Dumb Money

Year 16, Day 123 - 5/2/24 - Movie #4,722

BEFORE: Well, originally this film was going to be the connection between "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer", or perhaps the other way around.  America Ferrera is the connection now, but there were at least three connections between this film and "Oppenheimer".  However I chose a different link out of that Best Picture winner, and I could only choose one.  This film, however, has just as many connections - really, like 15 paths spiral out in all directions, it may even offer me more possibilities than "Barbie" did.  But I just have to stay on the one that gets me to Mother's Day, which is now just 10 days away.  

I know, I know, nearly every film has a mother in it somewhere, so it's not much of a challenge, but in a week or so things are going to be extremely matriarchal around here. 

THE PLOT: David vs. Goliath tale about everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (the video-game store) into the world's hottest company. 

AFTER: Right now, we've got college kids protesting the Gaza War, and honestly, something feels a bit familiar about that. There are tent encampments in universities like Columbia, Berkeley, and even Harvard, and I'm sure the participants would draw an analogy between their protests and the anti-war movement back in the Vietnam War era.  But just a couple years ago there were the Black Lives Matter marches, and a few years before that there were the Occupy Wall Street sit-ins, which took place in the fall of 2011.  This was a protest against corporate greed, economic inequality, finance's influence over politics, and I'm guessing also it was a thing to do that was more fun than studying for finals. (So let me get this straight, you're upset that the government bailed out the banks?  Think for a second about how bad things would have been if they DIDN'T do that, the recession could have easily become the Great Depression II...)

Out of that Occupy movement came the desire to make it easier for people to buy stocks, and with the Robin Hood app, suddenly people didn't need to go to a broker or an investment advisor to buy stocks, they could just press a few buttons on their phone, just like you no longer need to go to a record store to buy music or a newsstand to buy a magazine, most likely there's an app for it now and unless you're a boomer, you can just do whatever it is on your phone.  OK, great, I'm all for it but nobody really saw what the possible effects could be once you threw social media into the mix, just like nobody really thought about what effect phone-based sports gambling would have on sports, and we're starting to see that now with the Shohei Ohtani betting scandal.  

The stock market is really just a form of gambling, after all, you buy a stock betting that it will go up in value, but there are other people betting that it will go down, so they're selling it short.  Apparently these are people who take joy in other people's misery, but this is a very legal thing to do somehow.  Once Keith Gill, a financial analyst in Brockton, MA, researched the GameStop company and considered that to be a very undervalued stock that Wall Street was selling short, he made YouTube videos telling other people about it, and to prove he was right, he started buying up the stock with his own money, and wouldn't you know, when the word spread, the stock started going up. It's based on simple supply and demand, of course, because buying more makes the stock more popular, and then more people buy it, which makes it go up more, and wait a second, this sounds a lot like the Winfall lottery seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large", doesn't it?  When the PowerBall jackpot goes over a certain amount then the news starts reporting on it, which makes the jackpot get bigger faster.  

The power of the common man buying the stock en masse, at a time when the larger investment companies were betting against it, meant that a lot of individuals got rich (on paper) very quickly, and a couple of investment capital companies lost billions just as fast.  "Dumb Money" is a term for the investors who don't really know what they're doing, just buying stocks at random and not knowing when to get out, but come on, who really knows when any bubble is about to burst?  And these people were believers, or else they would have sold when they doubled or tripled or quadrupled their investment, but no, they were in for the long haul because they all wanted to see just how much money they could make.  This is the allure of gambling, you'll keep playing as long as you're winning, or as long as you THINK you will continue winning, and often you won't. "Let it ride" only works for a short period of time, but nobody knows just how long that will be, so the "Smart Money" sells first and cashes out when they're ahead, I guess. 

Keith Gill was then seen as a genius, however the subReddit promoting the stock got shut down for "vulgar content" - show me the subReddit that doesn't have that - and also Robin Hood closed down trading on that one stock because the company realized they didn't have enough money to cover the cash-outs if the investors suddenly started panic selling.  Sure, it's "buy low, sell high", but nobody tells you what constitutes "high", so really, everyone has to take a guess and they're all blind people stumbling around in a dark room at that point.  I think that's how it kind of went down, though I thought maybe there were a few more twists and turns to this story. Congress did a whole investigation into how everything went down and ended up pressing no charges, because, well, you know, that's kind of their thing, doing nothing. 

It's hardly a happy ending, but some people did get rich by selling their stock and others less so because they held on to their GameStop stock a little too long, but I know something about that. I had some stock in Marvel Comics years ago when it went public, I spent what I could spare, which was about a thousand bucks, and for a few years I got to go to their stockholders meetings and get Stan Lee's autograph on their stock report (which was in the format of a comic book) and somebody could really do a documentary on what went wrong after that, they bought a trading card company (Topps) so they could make their own trading cards, a toy company (Toy Biz) so they could make their own toys, and a sticker company so they could make their own stickers with their characters. They thought they were setting themselves up for success, but then they had so much debt they had to file for bankruptcy - and my shares were nearly worthless, I could have traded them in for shares in the new, reorganized company but that would have required paying in MORE money and I didn't want to throw good money after bad.  I bought some shares in Disney after that, and Disney later bought Marvel, so I guess I'm still invested in comic books, I'm just not in the mood to risk any more of my money on this, I'd rather just keep it in the bank. 

The capital investment firms that bet against GameStop shut down, and Robinhood never bounced back from the bad publicity of this incident, so I guess that's progress?  I still really don't understand enough about how the stock market works, which just isn't going to change after watching a movie like this or "Fair Play".  But I guess now the big corporations keep an eye on the internet to see what people are saying on social media, to keep all this from happening again?  Really, I think the smartest guy in the whole film was the GameStop clerk who made a bundle and sold half of it, giving himself a nice little cushion but also sticking with the stock for the long haul - that's really a win win, I think, and that's food for thought.  Also he was able to tell his GameStop supervisor to shove it, and that's worth something even more valuable. 

NITPICK POINT: Why does the movie spend five minutes on Gill getting razzed for what beer he wants to order?  Why does his friend insist on him ordering a Heineken instead of the craft beer he likes?  It's true that what beer you drink says something about you, but any friend that takes issue with your beer choice is not really your friend.  Two friends drinking together is a sacred moment, and this is a free country, and anybody can order any beer they want, god damn it.  Either way, it shouldn't be a 5-minute argument unless the film really is running short and they needed to waste some time.  There are quicker ways to show that Briggsy is an a-hole. 

Also starring Paul Dano (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Pete Davidson (last seen in "The Dirt"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Myha'la, Nick Offerman (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Anthony Ramos (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Talia Ryder (last seen in "West Side Story" (2021)), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "The 355"), Shailene Woodley (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Kate Burton (last seen in "Swimfan"), Clancy Brown (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Rushi Kota, Larry Owens, Dane DeHaan (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Olivia Thirlby (ditto), Deniz Akdeniz (last seen in "The High Note"), David Faber (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Noel Tyler Torres, Nicolas Calero, Gerardo Rodriguez, Rosalie Berrido, Denis Ooi, Christina Brucato (last seen in "The Menu"), Brian David Tracy, Tim Hayes, Kristin Carey (last seen in "Hall Pass"), A.J. Tannen (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Ryan Hansinger, Sal Rendino, Ryan Matthew White, Teddy Day, Marcus Briddell, Damien Jimenez, 

with archive footage of Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Jim Cramer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Jen Psaki, Maxine Waters. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 Doordash deliveries

Barbie

Year 16, Day 122 - 5/1/24 - Movie #4,721

BEFORE: OK, I'm not really looking forward to this one, it's just not my thing.  But here's my reasoning for watching it - whatever my impressions are about it, it's STILL a film that was nominated for Best Picture, so it's culturally significant, perhaps, at least to somebody, just not me. There must be SOMETHING there, right?  It can't just all be a big goof, right?  

Also, like many other films this year, I did work at a guild screening for this film at the theater, back in January, I think.  Maybe it was December. Let me check - ah yes, 12/14/23.  Greta Gerwig was there to speak after the film, and before the Q&A started I was standing outside in the lobby ready to cue the panelists to enter, so I was right between Greta Gerwig and Kathryn Bigelow, which was not a bad place to be. I wasn't able to watch the film that night, so here I go playing catch-up again. 

Also also, I recorded this on the DVR so I would really like to clear it off to make room for more movies that I will probably like more than this.  You will also note that I placed about a month's worth of films between "Oppenheimer" and this one, because I think the whole "BarbieHeimer" phenomenon was just completely ridiculous.  Many, many times two popular films have been released on the same day and we don't go creating cutesy couple-names for them, besides they appealed to completely different audiences and I didn't feel the need to watch either one right away.  I watched "Asteroid City" that week, a film that I enjoyed, possibly more than "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" put together.  So there you go, stick to what you know and what you think you might like, but don't shy away from watching a movie just because it's not your thing.  I'm willing to play hurt if I have to. 

For the linking, there were probably a dozen ways I could have linked to this film, as you'll see below. I could have arrived here from "Babylon", nah, too obvious, or from "American Fiction" but I was doing a whole "Black LIves Matter" thing that week, it wouldn't have worked. "You People", "Quiz Lady", even "Space Oddity" could have linked here, that's how big the "Barbie" cast is. Hell, I could have linked here from "Saltburn" or even "Jerry and Marge Go Large", from just a couple of days ago.  But as with "Oppenheimer", I didn't want the linking to be a throwaway, I would prefer that this movie gets me out of a linking jam, that's the best thing to do with big movies with big casts. 

So Helen Mirren carries over from "Teaching Mrs. Tingle", I really didn't have too many possible out-ros for that film, so let's assume I'm playing this right, and "Barbie" is absolutely vital here in connecting to Mother's Day in time.  And coming out of this film, I probably have just as many possible paths, I could name 10 or 12 movies that could fill tomorrow's slot, but I think I've got the best path to May 12, here are the links: America Ferrera, Dane DeHaan, David Cross, James Belushi, Cybill Shepherd, Pam Grier, Jacki Weaver, Dermot Mulroney, Zachary Gordon and Ty Panitz.  I may monkey with the order of films there at the end, because hopefully by then I'll also have the path to Father's Day, and I have to keep multiple options open right now. 

THE PLOT: Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land.  However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans. 

AFTER: Yeah, I'm definitely not in the target market for this movie, it's just too dumb across the board.  It's a silly story about dolls living in doll-land and then somehow visiting the "real world", so it's almost complete nonsense from start to finish - with one exception, I really dug the "2001" parody that kicked off the film, with little girls playing the cavemen and breaking their old-style toy dolls once they glimpsed the giant monolith that was Barbie-shaped.  That was clever, and it proved the point about Barbie being a breakthrough product that was unlike the dolls that had gone before, but to me the movie was all downhill from there.  I just dig the "2001" movie, maybe.

Is this a dumb movie that tries to make some smart points about feminism and gender equality, or is this really a smart movie that's acting like a dumb one so that people will watch it and be entertained and then maybe pick up on a couple salient issues that are being referenced?  Honestly, I don't know, but I think there was more dumb here than smart, more nutritionally non-recommended cotton candy than preferred meat and vegetables. I mean, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as they say, but too much sugar will just give you diabetes.  This is like 99% sugar that they want you to eat, snort and rub your teeth with after. 

Where the hell did this trend start, when every toy has to be a movie now?  Was it "The Lego Movie", which begat "The Playmobil Movie"?  Or was it the "G.I. Joe" franchise, or was it "Clue" before that?  Coming soon, "Monopoly: The Movie" and by god, I wish I were kidding.  It was "Toy Story", though, right?  With all the classic characters like Mr. Potato Head and the Slinky Dog and the army men as walking, talking characters, that movie hit us all right in the nostalgia nads and I don't think we've all recovered yet.  Unfortunately "Barbie" can't seem to decide if the doll itself is a good thing or a bad thing, because the screenwriters wanted to hit us with every piece of information or trivia about the dolls, good and bad.  WTF?  Sure, it's great that Barbie was created by a woman, who wanted to project the new reality of feminism, women getting jobs as doctors, lawyers, and eventually astronauts - and you have to DREAM all of those things before they can be manifested in the real world, so sure, it's great that little girls got to play with a doll that was something more than a wife and/or mother, so they could see all the possible things they could do as a career and prepare using imagination before they got there. 

But there's a dark side to Barbie too, and the movie brings up some of the related issues, God knows why - if this is a giant commercial for the doll, why bring up the unrealistic body dimensions that may have caused women to have unhealthy body expectations for themselves?  Why bring up the "misfit toy" versions of Barbie and Ken that missed the mark over the years, like the Barbie with a TV monitor in her back, or "Sugar Daddy Ken"?  Why point out all the inconsistencies in Ken and Barbie's backstories, living arrangements, and the fact that Ken doesn't seem to have a job other than "beach"?  Why present the measure of success in one's life as owning a Malibu Beach House and a sports car?  That lifestyle may not be the best for everyone, after all, and then if those girls grow up and become women who live in a one-bedroom apartment and drive a used car, aren't they going to feel, deep-down, like they failed somehow?  

Barbie's life in Barbie Land is close to perfect, every night is "girls night" and she has all her friends like Lawyer Barbie, Journalist Barbie, Writer Barbie, and there's President Barbie and nine Supreme Court Justice Barbies. (This is somehow exactly the world that conservatives think the liberals want, right?). But then suddenly Barbie starts worrying about mortalty, and somehow this gives her cellulite, bad breath and (worst of all?) FLAT FEET, where before her heels never touched the ground and that was perfect since she always wore high heels (Yeah, I'm gonna leave that one alone...).  A visit to "Weird Barbie" reveals that someone in the real world must be playing with this Barbie (aka "Stereotypical Barbie") and affecting her in this way, so she must travel to the Real World and find that child, or else the portal won't close and her life is only going to get worse.  Weird Barbie should know, because some little girl chopped off her hair, colored her face and made her do splits all the time, and now she's damaged goods.  Yeah, the messaging here is really odd, I think.

Barbie tracks down the girl who she thinks is the cause of her troubles, but it's actually that girl's mother, who works for Mattel and has been tinkering with new doll ideas, particularly a Barbie that has insecurities and an existential crisis.  These are dangerous concepts to introduce into Fantasy Barbie Land, but even worse comes along when Ken also gets a glimpse of the real Los Angeles, and draws the wrong conclusions about how the world is run by men (and horses) and therefore decides to bring the concept of the patriarchy back with him.  By the time that Barbie gets back to Barbie Land, the Kens are in charge and they're about to vote for a new Constitution that would make the change permanent, and all the Beach Houses are now Mojo Dojos and unless the Barbies rally together and find a way to prevent the Kens from voting, their glorious matriarchy will be gone forever.  

OK, there's another good germ of an idea here, because the importance of voting is a very good message for the film to have, especially with what's been going on in the U.S. with conservative men finding ways to outlaw abortion, and this was done by stacking the Supreme Court and also Congress, and sure, if this is an important issue then it can be addressed this November, provided enough people who think a certain way about things and how they should be show up at the polls and make their voices heard.  But the film undercuts its own message by having the women turn the men against each other, they flirt with all of them and provoke a war between the Kens on the beach, and the men are so distracted they forget to vote that day.  Ha ha, very funny, only not at all.  The message would have been stronger if the Barbies just voted in greater numbers then the Kens, instead of being just as sneaky as they were and voting without them.  It's kind of like how gerrymandering the voting districts to marginalize certain ethnic groups is a very very bad thing to do, unless you're in the party doing the redistricting - then it's perfectly fine, right?  Wrong, if it's bad for one party to do it, it should be bad for the other, too. 

There are Barbies of all colors, shapes and sizes here, which is also great - it's maybe a bit TOO P.C. though, like if the Barbie doll represents some kind of physical ideal then how do you explain the plus-size Barbies seen here, which I'm pretty sure do not exist in the Mattel line?  Don't get me wrong, I don't think skinniness should be mandated or larger women should be made to feel ashamed, but the movie just can't have it both ways.  And the one Barbie that we know is being played by a lesbian actress is "Weird Barbie"?  That doesn't feel right, are you saying that lesbians are weird, have weird haircuts and wear weird make-up?  You have to be careful with the stereotypes here, there's one Barbie played by a trans actress and I'm not really sure about the way she was portrayed either.  Baby steps on acceptance, I guess? I wonder how the trans community feels about this, representation is great but it's also got to hit the right tone.

Look, I'm all for women taking over society, I'd welcome it. I'd love to have some pressure to accomplish more things taken off my plate, I'll shop for groceries and make dinner every night, I do all that anyway and work two jobs.  My wife makes more money than I do, anyway and she's saving up for retirement while I haven't really cracked that code just yet.  I say "Go ahead and take over" only women don't need my permission to do so - but again, I'll be OK with it happening. There's an almost certain chance they'll do a better collective job than the patriarchy has. I know, this isn't really the way society works, because men are not going to surrender power easily, but part of me thinks they should.  The question then becomes, should we be working in this direction, or one where gender truly doesn't matter and isn't a concern?  Until we have a female President I just don't know if we can get there without pushback from conservatives. The country never got around to making equality the law of the land by passing the Equal Rights Amendment, and it's been like 30 plus years.  Why not just make it official instead of trying to figure out if we got there anyway by default? 

I guess maybe if you're a teen you could just watch this movie for the story alone and maybe you don't have the mental software to find the logical faults in the arguments about feminism, but if you're adult with a adult brain I would HOPE that people would see the cracks in the story here.  Or would adult women just be so nostalgic over seeing the dolls they played with as children coming to life that they wouldn't notice that the story is just a bunch of multi-dimensional nonsense?  That's all it was to me - and I don't even have a dog in the gender fight. 

But I don't think you can also fight sexism when you portray a battle between the sexes - I see how they flipped the script in a "Planet of the Apes" way, by depicting a world where the women are in charge by default, and then of course there's a conflict among gender lines when the patriarchy gets integrated into that world.  Then by depicting all Kens as easily distracted and also prone to war at the drop of a hat, guess what?  That constitutes sexism, sorry.  And the argument can be made that the matriarchy seen in Barbie Land was JUST as bad as the patriarchy in the real world, just with a different gender in control - so how is that an improvement?  This story is just misguided, all the way around. 

In the end, Barbie meets the spirit of Ruth Handler, the creator of the doll and co-founder of Mattel, who has been haunting an office on the 10th floor of the Mattel headquarters for decades.  Somehow this leads to Barbie and Ken going on a break and trying to figure out how they function as individuals and not as a couple.  Sure, fine, but would it be too much trouble to ask the screenwriter to maybe connect a few dots here and there?  How does THIS thing lead to THIS thing, and then how does THAT thing cause Barbie to become a real woman in the real world?  It just feels like this movie throws a lot of story pieces at the audience, and there's no connective tissue, no through-line, just a bunch of random events that nobody seems to understand, least of all the people and dolls who are living them. 

Gloria, that woman who works for Mattel and created the flat-feet and hygiene problems for Barbie in the first place has a daughter, Sasha, and so I'm going to hang on to just that part of the story, the connection between her, who played with Barbie dolls as a child, and her daughter, who's a more modern girl who did NOT play with dolls, or if she did, she's so over them now.  That's maybe the difference between the two generations, one grew up in a world that didn't initally have positive female role models in their toys, movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and the younger generation was born into a world that already had these things, so they just got kind of used to them and they don't mean as much?  Or something like that?  That's the part of the film that has some relevance this month, in my lead-up to Mother's Day.  The rest is just a bunch of gender-based combativeness, and much of that seems outdated.  We should be PAST all of that by now.

Also starring Margot Robbie (last seen in "Babylon"), Issa Rae (last seen in "American Fiction"), Kate McKinnon (last seen in "The Bubble"), Alexandra Shipp (last seen in "Space Oddity"), Emma Mackey (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Hari Nef (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Sharon Rooney (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Ana Cruz Kayne (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Ritu Arya (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan, Ryan Gosling (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Simu Liu (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Kingsley Ben-Adir (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans (last seen in "Before We Go"), John Cena (also last seen in "The Bubble"), America Ferrera (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "65"), Rhea Perlman (last seen in "You People), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Michael Cera (last seen in "Saltburn"), Connor Swindells (last seen in "Emma."), Jamie Demetriou (last seen in "Pinocchio" (2022), Emerald Fennell (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Andrew Leung (last seen in "Cruella"), Will Merrick (last seen in "About Time"), Zheng Xi Yong, Asim Chaudhry (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Ray Fearon (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Erica Ford, Hannah Khalique-Brown, Mette Narrative (last seen in "Cats"), Marisa Abela, Lucy Boynton (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Rob Brydon (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Tom Stourton (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Chris Taylor, David Mumeni (also last seen in "Last Christmas"), Ann Roth, Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Elise Gallup, Lauren Holt, Sterling Jones, Ryan Piers Williams, Olivia Brody, Isla Ashworth, Eire Farrell, Daisy Duczmal, Genvieve Toussaint, Isabella Nightingale-Mercado, Adam Ray (last seen in "Second Act"), Carlos Jacott (last seen in "White Noise"), James Leon, Ptolemy Slocum, George Basil, Mac Brandt (last seen in "Venom"), Paul Jurewicz (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Oraldo Austin, Benjamin Arthur

with archive footage of Marlon Brando (last seen in "Val"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), John Travolta (last seen in "De Palma"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 Mermaid Barbies

Teaching Mrs. Tingle

 Year 16, Day 121 - 4/30/24 - Movie #4,720

BEFORE: Another month has come and gone, just 29 films watched this month, though I meant to take things a little slower and program more breaks for myself, it just didn't work out that way because my chain to Mother's Day really wouldn't allow it.  But here's the format breakdown for April: 

14 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): American Fiction, Attack the Block, Proud Mary, No Good Deed (2014), Beast, Three Thousand Years of Longing, A Royal Night Out, Kinky Boots, Tell, Fire in the Sky, The Program, Beautiful, Jerry and Marge Go Large, Teaching Mrs. Tingle

3 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Murder in the First, Macbeth (2015), Unfinished Business

7 watched on Netflix: Fair Play, See You Yesterday, Rustin, The Woman King, They Cloned Tyrone, Coffee & Kareem, The Killer

2 watched on Hulu: A Haunting in Venice, Space Oddity

2 watched on Disney+: Disenchanted, Peter Pan & Wendy

1 watched on Peacock: Oppenheimer

29 TOTAL

And hey, I didn't have to resort to a pirate torrent site for any films, which is really just good planning on my end.  I mean, it's good to know the one I use is THERE, in case I program something on a streaming site and then it disappears on me, but I'd rather not use it if I don't have to. 

Michael McKean carries over again from "Jerry and Marge Go Large". 

THE PLOT: The story of a girl who is willing to do anything to become valedictorian, even if it means murdering the teacher that stands in her way. 

AFTER: We just passed the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting a little over a week ago, and this is a film that was affected by the incident - it was originally titled "Killing Mrs. Tingle" and had a darker tone to it, but then studio executives figured that maybe it wasn't the right time to title a film with the concept of a teen trying to kill their teacher.  Probably the right call, although the story then felt a little disjointed here, the teacher in question did get threatened with a cross bow, but then the teens felt that the worst thing they could do to the teacher they didn't like would be to take compromising photos of her as a way to blackmail her and get a better grade in her class.  Well, that's progress, I suppose, and maybe an important life lesson, because if you kill your teacher then she won't help you, and then she may just get replaced with another teacher who also doesn't like you.  And if all your teachers don't like you, well, umm, maybe it's YOU, you're the problem. Self-reflection can be tough. 

The last few films have really been about doing what you need to do to get ahead, whether that's looking the other way when a football player is clearly juicing, or sabotaging the other contestants in a beauty pageant, or buying 8,000 lottery tickets over four days time.  So I guess we're just spending a few days in legally unclear territory, it happens.  "Misguided" is perhaps the best word for the teens seen here, because it's a bad idea to try to steal the answers to the upcoming history exam for someone else, and then it's a worse idea to go to the teacher's house that night and try to "explain" why that shouldn't be considered cheating, and really, "My mom has been really sick" isn't enough of an excuse, like just how is that going to fly?  It's not.  OK, so mistakes happen, you tried something and it didn't work, maybe don't make things worse by knocking the teacher unconscious and tying her to the bed, what is the plan here, exactly?  It feels like, "Well, tie her up now and then we'll think of something to do next..."

Well, the kids didn't anticipate the teacher getting inside their heads, they didn't expect the football couch to come over for his regular Tuesday booty call, and they sure didn't think it would be so easy to change their grades, because one teacher in 1999 was still using pencil and paper to report them, and not these newfangled computers that were all the rage - but hey, the threat of Y2K was coming up in a year's time so maybe she was just erring on the side of caution.  We all had no idea if the computers were all going to crash and we'd have to start society all over again by living in caves or something. 

Look, I hate to call a film "sketchy", but even in a film where people do "bad" things, there need to be repercussions of some sort.  These kids get themselves into a spot of trouble, and it takes the absolute most unlikely circumstances to get out of it.  But my point is that Leigh Ann DID change her grade using a pencil eraser, and also the grade of the girl who was going to be valedictorian, and that's not cool.  Just because Leigh Ann needed the scholarship more, that didn't mean that changing her own grade was OK.  Just because Mrs. Tingle had some weird dislike for Leigh Ann, that didn't justify her changing her own grade, either.  It's still fraud, or theft, or something, and it's a weird thing to put out into the world.  

I couldn't even tell what class Mrs. Tingle taught, was it history?  Why did people have to give these weird show-and-tell presentations in history class instead of, you know, learning history from a book?  It was all very weird, like some screenwriter just didn't understand how high school works. I know reading books is very boring and not cinematic at all, but it is how learning happens, unless you're Bill & Ted. 

That's it for April movies, let's get set up for May - and Mother's Day is on the way, I'm reminded by Mona in "Beautiful" being a mother, and Marge in "Jerry and Marge" was a mother, and today's film had a few brief scenes of Leigh Ann's mother coming home from working as a waitress, so I definitely feel like I'm on a justified track here. 

Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Barry Watson (last seen in "My Future Boyfriend'), Marisa Coughlan (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Lesley Ann Warren (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Liz Stauber (last seen in "While We're Young"), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Vivica A. Fox (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), John Patrick White (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Harvey Silver.

RATING: 4 out of 10 misuses of the word "ironic"

Jerry and Marge Go Large

Year 16, Day 120 - 4/29/24 - Movie #4,719

BEFORE: It's a bit funny to me - but only to me - that Kathleen Turner was in the previous film and Annette Bening is in this next one.  I've already told the story here about how earlier this year I managed a screening of "Nyad" while Ms. Bening was in contention for the Oscar, and after the screening she was interviewed live on stage by Ms. Turner.  I had to use the theater's handicapped elevator to bring them both to the stage that night, as one had a broken foot and so they couldn't walk up the steps to the stage.  Hey, I'm there to help out any way I can. 

However, by watching this film tonight I'm kind of stranding the film "NYAD", I can connect to it via Annette Bening, but then I've got nowhere to go after that, it doesn't connect to anything else.  So I'll just have to wait for another opportunity to watch that one. 

Michael McKean carries over from "Beautiful". 

THE PLOT: Based on the true story about long-married couple Jerry and Marge Selbee, who win the lottery and use the money to revive their small town. 

AFTER: Sometimes you just have that relevatory "A-HA" moment, I guess - and some people are just better at statistics and systems and such, which is how Jerry Selbee figured out a way to game the lottery and virtually guarantee a winning investment, not by hitting the jackpot but by buying enough tickets to have three or four numbers right enough times.  You could say something similar happened to me when I finally figured out the best methods to link movies.  

Years ago, when my father's family wanted to give out presents at Christmas, they used a system where instead of buying small gifts for everyone, each family member would be assigned ONE person to buy a larger gift for - or you could abstain from the process, but if you wanted to receive a gift, you had to buy someone else a gift.  During a summer cookout or similar event the names would be drawn, but ultimately they found that the process never created one giant circle, ultimately there would be smaller circles that formed, like Uncle Leo would give a gift to Cousin Paul, Paul would draw the name of my mother, and she'd be assigned to give a gift to Uncle Leo.  Great, that was fun, but who goes next?  

One day while thinking about it I realized that there was a way to draw the names and form one continuous circle, so the gift-giving would go all the way around the room in a giant chain.  All they had to do when they assigned the recipients to the givers was put the names on bits of paper in a bowl, and then draw name #1, that person would give a gift to name #2, then the next draw would be to determine who name #2 would give a gift to.  They were using two bowls, that was the problem, so I couldn't wait for the next family party to tell me aunt that I'd figured out the best way to assign the recipients to the givers, they just had to draw from ONE bowl, and build the chain in succession, instead of going down a list and assigning the names that way.  But I came up with it too late, because the next year the family decided to go with a "Yankee Swap" format, where we'd draw numbers and everyone would bring a good wrapped gift, and we'd all draw in order and then you could either keep the gift you unwrapped or force a trade with someone who picked before you.  Damn, I came up with the solution just a little too late. 

In a similar way, Jerry's brain calculated that in this Winfall lottery system, where if nobody won the jackpot in a particular week then they would just increase the payouts to the lower winning tiers the next week - tickets with three or four correct numbers would be worth more on the "rollover" weeks.  So with some quick math, he determined that if someone bought enough tickets to have a substantial number of those smaller payouts, mathematically there should be enough smaller payouts to be bigger than the cost of all the tickets purchased.  The lottery might have been aware of this little loophole, because they were doing nothing to close it, or perhaps they were clueless and just under obligation to give away a certain amount of money.

After essentially gambling with some of his retirement money, Jerry proves that he can turn a profit, and estimates that the winnings would also increase if the amount of tickets purchased would also increase.  So he confesses to his wife and they start making money - and this was totally legal, there's nothing wrong with buying more tickets to put the odds in your favor, and in fact professional lottery players can also deduct the non-winning tickets, or keep them as proof in case they should get audited.  But then a problem pops up, the state of Michigan decides to cancel the Winfall lotto format, to keep winning Jerry and Marge would need to make frequent road trips to Massachusetts on the rollover weeks, stay in a hotel, spend a few days finding the winning tickets in the pile they bought, etc. 

We've known all along that the more you play the lottery, the greater the chance of winning, and if you could somehow cover all of the possible combinations of numbers with your tickets, well then you'd be assured of a jackpot.  But that's why they have so many numbers to choose from, because it would be impossible to buy all those tickets within a week's time to guarantee a jackpot.  But Jerry and Marge didn't need a jackpot, they just needed enough small wins to keep doubling their investments - and eventually they got the idea to form a business out of it, and get other people involved in order to make millions for their small town, revitalize the downtown area and maybe rebuild the concert stage and resurrect the JazzFest. 

So they found a helpful convenience-store owner, just over the Massachusetts border probably, who would let them use his machine around the clock to purchase and print out tickets.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong, besides the fact that the store owners probably aren't supposed to let the customers run the machine 24/7?  Well, a couple of college students at Harvard did a thesis on the odds of winning the lottery and spotted the same flaw, so they started up a similar investment group, got a bunch of college kids with free time to fill out the stacks and stacks of betting slips, and now two competing squads were buying up tickets on the same weeks, and that also changed the odds of winning for everyone.

Ultimately this true story also changed the way that lotteries work, for starters the game that both groups played was terminated when the loophole was exposed, and also the lotteries did away with rollover weeks and also started posting the exact amount of the jackpot in real time, which ultimately led to that mania that occurs whenever the PowerBall or MegaMillions jackpot gets close to a billion these days.  We had that happen here in NY about a month ago, and yeah, I bought tickets for the first time in a long time, and it was nice to think for a few days that I had a non-zero chance of winning a billion, but then inevitably my numbers didn't come up and I had to come crashing back down to real life.  What's a billion, anyway?  If the IRS takes half the money right off the bat, you're down to 500 million, and then you have to report the interest, plus suddenly everyone you know will come to you with a business proposal or with their hand out, so really, is it worth it?  That's assuming you were the only jackpot winner, you might have to share that 500 million with four other people, and really, 100 million doesn't buy what it used to.  JK. 

They don't get into too many of the finer details here about how it was done, but I'm guessing that both betting groups had to have some system for what numbers they played, because they couldn't just do Quick Picks, that maybe wouldn't produce the wide spread of number combinations that they needed to cover.  But we see the Harvard group passing out the stacks of empty slips to students and saying, "OK, fill these out."  I'm thinking it had to be just a little more organized than that, just picking random numbers might not be enough, and people maybe couldn't be trusted to do this right unless there was some order to it all.  Also, NITPICK POINT they really only had to do that once, because you can re-use the same filled-out slips again and again, if you take good care of the slips. 

This was a very good slice-of-life film, rooting for the people who won't go quietly into retirement is always a safe bet, this older couple just wasn't prepared for the down-time, and without fishing or gardening to fall back on, it's nice to see them go out and have a big adventure. I have to call NITPICK #2 on the driving distance from Evart, Michigan to western Massachusetts, my phone's map says making that in 10 hours would be impossible, it's got to be at least 12 hours, not including breaks. 

Also starring Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Annette Bening (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Larry Wilmore (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Ann Harada (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Jake McDorman (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Anna Camp (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Devyn McDowell (last seen in "Annette"), Ana Cruz Kayne (last seen in "Little Women"), Colton Whitfield, Jackson Whitfield, Uly Schlesinger, Cheech Manohar, Tracie Thoms (last seen in "Rent"), Lindsay Rootare, Don Stallings (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Subhash Mandal, K.D. O'Hair, Kurt Yue (last seen in "Greenland"), Joe Pistone, Michael Scialabba (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Kenny Alfonso (last seen in "No Good Deed"), Evan Bergman, Robert Pralgo (last seen in "Term Life"), Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "The Program"), Tordy Clark, Lindsey Moser (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Cameron Andrew Howell, Tori Kelly (last heard in "Sing 2").

RATING: 7 out of 10 boxes of cereal

Beautiful

Year 16, Day 119 - 4/28/24 - Movie #4,718

BEFORE: I spent all day yesterday working at the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival - yes, that's a real thing.  Three programs of films, mostly about the country's time as a war zone during the 1990's, I guess it's important that we never forget about this. But I of course was in the theater lobby and the office, and I got to listen to a 90-minute loop of Bosnian music over and over on a loop.  Yeah, I kind of never want to hear Bosnian music ever again, sorry. But it was a solid shift with hours and I need the money, so I just tried to be as helpful as I could to assist with the screenings. Next week it will be other events, that's how it goes. 

Joey Lauren Adams carries over from "The Program". 

FOLLOW UP TO: "Miss Firecracker" (Movie #3,888)

THE PLOT: Mona sacrifices everything, including family, in pursuit of a beauty pageant victory.  Her friend Ruby helps her to an amazing degree. 

AFTER: See, I didn't even know the main character here had a daughter, that's kind of a central plot point.  Mona can't qualify to be a pageant queen if she's a mother (or caregiver, whatever that distinction means) and I'm sure that's for some weird moral reason, like they want the contestants to project virginity or high moral values - or it's for legal reasons, like if the new MIss American Miss is going to be out on the road for the next year making appearances, the organization needs to know that there's not someone depending on her to feed them and take care of them, or something.  

But Mona DOES have a daughter, which also makes this film perfect for the two weeks leading up to Mother's Day, I'm on high alert for this topic, but this one wasn't planned by me - again we see that the linking system has a mind of its own and knows how to suggest films that are on topic. I don't know exactly how someone can allow their best friend to masquerade as their daughter's mother for YEARS while they pursue their beauty pageant dream, but that's where we find ourselves today.  The last film I watched about beauty pageants was "Miss Firecracker", and that was sort of thematically the same, women entering pageants to try and escape their dreary lives - is that what we all think, that nobody is doing pageants because they LIKE them, it's all just a giant con game so a lucky few people can get ahead, win a title and then - what, get endorsement deals or be famous or break into acting or modeling or something?  

The suggestion here is that everyone involved is very fakey, from the minor pageant directors who are swindling hopefuls out of money to take classes in dance or movement or hand-waving to the state winners who go to the national finals and all have phony bios and capped teeth and B.S. talent routines and memorized B.S. answers to interview questions and also will stop at nothing to make their competitors look awful.  Umm, OK, I'm willing to roll with that, but surely there must be some contestants who are the real deal and act genuine - maybe not, I don't know.

The other suggestion seems to be that pageant contestants are extremely insecure and in need of some validation, that this is somehow their motivation for entering beauty competitions, and in Mona's specific case, there's also a suggestion that this might stem from some form of sexual abuse from her stepfather, and really, this comedy suddenly isn't so funny when you start connecting those dots, then it's just kind of sad.  Like, I'm sure that pageants do have a dark side to them but I'm not sure this scenario gets it right.  Clearly there's also a rift between Mona and her mother, which also might be traced back to the stepfather, but to the point where Mona's mother won't go with her to the M.A.M. pageant, and yet Mona keeps persisting in asking her.

Another thing that isn't really funny is Ruby, who works taking care of elderly people, being accused of killing one with an overdose of medication.  We the audience know that the woman committed suicide, but that's also a serious issue and therefore not very funny, also someone being jailed for murder when they're innocent isn't exactly hilarious either. So how did someone somehow forget that comedies are supposed to be, you know, funny?  What's weirder is that this was directed by Sally Field, who you'd think would know something about comedy, having starred in many of them.  

Sure, the end goal of Mona realizing that she needs to grow up and be a mother to her own daughter is an important one, but the film takes such a roundabout way of getting there, with the murder trial, the pageant sabotages and the constant hiding of the truth about who Vanessa's parent is, there's plenty of bad behavior to go around, and I wish just some of it had been funnier, or at least more fun.  Beauty pageants might be very outdated, archaic and perhaps they should even go the way of the dinosaur, but for very different reasons than the ones on display here - just my opinion.  But this film is 24 years old, maybe these reasons were valid back at the turn of the millennium, and/or this film was way ahead of its time, who can say? 

Also starring Minnie Driver (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Hallie Eisenberg (last seen in "Bicentennial Man"), Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Leslie Stefanson (last seen in "The Hunted"), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Kathleen Robertson (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden"), Michael McKean (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Gary Collins (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Linda Hart (last seen in "The Best of Times"), Brent Briscoe (last seen in "Term Life"), Colleen Rennison (last seen in "Unforgettable"), Jacqueline Steiger (last seen in "Matilda"), Sylvia Short (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Herta Ware (last seen in "Species"), Ali Landry, Robin Bobeau, Chuti Tiu (last seen in "The Internship"), Samantha Harris (last seen in "Baywatch"), Dawn Forrester, Julie Condra (last seen in "Nixon"), Jessica Collins (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Deborah Kellner (ditto), Brent Huff, Charles Dougherty, Shawn Christian (last seen in "Meet Dave"), Irene Roseen (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"),Robert Phelps (ditto), Alexander Folk, Landry Allbright (last seen in "Con Air"), Lorna Scott (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Earl Schuman (last seen in "Mr. Deeds"), Mary E. Thompson, Rosine "Ace" Hatem, Jordan Lund (last seen in "ALEX & EMMA"), Warren Munson (last seen in "Down with Love"), Ben Bode (last seen in "Let Me In"), Greg Bronson, Brittany Crutchfield, Daniel Dehring.

RATING: 4 out of 10 call-in votes

The Program

Year 16, Day 118 - 4/27/24 - Movie #4,717

BEFORE: Well, the linking is driving the bus right now.  There's no other way for me to link out of "Fire in the Sky" - well, there ARE other paths but none of them get me to "Barbie" on May 1, which is a signpost on the road to my Mother's Day films.  But it's not even close to football season, right?  When is that, September through February, with pre-season in August?  Ugh, I'm way off. Plus it's college football, that season is even shorter, maybe, September through January? I have no idea what a college football schedule looks like, because I went to NYU, which didn't even have a football team. 

But wait, isn't there something football-related going on this week? The NFL Draft?  That's related to college football players, isn't it? No, really, I want to know. They're drafting college players into the NFL?  Huh, maybe the chain knows what it's doing after all. Today's film is dedicated to the hard-working people who bring you the very necessary (?) NFL Draft.  But this is neither a paid promotion or an endorsement of their event, it's all just a coincidence. 

Craig Sheffer carries over from "Fire in the Sky".  From drag queens to football players in under a week, that's the scope of films featured here at the Movie Year. 

THE PLOT: Players from different backgrounds try to cope with the pressures of playing football at a major university - some turn to drinking, others to drugs and some to studying. 

AFTER: This film follows the exploits of the Timberwolves, from the very fictional E.S.U., or Eastern State University.  Umm, what state is this college in?  Exactly.  Let's call it AnyState U.S.A., designed to appeal to the maximum percentage of the population.  They play against Michigan at one point, also Georgia Tech later in the film.  What conference does that put them in?  I also have zero idea how all that works - the Yellow Jackets are in the NCAA Atlantic Coast conference, and the Michigan Wolverines are in the Big Ten, so I'm guessing there would never be a team that plays against both of those opponents. But at the end of the day, I don't really know, so let's proceed as if it's possible.

Pretty much every stereotype about college football players that was prevalent in 1993 is represented here, from the jocks being allowed to take easy courses to maintain a good GPA, practically being given the answers to their exams or having other people take the tests for them.  Then there's the Heisman trophy-eligible quarterback who has a drinking problem and has to miss crucial games to go to rehab after a DUI.  Sorry, no trophy for him.  Don't forget about the enormous defense tackle who wants to buy his mother a house but instead suffers a career-ending injury, and the other defensive end who's CLEARLY using steroids because his idea of a fun time is putting his head through car windows in the parking lot, but the coaching staff turns a blind eye to his fake urine samples because they need him in the starting defensive line. Good times.

This is also the film that sparked some controversy by having a scene where athletes demonstrate how cool they are under pressure by lying down on the highway median with cars passing by very closely on both sides.  After a few teens tried to imitate these actions in real life, the scene was removed from the film.  OK, but they left in the scene where QB Joe Kane stands in a railyard with a train approaching and plays chicken with it, jumping out of the way at the last possible second.  But no, he's completely sane, nothing to worry about there. 

This was also a chance for tough-guy actor James Caan, formerly of "The Godfather" and "Rollerball", to show his softer (?) side as a football coach, dealing with players who get into every kind of trouble possible.  He's not quite at the level of Robin Williams' character in "Good Will Hunting" saying "it's not your fault", but it's kind of in the same ballpark. And supposedly Coach Winters is going to be fired if ESU doesn't have a winning season or at least get into a Bowl game, so sure, that justifies all kinds of looking the other way, doesn't it?  The alumni are slipping envelopes of cash to the players, the recruiters are promising all kinds of things that the college has no intention of following through with, and everyone's wondering why their car windows are shattered every time they park near the stadium. 

You don't even have to know a lot about football to follow this one, like I think the team with the most points wins or something, but I don't want to get all technical about it. It's more important that you deal with all the personal problems that the best players are having, because if you don't you may not have enough people to be on the field and then you probably forfeit the game.  Just guessing, but you can see why it's important that Kane gets out of rehab and Darnell passes his history test and  not too many people get their legs broken, if you just look at the big picture for a minute. Football is a numbers game, after all. 

Speaking of which, it appears the whole landscape has changed since 1993, in that it used to be 100% forbidden for college athletes to get paid, instead they were offered scholarships to attend school, as long as they kept playing their sport.  Getting injured and being unable to play on could make the scholarship go away, I think?  Not sure.  But then a number of lawsuits in 2009 made it easier for college athletes to get compensated for the use of their "NIL", or name, images and likeness.  But only by third parties like NIke or Gatorade, and not by the schools themselves, which are limited by NCAA rules to only providing scholarships and an additional $6,000 or so for "education-related expenses" per athlete annually. (I wonder if alcohol counts as an "education-related expense".). It's still against the rules for a college to buy a football player a car to get them to attend their institution, but progress takes time I suppose. 

Also starring James Caan (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Halle Berry (last seen in "Moonfall"), Omar Epps (last seen in "Scream 2"), Kristy Swanson (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Abraham Benrubi (last heard in "Strange World"), Duane Davis (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Andrew Bryniarski (last seen in "Scooby-Doo"), Leon Pridgen, Jon Pennell (last seen in "Heartbreak Ridge"), J.C. Quinn (ditto), Joey Lauren Adams (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "The Last Song"), Steven Griffith, Michael Flippo (last seen in "Something to Talk About"), Ernest Dixon, George Rogers, Bernard Mixon, Mary Holloway, George Nannarello, Jason Byce, Mindy Bell (last seen in "The Watcher"), Jim Fyfe (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Jason Jenks, Bob Neal (last seen in "Remember the Titans"), Jed Oldenburg, Bo Schembechler, Robert Fuller, Al Wiggins (last seen in "Nell"), Lynelle Lawrence, Julia Miller, Patrick Robert Smith, Dan Hannafin (last seen in "Patch Adams"), Charles Portney, John Bennes (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Charles Lawlor (last seen in "October Sky"), Robert D. Raiford (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Steve Zabriskie with cameos from Chris Berman, Lynn Swann.

RATING: 6 out of 10 cups of Gatorade spilled

Fire in the Sky

Year 16, Day 117 - 4/26/24 - Movie #4,716

BEFORE: So, an opportunity to get a film that's been on my list for a VERY long time crossed off. It's probably been on the list for more than three years, maybe more than five years. I don't keep track of how long something's been on the list.  I think I just put it on the list with a "what the hell" attitude, I mean, the film was released in 1993, and if I haven't watched it in thirty years' time, I figured it was a real longshot, and the cast is fairly obscure except for a couple major roles, so honestly, I thought I'd just never get around to this one, and then one day I'd die with maybe 10 films to go, and this one was likely to be one of those ten.  But no, the chain's got a plan for me, or the linking gods have looked favorably upon this alien abduction film from three decades ago.  

OK, so "what the hell", let's go for it.  Robert Patrick carries over from "Tell". 

THE PLOT: An Arizona logger mysteriously disappears for five days in an alleged encounter with a UFO in 1975. His co-workers endure ridicule and contempt as they are wrongly accused of murder. 

AFTER: It's just a coincidence that Season 5 of "The Secretsof Skinwalker Ranch" is starting THIS WEEK. I watched the first season of the show a few years back, so I could figure out why my mother was watching weird alien shows on The History Channel.  (Yes, alien investigations are somehow part of "History", there might be something wrong with that, sure.). And here it is, 5 seasons later and I'm still watching, trying to find something to disprove.  These ranch guys keep thinking they're going to find the right combination of frequencies, high-speed cameras and launching rockets and drones into the air above the ranch that will make the aliens reveal themselves and say, "OK, you got us, here we are.  We were going to stay invisible and off-radar, but wow, come on, 86.5 megahertz AND four rockets launched at once?  We just HAD to meet you guys!"  Yeah, UFOs (or I think it's UFPs now) don't work like that.

1975 was a different time, for sure. (Hell, 1993 was a different time, too...). America's obsession with UFO's was in its infancy, even the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was still two years away.  Travis Walton wrote a book about how he was abducted by aliens, or maybe he just needed to explain why he disappeared for five days, and if he was drunk or high or just fell down into a ditch for a while, who's to really say?  But his co-workers couldn't find him, and when he finally resurfaced, he was blaming the aliens for whatever happened.  Apparently the movie changed a lot of elements of the book he wrote, so, umm, what are we doing here then, guys?  Are we going to say this guy is 100% believable and then just make a movie about whatever we want, whether's it's part of his story or not?  If he's credible, then why not just film what was described in his book?  And if he's not credible, then why make a movie at all? 

Either way, I don't think that filmmakers can be trusted to handle information like this, even if Mr. Walton is believable and his story checks out, they're going to use movie magic to create their own thing, so we're not even comparing apples to apples here, we're hearing one man's account of an abduction, but filtered through a book AND a screenplay, and filmmakers who set out to try to make the best possible movie, and please don't confuse them with the facts, because they're professionals!  If you're looking to learn about what REALLY happened (or didn't happen) in the mountains of Arizona, boy, did you come to the wrong place.  Movie makers just want to make a movie that puts asses in the seats, and they'll do whatever it takes to do that.  I feel foolish even looking into this further, because if they changed the abductee's account, then I probably shouldn't take anything in this film too seriously.  

And then what happened?  You almost never hear about anybody claiming to be abducted by aliens any more.  Did if fall out of vogue?  Did people realize they were watching movies about alien abductions and then having very vivid dreams about it, which they then thought were real?  Did people stop chain-drinking and get sober and stop remembering things that didn't happen to them?  Or did the aliens abduct a few rednecks and then decide to leave the planet alone and never visit again - either because they saw the human race as no threat at all, or because they saw rednecks who stockpile guns as a very real threat, and vow never to visit Earth again?  Or maybe they ate a few humans and realized we don't taste very good at all - great plan everyone, keep fit and lean so we'll taste terrible to invading aliens.  This means more snacks and fatty meat for me, of course, so I'm all for it.  

More recent movies like "Attack the Block", "The Darkest Hour" and even the most recent remake of "The War of the Worlds" are big spectacle events, naturally they depict thousands of alien ships coming to Earth, they're trying to take over.  Oh, what happened to the old days when the aliens abducted people in secret, they weren't trying to take over the planet, just learn more about us, umm, both inside and out.  That's the problem with modern times, things are so impersonal - in the old days the aliens took over one person at a time, they really got a chance to do the probing and experiments on a small scale, and they'd at least get to know you.  It's a damn shame. 

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed that the film sort of doubled down on the alien invasion thing.  There's not any attempt to suggest that the logging crew might have been drinking or smoking the wacky tobaccy or anything that might have interfered with their perceptions and memories of the events in question.  Nope, we're sticking with aliens.  It's a bold move, but it's also a boring one, I'm sorry to say. 

Also starring D.B. Sweeney (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandrige"), Craig Sheffer (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Peter Berg (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Henry Thomas (last seen in "Spielberg"), Bradley Gregg, Noble Willingham (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Kathleen Wilhoite, James Garner (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Georgia Emelin (last seen in "Space Cowboys"), Scott MacDonald (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Wayne Grace (last seen in "All About Steve"), Kenneth White (last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Robert Covarrubias (last seen in "Sunset"), Bruce Wright (last seen in "The Negotiator"), Robert Biheller, Tom McGranahan Sr., Julie Ariola, Peter Vasquez, Gordon Scott, Mical Shannon Lewis, Courtney Esler, Holly Hoffman, Marcia MacLaine, Vernon Barkhurst, Jane Ferguson, Nancy Neifert, Charley Lang, Lynn Marie Sager, Mari Pedron, Frank Chavez, Eric Wilsey.

RATING: 4 out of 10 chain saws - and yet we never get to see the loggers fighting back against the aliens with their logging equipment, like what IS UP with that?