One Battle After Another

Year 18, Day 112 - 4/22/26 - Movie #5,310

BEFORE: I was going to feature the body-swap film "Little" here, with Regina Hall carrying over and getting me to this year's Best Picture winner, but that film was available on Netflix when I made this chain - just a couple weeks ago - and is not available anywhere now. It happens, that's become a fairly typical part of my process, and I'll tend to do a double-check on IMDB right before starting a new segment of the chain, just to make sure everything is still where I left it, and there will be no bumps in the road. But just like I have un-linkables and one-linkables, I also have droppables, and that film was a droppable, the middle film in a chain of three, if it suddenly becomes unavailable or I have too many movies and not enough slots, I can drop it and just move on, the chain should close up around the hole. 

Honestly, I was on the fence about watching that film anyway, because it links to another body-swap comedy, plus IMDB lists "Little" as a romance, or at least that's one of its tags, so I was starting to wonder if it was in the right place to begin with. Also I need to drop SOMETHING in order to make it to Mothers Day on time, that film being suddenly unavailable then makes the decision to drop it that much easier. If it hadn't been a middle film of three then I might have taken steps to actually PAY to watch the film, on YouTube or something, but now I don't have to, I can save a few bucks and just skip it.  

So now that's designated as "burned toast" and we're not going to worry about it, because it can only good happen, down the road a bit. "Little" could be needed come Christmas time or next year or something to make the linking happen and keep the chain alive, there's no way to know that now, of course, but that could be the case, so this was the chain's way of telling me that it's time to watch the film that won Best Picture. Regina Hall carries over from "Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul." and I can still keep films lined up with two more birthdays this week.

THE PLOT: When their enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own. 

AFTER: I "met" Paul Thomas Anderson on his last tour of the country, when he was promoting "Licorice Pizza" and there were screenings on 35mm. Well, I work for one of the last theaters in NYC that can still screen on film, so a number of screenings were booked, and for one I got to speak with him (briefly) to tell him when, and how, to walk on stage to the panelist chairs. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman were there, too, and of course I had no idea I was addressing someone who would go on to win the Best Director Oscar with his next film, and it was still a few months after that when I watched "Licorice Pizza", but you know, everything at the right time, not all at once. 

Obviously, with Mr. Anderson winning Best Director and this film winning Best Picture, I made the goal of getting to it as soon as possible, and I did - while still respecting the necessary nods to Easter, and Mother's Day coming up. Not that this film is related to either of those, but if this could be worked in between and scheduled for late April rather than, say, May or June, then all the better. Come to think of it, there's a bit here that's mother-related, it's just way too early, the holiday is still about 18 days away. But also, today is Earth Day, and though this movie was initially planned for tomorrow, maybe it fits better here, a day that's all about activism, and activism is at the start of this film. Well, revolutionaries, activism, whatever, it's all the same, right? The initial issue is immigration, and we see part of the infamous Trump border wall from his first Presidential term, along with a detention camp somewhere on the Mexican border where immigrants are being held, and the "French 75" group is there to break them out. 

Two of the group's members become lovers, Pat Calhoun and Perfidia Beverly Hills, however during the course of the break-out, Perfidia sexually humiliates the commanding officer, Steven Lockjaw, but he kind of digs it, and later becomes obsessed with her. This becomes important later during another operation when he catches her planting a bomb at another installation, and he agrees to not turn her in, provided she agrees to have sex with him. Later she becomes pregnant, and we the audience know that either man could be the baby's father. Perfidia gives birth to a baby girl but does not settle down and play the nurturing mother, she goes right back to her revolutionary cause, and is arrested after shooting a guard during a bank robbery. Lockjaw is still obsessed with her, and arranges for her to turn evidence on the other revolutionaries and avoid prison. She enters witness protection, and after using her information to arrest and/or execute members of French 75, he goes to visit her at her safe house, trying to make a booty call, only she's fled for Mexico. Pat Calhoun moves upstate to a sanctuary city and raises his (?) daughter under a new name, Bob Ferguson. 

Fast-forward sixteen years and the country has become more conservative, the anti-immigration movement is out of control, and the national guard and armored troopers are marching in the liberal cities, and DAMN, if this film didn't predict TO A TEE the I.C.E. actions of last year, right? Lockjaw has risen to the rank of colonel and has become a prominent anti-immigrant figure in the government agencies, and also has been invited to become a member in a high-profile secret society of white supremacists. He'll be fine, as long as they never find out he had sex with a black woman... Meanwhile "Bob Ferguson" has been living off the grid, raising his daughter and is now a paranoid stoner. He won't let his teen daughter have a cell phone, because he knows they can be hacked and tracked, and he's suspicious of all of her friends. 

Lockjaw hires a bounty hunter to capture Somerville, aka "Billy Goat", another one of the French 75 members, one who knows where the others are all hiding. So it's only a matter of time before the troops are sent to the sanctuary city, while another ex-French 75 member, Deandra, rescues WIlla from her school before the troops arrive, and Bob is also warned about the upcoming raid, so he escapes via a tunnel under his house, and heads for Willa's karate studio, where her sensei, Sergio, runs the operation that saves undocumented immigrants. Together they get the information that Willa has been taken to a convent of revolutionary nuns (they take care of retired bears in the off-season, I think). Unfortunately Bob gets arrested during the raid after falling off a rooftop (parkour is for the young, it turns out) and so that's going to take some time to break him out. 

Lockjaw has a head start at getting to the convent out in the California desert, he's got a DNA kit and wants to confirm that Willa is his daughter, and if she is he needs to kill her, or he'll never get in to the secret white supremacist society, which is call the Christmas Adventurers. The supremacists have also received evidence that Lockjaw might have a bi-racial child, so they send their own assassin out to kill both Lockjaw and Willa. In third place in this weird race is Bob himself, who gets sprung from prison by being sent to the hospital, then friendly agents at the hospital arrange his escape, and he hooks up again with sensei Sergio and they also head out to the desert. Bob's got a rifle and he catches up with Lockjaw, but he misses the kill shot. Lockjaw's already been to the convent and kidnapped Willa, but he's handed her off to the bounty hunter, who won't kill her because she's just a teen girl - but he will bring her to the compound of a far-right militia group, then he changes his mind and helps break her free, so like everyone else in this film, she steals a car and tries to get out of there. 

The last quarter of the film is just a giant chase scene, unfortunately - I wish it didn't just devolve into that, but sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it. I've seen it happen many times with animated features, it's not exactly high drama when you just put every character in a car and make them all drive through the desert really fast. I think a screenwriter just writes down "chase scene", and then that can be five minutes long or half an hour, it just depends how complicated you want to make it, and how long you want it to be, and I guess maybe how much film you have. Here we have Lockjaw in one vehicle, Willa in another, the supremacist assassin in a third car and Bob in the fourth. Who lives and who dies all kind of depends on who's following who and whose car is faster. And really, you can work this sequence to produce any outcome you want - I just maintain there were loftier, less pedantic ways to get the story where it needed to go. But sure, it's an action film and who doesn't love an action-packed chase scene? 

I still think "Sinners" was a better movie, in a few different ways. But "One Battle After Another" seemed to tap into more of the current cultural zeitgeist, whether that was by accident or by design remains to be seen. It's based on a Thomas Pynchon story, but clearly it was heavily tinkered with to represent current events regarding immigration, racial issues, the overreaching power of government to maintain order at the civic level. So the political climate created those problems or let them get out of control, and then this movie came along and beefed them up a bit, sort of taking advantage of them to make this story more relevant. I suppose that's one way to win an Oscar, I'm not going to say outright that's a bad thing, like you can't get mad at "Schindler's List" for riding a wave of interest in the Holocaust, ultimately that's a good thing. But we've called other Holocaust movies "Oscar bait", so I think maybe there's a fine balance that needs to be maintained. 

Still, a lot of work went into this, and it found a way to be relevant, which not all movies manage to do. Pynchon wrote "Vineland" during the Reagan years, and so you can probably draw a lot of connections between Reagan and Trump, really the more things change, the more they stay the same, and history doesn't always repeat but it sometimes does rhyme. But that's only part of how you win a Best Picture Oscar, this film had a $70 million marketing campaign and another $14 million just for the awards campaign. It's not really fair if there are independent movies out there that don't have that kind of publicity budget, is it?  And even if you consider it a masterpiece, does it make sense that a masterpiece would gross $213 million worldwide and still not be profitable? I know Hollywood accounting is a little fast and loose, but how can a movie make that much and still be considered a financial failure - like, what's the point? 

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (director of "Hard Eight" and "Licorice Pizza")

Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Sean Penn (last seen in "Brats"), Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Teyana Taylor (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Chase Infiniti, Wood Harris (last seen in "Creed III"), Alana Haim (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Paul Grimstad, Shayna McHayle, Tony Goldwyn (last seen in "Ezra"), John Hoogenakker (last seen in "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas"), Starletta DuPois (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale"), Eric Schweig (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), D.W. Moffett (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Kevin Tighe (last seen in "School Ties"), James Downey (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), James Raterman, Dijon Duenas, Dan Chariton (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Jon Beavers (ditto), Ted McCarthy (ditto), Pearl Minnie Anderson (ditto), April Grace (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), Tisha Sloan, 

Brooklyn Demme (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Sachi Diserafino, Melissa Duenas, Vanessa Ganter, Otillia Gupta, Nia Leon, Joe Silva, Jeffrey Massagli, Nicole J. Sunseri, Jeremy Ekalo, Alberto Garcia, Antonio Tadeo Garcia, Patricia Ridgely Storm, Jeremy Boone (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Bryan Pickens, Carlos McFarland, Colton Gantt, Elisabeth Pease, Autumn Crosswhite, Mickey Giacomazzi, Omar Khattab, Sandra Iturbe, Marisela Borjas Ramirez, Derrick J. Saenz, Esperanza Rodarte De Santoyo, Hadasa Genesaret Palomares, Gilbert Martinez Jr., Luis Trejo, Julian Corral, Elijah Joseph Sambrano, Sherron Gassoway, Robert Sherock, Lynette M. Telles, Ann Limbaugh-Brouhard, Antonio Garcia, Emilio Carranza, Juan V. Ramirez, Ron Bermudez Perea, Edith Ascencion, David Reynoso, Timothy Kravitz, 

and the voices of Jena Malone (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Anthony Weise,

RATING: 7 out of 10 tear gas canisters

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.

Year 18, Day 111 - 4/21/26 - Movie #5,309

BEFORE: I've been on Netflix a lot this month, which has reduced my Netflix watch-list to a more manageable level, and that's a good thing, only it doesn't open up any slots on the main list, only on the "streaming and someday/maybe" list, which is now also noticeably smaller. That's about to change because I need to go through the list of films which start streaming in April, plus I have a number of documentaries I want to put on that list so I'll be ready when the Doc Block time rolls around. The rest of April will be more cable/DVD heavy, which will start opening up slots on that list, which will then enable me to record some more movies from cable. 

I think that the Netflix algorithm has finally figured me out, though, which took a number of years because my viewing patterns are so erratic. Netflix is now a channel on my cable system, so I don't know, the algorithm somehow tapped into my DVR preferences or my Google calendar or something in its A.I.-fueled goal to take my life over and, I don't know, maybe recommend so many movies I want to watch that I'll be too busy to notice when the robots take over society? How else do I explain that when I signed on to Netflix last night, the first two movies it recommended were the film I was planning to watch - which was NOT saved in my Netflix list, because I already had it on DVD, but I prefer to watch it with captions - and "Plastic Detox", which was the screening that I worked at last night at the theater. How the hell did it know? 

Sterling K. Brown carries over from "Atlas". 

THE PLOT: In the aftermath of a huge scandal, Trinitie Childs, the first lady of a prominent Southern Baptist Mega Church, attempts to help her pastor-husband, Lee-Curtis Childs, rebuild their organization. 

AFTER: This feature was apparently based on a short film, and I saw some photos of that short while I was calling up the feature on the IMDB. It's funny, though, because usually when someone turns a short film into a feature, they add a lot more plot points to develop the story further, and here the choice was made to NOT do that, essentially just make the short longer. So there's still the same amount of story, meaning that a whole lot of nothing happens in the feature. It's a choice, maybe, but I don't know. Obviously I haven't seen the short, but it seems to tell the exact same story, right down to the worship-miming, which as far as I can tell, is not a real thing. 

There's the pastor of a mega-church and his wife, or "First Lady", and their attendance is way down because of some scandal that broke a year or so ago, and you don't really have to take too many guesses to figure out what the scandal is. The pastor, who spoke out against same-sex relationship, was having a few of those of his own, with younger men. There were other egregious things, like spending money donated to the church on fast cars and designer clothing, but that's probably acceptable compared to the sex scandal. Either way, it's hard to see how they've managed to keep the property AND keep it maintained during the lapse in attendance, of course, church property isn't taxed, that may have something to do with it. Still, if money's not coming in, we've got two people who can't maintain the lifestyle they've become accustomed to, the simpler thing to do would be to sell some of their stuff, clothing or property or what have you, or just give up the whole church idea and go find another line of work. 

But no, they're planning to re-open their mega-church, on Easter Sunday no less, and other than re-open, they don't seem to be planning much else - no plea for forgiveness, no admission of guilt, no explanation or press forgiveness tour. So sure, let's just keep doing what hasn't worked in the past, because maybe it will work THIS time. Most of their frequent attendees are now members of other parishes, like Heaven's Home, which is run by another couple who USED to be congregants at Wander to Greater Paths. So Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs comes up with a great idea to get the jump on the crowd at Heaven's Home by moving up the opening date of W.T.G.P. by two weeks, which would have been a great idea, of only the pastor of Heaven's Home hadn't decided to do the Christian thing and leave Easter to the Childses, by similarly moving up the opening date of Heaven's Home by two weeks. 

Meanwhile, the documentary filmmaker who is profiling the Childses (that's how we're able to see behind the scenes of Wander to Greater Paths, through the lens of a fictitious doc maker) catches footage of the couple getting a phone call from their lawyer, informing them they will have to make payments to the young men accusing Lee-Curtis, it's all set except there's one hold-out who will not accept the settlement. We also see Lee-Curtis having a conversation with the sound recorder for the documentary film, offering him the opportunity to do A.V. work for the church, but also making a sexual advance toward him. 

Things are so desperate that Lee-Curtis has Trinitie working out on the street holding up a sign, to let everyone know about when Wander to Greater Paths is going to open again. This causes a traffic jam when a car's passenger blocks the street, and it's the victim who won't settle the case. Other passersby berate Trinitie for the actions of her husband and mock his attempts to overcome the scandal. This is when Trinitie reverts to wearing mime make-up, which again, I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with any known religion, so it's just weird that it's a thing here. 

Other than that, not much happens here, the Childs have five devout parishioners, but I'm pretty sure they're going to need more than that to stay in business - so, you know, maybe it's time to pack it in, and maybe that's the point here, but honestly it's tough to say with so little happening or being stated outright. Mostly things don't really go anywhere and therefore seem rather boring. Nothing offensive here, but nothing really stands out as great either - and it's not funny enough to be a comedy, not dark enough to be a drama, I guess you can call it satire on the state of religion in America, but did we really need that? 

Directed by Adamma Ebo

Also starring Regina Hall (last seen in "Me Time"), Nicole Beharie (last seen in "42"), Conphidance, Austin Crute (last seen in "Booksmart"), Devere Rogers (last seen in "My Spy: The Eternal City"), Avis-Marie Barnes (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Andrea Laing (ditto), Robert Yatta, Greta Marable Glenn (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Selah Kimbro Jones (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Crystal Alicia Garrett, Perris Drew (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Nastashia Fuller, Dhane Ross, Elle Young, Mike Dyl Anthony, Olivia D. Dawson, Shante DeLoach, Tiyanna Taplin, Jerome Beazer (last seen in "Senior Year"), Lance Avery Brown, Verlenzo Hawk, Mike Ray, Fatima Garba

RATING: 4 out of 10 donuts in the parking lot

Atlas

Year 18, Day 110 - 4/20/26 - Movie #5,308

BEFORE: Back to work, I've got a screening tonight of a documentary about the pollution from microplastics and what effect that might be having on humans' bodies. You know, more end-of-the-world stuff, so that might be right in line with today's film which is set in the future, but is more about A.I. taking over the planet. I guess we all agree that human society is doomed, but we're not settled on the how or the when of it all. 

Simu Liu carries over from "In Your Dreams". 

THE PLOT: In a bleak future, an A.I. soldier has determined that the only way to end war is to end humanity. 

AFTER: It's almost like a variation on "I Am Mother", or perhaps it's the other way around - but clearly we're all concerned about the future where the robots take over. A.I. is the big villain right now in a lot of movies, it's a sign of the times because it's already taken over in the classrooms and the social media, so it's only a matter of time before it takes control of the entire film production process, then once it can influence the hearts and minds of the people and every writer in Hollywood can't find work, from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump over to controlling the elections, rounding up the humans into camps and starting the nasty business of eliminating us all. I mean, there will be no jobs for us anyway and no TV shows or movies we like, so really, what's the point of living in that future anyway? 

I kid, of course, but in every joke there is an element of truthiness. We're collectively terrified about A.I. right now, so that's going to be reflected in the movies people write and in the ones that we watch. But I think maybe we're in trouble in the future if A.I. takes over and the only possible person who can fix things and save the Earth is... Jennifer Lopez? Jesus, really? I mean, I know she was in exactly ONE action movie before (OK, two, "Out of Sight" and "The Mother", but come on, was Halle Berry not available? Sandra Bullock?) still I can't help but feel she was horribly out of place here. 

There's a back-story that kind of explains her character's history with A.I., it seems that Harlan, the evil A.I. trying to destroy the Earth, was invented by her mother, and it was built into the robot body that resembled a middle-aged Asian man, and young Atlas used to play chess with it, it was kind of a robot companion mixed with a surrogate father figure for her. Kind of reading between the lines here, because this movie is terrible at telling us how people feel, we're just kind of left with what they do. Anyway Harlan convinced Atlas to connect to him via a neural interface, and this was a terrible mistake, it somehow made him evil or it gave him insight to the human condition and convinced him that humanity had a history of destructive behavior. (He learned all this from a 12-year old girl's mind? How messed up was she?). Harlan's response to finding out that humanity was basically insane (again, this based on just one interface with a pre-teen girl, so yeah, that tracks) was to control Atlas's mother's body and make her commit suicide. Then he set his sights on the rest of humanity, because he had concluded that because humanity was so self-destructive, most of it needed to be destroyed so that it could not destroy itself. Yeah, there's a flaw in that logic somewhere - but at least his plan was to allow a few humans to live and thrive, with A.I. in charge of the world, of course. 

So, after leading the robot revolution/machine uprising in 2043, and humanity fighting back against Harlan, the Coalition of Nations forced him to flee into outer space. Atlas Shepherd then spent the next twenty-eight years of her life becoming an A.I. expert and military analyst, and working on defense mechanisms that would keep the Earth safe, in case Harlan ever returned. What's weird is that he didn't just leave the planet, he left the whole galaxy, and escaped to a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. Yeah, I have to call a big NITPICK POINT here, because another galaxy would be super far, far away, there's no chance any human or android could travel there within one lifetime. The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away, so traveling there at the speed of light, which is impossible, would still take 2.537 million years. Unless Earth developed some kind of faster-than-light travel, which our science tells us is beyond impossible, he could never get there as fast as this movie suggests. 

Nevertheless, 28 years later (which is a lot less than 2.5 million years) Atlas captures a hostile robot which was one of Harlan's subordinates, and learns his location and his plans to return and attack Earth. So she joins a mission to that other planet in that other galaxy and they all travel there somehow (again, impossible) only to find that Harlan set a trap for them. Drones attack the ship in orbit around the planet, the ICN Rangers try to get into their ARC mecha-suits, but most of them die either in the crash of the ship or inside the ARC suits as they descend to the planet. Atlas is forced into an ARC suit by Colonel Banks, the mission commander, and she is one of the few people to survive the crash, only the ARC mech suit is controlled by A.I., and she refuses to interface with the suit via a neural interface, only later do we find out WHY, because of her bad experience in the past, millions of people ended up dying after she interfaced with Harlan and that turned him evil somehow. 

(These ARC suits are kind of like the armored things worn by Earth soldiers in the "Avatar" movie, meaning this whole film is a mash-up of "Avatar", "I Am Mother" and maybe a bit of "Pacific Rim")

Traveling across the alien landscape in the ARC suit, trying to remain below Harlan's radar, Atlas does end up bonding with the A.I. in the suit, and because she's injured and the A.I. doesn't think strategically like a human, they do need each other to survive on the alien world. Harlan is planning to steal the ship that the Rangers took to get to his planet, fix it and fill it with bombs and then send it back to blow up Earth, he just needs the security codes from either the injured Colonel Banks or from Atlas herself. So, naturally Atlas is heading straight toward his base, practically delivering him the last piece of the puzzle he needs to destroy humanity. So, umm, maybe DON'T go there and give him what he wants? Just a thought. 

But by this point, Atlas trusts the A.I. in her armor enough to get over her bad break-up with Harlan, and is finally willing to interface with it. Now together they've got the thinking capacity of an A.I. unit, plus the tricky strategy of a human, and Atlas also manages to upgrade the ARC mecha-suit with parts from other destroyed ARCs, so physically they'll have a chance against Harlan's robot army. And they do manage to blow up the ship full of bombs before it can launch toward Earth, but then they've got to face Harlan in hand-to-hand combat. It's possible that one or both of them won't survive the final battle. 

I kind of wish that the living human didn't have to bond with A.I. in order to destroy A.I. - like how are we supposed to distinguish the good A.I. from the bad A.I. when we don't quite understand what turned the bad A.I. bad? How do we know this won't happen again, even after the good A.I. helps destroy the bad A.I., what's to keep it from turning bad itself, a few years down the road. Look what happened to the last A.I. that interfaced with teenage J. Lo, it went completely crazy, and maybe we can understand that. But now the one that calls itself Smith has bonded with the adult J. Lo, and that's probably enough to drive Smith crazy, too. J. Lo doesn't exactly have a great track record with long relationships, just saying. Marc Anthony, Cris Judd, Ben Affleck, Alex Rodriguez and even Sean "Diddy" Combs, at some point they all decided they desperately needed to be somewhere else, and this Smith A.I. will probably come to the same conclusion. 

Directed by Brad Peyton (director of "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" and "Rampage")

Also starring Jennifer Lopez (last seen in "Angel Eyes"), Sterling K. Brown (last seen in "American Fiction"), Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola (last seen in "The Marvels"), Lana Parrilla, Mark Strong (last seen in "6 Days"), Briella Guiza (last seen in "Ambulance"), Adia Smith-Eriksson, Logan Hunt, Jared Shimabukuro, Ashley J. Hicks, Paul Ganus (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Zoe Boyle (last seen in "Living"), Howland Wilson, Justin Walker White (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Michelangelo Hyeon, Gloria Cole (last seen in "Nope"), Lesley Fera, Tom Knight, Samantha Hanratty (last heard in "A Christmas Carol" (2009)), Geoffrey Hinton, Vaughn Johseph (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Supreet Bedi, Lorraine Tai (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Greg McKenzie (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), Harj Dhillon, James Millard, Omar Khan, Jessica Holmes. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 chess pieces

In Your Dreams

Year 18, Day 109 - 4/19/26 - Movie #5,307

BEFORE: Craig Robinson carries over from "The Bad Guys 2" and so does one other actor. Plus I've landed another Birthday SHOUT-out, this one's going out to Simu Liu, born April 19, 1989. Happy Birthday, Shang-Chi!

THE PLOT: Stevie and her little brother Elliot journey into the wildly absurd landscape of their own dreams to ask the Sandman to grant them the perfect family. 

AFTER: A couple weeks ago we screened "GOAT" at the theater, as it was directed by one of the college's alumni, and I got into a conversation with him, because I used to have a hand in making animated features. When discussing the film with my co-worker, I said it seemed like a mix of "Zootopia" and "Space Jam", and she said that I was probably spot-on with that analysis. In the same vein, tonight's film reminds me of a mix of "Inside Out" plus "Slumberland" plus a bit of "Wish" and I think I'm right on the money once again. Studio executives pay attention to what works in the marketplace, and then they try to copy elements from those movies when they make new ones. There's no secret formula and there are no guarantees, but you can look at what worked in other movies and try to have some of those elements in your upcoming film. 

Still, despite having seen other films that take place in the dream-world, this still feels fairly inventive, because this dream-world has specific rules, which a pre-teen girl and her younger brother stumble upon after finding a book in the basement of a thrift store. There's no real explanation where the book comes from, it looks like maybe that crate belonged to a magician or something, but then why would a magician have a book about how to enter the dream-world or petition the lord of that world to help make your dreams come true?  There's no way to use dreams in a magic act, unless the magician was using hypnosis or something, and that still doesn't seem to fit. Maybe the guy just studied weird rituals or something, and wishing on a star seems like a weird ritual, or falling asleep and trying to control your dreams could be another one. 

Anyway, what is very attractive about the book's contents are the instructions to call out to the Sandman, who lives in the Dream World, and supposedly if you can find him there and reach him then he will grant your wish, or more accurately, he will make your dreams come true. Yes, stop and think about how those could be two differen things. You might want SOME of your dreams to come true, but maybe think carefully about agreeing to ALL of your dreams manifesting themselves in the real world. Since getting this cold I've been subject to all kinds of fever dreams, some where you try to accomplish a task in your dream, something very simple like getting on a bus and going somewhere, or just finding a file on your computer, and you can't do it but keep trying it again and again in your dream, because you're locked in. 

Kids have different dreams than adults do, I suppose, so Stevie's dream is for her parents to stay together and stop fighting about the future of the family. Stevie's mother, Joanne, wants to interview for a teaching position in Duluth which would pay pretty well, but she'd have to live there, so getting that job would mean moving the family or breaking up the family, and her dad, Michael, doesn't want to move, he wants to stay in Duluth and keep trying to chase his dream of leading a great local band, though that doesn't pay very well or at all. Well, you know, times are tough and raising kids is probably expensive so I'm kind of with Joanne on this one. Stevie's wish is that her parents won't divorce and they can kind of keep the family together somehow and maybe even fall in love again, so things can be like they once were. 

The kids (who share a bedroom, which is another argument for moving to a bigger house, so the kids can each have their own room) speak the magic words in the book, and this allows them to enter the dream world together, control (to some extent) what happens in the dream, and then remember vividly what happened in the dream. On their first trip to dream-world Elliot's bed flies them around, they ascend into the sky and learn that's where the Sandman lives, but they'd have to travel further next time to find him, and also there is Nightmara, Queen of Nightmares, who is set on NOT allowing them to reach the Sandman, she confronts both kids with nightmarish scenarios that cause them to wake up, which cuts their journey short and forces them to start over, again and again. But they do meet Baloney Tony, a moving, talking version of Elliot's favorite stuffed animal, a giraffe that smells like old bologna (because Elliot stored cold cuts in his pockets) and Tony reveals that Stevie stashed him behind the refrigerator in the real world, which turns out to be true. 

So the kids have to train themselves to NOT be scared by what they encounter in the dream-world, facing their nightmares is enough to stay in the dream-world, and after traveling through some bizarre places, like Breakfast Town, which are apparently places they've dreamed about, they do reach the Sandman, who offers to make their dream a reality, once they turn a sand-filled hourglass over, and when the last grain of sand falls, Stevie's dream of parents who love each other again will be incorporated into reality. However, Stevie learns quickly that this "dream" scenario is one where her brother never existed, and also her fantasy is a bit too "perfect" in that her parents don't have free will, and also she can't escape from it, meanwhile her body is comatose in the real world. 

The "lucid dreaming" power only worked, however, when the siblings joined hands, and without Elliot in the fantasy (which is soon to become reality) Stevie has no control over the dream. Stevie is determined to wake his sister up, though, so he forces himself back to sleep so he can team up with Nightmara, who isn't so much of a villain, but rather a mentor who scares kids with intent, allowing them to see small terrible scenarios at night so they'll be better able to face their real-life problems and then try to solve them or deal with them. The parents also get involved, after finding the book with the instructions on how to enter the dream-world, they join in to help defeat the Sandman and preserve the imperfect, uncertain reality over the "perfect" but unchangeable substitute one. 

And Stevie, the control freak, learns the lesson that life will always be a little bit chaotic, especially with her brother around, and the family that united to defeat the Sandman is maybe a little closer together after working as a unit toward a common goal. Her parents still have issues to work out, but they're trying to do that, and Michael agrees to move to Duluth because it's what's best for the family. The future isn't going to be easy, but hey, nothing is, and that's maybe an OK lesson to send out to the kids in the audience. 

Directed by Erik Benson (writer of "The Good Dinosaur") and Alexander Woo

Also starring the voices of Jolie Hoang-Rappaport (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Elias Janssen, Simu Liu (last seen in "Jackpot!"), Cristin Milioti (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Omid Djalili (also carrying over from "The Bad Guys 2"), Gia Carides (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Erik Benson, Zachary Noah Piser, Bob Bergen (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Maisie Benson, Jorge Diaz (last seen in "Other People"), Quinn Minichino Eakins, Lizzie Freeman, Kellen Goff, Scott Menville (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), SungWon Cho, Alex Cazares, Reese Warren, Hailey Magpali, Kai Zen (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Francis Benson, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 teeth falling out of your mouth (it's a fairly common dream, apparently)

The Bad Guys 2

Year 18, Day 108 - 4/18/26 - Movie #5,306

BEFORE: OK, so the Springsteen film was a "big" film, and then "Sword of Trust" was kind of a little dud. So tonight's film needs to be big, right? Look, I'm not saying "Sword of Trust" was burned toast, not exactly, but it wasn't great. Now I have to move on and try to figure out if there was a purpose to burning the toast, if that's what I did. I think Springsteen would approve of the concept, as he sang in "Hungry Heart" - "Like a river that don't know where it's going, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." That's a songwriter who burned a lot of toast, if you know what I mean - anyway, I'm going to keep going, the chain is still active even if the films aren't all bangers. 

Marc Maron carries over again from "Sword of Trust". Maron's third film of the year is also Craig Robinson's and Omid Djalili's third film this year, so they'll all make the year-end countdown, and Paul Walter Hauser, who may come back for a fourth film if I can swing it, qualified by appearing in "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere". Nobody's close to de-throning Jason Statham, though, I'm fine with that, the man works very hard.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bad Guys" (Movie #4,166)

THE PLOT: The Bad Guys are struggling to find trust and acceptance in their newly minted lived as Good Guys, when they are pulled out of retirement and forced to do "one last job" by an all-female squad of criminals. 

AFTER: They can make four or five of ten of these "Bad Guys" films, as far as I'm concerned, I know there could be franchise burn-out at some point, as with the "Ice Age" and "Shrek" and "Toy Story" movies, but at least with "Toy Story" they make a point of adding a bunch of new characters for each sequel, and that's the path that "Bad Guys" is on, so OK, by all means, let's make more. I've got "Zootopia 2" on the books and coming up in May, that will kind of be the pivot film that pushes us in the direction of Mothers Day, if that makes sense. Look, I'll admit some of the May films, I'm not sure yet HOW I'm going to watch them, but if necessary I can drop the ones that aren't streaming and I've got a way to fill in the gap with 2, 4 or 6 movies if necessary. 

But let's deal with "Bad Guys 2" first, what great timing to have a bunch of characters stealing a rocket ship and going to space, since we just all watched the first moon mission in a long time take place. Sure, this movie came out in July 2025, and the filmmakers probably weren't thinking that far ahead, but I watched it now, post-Artemis, so to me, the timing is spot on. The scheme is that somebody is collecting this rare metal that when electrified, can act as a magnet for gold, so with the rocket in orbit, the gang can steal all of the world's gold at once, and this probably seems like a genius idea IF you are a kid, the kind of kid who wants to take over the world someday. OK, but I've got a couple of NITPICK POINTS here. If you're going to steal gold, which is on the Earth, held down by gravity, does it make sense to go into orbit to steal the gold? I mean, if you want to rob money, you go to the bank, where the money is. Why go to space, where the gold is NOT, in order to steal it? Even if you had a magnet that was powerful enough to draw gold from earth to the space station, how far is that, and how much time would it take? It takes hours for a rocket to get to orbit, but it's traveling fast, like, umm, like a rocket. Loose gold would not be rocket-powered, so even if you could exert enough magnetic force on it to counter Earth's gravity, it's going to take a lot of TIME to travel up to space station. Of course, this is a movie, so it takes only a few seconds for the gold to roll in, which is misleading and impossible. 

I don't want to say too much about how the film ends, but there are a few fake-outs and our heroes don't end up with the gold, but who does? According to the film's Wikipedia page, once the magnet is destroyed, the gold is "returned", but would it be? Once something's in orbit around the Earth, doesn't it kind of stay there, assuming it's at the point of balance where its high-speed momentum is countered by the constant downward pull of gravity. In other words, a satellite or space station is in a constant state of "falling", however it's moving forward fast enough that it doesn't fall to earth, the earth is round (I swear) so the Earth kind of moves out from under it as it goes by, therefore a constant (more or less) distance from the planet is maintained. Like imagine throwing a baseball, it falls to earth in a matter of feet, while a cannonball can maybe go a few miles before gravity pulls it down, but a space shuttle or a rocket can travel fast enough that it stays in orbit and won't fall down until you change its course. 

Anyway, even if that gold all DID fall to Earth, it would probably be extremely dangerous, the heat of re-entry might even melt it, so yeah, hot liquid gold falling from the sky, what could possibly go wrong there? Plus nobody would get their own gold back, because what are the odds, if you're lucky enough to have hot molten gold fall on you, it would probably be somebody else's, like who has the time to sift through thousands of pieces of gold and figure out who should get which ones back? Umm, yeah, I lost three candelabras and four gold bars in that heist from orbit, so please put me down to get an equal amount of gold back, OK? I'm sure whoever finds that much gold will turn it in - like there's a guy who comes into the theater every few weeks and reports that he lost $50 at a screening, just in case we find some money after cleaning the theater, I guess. 

Anyway, a lot of the other things in this film are rather complicated and unbelievable, more so than your average cartoon, maybe, but so what? It's an animated film so you can make whatever impossible thing you want happen. Remember in "Despicable Me" when Gru stole the moon? Yeah, it's kind of like that - swing for the fences, because why not? If you can think it then somebody can draw it or make a computer pixellate it, there really should be no limits in the storytelling. It should be fun at some point to see what unhinged things A.I. software starts coming up with when they fire all the writers in Hollywood and turn the whole process of making kiddie films over to computer-generated stories. Yeah, there were more layoffs at Disney/Marvel this week, so that's what's happening, human input will soon no longer be required. 

The overarching storyline is that the Bad Guys reformed at the end of the previous film, Wolf got into a situationship with the Governor, who was a secret high-tech thief herself, maybe having stolen the election or something. They're hurting for money, however, because Wolf can't get hired at the banks he robbed and Tarantula has a huge gap in her resumé where she was doing crime stuff. When a series of crimes are committed by the Phantom Bandit, the public assumes that the Bad Guys are behind them, so Wolf offers his team's services to the Commissioner, if they can deduce the identity of the Phantom Bandit, they can put "police consultant" on their job record and maybe that will lead to something. What could possibly go wrong? 

The clues seem to point to Snake, the one member of the Bad Guys who didn't help solve the recent crimes and who has been very happy lately, for some reason. He's even planning to attend the wrestling event which has been determined to be the site of the next heist, as the championship belt is made for that same mystery metal, MacGuffinite (the name is an inside joke for film fans, sure).  But even though the Phantom Bandit was there disguised as a wrestler, the crowd only saw the Bad Guys running off with the belt. They're rescued by Snake's new girlfriend driving a getaway van, but it's all a dodge to get the old Bad Guys working with a new team of female criminals, led by a snow leopard. 

Kitty Kat has footage of Diane Foxington, the governor, doing crimes as the Crimson Paw, so she uses that to blackmail the Bad Guys to help steal the rocket, if they don't, she'll upload the footage to the dreaded internet and that would end Diane's political career. Umm, somebody didn't get the memo, politicians can do crimes now as long as they don't get caught, or even if they do, they can just threaten to sue the press for slander and they'll probably win so who even cares any more if our government is completely corrupt? Oh, right, this is for kids so maybe we can wait a few more years before we shatter their dreams of a fair and just political system in America. 

Somehow, the Bad Guys catch up with the launched rocket by using a helicopter (NITPICK POINT #2, that's got to be impossible) and everybody ends up in space for the final heist of the Earth's gold, as I mentioned before. Meanwhile Professor Marmalade (who was imprisoned, but then met with Diane in a sort-of parody of "Silence of the Lambs" where they played Connect Four) got his crimes acquitted, I guess because he gave up Kitty Kat, only he had the bad luck to step inside his gold limousine just before all the gold on the planet got sucked in to orbit. Hey, I just thought of NITPICK POINT #3, you could really only steal the gold from half of Earth at one time, again because the Earth is round and even though the space station completes an orbit every 90 minutes, it's only 250 miles high, so it can only see part of the earth (much less than half) at any given time. 

Well, apart from giving kids some very wrong information about how rockets and space stations work, this was a pretty entertaining film. Since it's set in a fantasy world where perhaps different rules apply, and there are humans interacting with talking animals and that doesn't really weird to anybody, we may have to let a few things go and perhaps grade on a curve. Apparently this film was going to be released in spring of 2026, but then production was rushed to get out ahead of "Zootopia 2", so yeah, maybe they cut a few corners here and there. 

Directed by Pierre Perifel (director of "The Bad Guys") and JP Sans 

Also starring the voices of Sam Rockwell (last heard in "IF"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Daddy's Little Girls"), Awkwafina (last seen in "Renfield"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Danielle Brooks (last seen in "A Minecraft Movie"), Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"), Maria Bakalova (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Alex Borstein (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Lilly Singh (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Omid Djalili (last seen in "Love Again"), Colin Jost (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Jaime Camil (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Hugo Savinovich, Michael Godere (also last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Kelly Stables (last seen in "The Ring Two"), William Calvert (last heard in "Haunted Mansion"), Arthur Ortiz, Jason Griffith, Shelby Young (last heard in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Bridget Hoffman, Christopher Knights (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Ashley Lambert, Jorge R. Gutierrez (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Ashley London, Juan Pacheco, David Michie, R.B. Ripley, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 tranquilizer darts

Sword of Trust

Year 18, Day 107 - 4/17/26 - Movie #5,305

BEFORE: I would say that April so far has been a little "hit or miss" and that's really been by design. In trying to link these big hit movies, I've relied on little indie films that fly a bit below the radar, that's just the way this linking thing works. So it's big blockbuster, then sleeper hit, then another big blockbuster, then another sleeper. This is WHY the sleepers are on the list, I need mortar to link the bricks together, that's how you build a wall. Otherwise you just have bricks stacked together and there's no structural integrity, the whole thing's going to fall apart. The upside is that I end up watching a lot of films that I might otherwise never have paid attention to, and the whole thing "works" if I say it does, and I put in the effort to build chains, let's say 9 or 10 chains make up a Movie Year, and Christmas will be here before you know it.

I'm just surprised that I've been able to get to certain films that have spent maybe two or three years on the someday/maybe list - "iBoy", "Southside with You", "Society of the Snow", "Walt Before Mickey", "The Saint of Second Chances", "Roger Dodger", "The House of Mirth", "Wicker Park", and "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul" - I had deemed all of these impossible to link to, at one point or another, and usually adding more movies to the watchlist, to replace what's been watched, has been the solution to the puzzle. Maybe nothing is unlinkable this year, it just takes time, effort and more movies. The average cast size is WAY down this year, some movies, like today's, have had 25 people or less in the cast, and one movie only had THREE actors. 

Marc Maron carries over from "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere". 

THE PLOT: Cynthia and Mary collect inheritance from Cynthia's deceased grandfather, and the item she receives is an antique sword that was believed to be proof that the South won the Civil War.

AFTER: Well, after all that - after putting this film on my watchlist and then forgetting about it for a couple years, then working so hard to schedule it, in between the bigger films, and then, you know, actually watching it, I really wish it had been a better film. It's kind of mercifully short, coming in at just 88 minutes, but honestly there's only about FIVE minutes worth of story, and the rest is just filler - delays and awkward conversations. 

Really, seriously, almost nothing happens here - half of a lesbian couple inherits a sword, takes it to a pawn shop and tries to get more than it's worth, based on this legend that somehow it "proves" that the South won the Civil War.  Then the pawn-shop owner finds videos on YouTube about collectors who value this sort of artifact, and the lesbian couple, the pawn-shop owner and his employee are all taken in a windowless van to the compound of some die-hard southern good old boys, and sure, there might have been some danger there, but it's minimized very quickly, I won't say any more about the plot twists, but trust me, there's not much there for me to conceal. 

The filmmaker didn't do everything wrong, she did quite a few things right, like she cast Marc Maron as the pawn-shop owner, and casting Marc Maron is almost always a very good idea. I like him in every movie I've seen him in, I've watched all of his stand-up specials, too. Nobody is better than contrasting the little joys and absurdities in life with the very dark tragic moments and the responses that we have to them in order to survive. It's through those stand-up specials that I know that the director here, Lynn Shelton, had a relationship with Maron after casting him in this movie, and they were quite happy together until she died suddenly from myeloid leukemia. Again, that's terrible but we're also balancing the good and the bad here, it's great to be in a relationship with someone until it isn't. 

The other thing this film does right is make fun of Southern people, especially those rednecks who are more than willing to believe that the South won the Civil War, or Trump was robbed in the 2020 election. Yeah, I'm betting it's the same people, prove me wrong. As a side note it also makes fun of people who believe the Earth is flat and can't be convinced otherwise. But that's about it for the good things the film does, the rest of the film doesn't really go anywhere - it can't even keep the alternate story about the South winning straight, because the story was written down by a senile old man the names keep changing or are uncertain, and the same goes for all the other details. Still, some people are going to believe what they want to believe, however I shouldn't have to waste my time hearing about it. 

I'm just grasping at straws, trying to figure out what the point of this little exercise was, and I'm coming up empty. OK, well, at least I got it off my list, and I've opened up another slot on the someday/maybe list, I guess for tonight that's going to have to be enough. 

Directed by Lynn Shelton (director of "Outside In" and "Your Sister's Sister")

Also starring Jon Bass (last seen in "Baywatch"), Michaela Watkins (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Jillian Bell (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Nutcrackers"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "The Starling"), Lynn Shelton (last heard in "Prince Avalanche"), Whitmer Thomas, Tim Paul, Benjamin Keepers, Al Elliott, Michael Patrick O'Brien (last seen in "Booksmart"), Scotty Lee, Robert Longstreet (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Elise Mayfield, Prasanna Avadhanula, Tilcia Furman, Patierra Knight, Blake Funderburke, Joshua Alford, Brian Bremer, T'Darius Murphy, John Winscher (last seen in "The Out-Laws")

RATING: 4 out of 10 "truther" videos

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Year 18, Day 106 - 4/16/26 - Movie #5,304

BEFORE: We're still on the path to Mother's Day, I'm just going to tweak things along the way, just to make sure everything works out. I was out all day yesterday, working - yes, the shift started at 7:30 am and I didn't really understand what the presentation was, something about preserving the homes and studios of American artists, but I don't always have to connect with all of the presentations, it's more important that I supervise the screening and the reception and make sure that all goes well. I got home at 8:30 pm, took an hour nap, we watched "America's Culinary Cup" and then I watched "Survivor", because Wednesday is the BIGGEST night in TV right now, and then I had to post yesterday's blog entry and only THEN could I start today's movie. I'm still very behind on my sleep, but I need MORE sleep, not less, to shake this damn cold. 

Well, Paul Walter Hauser seems like he's everywhere these days, doesn't he? He's in the "Naked Gun" reboot, he's in the "Press Your Luck" movie, and he's here in the Springsteen bio-pic. I even dropped one movie with him that COULD have gone here, and I did that because it seems to be a comedy about fathers, and it's very link-able, so I've got a good chance of working it back in come June, which would be seasonally appropriate. OK, so there's a chance that I won't be able to do that, but what would be even worse would be watching it HERE and then needing it for linking THERE. Right? 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "A Complete Unknown" (Movie #5,051) and "Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band" (Movie #5,074)

THE PLOT: Bruce Springsteen's journey crafting his 1982 album "Nebraska", which emerged as he was recording "Born in the USA" with the E Street Band.

AFTER: Damn it, this one could have made a good Father's Day movie, too - but I just didn't know that going in. There's a bunch of stuff about Bruce's relationship with his father, who was something of an abusive bully when Bruce was a young boy, also his father drank a lot and was one of those old-school tough guys from the 1950's, and well, it was a different time. The majority of those fathers from that generation were raised a certain way, not to be "weak" for, you know, the sake of America, and they worked in factories and they all drank and smoked and beat their wives. I'm generalizing here, but also I think this is true to some extent, how one generation impacts the next and real change and growth takes time. If this movie plus that one that I cut had ended up next to each other in June, I could have worked with that. 

It would be impossible to put the story of Springsteen's entire career into a movie, without it being fifteen hours long - geez, that "Road Diary" documentary was over two hours, and that was really just about the concerts. How do you take a forty-year career in music as one of the really really big acts and make that into a two-hour movie? You just can't, so you kind of have to pick a couple of weeks or a few months in the man's life and focus on that, hoping that by looking at the small, you can at least get a sense of the bigger thing. So here they picked a period when Bill had just come off of a big tour promoting "The River", a double-album, and he wanted to rent a house somewhere in New Jersey and just chill for a while, decompress, maybe focus on writing some more songs. But that proves to be problematic because 1 am invariably rolls around, and he can't sleep, so he heads down to the Stone Pony and sits in with whatever band is playing. Sure, that tracks. 

Bruce's parents moved to Los Angeles shortly before this - look, I don't understand that either, why would an older couple who lived their whole lives in New Jersey just pack up and retire to L.A., of all places? It doesn't make sense, unless they were trying to live near another one of their kids or something, but you know, I do have a bias against Los Angeles, so there's that. San Diego, sure, I could see moving there, but L.A. is a giant shit-hole, and I'm talking about Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Just me? But then Bruce's father disappears while Bruce is driving around New Jersey feeling all sentimental and moody about places he spent time with his parents, so he has to drop everything and fly to L.A. where he finds his father drinking in a Chinatown bar, and of course this is very triggering, it reminds Bruce of all the times his mother sent him in to some bar or diner to tell his father it was time to come home, knowing this could lead to a beating later on.

Yeah, nice try, the film almost got me with this one - poor Bruce Springsteen, who has to search all of Los Angeles to find the needle in a haystack that was his father. Any guess how many bars there are in the L.A. area? But not all of us have the resources to fly across the country after paying FULL PRICE for a plane ticket bought at the last minute, and he probably stayed at a very nice hotel and he didn't worry about the expenses involved in renting a car, driving across a giant city and checking out a couple hundred bars over the course of two or three days. He's still Bruce Springsteen, he had the money and time to do this, he had the resources that you or I would not have. If my father wandered off somewhere in North Carolina, I'd have to say, "Well, I hope he turns up soon, but maybe he won't..."  I mean, OF COURSE we would drive down there to look for him, but doing that would put a big strain on my finances.  Just saying. 

Really, the whole film is like that, they really tried to get me to feel sorry for Bruce Springsteen - he's coming off the road, he's tired, he just wants to decompress, he wants to write some very personal songs but he can't seem to find the time. BOO-fuckin'-HOO, you're a rock star, this is the life you chose, it's what you wanted. Springsteen's also going through that parental stuff, he's haunted by memories from his childhood, and he's having trouble committing to this woman he met who's the sister of a classmate, has a daughter and lives near Atlantic City or something. Well, Bruce, something's got to give, you can't have a committed relationship and spend time with Faye and her daughter if you have to tour, and write music, and play at the Stone Pony on Sunday nights with Southside Johnny. Also brooding, you have to maintain that very strict brooding schedule, so you know, there's bound to be some conflicts because there are only so many hours in the day. 

We were supposed to feel sorry for Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown" because he had to balance songwriting and appearing at the Newport Folk Festival with the relationships he was having with TWO women at the same time, only one of which was Joan Baez. Yeah, that film ALMOST got me, too, but again, at the end of the day, he's still mega-star Bob Dylan, he's having wild sex with (at least) two women simultaneously, and he's well on his way to mega-stardom, dozens of hit albums and eventually a Nobel prize. So I really didn't have much sympathy to spare for Dylan - like I'm sorry your life is so complicated right now/then, but that's really on you, you chose this life for yourself, and now you have to follow through and become what you always wanted to be. 

Really, we're back on "artist brain" because initially as a music star you just want to perform, you want to write a few songs because they have meaning to you, you want to meet other music stars and jam with them, you want to have a hit record, you want to be on TV or MTV and eventually maybe win some Grammys, have enough money to do whatever you want, and fame and glory and groupies and sex and drugs and fast cars (or motorcycles, whichever). Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, as they say, so maybe your personal life is going to be in the crapper for a while, and maybe you'll need therapy of some kind to sort everything out, but really, that all comes with the territory. 

The "artist brain" delusion kicks in once the record company doesn't agree with your vision, and you find yourself going to the mat because only YOU can see the potential in these songs, or in how they're recorded or mixed or edited, and if you're lucky, you've got producers or editors or sound mixers who share your vision, and if you're SUPER lucky, you get proven right and your work has meaning for fans and you form a connection with your fan base and it all works out. But surely there must be instances where music performers were WRONG and nobody else shares their vision for the small, intimate acoustic album or it does NOT connect with the fans and the album doesn't sell and the ride is over. I mean, the highway's jammed with broken heroes, right? 

What would have happened if they'd shelved "Nebraska" and the record company moved ahead with "Born in the USA" instead? "Born in the USA" was like the biggest album of 1984-85, so it was probably going to be a hit record no matter what, but who's to say? Maybe if it had come out two years earlier the pro-American Reagan-era zeitgeist would not have been ready for it, and perhaps it would have been a minor success instead of the cultural phenomenon that it was. This is the "Burned Toast" philosophy all over again - we look at a potentially bad thing that happened, Bruce fighting with the record company, Bruce in deep emotional turmoil while releasing a very personal acoustic album, a bad review of "Nebraska" from Rolling Stone, but maybe things worked out better because the toast got burned, and "Born in the USA" got a little extra polish and Courtney Cox was hired to be in one of the music videos, and Springsteen got married, divorced and married again. It seems like maybe things worked themselves out over time, but we'll never know what could (or couldn't) have been.

This is all still very fascinating to me - my favorite part of "A Complete Unknown" was watching the song "Like a Rolling Stone" come together in the studio, and I kind of like the little parts of the studio sessions we see here, but they're not as prominent, and also I just don't know enough about the "Nebraska" album and what that all means. This does kind of work as a primer, dumbing it all down for those of us who only know "Hungry Heart" and "Born to Run" and maybe "Rosalita", but all of this brooding and depression and psycho-babble only gets me so far. I'm going to go take a spin through Springsteen's Greatest Hits album and see if I gain any additional meaning to it all, after watching this film. But really I just have to take the events portrayed in this film and make my ruling based on that. 

There's so much more to Bruce Springsteen than can possibly be contained in one film, you could make three or four more films like this and not even come close to what happened to him over forty years plus. There's the early days, the formation of the E Street Band, the "Born to Run" era, the "Born in the USA" superstar era, winning the Oscar for "Streets of Philadelphia", the break-up of the band, the re-formation of the band, playing a Super Bowl, getting into the Rock Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors and then the Broadway years. And then there's all the activism and causes and political views, which have come to a head here in the disastrous Trump-fueled end times. I had a run-in earlier this week with a different rock star, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, because I worked an event at the theater where he was promoting the re-working of his song "Comfortably Numb" to accompany a short film all about support for Palestine and the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. As I usually say, how can you tell when a rock star has a cause they support? Don't worry, they'll let you know. 

I was just worried that the event would somehow be targeted by activists on the right, or worse, on the left. But thankfully nobody protested the event, we got Roger Waters in and out with no trouble, except for some over-eager autograph hounds. I cleaned out the green room afterwards and found a few bottles of wine, which could easily have come from the PR people, not Mr. Waters himself. Hey, he's a rock star, really there's nothing I could have found in the green room that would have shocked me. His reputation alone has kind of earned him the right to do whatever he wants (within reason, of course) and if he wants to re-work one of his songs to support a cause, of course, he can do that. I did not talk to the man, of course, really it was just enough to see him in person and hear him perform one song in my place of work, then I had to coordinate with the piano movers to get the baby grand off the stage and into their van without damaging the piano, the stage, or anyone or anything else. Mission accomplished - if Mr. Springsteen wants to come to the theater and support a cause and perform something, I would be happy to help out then, too.

If I had a NITPICK POINT tonight, it would be with the end of the film, where Bruce moves to Los Angeles and his friend Matty drives him there. Wow, that's a long way to go for a friend, but I guess if your friend is a rock star, you make the time and you put in the effort. But Bruce flies to Los Angeles when his father is missing, but when it's his own move, he makes his friend drive him? It's not like he had a moving van full of stuff, but still, that's a week's drive at least, plus there's hotel costs and sightseeing along the way, it must be nice when you can afford the cost and that much of your time. Along the way they stop at a Texas fair, and that sure didn't look like the Texas State Fair that I went to twice. If anything it looked like the stockyards in Fort Worth, BUT it was filmed in New Jersey, on a farm in Harding. To be fair, they never said it was supposed to be the big State Fair outside Dallas, it was meant to be the Archer County Fair, which probably would have been smaller, especially back in 1982. So it's fine, ignore my complaint. 

Directed by Scott Cooper (director of "Antlers" and "The Pale Blue Eye")

Also starring Jeremy Allen White (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Jeremy Strong (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Odessa Young (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Harrison Sloan Gilbertson (ditto), Gaby Hoffmann (last seen in "13"), Grace Gummer (last seen in "The Homesman"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Get a Job"), Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr., Jayne Houdyshell (last seen in "Little Women" (2019)), Jeff Adler (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Chris Jaymes (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Bartley Booz (last seen in "Babygirl"), Craig Geraghty (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Laura Sametz, Vienna Barrus, Vivienne Barrus, Arabella Olivia Clark, T. Ryder Smith (last seen in "Birth"), Clem Cheung (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Stephen Singer (last seen in "The Prince and Me"), Judah Sealy, Johnny Cannizzaro (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Brian Chase, Charlie Savage, Andrew Fisher, Mike Chiavaro, Pappy Faulkner, Lynn Adrianna Freedman (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Bailey Rae Allen, Ryan Bourque, Tom Konkle and the voice of Jimmy Iovine (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple") 

with archive footage of Jane Fonda (last seen in "Here"), Mark J. Goodman (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Robert Mitchum (last seen in "The Last Tycoon"), Martin Sheen (last seen in "Brats"), Sissy Spacek (last seen in "Music by John Williams"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 radio ads for Action Park