Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freaky Tales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddington

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

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

Austin Butler carries over from "Caught Stealing". 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RATING: 4 out of 10 city council Zoom meetings

Caught Stealing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RATING: 6 out of 10 loaves of challah bread

Golda

Year 18, Day 176 - 6/25/26 - Movie #5,356

BEFORE: All right, I've confirmed 42 docs for the Doc Block - I'm going to make one last pass on my list to try to get the total up to 50, but I think it's a long shot. The chain is kind of telling me that it only wants to be 42 docs long - last year I did 49 and it sure felt too long, so I should probably take the hint. Still, I've got a couple more days off before I have to report back in to one of my jobs, so maybe...I know, just take the win and move on. 

Helen Mirren carries over again from "The Duke". This one has surfaced at a time where it may have some relevance, after Israel has been in the news within the last year for starting a war, and of course once again there's no peace in the Middle East, so let's take a look back through history to another war, maybe I'll get some understanding. 

THE PLOT: Focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, also known as the "Iron Lady of Israel", faced during the Yom Kippur War. 

AFTER: I was alive during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but honestly, this is the first time I'm ever hearing about it. I guess when you're only 5 years old you don't really pay attention to the wars around the world, and maybe your parents also protect you a little bit so that you don't. The first time I remember even thinking about the Middle East was probably around the time of the Camp David accords, where Begin and Sadat sat down with Jimmy Carter and a few things got worked out - but that kind of comes at the end of this movie, almost as a follow-up. 

Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel, to date the only female head of that country's government. But she was there at the start when Israel became a country in 1948, she was one of the signers of Israel's Declaration of Independence. She served as Labor Minister and then Foreign Minister, appointed by David Ben-Gurion, and retired in 1966 for health reasons. But then in 1969 she was back, becoming Prime Minister after the death of Levi Eshkol, and during her tenure she made many diplomatic visits to Western leaders to promote peace in the Middle East. The only thing that could possibly get in the way of her plan was some country like Egypt or Syria (or both) starting some kind of military campaign against Israel - I mean, come on, really, what are the odds? 

According to this film, she received intelligence reports that Egypt was amassing a large force on the other side of the Suez Canal, and word was that a war would start by sundown. Israel's forces were largely caught off guard, and Golda Meir refused to launch a pre-emptive strike, because, well, how would that look? Israel could be seen as the aggressor in that scenario, and that really didn't fit in with the image of a country seeking peace, to strike first. However, a large portion of the country's forces were mobilized in response to the threat across the border, then Syria launched an attack as well, so the troops were ill-prepared, also throwing Meir and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, for a loop. Egypt and Syria both infiltrated different parts of Israel, gaining land between October 7 and 8. Moshe Dayan proposed an air strike on Damascus, Syria, however Israel was short on planes, and had to ask Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State, to send them some extra jets. 

Kissinger was in a bit of a bind here, because he was trying to maintain good relations with all of the parties involved, like to keep the oil flowing from Egypt and Syria to the U.S., however he was also Jewish and had a relationship with Golda Meir, therefore he sent the jets, but I'm guessing it would have been a scandal if those other countries found out where Israel got them. 

On the fifth day of the war, Major General Ariel Sharon proposed sending the 143rd Tank Division across the Suez Canal to challenge the Egyptian armies. Israeli intelligence learned that the Egyptians would not be able to cross the canal for two days, because that would leave Cairo undefended - then when they did, they were defeated by the Israeli tank forces waiting for them. A few day after that, Sharon's forces crossed the canal at an undefended point, and despite being ambushed, they held their position - meanwhile the Third Egyptian Army got barricaded and Egypt was forced into negotiations. Kissinger came back to talk Golda Meir into accepting a ceasefire, but she went ahead with her plans because Israel had the upper hand at that point. 

What followed seems a lot like what we went through after the Israel-Palestine conflict - diplomatic talks, exchange of POWs, and a re-drawing of borders based on who won and who lost. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. Golda Meir got treated again for cancer, and maybe it's just who she was or maybe the times were different, but apparently, according to this movie, if you were the Israeli Prime Minister you could light up a cigarette right there in the hospital while you were receiving cancer treatments. I suspect times have probably changed, and you can't do this today, or maybe only the leaders of countries could do this. 

 A year later, Golda Meir testified before a commission regarding her conduct during the war - this film is rather non-linear, it's possible that the whole war is seen here during flashbacks while she is testifying, but I suppose other answers are possible, perhaps it just jumps around in time for artistic or confusing reasons. Anyway, Golda does not mention how her general's plan to monitor communications from Egypt failed to warn them of the attack - either the eavesdropping didn't work, or perhaps nobody was listening to the monitors at all. Either way, her generals dropped the ball, but she took the hit for not being ready to respond to the attack at first. Instead she chalks her delay up to resistance to retaliate, however she still maintained that she felt the Yom Kippur War was inevitable, even if nobody knew when it would arrive, they knew war was coming. Umm, OK, that's your defense, if you're comfortable splitting hairs like that. 

And four years after that, Golda is seen dying in a hospital bed while watching footage of her meeting with Sadat in 1977. Still, she's chain smoking, so I guess some people never learn - I'm pretty sure that smoking in a hospital ward while using an oxygen tank is a recipe for disaster. But again, it was a different time and that's how addicted some people were to smoking in the 1970's. 

Directed by Guy Nattiv

Also starring Camille Cottin (last seen in "A Haunting in Venice"), Rami Heuberger (last seen in "Schindler's List"), Rotem Keinan (last seen in "The Operative"), Emma Davies (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Lior Ashkenazi (last seen in "Norman"), Dominic Mafham (last seen in "Ophelia"), Dvir Benedek, Ed Stoppard (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ohad Knoller (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Jaime Ray Newman (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Zed Josef, Henry Goodman (last seen in "Their Finest"), Jonathan Tafler (last seen in "Yentl"), Ellie Piercy (last seen in "The Dig"), Mark Fleischmann (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Daniel Ben Zenou, Sara Matin, Dalia Librus, Kit Rakusen (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), 

with archive footage of Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Golda Meir, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Rather"), Anwar Sadat, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 aerial photographs

The Duke

Year 18, Day 175 - 6/24/26 - Movie #5,355 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #12

BEFORE: Just one week left in June now, and that's also one week until the start of the Doc Block, neatly coinciding with July 1 to line up the best film for July 4 and the (nearly) All-American line-up of documentaries for our country's 250th Birthday - I added a couple more films into the mix, so I think now I'm up to 41 or 42 docs. I mean, 50 would be great for 50 states and 50 stars on the flag, but I don't think I can make that happen in time. 

Helen Mirren carries over from "The Last Station". Keeping track of everyone who appears in every doc is going to be a logistical nightmare, that's why I started early by compiling the cast lists in advance, but it's still going to be a lot of work, all that archive footage. Today's film has footage of John F. Kennedy in it, so he's got a bit of an unfair head start. Honestly, I don't know who's going to have the most appearances, it could be a U.S. President or it could be a talk-show host like Johnny Carson or Conan O'Brien or Letterman or Cavett, I'm just fairly sure we'll have a new front-runner when the Doc Block is over, the leader right now is still Jason Statham with 6 appearances this year. 

THE PLOT: In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver named Kempton Bunton steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery of London. 

AFTER: This film is intended as both comedy and social commentary, but it is based on a true story, the real 1961 theft of a Goya painting from London's National Gallery - now we the audience have a tiny bit of information at the start of the film about who nicked the art, but you kind of have to read between the lines a little to figure that bit out. It is very easy to leap to the conclusion, as the police did, that Kempton Bunton stole the painting, simply because he was the one who was trying to return the painting for the cash reward. Which raises a few questions, namely was there honestly a reward being offered for the painting's return, or was this just a desperate attempt to lead the thief to come forward, in order to claim that reward? It sure does not seem to be a "no questions asked" type of reward if Bunton showed up with the painting (approximate value: 140,000 British pounds) and they didn't just hand him a check, or even a cheque. Nope, he was arrested and put on trial, for a number of several but connected charges. They charged him with the theft of the painting, the theft of the frame, and also for the damage done to the country's citizenry as they were deprived of the opportunity to enjoy the sight of the painting for several weeks. 

Yes, we're exploring the vagaries of the British legal system once again, second night in a row, and just because a man tries to return a painting for the reward money, naturally that man immediately becomes the prime suspect in the art's disappearance, but, you know, other answers are possible. His fingerprints were not on the painting, but he could have worn rubber gloves. There was no footage of him entering the gallery or taking the painting, but who knows, maybe this elderly bus driver and part-time bread baker was somehow a criminal mastermind and an expert at avoiding cameras and picking locks. Hey, it could happen. 

After all, this is a guy who tried to get out of paying the license fee for his television, because he had disabled the coil on the telly that allowed the signal from BBC1 and BBC2 to be picked up, he claimed that he only watched the other channels, and not the ones financed by the U.K. government, therefore he didn't owe any money to the government for their services. Well, the TV inspectors didn't really see things his way, Mr. Bunton argued that TV should be free for all people, but especially senior citizens who were already having enough trouble making ends meet on a limited income. And he was willing to campaign and petition around his neighborhood for support on this issue, while his wife would have much preferred if he paid the 2p or whatever the fee was, then she could enjoy watching her TV without the fear and shame of breaking the law. 

My own father was kind of the same way, we never had cable TV when I was a kid, because my father felt we shouldn't have to PAY for television, it should be free, and after I moved to New York City I couldn't WAIT to get cable and the hundreds of channels that came with it. Years later I offered to buy cable for him because I knew how much he and my mother enjoyed PBS shows, and they deserved to watch them in HD, plus all the shows on A&E, Animal Planet, etc. We fought for years about this, but finally I just went ahead and arranged the cable installation and had the bills sent to me, and this was just a couple years before they stopped sending TV signals out over the airwaves, and suddenly everybody had to have cable if they wanted clear reception. You know, it kind of benefited me because then I got to keep enjoying cable TV when I went and visited them - but I had to kind of force my father around to my way of thinking. 

Anyway, Kempton had a difficult time after he lost his taxi driver job because he was too talkative and tended to say a lot of crazy things - he then kept promising his wife he'd find a new job, however he tended to sneak off to London to try and drum up press coverage for his TV license cause, while also trying to get someone at the BBC to buy his scripts to turn into TV shows. Kempton also got a job baking bread, but made the mistake of pointing out his supervisor's inherit racism in forcing the workers with darker skin back off their breaks earlier than the white workers. Kempton's wife worked as a housekeeper and babysitter for a local councillor and his wife, however once Kempton got accused of art theft they were forced to fire her, as they were afraid of bad publicity. Kempton's son Jackie worked on building boats, while his elder brother Kenny who lived in Leeds had a job in construction but you know, that probably meant he did low-level jobs for the mob. 

Meanwhile, the police are working hard to try to figure out the identity of the thief, they even brought in a handwriting analysis expert to study the notes that Kempton was sending to the newspapers, in which he was suggesting a plan to exhibit the painting to raise money for his political cause of paying for the TV licenses for older people, however when this plan seemed like a no-go, he resorted to just walking back into the museum with the painting to try to return it via the lost & found department. This was the point at which he got arrested. 

His barrister's propsed defense argument in court involved around proving that Kempton never meant to "steal" the painting for good, but just to "borrow" it for his fund-raising campaign with plans to return it once he'd raised the money for the TV licenses. The court couldn't really view this as a valid excuse, for fear that other people would then walk into art museums and help themselves to the valuable paintings whenever they were short on cash. Well, you can't blame a defendant for trying. But something happened as Kempton was giving testimony on the stand, he just seemed so plain and down-to-earth and friendly that he won people over. It was really hard to believe in the first place that an older man could have been such a nimble thief, plus he didn't really fit the profile of "criminal mastermind" at all, so he was acquitted of the crime of stealing the painting, however the jury did hold him responsible for the theft of the frame, which was never returned or ever found. 

Meanwhile, back at home the true art thief reveals himself, and then of course WHY Kempton was willing to take the blame and go on trial and serve time made perfect sense. Eventually even the police figure out who the real thief was, but re-opening the case and having another trial might cause them to be seen as inept, plus the fact that Kempton was incarcerated even though he was innocent would give him a reason to sue them for false imprisonment, so the police intentionally did not pursue the matter any further. Really this became a comedy of errors across the board, and while not much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, a lot of it is slice-of-life, isn't-that-quite-peculiar funny. 

Really, there's just one thing missing - the film could have used an animated bear who liked marmalade and wears a rainhat who also could have been falsely accused of art theft and gone to prison for it. I mean, this all feels a bit like a "Paddington" film only it doesn't have Paddington in it. Do you remember someone used to alter the "Garfield" comic strips to remove Garfield from every panel? Those were kind of weird because there was just empty spaces where Garfield should have been and it all felt kind of surreal and sad. Yeah, this is kind of like that, it's definitely a Paddington movie without Paddington. I wonder if somebody could add him now, using A.I. JK. 

The real theft was so famous that it got referenced in the first James Bond film, "Dr. No" - the painting of the Duke of Wellington is seen in Dr. No's hideout, implying that maybe he was the one that took it - well, at the time it was just as good a guess as any.

Directed by Roger Michell (director of "Morning Glory" and "Notting Hill")

Also starring Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "Imagine Me & You"), Fionn Whitehead (last seen in "Voyagers"), James Wilby (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Sian Clifford (last seen in "See How They Run"), Charles Edwards (last seen in "The Witches" (2020)), Charlotte Spencer (last seen in "Dark Shadows"), John Heffernan (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Aimee Kelly (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Joshua McGuire (last seen in "Saltburn"), Jack Bandeira (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Sam Swainsbury (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Andrew Havill (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Neal Barry, Craig Conway (last seen in "The Current War"), Michael Hodgson, Dorian Lough (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Sarah Beck Mather (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Michael Mather, Austin Haynes (last seen in 'The Boys in the Boat"), Simon Hubbard, Matthew Steer (last seen in "Criminal"), Val McLane, Michael Gould (last seen in "Radioactive"), Heather Craney (last seen in "Child 44"), Claire Lams, Stephen Rashbrook, Ashley Kumar, Darren Charman (also last seen in "Deep Cover"), Sparrow Michell, Michael Adams (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Steve Giles, Andrew John Parker, Cliff Burnett, Sarah Cotton, Sarah Annett, Alice Stokoe, Sharon Facinelli, with archive footage of Sean Connery (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?", John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Apollo 18"), Joseph Wiseman (last seen in "Dr. No")

RATING: 7 out of 10 ginger nut biscuits 

The Last Station

Year 18, Day 174 - 6/23/26 - Movie #5,354 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #11

BEFORE: Well, darn, I went and programmed this film, then it seems like it disappeared from Hulu just a couple weeks later. I realize everything has an expiration date, but these things do tend to happen at the worst times. I'm programmed to make it to July 1 in a set number of steps, so I can land the right film on July 4. Usually it's no big deal, if a film is gone from Netflix, maybe it went to Hulu - if it left Hulu, maybe it went to Tubi or Roku, I don't mind a few ads. This one isn't screening anywhere that isn't going to charge me an additional fee, like YouTube or Apple TV, and I haven't found a new pirate site to replace the one that got shut down. 

Wait, maybe I can find a replacement film, another film on my list that could just happen to connect the same two films, that I could just drop into the place, with no lengthening of the chain.  Sure, there are two films I could watch instead - but one is a romance film, and it's firmly entrenched in a chain saved for February, so I could screw up a whole month's worth of films by watching that now. The other substitute is that film set during Christmastime about the dying mother, which I already passed on once, and now I'm saving that for Christmas some year. 

So damn it, I have to pay the $4 today to watch this film and keep the chain going without tearing apart a set chain of a week's length just to try to end up in the same place, I honestly don't even know if that would be possible. YouTube gets paid today, because iTunes is just a hollowed-out shell now, they never have any movies that I want to watch any more - and I can watch YouTube on my computer and not my phone, at least. OK, so that's the plan, pay the fee and I can stick with the chain that I know is going to get me to the Doc Block. John Sessions carries over from "Denial". 

THE PLOT: A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. 

AFTER: I have to admit I don't know much about Leo Tolstoy, I mean the man as opposed to the author - you can know an author by his works, but is that all that he was?  This film is an account of the last year of his life, 1910, during which his almost cult-like followers wanted him to create a new will, one which would place his copyrights in the public domain, which seemed like a very Socialist thing to do, and Socialism was kind of having a moment right around then on the Russian political scene. However, Tolstoy's long-term wife seemed to have other ideas about who should own those copyrights and profit from the book sales after his death. Well, she had gotten used to living in a nice big house and all the comforts therein, who could blame her? 

We see the strain on the marriage through the eyes of Tolstoy's new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, who is assigned the job by Chertkov, the leader of the "disciples" known as Tolstoyans, not "Leo-Crats" as you might imagine. Valentin can see both sides of the argument, especially after Tolstoy's wife Sofya is very nice to him, but he also understands how much the author means to the entire nation, and there seems to be growing sentiment against the aristocrats and the other people who "own" stuff - shouldn't wealth be better distributed among the population?  Ah, but Valentin hasn't seen the other side of Sofya, the long-suffering wife who might also have anger issues or mental problems. Well, sure, who wouldn't after 40 years of marriage? These two can't be in the same room for 10 minutes without talking about killing each other. Yeah, that tracks. 

Tolstoy, of course, has 14 children, that's what makes this another addition to the Father's Day themed programming. See, I knew there was a reason why I stayed the course and didn't drop in a substitute film... Tolstoy came from a family of old Russian nobility, his father was a Count, and he was the fourth of five children, but both parents died before he was ten. When he went to university, his teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn". After running up gambling debts, the simplest (?) thing to do was join the Army and fight in the Crimean War - hey, that's my favorite go-to Jeopardy answer whenever there's a question about Russian Wars! His war service and two trips around Europe turned him from a privileged noble into a non-violent anarchist - well, sure, OK, I love that for him. Who knew that he had a running correspondence with Gandhi?  

After founding a number of schools for the children of peasants, Tolstoy decided to get married, and he chose Sophia Behrs, sixteen years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She acted as his support system - secretary, editor and financial manager - giving him the freedom to write "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". They had 13 children, eight of whom survived past childhood. But as Tolstoy became more radical in his views, the relationship with his wife kind of deteriorated, the film represents the ultimate result of all that. We see Tolstoy leave his estate after signing the new will, he really just needs to be somewhere else to "continue his work". This is that condition we call "artist brain", where an author or filmmaker refuses to admit that he's old and really needs to retire.  

Leaving his wife behind has unintended results - when she learns that he has left to parts unknown and has no plans to return, she immediately heads for the lake and tries to drown herself. Well, love makes people do some funny things sometimes - she couldn't stand to live with him any more, but the thought of living without him was even worse. He had taken a train to Astapovo station, which was literally (and figuratively) the end of the line - he apparently became ill at some point along the way. Their daughter Sasha did allow her mother to see him briefly before he died, I suppose that was the least she could have done. The new will stood for a while, but in 1914 the Russian senate allowed the copyrights of his works back to his widow. 

Helen Mirren does most of the heavy lifting here, Christopher Plummer is much more passive, but to be fair, he was playing Tolstoy as a pacifist. However, remember that he was also an anarchist, and we just don't really get to see that side of him here. Paul Giamatti is pretty passive too, but his character is a schemer, and the actor only gets to do his trademark "temper flare-up" thing once in this movie - probably the most Giamatti-esque that Paul Giamatti ever got was during his performance in "Big Fat Liar", I realize that now. Well, that and "Private Parts" and "Sideways", I realize you could edit a whole compilation together of scenes with characters played by Giamatti losing their tempers...

Directed by Michael Hoffman (director of "The Best of Me" and "Game 6")

Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Christopher Plummer (last seen in "The Exception"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Big Fat Liar"), James McAvoy (last seen in "The Bubble"), Patrick Kennedy (last seen in "The November Man"), Kerry Condon (last seen in "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"), Anne-Marie Duff (last seen in "On Chesil Beach"), Tomas Spencer (last seen in "Beyond the Sea"), Christian Gaul, Wolfgang Hantsch, David Masterson, Anastasia Tolstoy, Maximilian Gartner, Nenad Lucic, Henning Mosselman

RATING: 6 out of 10 broken plates