A Real Pain

Year 18, Day 31 - 1/31/26 - Movie #5,231

BEFORE: Last movie for January - I hesitate to call that a "perfect month" for movies, but really there's no such thing. Still, 31 days, 31 movies and they got me exactly where I need to be right now. Here's the format check:

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Games Maker, Rumours, Borderlands, The Naked Gun, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Friend, Black Death, Cleanskin, Living, Mickey 17, The Double, The Art of Self-Defense

7 watched on Netflix: Society of the Snow, The Penguin Lessons, The Thursday Murder Club, The Out-Laws, Fixed, A House of Dynamite, The Saint of Second Chances

6 watched on Amazon Prime: Black Bag, My Spy: The Eternal City, Walt Before Mickey, Heads of State, The Phoenician Scheme, Deep Cover
2 watched on Hulu: The Last Showgirl, Riff Raff

2 watched on YouTube: Daddy's Little Girls, A Real Pain
2 watched on Disney+: Freaky Friday (2003), Freakier Friday

31 TOTAL

It would have been one more for Hulu if they had JUST kept this film there, what the hell? It was on Hulu when I put it on the watchlist, why is it not there any more? Just keep everything where it is so I can find it again!  Now I had to pay a couple bucks to watch this on YouTube, what freakin' year is this? I'm paying for like three streaming services and you're going to pull my movies away from me before I can watch them? Son of a bitch. Sure, I could have just NOT watched this and moved on, but a plan is a plan and I have $3.99 in my budget. God damn it. 

Jesse Eisenberg carries over again from "The Art of Self-Defense". I'll post the February links tomorrow because Jesse's going to be with me for one more movie...

THE PLOT: Mismatched cousins reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. 

AFTER: It was Holocaust Remembrance Day a few days ago (Jan. 27) so I maintain that the chain DOES know what it's doing, sure I could have swapped this one with "The Art of Self-Defense" and gotten it one day closer, but I was just never going to land it on the day itself. That's OK, points are awarded for at least getting close. This film tells the story of two cousins who visit their grandmother's homeland shortly after her death - she left them money for the trip, otherwise it's doubtful that Benji would have been able to cover the cost. This is called a heritage tour, one that visits concentration camps and noted sites commemorating the Warsaw Uprising and such. Hey, if that's how you want to spend your vacation time then no judgement here, but I think I'd rather go to the Caribbean, just saying - Grandma's not going to know if you go somewhere else, just saying. Really, they should pay YOU to go to Poland and visit the remnants of a concentration camp. 

But of course we're dealing with polar opposites represented in the two cousins, it's the "Odd Couple" formula, because two people of similar mind-sets doing something together is quite boring, there's room for conflict if you introduce opposing viewpoints and personalities and make them have to work together. Eisenberg originally wrote this story about two characters traveling to East Asia together, then saw the opportunity to re-write it and deal with his own family history and his own feelings about the Holocaust. How do we compare the depression and anxiety felt by today's millennials against the backdrop of a generation that dealt with so much more, war and horror and the attempted extinction of entire cultures? It's like comparing a hangnail to losing your entire hand - but does knowing that make people feel better or worse about their own petty hang-ups? I guess it's more like comparing your own hangnail against somebody else losing a hand.

So Benji is the free-spirited drifter, the burn-out, the wash-out, but also the artist and the one ruled by his emotions, while David is the pragmatic one, the married one, the one who has a job and some kind of life direction, however he's also riddled with anxiety and self-doubt and keeps his emotions on the inside. These are the two types of people, and they're going on this heritage tour together, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? I kind of thought that they'd get locked out on the hotel roof that first night they stepped out to smoke a joint, and then get stuck there and miss the whole tour - no, this isn't "The Hangover", so they did make the bus and they did go on the tour. 

They did, however, miss their stop on a train, and it was largely due exactly to the difference in their personalities - Benji didn't feel right sitting in first class, because his Jewish ancestors would have been unable to do so, also they would have been in the BACK of the train, crammed in on the way to the camps. Well, he's not wrong, he's just got Survivor's Guilt and it hits when it hits. So he leaves the first-class section, and David brings him food because that's who David is. Then David falls asleep and they miss their stop, because Benji wanted to let his cousin sleep, and that's who Benji is. David was very mad when he woke up, as they got off at the wrong stop and their luggage was still on the train - this forced the cousins to work together to find a solution to get back to the right stop, and thankfully the other tourists had kept track of their luggage. But they still made the tour wait several hours for them to catch up - didn't anyone have a cell phone that worked in Poland? 

The tour also includes an older couple from Ohio, a recent divorcee from California who just moved back to Brooklyn, and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism, and it's led by James, a mild-mannered guide who's full of facts and figures and has maybe forgotten that history is about people, not facts. Benji at one point criticizes him for his coldness and inability to socialize, and you have to wonder if Benji's really mad at him because he's mad at his own cousin, or himself. That night Benji acts up during the group's communal dinner, and as a kind of apology, David reveals the complex nature of the relationship between the cousins. Benji was Grandma's favorite, but she was also extra hard on him because she knew he needed tough love - Benji also suffered an overdose after their grandmother's death, and David still hasn't forgiven him for this. It might be tough to say if that was a suicide attempt or not, but it doesn't matter, he can still be mad at him for taking drugs though. 

More perspective is gained by visiting the Majdanek camp, and then their grandmother's old house in Krasnystaw. Well, sort of, they tried, anyway. What's important is that the cousins got everything out in the open, dealt with how they've changed over time and the fact that David's always busy with his wife and son and they barely ever visit each other any more, and David had to get it out there, that he couldn't bear the thought of losing somebody with Benji's passion and charm to something as stupid as a drug overdose. We're not really sure what the long-term effect of this trip on the cousins is going to be, since Benji remained at the airport, surrounded by strangers. That's kind of an appalling lack of a resolution, isn't it? 

Most likely both characters here represent aspects of writer/director Eisenberg, with his internal conflict just split into two characters for the convenience of the audience - if this is true, then the film is kind of in the same category as "The Double", two people with opposing personalities, but essentially they are identical, or at least related and coming from the same place. But my guess is that Eisenberg contains both natures, the anxious and introspective one, and the outgoing and emotional artistic one. We all do, to some extent - and the setting was just a place for him to explore his own complicated thoughts and feelings about the Holocaust and being descended from immigrants. The first-gen Americans were hard workers so that the second-gen Americans could become doctors or lawyers, which enabled the third-gen Americans to become artists and live in their parents basements and smoke weed. Well, he's not wrong. 

Directed by Jesse Eisenberg

Also starring Kieran Culkin (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey (last seen in "Bounce"), Kurt Egyiawan (last seen in "Beasts of No Nation"), Liza Sadovy (last seen in "Disobedience"), Daniel Oreskes (last seen in "Mountainhead"), Ellora Torchia (last seen in "Midsommer"), Banner Eisenberg, Jakub Gasowski, Krzysztof Jaszczak, Marek Kasprzyk

RATING: 6 out of 10 visitation stones

The Art of Self-Defense

Year 18, Day 30 - 1/30/26 - Movie #5,230

BEFORE: OK, another weekend (not that I can really tell the difference these days, because I work on an irregular schedule) and we're getting very, very close to the start of February and the romance chain. So after tomorrow the next time I can be on "regular" (as in non-romance) films will be sometime right after St. Patrick's Day. It's going to be a cold, cold winter, it seems, but I've got love to keep me warm. Bleargh.

Jesse Eisenberg carries over from "The Double".

THE PLOT: After being attacked on the street, a young man enlists at a local dojo, led by a charismatic and mysterious sensei, in an effort to learn how to defend himself from future threats. 

AFTER: I don't know anything about karate, outside of "The Karate Kid", anyway, or any martial arts, really - it's just not my thing. I have to imagine, however, that most martial arts dojos aren't run in the manner depicted here, however there are a lot of places that one can find "big boss energy", or BDE, like the sensei shows here. I've had a few bosses like this, and I just found out one of my old bosses (who was very nice to me) is now being seen by some employees as more tyrannical than I remember. Umm, yeah, sure, it's lonely at the top and you have to pay the cost to be the boss, and if you don't run your dojo (or studio) then it's going to run you. But all that is still no excuse for not being nice to people and not treating your employees (or students, or followers, or whatever) with respect and decency. I shouldn't have to say this, yet it's where we find ourselves. You can be a leader without being a total dick - or I don't know, maybe not, which is why I'm not running anything right about now. I'm selling beer to sports fans and I'm managing screenings, I just want to be helpful and nice without copping an attitude. 

Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, a nice-enough but insecure mensch who can't seem to stand up for himself (OK, so clearly he had a "type", because this is almost exactly the same type of character he played in "The Double") and he has trouble being social with co-workers, and he has trouble standing up to his boss, and pretty much he just lets people walk all over him. Something changes, however, when he's assaulted in broad daylight by a bunch of motorcycle riders wearing all black, they tackle him and beat him up, all while he was on a run to get dog food. After that he's afraid to leave his apartment for a while, and his poor dog gets very hungry and his boss wants to know if he's ever going to come back to work. NOTE: This film was made pre-pandemic, before half of everybody insisted on being able to work remotely so they wouldn't die from COVID.

Finally he takes a stand and checks out a self-defense class - it's all a little unusual to him, even seems a bit cult-like, having to follow a new set of rules for interacting with people (the late-night all-male "cool down" sessions seem like a lot, for example) but he's on the path to gaining some self-confidence back, figuring out this whole colored-belt coding system and navigating the difference between the day class and the night class, and trying to memorize the 10 or 11 Rules that are posted on the wall. No sneakers on the mat, no eating in the dojo, etc. It maybe seems significant that people who disagree with Sensei either get banned from class or crippled in one-on-one combat. Sensei might be wise in martial arts, but he's got a terrible business plan, since crippled people can't continue with their karate lessons. 

Eventually, a new Casey emerges, one who is more confident and sure of himself, although he doesn't appreciate some of Sensei's advice, like to stop listening to soft rock and start listening to heavy metal. Or to ditch his tiny dachshund in favor of a more manly, "non-gay" dog. Sensei also likes to micro-manage, but admits that he's got no head for accounting, so when Casey gets fired after standing up to his boss (relatable) he puts him to work straightening out the financials at the dojo. Well, somebody's got to get those W-2 forms filed properly. Going through the ledgers, Casey learns that people who've been kicked out of class are still paying monthly fees, they all either neglected to cancel their memberships or they were afraid to. It's probably fine. 

Actually, this whole film comes from a familiar place, we've seen it many many times here at the Movie Year - a guy does something simple, like enrolls in karate class, and now some screenwriter posits, "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" and so it does. Sensei's not just a dick, he's also criminally insane. He tells Casey that he's found the guy who beat him up a few months ago, and what bar he'll be at on Friday night - expecting Casey to join him in giving the guy a little payback. But it's all bogus, because shortly after that, he asks Casey to join him on a jaunt around town on motorcycles, wearing all black, looking for people to beat up. Wait a minute, that all feels a little familiar. You don't suppose - is this Sensei's way of drumming up business for his karate class, terrorizing the town to make people realize they need to take self-defense classes? 

Casey slowly realizes that Sensei is completely out of control - and the breaking point comes, just like in "John Wick", when the bad guy messes with his dog. You shouldn't have done that, because nobody loves anything more than their dog. Casey's now got to take down Sensei, no matter what lengths he has to go to. Here you might think, hey, why not just tell the police department who's been driving around town on motorcycles and beating people up, in a crazy scheme to get more people to enroll in karate class? And that would be a very good question, but it's not where the film chooses to go. After all, Sensei has video-tape of Casey beating up the man who he thought beat him up in the first place, so he's ready to blackmail Casey as being complicit in the scheme, if it comes to that. 

Things get worse before they get better, and the bodies keep piling up, but it seems this takes place in a city where the cops never figure out that all of the missing people in town were all enrolled at the same dojo. Nor do they ever crack the case of the motorcycle terrorists, so I don't know, maybe this police department got de-funded or something, or you know, detective work is hard and they just didn't want to be bothered? I mean, they get paid either way, right? Still, it's not a good look. 

I didn't really take this to be a comedy, but Wikipedia swears that it is one, just a black comedy (not the Wayans brothers kind, the dark humor kind). The only part I found even remotely funny was when Casey had colored belts made for everyone in the dojo and everyone was surprised that in addition to symbolizing their progress in karate, belts can also function to hold your pants up. Wow, that's some breakthrough thinking, were you guys all just raised in suspender-based families or what? 

Directed by Riley Stearns

Also starring Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Imogen Poots (last seen in "That Awkward Moment"), Steve Terada (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), David Zellner (last seen in "Person to Person"), Phillip Andre Botello (last seen in "Funny People"), Jason Burkey (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Mike Brooks, C.J. Rush (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Nicholas Hulstine (ditto), Davey Johnson, Hauke Bahr, Katherine Martin, Cameron Murphy, Lena Friedrich (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Louis Robert Thompson (last seen in "Mom and Dad"), Dallas Edwards (last seen in "Masterminds"), Katherine Smith-Rodden, Frederic Spitz, Alex Haydon (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Mark Sawyer-Dailey, Josh Fadem, Scott Goodman, Justin Eaton and the voice of Caroline Amiguet, with a cameo from Leland Orser (last seen in "Runaway Jury")

RATING: 5 out of 10 yellow items purchased at the grocery store

The Double

Year 18, Day 29 - 1/29/26 - Movie #5,229

BEFORE: How about this for a coincidence, I've got back-to-back films where the same actor plays multiple roles - this was NOT planned by me, at least not intentionally. It seems that my subconscious kind of took over, or else the chain has a mind of its own, I can't be sure. Robert Pattinson played Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 and both were on screen at the same time, tonight I think we've got a similar situation with Jesse Eisenberg playing the main character AND his double, using this advanced "split-screen" sort of technology, which probably isn't that advanced at all, like they were doing this in Charlie Chaplin movies back in the day, probably not much has changed, as of 2013 anyway. In 2026 they'd probably film two actors and use face-swap software to make them look the same, but when this was made they probably just filmed the same actor twice to get the reverse shots they needed. 

It suddenly occurs to me that January is named after Janus, the Roman god who had two faces, or a double-sided head. This seems about right. Janus was also the god of duality, beginnings, transitions, passages, time and endings. Well, that just about covers it, right? "Deep Cover", "Freaky Friday", "The Out-Laws", "A House of Dynamite", every one of my January films fits into one of those themes, so maybe Janus the god has been in charge of selecting my movies? 

Tim Key carries over from "Mickey 17".  But it's Jesse Eisenberg who's going to get me into the February chain, and since the new "Now You See Me" film still is not available, I'm going to get there in exactly the right number of steps. Why, it's almost like I know what I'm doing. 

THE PLOT: The unenviable life of a government-agency clerk takes a horrific turn with the arrival of a new co-worker who is both his exact physical double and his opposite otherwise - he's a confident, charismatic ladies' man. 

AFTER: This film is a modern update of the Dostoyevsky novella "The Double", in which a low-level bureaucrat is having trouble advancing at work, due to his anti-social nature. After getting thrown out of a party for his office manager's daughter, Yakov Golyadkin meets a man in a snowstorm who looks exactly like him - at first they are friends, but eventually become bitter enemies after "The Double" tries to take over his life, using all of his charm and social skills, which Yakov lacks. Yakov then begins to see replicas of himself everywhere, has a psychotic breakdown and ends up in an asylum, which, for a Russian story, counts as a happy ending. Free room and board for the rest of his life, plus probably a lobotomy coming at some point, then the sweet release of death. Really, when it came to writing stories about depressing circumstances, Dostoyevsky was second only to Kafka - probably the only scenario worse than getting replaced at your job by your evil twin would be waking up after being turned into a giant cockroach. But maybe Dostoyevsky was just the Scott Adams of his day, or vice versa. 

"The Double" focuses on Simon James, who's been working at the same job for seven years and has difficulty getting noticed, his boss calls him "Stanley" and the guards still won't let him in without looking at his ID, he is essentially very forgettable, nearly invisible. He is infatuated with Hannah, a co-worker who works in the photocopying room, and he won't get his printer fixed because he needs an excuse to go and spend time with her, however he has not taken steps to ask her out, and prefers to spy on her at night using a telescope. This is a little bit odd, I mean what are the odds that he would have an apartment that could look into hers, was this a happy (creepy) accident or did he choose the apartment based on the view? Either way, it's not a good look. Simon's hobbies also include going through her trash and piecing together drawings she made and tore up. 

One day, while creeping on Hannah with his telescope, Simon thinks that he sees a man in another apartment who looks just like him. But then he sees a man standing on a ledge who waves to him, as if he KNOWS he's being watched, and then he steps off the ledge and falls to his death. The jaded detectives who interview him just say that his happens more often than one might think, like all they do is investigate suicides like this, just in a five-block radius really. It seems life really sucks all over and people can't wait to get out of it. Simon resolves to improve his life by asking Hannah out, and even trades in his TV set to get money to buy her a gift, but then he decides to not give it to her, that would be too forward - well, she did mention that there was a guy who was obsessed with her and moved too quickly so Simon doesn't want to do that. 

Then there's a new guy hired at the company, James Simon, who looks exactly like him, though nobody else seems to be able to notice the resemblance. But James is everything Simon isn't, he's confident and likable and knows how to navigate office politics and get ahead - he has Simon take an aptitude test for him and then he steals all of Simon's proposals and presents them as his own - James starts dating the boss's daughter and also Hannah, at this rate he's going to get everything that Simon wants and probably push him out of the picture, and yet somehow they're still FRIENDS, umm, until they aren't. Really, there's a case to be made here for killing your double straight away if you should happen to meet them, like don't wait on this, just kill them before there's a reason and then maybe nobody would suspect you of the crime. 

Instead James starts using Simon's appearances for his sexual encounters, using blackmail of photos of HIMSELF with the boss's daughter, because everyone will think that Simon's the one in those photos. Suddenly James doesn't have a key to his own apartment and is forced to sleep on the bus, he's fired after going on a tirade bad-mouthing the very successful James, and he's about ready to kill himself when he sees that Hannah has overdosed, after being depressed because James cheated on her and also got her pregnant, but now she's miscarried. Instead of being thankful that Simon saved her life, Hannah suggests that he should now kill himself - OK, wow, maybe next time somebody sees you in trouble they should just let you die, how about that? 

Then things get really weird - Simon's mother dies and he rushes to her funeral, which is held right away and also at midnight outside the nursing home. This makes no sense and probably also reveals to the audience that this whole adventure is really just one giant office stress dream, and trust me, I know a few things about those. (I woke up screaming while we were on the cruise in December, I was sleeping more deeply than usual, and guess where THAT took me...). But Simon finds James at the funeral, impersonating him, no doubt. When he punches James he finds that his own nose bleeds, the two men are somehow connected to the point where they share injuries. What does this mean? Are they really somehow the same person, or twins who were separated at birth that share psychosomatic feelings? This is never really made clear, but I guess it doesn't really matter. 

Simon's ultimate "solution" is to handcuff James to the bed while he's sleeping in Simon's apartment, then to go to the ledge in the other building and jump off, much like the man he witnessed at the start of the story. Only Simon knows from the detectives how to jump off the building and hit the awning and probably survive, however he'll be inflicting injury on the sleeping James and nobody will arrive to give him medical attention. What a terrible cruel world it is when his only recourse is a suicide attempt that will also potentially kill his doppelganger who has taken his job and his apartment and his girlfriend away from him. Like, double WOW. All because HE couldn't hack it and he had to take out his competition to remain unique. I have a NITPICK POINT here because eventually Simon is going to have to explain the dead body in his apartment, right? 

We've all heard about twins or triplets who get separated and end up working in the same industry, or living a few miles from each other or marrying spouses with the same name. But one of the weird things about social media these days is that is has allowed a few people to find their own doppelgangers, people they are not related to, they just happen to look exactly alike, because of how many people there are in the world, and how few configurations there really are for facial features, if you think about it. It's just math and probability in the end - I don't think we have a word for this, but if you google "strangers who met their real-life doppelgangers" you can see what I'm talking about.  The odds of meeting your doppelganger are estimated at being one in a trillion, yet it DOES happen. 

I had a couple experiences where I (almost) met my doppelganger. I remember being at Symphony Hall in Boston one time, watching a choral performance. I was in the balcony, sure, but there was a bass singer who I thought looked like me - big guy, glasses, ponytail. And I sing bass, too - so I went down after the show and tried to look through the singers for my exact double, and I was just a bit too late, I did see someone with a ponytail leaving the building but I was just a bit too far behind him to be sure. Another time a guy came to our booth at San Diego Comic-Con and he was also wearing a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt over a t-shirt and we were total twinsies, except I was a bit taller. That photo is still in my old office, I should probably try to drop by and get it. The third time was when my BFF took a photo of someone at a chowderfest in 2007 who looked a LOT like me - big guy, Red Sox cap, comic-book t-shirt - and I was AT that event, but missed bumping into myself. Probably a good thing, because I know the best course of action for when that happens, and, well, it's not pretty. 

Or, you know, just putting this out there, if you find that you have met your doppelganger, and that person has taken over your life, your job and your apartment and the love of your life, maybe just let it go? Maybe it was time to give up that life anyway, I mean, what were you really DOING with it? Just pack a bag and move to another city, don't tell anyone where you're going, especially your Double, and just start fresh. It's the only move that makes some sense and also doesn't land you in jail for murder or bring bad karma your way. If some other monkey takes over your circus just go find another one somewhere else. 

Directed by Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme")

Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Mia Wasikowska (last seen in "Stoker"), Phyllis Somerville (ditto), Wallace Shawn (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Yasmin Paige (ditto), Noah Taylor (last seen in "Skyscraper"), James Fox (last seen in "Cleanskin"), Cathy Moriarty (last seen in "Matinee"), Gabrielle Downey (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Jon Korkes (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Craig Roberts (last seen in "The Current War"), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (last seen in "Wonka"), Susan Blommaert (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Bruce Byron, J. Mascis (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Tony Rohr (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Karima Riachy, Andrew Gruen, Morrison Thomas, Sally Hawkins (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Lloyd Woolf, Lydia Fox, Christopher Morris, Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "Calvary"), Donal Cox, Kierston Wareing, Paddy Considine (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Dirk Van Der Gert, Liam Bewley, Gemma Chan (last seen in "The Creator"), Nathalie Cox (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Martin Crossingham, Joanna Finata, Steve Saunders, Rade Serbedzija (last seen in "The Fog" (2005)), Chuen Tsou, Natalia Warner.

RATING: 6 out of 10 episodes of "The Replicator"

Mickey 17

Year 18, Day 28 - 1/28/26 - Movie #5,228

BEFORE: Well, we're all in shutdown/survival mode, it seems. I'm working tonight but I haven't worked in 5 days, and after tonight it will probably be another 5 days before I work again. Just waiting for my next paycheck from shifts I did two weeks ago to come in so I can pay my monthly bills for February. I'm also going to the comic-book shop today but I haven't been there in a month, and I scaled my pull list WAY back, so there's that. I'm really only stepping outside if I need to get food or there's a basketball game I need to work. Riding the storm out is fine, but there's still another two months of winter left, so it's going to be a while before things warm up, I guess - and there's another snowstorm they're tracking that could hit this weekend...is this the fun part? All of the news is horrible, all of it, I don't even want to turn on the TV some days, however these are exactly the headlines that we should NOT be turning a blind eye to, if you follow me. We're well on the way to living in a dictatorship unless somebody puts a stop to it. 

Patsy Ferran carries over from "Living". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "High Life" Movie #4,818

THE PLOT: During a human expedition to colonize space, Mickey 17, a so-called "expendable" employee, is sent to explore an ice planet. 

AFTER: Yes, this is the SECOND film where Robert Pattinson plays a space explorer on a long journey who really gets the short end of the stick and ends up learning just how terrible space travel can be. That feels kind of like a conscious choice, to play a very particular type of character in sci-fi movies, ones who are just covered in bad luck no matter what they do - here we are, ready to back to the moon again for the first time in like 50 years, and now these films come along and are ready to harsh my mellow. Sure, it's maybe not all going to be "Star Trek" peace and love and united cultures and no need for money in the future because everybody just has whatever they need (awfully convenient...), surely there must be a down side somewhere. 

And this is from director Bong Joon Ho, who made films like "Snowpiercer" and "Parasite", also "Okja", this film kind of ends up being a combination of all of those things - it takes place on a vehicle headed to a very snowy planet, there are forms of class warfare on board, and then there are weird creatures on that planet, and at one point Mickey has to hide in his cabin, much like the poor family hid themselves inside the rich family's house in "Parasite". Hey, this maybe is like the ultimate Bong Joon Ho combo film!  

The main hook here is that Mickey has signed on for this space expedition as their "expendable", a special job that requires him to die over and over again, being exposed to radiation or viruses or hungry alien creatures as a sort of test subject, so the upper class people on the spaceship can remain safe. If there's a terrible job to do that could kill someone, well, he gets to do it, and if he dies, they just restore him using a 3-D printer and a back-up of his brain. In the bowels of the ship there's a "recycling" furnace, just throw garbage or leftover food or dead bodies down there and it will burn up that material and turn it into new, usable material to make more Mickeys with. Or probably also make some form of flavorless, nutrition-less food for the second-class passengers. It's probably best not to think too much about how it all works.

This would seem, at first, to be a riff on the Tom Cruise film that was originally called "Edge of Tomorrow", but that title honestly seemed very vague and boring, so the posters were filled with the words "Live. Die. Repeat" and many people thought that was a better title for the film - so on cable right now it's airing under a title that's a combination of both, which is now the most confusing possible way to promote it. Whatever your movie's title starts as, just KEEP IT that way and don't ever change it. If it's a good movie, people will want to find it, and they can't do that if you change its name. Anyway, in that film Tom Cruise battled aliens unsuccessfully, over and over again, and each time he died he went through a time-loop and started over, with a bit more knowledge and skill to help him defeat the aliens. Eventually. 

But really, this is more based on a thought experiment that is also based in science fiction, and I'm thinking about the transporters seen on "Star Trek", the ones that disassemble Federation officers into millions of tiny atoms, and then re-create them on the other side by putting those atoms back together again. It's impossible IRL, and I'm guessing this will also be impossible in the future - your body contains millions, billions of atoms that would need to be put back together in the same exact way they once were, and if they don't do that exactly right, you're not going to be YOU on the other end, or your large intestine's not going to line up with your small intestine, or some other body part's not going to be in the right place. OK, but let's assume for a second that your body could be broken down into atoms, or energy or whatever, and sent through a transporter device to another location and could be assembled again on the other side of a large distance. Great, that's all sorted out, why do we need spaceships, then? Just asking. 

Now, imagine that instead of sending your atoms across that distance, it was easier just to break your body down, destroying it, but also re-creating it on the other side of that distance, just using the elements and materials on hand THERE - or turning energy into matter, whichever. Essentially you would step into a transport chamber on Earth, the device would disintegrate you but also take an inventory of every single molecule, every atom - then this information would be relayed to a similar chamber on, say, Mars, which would re-create you, atom by atom, using the elements and materials there on Mars, creating a version of you over there. Is that you, or just a replica of you? It would appear to an outsider that you were "transported" from Earth to Mars, but were you? Or were you destroyed on Earth and re-created on Mars? Now, does that Mars version of you also have your memories, or is it a blank slate, mentally? Is that person on Mars a clone or a replicant or something completely different, or is it still you? 

I think that's kind of what we're dealing with here in "Mickey 17". Mickey has died 16 times in the service of this spacecraft, and each time he's been re-created using a 3-D printer and that brain back-up. My main NITPICK POINT here is that people keep asking him what it's like to die, only he wouldn't know, would he? If Mickey 10 died they would create a Mickey 11 using the brain back-up of #10, but the back-up would have been made a few days before his death, so the death part just wouldn't be in his memories, right? The X-Men tried something like this a few years ago, they had all of Earth's mutants living in harmony (sort of) away from humans, on their own island nation of Krakoa (the island itself was a living mutant, long story) and they found that a combination of the powers of five specific X-Men (Egg, Proteus, Elixir, Tempus and Hope Summers) could be used to resurrect any mutant who died. They similarly made back-ups of each mutant's memories so those could be implanted into the new body of any resurrected mutant, essentially the comic book writers had "solved" death, not that any comic book character ever really dies, because for important characters like Black Widow or Captain America, the writers always find a way to bring them back. Why? To sell more comic books, duh. In my time I think I saw each member of the Fantastic Four "die" at least once, probably twice. Then there's always a time loop or a black hole or a "that was really a Skrull masquerading as Human Torch" moment that brings them back.

What a story "crutch" for the X-Men writers, though, they could have any character sacrifice themselves in battle, and be back up and running with a new version of Gambit or Rogue or Cyclops within 48 hours. But again, I have questions, because if Cyclops died, and the Five Mutants resurrected him, is he still him, or is he something else? He has all of Cyclops' memories, sure, but only before the last "back-up". Also, how many times can you kill off Cyclops before the audiences realizes that in this scenario, death has no meaning if they can just be brought right back. Why should I care, then, if Cyclops dies? Also, what happened to his "soul" when his body died? Or is there no such thing as a "soul"? Are you saying we're all just crude matter with electrical neurons firing in our brains, creating the illusion that we are alive and have consciousness? Are "WE" our bodies, our brains or our souls, or a unique combination of all three things working together? What happens when we die, does our life energy just get dispelled into the universe and do we just stop feeling and thinking, lights out and that's it? Or are there going to be 17 versions of Cyclops' soul meeting up in comic-book heaven? 

Anyway, back to "Mickey 17", what really is forbidden in this scenario is the concept of "multiples" - like, under no circumstances are you supposed to make more than one version of Mickey, or anyone, at a time. Because that would mean that there are two Mickey souls walking around in different bodies, and therefore maybe there's no soul at all, we're just bags of chemicals that think we are smart and alive, and that's too horrible to contemplate. Also, knowing how humans are, most people would probably want to have sex with their clones, and we can't allow that either. Like if you can't have sex with your twin, well then you can't have sex with your clone either, I think we just maybe like over-regulating this sort of thing, but I get it. Then again, having sex with your clone is just another form of masturbation, right, it's sex with somebody you love AND you probably know just how to please them, so I don't know, maybe just go for it and then let me know how it was... No, wait, don't tell me. No, wait again, please do and don't leave out any detail. No, wait...

Wouldn't you know it, Mickey 17 is left for dead on this alien world of Niflheim - they come and pick up his weapons, because you know, they have value, but Mickey 17 is at the bottom of a really deep ice crevasse, and it would be kind of dangerous to get him out, what's the point when they can just make a new Mickey? Funny story, Mickey is attacked by the Creeper aliens but they DON'T eat him, they bring him back to the surface, and he hitches a ride back to the spaceship on a transport truck, but that takes so long that by the time he gets back, there's Mickey 18, living in his cabin and sleeping in his bed. Uh, oh, what happens NOW? Multiples are strictly forbidden, but you know, Mickey's girlfriend has been thinking about the possibilities of a threesome. Should they? No, it feels so wrong, but if that's wrong then they kind of don't want to be right...

The guy in charge of the mission is Kenneth Marshall, half-failed politician and half-failed preacher, it seems, and he wants to colonize this new planet with only the FINEST genetic stock (sounds a bit like Hitler) and also turning a hefty profit (sounds a bit like Trump) all while Making Alienworlds Great Again (sounds a lot like both Hitler and Trump).  But he can't do that if there are "impure" soulless multiples on his ship, and also the planet is full of these Creeper aliens that need to be eliminated/exterminated. Eventually somebody calls him on his own B.S. by pointing out that the Creepers ARE already the dominant species on this planet, and they're not the aliens, but the HUMANS are. Whoa, Niflheim is just really Greenland, if you think about it, and this movie could NOT BE more relevant and timely. We in America are former colonists, mutts, people who were kicked out of every other country on Earth, given a second chance, and now WE are invading Venezuela and threatening to take Greenland from Denmark? It's just not a good look.

The Creepers eventually realize that there are thousands of them, and they way outnumber the humans, so they surround the ship and demand justice for the baby Creeper that was killed, also they want the living one that the humans have to be returned. I won't say anything about how it all turns out, but all they want is a life for a life. If only the humans had a spare person kicking around that they didn't really need...

This one's really way far out there guys, but a lot of great and interesting ideas here, some we've seen before and some that we haven't. The director adapted this film from a novel, and claims that none of the characters are meant to be mirrors of active politicians, but come on. Or maybe we're all just taking what we know about Trump and applying that to the corrupt leader seen here, I don't know. Overall it drags on a bit too long, like maybe if they could have trimmed 20 minutes or so out from somewhere I'd give it a higher score. But it's still wild, man.

It also occurs to me that today's film is like a reversal of yesterday's film - "Living" was about a man who had to learn how to live, and he kept living until he died. "Mickey 17" is about a man who had to learn how how to die, and he kept dying so he could live. Just me?

Directed by Bong Joon Ho (director of "Okja" and "Parasite")

Also starring Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Good Time"), Steven Yeun (last seen in "Nope"), Michael Monroe, Cameron Britton (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Christian Patterson, Lloyd Hutchinson (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Samuel Blenkin, Ian Hanmore (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Tim Key (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Rose Shalloo (last seen in "Emma."), Angus Imrie (ditto), Bronwyn James (last seen in "The Dig"), Holliday Grainger (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Milo James (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Steve Park (ditto), Naomi Ackie (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Daniel Henshall (last seen in "Okja"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Poor Things"), Toni Collette (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Jude Mack, Anamaria Vartolomei, Ellen Robertson, Haydn Gwynne (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)), Edward Davis (last seen in "Radioactive"), and the voice of Anna Mouglalis,

RATING: 7 out of 10 cafeteria trays

Living

Year 18, Day 27 - 1/27/26 - Movie #5,227

BEFORE: The January plan is almost over, it worked out better than I thought, in that I was able to add every film I wanted to add, without getting in the way of work days, and the sequel film "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is still not streaming at an affordable price, so I won't have to add it later this week, which is great because I don't have any room for it. It will be added to the watchlist later, I'm sure. Now I really will have to start working on the documentary cast lists so I can have the right order set up for June or July or whenever it makes sense to start it. 

Tom Burke carries over from "Cleanskin". I've had today's film on the list for probably three years, it just never seems the right time to get to it. It's not impossible to link to, but I don't think a real opportunity arose in all that time - well, waiting for two other Bill Nighy films (that aren't horror films or romances) to come around doesn't seem to be working, so let's clear it off the list a different way. 

This one got a Best Actor nomination for Bill Nighy, which is why I took notice of it in the first place, which reminds me that the nominations for 2025 were announced the other day, so I checked them out today. A lot of snubs, which means a lot of films suddenly WON'T be having guild screenings any more - this could explain why my calendar is fairly clear, there was a time to book "FYC" screenings, and for most films, that time has come and gone. It's like the SAME 5 or 6 films got all the nominations this year, and once again, I haven't seen most of what's been nominated, with one exception. "Sinners" got the most noms, and I dropped that in to my horror chain last year at the last minute - so if I can't program "One Battle After Another" in March before the Oscars - and I really can't, because my romance chain is programmed to reach St. Patrick's Day - I guess I'm going all in on "Sinners". 

THE PLOT: In 1950's London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off from work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis.

AFTER: This film also premiered at Sundance, on January 21, 2022 - just a bit over 4 years ago. I've heard this is the last year for Sundance in Utah, then next year it's moving to Colorado. I visited Sundance in Park City 3 times, back in 1998, 2001 and 2004 - considering my recent career choices and my age, it's possible that I won't make it back there again. I have a co-worker now who goes out there and does crowd control and check-in, I have not made any attempts to join her there partially because of my age (working festivals is kind for the young) and also the extreme cold. But I remember those visits when I would get up at 5 am and take the bus down to the box office so I could get early same-day tickets, buy as many as I could, take them back to a ski cabin full of crew members and sell my extras, keeping the best ones for myself. Those were the days - but I also remember the freezing cold, and while it's cold in NYC right now, it's not Sundance cold, also I'm inside, and I don't have to work this week except for tomorrow night. 

So let's say it's been on my list for three years, give or take, that's not TOO bad, I've got films that have been on the list for much longer. The films that have been on my list the longest are some TCM staples like "Grand Illusion", "No Time for Sergeants" and the 1941 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", who knows, maybe I'll never get to these. But for modern films that have been on my list the longest, therefore the true un-linkable films, there's "Zombie Honeymoon", "The Red Turtle", the two sequels to "Cube" and the 2016 re-make of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Well, never say never I guess, because I did get to "The Butterfly Effect 2" last year, also "I Lost My Body" and "Apollo 18", and I'd pretty much written those films off, too. "Norma Rae", "Stroker Ace" and "Gotti" were once thought to be un-linkables, too, and it just took adding more films to change that. 

The future's always in motion, that's my point - but what if it wasn't? "Living" is a film about a man who's given six months to live, though his doctor says with some luck he might make eight. OK, that's the bad news. If there's any good news, it's the effect that this has on his life, or what remains of it. When the end is in sight, when you have more road behind you than ahead, it can change the way you think about things. Suddenly spending all of his days inside of an office seems like kind of a waste of time - it's not how he really wants to spend his last six months, as a bureaucrat on the London County Council. Especially when so many of the projects that his office works on tend to just float around from department to department, and almost nothing ever gets accomplished. You can kind of see the inspiration for Terry Gilliams' "Brazil" here, where everyone is literally drowning in paperwork, delays are an inevitable part of the process and if any department should make a mistake, it's either covered up or intentionally never acknowledged as such. 

After receiving his diagnosis, Rodney Williams attempts to tell his son and daughter-in-law that he has terminal cancer, only his attempts are unsuccessful, he can't seem to broach the subject, with what I know about British personalities, this kind of tracks, it's easier to NOT tell them and deal with the consequences of that later. But since he'll be dead, that means he won't have to deal with those consequences at all. What he does instead is withdraw half of his life savings, purchase a lethal dose of sleeping pills and head off to a seaside resort town with the intent of committing suicide. I can't really tell if his logic here is to make things easier for himself or for everyone else - but of course he's not really thinking things through, he's just reacting to the bad news. 

When he meets Sutherland, an insomniac writer in a cafe, he offers up the sleeping medicine to someone who clearly could use it, and in return, Sutherland takes him out for a night on the town. Drinks, singing, and striptease, sounds like a lovely time, and Rodney has actual FUN for the first time in, well, as long as he can remember. He comes across as someone who just maybe forgot HOW to have fun, and work and life can do that to you. He returns to London with a new hat and a new outlook on life, so he does NOT go straight back to the office, instead he runs into Miss Harris, a young woman who used to work for him, but left to take a position at a chain restaurant. He invites her to lunch at a high-end restaurant, and they have a lovely conversation - he meets with her several times, but it's not exactly romantic, she just reminds him what it's like to be young and he envies her outlook on life. 

He soon realizes that it's not too late to do something positive, so he pushes for the construction of a children's playground, a proposal to redevelop a World War II bomb site into something more useful to the community. Normally this is the type of thing that would be lost in the shuffle, or sent around from department to department, but Williams decides to fast-track it through all of the approval stages, and shepherd it through each level of approval personally, so that, you know, something actually gets DONE for once. Meanwhile, Miss Harris starts dating Williams' new protege, Wakeling, and they're seen going on long walks and sitting in the park together, because it's 1953 and that's what people did back then. 

No spoilers here, but the example set by Williams here sparks his colleagues to also become advocates for positive change, however before long they're slipping back into their old habits and letting projects languish in levels of bureaucracy, often because it's just easier that way. True change takes time, we get that, even small changes in a modern city take inordinate amounts of time, and when I think about NYC today, there are then also levels of corruption, people taking advantage of the system, and people being resistant to change that tend to slow things down. They've been trying for years to stop subway fare evasion, for example, and nothing seems to work, partially because government officials are incompetent and partially because citizens are both entitled and inventive, and keep finding new ways to beat the system. So, we keep finding ourselves back in the same place, where there's a problem that nobody seems to know how to solve. They could put humans back in control of selling fare-cards or monitoring turnstile entry, but those humans need to get paid, so any savings from eliminating fare-jumping would be negated by the additional salaries for guards preventing the theft of city services. 

Williams leaves a letter for Wakeling, urging him to remember the playground whenever he gets discouraged, the one time that something got done in short order and within budget, I guess. It's good advice, when you look back on your career, remember the good days, the well-attended screenings or the busy Comic-Cons and not the bad days, when your film didn't get an Oscar nomination or the studio had to move because the landlord locked the doors when the rent didn't get paid. I'm trying, I really am, but late at night I still get those stress dreams - going through old photos helps, because I only took photos on the good days, it turns out. 

I know this is set in the 1950's, but I couldn't help think of the Beatles when somebody asks Williams how me manages to not lose his temper when dealing with the unhelpful council members, he simply says he doesn't have time to get angry. Essentially it's the same as saying "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting." Those lyrics from "We Can Work It Out" might turn out to be the most important ones that Lennon & McCartney ever wrote. Well, those along with "All You Need Is Love". Maybe this is what "There's nothing you can do that can't be done" refers to. 

Directed by Oliver Hermanus

Also starring Bill Nighy (last seen in "The First Omen"), Aimee Lou Wood (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Alex Sharp (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Adrian Rawlins (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Hubert Burton (last seen in "Their Finest"), Oliver Chris (last seen in "Dolittle"), Michael Cochrane (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Anant Varman, Zoe Boyle, Lia Williams, Jessica Flood, Jamie Wilkes (last seen in "Fair Play"), Richard Cunningham (last seen in "45 Years"), John Mackay (last seen in "Cruella"), Ffion Jolly, Celeste Dodwell (last seen in "Allied"), Jonathan Keeble (last heard in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Patsy Ferran (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Barney Fishwick, Eunice Roberts, Mark James, Nichola McAuliffe, Laurie Denman, Gleanne Purcell-Brown, Violeta Vlaverde, Michael James, Rosie Sansom, Matilda Ziegler (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Grant Gillespie (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Nicky Goldie, Thomas Coombes. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 "skyscrapers" of paperwork

Cleanskin

Year 18, Day 26 - 1/26/26 - Movie #5,226

BEFORE: The snow has ended, which means everyone on my block now goes completely insane, trying to clear all of the snow from their property. It's a LOT of unnecessary work, I mean I guess I understand they all want to dig their cars out, but who the hell drives to work any more, doesn't everyone (except me) work from home now? I guess I have a different perspective, I just walk or take the subway or bus everywhere, I haven't driven a car in over ten years. So what we do is just leave the car buried in snow, we don't feel the need to dig out the driveway or make a path to the street for the car, that's half the battle won right there, just by giving up. All I want to do is clear our front steps, half of the walk and all of the sidewalk in front of our house. That's it, all I'm legally obliged to do, and considering my age, that's enough of a workout. My wife paid some guy last night to do most of the work, normally I wouldn't shovel until the snow has STOPPED coming down, but this guy who rang our doorbell got most of the job done. 

So today I just had to scrape the sidewalk path and spread the last of our ice melt - it's not even going to be warm enough to melt for a while, but let me do what I can today and hope the sun comes out to assist. Then I shoveled half of our new neighbors' steps, because they haven't moved in yet so they're not even here to do it. Then I came inside, while my other neighbors are digging, scraping, piling and none of them have any idea how to do it properly, they're all like blind people stumbling around in a dark room. I even saw one woman using water from a garden hose to melt the snow, which is ridiculous and hazardous. All that water's going to re-freeze and make a coating of ice on her sidewalk, so I hope she likes slipping and falling, because she's going to be doing a lot of that. Other people are shoveling their snow back into the street, so cars can run it over and melt it, but that's stupid because the plow just finished getting that snow OUT of the street, and now they're working against common decency by putting it back. First rule of snow maintenance, keep the roads clear. 

I know, you all want to DO something to try and fix this "problem", but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, as hard as that is. Doing nothing is actually better than doing the WRONG, thing, if you follow me. And why spend three hours moving snow around to worse places, when you can just clear your walk in an hour and go back inside, have a coffee and relax? I just never understand other people sometimes, especially when they get snow crazy. Take a damn break, already. 

Sean Bean carries over again from "Deep Cover". 

THE PLOT: A British secret service agent is faced with the task of pursuing and eliminating a British-born suicide bomber and his terrorist cell.

AFTER: Back on spy stuff tonight, there's been a lot of spy movies already this year - also a lot of political films, like I think I've seen three films that riffed on G7 or NATO meetings, also three films with plane crashes so far. Well, sometimes weird things are trending around here, that's all I can say. January's a free, non-themed month, I can just let the chain take me wherever it wants to, there can be an animated film about a dog getting neutered or a movie about apes running the planet or a man doing crazy promotions at baseball games, it's all part of the plan somehow. There are only five films left in free-play January, though, I have to set things up now for the romance and relationship-themed February, sure that category can also be somewhat all-inclusive, but of course I've hand-picked about 45 films with a bit more of a focus. 

The path THERE goes through today's film about terrorist bombers in the UK and the Secret Service agents trying to stop them. It's another case, however, where the story just wouldn't work as a straight narrative, with all the scenes in the proper order, because the film needs to go back into the formative years of the terrorist, to explain how he got to this point, where he's willing to strap on an explosive vest and go in to a public place just to take out a few Parliament members having lunch together. BUT, if you flashback to the past and explain the motivations of the suicide bomber, that's a little too close to justifying his actions. And if you don't, then he comes across as a madman or a lunatic. Perhaps it's best not to go into it at all, just saying. 

Before that, we get into the story of how the explosive got into the terrorist's hands in the first place, which unfortunately doesn't make much sense. SIS Agent Ewan is functioning as a bodyguard for Harry, an arms dealer, who we first see in bed with a hooker. The hooker casually removes the clip from Harry's gun (this could be important later) and then is escorted out after Harry pays her (almost) what he owes her. Ewan escorts Harry to the bank, transporting a briefcase of Semtex, wait, WTF? Who brings a case of explosives to a BANK, unless they're going to blow up the bank? Was he going to put that case in his safe deposit box or something? I'm pretty sure that's against the bank's policy - and how did he get it past security? Anyway, the terrorists attack at the bank, killing Harry and shooting Ewan and making off with the explosives. Thankfully there's no way that could come back and bite somebody in the ass...

Once he recovers, Ewan tracks down that hooker that took the bullets out of the arms dealer's gun, and it turns out Paul, another one of her clients paid her to do that, and so the next time she sees that client, Ewan and Mark, a rookie agent, are waiting for him. Paul kills the hooker, but Ewan kills Paul, so great, another dead end. Ewan's mission to find the explosives, which is totally off the books, continues, under the supervision of his SIS superiors, who are not only trying to stop more suicide bombings but also cover their own asses for losing track of the briefcase of explosives in the first place. Again, come on, what idiot brought that to the BANK?

After another round of terrorist origin flashbacks, Ewan and Mark are sent to an abandoned building, which they are told is the hiding place of a terrorist. Ewan confronts the man they find there, interrogate him and burn him to death. Again, I just hope there are no repercussions from that, like what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? Ewan takes the man's jacket for no logical reason (but this could also be important later) and then after another failed attempt to catch the suicide bomber on foot, they're instructed to go hide out at a hotel under false names. While catching a nap there, Mark tries to kill Ewan, so exactly what the heck is going on here? Ewan resolves to take the terror cell down before another bombing, or before other SIS agents take him down, which they've apparently been tasked with doing. OK, good luck with that, let me know how it goes. 

And then once he's dealt with the Muslim terrorists, one way or the other, then he's got to try to figure out exactly who that guy he burned alive really was, and why his own agency is apparently trying to kill him - geez, it just never ends, does it? Why, it's almost like somebody in the government is working WITH the terrorists, or at least benefiting from the anti-Muslim sentiment that's being generated as a result of the bombings. Say, you don't suppose...how far up does this conspiracy go? 

Directed by: Hadi Hajaig

Also starring Charlotte Rampling (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Silas Carson (ditto), Abhin Galeya (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Tom Burke (last seen in "Black Bag"), Tuppence Middleton (last seen in "Mank"), Peter Polycarpou (last seen in "The Brutalist"), James Fox (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Michelle Ryan (last seen in "Cockneys vs Zombies"), Sam Douglas (last seen in "The Boys in the Boat"), Glenn Wrage (ditto), Tariq Jordan, Chris Ryman (last seen in "Morbius"), Mens-Saga Tamakloe (last seen in "Damsel"), Shivaani Ghai (last seen in "London Has Fallen"), Shane Zaza, Chris Geere (last seen in "After Earth"), Simon Wright, Sid Mitchell, Rebecca Egan, Robin Hellier, Martin Muncaster, Jeetandra Lathigra, Natalie Jones, Tanya Edworthy,

with the voices of Marc Eccleston, Stephen Bray and archive footage of Rowan Atkinson (last seen in "Wonka").

RATING: 4 out of 10 wedding guests

Deep Cover

Year 18, Day 25 - 1/25/26 - Movie #5,225

BEFORE: SNOW DAY! The whole East Coast is getting hammered today, thankfully I don't have to be at either job, and even if I did that event would probably get cancelled or postponed. So we can just hunker down for the day, I can catch up on some TV after I post this. We drove out to Long Island yesterday and had a big meal at a Chinese buffet (the fourth one we've found out there, and we think there are only four) so I didn't even need to eat dinner last night. Going to rest up and prepare to shovel our way out tomorrow - but our bucket of ice melt got all solidified into a big block, possibly due to humidity in our basement. I managed to chip it into a bunch of smaller pieces which I think I can still use tomorrow on the sidewalk. Shoveling snow is a bit of a lost art, and most people don't realize it's all about timing. You don't want to start too early, because then you'll have to do it again, and you don't want to start too late, because then you're  breaking the law and also it might freeze and make things impossible. It's kind of like driving on the highway, where everyone who's driving slower than you is an asshole and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac. Anybody who starts shoveling after me is irresponsible and anyone who starts before I do just doesn't know what they're doing. 

Sean Bean carries over from "Black Death".

THE PLOT: Three improv actors are asked by the police to go undercover in London's criminal underworld. 

AFTER: The idea here is that undercover cops might have trouble impersonating criminals and embedding themselves in a criminal organization, and therefore, quite illogically, the police might turn to improv comedians to do that task. The reasoning is that they're trained to say "Yes" to everything, and therefore you would expect them to do every task assigned to them, and really their mantra is "Yes, and..." which means they would follow up every agreement with some more information that would be designed to keep their story going. OK, so the logic isn't 100% there, really because what they say also would have to be believable, while the secondary goal of the improv comedian would to allow the story to get more and more UN-believable, and therefore funny. So if you think about this too much, you might realize that an improv wouldn't last long in the criminal underworld, especially if they turned the conversation to something outrageous like space aliens invading or pretending they survived a 20-story fall from a building. 

But this is what WE have to work with tonight, Hugh is a lonely IT worker for a brokerage firm, and he has trouble socializing with his co-workers, and figures that learning improv comedy might help him break out of his shy shell. Marlon is an unsuccessful "method" actor who has done a few commercials, but can't resist doing too much research and over-developing his characters - improv comedy might teach him to think fast, not obsess over his acting, and just do the job quickly and move on to the next thing. Kat is their improv teacher, and they're recruited by a police Sergeant to do a quick sting operation at a convenience store suspected of illegally selling cheap cigarettes. 

They are (somewhat) believable and there is an offer on the table to buy illegal cigarettes, but instead of just taking the recorded evidence they have to Sgt. Billings, they try to work their way up the chain to meet the supplier, and accidentally set themselves up as potential drug dealers trying to make a buy. A mid-level dealer named Fly offers to sell them three bricks of cocaine, but just then an Albanian gang rushes in looking for drugs that were stolen from him, and Kat quickly claims the cocaine and offers to sell it to him as a replacement for what was stolen from him, unaware that she's really selling his own cocaine back to him. Fly is impressed that she negotiated a settlement so quickly, and Billings claims they got farther into a criminal operation in two hours then any previous operative had in two weeks of undercover work. 

So, kind of a win all around, and they're asked to keep working for the drug dealer, who sends them out on collections detail, when sent to shake down a retired hitman who owes Fly money, he tries to escape but is hit by a van, and the improv trio takes the money that he owes Fly with them, and also takes credit for killing the deadbeat hitman. They keep failing upward like this for a while, and before long they're hanging out with Fly on his birthday, celebrating at a nightclub -  meanwhile a couple detective at another precinct think that the local drug trade has some new players and they open up their own investigation into the three mysterious newcomers who aren't in any police files yet, obviously because they're not real criminals and have no record. Why, it's almost like they don't exist at all!

The three comedians go with Fly to meet his boss, Metcalfe, who figures out pretty quickly that the trio fooled the Albanians, however the Albanians were HIS client, so now they need to find some more cocaine, quickly, and are sent to negotiate with K-Lash, the leader of a street gang. Things do not go well because Marlon can't keep from over-acting like a tough guy, and Sgt. Billings has to rescue them, however he also robs the street gang, which means he's a dirty cop. He also gets killed, and without anyone else knowing their identities, this means the improv comics are stuck undercover, at least until they can find a way out. I suppose they could just hop on a train and leave London, start fresh somewhere else, but that would mean throwing their old lives away. Hey, if it's leave town or get killed by drug gangs who find out you've been working for the police, I'd say leaving town seems like a pretty good idea. 

Kat's friends, who saw her out for a night on the town with Fly and his assassin associate, Shosh, decide to stage an intervention - like, they wanted Kat to get out and meet some new people, but then suddenly they don't really like the people that she met. I guess they thought she could meet a nice man like a doctor or lawyer and get into a relationship, not go clubbing with criminals - some people are just never satisfied, you know? Then they have to steal Kat's friend' car so they can dispose of the police sergeant's body - yeah, at this point they might realize that they're in way too deep. 

Those other two police detectives finally catch up with them, and are disappointed when they learn that they haven't arrested three new criminal masterminds, but instead three comedians who have only been pretending. Still, it's clear that being so close to crime has led them to do things like cutting up a body and put themselves in one dangerous situation after another. So before Metcalfe can figure out who the link in his organization is, they have to go BACK undercover and try to turn Fly, get him to wear a wire and get the evidence on Metcalfe, the boss at the top of the pyramid. But then even if they succeed, that means that they'll have to go back to their boring pre-undercover lives, which is probably a bit of a relief and also a bit of letdown. 

Hugh gets himself out of IT work and opens up a wine shop, though. Good for him. 

Directed by Tom Kingsley

Also starring Bryce Dallas Howard (last seen in "Jurassic World: Dominion"), Orlando Bloom (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Nick Mohammed (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Paddy Considine (last seen in "Heads of State"), Sonoya Mizuno (last seen in "Civil War"), Ian McShane (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Ben Ashenden (last seen in "The Bubble"), Alexander Owen (ditto), Leart Dokie, Omid Djalili (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Nneka Okoye, Freya Parker (last seen in "Wonka"), Sophie Duker, Susannah Fielding (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Ania Magliano, Assa Kanoute, Anthony Rotsa (last seen in "The Promise"), Sam C. Wilson, Ben Rufus Green, Sarah Beck Mather, Katy Wix, Mark Davison, Simon Thorp (last seen in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"), Arthur McBain (last seen in "Napoleon"), Amber Grappy, Terry Bamberger, Nathan Osgood (last seen in "The Current War"), Ewen Weatherburn, Billy Clements (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Jacob Bukasa, Daniel Scott-Smith (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Ahir Shah (also last seen in "Jurassic World: Dominion"), Brona C. Titley (last seen in "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People"), Al Barclay, Hasit Savani, Emma Keele, Judith Street, Vincent Brimble (last seen in "Last Chance Harvey")

RATING: 6 out of 10 broken bottles