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

The Luckiest Man in America

Year 18, Day 105 - 4/15/26 - Movie #5,303

BEFORE: Maisie Williams carries over again from "The Book of Love" - her third film in a row, and she also gets a special birthday SHOUT-out today, as she was born on 4/15/97. 

Today's film is about the "Press Your Luck" game-show scandal of 1984, in which a contestant figured out the "random" patterns of the game show's prize board just by watching at home, and when he was on the show, once he got the timing down, he was able to avoid all of the Whammies and land only on the prize-winning spaces that also awarded more spins. He kept spinning and kept winning so long that his streak had to be continued in the next episode of the show, and he set a record for most prize money won on a game show in a single day, $110,237 in cash and prizes which is equivalent to about $341,000 in 2025 money. His record stood until 2006 when someone on "The Price Is Right" won $147,517.

THE PLOT: An unemployed ice cream truck driver steps onto the game show "Press Your Luck" harboring a secret: the key to endless money. But his streak is threatened when the bewildered executives uncover his real motivations. 

AFTER: The story of Michael Larson is indeed a fascinating one, there's so much more to the story that is not told in this film. "The Luckiest Man in America" really only tells us the story in the present tense, but of course Michael Larson had a past and he had a future (he died in 2024, but still, that's 40 more years after "Press Your Luck" had him on.  Of course, nobody knows the exact conversations that the game show executives and employees had, or exactly what went on behind the scenes, so of course some of this film's events are speculation. So it's important to know, though, where the film deviated from the facts of the case. 

We know that Michael Larson worked part-time as an ice cream truck vendor, also he sometimes repaired air conditioners. Outside of that, he ran a lot of scams and schemes - one of the simplest was opening up bank accounts to receive a $500 credit for each one and then closing them down just as quickly to walk away with the bank's money. He once registered a business JUST so he could fire himself and collect unemployment in addition to selling stolen goods and running various Ponzi schemes. Considering how much time he spent memorizing the patterns of the game board on "Press Your Luck", that was possibly the hardest he ever worked at anything and the most honestly, too. 

Technically he wasn't cheating, because there was no specific rule against memorizing the game board's patterns - and there were only FIVE patterns to memorize, because the game show was produced very cheaply. The show's creator knew that memorizing the pattern was possible, he just didn't believe that anyone would take the time or the trouble to do so. Once they realized that Larson was looking at the different squares BEFORE they lit up, they figured out exactly what he was up to. And the prizes that equaled a couple thousand dollars PLUS one spin were always in the same places, it's just that each square rotated between three different prizes or whammies, so it was all just a matter of timing and memorization. He landed on the best squares (the ones with extra spins) 29 times in a row, which allowed him to build up such an enormous bankroll.  

The host was instructed to try to scare him into quitting, reminding him that he was defying the odds each time he ordered another spin, but Larson didn't care, because once he knew how to avoid the whammies and stop at the right time, he could not lose. He had spent MONTHS watching VHS tapes of the show to determine the patterns, and he used the pause button on the VCR remote to practice his timing.  

NITPICK POINT: The film suggests that somehow Larson drove his ice cream truck all the way from Ohio, also that maybe he was living in the truck, as it contained several fake IDs, license plates for various states, and the VHS tapes of the game show that he watched. None of this makes any sense, because Larson spent the last of his money on the PLANE ticket from Ohio to Los Angeles, and the bus ride out to the studio in Hollywood. Something in his hard-luck story of not being able to buy a birthday gift for his daughter made him sympathetic, and it won over the show's executive producer, but again, this was all maybe kind of an act, because he knew that if he could get on the show and spin the wheel, he'd win every time. 

Look, I've been close to being a contestant on two different shows, both "Jeopardy!" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", I can always pass the first part of the test easy-peasy, that's the knowledge-based part. What I lack is apparently the charisma to be a contestant, they want to see big smiles, jumping up and down, that sort of thing. That's not how I roll. Also they want you to be positive, the audience wants to hear upbeat stories about contestant's accomplishments, and well, let's just say that sometimes I've tried out on days where I wasn't very upbeat. I also don't like pretending to be someone I'm not, so it's difficult for me to be all sunshine and rainbows when trying out for a quiz show is a serious business to me. But this means that I don't really understand why Larson's sad-sack routine had any effect on the producer of "Press Your Luck", to the point where he'd select Larson for the show without properly vetting him, giving him a break because it seemed like life wasn't really going his way.  

But was that the case? Was Larson appearing like a loser with no money all part of the act? Or was that who he really was? It kind of doesn't matter, as long as appearing that way got him cast directly on the show, like before he could be checked out. That decision ended up costing CBS a lot of money, after it was determined that Larson wasn't cheating, he was just smarter than the producers of the show. He got his check, but he also got a lifetime ban from re-appearing on the show, and the producers decided to NEVER air his episode again - also they were forced to add more complex patterns to the spinning part of the game, and a future limit of $75,000 on any contestant's winnings. This seems a bit weird, like if the producers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" wouldn't allow anyone to win more than $250,000 or something.  

The film shows a clip of the real Michael Larson during the end credits, but it doesn't get into what happened to him after the show - he had to pay about $35,000 in taxes on his winnings, so there went a chunk of the money. He also bought a bunch of gifts for his daughter, to make up for missing her birthday, and then he invested some of the money in a Ponzi real estate scheme. Yeah, that tracks. He stored about $50,000 in his girlfriend's house, and the place got robbed one night while they attended a Christmas party. Larson was convinced that his girlfriend was involved in the theft, which led to her kicking him to the curb. Larson then got a job as a manager at a Wal-Mart, but never gave up on his schemes, 1995 he was charged with taking money from 14,000 investors in a multi-level marketing scam, at which time he fled Ohio for Florida, and died there from throat cancer in 1999. 

The story behind making the movie is almost as twisty as that, the first plan to adapt his story into a movie took place in the year 2000, with Bill Murray attached to star. Howard Franklin was supposed to direct it, but it really took 24 more years for the film to be made, by another director. I can't imagine all the weird twists and turns in-between, which are not mentioned on the film's Wikipedia page. I guess everyone always had something better to do than this. 

NITPICK POINT #2 - the way the production segments are portrayed here, it seems like the game show was aired live, and that would be ridiculous. Most game shows are taped and broadcast later, like they record five episodes of "Jeopardy" during a taping day and that's a week of shows, then they air about two months later, I think. This is done just in case there's some accidental nudity or something, like that one time a woman's blouse fell off while she was running to "come on down". But here Larson swears out loud and the sound editor claims that he will NOT be able to edit that out. Why not? The show's being recorded for a future broadcast, there should be NO reason why they can't bleep out a curse word. 

Directed by Samir Oliveros

Also starring Paul Walter Hauser (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), Walton Goggins (last seen in "Fatman"), Shamier Anderson (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), David Strathairn (last seen in "At Close Range"), Brian Geraghty (last seen in "10 Years"), Patti Harrison (last seen in "The Electric State"), Ricky Russert (last seen in "Queen Bees"), David Rysdahl (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Shaunette Renee Wilson (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), James Wolk (last seen in "The Boys in the Boat"), Damian Young (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Haley Bennett (last seen in "Borderlands"), Johnny Knoxville (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Lilli Kay (last seen in "Rustin"), Tatiana Ronderos (last seen in "Mile 22"), Stefano Meier, Carlota Castro, Carlos Manuel Vesga, Genesis Rodriguez (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Paulina Diazgranados, Evan Sudarsky, Marcela Vargas, Johan Ortega, Manolo Bellon, Tyler Youngblood, and the voice of Chris Nichter

RATING: 6 out of 10 parting gifts

The Book of Love

Year 18, Day 104 - 4/14/26 - Movie #5,302

BEFORE: There, I did it, I skipped a day. I don't think I can possibly be expected to work late on a Sunday night, show up back in the same location early on a Monday morning, and somehow watch a movie in-between. It's not humanly possible...  But since I need the money, let me do those two shifts with a tight turn-around, and the movie progress is just going to have to wait. I think this will allow me to line up another birthday on Wednesday, so there IS an upside. I just need to keep looking up actor birthdays, if that's any kind of guiding force I can lean on that to get from one holiday to the next, if need be. Certainly with no holiday in the next 26 days and the topic is basically random, I need to let something take the wheel. 

The only important thing right now is to keep an eye on the overall number - I can drop a movie, I can add a movie, as long as the count stays the same, more or less. And if I drop without replacing, that's not a big deal, as I can do another skip day. Last year we took a whole week off in March, so I'm ahead in the count over where I was a year ago. Whatever...so I'm going to drop a film two slots from now because it seems like maybe a good film for a Father's Day chain, and it's a middle film so I can postpone it, even if I'm not sure I can link to it in June. I guess we'll see...but doing that allows me to add THIS one, which was never part of the plan until right now. It's just going to help me land that birthday tomorrow. 

Maisie Williams carries over from "iBoy". 

THE PLOT: A widowed New Orleans architect strikes up an unlikely relationship with a teenage runaway. 

AFTER: I'm not sure why I feel so ambivalent about this film, it's partially because I just dropped it in at the last minute, I had no plans to watch it so therefore no time to anticipate it or look forward to it, whereas with any other typical film I've got usually about two or three weeks to prepare for it, therefore I'm ready when it screens and I'm kind of got a vested interest in enjoying it. But I'm really finding it hard to care about this one, is that just because I sprung it on myself or is it because the plot really comes in out of left field and doesn't seem to have a consistent purpose to it? 

We do get somewhat invested in the marriage of Henry and Penny, like she seems a bit out there but she clearly loves and supports her husband, while also being a bit wacky and able to keep him on his toes. It's fine, because it seems like he's looking forward to spending the next 20 or 30 years just trying to figure her out. She's also eight months pregnant, so yeah, everything's about to change. But she also does weird things like throw out his brown loafers, just because they're brown loafers and instead buys him purple sneakers which he feels a little funny about wearing to the office. But, yeah, sure, they're bold. All I know is that if I threw out a pair of my wife's shoes without telling her, my days would certainly be numbered. Just saying. 

But then everything changes, while Henry is at a ceremony dedicating a plot of land as part of his company's plan to redevelop New Orleans, he gets word that Penny has died in a car crash. (At first it seems like she drove into an oncoming truck, but later we learn she crashed into a tree, maybe after avoiding the truck?). Naturally this sends Henry into a personal tail-spin, after the funeral he can't seem to get anything done, the house renovations seem meaningless and he can't bring himself to submit Penny's obituary to the paper, and forget work, it also seems futile. But for some reason he remembers the promise he made to his wife, that if he saw that teen girl come around and pick through their trash again, he should try and help her. So that's what he does, even though the girl doesn't really want any "help". 

But Henry persists, and he finds out the girl lives with her abusive uncle, ever since her father died, and for some reason she wants to build a raft that will carry her across the ocean to the Azores. Terrible idea, she'd have to go around Florida, the long way, and probably too close to Cuba, too. But I guess the prevailing current would be in her favor, just why not Bermuda or any of the nice islands in the Caribbean? Let's put a pin in that one and revisit it later. 

Meanwhile Penny's mother keeps coming around to bother Henry, she wants to put Penny's ashes in the family cemetery, but he would prefer to keep them in the cubic urn he designed. Henry's got a special skill for building things, which could come in handy if someone were, say, trying to build a raft. But Millie, the girl, doesn't trust him yet, and she needs to know that he's not a perv, also she's never really had anyone looking out for her before - it's going to take time. 

Millie does have the journal that her father kept when he sailed off on a raft, and over the course of the film, she relates stories to the audience of other people who dropped out of society in similar fashion, including the famous Thor Heyerdahl, who proved what could be done with his simple raft, the Kon-Tiki, and somehow there's a message here about how people keep making simple problems complicated and calling that progress. The simple answer to life's problems, therefore, seems to be just nailing some planks together and loading up your raft and sailing away to somewhere else. Why stay in one place and solve your current problems when you can start fresh on a tropical island somewhere, or possibly die in the process of getting there? Either way, your old personal problems will be gone!  What could possibly go wrong? 

That's, umm, that's not a great message for the kids out there. When life gets you down, build a raft? Can't you just move to Nevada or the Carolinas or something and find a new line of work? But no, Henry keeps remembering his wife's advice to "Be Bold" so whatever it takes, robbing a junkyard for parts, or tearing down the beams of the house to build the raft, it seems like once he gets the rafting bug, too, there's no stopping him. Unfortunately we never really find out the result of him enabling Millie's fantasy and going on the grand adventure with her, they do sail off across the Atlantic but the film ends and leaves us wondering about their fates. Well, if the film can't be bothered to tell me then I won't bother to care, sorry. 

I've been to New Orleans, we were there about a week before Halloween in 2018. (It's still going to be a while before I post the pics on Instagram, I'm still sorting through 2011.). It's a fine-enough town, we took a haunted city tour and went to the city museum, which was half devoted to Hurricane Katrina and the other half was Mardi Gras fashions and floats. We gambled in a riverboat casino and enjoyed the buffet there, but I was unimpressed by the food that New Orleans people are always raving about - gumbo, crawfish etouffé and muffaletta were a hard pass. Red beans and rice was fine, but you know, it's just red beans and rice. I did have a shrimp po'boy that excited me, but that was about it, apart from the beignets. I know every city thinks they have the best food in the country, I just think the fine people of New Orleans are delusional. Sorry. 

In a similar fashion, clearly someone felt this was an important story to tell, which is why they made the film, and I'm just going to have to disagree. There's just nothing really thrilling going on here, it just feels like the raft, cobbled together from pieces and parts that were never meant to fit together. Will it even float? 

Directed by Bill Purple (assistant director on "Georgia Rule" and "13 Going on 30")

Also starring Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise"), Jessica Biel (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "The Discovery"), Orlando Jones (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Richard Robichaux (last seen in "Hit Man"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Bryan Batt (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Jayson Warner Smith (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Christopher Gehrman (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Wendy Miklovic (last seen in "Grudge Match"), George Wilson (last seen in "Cleaner"), Josh Mikel (last seen in "Renfield"), Russ Russo, Cailey Fleming (last seen in "IF"), Darnekia Dowl, Natalie Mejer, Sheldon Frett (last seen in "Get on Up"), Madeleine Woolner (last seen in "The Upside"), Ian Belgard

RATING: 4 out of 10 Scrabble tiles

iBoy

Year 18, Day 102 - 4/12/26 - Movie #5,301

BEFORE: I don't know much about this film, it's the kind of film you think "Eh, it might be interesting" so you put it on your "someday/maybe" list, and then three or four years go by and you figure you're never going to get around to it, because it's really hard to link to, but you know, that's OK because again, you don't know much about it and it's not exactly talked about a lot, so who the hell even knows if it's any good? But then it becomes exactly the film you need to link a couple blockbusters together somewhere on the road between Easter and Mother's Day. The fact that I can see this as some kind of connective tissue between "Jurassic World: Rebirth" and "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere"? Well, that's kind of enough to move it from the bottom of the list to the top, right? 

Lucy Thackeray carries over from "Jurassic Park: Rebirth". 

THE PLOT: After being shot, Tom awakens from a coma with fragments of his smartphone embedded in his head - and worse, that returning to normal teenage life is impossible because he has developed a strange set of superpowers. 

AFTER: This is a fairly basic revenge-driven action film, I'm reminded of all of those Jason Statham movies where he has to work his way up the chain of a multi-layered criminal organization, like "The Beekeeper" or "A Working Man" or a number of others. And Tom has an advantage here, he can use his new smart-phone based mental powers to confuse, distract and terrorize the low-level gangsters in order to figure out the identity of their boss, and then go work on THAT guy. 

For example, Tom takes a video (with his eyes?) of himself urinating on a gang member's car, and then when the gang leaves their hideout to beat him up, he's already invaded their space, stealing their stash of drugs. He then hides the drugs in the dealers' bedrooms or closets and sends an e-mail (with his brain?) to the police department with all the addresses, as a hot tip. This one action takes half the gang members off the streets, but the ones left behind are more dangerous, and now THEY'RE out for revenge, too. 

Tom seems to have forgotten a very basic problem - he's not exactly Jason Statham, he's just a teenager. But hey, Jason Statham couldn't hack another person's cell phone with his mind, so you know, maybe it's a trade-off. The gang raped the female classmate that Tom liked, because her brother would not join the gang, and they recorded the incident. Tom knows exactly who did it because once he sees the footage, he can replay it over and over in his mind, and look for more clues like what kind of shoes the gang-bangers were wearing, or what tattoos are visible in the footage. 

Meanwhile, he spends more time with Lucy as she recovers, and there's a chance for a real relationship here if he can take down the gang and not be sloppy about it, which would mean they could figure out who's stealing their drugs and burning up their money. No, wait, reverse that. As long as the gang's leader doesn't kidnap Tom's grandmother AND Lucy and force him to transfer money directly into his bank account, things will be fine. Well, guess what? 

I'm going to keep things short tonight because I worked late today (Sunday) and I have to be back at the theater first thing in the morning (Monday) so if I'm lucky and stop now, I can get maybe five hours of sleep. So no Monday movie this week, I'll try my best to be back here with. a Tuesday movie. 

Directed by Adam Randall

Also starring Bill Milner (last heard in "Locke"), Maisie Williams (last seen in "Then Came You"), Miranda Richardson (last seen in "Enchanted April"), Rory Kinnear (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Jordan Bolger (last seen in "The Woman King"), Charley Palmer Rothwell (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Armin Karima, McKell David, Shaquille Ali-Yebuah, Aymen Hamdouchi (last seen in "6 Days"), Leon Annor, Petrice Jones, Cameron Jack (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Paul Reynolds, Christopher Colquhoun, Oliver Coopersmith, Helen Daniels.

RATING: 5 out of 10 riot cops

Jurassic World: Rebirth

Year 18, Day 101 - 4/11/26 - Movie #5,300

BEFORE: All right, this Movie Year is officially one-third over - umm, right after I watch this one, that is. I didn't even mention I've been operating sick the last few days. I called out "sick" last weekend for one day (I wasn't sick, but had a different valid excuse, sort of) and then karma's just going to take it out on me, by giving me a real cold. Right? I worked last Tuesday and wore a MASK for the first time in forever, it's not really a good look if you're serving food or beer at a sports game and you're coughing all over the place. By Thursday I didn't feel I needed the mask any more, it felt like the cold was going away, but really it was digging down and planning to stay a while. I'm coughing more now, and my already irregular sleep schedule is now completely nuts, because I can't sleep when I'm supposed to, so how the hell can I finish a movie?  This would only be a problem if I had four theater shifts coming up in the next week, and two of them had early morning starts... I may have to skip a movie day here or there if I'm still feeling under the weather. 

Ed Skrein carries over from "I Used to Be Famous". It's a big century-mark today so I'm landing it on the latest installment of one of the biggest movie franchises ever

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jurassic World: Dominion" (Movie #4,226)

THE PLOT: Five years after "Dominion", an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.

AFTER: Anything in the "Jurassic Park" or "Jurassic World" franchise re-confirms the "Reductio ad Absurdum" idea, where we all tune in to see everything go wrong. Think about it, if they built an amusement park with dinosaurs genetically grown from million-year-old DNA and everybody was safe and happy and have a good time, that would somehow feel like it was just HALF of a movie, right? But then even after things went horribly wrong, they rebuilt and re-opened that theme part a couple times, didn't they? And people WENT BACK for some reason, knowing there was a non-zero chance they would somehow get eaten up by dinos. Like, come on, fool me once and shame on you, but fool me twice, that really should be on me. If people died going on the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland, and they closed it, fixed it, re-opened it and then MORE people died on "It's a Small World", would you go on that ride? Not if you were smart. 

So in at least two or three of the movies, they re-opened Jurassic Park and we're supposed to believe that people came back because the appeal of live dinosaurs was still there, despite the danger. Umm, sure, but right now people are boycotting a movie theater chain just because their ticket app or their food app isn't working. If customers do not have a good experience, they will NOT come back again, this was part of my training at the stadium where I'm working now. They showed us the results of a poll where people who said they would not return to the stadium were asked WHY, and according to this poll, 57% of those people said they would not return because they had a negative encounter with an unhelpful employee. What's funny to me is that 0% of the people said they would not return because the food and ticket prices were too high, which is what I suspect people really would say. (My guess is that this was not an option given to them on the survey.)  Where "Jurassic Park" is concerned, they surveyed the people who were eaten by dinosaurs if they would return to the park again, and well, they're still waiting for a response. But thanks to the poll, corporate believes that 0% of the people who would not return said that was because they were eaten, so really, no need to improve on the safety issues. 

The most recent sequel neatly sidesteps this dilemma by NOT showing any of the island park venues re-opening, THANK GOD. Instead this depicts a world where the dinosaurs who live in most parts of the Earth are dying off en masse, perhaps it's a problem with the air or the unstable nature of the cloning process, or maybe it's some kind of correction the Earth is taking because it knows that the natural order has been messed with. But there is still a zone around the equator where dinosaurs are NOT dying, so it's maybe got something to do with the climate or the amount of daylight or the distance from the poles, who can say? Anyway there's a small number of countries and islands that can support dino life as a result, so thankfully everybody knows to stay AWAY from that part of the world, like even families on a personal boat trip know to steer clear of the equator, so there's zero chance of any civilians passing into the danger zone...

Instead, a pharmaceutical company puts a crack team together to go back to one of the old island testing grounds of InGen or BioSyn, whichever, because they need to get fresh genetic material from living dinosaurs, as they believe they can use this to create a cure for heart disease and save millions of human lives. Well, sure, with all of the disasters that befell those other two companies, I guess it's believable that none of them saved any of their genetic material, or any of their notes. Or perhaps it's a legal thing, if they went through the proper channels they'd have to reimburse those companies or the shareholders or whatever, plus it would be a whole legal thing, but if they just went down there and got the samples themselves, like they were just out there in nature, you could make a case that material would be public domain, or taking it would at least be a lot less prosecutable. And the mission will be quick and easy, as long as there's not a family on a personal boat trip that crosses into the danger zone for some reason. 

Come on, admit it, even in this new scenario, if they put this crack team together, took the boat down to the island, used their fancy technology to collect the samples, got in, got out and nobody got hurt, the movie would be like fifteen minutes long and YOU would feel like you got ripped off. So you paid your $18.50 to sit in a movie theater and you WANT to see things go south, you WANT to see people get eaten by dinosaurs, sure you want the mission to succeed, but you WANT it to be very difficult, because only then will you feel like you got your money's worth, that you've been properly entertained to the legal limit. The greater the danger, the greater the payoff, and things really have not changed a bit since the days of Roman gladiators, now, have they? 

So, really, it's same shit, different island - the team has to travel to Ile Saint-Hubert, which we're being told was a testing lab, it's where the original park tried to come up with some new dinosaurs, because people were getting BORED with the old ones. People, right? You bring back a bunch of species from billions of years ago, major scientific miracle, and after people see the T. Rex and the raptors and the giant apatosauruses, people got BORED. OK, the people that didn't get eaten got BORED. I can't really tell if this is meta or not, because what we're talking about here is franchise fatigue, and it's being referenced as a problem in the fictional theme parks, so you have to wonder if it isn't also a problem in real life with the "Jurassic Park/World" films themselves. They showed us T. Rexes and raptors and the giant apatosauruses, and then where do you GO after that? Are you not entertained enough? 

So now we have to focus this film on Mosasaurus, that giant aquatic dinosaur, the Titanosaurus which maybe wasn't even ever a real dino, and the Quetzalcoatlus, which was like the largest flying thing that ever lived on Earth. Sure, the dinos are getting bigger, but so is the danger... to make things even worse, this turns out to be the island where the company was making new hybrid dinosaurs, you know, to get people back to the theme park to see new dinosaurs that never even existed in the first place, this will surely fight the franchise fatigue both within the movie and IRL. So now we get the Mutadon, which is a mix between the raptor and the pterosaur (sure, flying raptors, what could possibly go wrong there?) and the Distortus Rex, which is a mix of the T. Rex and the xenomorph from "Alien". Sure, green light, let's run with that.

The Distortus Rex sure looks like a rancor to me, the creature kept underneath Jabba the Hutt's throne room in "Return of the Jedi". The tip-off was how it held that guy and bit him in half, like he was a corn dog or something. I mean, I guess if you're going to steal, you steal from the best, but do you have to do that so blatantly? 

I firmly believe we're past the point of worrying about diminishing returns with this franchise, like this most recent film did get an Oscar nomination for visual effects, but it did NOT win and it did NOT get any other nominations. The only people still watching these films are the visual effects junkies, not people who love a good story or seek out great acting - if you took a survey asking why people went to see this movie 40% would say it was for the effects, maybe another 30% for the adrenaline rush and probably 20% went out of habit. Maybe 10% of people just had nothing better to do on a Friday night. But really, it's time to cut the losses and stop trying. 

To prove my point, there are only 20 cast members - I remember when a "Jurassic Park" film had a cast of thousands, or at least hundreds, so clearly they're in desperate straits and trying to save money wherever they can. That's a sinking ship, if you ask me. My fear is that this latest film is just the start of another trilogy, however, because this DID make money, with a budget of $180 million and a worldwide gross of $869 million. So yeah, there will be more. 

Directed by Gareth Edwards (director of "The Creator" and "Godzilla")

Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Rupert Friend (ditto), Mahershala Ali (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Jonathan Bailey (last seen in "The Young Messiah"), Manuel Garcia-Ruffo (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Luna Blaise, David Iacono (last seen in "Joker"), Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Adam Loxley, Niamh Finlay, Julian Edgar, Lucy Thackeray (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Billy Smith (last seen in "Mile 22"), Jonny Lavelle (last seen in "1917"), Frankie Verroca (last seen in "Babygirl")

RATING: 5 out of 10 bags of stale chips in the abandoned service station

I Used to Be Famous

Year 18, Day 100 - 4/10/26 - Movie #5,299

BEFORE: I had probably a few dozen roads out of "Jay Kelly", if not a hundred. So why this one? Sure, it's going to bring me via an actress who's not in a lot of films, to a film I know nothing about, but also a film with very FEW links to other movies. But one of those links is to a big blockbuster franchise film that came out last year, and that film feels kind of good to schedule on a century mark, a film number ending in 00. That's all, I can discard all the other paths out of "Jay Kelly" because I'm just looking at this one, and this one gets me to Movie #5,300 and also all the way to Mother's Day, via the Burnt Toast codicil. Today's movie could be a real stinker and I wouldn't care, because I'm looking down the road with big things to come. 

Eleanor Matsuura carries over from "Jay Kelly". 

THE PLOT: Vince, a desperate former popstar who dreams of making a comeback has an impromptu jam session with autistic young drummer Stevie that sparks an unexpected friendship between the two misunderstood musicians. 

AFTER: OK, so I've seen a few films about street musicians over the years, and today's film isn't exactly as good as "Sing Street" or "Once", but you know, that's OK, it doesn't have to be. It can just be what it is, which is a film about a former boy-band member who's now unemployed and looking to get back into the game. Look, I can sympathize, I was part of the indie animation scene in NYC for over 30 years, and now that I'm out, it's really tempting to try and find a way back in. I mean, I've got knowledge that I picked up over the years, and I've got experience, so part of me still wants to put all of that to use for someone else. But then there's a more rational part that says, "Nah, you've done that, you can do something different now, if you go back you're only going to have those same stresses all over again." So that's my plan, I'm doing something different, I'm working at a movie theater and I'm working at a stadium concession stand, and while there's stress in both places, it's a different kind of stress, and so far, so good. 

It's OK, I can be semi-retired from show business, I did so many of the things that I wanted to do, and a few things that I didn't even KNOW I wanted to do. I was interviewed for a documentary about George Lucas, I got my a cappella group to perform on a movie soundtrack, I got my name in the credits of a "Simpsons" episode and I met "Weird" Al Yankovic before a concert. I produced the only animated feature to qualify as a SAG low-budget project, I got another animated feature into the Dramatic Competition at Sundance, and I jumped through all the hoops to get one short film all the way to an Oscar nomination. Plus I ran a clean and legal operation for 30 years and only appeared before a judge ONCE (at the Department of Labor). I ran or co-ran FIVE successful Kickstarter campaigns and sold $11,000 of animation art to a French museum. Even if I'm done in that industry, that's a long and varied list of accomplishments. 30 years prior, I didn't know I could do all that - I didn't even know those were possible things to do. 

Anyway, perhaps Vincent Denham, or "Vinnie D" went through something similar as a member of Stereo Dream. He's got his memories, but he's also got regrets, most noticeably the loss of his brother, and the fact that he was on tour with the boy band when his brother died. Of course, when he starts playing music on the street and a young drummer joins in, when they develop a connection it's easy to see that Vinnie is looking to replace his brother in some way. The similarities are not subtle, Vinnie's brother Ted had some kind of learning disability, and the drummer, Stevie, is autistic. But Stevie is also very talented, so in addition to finding a brother substitute, Vinnie thinks he's found his ticket back into the recording industry. They just need to rehearse a bit, plus come up with some killer lyrics, and then they need to find some gigs. Then if Vinnie could get in touch with his old bandmate - the famous one - and maybe get turned on to a good record producer, he'd be right back where he wants to be. That's a lot of "IF's", though. 

He starts by gaining Stevie's trust (and Stevie's mother's trust) by joining the therapy drumming circle at their local church/community center. Vinnie was only there to fill his pockets full of cookies and sweets, but then he heard the drumming and thought it might lead him to that mystery kid. Well, it's a movie so of course it did. And also it's a movie so of course there's an upcoming concert that showcases local talent. And also it's a movie so of course a video of Vinnie and Stevie busking goes viral at the just the right time.  

But remember the autism - bringing a kid on the spectrum out at night to perform at a club full of people, it's loud, dark, people are drinking and being rude, potential triggers are everywhere and so it does NOT go well at first, and Stevie's mother nearly shuts down the whole process. But then while Vinnie is away visiting his mum, Stevie somehow has the confidence to go from bar to bar and find them a new gig. Yes, he's willing to go out and have conversations with strangers, which is a new and scary thing for him, but Vinnie did tell him how great it feels to be on stage and have a show go well, so maybe he could reach beyond the limits that his mother had put on him, it could happen. 

And Vinnie does manage to reach Austin, his bandmate who managed to have a long career after the boy band. And Austin's record company does want Vinnie D. to go out on tour and be the opening act - but they don't want him to bring Stevie, they've got more professional drummers that can back him up. So Vinnie does get another shot at stardom, but he's got to go back on his word to Stevie to get it, it's a horrible dilemma. I won't spoil how it ends up, though. 

I just want to mention something about autistic people - I do have a nephew on the spectrum but I want to talk about a few years back when we were making an animated feature with a co-director who lived in California. This brought us in touch with some new crew, like our sound recordist was out on the West Coast, and I think through him we met this girl who was autistic and aspired to be an animator herself. She really wanted to meet my boss, and I hadn't had much experience dealing with autistic people at the time, I didn't know how exactly it was different from ADHD or Tourette's or other conditions - honestly her brand of autism kind of reminded me of Tourette's, she just seemed to say whatever she wanted, and in her meeting with my boss she ended up spilling water on a bunch of his original art. Now I look on Instagram and I see that she's doing motivational talks about dealing with her condition and also having a career in animation. Again, not knowing all the facts here but it kind of feels a bit like she's using her diagnosis to get ahead, and that doesn't really rub me the right way. I guess you've got to use whatever life throws your way the best you can, but like if a guy with no arms wanted to become a painter, sure, go ahead, paint with your brush in your mouth if you can, but I don't really see how you turn that into a selling point to get ahead. I'll probably get in trouble for saying something like this, so I usually don't - but it's how I feel. 

Similarly, Stevie in this movie applies to a prominent school of music - and I have to wonder if his autism diagnosis was a help or a hindrance. Maybe the school was trying to fulfill some kind of quota - like they had me fill out a form about whether I have a disability, and I do - hearing loss. Hey, if it helps me keep my job then I'm also half-blind and I have arthritis and gout and ADHD and psoriasis and chronic halitosis and any other condition you can think of....

My point is, if it's wrong to NOT hire someone because they have a disability or medical condition, I think it should also be wrong to hire someone just because they have a disability or medical condition, does that make sense? 

Directed by Eddie Sternberg

Also starring Ed Skrein (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Leo Long, Eoin Macken (last seen in "Centurion"), Lorraine Ashbourne (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Neil Stuke (last seen in "Twice Upon a Yesterday"), Kurt Egyiawan (last seen in "A Real Pain"), Stanley Morgan, Racheal Ofori (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Joplin Sibtain, Tom Bacon, Carrie Rock, Aiyana Goodfellow, Jack Minton, Marcus Fraser, Jedial Stiling, Jacob Webster, Jack Maw, Jamie Wannell, Pooja Shah (last seen in "Bend It Like Beckham"), Nicole Avraamides, Cooper Filby, Edward Hyland (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Anita Reynolds, Jessica Murrain, Jennifer Joseph, Zara Symes, Mark J. Elias, Sukey Willis, Craig Stevens, Gethin Jones, Kimberley Walsh, Alex Wood.

RATING: 6 out of 10 jammie dodgers

Jay Kelly

Year 18, Day 99 - 4/9/26 - Movie #5,298

BEFORE: I'm on the road to Mother's Day now, just about one month away. I don't want to reveal the target film just yet, but last year I had a couple featuring Sally Field, "Not Without My Daughter" and "Norma Rae", plus "End of the Road" with Queen Latifah. I may only have one this year, the one that makes the most sense in this crazy Movie Year, but who knows, there may be more. 

Lenny Henry carries over from "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl"

THE PLOT: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager, Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories. 

AFTER: Somebody clearly tried to make an Oscar run with this film, I'm sure there were guild screenings and trade ads were taken out, but it only resulted in some Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations, I guess it was too much of a leap from there to any Oscar nominations, because they just didn't happen. Perhaps somebody over-estimated how much the audience would care about George Clooney playing a successful actor looking back on his life. Was this story intentionally based on him, was he playing a version of himself? It doesn't matter, because if the actor in question is portrayed as TOO successful then he (Clooney or Kelly) could come off as entitled, and that's a big no-no these days. If you act like you deserve an Oscar, you're kind of turning off the voters at the same time, and then you won't get one. 

Oh, they tried to portray Jay Kelly as a sympathetic figure - sure, famous, rich, successful, but also a broken marriage or two and two daughters who are convinced he was never there for them. Sure, a great actor can be a bad parent, they're just like us, after all, only there's a feeling like maybe they're supposed to be better?  It almost doesn't make sense that somebody can be so good at one thing and terrible at another, but then if you think of career, family and love as a triangle of sorts, consider that some people only manage to lock down TWO of these things at a time, and that's with trying, all THREE could be damn near impossible, if you know somebody who can juggle some form of success in all three arenas, buy them dinner and give them a pat on the back, I guess, because they're winning at life.   

The film shows Jay Kelly as he wraps shooting one film and has a bit of a break before starting the next one, so he tries to spend time with his younger daughter, only she's about to leave for a trip through Europe before college. Then Kelly learns that the director who first cast him in a film has died, so he attends the funeral. At the funeral he re-encounters Tim, his former roommate from acting school and they go out for drinks. Tim eventually accuses Jay of tagging along on an audition and stealing the role that WOULD have made Tim famous, only Jay got it. They have a fist-fight in the parking lot and Jay Kelly gets a black eye. 

The next morning, Jay ditches rehearsals for his upcoming film and books a trip to Europe, to secretly follow his daughter. To have a cover story, he has his manager, Ron, agree to a tribute screening at a film festival in Italy, which he had previously declined. But now it's back on, even though Ron arranged for another one of his actor-clients to get the screening and award. So now the festival has to give out TWO awards and have TWO tribute screenings. Jay's whole entourage flies by private Jet to France so they can all get on the same train as Jay's daughter, headed toward Italy. 

Jay Kelly is immediately recognized on the train, but he interacts with everyone on his train car, like, why hide it, and meanwhile his manager and publicist are dealing with the negative publicity and lawsuit caused by Jay punching that guy in a parking lot. Jay is now being sued for assault, but it all seems like this is par for the course. While on the long train ride, Jay has some flashbacks that clue us in about his strained relationship with his older daughter, and an affair he had with a co-star, cheating on his wife and his daughter's mother. So yeah, it's so weird how they think that he abandoned them, but he kind of did. 

More stuff happens, like a cyclist on the train steals an older woman's handbag, and as the train is stopped, Jay chases after the guy and retrieves the bag, the cyclist was off his medications and allegedly did not know what he was doing. Umm, sure. But now there's some GOOD viral video of Jay doing a good deed, to maybe offset the roommate fight thing. Jay's publicist and another member of the entourage get off the train early, I guess to go back to their lives, and his hair person takes a side-trip to give a haircut to the French President. Somebody PLEASE tell me this is all going to add up to something relevant - I got a feeling at this point that was becoming an incredible long-shot. 

Finally the train arrives in Tuscany and Jay's father is in attendance, that appears to be yet another strained relationship in Jay's life. Meanwhile his manager, Ron, meets with that other client, who fires him and there's also word from Jay's lawyers that they made the whole assault lawsuit go away. This plus the tribute means that everything once again seems to be going Jay Kelly's way, except that neither daughter wants to attend the ceremony, but they both seem pretty OK with cutting him out of their lives, one to go on her own filmmaking adventure in Italy and the other stays home in California for her twice-weekly therapy sessions. Finally, Jay's manager quits, too, because he needs to start putting his own family ahead of Jay's needs, but Jay convinces him to stay for the tribute, as a friend, because they share in his professional success. Sure, and I'm the Tooth Fairy. 

This film is hitting for me at an extremely coincidental time - now I can't tell if this is fate, karma, coincidence or just my own darn luck, but if you're a longtime reader of the Movie Year you know that I worked for an independent animator for over 30 years, and I was fired about a year ago. Well, that animator has a birthday coming up, and I've been asked (twice, no three times) to not only attend the show, but help put it together, maybe make a video about how I got the job and what working for that person meant to me, oh, and if I've got access to any photos from working at the studio, or pictures of my boss with celebrities, could I help organize them into a tribute for his special birthday screening of his films? 

My response so far has been "No" - followed by "Hell, no." and I'll have to answer an e-mail from his wife next telling her the same. I can't tell you how many times it fell on me over 31 years to organize screenings of his work at this festival or that one, plus at least three times I was paid to compile photos of him with famous people, for this book or that web-site or some kind of promotional reel. And now that I'm no longer working for him, you want me to do this all again, for FREE? Yeah, I was born on a Sunday but it wasn't last Sunday. If nobody saved the work I'd done in the past putting these photos and tributes together, that's not my problem. As for the video, he didn't want to hear my input on running his studio over the last two years, in fact he would usually tell me my suggestions were horrible ideas and then two days later he would ask me to implement those exact same things, which were now GOOD ideas because HE thought of them. Did he think that I would forget that he told me those were terrible suggestions when I made them? And NOW somebody wants me to make a video where I talk about what a delight it was to work for him? I don't think he wants to hear what I have to say on a video.

So yeah, I'm not helping to put this tribute together, because now he seems to have forgotten that he fired me after I made one too many suggestions that he didn't like. OK, sure, he hired me back but he wanted me to work from home, which was impossible, so then I quit. I don't work for free, so I'm not working on this tribute screening, let someone else put it together for once. His studio was supposed to fall apart without me, and that hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful. The only tool I still have to allow him to feel my absence is to stay away, and not get involved.

My experience has also been that when people say they want a "roast" as a tribute, they don't really mean it. So me not getting involved here is better for everyone, I think. 

Jay Kelly represents, to me, someone with "artist brain", and I have known a couple over the years. These are successful people who surround themselves with managers, assistants, hair and make-up people, publicists, and interns so THEY can remain in control of their lives, but God forbid any of those people disagree with him, or point out his failings or shortcomings. If they do they'll most likely be fired and replaced with people more unlikely to speak out. The thing about people with "artist brain" is that they ensure that nobody will say "No" to them about doing all the anything they want to do, but unfortunately that's exactly what they need to hear, at least once in a while. 

Directed by Noah Baumbach (director of "De Palma" and "White Noise")

Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Adam Sandler (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Laura Dern, Billy Crudup (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The Discovery"), Grace Edwards (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Stacy Keach (last seen in "Valerie"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Emily Mortimer (ditto), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "The Assistant"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Tesla"), Greta Gerwig (last seen in "White Noise"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Louis Partridge (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Alba Rohrwacher (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Landscape with Invisible Hand"), Nicole Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Sadie Sandler (also last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Burke and Hare"), Jamie Demetriou (last heard in "Strays"), Patsy Ferran (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Parker Sawyers (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Lars Eidinger (last seen in "Proxima"), Giovanni Zeqireya, Kyle Soller (last seen in "Marrowbone"), Tom Francis, Giovanni Esposito (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Stanley Townsend (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Erica Sweany, Kevin Shen (last seen in "Unlocked"), David Neumann (last seen in "White Noise"), Dean Wareham (ditto), May Nivola (ditto), Leila Farzad (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Juliet Cowan, Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Lucas Aurelio, Tuwaine Barrett (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Martha West (last seen in "Creation"), Philip Arditti (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Nigel Whitmey (last seen in "Shining Through"), Doug Cockle (last seen in "Criminal"), Helene Maksoud, Ruthie Rogers, Josh Berger, Penny Mortimer, Carlos Jacott (last seen in "Omni Loop"), Eloise Jacott, John Macmillan (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Andreas Munoz, Ferdi Stofmeel, Rosita Raffaelli, Antoinette Aaron, Philippe Spall (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Annabel Mullion (ditto), Nasser Memarzia (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Christophe Guybet, Federico Scribani, Francesco De Vito (last seen in "When in Rome"), Sharon Rooney (last seen in "Barbie"), Hannah Onslow (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Amber Mendez-Martin, Janine Duvitski (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Pippo Crotti, Yinka Awoni (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Theo Augier, Alex Jarrett, Alais Lawson, Cassius Hackforth, Emily Piggford, Danielle Lewis (last seen in "The Son"), Monica Nappo (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Galatea Ranzi, Fabio Vannozzi, Arianna Becheroni, Lucian St. Aubyn, Marco Conte, Donald Sabourin, Matilda Thorpe, Morgan Beale, Ruby Stokes, Alastair Coughlan, Andrew Malik, Joe Hewetson, Max Beken, Carly-Sophia Davies, Debora Weston (last seen in "Patriot Games"), Martin McDougall (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Kit Rakusen (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Sadie Stallcup, Daniel P.D. Smith, with a cameo from Noah Baumbach (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming")

RATING: 5 out of 10 clips from other George Clooney films (you thought it was going to be slices of cheesecake, didn't you?)