osgard prays for God to send him a sign that he should also leave the monastery - does God look like Bill Murray in this one? It's unclear. BUT a group of knights turns up at the monastery and asks for a guide to take them into the marshland, to find a village that hasn't been affected by the plague. The bishop has sent these knights because of rumors that a necromancer runs that town, and is bringing dead people back to life. Osmund takes this as a sign from God that he should escort them, also this will give him a chance to meet up with his lady friend as planned. 

The group is attacked in the forest and a couple of them die, also Osmund finds Averill's cloak, stained with blood, so naturally he assumes she's dead. They reach the village in the marsh, everything seems rather chill and plague-free, only Osmund watches a ritual at night where Langiva, one of the town leaders, brings his dead girlfriend back to life. Meanwhile the knights are given food and drink which is drugged, and they're all captured to be sacrificed in rituals designed to keep the plague from reaching the village. Langiva blames the church for the plague, and who's to say she's wrong? The church has missionaries and envoys sent all over the known world, they might be the ones spreading disease, in addition to rats and such. The church certainly didn't have the knowledge or the power to just make everyone stay home for a few years while the plague dies down, people still had to go to the market and the butcher and work their farms and clean the town streets.  

So, yeah, if the plague was caused by Christians then the solution is simple, just sacrifice a few holy knights and that should keep people from coming to the village and bringing the plague with them. It makes sense, except it doesn't, because if you kill the bishop's envoy he's just going to send another envoy team to find out what happened to the last one, and so on and so on. The knights are given a choice, either renounce their faith and be saved, or maintain their faith in God and be sacrificed on a cross. Please note that being "saved" includes death by hanging from a tree, so really, there's not that much of a choice here. There seems to be a differing opinion on the semantics of what being "saved" means. 

Osmund renounces his faith, but only so he can get close to the revived Averill and kill her again, because he thinks she's a resurrected zombie and therefore a holy abomination. Sure, sounds like a great plan until he learns the truth about whether she was ever dead to begin with. Whoopsie. But a couple of the knights manage to escape their water-filled cells and start killing villagers, the main knight Ulric is scheduled to be drawn and quartered, but even though the other knights can't reach him in time, he's still got a few tricks up his sleeves. Literally. 

Bad news, Langiva escapes and Osmund is brought back to the monastery, eventually he gives up the life of a monk (that was probably never going to be a good fit anyway) and becomes a knight himself, spending his days searching for Langiva in every small village he can find. Well, it's a living at least. The notion is raised, by the pagans, that there is no hell or heaven waiting for us - ALSO the possibility, raised by the monk that we are already in hell, due to our sins in a previous life. It seems unlikely, yet when life really, really sucks, our natural tendency is to consider this, so perhaps it's worth a thought.

Directed by Christopher Smith

Also starring Sean Bean (last heard in "Wolfwalkers"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "The Good Nurse"), John Lynch (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), Tim McInnerny (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Kimberley Nixon (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Andy Nyman (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), David Warner (last seen in "Scream 2"), Johnny Harris (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Emun Elliott (last seen in "6 Days"), Tygo Gernandt, Jamie Ballard (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Carice van Houten (last seen in "Race"), Tobias Kasimirowicz, Keith Dunphy (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Marianne Graffam (last seen in "Spencer"), Ines Marie Westernströer, Nike Martens, Peter Wolf, Alex Tondowski (last seen in "The Voices"), Thorsten Querner, Gotthard Lange (last seen in "The Book Thief"), Emily Fleischer (last seen in "The Phenom"), Andrea Ummenberger

RATING: 5 out of 10 members of an angry witch-finding mob

The Phoenician Scheme

Year 18, Day 23 - 1/23/26 - Movie #5,223

BEFORE: Out late again last night, working at a little cobbled-together film festival - a rather unique event, it seems somebody was running some kind of scam festival, I don't know all the details but entry fees were collected, a screening was arranged and then the organizer started hitting the filmmakers up for money, forcing them to buy blocks of tickets or else their films would be cut from the program. Threats were made, harsh e-mails were exchanged, and then the filmmakers got together and arranged their own screening, cutting the organizer out of the picture. I only learned of this after the fact, so my information is all second-hand, but it felt good to work on the event knowing that it was done grass-roots style to fulfill the promise that the original organizer maybe had no intention of fulfilling. Hey, I'm glad the films got screened, also that I got paid for my time, there are no guarantees in life, especially when dishonest people are involved. It just reminded me of the documentary "Narrowsburg", and some of the filmmakers were shocked to find out that this sort of thing has happened before, and probably will happen again. How easy is it to create a bogus festival, get a listing on FilmFreeway, charge a lot of people entry fees, and then just NOT put the screening together and pocket the money? This is why we all have to band together and call out people for their B.S.

Bill Murray carries over one more time from "The Saint of Second Chances" and now he's tied with Jamie Lee Curtis and Idris Elba. That seems about right. 

THE PLOT: Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins. 

AFTER: Bill Murray plays God in this film - well, at least Wes Anderson got that right. If Bill Murray isn't your God or at least your spirit animal, then what exactly are you doing with your life? We should all be the sort of enigmatic, nomadic, carefree bon vivant that Bill Murray represents, somebody who can fit in just as well at a college dorm party as he would at a fancy wedding, and be funny and entertaining and not give a damn about what anybody thinks of him. He works when he wants to work, and travels when he wants to travel and everybody else can really go and take a flying fuck at a rolling donut if he's not their cup of tea. 

I've become a big Wes Anderson fan, and I programmed this one with great antici...pation, but I just don't know if it lives up to the hype I may have inadvertently created for it. It's just not as BUSY as "Grand Budapest Hotel", and it doesn't feel as meaningful on a personal level as, say, "Moonrise Kingdom", so what gives, it is me or Wes that's the problem here? First off, there almost zero story here, and that's on Wes, not me. He based the main character on his own now-late father-in-law, Fouad Malouf, a Lebanese engineer. He considered that man to be wise and larger-than-life, but full of various business plans and he had his files and memories organized in shoeboxes near the end of his life. I do kind of the same thing, but with receipts for tax returns. But the business plan here is really just an attempt for Zsa-zsa to get closer to his daughter, perhaps. This whole father-daughter thing kind of carries over from "The Saint of Second Chances", maybe. 

But is there any THERE there? What, exactly, is the Phoenician Scheme? Like I watched the whole film and I can't even tell you what that was about. Zsa-zsa Korda had to travel from the U.S. West Coast to France, back to the U.S. East Coast - and he doesn't even have a passport, mind you, how the hell does THAT work - and at each stop he meets with his investors and drops the bombshell that he has to alter their contract, those investors have to start contributing more to make up for some kind of budget shortfall, which is caused by a bunch of government agents who are intentionally driving up the cost of building materials in order to drive him out of business. 

In the meantime, people are constantly trying to assassinate Korda, and the easiest way to do that is to shoot down his plane or put a bomb on it, I think he survives like THREE plane crashes in this film, and each time he has a vision of the afterlife, in which, as stated before, Bill Murray plays God, as it should be. Korda is very hard to kill, it turns out, he even takes a bullet meant for his investor in Marseilles, and really, they just have to pluck the bullet right out, like it wasn't even a thang. Korda and his daughter (and his son's tutor) get rescued from the jungle where a plane crashed, but they get rescued by militants that tried to rob the casino in France, who just bring them back home, which is mighty convenient. 

Then Korda travels to meet his second cousin, Hilda, and he offers to marry her, and she accepts but also refuses to increase her investment in the Phoenician Scheme, whatever that is. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, Korda is forced to meet with his half-brother, Nubar, who might be responsible for the death of Korda's first wife or something, and Nubar denies being the biological father of Korda's daughter, which I guess is something, but he's still not a very nice guy. He might even be the one sending all those assassins to kill Korda, but how can we be sure? Korda has a change of heart and offers to pay his slaves, cover the budget shortfall himself, and present his scheme to his investors as the Desert Oasis Palace hotel, only to have the whole thing disrupted by another battle with his half-brother. Is that right? This was very, very hard to follow.

Well, if Korda is really Wes Anderson's father-in-law, then I guess that means that Anderson himself is represented by the character played by Michael Cera, who has feelings for Korda's daughter. If I read between the lines a bit, that means that Anderson views himself as part-secret agent and part insect expert. Yeah, sure, that kind of tracks, I've long imagined that Anderson lives in a birdhouse and composes folk music in his spare time when he's not directing films and admiring symmetrical things. 

With each film it feels like Wes Anderson's films have become more intricate, more interwoven and complicated, however it seems to have reached the point where they are also in danger of becoming incoherent. If you look back on, say "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "The Darjeeling Limited", yes, they're quirky and oddly beautiful but to my point, I care about those characters. I want them to do well, even if they're all sort of disconnected and self-obsessed. Then sometime after "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" it began to feel like maybe the art direction was driving the bus, rather than the story. By the time we get to "Isle of Dogs" you can really see that the narrative has taken a back-seat to the eye candy, how it looks has become much more important than whether it all makes sense. I simply loved "The French Dispatch", even though it was a complicated set of (sometimes very) short pieces. But now I think we've reached the point where it's all quite lovely to look at, but what is it all about? What does it MEAN, if anything? Possibly nothing. "Asteroid City" - again very complicated and it looks great, but I had no idea which half of the story was "real" and which part was the "fantasy", or were they both a little bit of both? 

OK, this is done, now I need a new goal - beyond "Spinal Tap II", which I think is going to be easily worked into the Doc Block, even though it's a Mock Doc. What about "Wake Up, Dead Man"? I did get a very good recommendation from my BFF, so perhaps I should try to link to  that one ASAP. In fact I could go straight there from here via Jeffrey Wright, or I could go to "Freaky Tales" via Tom Hanks - hell, from here I could go just about anywhere, it's one of those giant holes at the center of the map, like in "Time Bandits". But I have a plan for January already in place, one that's going to get me to the romance films exactly on time, so I kind of have to stick with that. Maybe one year I should just do the whole 300 films one step at a time instead of 30 at a time - life on the edge, I wonder what that feels like. OK, so the two new goals for the year are to work in "Wake Up, Dead Man" in April and "Spinal Tap II" in June or July. Not much of a plan, but it feels do-able. 

Directed by Wes Anderson (director of "Asteroid City" and "The French Dispatch")

Also starring Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "Reptile"), Mia Threapleton (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Michael Cera (last seen in "Dream Scenario"), Riz Ahmed (last heard in "Nimona"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Here"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Get a Job"), Mathieu Amalric (last seen in "Sound of Metal"), Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More"), Benedict Cumberbatch (ditto), Rupert Friend (ditto), Benoit Herlin (ditto), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Rustin"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Hope Davis (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Charlotte Gainsbourg (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Nosferatu"), F. Murray Abraham (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Steve Park (last seen in "Death of a Unicorn"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Jason Watkins (last seen in "Hampstead"), Donald Sumpter (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Scott Shepherd (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Karl Markovics (last seen in "Resistance"), Tonio Arango, Stephane Bak, Aysha Joy Samuel, Truman Hanks, Carmen-Maja Antoni, Mattia Moreno Leonidas, Alexandra Wysoczanska, Shabram Kohestani, Thuli Wolf, Jenny Behnke, Luisa Steinmann, Yekta Arman, Giuseppe O'Bruadair, Sanjay Hari, Alexander Kuhne, Young-sam Kim, Andreas Krafft, Faysal Omer, Werner Ort, Alexander Yassin, Hans Carl von Werthern Harry Wiggins, Simon Weisse, Matthew Jordan, Sönke Möhring, Max Mauff, Philipp Droste, Merlin Sandmeyer, Edward Hyland, Kit Rakusen (last seen in "Belfast"), Milo James (last seen in "The Boys in the Boat"), Ogden Dawson, Hector Bateman-Harden (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Benjamin Lake, Gunes Taner, Gabriel Ryan (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Antonia Desplat (ditto), Mohamad Momo Ramadan, Jonathan Wirtz, Sabine Hollweck, Daniel Steiner (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Jaime Ferkic, Antonia Schröter, Beatrice Campbell, Freya Feyrouz, Mardini Abdulaziz, Johannes Krisch (last seen in "A Cure for Wellness")

RATING: 4 out of 10 bashable rivets (and giving this score, pains me, it really does)

The Saint of Second Chances

Year 18, Day 22 - 1/22/26 - Movie #5,222

BEFORE: A documentary tonight (wait, what?) even though the official Doc Block is MONTHS away - well, it's happened before, last year I watched "Will & Harper" in January because it felt right to do so, and I think the year before that there was that doc about Kevin Hart that I worked into the Kevin Hart films in May, also out of season. The linking has to take prominence sometimes - right now my Doc Block is in the early planning stages, there's some work that needs to be done in figuring out which films are streaming on which platforms, therefore which are available to me and which ones are not. Then there's the more tedious process of figuring out who appears in each doc, it's a lot of archive footage to go through. As things stand right now, I want to watch this film and I do NOT see how it's going to connect to the other docs - which would mean I could not watch it without breaking the chain, and the chain is everything. 

Bill Murray carries over from "Riff Raff" via archive footage - I mean, there's a good chance that Mr. Murray appears in the Chevy Chase documentary I recorded off CNN, but he's not listed on the IMDB, so I can't be sure. I'd hate to get to July or August and watch the damn movie only to find that as Chevy's replacement on "SNL", they never appeared together. Again, there's probably footage of them both from "Caddyshack" or something, but I don't think they were ever on screen together in that film, either. So we're going to get to this one tonight, bottom line, because it's a sure thing, and there just aren't many of those in life. 

THE PLOT: Mike Veeck, son of legendary Major League Baseball team owner Bill Veeck, blows up his father's career and then spends the next few decades learning the value of a second chance. 

AFTER: Oh, jeez, I love this documentary so much, I'm so glad I watched it as soon as I could. This film manages to give us the back-story behind not one but TWO of the wildest, wackiest moments in baseball history, and then update us on what happened later to the people responsible. It's not just informative, it's uplifting, heart-breaking and insightful, it's about baseball, sure, but also families and fathers and people who mean well but keep screwing up (relatable) and then trying to redeem themselves, whatever that means. 

Wild baseball moment #1 took place August 19, 1951, in the second game of a double-header between the St. Louis Browns and the Detroit Tigers, and the owner of the Browns was a showman who enjoyed publicity stunts, the wackier the better. He'd secretly signed a very short man named Eddie Gaedel on as a player (I could use one of the terms they used back then, but they've fallen out of favor - Eddie was an LP, little person.)  Eddie was 3 feet, 7 inches tall, and wore a uniform with the number 1/8 on it. He did stuff around the ballpark like jump out of cakes in promotions for local breweries. But on that day in 1951 we was called in as a pinch-hitter, and the umpire went kind of nuts. But after his signed contract was examined, Gaedel entered the batter's box, with a strike zone about the size of a toaster, less if Gaedel was crouching, which he did. The 6-foot tall pitcher could not get the ball in the strike zone, and Gaedel had been instructed to not swing, under any circumstances. Gaedel took four balls and walked to first, then was replaced by a pinch-runner. That runner didn't score, the Tigers won the game and the next day Gaedel's contract was voided by Major League baseball. 

The second wild baseball moment was the infamous "Disco Demolition Night" at Comiskey Park in Chicago, July 12, 1979, another double-header, this time with the Chicago White Sox against the Tigers. Local DJ Steve Dahl had lost his job when his radio station switched formats from rock to disco, so he famously destroyed a copy of "The Hustle" while on air. The White Sox held a "disco night" promotion, where fans could get in for just 99 cents PLUS a disco record, secretly Steve Dahl planned to blow up the dumpsters containing the records between the two games. The promotion worked a bit too well, since the park had a capacity of 44,500 and they drew a crowd of almost 48,000. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Dahl warmed up the crowd by getting them to chant "disco sucks!" and then the explosives were set off, destroying the records. About 5,000 fans rushed on to the field, some climbed foul poles and others ripped up the grass or destroyed the batting cages. Chicago police in riot gear arrived to restore order, many people were injured or arrested for disorderly conduct. The second game could not be played because of the damage to the field, and so the game was forfeited to Detroit. 

Well, it turns out the owner of the Browns in the first story and the owner of the White Sox in the second story were the same guy, Bill Veeck (pronounced "Veck"). At different times he owned different teams, the Brewers and the Indians, the Browns and the White Sox. This was back when a single guy could do that, later on rich people had to form companies and conglomerates to own MLB teams. Veeck was always thinking up various ways to increase attendance, like fireworks after a home team home run or training pigs to deliver the baseballs to the umpires. Basically he thought up a bunch of crazy ideas and liked to have fun. But his son, Mike Veeck, was the "brains" behind Disco Demolition Night and perhaps when his father covered for him, that was really the beginning of the end, Bill sold the White Sox about a year later. 

But Bill Veeck was also known for hiring a bunch of contract players away from other teams, giving them "second chances" even if they weren't playing as well as they used to, but then he'd never offer to increase their salaries to retain them, so nobody really worked for him for very long, everyone got to play a bit longer, but they were also disposable. Then I guess free agency came along at some point and the whole game changed. The other great thing that Veeck did was integrate the American League by signing Larry Doby, not too long after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the National League. In addition to baseball Bill Veeck ran the Suffolk Downs racetrack in Massachusetts in the late 1960's, and yes, he did make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

After Disco Night, Mike Veeck spent a lot of time drinking, and feeling bad about having blown up his baseball career. F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous for saying there are "no second acts" in American lives, but Fitzgerald was kind of also full of shit. Who hasn't messed up so bad that they had to change jobs, or leave town, or move out of their apartment in the middle of the night? But this is a free country, you can go to the next job in the next town or move in with your next spouse and screw Fitzgerald, you can have a third, fourth, fifth chance if you want to - hell we've had Presidents like George W. Bush, how many jobs did he screw up, in addition to running the Texas Rangers baseball team? He failed up all the way to the White House!

So eventually Mike Veeck got back into baseball, because running teams and stadiums and baseball promotions was what he knew. Also relatable, how many of us have tried to do something very different from our parents, only to end up working in a related field? I did not want to become a truck driver like my father, so I went to film school and a couple years later I was working on music videos, but as a PA, driving a van and picking up supplies and equipment for shoots, and damn if being a truck driver of sorts didn't find me anyway. (So I got into animation, no driving involved... but after 30 years of working in animation I had to get out for mental health reasons, and now I do something different. I'm also on my second or third act. 

Mike became an executive with the St. Paul Saints, a small team in Minnesota in the Northern League - like his father, he signed a lot of players who needed a second chance to play the game, or who maybe didn't get their first chance yet. He signed Ila Borders, the first woman to pitch in Minor League Baseball, he also signed Dave Stevens, a player with no legs (that's a whole other story right there, probably) and when Darryl Strawberry was let go from the NY Mets after a DUI, no other team would sign him, except the St. Paul Saints. Darryl was happy just to play some more, and eventually found his love of the game again and went and played for the Yankees. 

In 1998, when they expanded the number of MLB teams, Mike Veeck worked as VP of marketing for the brand-new Tampa Bay Rays, but during their first game ever, he couldn't resist arranging the setting off of fireworks, in their domed stadium. The smoke from the fireworks lingered in the stadium, as the ventilation system wasn't working right, and it prevented the outfielders from tracking fly balls. As a result the Rays lost their first-ever game and well, let's just say Veeck didn't hold that job for long. 

There's so much more family stuff here that I don't want to spoil, but Veeck kind of learned along the way to be a better husband and father, his relationship with his daughter is some of that simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking stuff I mentioned before. No spoilers here though. But Mike enjoyed working with his two kids at the games of the Charleston RiverDogs, the single-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays. If you happen to be a fan of this new form of baseball played by the Savannah Bananas, or enjoy what goes on at minor league games, probably we wouldn't have any of their antics, or those sausage races, or bobblehead promotion nights, if not for the Veecks, who believed in their hearts that baseball was always supposed to be, you know, fun.

It's a little bit confusing that Mike Veeck is interviewed here, but also plays his own father in the re-enactment footage, while actor Charlie Day plays the young Mike Veeck. Bill Murray was also a co-founder and co-owner of the St. Paul Saints, until 2023 or so, and would often appear at their games to hand out programs or such, there's footage of him doing that, which makes it possible for me to include this film here AND now I've perfectly set up the new Wes Anderson film, which I can watch later tonight, after my shift at the theater - or, you know, probably very early tomorrow morning, whichever. But GO WATCH THIS FILM on Netflix if you get the chance. 

Directed by Jeff Malmberg (producer of "Welcome to Marwen") & Morgan Neville (director of "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain" and "Won't You Be My Neighbor?")

Also starring Mike Veeck, Charlie Day (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Darryl Strawberry (last seen in "Knuckleball!"), Andrea M. Anderson, Elliot Berk, Tom Billett, Ila Borders, Dave Dombrowski, Abigail Gore, Marianne Haaland, Annie Huidekoper, Lamar Johnson, Kyd Kalin, Neal Karlen, Max Kassidy, Tony LaRussa, Howard M. Lockie, David Lowe, Eliza Hayes Maher, Mera Malmberg, Michael Joseph Pierce, Gary Private, Christopher Matthew Spencer, Dave Stevens, Libby Veeck, Night Train Veeck, Dripp Vegas, Fran Zeuli, 

with narration by Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), and archive footage of Harry Caray, Steve Dahl (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Larry Doby, Eddie Gaedel, Sister Rosalind Gefre, Peter Jennings (last seen in "Rather"), Kevin Millar, Satchel Paige (last seen in "42"), Mike Tirico, Bill Veeck, Rebecca Veeck, Don Wardlow, 

RATING: 8 out of 10 uniforms with shorts (a terrible idea when you realize players need to slide into third base)

Riff Raff

Year 18, Day 21 - 1/21/26 - Movie #5,221

BEFORE: Two days off in the middle of the week so it's a great chance to catch up and even get ahead of the count again. Gabrielle Union carries over from "Daddy's Little Girls", but I think it's easy to see the original plan here, which was to have Bill Murray carry over from "The Friend". But I was short for January, which is a long 31-day month, so I saw the opportunity to drop in those four Idris Elba movies, since one of them connected with "The Friend" and one of them connected here. And that's how you fill up a month, really, but now I can't take any more days off from movies in the next week if I want to hit my first love/romance film on time on Feb. 1. It's fine, sometimes I actually do know what I'm doing - not often, but sometimes. 

Man, today's film is lit up with green names - that's my visual code for links to horror films, romance films and Christmas films. So I'm losing a lot of linking opportunities by watching this, but that was going to happen no matter when I did it. I'll just have to quickly check that I'm not stranding too many other films - with a pool of 625 movies to choose from, things will probably be OK. Even if I am stranding something, there are new films joining the list all the time that could rescue them. 

The complete color-coding system, BTW, is: blue is a normal link to another film somewhere on the watchlist, red is a (temporary) direct link to a film that's stored NEXT to it on the watchlist, this is how I build two- or three-movie blocks that can be moved around, and green is a special link to one of the sub-categories, romance or horror or documentary or Christmas - so I know which films can get me into or out of those themed blocks. Well, it works, I just have to be constantly changing the color of actors' names. 

THE PLOT: A former criminal's ordinary life is turned upside down when his old family shows up for a long-awaited reunion. 

AFTER: An older man with a younger wife and a step-son living in Maine, that's a pretty good set-up, because it establishes a world that's perhaps a bit fragile and it's about to get rocked when Rocco, Vincent's son from his first marriage shows up, with a very pregnant girlfriend and also Vin's ex-wife, Rocco's mother, who Rocco apparently drugged and drove up from NYC with. OK, WTF is going on here? Just wait for it all...

At first it just seems like it's an innocent (but pretty effed up) attempt to get the family together for the holidays - this would seem to be set between Christmas and New Year's, so again, the chain kind of knows what it's doing here, it's still January so this film is seasonally appropriate. They apparently drove all night, so Rocco and his baby mama pass out in the guest room with the intent of sorting things out in the morning. Ruth, Rocco's mother, wakes up in the morning and doesn't know where she is, and pulls a knife on Vin's stepson, DJ - yeah, that's a New York woman, all right. Sandy, Vin's second and much younger wife, just wants to know who all these people are and what they're doing in her house. (This is their holiday cabin, not the main house, a fact which could be important later.)

Meanwhile another car's been driving north, containing two unsavory characters, Leftie and Lonnie. Leftie's clearly the boss, and Lonnie's the muscle, but even accidentally saying their names out loud at a gas station means they HAVE to kill the clerk. Well, obviously they're on Rocco's trail, as per the rules of parallel editing. Of course they're heading for the cabin in Yarmouth, the only question becomes what's going to happen when they get there. The blended and rather complicated family is getting ready for a New Year's dinner and celebration, but gradually the real reason for their hasty escape is revealed, Rocco apparently killed Leftie's son - now he may have had a very good reason for doing so, but Vin correctly determines that it's only a matter of time before Leftie shows up at the door. He gives his son access to his stash in a safe deposit box at the bank, provided he and his girlfriend beat it in the morning.

But Leftie's already on the way, and Vin's plan to have the cabin listed in his wife's name is a good one, but he didn't factor in the very helpful neighbors one might find in rural Maine giving out directions. At the cost of their own lives, unfortunately. So naturally this is all going to come to a head, and we're going to find out what happened between Rocco and the gangster's son - for that matter, we're going to learn about Vin's past association, and how he came to be in Maine himself, in the first place. Sure, you can run from your past but you can't hide forever, eventually it's going to catch up with you. 

This plays out kind of like a Down-Easter version of "Fargo", maybe the "Fargo" TV series rather than the movie, but still, that's a good thing, especially when a season's worth of secrets from the past gets revealed in such a short, tight time-frame. You can't really see around the next corner to possibly guess what gets revealed next, or where this is all going to land, but those are good things, too. They tried to pull a "Tarantino" by starting with the most exciting, dramatic moment and then flashing back to explain how we got there, but that doesn't make this into "Pulp Fiction", unfortunately. I did like that the film started with a song titled "What Can Go Wrong", because I believe that's the genesis of many screenplays - start with a simple situation like a family reunion for a holiday and then start imagining how it can go wrong. 

Directed by Dito Montiel (director of "Empire State" and "The Clapper")

Also starring Jennifer Coolidge (last seen in "A Minecraft Movie"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Places in the Heart"), Miles J. Harvey (last seen in "The Dinner"), Emanuela Postacchini (last seen in "Third Person"), Lewis Pullman (last seen in "Thunderbolts*"), Bill Murray (last seen in "The Friend"), Pete Davidson (last seen in "Martha"), Michael Angelo Covino (last seen in "News of the World"), Julius Sampson, Scott Michael Campbell (last seen in "Flight of the Phoenix" (2004)), Sage Spielman, Roger Guenveur Smith (last seen in "Eve's Bayou"), Lucinda Carr, Brooke Dillman (last seen in "Barbarian"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Eli Massillon, Angelic Zambrana (last seen in "Empire State"), Bob Leszczak,

RATING: 6 out of 10 New Year's fireworks (sparklers only)

Daddy's Little Girls

Year 18, Day 20 - 1/20/26 - Movie #5,220

BEFORE: This one's been on the list for a while, I'd been trying to get it to land on Father's Day, but I think that ship has sailed, a few times now. It's a tough one, so if I see that it can serve a purpose here and help me get to "The Phoenician Scheme", I feel like I really should take that. But here's the problem, it took me too long to link to it, so the film is gone from cable, it's gone from Amazon Prime and it's WAY gone from Hulu. Sure it might cycle back to cable at some point, almost everything does, but now I can't possibly predict when that might happen - it feels like maybe this film's in limbo and there's just no demand for it at all. Sure, I could rent it from AmazonPrime, but I'd rather not, and it would be great if I could watch it on iTunes for like $1.99, but's it not on that service at all. The only place it seems to be streaming is via YouTube, and there's this new channel there called MovieSphere that seems to have bought up the rights to a bunch of movies. I went ahead and subscribed for a 7-day trial, and unless I see another movie on my list that's there and nowhere else, I plan to cancel later today so I don't get charged at all. Yep, it's the old Apple TV+ scam, I can just join and watch the movie I want, then cancel without paying a dime, and I'm guessing I can do that multiple times. Ha ha! 

Idris Elba carries over one more time from "A House of Dynamite". 

THE PLOT: A mechanic is struggling to raise his three daughters when his ex-wife and her drug-dealing boyfriend file for custody. He struggles to file charges against them and during the way he falls in love with his attorney and inspires his neighborhood to fight back. 

AFTER: This is one of those films that had zero focus, or maybe too much focus, as in focusing on too many things at once. It's a romance, it's a racial drama, it tries to be a slice-of-life comedy at times, and really, you can't just slip between these different things and end up being all things to all people. I'd listed it as a Father's Day film to try and make something useful out of it, but it's not really romantic enough to be a romance and not funny enough to be a comedy. BUT I will say that by just linking to it randomly, I can sort of justify it as a Martin Luther King Jr. Day film, because at one point all of the characters are assembled together at a community meeting, talking about how they need to improve their neighborhood, because MLK himself once walked through it. So there, you see that the chain knew where it belonged, even if I didn't - and I was just ONE day off from landing it right on the holiday itself. (Damn, if only I'd dropped "Fixed", I would have hit it spot on. I hope that's not an indication that I should have dropped "Fixed" and now I'm going to be one film over my quota for the year...

I had sort of declared a fatwa on Tyler Perry films, because so many of them look so insanely stupid - the whole "Madea" series, for example. BUT I had a moratorium on body-switching moveis, too, but then "13 Going on 30" slipped in and then "Family Switch" and before you know it, that led to a double-dose of "Freaky Friday" and "Freakier Friday". So last year I watched "The Six Triple Eight" and it was fine, so really, that gave me cause to re-visit the Tyler Perry genre, however I'm still firmly against reviewing any film in which he wore a dress. Like, fine, do that on your own time if that's your kink but don't tell me it's all for art's sake, I don't have to watch that if I don't want to. The same freedom that allows people to cross-dress allows ME to not be 100% OK with it. You can justify it however you want, you can say that people are just finding themselves, but they were RIGHT THERE before, why couldn't they find themselves then? So I just think for drag queens it's all about the extra attention, prove me wrong.  

Anyway, as far as clear points of view go, it's a good idea to have one, but it's usually a bad idea to have too many. In the name of social justice this film takes a stand against courts automatically granting custody to mothers over fathers, drug dealers, child abuse, false accusations against black men, how hard it is for African-Americans to get ahead, and how hard it is for any parents to raise children in our society, and how hard it is for black women to find a respectable partner with a decent job and no criminal record. Jeesus, pick a lane already, or did Tyler Perry think he could somehow solve all of these problems just by making a film about them? 

Single father Monty works at an auto-shop, and he's slowly trying to buy the shop from its owner, though it's going to take a few hundred more payments. His progress would be helped if he could make more money, so he starts moonlighting as a driver, on the advice of his next-door neighbor, who works for a law firm. Julia, the attorney that he drives around, however, has a problem with nearly everything he does and says, so they don't really get off on the right foot. She's actually a rare bird, a notable black Karen, also a nepo baby whose father started the law firm, and she's more entitled than she has any right to be. When Monty diverts from the route because his daughters started a fire while they were home alone and unsupervised, and Julia can't believe this horrible thing is happening TO HER, whereas a decent human would have maybe understood that this man's daughters are in trouble and he needs to check on them immediately. 

What makes matters worse is that his ex, the girls' mother, is also at the hospital with her drug dealer boyfriend, and a Social Services representative determines that the three girls were left at home by Monty, with no supervision, and custody is granted to their mother, who before long starts to teach her eldest daughter how to sell weed. Umm, sure, great parenting skills there, but the screenplay is obviously stacked against their mother, and any attempts by Monty to stand up for himself in court are shot down by the judge due to lack of evidence. Geez, if only he knew a real lawyer who could help him out, but unfortunately he just burned that bridge. However, Julia then goes on several more disastrous blind dates with men who seem fine at first but turn out to be married or perverts, so she follows the advice of her two girlfriends and relaxes her standards a bit, then she sees Monty in a different light. 

They grow together while working on his case, however this is a MASSIVE conflict of interest, for a lawyer to fall in love with her client and date him while she is also representing him. They should do the right thing and table their relationship until the case is over, but come on, then the movie would be three hours long. What's weird is that Julia's friends are then shocked when they find out she's dating her former driver, I guess they wanted her to relax her standards, only, umm, not that much? The plot just kind of zigs and zags here in ways that don't make much sense, if I'm being honest. I mean, first we're supposed to hate Julia because she's all entitled and judgmental, then we're supposed to like her because she helps Monty with his case, like can we land on one narrative path, please? 

She does interact better with the judges than Monty does, that's for sure - but then she finds out that Monty served time for statutory rape when he was younger, and she breaks off the whole thing without looking into that any further - so I guess now we're supposed to hate her again?  At this point the owner of the auto shop decides to retire because the neighborhood has too many drug dealers and thugs in it, so he doesn't exactly GIVE Monty the shop (because he can't even afford it at this point, as he's apparently been spending so much time in court and not working) but close to it. Monty finally snaps and crashes his car into his wife's boyfriend's car and then brutally beats him - other drug dealers race down to the street and beat up Monty, which causes the mob of regular townspeople to take up arms against the dealers. It's a full-blown race riot, and the message here is that the cops aren't going to clean up the streets, but the regular people who outnumber the dealers need to take action. This is actually terrible advice, especially if the drug dealers have like weapons and stuff. But sure, it's wish-fulfillment stuff here - community members do have the power to change things, only maybe vigilante violence is not the way to go.

Julia learns from the news that Monty was falsely accused of rape back in the day - which leads to the question, why couldn't HE just tell her that? Anyway, all is forgiven as he turns out to be the only decent man she's found to date, so she comes back to court to defend him. The mob is there, too, to testify against Monty's ex and the drug dealer, and not a single one of them saw Monty crash his car into there. Sure, people can take back their streets, but only if they're willing to lie in court, that's another terrible message right there, the movie seems to be full of them. Well, at least Monty owns the auto shop now, so I guess that makes everything OK?

I'm left to conclude that the main reason this film vanished from premium cable and also streaming platforms is that it's disjointed and rather terrible. Well, it was made early in Tyler Perry's career (his first film without playing Madea and wearing that dress) and maybe he hadn't worked out consistent storytelling methods yet? Or how to get a coherent message across without flip-flopping all over the place? 

NITPICK POINT: Monty takes Julia to a jazz club in his neighborhood for her birthday. They park RIGHT outside the club, and there are no other cars parked on the street, so that sure looks like a "no parking" zone to me, plus it's a terrible neighborhood, or so we're told. HOW is that car not either stolen or towed away while they're in the club?

Well, that's it for the Idris Elba films on my watchlist, I've got to follow a different link out of here, but Idris is tied for most appearances in January, and therefore the year, with four. He's tied with Jamie Lee Curtis right now, but it's still very very early, I'm only 1/15th of the way through this Movie Year. 

Directed by Tyler Perry (director of "The Six Triple Eight")

Also starring Gabrielle Union (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Louis Gossett Jr. (last heard in "IF"), Tasha Smith (last seen in "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"), Tracee Ellis Ross (last seen in "American Fiction"), Malinda Williams (last seen in "Two Days in New York"), Terri J. Vaughn (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Gary Sturgis (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Cassi Davis, Sierra Aylina McClain (last seen in "Shrink"), Lauryn Alisa McClain, China Anne McClain (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Juanita Jennings (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Maria Howell, Rochelle Dewberry, L. Warren Young (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Steve Coulter (last seen in "Hangman"), Sharyn Shields, Leland Jones (last seen in "Till"), E. Roger Mitchell (ditto), Craig Robinson (last seen in "My Spy: The Eternal City"), Danny Kim, Minnie Tee, Donna Biscoe (last seen in "The Six Triple Eight"), Bishop Eddie L. Long, Bennet Guillory (last seen in "The Color Purple"), LaVan Davis, Kate Kneeland (last seen in "One MIssed Call"), Arron Momon, Greyson Chadwick (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Ric Reitz (last seen in "Safe Haven"), Giulia Pagano (last seen in "Safe Haven"), Bob Banks, Sharron Cain, Dan Albright (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Sharan C. Mansfield (last seen in "Killers"), Javon Johnson (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Gordon Daniels, John Beasley (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Monica Pearson, Joan Pringle (last seen in "The Lost City"), Kortnee Simmons (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Brian J. White (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 motions to dismiss

A House of Dynamite

Year 18, Day 19 - 1/19/26 - Movie #5,219

BEFORE: Well, I survived the weekend working at the NY Videogame Awards (now it's just called the "Game Awards", I guess, but whatever) and it was a bit rough - 14 hours on shift yesterday, but I didn't have to do much for the first five, so there's that. On my way there, I passed another movie theater (one that rents out private rooms to groups and also provides catering, so I guess that's a thing now) and they were screening several movies, including "Greenland 2". I suppose that was inevitable, but it made me realize it's the PERFECT time to release a movie if it has "Greenland" in the title, because of current events, with Trump threatening to invade it. Then I wondered if maybe Trump watched the first "Greenland" movie, and if so, is that why he wants it so badly? Because it's a safe place for Americans to go if the U.S. comes under a missile attack? And if so, does anyone else realize that Trump is getting his foreign policy ideas from movies? There was a documentary about Venezuela titled "Men of War", about the failed 2020 attempt to overthrow Maduro, and now I'm wondering - but Trump doesn't seem like the type of person to watch docs, he seems more likely to watch "Aquaman" and then decide we have to invade Atlantis. 

Anyway, timing is everything so I've put a film with an African-American President on MLK Day, this makes sense in MY mind, anyway, and Idris Elba carries over again from "Fixed". Is this inappropriate? Honestly I'm not quite sure. 

THE PLOT: When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond. 

AFTER: Other than having perhaps the world's most boring movie poster ever, what sets "A House of Dynamite" apart is its unique structure. The story of a single rogue (?) missile headed toward takes only 20 minutes or so to tell, because that's how long the missile takes, I guess. Missiles move very fast, you see. So we see the whole thing unfold from the point of view of Capt. Olivia Walker in the Situation Room and also the soldiers at Fort Greely, who would apparently be the ones in charge of shooting down a missile headed for Chicago, should there be one. Many other characters appear via teleconference, such as the Secretary of Defense and (eventually) the President. The attempt to shoot down that missile is unsuccessful, or in military terms there was a "negative impact" from the interceptors. Other things happen once the POTUS joins the conference, they try to determine what Asian entity might be responsible for launching the missile, and the Russian defense ministers are contacted to try to confirm the missile's origin, also to get Russian to not retaliate if the U.S. should have to, umm, retaliate. There's this funky thing called "Mutually Assured Destruction", which basically states that if one country starts a nuclear war, the other side is bound to do the same, and that's it for humanity, I guess. With only a few minutes to go before impact, Walker calls her husband and asks him to leave D.C. with their son. 

Then the narrative snaps back to the beginning, and the same chain of events is seen from another perspective, that of the military commander at STRATCOM (U.S. strategic command) and he's on that same conference call that we've seen before, he talks with the President, which we've seen before, and this guy is pushing hard for immediate retaliation. We get to the same point in time again and the narrative snaps back again, this time following a Deputy National Security Advisor named Jake Baerington, who rushes to get an expert on North Korea on the phone to determine if the missile is from there, then he works on speaking with the Russians to find out if the missile is theirs. Finally Jake talks to the President and he's an advocate for NOT retaliating. But is that really what the American people want, to take the hit? The President really wants to know what to do here. 

Maddeningly, the narrative snaps back AGAIN to follow the Sec Def, and then AGAIN to follow the President, who is given no last name here. President Potus, I guess, which would be an awfully wild coincidence if that were his last name. The President is seen at a basketball event with a WNBA star and some of America's youth, and this kind of calls to mind how George W. Bush was reading to school children when he was alerted about the 9/11 event. But W. didn't have the jump-shot that this President has, and that kind of calls Obama to mind, doesn't it? Anyway the Secret Service receive word of the incoming missile, and the President is whisked away by limo so he can be on those conference calls that we've heard several times already. 

The President is airlifted by Marine One to an undisclosed location, and then we realize that certain important people have been disappearing from each telling of this story, and it's because some people have been pre-selected to spend time in an underground bunker, to insure that our country and society can re-build after an extinction event. The President then has to weigh his options, knowing that a missile is about to obliterate Chicago. Does he follow the advice of the STRATCOM General, who suggests retaliation, or the recommendation of the National Security Advisor who claims that striking back blindly without knowing the origin of the missile would be pointless and suicidal?  

Well, really, get used to disappointment here because this film is designed to generate a lot of questions without really providing any answers. Perhaps the conclusion is ambiguous so that viewers can enjoy whichever scenario they prefer, but largely this also feels like a giant cop-out. We're drawn RIGHT up to the most exciting bit and then we're left hanging. Like, I get it, there's a story there perhaps that somebody didn't want to tell, the implications of society's destruction and radiation fall-out and the aftermath are ones we all understand, they don't NEED to be depicted. Still, it would be nice if the storytellers could finish what they started, just saying. 

How accurate is this? It's tough to say - our U.S. Department of Defense didn't particularly care for the suggestion that they could launch an interceptor missile and MISS their target, because according to them, this system which has NEVER been used has a success rate of 100% and a failure rate of 0%. Well, that's awfully convenient - if I never start my car, I'd have to admit that I don't know whether it works or not, I shouldn't just assume the car will start because it's never failed me before, when realistically I've never even TRIED to start it. The process of intercepting a missile is compared to "firing a bullet at a bullet", which really only worked in "The Suicide Squad". 

This might seem a bit like the "Rashomon" method of storytelling, where the same story is told several times by different people, and changes a little bit each time. But that's not really the case here, the same story is told here by different people, and is exactly the same each time, and maddeningly so. Is that the point, to show that nuclear war is inevitable and can't be stopped once it's started, or is there any hope for the future that our efforts can change things? Well, results are maddeningly inconclusive, that's for sure. Also, why take nearly two hours to tell a 20-minute story, or was it too confusing if everything played out just once? 

Look, my theory here is that some foreign power targeted Chicago specifically to eliminate the cuisine from that city from the planet. And they would be doing us a favor - have you seen what people in Chicago put on a hot dog? I'm fine with yellow mustard, sweet relish and white onions, but then after that it's just Crazytown - tomato wedges have NO PLACE on a hot dog, pickled peppers is a definite HELL NO and then celery salt is completely USELESS. Then they add a PICKLE SPEAR, which you absolutely DO NOT need, because you already have pickle relish on there. Sure, drag it "through the garden" and then throw that whole mess into the trash. And you can throw giardiniera (pickled vegetables in vinegar) right into the trash with those extra hot dog toppings, and don't even get me STARTED on Chicago-style deep dish pizza. 

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (director of "Strange Days" and "The Weight of Water")

Also starring Rebecca Ferguson (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Gabriel Basso (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Jared Harris (last heard in "The Sea Beast"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "Twisters"), Moses Ingram (last seen in "Ambulance"), Jonah Hauer-King (last seen in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Greta Lee (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Jason Clarke (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Malachi Beasley, Brian Tee (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Brittany O'Grady, Gbenga Akinnagbe (last seen in "Passing"), Willa Fitzgerald (last seen in "18 1/2"), Renee Elise Goldsberry (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!", Kyle Allen (last seen in "Space Oddity"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Neal Bledsoe, Nicholas Monterosso, Chance Kelly (last seen in "Broken City"), Enid Graham (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), J.W. Cortes, Caleb Eberhardt (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Sam Vartholomeos (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Francesca Carpanini, Abubakr Ali, Aminah Nieves, Daniel L. Karbler, Philip Lenz, Timothy Brester, Ben Chase (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Renrick Palmer, Patrick Feeney, Bryan Harlow, Shane R. Duffy, Vincent Hickman, Kevin O'Connor, Evan Rubin, Gary Wilmes (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Ezrah Lin, Andreiu Kouznetsov, Alexander Sokovikov, Spencer House (last seen in "The Big Sick"), John Zdrojeski, Samantha Soule (last seen in "The Irishman"), Quincy Dunn-Baker (last seen in "Nonnas"), Jared Reinfeldt (last seen in "Little Women"), Lynn Adrianna Freedman (last seen in "Gone Girl"), Tai Bennett, Greg Schweers,

RATING: 6 out of 10 Confederate soldiers re-enacting Gettysburg

Fixed

Year 18, Day 18 - 1/18/26 - Movie #5,218

BEFORE: The most logical next film to watch is "A House of Dynamite", a film in which Idris Elba plays the President of the U.S. Sure, prime minister in one film, president in the next, that seems like a no-brainer. BUT, I have a work schedule, and I came home late from the theater on Saturday night, plus I'm scheduled to be back early in the morning to open up for Day 2 of the Videogame Awards. (They put me on this event because, you know, geek stuff, but I don't play any of the new games, the last semi-recent game I played was "Red Dead Redemption" and I didn't make it all the way through...)

All I really wanted to do last night was grab something from the beer fridge, heat up a TV dinner and pass out - but then I'm falling behind, right? So let me flip two films around here, watch the shorter one first so I can get to sleep earlier and increase the chances of waking up tomorrow at 8 am so I can be out the door by 8:30 and at the theater by 10. Both subway lines I need to get there are doing trackwork, so I'll need extra travel time. 

So Idris Elba carries over from "Heads of State".  I can justify this by saying I wanted to move this film closer to "The Friend" because they're both about dogs, and I can watch the more serious film about a nuclear strike tomorrow, OK? Thank you for understanding. Idris Elba also did a voice in "Zootopia 2", but that film's not streaming yet, and I missed it at the theater. So it might also have made sense to skip "Fixed" today and save it for whenever "Zootopia" is available to me, but I have no guarantee that Mr. Elba would be the link to that film or the link away from it, so better to watch it now, because if not I could be stranding it.

THE PLOT: Bull, an average, all-around good dog, discovers he's going to be neutered in the morning. He realizes he needs one last adventure with his pack of buddies, as these are the last 24 hours with his balls. What could go wrong? 

AFTER: This is a one-joke film, I'm sorry - I mean, a number of things happen but they're all centered around one joke, and that is that dogs like to hump things. That's not really even a joke, it's more like just an observation. We all know that male dogs hump people's legs, also other things here, and they like to hump other dogs. That's natural, so how can it even be funny, except for slice-of-life kind of funny?  But then if you get the dog neutered, he probably won't do that any more. That's maybe the third best reason to get a dog "fixed", the first being to control the pet population, there are enough dogs on the planet already, and the second best reason is so YOU don't have to deal with their puppies, if you don't want to. 

There's this elaborate window-dressing about taking your dog to the vet to get him neutered, but giving him Kool-Aid in the toilet the night before. Umm, I don't think that's a thing, like I hope it's not a thing, and I believe the filmmakers made it up just for this movie. Because what's the point of doing that, you probably DON'T want your dog drinking out of the toilet, and if you really wanted to give him Kool-Aid for some stupid reason, you could just put the Kool-Aid in his water bowl. The toilet is for one thing, and it's not giving sugary beverages to your dog. It's stupid.

Bull decides to run away from home so he can keep his balls, but he encounters a large pack of alley cats, and only escapes because his dog friends come looking for him, and they all escape the cats' territory together. Bull and his fellow "pack" dogs go out for a night on the town, the last night for Bull to use his balls, and they know this because of the Kool-Aid - not from determining that the whole family is kind of grossed out by Bull humping Nana's leg. Eww, it's probably all old and scaly and varicose veiny, but still, dogs be humping things. The pack of dogs goes out to a dog whorehouse, and yeah, I bet you didn't know that was a thing, either. Umm, it's not. Bull's too shy or afraid to approach Honey, the show dog that he's attracted to, so he settles for Molasses, who's a hooker dog. Prostitute dog? Nothing sounds right because there is no such thing. If there were we'd call them a "pound hound" or a "hooker bitch" and those sound even worse. Are there doggie pimps, too, or are they all independent contractors? 

This is all just silly or in bad taste or something, this is kind of like the "Sausage Party" of animated dog films, and nobody really needed to see hot dogs getting it on, either, always looking for buns to slide into and such. Well, you know, sometimes a hot dog wants buns and sometimes maybe he just wants to be by himself, but I digress. After Honey catches Bull with his, umm, thingie inside Molasses, the dogs all end up in the pound together, because that's the only place that screenwriters know where stray dogs are made to go. They escape the pound by all peeing at the same time, but that's really not a way to escape from somewhere, and the film never offers up a counter-argument to explain how it is. 

One of the dogs, Frankie, goes back to the intersex Doberman he met at the Humphouse, and I'm not sure there are trans dogs or intersex dogs or whatever is seen here. Also not a thing. Honey is scheduled to breed with Sterling, another Borzoi show dog, but let's just say that Bull gets caught in the middle of that. Yeah, it's like that. But after Bull apologizes, Honey confesses that she is in love with him, and they get one night together, and that means despite the attempt to get Bull neutered, he fathered a little of puppies, anyway. Great, so that was all pointless, then. Sterling the show dog soon gets the Kool-Aid treatment, which again, is not a thing - and that also makes no sense because if you had a Borzoi show dog, why would you get it "fixed" and not try to breed the best Borzoi puppies that you could? 

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (director of "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation")

Also starring the voices of Adam Devine (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Kathryn Hahn (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "Dear Mr. Watterson"), Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Beck Bennett (last heard in "Nimona"), Michelle Buteau (last seen in "Marry Me"), River Gallo, Scott Weil, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania"), Julie Nathanson (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Michelle Ruff, Kari Wahlgren (last heard in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), Grey DeLisle (last heard in "Onward"), Sean Chiplock, Lilly Gizelle, Eric Lavvber.

RATING: 4 out of 10 tennis balls