Cleaner

Year 18, Day 153 - 6/2/26 - Movie #5,335

BEFORE: Right now it's the "calm between the storms", since we wrapped on the NewFest Pride event last night and the Tribeca Festival starts in just two days. I was scheduled for four Tribeca shifts but I left myself available in case someone else calls out, and that just happened, so now I'm down for five shifts over the course of a 12-day event. That's fine, I lost two weeks for vacation and then funeral so I need to catch up and make some money. I was planning to see a matinee of "The Mandalorian and Grogu" on June 9, now I'm going to have to delay that a week and try to catch in on June 16. (There's a discount Tuesday program at AMC). It's all good, that's still 2 weeks before I want to post a review. Anyway, this is why I made skip days and why I said that I'd probably need them during the Tribeca Festival. It's going to be THE PLACE for important new films and also some star-studded tributes, so really it's where I want to be working behind the scenes. 

Kalyn Harper carries over from "Playdate".

THE PLOT: Criminal activists hijack a gala, taking 300 hostages. One extremist plans mass murder as a message to the world, but an ex-soldier turned window cleaner works to rescue the hostages. 

AFTER: Yeah, this film kind of puts me in a delicate spot - I want to be nice, I want to give it a good review, but that would mean overlooking a few things. But don't get me wrong, it's great that they're making action films with strong female characters, we've seen the "one-man army" formula applied to Jason Statham again and again, also Liam Neeson, Keanu Reeves, Bruce Willis and more recently, Chris Hemsworth and even Bob Odenkirk. One-WOMAN army films are less common, still there's Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lopez, Angelina Jolie and Uma Thurman who have given it a go. So now we have Daisy Ridley as an ex-army Special Forces type who must have aged out of the program and taken a job as a window cleaner on a London skyscraper. Well, I guess, I mean who knows more about rappelling down from high places - but a cleaning job? 

There's a bit of wordplay with the title, though because "Cleaner" also could refer to cleaner sources of energy that are being promoted by the corporation that occupies the skyscraper, the Agnian Energy Group, but apparently the company isn't as "clean" as they say they are, because environmental activists infiltrate the company's gala presentation, disguised as an Asian dance group, presumably the evening's entertainment. However they're wearing masks and also are protected from the knockout gas that puts many of the party's guests to sleep, leaving the board members that the activists want to confess the company's sins so they can broadcast them on the internet. It seems the "cleaner" company has been polluting and exploiting Third World countries, while maintaining a separate corporate image. 

Oh, if only there were someone nearby who had not only access to the building's systems, but also the combat knowledge to take these activists down. Thankfully there is, unfortunately she's stuck on a movable scaffold outside the building because her boss made her work late, also she mouthed off to an executive in an elevator, so the boss kind of "stranded" her outside for a bit, and wouldn't you it, the terrorists killed him before he could release his override of the scaffold control. So she can only watch helplessly from outside as the activists subdue the executives and even kill a couple to show they mean business. To make matters worse, her autistic adult brother, who's been kicked out of yet another care home has been put under her supervision, and he's somewhere inside the building with the terrorists, too.

She also JUST found out that one of her co-workers, another window cleaner, is part of the activist group - it's possible that he took the job so he could study the building and learn all the various methods of entry and other holes in the building's security. That tracks but I wonder if I'm helping the screenwriter here by filling in the gaping holes in the plot. It's also a huge drawback that the main action star here is essentially sidelined for a major portion of the film, unable to act or even get back in the building. Imagine if Bruce Willis as John McClane got up into the duct-work of the Nakatomi Tower and got stuck there, and couldn't get out for a large portion of "Die Hard". That's not an action movie, that's an inaction movie. 

The news is not all terrible, because Joey manages to stop the scaffold and burn a flaming "SOS" message on the side of the building. She also gets in contact with the London police SWAT team, so they know that she's not a threat and has the skills to help, once she figures out how to break a window and get back inside. Also, her autistic brother happens to be some kind of hacking genius, of course, he got kicked out of care homes for hacking their files, so if she can reach him, he could be able to plug in and prevent the activist's forced confessions from reaching their audience. But still her ex-co-worker becomes the new leader of the group by assassinating the old leader, and he wants to just kill everyone, he's got a dead-man's switch rigged to his own body so even if he gets killed, the building could still blow up real good. 

But if anyone's got the skills to fix everything, it's this former army agent turned window cleaner, right? Why, it's almost like some screenwriter thought about a typical day in the life of someone doing this very typical job and tried to imagine all of the things that could possibly go wrong...

Directed by Martin Campbell (director of "Memory" and "The Protégé")

Also starring Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Ophelia"), Matthew Tuck, Clive Owen (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Taz Skylar, Flavia Watson, Ruth Gemmell, Ray Fearon (last seen in "Memory"), Lee Boardman (ditto), Howard Charles, Rufus Jones (last seen in "Wonka"), Richard Hope, Gavin Fleming, Poppy Townsend White, Dudley Watts, Calvin Warrington-Heasman, Andreea Diac (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker"), Russell De Rozario (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Kate Nichols (also last seen in "Memory"), Stella Stocker (ditto), Sol E. Romero (ditto), Celine Arden, Melissa Humler, Ben Essex, Rebecca Bellavia, Tom Boney, David Cheung, Joshua Ravenscroft, Melanie Grey, Regina Seifert, Akie Kotabe (last seen in "The Son"), Lorna Lowe, Cassandra Spiteri, Simon Uttley, Atanas Srebrev (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Einar Haraldsson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 "bird strikes"

Playdate

Year 18, Day 152 - 6/1/26 - Movie #5,334

BEFORE: Alan Tudyk carries over from "The Twits". And here are the actor links that should get me through June, past Father's Day and all the way to the Doc Block: Kalyn Harper, Poppy Townsend White, Kyle Chandler, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Oh, Frankie Muniz, Anna Chancellor, Saoirse Ronan, Tamara Lawrence, WIllem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, Sally Messham, John Sessions, Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver. You know, because we're looking at a month where there's room for John Wick and Cody Banks and William Shakespeare and Golda Meir and then Grogu somehow. It sounds weird, maybe the Doc Block just can't get here enough...

THE PLOT: Brian has been fired from his job and becomes a stay-at-home dad. He accepts a playdate invitation from another stay-at-home dad who turns out to be a loose cannon. 

AFTER: I was going to watch this film earlier in the year, but now I can't remember if that was going to be between two Isla Fisher movies or two films with Paul Walter Hauser. It hardly matters, the important point is that I dropped it, probably from the middle of someone's three-movie mini-chain, because it kind of felt like a Father's Day film, maybe. But I couldn't be sure that I could get back to it near Father's Day, that sort of thing is rather unpredictable - however a lot of the actor's names were coded in blue or green on my list, and that means there are connections. So I figured I had a pretty good shot at circling back to it, and OK, looks like I was right. I delayed this just a couple of days to get it into June - which thematically is for dads and grads, and I've probably got more of the former than the latter. If I can stay on track there will be two notable recent father-centric films on the holiday weekend itself, and other father-related plot points will be considered a bonus. 

But it's funny how it feels like as soon as it's not a theme month and I've got the chance to go anywhere and watch a movie about any topic, I get pulled right back into spy or heist or other action films. "Cleanskin", "Black Bag", "My Spy: The Eternal City", "Heads of State", "Deep Cover", "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre", "Killer Elite", "Homefront", "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning", "G20" and so on - the only reason May wasn't packed with action films was probably due to me taking half of the month off. But it's June and I'm back on the topic - today's film isn't technically about spies, but instead normal dads caught up in a weird military industrial/government (?) affair, but it still kind of counts as intrigue of a sort. More spy and assassin-based films are on the way, like "Back in Action" and that John Wick spin-off film. 

Everything here starts with a very simple premise, what if a normal man lost his job and his wife went back to work, and he just became a stay-at-home dad for a while, and got a chance to bond with his stepson? I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? Well, that's the screenwriter's job, to think of a very basic plot and then come up with a whole lot of different ways that it can go wrong, because there's a movie in every simple story if you just make it all go sideways or tits-up. Brian is convinced that sports is the answer to bonding with young Lucas, they just have to find the right sport. But Brian's coaching of the lacrosse team and putting Lucas in the game in a clutch moment (that's probably a conflict of interest) is ruined when he describes the come-from-behind pivotal turning point of the game as if it's occurring in slow-motion, and Lucas takes him literally and tries to slow-motion walk toward the goal, and turns out to be a terrible idea. Lucas gets tackled by the other team and then roughed up again later by his own teammates. 

So they go out on a different day and toss the old football around - right next to another father/son pair doing the same thing on the same day. Lucas kind of bonds with CJ, the other boy, and before you know it, they're invited by Jeff, the other dad, to come over for a playdate and then eat pizza at Buckee Cheese (possibly a ficitonal mash-up of the famous pizza restaurant for kids with the also-popular Buckee's rest stops, seen across the U.S. southern states). Suddenly a group of mercenaries attacks the restaurant, and they want to end this little male bonding fest. After a fight involving both the mercs and the restaurant's mascots, the foursome escape in a stolen minivan and are further pursued in a high-speed chase with explosions and everything. 

Jeff is forced to reveal that he is an ex-Delta Force soldier, who after his discharge was forced to take security guard work at a top-secret facility and discovered CJ being held prisoner there, so he broke him out and they've been hiding out ever since. Now that armed mercenaries have found them, they're forced to all hide out at Jeff's estranged father's house - they can't really stay there, but they do put a plan together to return to the mystery facility and kidnap an employee in order to determine what exactly is taking place there. 

There is a bunch of cool stuff in this film, in addition to the action, some of which I haven't seen before - there's a whole army of cloned teen soldiers-in-training, and honestly I haven't seen that as a plot-point since "Star Wars: Episode II". (It's funny, I was just going through old photos last week and I found some from my first year of autograph collecting, which included meeting Daniel Logan at SDCC, probably in 2003). Of course, we don't KNOW about the clone army at the start of this film, it's something that comes up later. All we know is that the scientists harvested Jeff's DNA because he's a perfect physical specimen, only the clones are emotionless and have no morals, therefore no hesitation about killing and no PTSD later on. Jeff's former commander teamed up with an eccentric billionaire scientist to perfect the cloning technique and attempt to create a new perfect and replaceable army. 

The billionaire and his henchmen threaten to harm Brian's wife, so he leads Jeff into a trap, where young CJ is taken from him and returned to the facility he came from. But this allows the other characters to enact a rescue mission thanks to the accidental transfer of Lucas's tracking device to CJ when he loans him his jacket. When in doubt, just steal another gray minivan, crash it into whatever building you need to get into, and with luck you'll also run over the villain at the same time. Well, it's not the worst philosophy to live by...

Directed by Luke Greenfield (director of "The Girl Next Door" and "Something Borrowed")

Also starring Kevin James (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "Ordinary Angels"), Sarah Chalke (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Big Miracle"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Benjamin Pajak, Banks Pierce, Hiro Kanagawa (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Miles Fisher (last seen in "Dean"), Luke Greenfield (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Paul Walter Hauser (last seen in "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere"), Lauren Akemi Bradley, Sarah Surh (last seen in "Colossal"), Sabrina Dhowre Elba (last seen in "Three Thousand Years of Longing"), Massiel Taveras, Kalyn Harper, Peter New (last seen in "Monster Trucks"), Kiefer O'Reilly (last seen in "Rememory"), Benjamin Goas, AJ Kostynick, Elenna Anastacio, Jason William Day (last seen in "The Smashing Machine"), Kian Pitman, Patti Gervan, Chase Nicholson, Beth Greenfield, Tess Atkins, Madie Vredegoor (last seen in "Cut Bank"), Aron Cihelka, Pedram Younesi, Chase Petriw, Sarah Hayward (last seen in "Miracle"), Francisca Dennis, 

with archive footage of Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Ice Cube, Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Comeback Trail") and Zach Galifianakis (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Kings Hawaiian rolls

The Twits

Year 18, Day 151 - 5/31/26 - Movie #5,333

BEFORE: OK, today is the LAST day of May so I've got one final film for the month, then I'm on to Father's Day material, I think. It's 21 days away, sure, so let's see how many father-based films the chain has picked for me, I know it's at least three, but fathers kind of turn up everywhere, and sometimes when you least expect them to. I've got 19 films to watch in those 21 days, so I still have two skip days available to me, I will try to get through the first week of June without burning one, as I may be busiest during the second week of the month. Again, I'll keep an eye on actor birthdays to see if that gives me any more insight over lining up the films with the calendar. The secondary goal is to review "The Mandalorian & Grogu" before the end of next month. 

I've only watched 16 movies in May, here's the format breakdown: 

MAY

6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Gridiron Gang, The Smashing Machine, Marty Supreme, Jules, Big Miracle, Bad Moms

4 watched on Netflix: Spiderhead, Wake Up Dead Man, Matilda: The Musical, The Twits

2 watched on Hulu: Thelma, Lee

2 watched on Disney+: Zootopia 2, Honey We Shrunk Ourselves!

2 watched on Peacock: Wicked, Wicked: For Good

16 TOTAL

Dee Bradley Baker carries over from "Wicked: For Good", where he voiced Chistery, the leader of the Flying Monkeys. 

THE PLOT: Two orphans join forces with a family of magical animals to save their city from the powerful Mr. and Mrs. Twit - the meanest, smelliest, nastiest people in the world. 

AFTER: Just my luck, this is another film based on a Roald (Ronald, really) Dahl book - a beloved children's classic that, much like his other books, was extremely weird and out there and blew people's minds back before the Reagan era. Apparently he wrote the whole book just to prove that people with beards are nasty. Well, he wasn't wrong. Dahl was also very adamant about nobody, ever, EVER changing anything about his book "The Twits", but still in 2023 Penguin Books went in and changed a whole bunch of passages because, well, some ideas and some themes in the book were not crucial to the main story. Also kids were deemed unworthy of learning about foot warts and men keeping bits of their breakfast in their beards so they could have a snack later. 

Then the film company changed a BUNCH more things apparently, and again, Roald Dahl insisted that nobody ever change his written words, so they changed a bunch of his IDEAS when they made the movie. A-HA, he never forbid that at all, so let's all take advantage of the dead author thanks to a technicality.  

The Twits are a horrible married couple, who hate everyone and also each other - they are retired circus monkey trainers, and they want to open up their own theme park, called Twitlandia. They constantly prank each other by hiding worms in plates of spaghetti, and they also keep a live toad in their bed. If you lick the toes of the toad, your personality becomes "opposite" of what it was before, remember that because it could be important later. The Twits also use a very sticky glue called "Hugtight" to catch birds to Mrs. Twit can bake them into pies - and when we first see them in this film, they're stealing a giant truck filled with liquid hot dog meat, and they fill the town watertower with that, until it explodes and fills the town with stinky liquid meat by-products. 

The Twits also keep a family of magical animals called Muggle-Wumps captive, in the book it's because they want to create a circus act of upside-down monkeys, but in the film the monkeys are kept standing on their heads because that makes them cry, and their tears power the electrical supply to the Twitlandia Park somehow. The movie adds a couple of kids who live at a city orphanage, who want to both solve the mystery of who filled the water tower with hot dog meat (which was done in revenge for their team park being shut down after MANY health and safety violations) but also they want to free the Muggle-Wumps once they learn about them.  And because these two kids, Beesha and Busby, are filled with childlike compassion, they can understand what the Muggle-Wumps are saying.

The Twits get arrested because Beesha recorded them with her body-cam, admitting to their hot dog meat-related crime. However they are soon bailed out by a family who want the town to be fun again, like it was in times past, and the Twits also promised everyone a million dollars if they can be allowed to re-open their park and charge admission again. The Twits go right to the orphanage and try to get their Muggle-Wumps back, first by promising to "adapt" orphaned Beesha, then by threats. But as we learned in "Matilda", Mr. Dahl believed that it's OK for kids to be nasty to adults if the adults are nasty to them first - so the orphans trick the Twits into jumping out the window. 

The Twits then feel the only way they will get their park open and the Muggle-Wumps back is to run for mayor in the upcoming election, and they do this by feeding the current mayor, Wayne John Jon-Jon, a cake made with laxatives, which causes his butt to explode. Classy. Beesha tries to crash the election, but it's too late, the Twits have promised everyone in the town money and success and so much winning that they may all get TIRED of winning (sound familiar?) so the Twits become co-mayors of the town, and they are now free to steal their animals back and also tear down the orphanage in revenge, or at least move it to someplace very inconvenient. 

During their first performance at the re-opened Twitlandia Park, Beesha manages to get both Twits to lick the Sweet Toed Toad's toes, so they immediately become their opposites, a pair of decent-minded people who let captive animals loose and apologize for their misdeeds by blowing up all of their amusement park rides. But even this is not enough revenge for Beesha (she's such a Matilda, really...) so she pranks the Twits by rearranging their living room furniture on the ceiling, as if the room is upside down. The stupid Twits then determine that they are, in fact, standing on the ceiling and not the floor, and they need to stand on their heads to correct things. Well, that would be the first time blood made it to their brains, at least - and when they stand on their heads, they find that they are glued to the floor thanks to that very strong glue they used before to trap birds. 

The orphans celebrate, they have finally defeated the Twits and saved the Muggle-Wumps, however now that they have enacted vengeance on the Twits, their childhood innocence is GONE and they can no longer understand what the animals are saying. Well, karma is a bitch, isn't it? So they decide to SAVE the Twits, who are in danger of dying from the "Dreaded Shrinks", which is what happens when you stand on your head for too long, your neck shrinks into your head, your legs shrink into your body, and eventually you disappear by collapsing into your own body. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that the entire story is told by Pippa, a female firefly, to her infant son as a bedtime story, near the end when the Twits fly off because of a helium balloon prank, Pippa and her son can be seen flying out of Mr. Twit's beard, which is where they've been the whole time.  Umm, sure. The orphanage is returned to its original location, and the town is a FUN capital destination again, because the Muggle-Wumps vomit out these little florbnorble characters when they get anxious, and they've been so very anxious lately.  Apparently the florbnorbles are lots of fun when you have so many of them.  And the Twits end up in Loompaland (where the Oompa Loompas come from, I'd wager) and get eaten by a gigantic Sweet-Toed Toad.  That seems about right. 

This is the best sort of story to tell with an animated film - a lot of the stuff that happens here would be IMPOSSIBLE to film in live-action. So sure, make it into an animated film, however it's still quite a lot of silly things happening, and the narrative is bound to pale by comparison to other films that aren't packed up with wall-to-wall nonsense as this is. 

Directed by Todd Demong, Phil Johnston (director of "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Katie Shanahan

Also starring Johnny Vegas (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Margo Martindale (last heard in "Stop-Loss"), Emilia Clarke (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Sami Amber, Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Ryan Anderson Lopez, Phil Johnston (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Jason Mantzoukas (last heard in "Dolittle"), Riley King, Zarah Kulczycki, Rebecca Wisocky (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Mark Proksch (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Della Saba (last heard in "Wish"), Nicole Byer (last seen in "Thelma"), Charlie Berens, Stephanie Escajeda, Natalie Portman (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "Draft Day"), Israa Zainab, Erika Dapkewicz, David Byrne (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Scott Whyte (last heard in "Tom & Jerry"), David Cowgill, Hayley Williams,

RATING: 4 out of 10 news updates from Beverly Onion

Wicked: For Good

Year 18, Day 150 - 5/30/26 - Movie #5,332

BEFORE: Yes, it's a double feature today - one advantage of waiting SO long to watch "Wicked" is that I can follow up right away with the sequel. HA!  And some suckers had to wait like a YEAR to find out how the story ended. I don't want to fall behind in the count, and I want to save my skip days for June, so I'm doubling up today - it's the weekend and I have a day off after working nearly ALL week, so yeah, I really wasted the better part of a day watching nearly five hours of "Wicked" movies. The first one was WAY too long, thanks to all that over-explaining. 

Anyway, nearly everyone carries over from the first film - pick one, Ariana Grande, it doesn't matter, there are a ton of actors who are now one step closer to making my year-end countdown, but it takes THREE films, so just being in the "Wicked" films ain't gonna do it. 

THE PLOT: The continuing story of Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. 

AFTER: I'll try to keep this one brief because I've got to move on - I'm treating these two movies as sort of a speed bump in the road, but once you're over the speed bump, you're really free to resume your cruising velocity. A bit of turbulence, maybe. 

Basically, I can now never watch "The Wizard of Oz" again the same way, I watched that movie at least once a year when I was a kid, but then of course "Star Wars" came along and I got pulled in that direction. The funny thing is that the first "Star Wars" film and "The Wizard of Oz" are practically the same film, in that they are both fantasy quest films, a team has to be put together to defeat the evil power, they have to travel to a giant city or space station and the good magic/Force is needed to defeat the bad magic/Force. You can go even further with this by noting that Chewbacca is somewhat reminiscent of the Cowardly Lion, C-3P0 kind of looks like the Tin Man, and I don't know, Luke is naive Dorothy and R2D2 is Toto or something. The analogy kind of falls apart at some point, but I remember that Han and Luke dressing like stormtroopers to rescue Leia from the Death Star reminded me of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion dressing like palace guards to rescue Dorothy from the Witch's castle. Or maybe it was the other way around. 

I thought about that again near the end of "Wicked: For Good", where Glinda and Elphaba were battling with wand and broomstick, and it sure reminded me of a lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, obviously Vader is the Elphaba analog because they both had prequel movies explain how they were not born evil, but got corrupted or betrayed along the way, so neither one is really "evil" except for the fact that they both did bad things and maybe killed a bunch of people along the way - but everyone can be redeemed, right? And now of course we're thinking the Wizard is the Palpatine analog, because they are the secret powerful (?) ones hiding in the shadows who just want to control everything and everybody. One just built an Emerald City and the other built a Death Star. 

Of course, we can talk about the Trump symbolism of the "wonderful" Wizard, too, but that's a bit too easy. I'm going to stick with the Star Wars analogy for now. Glinda is Obi-Wan and Elphaba is Anakin and I guess that makes Fiyero Padme or something, but again, that analogy is going to fall apart at some point. This still makes "Wicked" sort of the "Attack of the Clones" and then "Wicked: For Good" is the "Rogue One" of the franchise, because it's going to lead us right up to the events we've already seen in the first movie, more or less. And as Obi-Wan once said, you're going to find that many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view". Well, there's a lot of that going around, because the original "Wizard of Oz" film led us to believe that the Good Witch is good and the Wicked Witch is Evil, and the Wizard himself is just an old foolish man with no power at all. And now thanks to "Wicked" we see all of that differently - Glinda is "good" but she's also stuck-up, spoiled, demanding and overly helpful, but in a way that is also condescending at times. The Wicked Witch was branded "evil" by the wizard, but was she? She was green and came to dress in black, however once she learned the truth about what was going on in Oz she tried her best to stop the Wizard's plans to dumbify animals and build yellow roads everywhere, and for that she was cast out, called evil and blamed for all of society's ills, to the point where crowds everywhere called for her outright execution. But she was just trying to make things better for everyone, including the animals. 

The Wizard himself, along with Madame Morrible, had these vast plans that I can't even quite understand, yellow roads and trains going everywhere, what exactly was the endgame there? And how did it benefit them to take the power of speech away from animals? I'm still confused about that. And now they added a bunch of love triangles into the mix, I personally wouldn't have shipped the Scarecrow with the Wicked Witch or the Tin Man with Glinda, but I guess that's where we find ourselves, huh? It's kind of funny then when these characters meet up later after Dorothy comes to town, and everyone has to interact with their exes or unrequited love partners, isn't that all so very awkward?  And Elphaba is really the only character who can use magic and read the spells in the spellbook, why is that? She casts spells that turn Fiyero and Boq into the Scarecrow and Tin Man - oh, like we didn't see THAT coming - why couldn't they just always have been the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, there was nothing wrong with those characters that they had to be given human back-stories.  

Really, I saw all the twists coming, everything was pretty easy to predict - I thought for a second, hey, wasn't there a Wicked Witch of the East, too? But then I remembered that the Wicked Witch said that Dorothy's house landed on her sister, and I guess she wasn't speaking metaphorically at all, because the sister character was RIGHT THERE and even if she wasn't a true witch, she did feel like one, and call herself one that one time, so I guess that's enough? Still, a bit too convenient perhaps. And the biggest twist of all (which I won't spoil here) - sure, I saw that one coming too, because there really was only one GIANT plothole created by the first "Wicked" film, and the final twist in the sequel takes care of it. But that also hearkens back to "Star Wars", too, in a way. 

I'm also reminded of the film "Noises Off", which was about a theater play and the movie version shows us the whole play once on stage, we have the same view as the audience. But then during the next performance of the same play, we see it from backstage and we see the actors changing costumes, fighting with each other, making out with each other, and it's all for great comic effect, of course. But now if you think of the original "Wizard of Oz" film, that film still exists, we can still go back any time and watch it, but now we've also seen behind the curtain, somebody filled in all the gaps (or perhaps more correctly, created the gaps and then filled them in) and just kept adding to the story so now there are connections where there never were before, and we've seen not just the behind-the-scenes action of the play, but also the rehearsals leading up to the play and also the curtain calls after. There were maybe a few too many endings here, it felt like nobody wanted the story to really end so it just kept going and there was more and more and well, guys, you've got to wrap it up at SOME point. 

I still think these films are largely flawed and mostly unnecessary, but I'm just one man - you can attempt to modernize a franchise through sequels, but it's not always the best idea. They tried this with the "Star Wars" prequels, and took a lot of heat for things like Jar-Jar Binks and Neimoidians, it's tricky tricky business. Updating Superman and Batman films for modern audiences is a rather tricky venture, too - sometimes maybe it's best to leave well enough alone, I think. They really had to tear down a lot of "The Wizard of Oz" when they built the addition, sure they created some more storytelling space but I wonder in the end if if was worth all the effort. Sorry, but I kind of miss the days when Good Fairies were good and Wicked Witches were wicked, it was a simpler time I guess. 

Directed by Jon M. Chu (director of "Wicked" and "In the Heights")

Also starring Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Aaron Teoh, Keala Settle, Adam James, Alice Fearn, Courtney Mae-Briggs, Kirsty Anne Shaw, Alice Bennett (all carrying over from "Wicked"), 

Bethany Weaver, Scarlett Spears, Samuel Wright, Clare Brice, Lucy Frederick, Summer Strallen, Minal Patel, Michael Guarnera (last seen in "Ava"), Herbie Kinsey, Matthew Yang King, Erin Battle (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), 

with the voices of Sharon D. Clarke (also carrying over from "Wicked"), Colman Domingo (last seen in "Sing Sing"), Dee Bradley Baker (last heard in "Spellbound")

RATING: 4 out of 10 children at Glinda's birthday party

Wicked

Year 18, Day 150 - 5/30/26 - Movie #5,331

BEFORE: Well, I got busy at the Barclay's Center - I know that the attention is on MSG right now because the New York Knicks have somehow managed to make the NBA Finals, which means that there are days coming up where I'll have to avoid Manhattan, or, you know what, maybe not leave the house at all. There's no telling what Knicks fans will do if their team wins a game next week at MSG. 

Then on Thursday night I went out to an animation show, right here in my neighborhood in Queens, free screening and I went to see if I knew anyone there, besides the woman who runs the event. Plus they had sandwiches. And brownies. So really, what else do I need? 

But I had to use another one of my skip days, and really, I needed to save those for June, I'm going to get very busy with the Tribeca Film Festival - so I'm going to do a DOUBLE-feature of the "Wicked" movies today, which is madness, because I said I was going to let the birthdays drive the bus if the situation presented itself - but let me state that these films are PROBABLY not my bag, really I was saving them to get myself out of a linking jam, and well, getting me to Father's Day this year probably counts, because my whole plan for June and therefore July might fall apart if I don't get there in a short number of steps, which is what burning off the "Wicked" films is buying me here. 

James Dryden carries over from "Matilda: The Musical". And now that I've delayed the review until May 30, we can issue a grand Birthday SHOUT-out to Idina Menzel, born 5/30/71. She's got a cameo here, but I hear she might have had something to do with the (un-) original Broadway production of "Wicked". Let me state for the record that I have NOT seen the Broadway play this is based on, so all of my reactions are going to be unfiltered, from someone who read the original books and also watched that weird sequel a few years ago with James Franco as the Wizard. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Oz the Great and Powerful" (Movie #1,625)

THE PLOT: Elphaba, a young woman ridiculed for her green skin, and Galinda, a popular girl, become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. After an encounter with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads. 

AFTER: The linking is still kind of telling me I should have watched "Goodbye June" - both James Dryden and Andrea Riseborough would have had their third film this year that way, and they would have clinched spots in the year-end countdown. Tough luck, because I re-classified that film as a Christmas film, and I'm only watching Christmas movies by accident right now. Like, what if were to watch "Goodbye June" and then fall short by ONE slot in December, and then I have to leave out a Christmas film? Nope, that would be bad, I can't take the chance. I mean, it could still happen, there's no way to predict December slot availability now, but if I have the chance to err on the side of caution, I'll do that. Now let me go add five more documentaries to the Doc Block....

But going from "Matilda: the Musical" to here also allows me to have a theme week, and the theme is "Movies based on Broadway Musicals that are Also Themselves Based on Previous Movies" - essentially, we're dealing with remakes of remakes, but ones that have been re-interpreted and changed around for more modern audiences. Let's face facts, Roald Dahl and L. Frank Baum were victims of the 18th and 19th century, they only saw things their way and they were soaking in outdated patriarchal and racial and social concepts that got squashed at some point, rightfully so. If they re-made "Huckleberry Finn" today, it would look a lot more like "12 Years a Slave", and that SHOULD be considered progress, all things considered. 

So I put this one off for a long time, pretty much as long as I could, kind of like I did with "Barbie", at some point a film like that becomes SO BIG, so much a part of the zeitgeist, that I just have to watch it and figure out what all the pop culture madness is really about. I tried to wait until the film was no longer available on Peacock, because Netflix is a cable channel for me now, that's SO much easier, and my computer browsers allow me to access simply EVERY OTHER streaming service, except for Peacock. So I had to watch "Wicked" on my phone, holding it just inches from my face, with bad sound, and come on, you really don't want me to review a film I watched like that. I'm not going to be happy if the screening conditions were like that, movies are meant to be watched on the biggest screen possible, if I can't watch it in the theater (which is like 99% of the time, despite the fact I work in a movie theater) then AT LEAST on my giant TV screen and if even that's not possible, then AT LEAST on my semi-large computer screen. The phone is the LEAST preferable option, like I know the kids are all watching movies on their phones, but I'm just not a kid. I need a big screen, I need captions, I need a big glass of water and a smaller glass of Mountain Dew, snack optional but certainly preferred. I need the sound up and the lights down, on a recliner if possible. 

So here we go, let's tear apart a classic film, perhaps the classic-est film of all time, and put the pieces back together in a way that completely defines it for modern audiences, literally I know the Broadway musical kind of changed everything in the process of giving the characters back-stories that are different from the ones we thought we knew. I've been through this with "Star Wars", for a long time we had only three movies, and they were great, and we were allowed to imagine what the Clone Wars were and how Darth Vader became Darth Vader, and who was Luke's mother, anyway? Eventually George Lucas decided to tell those stories and he put in a fair amount of twists with Anakin and Padme, so we ideally wouldn't see the end coming, except that we all totally did because that END was also the BEGINNING of the story we already knew. We're kind of in the same narrative boat here, because we've got all the pieces already, somebody is just going to tell us how they all came to fit together to eventually create the start of "The Wizard of Oz". 

First question - why aren't Munchkins tiny any more? Isn't that a key point in the original film, that all of the Munchkin actors were played by LP's? I realize that casting a bunch of LP's might be rather problematic, but it would have been faithful to the original, and now we have an inconsistency in the franchise, where Munchkins and Winkies are the same size, and NOBODY is small? Doesn't this take jobs away from smaller actors, how does THAT help? We could have cast a whole bunch of LPs through the LPA and Wow, I bet your film would have qualified for some kind of tax credit that way. Are we so woke now that "munchkin" has become some kind of derogatory term for smaller people, and it's therefore considered perjorative? Or did somebody just want to think about the dance sequences, and how casting LPs would have made them more difficult? Anyway, I think the LPs really could have used the work, imagine casting 50 or 100 of them to populate Munchkinland and how much representation that could have been - and now Munchkinland no longer makes any sense, at least when you go back and watch the original film. Or are they all going to get shrunken in the sequel somehow? 

Back in 2014, I applauded the use of real LPs in "Oz the Great and Powerful", because it's a long time between St. Patrick's Day and Christmas, and people have to WORK in-between dressing up like leprechauns and dressing up like Santa's elves. Don't hate the players, hate the game, or complain about why that IS the game, I'm just calling out the game. But now have we gone SO FAR beyond "woke" that if we cast little people to play little people, that would somehow be considered an insult? As if to say, "they're real actors now, they don't need our help" but I bet they WOULD eagerly take the gig, all of them, because it's better to work than to be shut out entirely. 

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I'm going to quote my own review (2nd time this week) from that other "Oz" film:

Next I come to magicians and politicians - who are both portrayed as liars (OK, I'm with you so far...) and a magician who essentially becomes a politican is a double-liar.  I'm fine with the character being who he is, but the film seems to promote a "Fake it 'Til you Make" it mentality.  I guess we've all been there, since none of us are born knowing how to do the jobs we'll later have, but again, it's an odd message to put out in a kids' fantasy film.  There's a fine line between pretending and lying, after all.

Now, as to the backstory, doesn't this conflict with the plot seen in "Wicked"?  (I haven't seen that play, but I'm going to look up the plot now...yep, it sure does)  If you've got two different backstories for a character, it makes it seem like no one's in charge of the franchise.  I know, they pull this crap in comic books all the time, changing Superman's origin every few years just to keep it current, but I don't have to like it.

I think what we've got here is another severe case of "prequelitis" - we all know where "The Wizard of Oz" begins, so this film has to end in a certain way, one which sets up the 1939 film.  But when you try to piece it together, the timeline just doesn't work - if you go back 20 years and bring Oscar Diggs to Oz, then he has to remain there, so he'll be there when Dorothy arrives.  But Dorothy visited that psychic, Professor Marvel, in Kansas before the tornado - and he looked exactly like the Wizard.  Assuming that was the same guy, how could he be in two places at once?  There are other inconsistencies as well, but the main one I won't mention for fear of giving away a plot point.

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Why is green the new black, so to speak? This is a fantasy world, Oz, it can be whatever you want it to be, and there are people seen in the crowds of all colors, races, backgrounds, so based on that, there should not be racism in this paradise - so why does "Green" still get singled out, like I know Kermit sang that song about how it's not easy being green, but in that case it was a metaphor for just learning to be comfortable with whatever color you are, while also pointing out that it didn't make any sense to wish to be yellow or orange or purple or whatever. So Elphaba gets bullied JUST because she is green, and she's meant to feel "less than" because there is still somehow racism in Oz, but JUST for that color. It makes no sense and seems to serve no purpose.  In the old days, we just had green witches in our stories and we didn't question that, we didn't need a "reason" for them to be green, we just assumed it was because their evil turned them that color or maybe it was one of their potions. This kind of reminds me of Emperor Palpatine, who looked one way in Episode II and a different way in Episode VI. It's easy enough to say that using the Dark Side of the Force broke him and twisted him or put some kind of strain on his body and we didn't NEED Mace Windu turning his own force lightning against him, which also didn't make any sense, except that Daddy Lucas needed to dumb it down for us children while also explaining every. little. thing. that would be important later in Episode IV-VI. 

Elphaba is green because her mother had an affair - that's a bit weird, again this is supposed to be a fantasy world, so either people are free to love whoever they want, whenever they want, or there should be repercussions for things that are "wrong", but those should fall upon the sinners, not their children. Yes, sure, in a post-Anakin Skywalker world, people are not BORN evil, they become evil over time because somebody broke their heart or betrayed them or something. We've apologized, through movies, for the behavior of everyone from Cruella de Vil to Maleficent, and I kind of miss the days when villains were just plain evil and not all victims of circumstance, and now here we are with the Wicked Witch of the West - I can't wait for the prequel film to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" where we learn the backstory of the "Child-Catcher" that haunted my childhood dreams. Ooh, ooh, maybe they'll do Sauron next and explain how he was abused as a child and he's not really evil, he's just taking over Middle Earth to get back at the uncle who touched him in a naughty place. 

So Elphaba feels that so many things are her fault, even if they aren't. Maybe she knows about her mother's affair, maybe she doesn't, but either way, that's on Mrs. Thropp, right? Or maybe it's all on Governor Thropp, who wasn't enough for Mrs. Thropp somehow, forcing her to cheat on him to get what she needed in a relationship. I don't know, do we blame the cheating spouse or the one who got cheated on, or do we just say, "Well, these things happen" except here there are repercussions, because one daughter was born green so excessive measures were taken to ensure that the second daughter was NOT born green, and Mrs. Thropp paid the price for that. Well, karma's a bitch, what can I say?  

Essentially this is all about bullying, just like "Matilda" was all about bullying at first, however Matilda and her fellow students faced a common enemy, a teacher, who was a bigger bully, and that united them and allowed them to fight back. However, once again, Hollywood got bullying wrong, fighting back is not the proper response, neither is NOT fighting back. If you don't fight back, a bully will continue to take advantage of you, as you're an easy target. If you DO fight back, and bully will still hate and disrespect you, however they will probably move on to another, easier target - problem NOT solved. One thing you can do is befriend a bully, or get them the help they need to deal with whatever social issues or personal demons they're facing, which is what's causing them to lash out in the first place. I once bought a bully's entire Star Wars comic book collection for $40 bucks and I never was troubled again. Another time I sucker-punched my bully, that got me pushed up against the lockers, but also I was never troubled by them again. The only other way I know to deal with a bully is outsmart them, like hide drugs in their locker or frame them for a felony crime and get them COMPLETELY taken off the board. I never tried this because the other options were easier and didn't make me guilty of something. 

Now to deal with this talking animal madness - there's some kind of push within Oz to turn (?) talking animals back into regular ones, or this is happening and nobody knows why or how to stop it. I don't know if this is because there were talking animals in some of the original books, but then they just don't want to deal with it anymore, and everybody looks the other way. So basically we're talking about a genocide of sorts, I assume that everyone within Oz is a vegetarian or something, but we never really get a good look at those weird platters that everyone is eating from in the Shiv University cafeteria. Still, I assume you don't want to eat your teachers or those goats and birds that you just had a conversation with, that wouldn't be right. So what, is there a big plot by the wizard to dumb down all the animals, just so he can have a steak or open a fried chicken franchise or something? There's a suggestion here of some larger idea, but it just gets dropped somewhere in the middle of the movie, surely there must be some follow-up in the sequel film, but still, what gives?  Oh, right, this all might have something to do with a talking lion in the future...

Everything from the original 1939 film is totally telegraphed here - like I already know who is going to become the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and other Wicked Witch. Or I'm fairly sure, I doubt there are going to be any huge surprises to come, unless I TOTO-lly read everything wrong. Really the worst movie sin here is in all the excessive dialogue and time spent OVER-explaining everything, as if we're all complete idiots in the audience. Why, yes, he's the Wonderful Wizard because he is a wizard and he is wonderful. "I need to be good." "We hate each other." "I am a talking goat who cannot pronounce a certain name correctly because I have no upper front teeth." JESUS FUCK, shut up already! So much inane blathering!  So much expository material. "I am a dancer, which means I dance and I get through my life by dancing." Give me a damn break!"

So, to sum up, this is what you get when Elle Woods and Carrie White attend Hogwarts and an episode of "Glee" breaks out. Little people can't dance and are not employable, racism exists only against green people, adultery causes birth defects, bullying is justified, animals need to be dumb so they can be eaten without guilt, and hate gives you magic powers. OK, these are some REALLY weird principles to defend. What fresh hell is going to await me in the sequel?  

Directed by Jon M. Chu (director of "In the Heights" and "Crazy Rich Asians")

Also starring Cynthia Erivo (last seen in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Ariana Grande (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Michelle Yeoh (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Jonathan Bailey (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Andy Nyman (last seen in "Black Death"), Courtney-Mae Briggs, Bowen Yang (last seen in "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain"), Bronwyn James (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Aaron Teoh, Shaun Prendergast, Keala Settle (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Colin Michael Carmichael (last seen in "Hot Fuzz"), Tarik Frimpong (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Malinda Parris, Noah Prempeh, Hattie Ryan, Kirsty Anne Shaw, Karis Musongole, Cesily Collette Taylor, Adam James (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Alice Fearn, Clive Kneller, Michael McCorry Rose (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Kristin Chenoweth (last seen in "The Boy Next Door"), Bobby Windebank, Cherida Strallen, 

with cameos from Winnie Holzman (last seen in "You People"), Stephen Schwartz (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), 

and with the voices of Peter Dinklage (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Sharon D. Clarke (last seen in "Havoc" (2025)), Jenna Boyd (last seen in "Here"), Tom Kiteley, Elizabeth Dulau, Kim Durham, Jennifer Woodward (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Stephen Stanton (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), David Eigenberg (last seen in "A Perfect Murder")

RATING: 3 out of 10 non-flying monkeys (not yet, anyway)

Matilda: The Musical

Year 18, Day 147 - 5/27/26 - Movie #5,330

BEFORE:OK, some notes about the linking - the most obvious place to go after "Lee" would be "Goodbye June", a film directed by Kate Winslet about a dying mother/grandmother. Well, sure,  I realize my subconscious brain wants to stay on that track, because of what happened with my own mother this month. But it's a bit on the nose, and I want to get off that track - SO I'm taking advantage of the fact that movie is set at Christmas time to drop it from the chain here, and since it connects to another Christmas movie via Stephen Merchant, I'm going to re-purpose that film as a Christmas film. I mean, May is a good time for a Memorial Day/Mother's Day mash-up, but a Christmas/Mother's Day mash-up, maybe not so much. So it's out for now, and the chain's going to close up around the hole, no problem. 

However, this means that yesterday was a skip day, and I've only got five of those that I can use between here and Father's Day, less if I find some more films tomorrow that started streaming in May and could fill in the cracks between what's already on the docket. So now I've got FOUR potential skip days in the next month, and if I line things up with May birthdays, I'll be down to three, with both NewFest and Tribeca Film Festival coming up. I'll probably use all three since the festival shifts are long BUT there's a chance to make some money there. So still, either way, Andrea Riseborough carries over from "Lee" and if I can make it to June 1 before the Father-based films kick in, that will be some kind of a win. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Matilda" (Movie #2,802)

THE PLOT: An adaptation of the Tony award-winning musical that tells the story of an extraordinary girl who, armed with a sharp mind and a vivid imagination, dares to take a stand to change her story with miraculous results. 

AFTER: As part of the process I went back to re-read my review of "Matilda", the 1996 (?) film - since then the story was made into a Broadway musical, adding songs and whatever else, and then somebody decided to make THAT musical into a movie, 25 years after the first film. Now we need a book made based on the film remake based on the stage remake, and everything will come full circle, so to speak. And as part of THAT process, the remake film screened at the theater where I work, and Emma Thompson came to promote it and do a Q&A, and walked right past me. This was maybe two months after her ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh, was there for "Belfast" and he also did a Q&A and he was also a foot away from me at times. Nobody else saw the connection, not Mr. Branagh or Ms. Thompson, I was the only person there that saw them in the same place at different times. So that was just for me, another random gift from the movieverse. 

Anyway, my review of the original film has some comments that are still relevant to the remake, so here they are: 

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This character was a self-starter, she taught herself how to read and then how to get books from the library, because her parents were total duds who didn't even want to send her to school for some reason.  Plus they neglected her in other ways, not just in almost failing to provide her with an education, since her father was always busy cheating people at the used car lot, and her mother was always busy playing bingo. Matilda was forced to chart her own educational path until circumstances changed, and an encounter with a teacher leads her father to believe that school might be the best place for her after all.

Unfortunately, it's a mixed bag as she really bonds with her teacher, but the school has the worst principal you can imagine.  And since this story is based on a Roald Dahl book, and he was always very twisted in his depiction of certain adults (*cough* Willy Wonka *cough*) that's saying a lot. The principal can't just be mean, she has to be SUPER-mean, the kind of person that throws kids out of windows, which just wouldn't be allowed in any school district anywhere, plus she was some kind of former Olympic shot-put champion or something, and not feminine in any way, like, do we have to spell it out for you here?

And once Matilda gets to school, the film doesn't seem to ever settle on a coherent plot line.  Like, what's her end goal, surviving school or just getting revenge on every adult that ever yelled at her or put her down?  Once Matilda figures out that adults are "people" (duh) that somehow means that they should be held accountable for their actions, and if they're not nice people, then they deserve to be pranked, or worse.  That's a terrible message to send out to the kids, isn't it?  

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Today I've got the same complaints, more or less. The film is all over the place, which leads me to believe that the book is all over the place, or perhaps incoherent. Maybe it connects with kids who have short attention span and kind of appreciate that there's no linear "quest", no through-line where there is a clear problem that needs to be solved, and therefore no clear revelatory solution at the end, either. Just more problems - perhaps more than when the story started, but hey, that's life, right? 

But I keep hearing how problematic Roald Dahl was, and continues to be. There's a Broadway play now where John Lithgow is playing him as both a literary "genius" and also an Anti-Semite. How do we resolve these things? Sure, it was a different time, but this man had hate in his heart for not just Jews, but also children, parents, lesbian teachers and possibly Oompa-Loompas as well. Yet people continue to make stories out of his lesser works, instead of just acknowledging that he maybe wrote ONE good book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", which itself is also quite problematic, and just maybe nothing else in his bibliography is going to measure up. Can't we just say he was a total asshole and let cancel culture cancel him? 

But no, in the same way some people would LOVE to cancel J.K. Rowling for her anti-gay, anti-trans messages over the years, they tried to cancel her but it didn't work, because the "Harry Potter" books are now becoming an HBO series, or maybe seven HBO serieses, I'm not sure. As long as HBO/Paramount/Skydance can make a profit by re-working and re-adapting someone's work, we're going to put all that complicated bigotry and assholishness aside, at least until after we count the money. 

Here I thought this was a simple story about a girl with psycho-kinetic powers, which somehow go hand-in-hand with her being really smart (umm, NITPICK POINT, that's not how mutant powers or intelligence works) and instead we get this think-piece about how it's OK for kids to be a little naughty if people are mean to them. (umm, this isn't a thing either, that's not how you deal with bullies, we've been THROUGH this, Hollywood). Also lesbian teachers are evil and all have an axe to grind and are extremely mean to children yet are somehow able to keep their jobs because there's just no oversight in the teaching community. 

I really didn't see why so much time was spent on Matilda telling the story of the acrobat and the escapologist who worked in the circus together, were madly in love and expecting a baby, yet the acrobat's evil step-sister (don't even get me started on this...) forced them to do the most extreme, unbelievable stunt, with tragic consequences. And then near the end the story became very important because it wasn't just a made-up story, it was the background origin story of Matilda's teacher, Miss Honey, who was the daughter of the acrobat and the escape artist somehow, and there's zero explanation to how the real events became part of Matilda's made-up story, which kind of would have been helpful. Did Matilda read about the real circus accident in an old newspaper or something, and then enhanced the story with details of her own?  Or did she accidentally read Miss Honey's mind, which would be a completely different mental power? Or something else? Details, PLEASE. 

So we're here in late May, sandwiched between Mother's Day and Father's Day, so I'm open to any movies with either parent in them, or both, whatever. I guess the take-away is that if your parents completely suck, do something about it. You can get yourself clear of them, or you can find a new mother figure or father figure if you need to, just choose carefully and make sure you don't get yourself in more trouble in the process. Also, if your teacher sucks you can do something about it - in junior high my classmates protested over the cafeteria food, which we thought was of poor quality, so we all got together and NOBODY ate the school lunches as a form of protest, which meant that the cafeteria staff made a bunch of food every day that I assume got mostly thrown away. Well, that's not cost-effective at all, so things changed, we changed them. Then in 10th grade our U.S. History teacher was a total dud, like I fell asleep as soon as he started talking. Again we (and our parents) protested, this guy was NOT up to par, and a few weeks later he had back surgery or perhaps "back surgery" was a dodge for replacing him, and our principal, a former history teacher himself, stepped in. 

This is the only reason I'm not giving this film a terrible rating, because there IS a message here, underneath all the other nonsense. If the adults in your life are not up to par, yes, of course you should do something about it. Don't settle for third best, because you deserve AT LEAST second best out of people. And this goes for your parents, teachers, politicians, spouses and friends - if they suck, cut them out of your life, because you can do better. Especially when it comes to politicians, and the midterms are coming up. Just saying. 

NITPICK POINT: I thought the "Alphabet Song" when Matilda first arrived at school was quite clever, especially how you don't realize what it is until the second time through. The other songs, I could really take them or leave them. But I could not find the letter "R" or even the sound where it was supposed to be. Umm, where was it, and why are we leaving out a letter, like was that missing "R" for Roald?  

NITPICK POINT 2: Matilda solves a complicated math problem on the blackboard, in a plot point that seems to be stolen from "Good Will Hunting". It's a problem so complicated that only an adult math expert should be able to figure it out, but she handles it. So, umm, if it's way over the heads of everyone in the room, or so it's believed, WHY is it on the blackboard in the first place? 

NITPICK POINT 3: Can we all just admit that "Roald" is a terrible first name? I've always thought that he was supposed to be named "Ronald" and someone just made a mistake on the birth certificate. Nobody else in the world was ever named "Roald", right? Another great reason to cancel this author and stop making movies based on his work. Everything about him is just so, so problematic, including his name. 

Directed by Matthew Warchus

Also starring Alisha Weir, Emma Thompson (last seen in "Much Ado About Nothing"), Lashana Lynch (last seen in "The Woman King"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere"), Sindhu Vee, Carl Spencer (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Lauren Alexandra, Winter Jarrett-Glasspool, Andrei Shen, Ashton Robertson, Meesha Garbett (last seen in "Cats"), Charlie Hodson-Prior, Rei Yamauchi Fulker, Katherine Kingsley (last seen in "Genius"), Amber Adeyinka, James Laurenson (last seen in "One Day"), Ann Firbank (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Amanda Lawrence (ditto), Thomas Arnold (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), James Dryden (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Matt Henry, Karen Mavundukure, Tia isaac, Ella Chadwick, Erin Rushidi, Rudy Gibson, Isa Islam, Joshua Moabi, Poppy Caton, Ian McIntosh, Kirsty Malpass, Tim Bentinck (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget")

RATING: 4 out of 10 amusement park rides - sorry, but even in a "better" school this feels wildly inappropriate. Too much of a swing in the other direction?

Lee

Year 18, Day 145 - 5/25/26 - Movie #5,329 - MEMORIAL DAY

BEFORE: OK, I'm back in a New York groove, and I'm back to work, following what turned out to be almost two weeks on the road, living out of a suitcase and I think nine states overall. And so many restaurants, travel stops and gas stations - though our favorite one on the Connecticut/Rhode Island border was closed - no, open, but the registers were down so they couldn't sell anything, not gas or snacks, they just stayed open for the restrooms and the Sbarro that was inside. I mean, jeez, what's the point? And if the registers are down, why not take CASH? Oh, because as a society we've lost the ability to count money or calculate sales tax without a computer to do it for us. Well, at least it should be very easy when A.I. wants to take over the world, just unplug all the cash registers and watch the world's economy collapse overnight. 

There's some good news, though, I did NOT watch a movie on Saturday night/Sunday because my linking ran out, so I spent the night stringing movies together and making a plan - this still involves a lot of scrap paper and writing down names of movies with arrows showing me all the connections, because on the computer I can somehow make only one plan at a time, but on paper I can see the big picture and then focus on the part of the chain that I want to expand, or if the chain circles back on itself I can see it right away, and that's going to give me more options. I had a LOT of options after "Wake Up Dead Man", and that was by design - the film was star-studded and I had many, many films I could go to next. The choices for the first step included "Queer" with Daniel Craig, "Back in Action" with Glenn Close, the new "Running Man" movie with Josh Brolin, and this one. There were other choices, but since this isn't the time of year to watch romances or horror or Christmas films, I started with those four and tried to figure out which of them would best get me to Father's Day movies, and possibly then to the Doc Block in the right number of steps. The arrows helped me identify films with the most connections and options, just in case my first pass doesn't produce the results I want, maybe I'll get it on the second or third or forty-seventh. 

I went with "Lee" because it's about World War II, and today is Memorial Day, and I saw a way to loop back to "Back in Action", so that's really TWO of the possible paths that I'm combining and following at the same time. If I make any path linking movies, sure, I'm going to see ways it can loop back on itself. I ended up with a framework that will get me to Father's Day, AND the Doc Block (tentative starting date - July 1) and as a bonus, it's going to go through the "Wicked" movies and "Hamnet" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu", and you know that last one is a BIG selling point for me. OK, so maybe it's three days short of a full schedule, but that's OK, I don't have to crowd the month or overcrowd it, I can take days off - any skip days in June will only increase the number of slots available in November or December, really, and who knows, I may need them. So I'm going to keep an eye on the actor birthdays and my work schedule, and if I need to delay a film here and there, it's only going to help - but knowing me, once I go through the list of films new to streaming in May, I'll probably fill all those gaps.  

So here's the linking for the rest of May, and then I'll get to June when we get to June: after Josh O'Connor there's Andrea Riseborough, James Dryden, Dee Bradley Baker, Alan Tudyk, and Kalyn Harper, that should get me to May 31 or a little after, if I need to skip a day. It looks like May will only have 17 or 18 films in it, but again, I've been traveling and so that's all OK, once I get through the Doc Block I can count the days to the end of the year and see where that leaves me. The Doc Block is only 32 confirmed films right now, last year I think I did 49, so if I get some time next week I can go through some more cast lists and see if I can beef it up a bit. 

THE PLOT: War correspondent Lee Miller travels to the front lines of World War II to embark on a mission to uncover the hidden truths of the Third Reich. But in the wake of betrayal, a reckoning will come over the truths of her own past. 

AFTER: All right, let's get back to it - this turned out to be the perfect film for the day - because it's a mix of a Memorial Day film and a Mother's Day film. That sounds pretty rare, I can't really think of another movie that would qualify as both of those things. And even though it's been over two weeks since Mother's Day, that was only THREE films ago for me, so I'm going to say that I'm still on topic. I mean, mothers are everywhere, they're in a lot of movies - but how many mothers are seen going to war? That sure wasn't common back in the 1940's. 

So first off, let's deal with the war - Lee Miller worked as a photographer and war correspondent, and her photos for Vogue helped break the news of the Holocaust to the world - before the liberation of the concentration camp prisoners, all people knew was that a large number of Jewish people were "missing", along with gypsies, disabled people, political dissidents and such. The true horror regarding the number of people Hitler had killed outright was yet to be known, and obviously the figures were (and are still) quite staggering. However there was a feeling among some magazine editors that the world was not ready to know about the extent of the horror, the war was over and perhaps their readers just wanted to either celebrate or move on with their lives, or both. But that would really be doing a disservice to the public, it's a reporter's job to report and it's a publisher's job to publish, and in the end what you don't report on or what gets censored says a lot about the society you're living in. And it's not even a politician's job to decide what the public can find out about - thank God in America we still have the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech. Well, mostly, maybe we should try to enjoy it while it lasts - if our President can silence comedians, get TV shows taken off the air, aren't we getting a little too close to Hitler-like power? 

We first meet Lee prior to the war, living a Bohemian lifestyle in France as a former fashion model and aspiring photographer, whose hobby seems to be eating lunch with her friends while topless. She catches the eye of Roland Penrose, an art promoter and historian and freelance poet, and they fall into a relationship, moving to London, where Lee finds employment taking photos of bombed buildings once the Blitz starts in 1940. Once the U.S. enters the war in 1941, she becomes a war correspondent (for America, not the U.K., which refused to send a woman into a war zone, this was an important plot point in the film) alongside photojournalist David Scherman. 

After D-Day, she photographed combat operations during the Battle of Saint-Malo, and after the liberation of Paris, she photographed the French people who were shamed for "collaborating" with the Germans, also known as "doing what they needed to do to survive". While in Paris, she tracked down her old friends Solange d'Ayen and the Eluards, who first inform her about all the thousands of people who went missing during the occupation. This leads her to travel to Germany to document the atrocities at Dachau and Buchenwald, also snatching a few photographs inside Hitler's apartment in Munich, unaware that he was holed up in a bunker in Berlin at the time. I suppose if Hitler had come back to his apartment while she was there, it could have been very awkward. 

She then returned to Roland in London (who apparently busied himself painting camouflage on sheds and other municipal buildings while she was away) but became furious when she realized her concentration camp photos would NOT be published by British Vogue, however they were passed along to the American edition of the magazine. NITPICK POINT: I know the issue was with censorship in the U.K., but there were other magazines, if the photos were so important, why didn't another magazine offer to publish them? I guess it depends on copyright law, whether Vogue magazine "owned" the photos because they paid the photographer, or whether she would have been able to shop them around. 

Of course, this is all told in flashback, with the framing device of a young man interviewing the older Lee Miller, and this is the other part of the story. Not to give anything away, but the interviewer turns out to be Lee's adult son, Antony, whom she had never told anything about her wartime experiences. He did find thousands of photographs and manuscripts in her attic after she died, and they were later archived by Antony. This part of the film really hits home for me, because I similarly had to go through our family's photo albums in conjunction with my mother's funeral, I had to pick some good photos of her for the wake, and also I posted some of the more personal one on my Instagram feed. This wasn't easy because my mother WAS the photo-taker for the family, so there are plenty of pictures of family vacations and parties, but mostly without her IN them, because she was taking the photos. 

Like Antony, I shared my mother with the world, or at least a lot of other people, because she was active in the local parish, the entire Boston diocese, her college fraternity (mu phi epsilon, mostly for music teachers I think) and she headed up her high-school class reunions. Then there were her elementary school students, and community theater participants, and so many church activities. So yeah, I had a working mother and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, but I get it, Mom had shit to do. I usually got breakfast and dinner from her, and then of course we did go on those family vacations and road trips together. So we did spend time together, but of course after she's gone that just never seems like enough, although it has to be. 

I think by the end of this blog (SPOILER ALERT) I'm going to find out that anything I attribute to the Chain's ability to program movies that are important for me to watch was really just a part of ME, my subconscious or whatever, sending messages to the other parts of me that really needed to get those messages. But that's kind of crazy, right? 

Directed by Ellen Kuras (assistant director on "Killers of the Flower Moon")

Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Insurgent"), Andy Samberg (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "Infinity Pool"), Marion Cotillard (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "To Leslie"), Noemie Merlant (last seen in "Tar"), James Murray (last seen in "6 Underground"), Arinzé Kene (last seen in "Love Again"), Vincent Colombe, Patrick Mille, Camilla Aiko (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Samuel Barnett (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Zita Hanrot, Sean Duggan (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Enrique Arce (last seen in "On the Line"), Marinko Prga, Orlando Seale (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Harriet Leitch (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Claire Lavernhe, Caroline Lena Olsson (last seen in "Children of Men"), Vanessa Glodjo, Ena Kurtalic, Toni Gojanovic, Ian Dunnett Jr. (last seen in "Belfast"), Riley Neldam (last seen in "The Union"), Patrick McCullough (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Katalin Ruzsik, Joe Anders (last seen in "1917"), Anita Major (also last seen in "Infinity Pool"), Adam Boncz (ditto), Sanchia McCormack, Agnes Fekete, Jazmin Elizabeth Brenner, with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare")

RATING: 5 out of 10 loaves of unsliced bread