Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)

Year 18, Day 183 - 7/2/26 - Movie #5,363

BEFORE: Barack Obama carries over from "Sigourney Weaver, the Ultimate Action Heroine", and I remember using him as a link last year, at just about this time, too - carrying over from the stockumentary about Tom Hanks to "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise" and then "Inside Job" and "Join or Die" right before July 4. This time I'm not putting all the docs with Obama in them together, I've got other fish to fry. But in honor of Barack AND the fact that this band was formed in Chicago, today's Semi-Quincentennial "Get to Know a State" segment #2 is all about the Great State of Illinois - here are some fun facts, figures and things I made up: 

Date admitted to the U.S. December 3, 1818 (the 21st state)

Claim to fame: Birthplace of the band Earth, Wind & Fire, also Styx, Fall Out Boy, the Smashing Pumpkins and the band that performed "25 or 6 to 4" whose name escapes me at the moment.

Nickname: Land of Lincoln or the Prairie State

Prevalent language: Italian, I think

State Motto: "This fell off the back of a truck, whaddaya gonna do?"

State Flower: Violent, whoops, I meant violet. 
State Mushroom: Giant puffball

State Reptile: Painted turtle (what's with all the turtles?)

State Bird: Northern Cardinal, who I think is now the new Pope

State Insect: Monarch butterfly

State Mammal: White-tailed deer

State Tree: White Oak (they apparently love only white things, just saying)

State Dance: Square dance (clearly this was voted on in the 1800's, time for an update)

Notable Sports Teams: Da Bears, Da Bulls, Da Cubs, Da Sox and Da Blackhawks and the Fighting Illini, whatever that is. 

Fun Facts: Illinois was the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, Twinkies, the first McDonald's franchise, and the home of the biggest mob hit in history, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, which inspired the movie "Some Like It Hot". However, most of the state's culture burned up in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, leaving them with only improv comedy and deep-dish pizza. While I appreciate any pizza that's larger than my own head, the Chicago versions of hot dogs ("dragged through the garden") and ice cream ("dragged through five clashing flavors") need to be avoided at all costs. 

I've visited Chicago twice, once in 2003 and again in 2021. The first time we took one of those mob-themed bus tours and the Field Museum, and both times we visited Navy Pier and the Billy Goat Tavern, because seriously, what else is there to do there? At least the second time we also went to Morton's steakhouse and the world's largest Starbucks (like, 6 floors of different coffee stuff).

THE PLOT: The rise and fall of the band Earth, Wind & Fire, told via exclusive access to the band's archives of visual, audio and written material, with the support of the band members and the estate of Maurice White. 

AFTER: I've maybe watched too many documentaries about bands, because they follow a formula, based on the lifespan of the band, it's a pattern that was set by the Beatles and has continued to manifest itself in the story of every band since. Eventually the same things will happen, the band will break up either due to creative differences or because the income has dried up. In the case of Earth, Wind & Fire, both things happened around about the same time. The money thing is kind of a given because as a band becomes more successful, they're forced to create a business, either a holding company or an LLC that is responsible for paying the bills, and keeping things legal - this company is sometimes run by family or friends of the band members, but not in all cases. But what happens then is the band has created this machine to process the money from the record company, but also pay for the tours, travel expenses, legal fees, merchandising, etc. and at some point the company is maybe laying out more money than it's taking in, often leading to the band members getting paid less and less over time. When you have a 15 or 16-piece band, with two drummers, a horn section, and back-up singers, well you can see the obvious problem, you can't treat all of those people as staff. The bass player for the Rolling Stones has had a 20-year temp job. 

At the same time, EW&F founding member Maurice White, who kept the books, wanted to embark on a solo career (what could possibly go wrong?) and maybe also saw that the income from each tour was less and less, and the band was losing money with each tour, then borrowing against the advance for the next record, and where does THAT end? So he basically fired the rest of the band and encouraged them to strike out on their own, although some who weren't ready had to sell stereo equipment for a while, and it was a couple years before Maurice figured out that he needed the rest of the band as much as they needed him to be in charge. But musical tastes of the public change over time, and by the time they got the band back together and were ready to tour again, it was nearly too late, they played to empty stadiums and had to cancel shows and issue a bunch of refunds, hoping that the new album would strike a chord with the public and they'd start showing up again. 

Earth, Wind & Fire kind of got saved by the next generation of rappers who sampled their hits (stealing the riff is OK I guess if you give credit and also re-introduce a bunch of old-timers to the new crowd of music fans) and the older EW&F songs got licensed to appear in TV commercials and films (like the "Trolls" movies). And then the band got the bump from winning an NAACP award plus getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Pack your bag, guys, you're heading out on tour again...

We therefore diagnose Maurice White as the band member with the worst case of "artist brain" - sure, he was a driving creative force, he was inspired by African musical instruments, Egyptian iconography and the theatrics of Doug Henning - PLUS he demanded that the band should learn at least a little choreography and wear outlandish costumes. BUT at some point this reaches beyond the principles of showmanship and becomes, "I'm in charge, everyone has to take my advice", and also "I get to sing about love and preach about faithfulness, but also I'm allowed to have a second secret family while I'm on tour." Yeah, we've seen this before and we'll probably see it again, famous people are just like regular people, except even more entitled. Sure, he felt abandoned by his mother when he was a kid, and this affected how he treated other people when he was an adult, but at some point, don't you need to get some therapy for your childhood trauma if it prevents you from treating people fairly later in life? Just saying. 

Still, this also works as a love letter to some of the greatest soul/funk/fusion jazz songs that the band is known for - "Shining Star", "Sing a Song", "September", "Fantasy", and we can maybe almost forgive them for their foray into disco with "Boogie Wonderland" because during that same time period they covered the Beatles song "Got to Get You Into My Life" and performed it in the god-awful-but-I-still-love-it movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". I just want Questlove to keep making documentaries, because he's got really good instincts and a knack for picking great subjects from the pantheon of American music. I think the only Earth, Wind & Fire album I own is their Christmas album, though, where they updated their song "September" as a holiday song titled "December". 

Directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson (director of "Summer of Soul")

Also starring Philip Bailey (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Ralph Johnson, Verdine White (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Patt Adams, Bob Cavallo, George Faison, Flea (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), David Foster (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Michael Harriot, H.E.R., Jimmy Jam, Booker T. Jones (last seen in "A Star Is Born" (1976), Dennis Kimbro, George Massenburg, Al McKay, Michelle Obama (last seen in "The Six Triple Eight"), Anderson .Paak (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Herb Powell, Lionel Richie (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Leonard Smith, Bruce Talamon, Wanda Vaughn, Wayne Vaughn, Eden White, Don KB White, Marilyn White, Don Whitehead, Stevie Wonder (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything")

with archive footage of Maurice White (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Fontella Bass, Roland Bautista, Michael Beal, Chuck Berry (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Beyonce Knowles-Carter (last seen in "Jagged"), Jim Brown (last seen in "Draft Day"), Sabrina Carpenter (last seen in "Horns"), Chance the Rapper (last seen in "Slice"), Jessica Cleaves, George Clinton (also last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Don Cornelius (ditto), Phil Collins (last seen in "I Am Sam Kinison"), Ram Dass, Clive Davis (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Rhamlee Michael Davis, Morris Day (last seen in "Graffiti Bridge"), Neil Diamond (last seen in "Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Melinda Dillon (last seen in "Spielberg"), Leslie Drayton, Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Larry Dunn, Medgar Evers, Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Wade Flemons, Johnny Graham, Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Martha"), Michael Harris, Doug Henning, Jennifer Holliday, Whitney Houston (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Michael Jackson (ditto), Yackov Ben Israel, Etta James (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Rick James (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Kendrick Lamar (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Ronnie Laws, John Legend (last seen in "Martha"), Ramsey Lewis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "Thunderbolts"), Mike Myers (last seen in "Terminal"), Don Myrick, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Prince (also last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Richard Pryor (also last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Minnie Riperton, Bobby Rush, Lui Lui Satterfield, Skip Scarborough, Sherry Scott, Marlena Shaw, Charles Stepney, Billy Stewart, Barbra Streisand (also last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Beloyd Taylor, Alex Thomas, Ellene Warren, Chester Washington, Thomas Washington, Muddy Waters (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), Howlin' Wolf (ditto), Fred White, John White, Mimi White, Bill Whitten, Deniece Williams, Allee Willis, Wolfman Jack, Andrew Woolfolk

and Black Eyed Peas, Cameo, The Commodores, Gap Band, Brothers Johnson, Kool & the Gang, Pointer Sisters. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 meditation sessions

Sigourney Weaver, the Most Iconic Action Heroine

Year 18, Day 182 - 7/1/26 - Movie #5,362

BEFORE: After months of planning and preparation, the DOC BLOCK is finally here! Because of the way the linking worked out, I had this film at the top of the order practically from the start, and then when I learned that Sigourney Weaver had a role in the new Star Wars movie, well then by linking to THAT film I was really killing two birds with one stone, I could just keep the docs in the order I planned, no need to re-shuffle anything. Umm, except for a couple of exceptions, like I had one doc in the middle of things that I moved to the final slot, just to increase my chances of getting a good outro for the Block. And as I stated recently, I had maybe 43 or 44 Docs in the Block, which I have now bumped up to a very solid FIFTY, which should work out unless the linking fails and I have to cut something. 

But let's hope for the best - let me just do a quick check of my numbers for the rest of the year, I've got just under 140 slots left, if I use 50 of them for the Doc Block that will leave 90 slots. That could mean 30 for September, 30 for October, that should leave me 10 for November, 10 for December, and 10 for late August, if needed. Yeah, the math kind of works out, even if I don't know WHAT I'll be watching in those months yet. OK, we're good to go. 

So Sigourney carries over from "Avatar: Fire and Ash" - Now here's the linking for July, this should get me more than halfway through the Doc Block: Barack Obama, Richard Dreyfuss, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, John Lennon, Dinah Shore, Dick Clark, David Bowie, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson, Lorne Michaels, Conan O'Brien, Sean Penn, Sandra Bernhard, Johnny Carson, Paul Reubens, Dan Rather, Bill Clinton, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, David Lynch, Carl Reiner and Carol Burnett. Now that seems like an odd assortment of people to bring to the party. Speaking of parties, how about a belated birthday SHOUT-out to Dan Aykroyd, born on July 1, 1952 and appearing in "Ghostbusters" footage today...

The other programming note is that I did NOT take the time to re-organize the Block by subject matter, last year I put all the docs about musicians together, all the docs about athletes together, and so on. There was no need to do that this time around, because some of the linking here is SO niche that I felt if I re-organized everything, the chain was likely to break at some point - look, I've got a framework with a working chain already, so I'm just going to roll with it, but we're going to be bouncing around a LOT with the subject matter. The unifying factor this year seems to be that these people and things are very uniquely American - well, at least most of them are, there are some Canadian-Americans, one Italian and a Swedish pop group thrown into the mix, but mostly it's about American stuff like rock music, baseball and Hollywood stars. 

But since I have FIFTY docs coming up, and since it is America's 250th birthday, let me add a new feature for the semi-quincentennial. I can't promise I can keep this up for all 50, but let's try a segment I call "Get to Know a State", here are some facts and figures and things I made up about my first profiled state, NEW YORK. 

Date admitted to the U.S. July 26, 1788 (the 11th state, but come on, really it's #1)

Claim to fame: Sigourney Weaver was born there

Nickname: Empire State 

Favorite "Star Wars" movie: Episode V, obviously

Prevalent language: All of them

State Motto: "Excelsior", which is Latin for "You talkin' to me?"

State Flower: Rose
State Fruit: Apple (as in "The Big Apple")

State Reptile: Snapping turtle (don't ask me how I know this...)

State Bird: Eastern Bluebird

State Insect: Ladybug (some of which were once Manbugs)

State Mammal: North American beaver (too easy)

State Tree: Sugar Maple 

State Beverage: Milk (Yeah, right, really, it's Long Island Ice Tea)

Notable Sports Teams: None that come to mind, maybe the Buffalo Bills or New York Liberty?

Fun Fact: New York City was once the U.S. capital, the first one, but then it decided it was too cool for the job, also there was no chance for advancement and the pay was horrible so it quietly quit and let Philadelphia take over. 

Seriously, though, I've lived in New York City for 40 years now, and so I know there are really TWO different New York States of Mind - there's NYC & Long Island and then everything else is "upstate" - some people supposedly live north of Yonkers, but this is as yet unconfirmed. I've been all over the state, to Cooperstown, Lake George, Rhinebeck/Kingston, and as a kid my family took me to Ithaca, Rochester, Niagara Falls and Fort Ticonderoga. I would like to visit Woodstock and/or Tarrytown and maybe the Finger Lakes someday. Especially the Middle Finger Lake. New York State is also known for the invention of Buffalo Wings, the Garbage Plate (Rochester) and just ONE restaurant in NYC is where lobster newburg, eggs benedict and baked alaska were first served. That's Delmonico's, which has been open since 1837!

NYC is also the culinary home of bagels, pizza, cheesecake, pastrami sandwiches and black and white cookies, and that's just for starters. Every type of cuisine - Chinese, Indian, Japanese, deli - is available there, sometimes 24/7. How can you not love that? Come hungry, leave happy. Just don't get me started about the abomination called Manhattan Clam Chowder. 

THE PLOT: This German documentary explores the career and films of Sigourney Weaver, classifying her as the Most Iconic Action Heroine of all time. 

AFTER: There's some precedent for this, of course - two years ago the first film in my Doc Block was the one about Sylvester Stallone, and last year it was the film about Faye Dunaway. This kind of seems right in line with that, Sigourney Weaver is maybe part Faye and part Sly, if that makes sense. Dramatic actress plus action star, all in one package, which is kind of the point of this German documentary. This came into my possession because the PBS station here in NYC ran it on a double-bill with "Gorillas of the Mist" one Saturday night, and I figured I'd just grab it and pair it something else, like maybe the "American Masters" profile of Marlee Matlin, which of course they have not rerun since. C'est la vie - I don't miss out on documentaries, if they're not streaming somewhere then THEY have missed out on being part of my Doc Block. 

I've seen searching for the proper word for this kind of documentary, one that uses mostly archive footage, maybe they interview one or two people who happen to be available (and will sit down for an interview for free, or close to it). I mean, we have "Rockumentary" for docs about rock music, we have "Mockumentary" for staged docs like "This is Spinal Tap", in my mind I was calling these "Schlockumentaries", but that's not really fair, they do serve a purpose as they make my linking possible, even if they're not ground-breaking in any way. But they do pay fees for the licensing of footage and music, so I suppose they're good for the movie-studio economy and they run a TON of them on channels like AXS, Fuse and once in a while, PBS. (That means I already own the films, as PBS is owned by us all, so I might as well record them.). Well, damn, the word "Stockumentary" was RIGHT THERE, so from now on, around these parts and soon, hopefully everywhere else, that will be the new name for docs comprised mainly of archive footage from other films and other interview sources. 

Well, it's good to know that Sigourney herself was not inconvenienced in any way by the making of this German doc, they did sit down with some of her co-stars from this weird French comedy series that she appeared in, in which she poked a bit of fun at her non-reputation as a spoiled Hollywood star. Then they used a bunch of footage of her on various red carpets, attending the Cannes Festival, then of course a ton of dramatic movies that didn't do much bank, but really what they want to concentrate on here is the big franchises - "Alien", "Ghostbusters", and "Avatar", now of course we can add "Star Wars" to that list, but that happened after this doc was made. Really, nobody has a better track record when it comes to franchise films, even Stallone only had two, "Rocky" and "Rambo", maybe you can add "The Expendables" in there if you want. But Sigourney can do it all, from horror-scifi to comedy-scifi to fantasy-scifi. 

Her parents were Pat Weaver, who literally invented "The Today Show", her mother was an English actress named Elizabeth Inglis, and her uncle was Doodles Weaver, who performed in Spike Jones' band on old novelty records. Born in New York City, as mentioned above, she's famous for a number of films set in NYC, like "Ghostbusters" and "Working Girl". Her first name used to be Susan, but she re-named herself after a character from "The Great Gatsby". After doing some acting in NYC prep schools, she attended Sarah Lawrence College but transferred to Stanford as an English major, then got a Master's from Yale School of Drama in just 2 years. In 1974 she made her Broadway debut (acting opposite Ingrid Bergman!) and then her first movie role was of course "Annie Hall", a tiny character out on a double-date with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.  

Everything changed, of course, with the release of "Alien" in 1979, Ridley Scott's sci-fi/horror ensemble piece, and the sequel directed by James Cameron - picking up as an action hero where Carrie Fisher left off and then like REALLY running with that. She kept working in both stage and screen, movies like "The Year of Living Dangerously" and plays like "Hurlyburly" and works of Christopher Durang and Stephen Sondheim. All that led to "Ghostbusters", "Gorillas in the Mist", "Working Girl", "Dave", "Death and the Maiden", "Copycat" and "The Ice Storm", some of which are mentioned here in this stockumentary. Three Oscar nominations, no Oscar (yet) but she has won a BAFTA, a Grammy and two Golden Globes. SEVEN Golden Globe nominations and four Emmy Award noms, obviously a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The film really makes a case for her being one of the most successful actresses of all time, and it's hard to disagree. 

There's plenty of movies they didn't even get to, like "Heartbreakers", "The Village", "Wall-E", "The Tale of Despereaux" and "Galaxy Quest". Near the end of this doc she's seen speaking out in defense of equality (gay rights, gorilla habitat conservation and preserving the oceans are among her supported causes, and she's jokingly introduced as a future President of the U.S. Sigourney for President? Well, I suppose we all know we could do a lot worse, and we have.

Directed by Bärbel Merseburger-Sill

Also starring Carlo Chratian, Matthias Harder, Valerie Steele, Neil deGrasse Tyson, 

with archive footage of Woody Allen (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "The House of Mirth"), Ursula Andress (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "God Is the Bigger Elvis"), James Cameron (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Veronica Cartwright (last seen in "The Children's Hour"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "Pee-Wee As Himself"), Doris Day (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Gridiron Gang"), Carrie Fisher (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "Nyad"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Mel Gibson (last seen in "Force of Nature"), Cary Grant (last seen in "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames"), Pam Grier (last seen in "The Package"), Melanie Griffith (last seen in "Martha"), Linda Hamilton (last seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate"), Gregory Hines (also seen in "Music by John Williams"), Ian Holm (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "Champions"), Rock Hudson (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Gale Anne Hurd (last seen in "De Palma"), John Hurt (last seen in "Hercules" (2014)), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Angelina Jolie (also last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Milla Jovovich (last seen in "No Good Deed" (2002)), Diane Keaton (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Jules"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "The Extra Man"), Yaphet Kotto (last seen in "Live and Let Die"), Frank Langella (last seen in "Draft Day"), Brie Larson (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Janet Leigh (last seen in "The Fog" (1980)), Joel David Moore (also carrying over from "Avatar: Fire and Ash"), Rick Moranis (last seen in "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves!"), Carrie-Anne Moss (last seen in "Disturbia"), Bill Murray (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Helmut Newton, Barack Obama (last seen in "Mile 22"), David Hyde Pierce (last seen in "Vampire's Kiss"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "The Book of Love"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Conan the Barbarian" (2011)), Harold Ramis (last seen in "Belushi"), Winona Ryder (last seen in "Homefront"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (also last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Martin Scorsese (last heard in "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu"), Jim Simpson, Tom Skerritt (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Uma Thurman (last seen in "The Life Before Her Eyes"), Sam Worthington (also carrying over from "Avatar: Fire and Ash")

RATING: 6 out of 10 photography sessions with Helmut Newton

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Year 18, Day 181 - 6/30/26 - Movie #5,361 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #14

BEFORE: So there's this guy on Instagram (and I assume on TikTok and YouTube, too) who posts videos of what he eats - sure, lots of people do that now, and some people are speed eaters and some people are eating for quantity (mukbang?) and some people are shilling for restaurants and some people are protein maxxing - sure, it's a great big wonderful and confusing world of food videos. But this one guy fascinates me because he's obviously overweight, and he goes to fast food restaurants and orders like one of everything, which causes a lot of rage-baiting in the comments. You know the guy who says "Moooood" before he starts and also says "you guys" after every sentence - but he also says, "Watch me eat all this food in the next video" and then maybe there is no next video, so is he really eating all of that? I was raised to be skeptical, but yeah, considering his size, probably. But the videos are still framed as his "weight loss journey" and sometimes he says he's going to be on a strict diet for the next week, so that's an excuse to eat four pizzas and three ice-cream sandwiches in a video before the diet starts. 

That's kind of where I stand with narrative films, after tonight I kick off a 50-film Doc Block, you know, for Amurica, to celebrate the semi-quincentennial, but before I go on a narrative story diet, I'm going to binge out by watching both a "Star Wars" film and the latest "Avatar" sequel, which just made it to streaming on Disney Plus. So "Moooood, you guys, we're going to watch a documentary about Sigourney Weaver... AND THEN a documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire... AND THEN a documentary about the movie "Jaws"...  AND THEN...

Seriously, though, Sigourney Weaver carries over from "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu". And here are the format stats for June, which ends today, and I'll post the planned linking for July tomorrow. It's not 100% solid, like a few things could still change, but here's hoping I don't have to move too many things around during the coming month.

15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Cleaner, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, 47 Ronin, Good Fortune, Agent Cody Banks, Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, How I Live Now, On Chesil Beach, Inside, The Legend of Ochi, Aftersun, The Duke, Golda, Eddington, Freaky Tales

6 watched on Netflix: Back in Action, The Rip, Over the Moon, The Outrun, Denial, Caught Stealing

1 watched on Amazon Prime: Playdate
2 watched on Hulu: Big Fat Liar, The Man in My Basement

1 watched on YouTube: The Last Station
1 watched on Disney+: Avatar: Fire and Ash

1 watched on Peacock: Hamnet

1 watched in theaters: Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

28 TOTAL

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Avatar: The Way of Water" (Movie #4,520)

THE PLOT: Jake and Neytiri's family grapples with grief, encountering a new, aggressive Na'vi tribe, the Ash People, who are led by the fiery Varang, as the conflict on Pandora escalates and a new moral focus emerges. 

AFTER: We have a new leader for LONGEST movie of the year, this one weighs in at 3 hours and 18 minutes, or 198 minutes, which is longer than "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning", which was ONLY 170 minutes long. Jeezus, Tom Cruise, that's not even three hours long, are you even TRYING? James Cameron just schooled you in how to give the moviegoer more bang for their buck, and also make it impossible for a movie theater to schedule this film more than four times a day. How is a movie theater supposed to make money from this? Oh, right, by selling overpriced popcorn, soda and candy.  Well, that's very American, give people salty snacks and sugar water, ruin their health and also overcharge them for doing so. OH NO, you can't bring in bags of popcorn and soda you just bought at the corner store, you have to buy all your food and drinks at the theater itself, because the margins are so tight and they have to kick nearly all of the profit from tickets sales back to the film distributors, so that's really why movie theater snacks are so regulated and also expensive. 

But let's get back to how freakin' LONG this movie is - I could not finish it in one night, I had to save the final hour (the final battle) for this morning. To be fair, I did work late at the theater Monday night, I was pretty tired when I got home. But still, I persisted and watched about 65-68% of "Fire and Ash" before calling it a night. I would have preferred to watch the last hour on my computer, which has a full-screen mode, rather than on my phone, which does not. OK, my phone does have full-screen, but phone full-screen is much smaller than computer full-screen. 

Please, please, let THIS be the last "Avatar" movie - there have been three very long films in this franchise so far, and all together that's a trilogy that would take up too much of anyone's time to re-watch. I don't think I ever re-watched the FIRST "Avatar" movie, I only saw it once and then I was perfectly happy waiting 13 years for the sequel, and now I've only waited THREE years for the sequel to that. We don't need any more movies in this series!  Rumor has it that James Cameron wants to release at least two more, in 2029 and 2031, so realistically, expect them to be finished in like 2047 and 2050. I feel like a lot of this story has been going around in circles - Sully gets captured, Sully argues with humans, Sully gets violent, Sully breaks free and escapes. Repeat as necessary.  

OK, I guess they keep adding different clans, like in today's movie they added a fire-based clan, which kind of balances out the water-based Na'vi clan they added in the last film. Should we expect an earth-based clan in the next one, like they live underground or they live in mud? I think a better idea would be to end the series after three, because "Fire and Ash" feels kind of like the equivalent of "Return of the Jedi" in the "Star Wars" franchise, it's a wrapped-up storyline, maybe, and a lot of things feel like they sort of came full circle, so maybe just take a break here?  We had "ROTJ" released in 1983 and as far as we knew THEN, that was it for the "Star Wars" franchise, there wasn't even word of another film being made until 1997 when we learned that Episode 1 would be coming out in 1998. "Avatar" could maybe benefit from a similar 15-year break.  

Don't get me wrong here, I think these "Avatar" films are quite amazing, even if they're not 100% my cup of tea. There are still narrative plot-holes, specifically regarding how humans got so far from Earth in the first place, like that should have taken hundreds of years for them to travel that far, unless they invented hyperspace travel. Also, how do they communicate with home base on Earth, if they're so far away? Also, does anyone remember what the goal was, in trying to take over Pandora? Does anyone remember unobtainium, the most stupidly-named MacGuffin in film history? I think in the second film the goal of the humans taking over changed, and they started hunting the whale-like Tulkuns, because there was something they could harvest from the Tulkuns that was even more valuable? I forget, though, what was it? 

This is a very American attitude, we see another planet, somebody's homeland, something filled with natural resources, and we just say, "Oh, yeah, we want that." And in so doing, we feel that we're entitled to it, manifest destiny, or just plain greed or jealousy, but you know, even if we realize that it belongs to someone else, we still want it, and therefore we think we need it. It's almost exactly why Europeans colonized America, and screw the indigenous peoples, anyway. The Na'vi are still serving as a de facto symbol of Native Americans, a people who are very in touch with the spiritual world, who love and respect animals, who have a sense of honor and decency and rules to live by - also far too trusting of American humans at first, and they learned the hard way how incorrect that was. 

I'm sure it's a great, big, beautiful world with many more sections to explore, but come on, let's give it a rest for a while, I'm exhausted....

Directed by James Cameron (director of "Avatar: The Way of Water")

Also starring Sam Worthington (last seen in "Lift"), Zoe Saldana (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Stephen Lang (last heard in "My Love Affair with Marriage"), Oona Chaplin (last seen in "What If"), Kate Winslet (last seen in "Lee"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Joel David Moore (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Brendan Cowell (ditto), Britain Dalton (ditto), Trinity Jo-Li Bliss (ditto), Bailey Bass (ditto), Filip Geljo (ditto), Duane Evans Jr. (ditto), Dileep Rao (ditto), Kevin Dorman (ditto), Alicia Vela-Bailey (ditto), Johnny Alexander (ditto), Phil Brown (ditto), Robert Okumu (ditto), Jeremy Irwin (ditto), CCH Pounder (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), Edie Falco (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jemaine Clement (last seen in "A Minecraft Movie"), Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Strange Darling"), David Thewlis (last seen in "Macbeth"), Jack Champion (last seen in "Freaky Tales"), Jamie Flatters (last seen in "The School of Good and Evil"), Matt Gerald (last seen in "The Minus Man"), Daniel Lough, Keston John (last heard in "The Wild Robot"), Jamie Landau, Graham Vincent, Joel Tobeck (last seen in "The Water Horse"), Shane Rangi, Grant Roa, Howard Cyster, Laz Alonso (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Wes Studi (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Dai Daniel.

RATING: 7 out of 10 underwater spirit trees

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Year 18, Day 180 - 6/29/26 - Movie #5,360 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #13 - WATCHED ON 6/10/26

BEFORE: OK, so full disclosure, I snuck out to the movies a couple of weeks ago and saw the new "Star Wars" movie - it's probably the LONGEST I've ever waited to see a movie from this franchise since the whole damn thing started, almost FIFTY years ago now. Honestly I don't remember how long "Episode IV: A New Hope" was in theaters before I saw it, my parents took a lot of convincing in those days if I wanted to see something that wasn't a Disney animated feature, I was only eight years old when "Star Wars" started up. But yeah, if you're going to transition out of kiddie movies and into the real hard-core stuff, that's the film you probably want to mainline, it's a gateway movie but I have to warn you, that's a real easy path to addiction, you're going to find yourself going to the theater again and again and again over your whole lifetime. What's worse is getting so hooked on the space junk that you actually consider a career in film production and you make your life decisions based on that, it can really mess you up, I can tell you firsthand. I'm only about 400 days clean myself, which means I get a chip or something, right?  (My name is John, I'm a former filmworker, it's been 400 days since I worked on a movie, but I'm still watching them every night and I feel the urge to produce again...)

If I've done this right, Pedro Pascal carries over from "Freaky Tales". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker" (Movie #3,396)

THE PLOT: Once a lone bounty hunter, Mandalorian Din Djarin and his apprentice, Grogu, embark on an exciting new adventure, hunting down Imperial warlords for the New Republic.

AFTER: I was very excited when I learned that Sigourney Weaver would be joining the "Star Wars" franchise, not just because she's a great actress, strong female figure, somebody on a par with Carrie Fisher, Natalie Portman, etc - but for me personally, I had a documentary about her sitting at the TOP of my Doc Block plan. Now part of this was just the way that the linking was going to shake down, but then once I saw today's film, it made my life so much easier, I already had my entry point to the upcoming chain. So all I had to do now was get HERE by way of Pedro Pascal, and it kind of took me all of June to do that, I really sort of had to bend my plans over backward to get here in basically three weeks' time. But I made it!

In the days that came after the release of this, the first "Star Wars" film we've been given in seven years, a lot of people complained that this one was too derivative. Please note that these are the SAME people who would complain online if the new "Star Wars" film was too much like the ones that have come before. So they want something new, but not TOO far out there, so new-ish? So this is kind of why every new character is sort of a riff on an older, established character - the Mandalorian has armor which is sort of like Boba Fett's, only better. And Grogu is sort of like Yoda, only cuter. The big cave-snake is kind of like a dianoga meets a krayt dragon, and that's a design choice that's pretty well calculated. They use the Hutts as characters, because that's easier than establishing a new species or a new gang of criminals. So what you end up with, therefore, is something that's a patchwork assembly of a bunch of things we've kind of seen before, but at the same time, that sets this film firmly in the Star Wars Universe. 

We still don't know the complete origin of Grogu, of course - they didn't explain this during the "Mandalorian" streaming series, and they're not going to explain it now. It doesn't matter where he came from, only that he's here. It would ruin the mystery if they named his exact species or said that Yoda had a fling with Yaddle but the Jedi back then didn't believe in attachments, so they just kept it casual. He got rescued from the Jedi temple before Order 66, that's all you need to know, Din Djarin is his father now, even though Grogu will outlive him, by like a lot. Stop asking so many questions, just roll with it, not everything needs to be fed to us as if we're hungry baby birds. 

It's good to see Din working for the New Republic, though - and tracking down Imperial fugitives for them so they can't work on re-forming the Empire or becoming rogue warlords on various planets in the Outer Rim. The sabacc deck of the wanted Imperials feels like a direct reference to the playing cards used to keep track of the Iraqi warlords during the real-life Gulf Wars. Anyway it seems the former Rebel Alliance has a handle on things and pays pretty well, so all of that feels like progress. Din and Grogu have a little homestead on a remote planet, I think they bought that with the bounties earned during Season 3 of the show. The rumor going around was that the plot of this movie would have been used for Season 4, but was compressed into a solo movie - I don't see how that's possible, there simply aren't enough twists and turns here to fill a TV season, but there are plenty for a two-hour film. 

And there's a new take on the Hutts, too, which you probably heard about already - we were introduced to a baby Hutt, Jabba's offspring, in the initial "Clone Wars" animated film, and now he's all grown up and trying to be better than his father. (Umm, yeah, Hutts can actually change their gender at different times in their lives, so we're not sure if Jabba is Rotta's father or mother. Let's say father, it's just easier, plus it fits with my theme, and this could be the LAST Father's Day film for the month, unless tomorrow...). Din Djarin is now tasked with rescuing Rotta the Hutt from captivity on the moon Shakari, where he's forced to fight gladiator battles in a sort of intergalactic WWE. (Hey, remember that scene in the first "Star Wars" where R2D2 played Holochess with Chewbacca? Yeah, it's exactly like that.). If Din can rescue Rotta, as a favor to the Hutt Twins (Jabba's replacements) then they'll work with the New Republic and divulge the location of the former Imperial Admiral Coin. It's a quid pro quo, of sorts.

A couple of problems arise when Din attempts his rescue. First he tries to buy out Rotta's wrestling contract from Lord Janu, only that's not for sale. Janu's planning a big match for Rotta's last fight, but the fix is in, there's no way he can survive, so really it's a death-match, and fans around the galaxy are ordering the Pay-Per-View, so no dice. Din also tries to convince Rotta that Janu doesn't have his best interest at heart, there's no way he'll ever be released from his contract unless he dies, and by the way, that's part of the plan. Rotta refuses to believe him, but he changes his tune during the gladiator match when he realizes it's a Royal Rumble, all the giant monsters in the galaxy against him. No worries, it's a Mandalorian and Hutt team-up that will save the day, win the match and also rescue Grogu from his adorable little cage. OK, so a few monsters got loose and terrorized civilians on Shakari, it's a small price to pay, anyway, Din's not getting paid to save civilians, he's only getting paid to deliver a Hutt. (You get your Hutt in 30 minutes or it's free, right?)

Rotta claims that being delivered to the Hutt Twins will be another death sentence for him, so he pleads with Din to not deliver him as planned - anyway Rotta's got the intel Din needed to find Coin, so sure, why not double-cross the Hutts? They were probably planning to double-cross Din, anyway, because they're Hutts. Din instead relies on a team-up with Zeb (an important character from the "Rebels" show who wasn't important enough to make it to the "Ahsoka" show) and they call an audible by going straight to attacking Coin's stronghold, which is pretty elegant, it cuts out the middle man and Din is able to deliver the highest card in that sabacc deck straight back to New Republic Headquarters.  But working his way up the chain of a crime organization, that's when you realize that this "Star Wars" movie is also kind of a Jason Statham movie. One-man army and all that.

Great, that wraps up the movie early, we can all go home and get some... wait, don't forget about the Hutt Twins, who do not like being double-crossed. Plus they have a bunch of bounty hunters at their disposal, so they send Embo to find Din and Grogu at their quaint little homestead on that remote planet, and that's when you realize that this "Star Wars" movie is also kind of a John Wick movie. Dozens of assassins trying to earn the same prize and all that. 

Embo attacks Din and delivers him to Nal Hutta, leaving behind Grogu and four small Anzellans (think Babu Frik from Episode IX) who were modifying his new Razor Crest spaceship to follow after and try to initiate a rescue. Things do not go well, because the Hutt Twins remove Din's helmet, which is a breach of the Mandalorian Code, and they intend to slowly torture Rotta for the next hundred years or so (remember the Sarlacc pit from Episode VI, something like that). They toss Din into a pool beneath their throne room (remember the Rancor pit from Episode VI) and he has to battle a giant Dragonsnake. Mando is saved by Grogu and the Anzellans, but is bitten by the Dragonsnake in the process, and hovers near death. Grogu, however, believes he is only "mostly dead" and tries to find him an antidote after they escape. 

(I think we all know the deal now when it comes to the Mandalorian - Pedro Pascal is NOT in the armored suit, not most of the time anyway. He provides the voice of the character, in the same way James Earl Jones always did the voice of Darth Vader. He does appear on screen for a couple of minutes, after the Hutts remove his helmet - but most of the time there are two professional stunt-men who do all of the physical stuff, and one of them is John Wayne's grandson or something. But at least they're getting screen credit now for their work, just like David Prowse did for being the physical body in the Darth Vader suit. Yeah, that was a guy who was very surprised when he finally saw Episode IV on the screen that his character sounded nothing like him, here he spoke all the lines on set and none of his dialogue was in the final film. Oh, well...)

It all builds to a climax as The Mandalorian, Grogu and their Hutt friend take on the Twins, Embo and a droid army (hey, remember the droid army from Episode I? Yeah, just like that, they're back). Meanwhile the Anzellans flew off to get reinforcements from the New Republic, and they return with the squadron comprised mostly of Lucasfilm employees making cameos, imagine that. I mean, there's power and there's power - in the future all of these visual effects guys will use AI to put themselves into EVERY movie, so sure, why not start now? I've got a bit of an issue with an overabundance of crew cameos here, but you know, George Lucas put his own kids into "Star Wars" movies and eventually made a cameo himself in Episode III, so sure, there's a bit of a precedence. Hell, even in the first "Star Wars" film the producer's daughter played a Jawa, nepotism is real and has always been part of the "Star Wars" universe. 

Anyway, it's fine, I'll take whatever "Star Wars" film they want to make for me, no complaints. If you really want to know why there's no fourth season of "The Mandalorian" it has more to do with the Hollywood labor disputes of 2023. If those hadn't happened, we'd all be watching season four on Disney Plus right now, but instead we have this film. It's fine. So it's the lowest grossing "Star Wars" film since "Solo", well that's kind of what you get when you Disney-fy the franchise. If you just want to make movies that appeal to kids, sure, it's going to hurt at the box office. Just think about that for a bit, Lucasfilm, you know what you have to do - you can have your puppet show but you've got to add in some stuff for the adults, the people who were kids back in the day and went to see Episodes 4, 5 and 6 in the theaters about 20 times each. But I suppose we're all in our 50's now, at least, and we'll probably all just watch this one ONCE in the theater and then catch it again on streaming. It's a different world now, just saying. 

Directed by Jon Favreau (director of "Cowboys & Aliens")

Also starring Brendan Wayne (last seen in "Cowboys & Aliens"), Lateef Crowder (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Jonny Coyne (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Matthew Willig (last seen in "Term Life"), Hemky Madera (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Cullen Douglas (last seen in "Love Liza"), Nigel Gibbs (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Bahia Haifi, Ajay Mehta (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Peter Breitmayer (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Rose Portillo (last seen in "The Mean Season"), Joel Stoffer (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"), Sonny Saito (last seenin "Letters from Iwo Jima"), Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (last seen in "Robocop" (2014)), Landis R. Fields IV

with the voices of Steve Blum (last heard in "Shazam!"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Stephen McKinley Henderson (last seen in "Good Fortune"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Jeremy Allen White (last seen in "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere") and cameos from Doug Chiang, Deborah Chow, Lee Isaac Chung, Anthony Daniels (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Dave Filoni (ditto), Rick Famuwiya, 

RATING: 8 out of 10 snowtroopers (Hey, remember when they attacked the rebel base on Hoth in Episode V? Yeah, kinda like that...)

Freaky Tales

Year 18, Day 179 - 6/28/26 - Movie #5,359

BEFORE: The end of the month is coming up quickly, just two films to go, then we can start exploring American history and American pop culture through the Documentary Block. So far I have not had to re-organize the list of scheduled films, but I feel I'm jinxing it just talking about it. I will do everything in my power right now to stick with the plan, I have every reason to believe that the chain is solid and will not fall apart on me, but, you know, I've said that before and had to scramble halfway through to fix a bad link. Hopefully there's enough crossover and enough redundancies in the cast lists so if that does happen, I can patch it very quickly and just keep moving on. 

You know what, I've decided to really go for it, if I can just beef up the chain a little bit, I think I can do FIFTY docs, here in this special anniversary year of our country. Yes, I know the country is turning 250, but I simply can't watch that many. I'm going to go for 50 - fifty states, fifty stars on the flag, President Grant is on the $50 bill, what could be more patriotic? I'll probably stay up really late tonight trying to find five more docs that are both interesting and streaming somewhere, and it would be helpful if they were about American stuff, too, but I'm flexible on that, because what is America if not a melting pot? And if I can't make it to 50, if I can get to 49 I can count "The Saint of Second Chances", which I watched back in January. 

Pedro Pascal carries over from "Eddington" and I think you know where I'm heading next after this. I've been taking the long way instead of shortcuts, and so still one very LONG film to watch before I say farewell to the narrative form for the next month and a half. 

THE PLOT: Four interconnected stories set in 1987 Oakland, CA about the love of music, movies, people, places and memories beyond our knowable universe. 

AFTER: I would say that this film might also qualify as a "fever dream" story, like the last two films, only it's a bit too short and it makes just a little too much sense, if you know what I mean. Plus it's based on real specific events, like somebody must have LIVED this, and it's unlikely that anyone would have dreamed this. But then again who knows?  Ah, one of the film's directors grew up in Berkeley and hung out in Oakland, so that tracks - but he would have been only 11 years old in 1987, a bit too young to go to punk concerts or fight against neo-Nazi gangs, but I bet I can tell you what basketball team he rooted for and what kind of music he listened to.

You know, the film doesn't HAVE to ring true, 100% - it can be somebody's unreliable memory about what that town was like in that year, or it can be a fantasy about what it might have been like if you believe in aliens, the untapped power of meditation, and have your own theories about how rap battles got invented. Again, who's to say? As long as it leads to an entertaining film we can take a little walk on the weird side. And we all know from "Pulp Fiction" that separate stories can come together and the same people can pop up again in different situations - what year does "Pulp Fiction" take place, does anybody even care? Some year when boxing matches were a big deal, heroin was the drug of choice and people were nostalgic for the 1950's, dude, that could be ANY TIME, and Tarantino had been writing and refining the story since the 1980's so overall it has this timeless throwback feel that's baked right in. This film is kind of like that, a bit non-linear and ultimately folding back on itself, only transferred to Oakland in a very specific year. 

As for me watching this film RIGHT NOW, at this time of year, at this point in the chain, it's darn near perfect. Part of the film is set during the NBA Playoffs in 1987, which is a real thing that happened, a battle between the Golden State Warriors and the L.A. Lakers in the conference semifinals. Sleepy Floyd was a real NBA player for the Warriors, he'd transferred in from the New Jersey Nets or something, but he does not play himself in this film, he plays a different character (same goes for Too $hort). I can't really confirm whether there was a real-life attempt during this playoff game to rob a bunch of basketball player's homes, because thieves knew that all of the player's families would be at the game, but it's possible. 

The other reason the timing is perfect has everything to do with tomorrow's film, which is set of course in that galaxy far, far away. Today's film has not one but TWO actors known for being in the "Star Wars" franchise, however their characters never met or shared screen-time together. But we can wonder from THIS film what things might have been like if Din Djarin, aka the Mandalorian, ever faced off against Orson Krennic. I mean, Krennic was top-tier in the Empire but maybe he was no good in a fight, different skill-sets and all that. So unfortunately the world may never know, but we can see here that they're both playing similar roles in "Freaky Tales", Ben Mendelsohn played a crooked cop who's the head of a very evil organization, while Pedro Pascal is playing a hired gun, an enforcer type who tracks down people who owe money, essentially a bounty hunter, right? And the ending kind of leads perfectly into the themes of the Mandalorian series, but I don't want to give anything away.  

It's probably a very tough thing, weaving together four separate stories, Tarantino-style, and coming out with something coherent at the end. Like we never really find out HOW all this freaky stuff is happening, like how does the bus take off and fly through the clouds? How did Sleepy Floyd take out an entire band of gangsters, martial-arts style, without ever leaving his house? Umm, astral, projection, sure, but HOW is that possible? For that matter, you might ask how the bad guy just kind of explodes at the end, "Scanners" style. I don't know man, just roll with it maybe, go to the workshop and learn about unlocking the powers of your own mind, I guess. 

Look, it was a different time, back in 1987 - but one thing everybody knew for sure in their hearts was that Nazis are bad, mmKay? Whether you're an NBA star or a punk music fan or a wanna-be female rapper, you come together and you fight back against the Nazis, otherwise they'll take over the whole country, we've seen this happen before. Why the alt-right NeoNazis were allowed to march in the U.S. back in 2021 without people coming together to disband them, or better yet, evict them from the country, I have no idea. If you're looking for people to kick out of the country and send to South America, I say start with the Nazi skinheads. 

Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck  (co-directors of "Captain Marvel" and "It's Kind of a Funny Story") 

Also starring Jay Ellis (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Normani, Dominique Thorne (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Ji-young Yoo (last seen in "Moxie"), Angus Cloud (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Jack Champion (last seen in "Retribution"), Keir Gilchrist (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Marteen, Tom Hanks (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Too $hort, Sleepy Floyd, Marshawn Lynch (last seen in "Bottoms"), Zack Roberts, LeQuan Antonio Bennett, Michelle Farrah Huang, Dan Marotte, James Coker, Mike Infante, Chachi Delgado, Yong Kim, Amy Bui (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Jordan Gomes, Ryan Tasker, Trestin George (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), DeMario Symba Driver, Tyra Monique, Robert Parsons, Tim Armstrong, Natalia Dominguez, Sedrick Cabrera, Ryan Pratton, Jay Liu, Sam Skolnik, Armand Munoz, D'Angelo Mixon, Max Carpenter, James Asher, Skipper Elekwachi, Michael X. Sommers (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Cheryl Vienna, Samuel Ademola, Alie Davis, Alexis Zollicoffer, Peter Lee Thomas, Andrew Roach, Chris Mullin, Stephanie Heiner, Glenn Davy, Josh Schell, Brandon C. Davis, Tracy Todd

RATING: 5 out of 10 underdog movies recommended by Hank at the video store

Eddington

Year 18, Day 178 - 6/27/26 - Movie #5,358

BEFORE: It's Saturday again, which would usually mean I start watching my movie late Friday night, however I was out late last night, working my first concert at the Barclay's Center. This was a small career goal, to add concerts to my schedule in addition to basketball games, it seems you have to be there a while before they let you work concerts, so this kind of means I might be doing well at this job. Or they were just under-staffed, because a lot of people have been calling out to work at other sports jobs like MLB games and, I presume, World Cup games. If that means I'm one of the few people available and I can advance a little bit, that's fine by me. Except that working the concert last night was completely exhausting, we had to pour all the beers sold into cups, which is extra work and my hands are still cramping up. Tonight I think I'll stay home and open up a couple beers FOR ME. I didn't get home until about 11:30 and it was too late to start a very long film, plus I was too tired. So I got up early and watched this on Saturday morning after a solid night's rest. 

Austin Butler carries over from "Caught Stealing". 

THE PLOT: In May 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico. 

AFTER: This one kind of fits into the same category as the two films I was comparing yesterday - "One Battle After Another" and "Caught Stealing". I call them "fever dream" films - they tend to be action-packed but also kind of go on a bit too long, they're like those dreams that you have when you're sick or it's the last, longest dream of the sleep cycle and things get really crazy and don't make any sense, but you DO a lot in that dream. Like I could have a dream when I'm at home and I need to get ready for work, but then I can't find my sneakers and I'm checking everywhere and then the cat jumps on my back, only it's not really my cat and then I have to run outside and catch the subway, only the trains aren't running so I have to take a bus, and the bus is shaped like an RV and is somehow enormous inside, bigger than my apartment somehow, and I'm late for work but I can still make it if there's no traffic, but of course there is... and so on. 

This one comes from the director of "Beau Is Afraid", which was another very long "fever dream" movie, one that I did not enjoy because I could not find a point to it - it played out just like a long series of random terrible things happening, which does qualify it for the "what could possibly go wrong" category, but when the answer to that is "everything" a film can feel a little disjointed and overall very random sometimes. But tonight's film at least has a framework, envisioned as a contemporary Western film set firmly in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, May 2020. So there are people requiring others to wear facemasks, other people refusing to wear masks, some people trying to keep themselves alive and others refusing to give up their rights for the sake of other people's health. Then in the middle of all that we got hit with protests from the Black Lives Matter movement, people calling to defund the police, and others convinced that COVID was either a Chinese black ops lab experiment gone wrong instead of just a contamination from an unregulated meat market, and then others were seeing conspiracies everywhere, from Q-Anon to Antifa. What a weird time to be alive, most people stayed home to work or go to school, but others got out there and partied or protested, which seemed dangerous and counter-productive, but people stuck at home got together online and I guess needed to work some stuff out. Everybody's life changed, there are still people who have not gone back to work in an office or sent their kids back to learn in a school. 

All of this madness is symbolized by the goings-on in Eddington, New Mexico, the local sheriff< Joe Cross, refuses to wear a mask and drives around trying to stick up for others who feel the same way - if he sees someone denied service at a grocery store with a mask requirement, or who can't get into a bar because the bar owner is having a town council meeting and closed it to the public, Joe's going to stop and try to stick up for the little guy. But sometimes the little guy is someone with breathing issues, and sometimes it's just the local crazy drunk person - Joe really needs to pick his battles better, because he's butting heads with the mayor, Ted Garcia, and there's already bad blood between them because Ted used to date Joe's wife, Louise, who got pregnant six months after they broke up, had an abortion and now is emotionally unstable. Mathematically there's no way Ted could have fathered that baby, but don't confuse Joe with the facts, he's got his axe to grind. 

Louise makes these weird dolls to sell on the internet, and the couple lives with Louise's mother, Dawn, who believes just about every conspiracy out there. Joe decides to run for mayor and challenge Ted, because Ted keeps pushing to build this big data center, while others are opposed to it because data centers are terrible for the environment and the water supply (this is true, someone explained to me once how cryptocurrency wastes a whole bunch of water, and I don't really understand it but it appears to be the case.). Joe puts his deputies to work coming up with slogans and pamphlets for his campaign, which I think is an illegal use of city employees. Meanwhile Dawn and Louise go to hear a lecture from Vernon Jefferson Peak, a radical cult leader who pushes those theories about child trafficking and rampant pedophilia, and there's a suggestion that perhaps Louise was abused by her late father, which you know, could explain a few things if true. 

Meanwhile, the mayor's son Eric gets involved with Black Lives Matter protesters, along with his friends Brian and Sarah, and Sarah tries to get deputy Michael on their side, seeing as he's the only black policeman and possibly the only black person in town. Poor deputy Michael is stuck in the middle, but it's only the start of his problems, things are about to get much worse. Sheriff Joe checks out a noise complaint at the mayor's house and ends up interrupting a fund-raising party, Mayor Ted ends up slapping Joe in front of the guests, which in retrospect was probably a mistake. Sheriff Joe suggests in an online video that Mayor Ted was the father of that aborted baby, and Louise doesn't take too well to this, and leaves town. 

Joe hits some kind of breaking point, and when that crazy drunk breaks into the town bar and tries to drink it dry, Joe shoots the man dead and dumps his body in the river. He then kills a few more people but stages it to be an Antifa attack. This causes some actual Antifa terrorists to head toward town on a private jet, which means that really everybody's going to be in some trouble soon - really, everyone in town is pretty much circling the drain at this point, even if they don't know it. The most honest officer in town is the Native American one, and he starts investigating the murders himself, since they were partially on tribal land. When Officer Butterfly Jimenez starts getting too close to the truth, Joe frames his own deputy, Michael, for the killings and puts him in jail to divert attention from himself. 

After this, the whole town is kind of in "One Battle After Another" mode, it's really hard to know who to root for with so many different factions involved, and weapons firing from all over, random gas explosions and dumpster fires, like did the protests get out of hand or are those Antifa terrorists acting in the shadows, causing trouble everywhere? Where did the snipers come from, and remember, this is a town where nearly everyone already had a gun, and the sheriff had been encouraging everyone to use them. Going with the Western theme, it gets really tough to know who's wearing the black hats and who's wearing the white ones. 

I guess all you really need to know about the ending is that the data center does get built, so, umm, Yay? We know that the pandemic eventually ended, there's a new mayor of the town, but let's just say he's a man of few words. And Louise ended up pregnant, but it can't really be Joe's baby so we can assume she found a new relationship and a new "family" to go with. It's fine, really, things are what they are, even if some people ended up in a weird new place. But like I said, we all had our lives changed by the pandemic, right? 

Directed by Ari Aster (director of "Beau Is Afraid" and "Midsommar")

Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Faye"), Pedro Pascal (last seen in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"), Emma Stone (last seen in "Kinds of Kindness"), Luke Grimes (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Deirdre O'Connell (last seen in "Fearless"), Micheal Ward (last seen in "Beauty"), Amelie Hoeferle (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), William Belleau (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Matt Gomez Hidaka, Cameron Mann, Rachel de la Torre (last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Amadeo Arzola, Landall Goolsby (last seen in "The Eye"), Robyn Reede (last seen in "Natural Born Killers"), Elise Falanga, King Orba (last seen in "You Gotta Believe"), David Pinter, Keith Jardine (last seen in "End of the Road"), Sam Quinn (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Ralph Alderman (ditto), Daniel Clowes, David Midthunder (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Juwan Lakota, Christine Hughes, William Sterchi (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), James Cady (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Aby Townsend (ditto), Thom Rivera (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Mickey Bond, Manny Rubio (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Vic Browder (also last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Diane Villegas (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Dan Davidson (ditto), Kristin K. Berg (last seen in "Maggie Moore(s)"), Joseph Ortega (ditto), Guia Peel, Mack MacReady, Marcela Salmon, Sterlin English, Jason Potter, Jean Dumont, Emery Barrera, Steven Foldy II, Eddie Garcia (last seen in "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief"), Justice McLean-Davis, Kaleb Naquin, Auburn Ashley, GiGi Bella, Ophelia Benally, Gabe Kessler, Bill Capskas, Robyn Casper, Bendicion Garcia, Giancarlo Beltran, Blane Aranyosi, Erika Clowes, John Roberts, Robert Mark Wallace

RATING: 4 out of 10 city council Zoom meetings

Caught Stealing

Year 18, Day 177 - 6/26/26 - Movie #5,357

BEFORE: I think I'm going to make it - the start of the Doc Block on July 1 is just about here, I just need to make it through the weekend and a couple of LONG movies, but one film is already watched so I've got a bit of a head start. It was two weeks ago that I snuck out one day to go to a movie theater, I stupidly went to a theater just a block from Madison Square Garden and there was an NBA Finals game that night, so I walked out into a madhouse and had to pass through some police checkpoints - OK, that one's on me. Thankfully I still had my Tribeca Film Festival pass and I showed it to prove I only wanted to pass through the zone and get down to the theater, which was partially true. Really the crowd was so huge that was the last place I wanted to be, I probably should have just jumped on the subway and come straight home - but you never know, I checked in at work just in case somebody called out. 

Liev Schreiber carries over from "Golda". Tonight's film had the buzz about eight months ago, but then I didn't hear anything about it during awards season, that's maybe not a good sign. No Oscar nominations, but it's directed by Darren Aronofsky, who's got a pretty good track record, so we'll see. I've met the man three times, once at a screening and once at Comic-Con and once in the middle of Tribeca Fest. 

THE PLOT: When his neighbor asks him to take care of his cat, a former baseball prodigy now working as a bartender finds himself in the middle of gangsters without knowing why. He must use all his cunning to survive and understand what is happening. 

AFTER: I think there are a lot of similarities between this film and "One Battle After Another" - they don't share any cast members, though, obviously they're directed by different people and they're based on different books, and one's set in Los Angeles and the other's set in NYC, but I could perhaps make a case for today's film being kind of the East Coast version of "One Battle", but also one hour shorter, meaning it may not be as detailed, but it also won't take up as much of your time. You do you, and proceed as you want. But this film really captures the feeling of living in the dirty, messed-up and mobbed-up Lower East Side in Manhattan. I moved out of that neighborhood way back in 1989, after a summer spent watching drug carriers barf up pills to sell to customers in the park behind my apartment. Umm, thanks but no thanks - hand me those listings for apartments in Brooklyn - no, wait, maybe Queens. 

This is set back in 1998, so about 9 years after I moved out of there, before the smart phone craze but back when people had pagers or beepers. People of little means could still somehow get fourth-floor walk-up apartments, which of course can be a pain in the ass, not just the stairs but with those faulty unlockable windows, no air conditioning, steam heat, lots of street noise, and of course the weird neighbors who come and go at all hours. Somebody really nailed this, I assume the director lives or lived somewhere in this neighborhood. In fact, I know it for sure, because I worked a summer at the AMC Theater in the East Village, and there was an older lady there who worked afternoons scanning tickets. Her name was Miss Kitty, and she appears in this film, in passing, a little research tells me that she's spent years living in the same building as the director. Yes, it's the same "Miss Kitty" I worked with - I used to joke that she worked for whatever building was there before the movie theater, maybe it was a nightclub or a stage, and she stuck around and when they tore that building down and built the movie theater, they just built it around her. 

But here in the fictional world she lives in the same building as Hank Thompson, a former baseball player who roots for the San Francisco Giants, and talks to his mother about them every day on the phone. But he's haunted by a car crash that killed his friend AND his baseball career at the same time, plus left him an alcoholic. Probably an alcoholic should NOT be working at a bar, but that's where we find ourselves. He works nights at Paul's Bar, and he's seeing a young woman named Yvonne who works at a hospital E.R. or something, and picks him up after he closes the bar for a booty call. Well, at least they're on the same schedule, this relationship could work unless one of them starts working day shift. 

Trouble comes when his punk neighbor, Russ, asks him to feed his cat while he's out of town. Before you know it, Russian mobsters come looking for Russ, and even though Hank explains Russ is gone, they still beat Hank up so bad he loses a kidney. After they come back and break into Russ's apartment, Hank calls a narcotics detective, Elise Roman, who reveals that Russ is a drug dealer working for a couple of Hasidic gangsters, the "scary monsters". Roman says that if the scary monsters show up again, he should call her right away. Hank finds a weird rubber poop in the cat's litter box, with a key inside - perhaps this is what the Russians are looking for, but what does it unlock? And where? Unfortunately Hank gets drunk at the bar and forgets where he put the key.  

The Russians come back, with a Puerto Rican associate named Colorado, and they beat him up too, threaten him with a gun, however none of this helps him remember where he put or lost the key. (At this point he really should get drunk again, to remember, but he's a kidney down and that's really not a great idea.) Once the Russians leave he gets chased by the Hasidim, gangsters, the Drucker brothers. He manages to give them the slip, but since it's not safe to go home, he circles back to Yvonne's apartment, only to find someone has killed her. 

With few places to turn, he goes back to Elise Roman, only to find that she's in league with the Russians and Colorado, however she claims that they did NOT kill Yvonne. So they all go to Paul's Bar to try and find the key, only it's not there. This is where impatient people start to get frustrated, and when they do, the bullets start flying. Paul tries desperately to defend his bar, but he's only got a shotgun against criminals with automatic weapons. Hank is able to lock himself in the back-room until the others leave, then he sets out on his own quest to find the key.  At this point Russ returns from London, and reveals that the key unlocks a storage locker with a large amount of money in it, Russ has been acting as a go-between for the various factions, because he's the only person everyone trusts to divide up the money and give everyone their share. The trouble came when he really did need to go to London for family reasons, and nobody wanted to wait until he got back. Russ wants to take all of the money and make Hank the fall guy, but Hank knocks him unconscious instead, reversing that situation. 

Hank spends a night on Coney Island, after Russ's head injuries kind of catch up with him, and then ends up going to the Hasidic Drucker brothers to shoot up the Russian's supper club, to kind of put an end to the Russian mob, but Roman is still active and threatening to kill Hank's mother. The Druckers agree to kill the dirty cop as long as Hank will lead them to the money stash afterwards. But first, a couple bowls of matzoh ball soup with the Drucker's bubbe. How nice. I won't say how it all ends up, but Hank manages to walk a very tight line, playing one faction off against the other, when all of the factions had reasons to kill or frame him at various times. 

Look, I don't know why two similar-ish films came out in the same year - and I don't know how one managed to win Best Picture and the other one had the buzz last September, like simply EVERYBODY wanted to see this, and now it's nine months later and you just don't hear anyone talking about it any more. That's just how it goes sometimes. 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky (director of "The Whale" and "Mother!")

Also starring Austin Butler (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Matt Smith (last seen in "Morbius"), Regina King (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Strange Days"), Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio / Bad Bunny (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Alright Now"), Carol Kane (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Action Bronson (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), George Abud, Macy Rodman, Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kolokolnikov (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Brill (last seen in "Slice"), Tenoch Huerta (last seen in "The Forever Purge"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Dominique Silver, Shaun O'Hagan (last seen in "The Good Nurse"), Jake Bentley Young, Kitty Lawrence, Oleg Prudius, Gregg Bello (last seen in "Mother!"), Stanley B. Herman (ditto), Eddie De Harp, Nu Ka Ki, Renee Asofsky (last seen in "The Fountain"), Henry Wong, Matt Gauland, David Weise, Arishel Ramirez, Janelle McDermoth, Craig "Radioman" Castaldo (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Eric Ian (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending", with the voices of Mike Francesca (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Lee Harris, Judy de Angelis (last seen in "The Siege"),

RATING: 6 out of 10 loaves of challah bread