Bad Moms

Year 18, Day 129 - 5/9/26 - Movie #5,326 - Happy Mother's Day!

BEFORE: OK, I could not finish this film last night, because I came home and had some beer and chocolate cake, then crashed - I really needed the sleep, but I was up by 9 am on a Saturday morning. Still, it's a big day, I have to pack and kind of help get the house in order because we're going to be gone for a week. My mother has been in and out of the hospital because the fluid is building up in her body again, her heart just isn't strong enough to keep things flowing, so they're either talking about surgery to fix her aortic valve (which has been considered before, but nixed because they don't think she'd survive the surgery) or putting her in hospice care, which is basically just awaiting the inevitable. So, no great options right now, but we're still driving down to see her and spend time with her this week. If she's starting to get palliative care, then we don't know how many more trips there will be, sad to say. 

So, you know, not really in the mood for a comedy, maybe, but still, Kristen Bell carries over from "Big Miracle". This is where I planned to be on Mother's Day, and I came out one day ahead, because of the travel plans. 

THE PLOT: When three overworked and under-appreciated moms are pushed beyond their limits, they ditch their conventional responsibilities for a jolt of long overdue freedom, fun and comedic self-indulgence. 

AFTER: Let me see if I can follow the generational logic here - our country had the post-World War II generation of wives who became mothers, and they expected a lot. Some were immigrants, some were raised in the U.S., but they all seemed to have high standards. Mothers were expected to sacrifice everything for their children, and the plan was that this would pay off later when they could make their children feel guilty and thus one or more kids would feel obligated to take care of their mothers, provide room and board or at least financial support, when they were elderly. It was a long con, planned out well in advance, but for the most part it worked. The landscape in the 1980s and 1990s was filled with nursing homes holding all the elderly parents who could not move in with their adult children, but you know, the adult kids visited whenever they could. The next generation caught on, and pushed their children even harder, because more successful kids have better careers, and can provide better for their elderly parents, theoretically at least. So we had a whole generation of "helicopter moms" who pushed their kids relentlessly, however that whole generation got very stressed out as a result. 

That generation was misled to believe that perfection was possible, attainable, which is not really true, you can strive for it but it can't be achieved, not to the satisfaction of your mother, anyway, who only wants what is "best for you", according to her definition, the only one that matters to her, and she will never let YOU define that for yourself. So this generation of perfectionists can't ever be satisfied with themselves, or THEIR kids, however a few of them have come to realize how badly they are stressing out the kids who all have ADHD or stress dreams or low self-esteem as a result. So there's been a perceived need to relax the standards a bit, or perhaps to re-define the goal since perfection is not attainable or likely, so now if you can achieve passing grades and have any kind of career goal, and still have a positive self-image, you're kind of in the clear. However, these relaxed standards, combined with internet access and allowing A.I. to complete homework assignments has now created an entirely entitled younger generation that doesn't feel they need to work at all, they can be completely picky eaters, and they have no idea how to clean up after themselves or do any household chores. Does that follow? 

Amy Mitchell here is part of that perfectionist generation, she needs to have a career, a husband, two kids and she's putting all kinds of pressure on those kids to play sports, get good grades, make the right friends, etc. Meanwhile her life is starting to fall apart, her boss wants her to go full-time, her husband is internet chatting with a naked woman, and her son is satisfied with failing grades. She thinks she can still "save" her daughter, who seems very self-sufficient and self-motivating, however Amy feels very guilty about putting that pressure on her, and feels that she's failed as a mom, across the board. When she meets two other women who also feel like they're failing, and compare themselves to the adult "Mean Girls" who run the PTA, they make the non-logical leap together and say, "Hey, let's be Bad Moms". In other words, we'll never be perfect, we'll never be perfect, so let's have fun failing. This logic doesn't really compute for me, it's like saying, "Well, we're all going to die someday, so what's the point of doing anything?" or "I'll never win a Nobel Prize, so why learn chemistry or physics?" It's not productive thinking by any means. 

However, there's an upside - the PTA moms who run the Bake Sale are wound WAY too tight, like here's a PowerPoint presentation about what ingredients can NOT be in baked goods because someone might be allergic to them. No nuts, no processed flour, no dairy, no unethically sourced chocolate chips - so, basically no fun either. Why do we all have to suffer and learn this list of banned ingredients when the impetus should be on the people with the allergies, to, I don't know, maybe avoid eating those things? Amy decides to run for PTA President on the platform of people doing less, not more, and it strikes a chord with all the other moms who feel like failures, who can't tell their twins apart of who have are more attracted to their nannies than their husbands. Wait, what?  Nobody should aspire to be bad at anything, I mean, nobody tries to be a bad dancer or a bad singer, though that happens often. Nobody TRIES to tell jokes badly, or write bad poetry, so how can it be OK to TRY to be a bad mom? Sure, just give up as a life strategy, I love that for you. 

Of course, this is all fantasy and wish fulfillment - like, what if you didn't have to hold yourself in check, you could kick your husband out just because he watches porn and find yourself a new man who's totally into you and has rock-hard abs and will also cook you dinner and cater to your every whim?  I mean, there's enough hypocrisy here that things don't really add up - the same woman who is trying to teach her son that he has to buckle down and do his homework for once is also telling her boss that she wants to double her salary and also spend less time at the office. Umm, that's just not how jobs work, is it? She also starts out telling her daughter that soccer is just an extra-curricular activity, it's not as important as schoolwork - OK, so why does she go to such lengths to become PTA President, just to have as much influence on the soccer coach as Gwendolyn had, just with a different result. If it was wrong for Gwendolyn to keep Jane OFF the starting line-up, it's just as inappropriate for Amy to have her put back ON it. 

It's just a silly comedy, I know, but it still needs to have some internal logic. We look at how the small things work and it tells us something about society as a whole, and this message of "give up, it's not important, things are going to work out fine" just doesn't work for me. Whatever happened to "You get out of it what you put into it," or even "just try your best"? Those ships have sailed, apparently, so now it's "undercut your opponent, use whatever dirty tricks you can to manipulate the system and grab all that you can". Wow, we really are suggesting people use the Trump playbook, aren't we? Maybe if I had kids I might feel differently about this portrayal, but the messages being sent out to women in the guise of entertainment are all rather strange. 

At the end, the deposed PTA President Gwendolyn is revealed to be another person who was incorrectly striving for an impossible perfection, and is also guilty about not being able to achieve it. She reconciles with Amy and Carla and Kiki and invites them on a day-trip using her husband's private plane, but NITPICK POINT - where are they going to fly from Chicago that will get them back home in time to pick their kids up from school? Oh, right, they don't care.

This movie was so successul that there is a sequel, however they rushed it out as a Christmas movie for the following year, and I'm not ready to cut to Christmas just yet, so what I'm going to do is to circle back to it in December, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that this year, but I will try.

Directed by Jon Lucas (writer of "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" & "Office Christmas Party") & Scott Moore (ditto)

Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Goodrich"), Kathryn Hahn (last heard in "Fixed"), Christina Applegate (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Jada Pinkett Smith (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Queenpins"), Oona Laurence (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Emjay Anthony (last seen in "Insurgent"), David Walton (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Clark Duke (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "LOL"), Wendell Pierce (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Leah McKendrick (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Megan Ferguson (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Lyle Brocato (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Shauna Rappold (ditto), Wanda Sykes (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Cade Mansfield Cooksey (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), J.J. Watt, Ann Mahoney (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Turner Crumbley (ditto), Samantha Beaulieu (last seen in "Big George Foreman"), Yuka Takara (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Amy Brassette (ditto), Jackie Tuttle (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), Adria Tennor (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Kelly Lind (last seen in "The Big Short"), Lena Clark (last seen in "Renfield"), Christine Merrill, Donna Duplantier (last seen in "The Best of Me"), Lindsey Garrett, Angela L. Larson, Christina DeRosa, Lara Grice (last seen in "Just My Luck"), Elizabeth Newcomer (last seen in "Bottoms"), Carrie Lazar (last seen in "The Alto Knights"), Nina Millin (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Yan Feldman (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jaylen Moore (last heard in "The Bad Guys 2"), Lilly Singh (ditto), David Simpson (last seen in "Respect"), Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Homefront"), Meghan Wolfe (last seen in "Trumbo"), Jay Jablonski (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), D.A. Obahor (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), LaJessie Smith (last seen in "Freelancers"), Eugenia Kuzmina (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Mary McCloud, Harry Beckstead, Michele Ziegler, Xanthus Valan, Colin Egglesfield (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Elvira Kunis, Karen Hahn, Lorelei Bell, Nancy Priddy, Adrienne Banfield Norris, Alice Mumolo, Kelly Angell (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), Justin Burkhamer, Ronnie Hooks, Mike R. Moreau, Christy Moritz, Gwen Parker, Gus Rhodes (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Taryn Terrell (last seen in "The Campaign"), with a cameo from Martha Stewart (last seen in "Martha")

RATING: 4 out of 10 boxes of shitty wine

Big Miracle

Year 18, Day 128 - 5/8/26 - Movie #5,325

BEFORE: I'm preparing to shut down the Movie Year for a week, so there's just some packing and clean-up work to be done, we've got to leave instructions for the cat sitter and make sure the mail gets taken in, plus make sure the DVR is programmed through the next week, even though we're going to try to keep current on TV while we're on the road. Tomorrow's going to be all about packing, there will be no time to watch a movie for Sunday so I've got to link to my Mother's Day film from here, but of course that's always been the plan. I know I've been back and forth on some movies that eventually had to be cut or replaced, but I always had my eye on the count and this is really where I planned on ending up today, so mission accomplished. 

But first I'm due back at the stadium today for the first time in almost a month, they kind of shut down after the NBA season for a few weeks, yeah there were a couple of concerts but I'd already turned those shifts down because of a beer festival and a shift at the movie theater. Ideally when things are slow at one job they may get busy at the other, with all the thesis presentations from the various departments of the School of Visual Arts being held at the theater, I have been there quite a bit over the last three weeks. We'll see if it's enough to make up for the lost shifts at the other job. But today is the home opener for the NY Liberty, the WNBA team that actually won a championship in recent memory, so we'll see how that goes. 

Andy Daly carries over from "Jules".

THE PLOT: In small-town Alaska, a reporter recruits his Greenpeace-volunteer ex-girlfriend on a campaign to save a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly-forming ice in the Arctic Circle. 

AFTER: OK, I'm back from the Barclays Center, and I'm exhausted. It's tempting to put off my review until tomorrow, but I have one more film, the Mother's Day film, before I shut down. So even though I'm tired I'll try to muddle through with the help of some strong beer, and then I may pass out and just watch tomorrow's film tomorrow, we'll see. They put me on a real food stand tonight, which is unusual because I've been at the grab-n-go beer stand so much that I got rather comfortable there, also the last time they made me work a food stand, it was really a disaster. I didn't know my PIN to sign in to the register, nobody gave me any training on how to serve ice cream or cheesecake, I just had to figure it out as I went. They really throw me into the fire sometimes, so to speak, or maybe even literally because they wanted me to climb a ladder to put ice cream mix into the ice cream machines, and I can't do that, man, I've got an inner ear thing, my balance is off - I was afraid I was going to fall into the deep fryers and become the world's first human chicken tender. OK, that didn't happen - but tonight I was on falafel and hummus and popcorn and nobody really told me where anything was or how anything works, so yeah, I'm probably going to make mistakes if you keep putting me on food stands without giving me any real food handling training. If that's the way you want to run your business, fine, but I'm just telling you now I'm not responsible for any comic or tragic disasters that may ensue. 

Tonight we're dealing with a real-life disaster, this film was based on a real-life incident that came to be called Operation Breakthrough, it happened in 1988 when there was an international effort to save some gray whales that had become trapped in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. OK, so sometimes ice forms in the ocean, this is a natural thing that happens when you go above the Arctic Circle and it's October, so winter is starting to set in. Whales are not fish, it turns out, they're mammals that need to breathe oxygen from the air, which means they need to resurface every so often, and if the ocean freezes over or there's an ice build-up, well then, stuff like THIS is bound to happen once in a while. It probably happens all the time, what's rarer is that we humans find out about it, and possibly have the chance to DO something about it. Normally in a case like this, if whales got trapped under the ice and had no access to the air, people might shrug and say, "Eh, whatcha gonna do", or "It's the circle of life, ya know. Animals die sometimes because they swam where they shouldn't or winter came in too fast."  Others might look at three whales trapped under the ice and think, "Ooh, easy hunting, we can harvest these whales and that will supply our village with food and blubber and whale oil and whale skin, what a great thing nature is!"

But that's not what happened here, because the news media got involved - a reporter stationed in Alaska did a piece about the trapped whales, and maybe it was a slow news week, but it went national (we'd say it went "viral" but that wasn't even a thing yet) and suddenly everyone wondered if there was a way to "save" the whales. Greenpeace got involved, sure, and we know where THEY are going to land on this argument, but also politicians on the local, state and national levels all got involved. Surely there MUST be something we can do, one of the whales may be injured so we're not inclined to let terrible nature just run their course, if there are ice-breaker ships or ice-breaking hovercraft, or de-icing technology of any kind, it needs to make its way ASAP to Point Barrow, Alaska, because three of God's creatures are at risk. 

Jesus, even the oil industry executives here are eager to save the whales, I mean, they're doing it just for the publicity reasons, but at least if they're trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, then they're still trying to do the right thing. OK, we'd love it if they were doing the right thing for the right reasons, but honestly, we'll take what we can get. Everybody loves whales, right, I mean they're mammals like us, they form lifetime bonds like us, they have babies like us, it's just some cruel trick of evolution that made us evolve into creatures that live on land and them into creatures that live in water. Why did God make things work out this way, I don't know, but he works in mysterious ways, don't cha know, and he DID put us in charge of all the other creatures, or so the Bible says, so if we want this whale family to live and be free from the ice, then damn it, that's what we're gonna manifest. 

This is a case where Greenpeace and the Reagan administration were actually working for the same cause, I can't say that ever happened again in the history of ever. Then you throw the Soviets into the mix, Reagan called his buddy Gorbachev and got the ice-breaking ship to head straight there, after the attempt to drag the ice-breaking hovercraft across Arctic tundra using two massive helicopters failed somehow. Yeah, I guess three stray whales in danger will do that, get the liberal hippie activists working together with the evil Republican White House and the even more evil Soviet dictator. Everybody wanted to see the whales live and be free to frolic in the wide, wide ocean, because having to tell all the U.S. school children that the whales DIED would be just too hard, all things considered. 

Honestly I think you have to go back to Woodstock to find so many people who were peace-oriented and life-positive working together for a common goal - or maybe the moon landing, a point where everyone in the world just eff-ing STOPPED and thought about what was important, and was rooting for life over death, action over inaction, getting off your ass and DOING something over just shrugging your shoulders and accepting the futility of struggling against entropy. That's worth a thought or two, today or any day, right? And look, I hate to be the screen-door in anyone's submarine, but the real truth is that nobody really knows how long the whales lived after they were released into the open ocean, because they weren't tagged. 

But still, it's a fine positive family-friendly film and I've had nearly a whole week of SIXES, so I can't really argue with that. Your friendly neighborhood movie whisperer is still trying to understand what message the chain has been trying to send him this week, I mean we've been all over the place with old people and young people, wrestlers and table tennis players, foxes and rabbits and snakes, then aliens and now whales. What the HELL, I mean really, WTF? But maybe that's the message, that this is one big crazy world that's full of all sorts of different people AND animals, and we all have to do our best to respect each other and try to share the planet - I mean, Earth Day is in the rearview now, but the message still applies, right? So there we go, it's a great big beautiful planet full of cities and oceans and when the aliens arrive, we'll work them into the mix too. Now if we can just get the Safdie Brothers talking and maybe making movies together again, can world peace be far behind? 

Still, I think this is exactly the kind of movie that you watch ONLY after you have watched 5,324 other movies first that were more urgent. Sorry, that's just the way I feel. 

Directed by Ken Kwapis (director of "He Said, She Said" and "He's Just Not That Into You")

Also starring John Krasinski (last seen in "IF"), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Smile 2"), John Pingayak, Ahmaogak Sweeney, Kristen Bell (last seen in "Queenpins"), Vinessa Shaw (last seen in "Side Effects"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Heads of State"), Ted Danson (last seen in "Cousins"), Kathy Baker (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "Scream VI"), Rob Riggle (last heard in "Strays"), Michael Gaston (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), Ken Smith, Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), James LeGros (last seen in "Certain Women"), Mark Ivanir (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Stefan Kapicic (last heard in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Gregory Jbara (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Tell"), John Chase, Ishmael Angaluuk Hope, Thomas R. Daly, Maliaq Kairaiuak, Jeffrey Evan, Thom Van Dorp, Maeve Blake, Krista Schwarting, Liam Boles, Opal Sidon, Tim Palmer, Jason Arthur Martin, Bruce Altman (last seen in "Touched with Fire"), Anthony Fryer, Hillarie Putnam (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Brett Baker (ditto), Shea Whigham (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Kathryn Harris, R.F. Daley (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Quinn K. Redeker (last seen in "The Candidate"), Teresa Pingayak, the voice of Jeff Bergman (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), AF: Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Rather"), Dan Rather (ditto), Joey Buttafuoco, Connie Chung (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Peter Jennings (last seen in "The Saint of Second Chances"), Larry King (last seen in "I Am Sam Kinison"), Sarah Palin.

RATING: 6 out of 10 avocados used to make guacamole at the Mexican restaurant in Alaska

Jules

Year 18, Day 127 - 5/7/26 - Movie #5,324

BEFORE: I've got an early thought about how to get to my Doc Block - it's still a fair distance away, if I follow my usual practice of starting it shortly after Father's Day, during the early summer slump. Look, it's not like studios release a lot of movies during summer or anything...

I arranged my docs in a rough viewing order, based on the limited information available through IMDB, which is getting less trustworthy every day, it seems. But I've also scanned through a bunch of the docs to make some additions of my own to the cast lists. Right now what makes the most sense is to start with a doc on Sigourney Weaver. This fits well with previous editions, where I opened with docs on Sylvester Stallone or Faye Dunaway - something with a lot of movie clips in it should give me a bunch of entry points. Well, there's this new "Star Wars" movie coming out, and Ms. Weaver is in there somewhere, or so I've heard. So now I've got a great excuse to go and see it (umm, I was going to go anyway, I don't really need an excuse - just put "Star Wars" in a movie title, and I'll show up) now all I'll have to do is get to some appropriate movie for Father's Day (if I don't use them all up before then) and then figure out a way to get to something with Pedro Pascal - "Eddington" and "Freaky Tales" are on my list, and then there you go, the Doc Block will take over for the next month of programming. 

Today, Cody Kostro carries over from "Marty Supreme" and I promise that this gets me one step closer to Mothers' Day. Hell, I could cut to the Doc Block from here, Ben Kingsley appears in archive footage in that Sigourney Weaver doc, but no, I'm going to hold back, and when I get back from North Carolina I'll start figuring out the road to Father's Day.

THE PLOT: Milton lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town, but finds his day upended when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. 

AFTER: When I get my job teaching filmmaking, I will be imparting to students the knowledge that I've gained from watching over 5,000 movies in under 18 years, and so you just know that the best screenwriting tip will be to start with a simple premise and then ask yourself, "What could possibly go wrong in this scenario?" and then KEEP asking yourself that question, again and again, until you've filled up enough pages. A beautiful summer day at the beach, what could possibly go wrong? That's how "Jaws" was created. A man starts playing table tennis, what could possibly go wrong? Well, that's "Marty Supreme" or maybe "Balls of Fury" or maybe also "Forrest Gump". An alien lands in a suburban backyard, what could possibly go wrong there? Well, that's "E.T." but also it's "The War of the Worlds" or "Independence Day" or "Mars Attacks".

It's also "Jules", but this one isn't like any of the others, it's kind of its own quirky little thing. Here a spaceship lands in the backyard of an elderly man, and he's something of the town character, he's got some form of dementia, which results in him attending every town meeting and asking the same questions, possibly because he doesn't remember doing so before? It's unclear. But he's got a couple of older lady friends, and a daughter who wants him to get checked out, and a son who lives somewhere else, one that he doesn't talk to.  It happens. Look, I don't know exactly what message the chain is trying to send me this week, because it's a little all over the place. Two films about athletes who can't succeed at the championship level in their sports, one film about all the animal species living together in a futuristic city, and now two films about people who are getting old and losing their cognition. I'm so confused, like sure, I'm driving down to visit my parents for a week soon, so any tips on dealing with older people, sure, I'll take them. Let's ignore "Zootopia" because it's just a fantasy film for kids, plus this week got thrown out of joint by having to replace a few films at the last second, so I just don't know, maybe there's no clear message here and I could really use a week off, away from NYC and a bunch of late-night shifts, followed by movies that make me stay up until 4 am. But the good news is that our neighbors moved in next door, which means that three months of construction noise is over, I'm sleeping better than I have in weeks. 

Milton's maybe on the spectrum somewhere, because he has no filter - his first impulse was to call 911 because the spaceship damaged his azaleas. Then he called again because the alien left the ship and was crawling toward his house - I think he's right to panic, because you just never know what kind of germs those aliens might have brought with them from another world, could be something we don't have immunity to. But after a couple days he takes pity on the alien (because it's humanoid, probably) and invites it inside, out of the cold, and feeds it apples. When his friend Sandy comes over, Milton doesn't even think to warn her that there's an alien sitting with him watching TV, it's like the most natural thing. But Sandy tells him they've got to keep the alien secret, and that it might have weird alien powers, the ones in the movies are always chased by the government, which would want to study it or kill it or both. 

Joyce, another older friend, comes over because she sees Sandy's car at Milton's house, and before long the three of them share the secret. Meanwhile, Milton's daughter gets him to that mental evaluation, and it's determined that he is losing his faculties, and should consider assisted living. Milton discounts the diagnosis and feels upset and attacked, he just wants to stay in his home with his new alien friend, which he and his friends now call Jules. Sandy, who has started some kind of mentorship program to connect with the young people in town, is assaulted by a young man who wants to steal her jewelry - but Jules, having bonded with Sandy mentally, feels from afar that she's in danger, and causes the assailant's head to explode. Ah, so the alien DOES have powers, but only seems to use them to protect his new friends. 

Jules needs to fix the spaceship in order to leave Earth, only the supplies he needs to do so are rather unorthodox, but his new human friends are willing to try and supply them. However the NSA is looking for the alien craft, and agents are combing western Pennsylvania while others listen to everyone's phone calls, hoping to hear people talking about the rogue alien. The police also note Milton and Sandy's weird activities in trying to procure the things Jules needs to fix the ship.  Honestly it's really a re-working of "E.T." just with senior citizens in place of kids, and apple slices instead of Reese's Pieces - it's a wonder we didn't see a couple of Rascal scooters flying across the moon here. 

Milton is offered a chance to go with Jules back to his homeworld, or maybe just to fly across the heavens, and if he hadn't just reconciled with his daughter, maybe he would have. But also Milton knows that his mental facilities are declining, and if he ventures too far from home, he's going to feel even more lost. Really, bonding with aliens and flying out into space is a young man's game, after all. Hey, you know, they never really followed up "E.T." with a sequel, so we have no idea if he ever came back to visit Elliot, I mean, what are the odds of making a sequel at this point. But then again, why should we let THAT be the only big blockbuster with no follow-up movie? You know what, get me Spielberg on the phone...

Directed by Marc Turtletaub (director of "Puzzle" and producer of "Land" and "The Farewell")

Also starring Ben Kingsley (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Harriet Sansom Harris (last seen in "Love Is Strange"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Queen Bees"), Zoë Winters, Jade Quon, Andy Daly (last seen in "Life as We Know It"), Teddy Cañez (last seen in "Ben Is Back"), Narea Kang, Edward James Hyland (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Blair Baker, Joshua Moore, John Skelley, Christopher Kelly, Aubie Merrylees, Anna George (last seen in "Syriana"), Eric T. Miller (last seen in "Nyad"), Marina Shay, Donald Paul (last seen in "Southside with You"), Jeff Kim (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Patrick Noonan (last seen in "The Half of It"), Rebekah Brockman (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Lee Sellars (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Laura Jordan (last seen in "Drunk Parents")

RATING: 6 out of 10 city council meetings (I didn't realize they were daily in some towns)

Marty Supreme

Year 18, Day 126 - 5/6/26 - Movie #5,323

BEFORE: So, how about this to prove the "Burned Toast" theorem - because I screwed up and I falsely believed the IMDB when it said that Danny Trejo was in "The Big Empty" and, well, he's just NOT, I had to tear apart my week's schedule and put it back together again, and all films with either Danny Trejo or Kelsey Grammer were put on the back-burner, which is FINE because I didn't have enough days to watch them all anyway - it's best to try again in a few months, I've found. 

The upside is that the new connective tissue includes "Marty Supreme", and I was just talking about the Safdie Brothers' break-up three days ago when I watched "The Smashing Machine". Whatever entity controls the chain (even if that entity is the RFK Jr.-like worm inside my brain) must have been paying attention, because it suggested tonight's film, which I just recorded last month and put on DVD last week, and I wasn't planning to watch it until maybe right after the Doc Block (with Fran Drescher carrying over from "Spinal Tap II") but now LOOK HERE it's risen to the top of the list out of necessity, because the brainworm knew that I needed to watch the now-competing Safdie Brothers films close together for comparative purposes. Will I end up on Team Josh or Team Benny? You've gotta admit, three days apart is pretty darn close. 

Fred Hechinger carries over from "Thelma".

THE PLOT: Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness. 

AFTER: Now that I've watched both "The Smashing Machine" and "Marty Supreme", can I just mention that in many ways, the Safdie Brothers' break-up is now even more ironic, because separately they almost made the same damn movie. Essentially, that is, when you break a film down to its essence, it's structure, its raison d'etre, you're going to find that many films are very similar at heart, and I don't just mean cases like "Zootopia 2" and "Bad Guys 2". You can almost DNA test a film sometimes and say, like "OK, this one's a little bit of "Alien" mixed with a bit of "Gravity" or whatever. Each brother made a sports movie, and like I said after "Gridiron Gang", nearly every football film is the same, more or less. Well every SPORTS movie is therefore the same, more or less. 

The sport is different, duh, "The Smashing Machine" was about UFC-style free wrestling that came to be called MMA, eventually - while "Marty Supreme" is about table tennis aka "ping pong" which was probably an offensively enough Asian-sounded name to get the sport cancelled BACK THEN so I can't imagine that anyone still calls it "ping pong" anymore, but who knows. In both movies, the main character goes to his first foreign match and doesn't win, and has to learn a valuable lesson about losing gracefully, or that you literally can't win 'em all. Then he comes home to a rather complicated relationship that occupies his time while he's supposed to be training. Then he's got to prove himself worthy of going to the NEXT championship in Japan. See? Same movie, only with different sports, set in different years and with different actors, but also the same. More alike than different, perhaps. 

"Marty Supreme" starts in 1952 with Marty Mauser working as a shoe salesman in his uncle's store while also competing professionally as a table tennis player. He wants to be the first American to play in the British open, the sport seems to be taking off in post-war Europe and Asia even faster than it is in the U.S. Marty's also got a deal with a friend to market orange ping-pong balls with his name on them, because they're easier to see against white uniforms. Marty's also having an affair with his childhood friend Rachel, she's married and pregnant, but he doesn't think the baby is his. (You mean he thinks married people still have sex? That doesn't make much sense.) His uncle wants him to manage the shoe store, but Marty just wants to earn enough money to travel to the U.K. and play in the British Open, but when his uncle isn't around to give him the money as agreed, he robs the store at gunpoint to get it - thankfully this won't have any possible repercussions later. 

Yes, it's the start of another "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" film, which, again, is nearly every film. Marty could have a nice life managing a shoe store, financially secure enough, only he doesn't want that. He could settle down with a nice single, not-married girl and start a family, but he doesn't want that either. Marty wants what he wants, and he's willing to do just about anything to get it, and he's not really a big repercussions guy - I don't think once in the film he ever stops to think that his actions have consequences and some of them might be negative. Maybe all young people are like this, brash and cocky in their 20's and then in their 30's they pay the price for what they did in their 20's and maybe in their 40's they're a lot smarter. I mean, by the time they're 50 most people have learned how to roll with the punches and so they just swallow all the shit that the universe sends their way, right? 

 But Marty is in his 20's, so he heads for London without thinking and he seduces an older woman who used to be an actress. He meets her wealthy husband, Milton Rockwell, who is in the pen business, and tries to set up some kind of endorsement deal, but he's not very good at doing that. Marty puts on quite a show in the table tennis semi-finals, but loses the final to Koto Endo, a Japanese player who's also deaf, and somehow this helps him focus, because he can't hear the crowd or any other distractions. Marty's new goal is to focus on the upcoming World Table Tennis Championship in Japan, but he'll have to raise money for his entry fee, expenses, and the $1,500 fine he incurred for fraudulently claiming he was allowed to stay at the Ritz hotel with the judges. 

When he returns to New York, he's arrested for stealing from the shoe store (wait, you mean actions DO have consequences?) and his uncle takes the money he won in the U.K., which he was going to use to finance the trip to Japan. The whole very long middle of this film is a kind of fever dream as Marty travels around NYC at night, hustling table tennis games, encountering mobsters, having sex with that actress, and looking for that mobster's lost dog in New Jersey, which he was supposed to have taken to a veterinarian, only he didn't do that. Various schemes to raise money don't work out, like he steals a necklace from the actress, only to learn that it was a worthless prop from her play. He rescues his girlfriend from her abusive husband and takes her to stay at the house of his friend Dion, and this strains the relationship so much that the deal for the orange tennis balls is literally out the window. 

Marty keeps making things worse instead of better, though - like by stealing Dion's parents' car to drive to NJ and find that dog, but they get shot at by the farmer who took the dog in. He has sex with the actress again, and she promises to give him a piece of REAL jewelry he can sell, only they need it to bribe the police officers who catch them having sex in public. Nothing seems to work in his favor, and everything is three times more complicated than it needed to be. But again, this is the life Marty chose when he chose to dream and decided he was willing to lie, cheat and steal to achieve that dream. Finally, in order to get to Tokyo in time, he's got to go back to Rockwell, who offered him an exhibition match against Endo, only he's got to agree to LOSE because that would create the most drama. Sure, one day you're coming thisclose to winning the British Open, and a week later you're willing to play in a fixed game just to be able to try and finagle another shot at a championship. Marty's moving forward, sort of, but he's just not LEARNING anything along the way. Is it worth getting a ride to Japan on a private plane if it means he's got to agree to both public and private humiliation? Apparently, yes. 

I won't say what happens when Marty finally does make it to Tokyo, either in the exhibition game or in the World Championship itself - but here we do see something stronger than "artist brain" and for lack of any better term we'll call it "athlete brain" today. This is an even stronger sense of entitlement that occurs when an athlete KNOWS they are very good at their sport, maybe even the G.O.A.T. - their brain is telling them that they should be given every chance to compete, that the rules and regulations maybe shouldn't apply to them, and also if someone manages to beat them, they must have cheated or used some secret advantage. You know, because it couldn't POSSIBLY be that you win some and you lose some, since they're the BEST they should win every time and that's the only result that will make them happy - only, will it? Can we think of some athletes that followed this kind of dangerous thinking and then maybe had a sort of destructive career arc? Tiger Woods, maybe? Dennis Rodman? John McEnroe, even Muhammed Ali to some extent? 

This film features a large number of cast members who are NOT professional actors - and I think that's a good thing, like, come on, how freakin' hard could it be? I could be an actor (and I have been), you could be an actor, anybody can do it. Here's it's a big bunch of Josh Safdie's friends, also a bunch of real table tennis players, and then a mix of film directors, fashion designers, rappers and also Penn Jillette. I missed seeing Penn when I watched it last night, I'll have to scan through it again to see if I catch his cameo as a farmer. But this also means that with so few real actors, this COULD have been very difficult to link to in the future, now I'm doubly glad for the burned toast, that an opportunity presented itself to link to this film rather quickly, and it's not going to be taking up space on my list for the next three years. 

Oh, and I don't think I'm either Team Josh or Team Benny, I'm Team "Whatever It Takes to Make a Better Movie", and if that turns out to be Team Reconciliation, so be it. People said the Gallagher brothers from Oasis would never get back together again and perform, but it happened, we just maybe have to give it some time. 

Directed by Josh Safdie (director of "Uncut Gems" and "Good Time")

Also starring Timothee Chalamet (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Hard Eight"), Odessa A'zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler the Creator, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania"), Luke Manley, Emory Cohen (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Larry "Ratso" Sloman (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue"), Ralph Colucci (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Hailey Gates (ditto), Mitchell Wenig (ditto), Roman Persits (ditto), Geza Rohrig (last seen in "Resistance"), Koto Kawaguchi, Pico Iyer, John Catsimatidis, Sandra Bernhard (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), George Gervin, Ted Williams, Timo Boll, Penn Jillette (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Isaac Mizrahi (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), David Mamet (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Spenser Granese (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Levon Hawke (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Isaac Simon, Mariann Tepedino, Philippe Petit (last seen in "Man on Wire"), Tracy McGrady, Kemba Walker, Naomi Fry, Ray Tintori, Paul Grimstad (last seen in "One Battle After Another"), Mahadeo Shivraj (last seen in "Good Time"), Devorah Shubowitz, Marinel Tinnirello, Nick Waplington, Nikhil Gowda, Keith Kirkwood, Conn Horgan, Joshua Bennett, John Keating, Ed Malone, Roddy O'Hehir, Michael Cummings, Harvey Shield, Diego Schaaf, Sho Miyazaki, Andy Kai Nagashima, Dennis Creaghan (last seen in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace"), Francis Dumaurier (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Musto Pelinkovicci (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Marius Tanase, Donato P. Daddario, Frankie Carbone, Lizzi Bougatsos, Lucas Z. Heinrich, Johnny Engle, Jimmy Lindquist, Todd Vulpio (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Johnny Zito, Stephen Dachtera, Brian Marks, Kevin Eccleston, Richard Schlossbach, Emilio El Kilani, Cody Kostro, George J. Katsiavos, Patrick Wiki Morales, Jake Braff, Bill Buell (last seen in "Ben Is Back"), Barry Daniels, Garrett Herrmann, Linda Malamy, Edward Puydak, Hector Diaz, Kevin Loreque (last seen in "The Post"), Joseph Cappiello, Joseph Jankauskas, Joris Stuyck, Nancy Shankman, Chris Nelson, Eric Rampulla, Randy Credico, Bob Rubin (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Michael A. Sollecito, Cheryl Flowers-Briggs, Rory Gevis, Mia Humberd-Hilf, Brian Sexton, Rick Garlick, Shingo Aiba, Yasu Suzuki, Tatsuo Ichikawa, Mark Okita, Joe Matsumura, Anna Melody, Ryuku Kina, Jota Ito,  Etsuko Enami, Koji Oribe, Rae Maddren, Carolyn Gershenson 

with the voices of Alison Bartlett (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Ronald Bronstein (last seen in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You") and Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Mickey 17")

RATING: 6 out of 10 '80's songs (which I think seem a bit out of place in a film set in the 1950's. Right?)

Thelma

Year 18, Day 125 - 5/5/26 - Movie #5,322

BEFORE: Well, after Star Wars Day comes the Revenge of the Fifth, also known as Cinco de Mayo. I had realized a bit too late this would have been a great place to drop in the "Machete" films, since I've got Danny Trejo carrying over from "Zootopia 2" to today's film. (He's uncredited, but the IMDB swears he's in there somewhere. I may have to speed through the film again to double-check.). And sure, I could have fit both "Machete" films in here, except for two things - one being that I don't have enough slots before we have to leave for North Carolina, so I'd have to double-up, and the second thing is that "Machete" is not playing on cable right now, and it's not streaming anywhere either. I could pay for it on Amazon or YouTube, but I think maybe I'll just add it to my someday/maybe list and try to circle back, like maybe when I finally watch the "Spy Kids" movies, which are also on the list but I've got priorities and a back-log. 

OK, so "Machete" is out for now, but last night I watched that other film that supposedly had Danny Trejo in it, and well, now I don't think he's there. At all. Wikipedia says he's in that movie, IMDB says he's in that movie, but both sources could be wrong. I went back and scanned through the whole film at double-speed, and it's a no-go. Sure, I COULD just proceed with that review and tell myself he's there and I just didn't see him, but in my mind, that's the end of the chain. I can't do it, I can't put that out there in the world if I don't believe Danny Trejo is in that movie. What are my options here? I don't want there to be a break, not now, but this puts Mothers Day and the rest of the year in jeopardy...

UPDATE: I'm going to backtrack to "Zootopia 2" and look for another link. There were dozens of people in that film, that means hundreds of other linking opportunities, probably another film on my list could serve as a better connection, all I need it to do is link up with one of the next five movies, and get me to Mothers Day in a similar number of steps. But that's incredibly unlikely, damn near imposs- oh, wait, there's one. I can use June Squibb as a link, watch this movie "Thelma", that gets me to another recent movie that I really, really want to see, and as a bonus, it kind of resolves the outro to my Doc Block, because I had two directions to go, and now I'll only have one. 

That makes the Danny Trejo thing kind of burned toast, it was a minor setback that prevented a major disaster down the road, which I just couldn't see. I'm back on track, and the only loser here is really Kelsey Grammer, I was planning to watch four of his films, but that got cut down to two because of lack of slots, and also those films were NOT available to stream anywhere, and now his tally goes down to zero, because following that road would have contained a break in the chain, I'm sure of it even if the IMDB disagrees with me. And Mr. Trejo, if you're listening, it's time to take "The Big Empty" off of your filmography, because you're just not in that movie.

THE PLOT: When 93-year old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her. 

AFTER: I think I'm going to cut this one some slack tonight, because it really came to my rescue when I learned that the Danny Trejo link I had planned just wasn't going to cut it. But THIS is why there are over 600 films on my lists at any given time - in case of emergency, I can break the glass, pull out the scalpel and perform a type of surgery, cutting out the clot and a little bit more of the artery, so I can transplant in another couple of films as a sort of stent to keep things flowing. 

This is roughly the same plot as "The Beekeeper", if you remember that one, where Jason Statham tracked down a scam artist who had cleared his landlord's bank accounts, and he made that person's life hell until he got the money back. Impossible in real life, more than likely, but, you know, it's wish fulfillment time when you watch a movie. Here elderly Thelma doesn't even need Jason Statham's help, she tracks down the phone scammers all on her own. Well, mostly on her own, she needs the help - and the scooter - of her friend Ben, who lives in a retirement village. We used to call them "nursing homes" but that was deemed too pejorative, as not everyone in them needs nursing care, even if some do. Then came "assisted living" which was not quite good enough either, because it stresses the fact that old people need assistance, it even implies that without that assistance they might stop living. So now we have "care homes" and "residential care communities" and "retirement residences". Hey, whatever makes you feel comfortable there. 

My family's elders have a long record of going into such facilities, but also aging out of them, which could be somewhat unheard of. My mother's mother moved in with my family when I was pre-teen, my parents had two rooms added over the garage as a sort of elder apartment, and some nights I slept in the extra bed there to keep an eye on her. After she died my father's mother moved in, she'd been in assisted living because she liked the sense of community, and going to church and playing cards with friends, but she got to a point where she wasn't going out much any more. During COVID my parents moved out of their house and into a residential care community, they were there for two or three years and we'd drive up and visit and bring them dinner on Thanksgiving, but the place changed hands and wasn't offering as much medical care any more, so they moved in with my sister. 

Dementia is another thing I know about, because my mother has lost the ability to remember recent things, though she does remember a lot about the past if you start asking her about it. But with that comes a desire to get out of my sister's house and return to her house in Massachusetts, or more lately she's been saying she needs to get back to HER mother's house in time for dinner. We correct her and remind her that her mother passed away years ago, but five minutes later she starts saying it again. Old people get mentally stuck sometimes and can't move past certain ideas. With any luck that will be my problem someday, if I should live so long, past 80 or so, when I can move into adult care myself, and just mentally lose myself in my memories... But hey, the food is sometimes good and there will be jigsaw puzzles and I can watch all the TV I want, I can also watch every movie again as if it's a new one. Wouldn't it be great to watch "Star Wars" again for the first time? JK.  

Anyway, Thelma spends a lot of time with Daniel, her grandson, she doesn't have too many friends her own age, as most of them are deceased. But she has a few, and whenever she meets another old person in the wild, they have to stop and talk to each other and see if they have any friends in common. But one day she gets a call from Daniel, and he says he's been in a car accident, and he's being questioned by the police because he hit a pregnant woman. The call is interrupted by another one from the police station, demanding bail money and giving her an address to mail it to. Well, there are obvious red flags there, however this is a common enough scam that could be used to get elderly people (or anyone, really) to send money. These days they're even using A.I. voices to duplicate people's real ones, so I'd be wary of any phone conversation or even videos you make on social media, because anyone could take a recording of your voice from your YouTube or TikTok posts and harvest enough words to make an A.I. version that could say ANYTHING to your relatives by phone. Also, any call or e-mail you get from a loved one claiming to have been arrested or involved in an accident with instructions to send money ASAP should be considered suspicious enough to investigate thoroughly. 

NITPICK POINT: Also, even an elderly person should know better than to send a stack of cash through the MAIL - that's been illegal for decades. It would have made more sense here to send a postal money order or certified check, then Thelma would have a receipt for it, in addition to an address to send it to. 

But here, she only has the address, thankfully she remembers that she threw the paper with the address on it away at the post office, and she gets back there before they empty their trash. Then she just needs the scooter from Ben and a gun from her friend Mona's stash, and she's ready to go get her money back. However, she kind of grossly underestimates the time it's going to take to get there on a Rascal scooter, it takes all day and it's getting dark out when she arrives. There were probably more efficient ways to get there, but also older people don't know how to use Uber or Lyft, so that tracks. The address turns out to be just a mail services store, so. a bunch of P.O. boxes, but she's prepared to wait - what else has she got to do? Old people can also get very focused on tasks, her daughter admits that when Thelma sets her mind to something, she won't eat, she won't sleep until the errand is done. 

The clip at the end of the director's grandmother, having a conversation during a drive that mirrors one Thelma had in the movie suggests that there IS (or was) a real-life Thelma, so how much of this story is based on a true incident? Wikipedia tells me that the director's grandmother was the target of a phone scam, but in real life her family intervened before she sent any money. I've seen first-hand how easily old people fall for these things, my old boss got scammed by a fake call from his bank alerting him to some suspicious transactions, they asked him to confirm his identity by giving them his password and PIN, and he was only too eager to comply. It's just that easy - maybe I'm in the wrong business. This is part of why I quit my job of 31 years. 

The scammer here runs an antique business that has fallen on hard times, and he's resorted to stealing money from old people to stay in business. Yeah, that also reminds me why I quit - my boss was deep in debt to people who worked on his most recent film, and I started to get the feeling he was never going to pay them. Also some people interested in collecting his art, he seemed to be stringing them along without ever delivering the art they wanted - also, his asking price for making music videos or commissioned illustrations seemed to rise whenever he needed to pay bills, he didn't have set rates for doing anything, budgets for things were based on how much money he owed the landlord and credit card company at the moment. That's price gouging, and I refused to be part of it. 

Anyway, more power to Thelma, and honestly I don't think I've ever seen a reverse heist pulled off in a movie before, except for "The Beekeeper", as I mentioned before. But other than that, this is totally original and the kind of heartwarming movie we need right now. Let's hear it for the burned toast that made me move this one to the top of the list! 

Directed by Josh Margolin

Also starring Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Richard Roundtree (last seen in "Speed Racer"), Parker Posey (last seen in "The Eye"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "G20"), Malcolm McDowell (last seen in "Sr."), Nicole Byer (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Quinn Beswick, Coral Pena (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Aidan Fiske, Bunny Levine (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Ruben Rabasa (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Hilda Boulware, Chase Kim (last seen in "The Giant Mechanical Man"), Sheila Korsi (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Annie O'Donnell (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Zoe Worth (last seen in "20th Century Women"), David Giuliani (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Annie Korzen (last seen in "Stardust Memories"), Ivy Jones, Sandra Lee Gimpel, 

with archive footage of Tom Cruise (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning")

RATING: 6 out of 10 people in line at the post office

Zootopia 2

Year 18, Day 124 - 5/4/26 - Movie #5,321

BEFORE: Happy Star Wars Day to those who celebrate - for some reason the new "Mandalorian and Grogu" film does not take advantage of the holiday, it's coming out in two and a half weeks, with a date closer to the traditional Star Wars premiere, which was 5/25/77. There is a film titled "5-22-77" which I have been trying to watch for some time, however I had it scheduled between two other films with Steve Coulter, only to find out that the one in the movie about Star Wars was a DIFFERENT Steve Coulter than the one in the other two films. I mean, it was a middle film so it was easy to drop it, but the prospects for watching that film have dropped by a lot. Still, it took me at least five years to watch "A Disturbance in the Force", that documentary about the Star Wars holiday special, so you know, never say never, it still could happen. 

When I get back from North Carolina, I will try to see if I can link to "The Mandalorian and Grogu" sometime in late May. For today I have a film with a very large cast, but only ONE of them can be confirmed as having been in a "Star Wars" movie - still, that's something. Alan Tudyk was the voice of K-2SO in "Rogue One" and he's done a voice in just about every Disney film in the last few years, too.  There could be other connections to "Star Wars" today, especially to the animated films and shows, but that's the one that leaps to mind. Other actors may have done cameos, it's tough to say these days. Obviously there's the Disney connection so we'll work with what we've got. 

THE PLOT: Brave rabbit cop Judy Hopps and her friend, fox Nick Wilde, team up again to crack a new case, the most perilous and intricate of their careers. 

AFTER: I almost hate to lose this film by watching it, it's got such a large, diverse cast that it connects a bit of everything - Christmas movies, horror movies, romances - but then, I really don't ever need to connect romances to horror movies or Christmas films to documentaries, so if I need to use it to get from random sports films to Mothers Day on time, I should use it for that. But damn, if this didn't give me 7 or 8 entries into the Doc Block that are now closed to me, but it just didn't link to the first Doc on my tentative list (or the last one) so I probably don't even need it for that. It's better to watch it now, since I watched "The Bad Guys 2" not so long ago, and both movies portray a world where animals can walk and talk and live together somehow without eating each other. 

There's really a lot to like here, whether you're a kid or whether you're an adult watching this with a kid, or if you're just an adult who still watches animated features made for kids. There are a lot of us out there, OK? And we're not crazy or sick or perverted, we just like animation, OK? Don't judge us too harshly - although, we tend to judge these animated films harshly, that's our right, especially if they don't have any jokes in there we adults can enjoy, too. I really do think that the "Zootopia" and the "Bad Guys" franchise films are like two sides of the same coin, though - in the way that one studio had "Antz" and another had "A Bug's Life" and a third had "Bee Movie". Or remember a couple years back when there were THREE studios that had Bigfoot or Yeti films at the same time - there was "Missing Link" and "Smallfoot" and "Abominable" all coming out in the same year. And then of course "Finding Nemo" and "Shark Tale" weren't too far apart, either. 

In both cases we have talking animals walking around in clothing, and there are heists and crimes all over the animal kingdom, and often politicians and people in power are behind them. Well, sure, with the administration we have currently, you'd expect a little bit of the current zeitgeist to sneak in there, I get that. Politicians are the new super-villains, it's time we started teaching that to the younglings. In the previous "Zootopia" film (or "Zootropolis" if you live in one of THOSE markets...) there was the corrupt assistant mayor who was behind the whole thing, the mayor was a lion, I think, and it's weirdly appropriate that the lamb was working against him. This time around, nine years later (our time) the mayor of Zootropia is a Clydesdale horse who used to be an action hero, and that's, well, oddly specific. But it turns out the real animals in power are the Lynxley family (of lynxes) who not only control things, but are descended from the lynx who not only founded the city, but is credited with the invention of the thermal walls that separate all the different environments, and that's what allows all of these different species to live together in the same city-scape. 

The Zootenial celebration, the anniversary of the creation of those thermal walls, just happens to be featured in this film, one year before America celebrates its own 250th birthday, which is the semiquincentennial (eventually I won't have to keep looking up the name, but right now it's still necessary) and I'm wondering now if this was intentional. Whatever, it hardly matters, all we need to know is that Zootopia is divided into different environments, and in the first film we really only saw the Rabbit Burrows and the city center, but now we're learning about Sahara Square, Tundratown, the Rainforest district, Savannah Central and The Bayou, which is a New Orleans-like marshlands, with a lot of manatees and such. There are 12 environments in all, and maybe if they make more Zootopia films they'll get around to showing us all of them. But what we need to know here is that the powerful Lynx family wants to shut down Marsh Market and expand their territory, which is Tundratown. This seems a bit weird, like you wouldn't think that one part of the United States would try to annex another, like if Denver tried to take over New Orleans we would not allow it, but remember this is a city and space overall is probably at a premium, so this would be more like one NYC neighborhood trying to expand into another, or gentrify Harlem or something. I can think of a few neighborhoods like Tribeca or Harbor Yards which didn't exist a couple decades ago, as some parts of NYC fall into disrepair there's probably big money involved in redistricting them and redeveloping them, if you could just manage to get the people living there to move out. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn is another example, people used to live in the space now occupied by the sports/concert venue, they all had to be bought out or made to relocate using eminent domain. 

But there's corruption in Zootopia, there apparently was a reptile district at one point, but the dangerous nature of snakes meant that they were banned from the city at one point, however one named Gary shows up here, and his goal is to prove that his ancestor actually invented the thermal walls, but at some point their district was also overrun by Tundratown, in a very illegal and unfair way, and the plagiarism and snake-ism was covered up by kicking out all the snakes from every part of town. This is worse than gerrymandering (or even salamandering) it's more like a virtual extinction of an ethnicity - like if they shut down Chinatown in Manhattan and closed it down so Tribeca or Soho could expand, you'd probably hear about it, because it would be considered racism against Asians. So this is species racism against snakes, and if Nick and Judy can prove it, they could probably stop the incursion of Tundratown into Marsh Market. Umm, I think. Look, this is all a lot complicated than it needs to be, if you ask me, but I suppose it does teach kids an important lesson about real estate. Buy land, kids, if you can, because they're not making much of it any more. Then sit on it for 20-30 years and sell it for four times what you paid for it. 

So Gary De'Snake is working with Pawbert Lynxley to re-find the old reptile district, and then locate evidence regarding Agnes De'Snake, to determine if she was maybe the true founder of the city. I think it's still a little unclear, however, how the lynx taking credit for her work led to the reptile exile. I know somebody dumbed this down for kids, maybe they just didn't dumb it down enough for me to understand it? Really it's just the framework for a bunch of chase scenes, which really is crucial in moving this plot forward. Judy and Nick team up with a conspiracy theorist beaver named Nibbles Maplestick, after they've both been framed for stealing the journal at the gala and working with the snake who bit Chief Bogo. Which is all bad, because they were warned to stay away from the gala in the first place, after Chief Bogo took them off the case, following a raid on a smuggling ring that was successful, just not the way that Bogo wanted it to be. Jesus, again everything is way too complicated, why is every part of this plot like having teeth pulled? 

I wish they had spent more time coming up with a workable plot that I could follow here, and maybe less time just coming up with names based on animal puns - like there's just not a lot of payoff there, I get that there are thousand famous people who are willing to record a line of dialogue each, so their kids can hear them voice an animal character in a Disney film - but it all just becomes a bit too cutesy and twee after a while, and then we're losing the gritty crime element that would help us understand the master plan, whatever it is. Right? And everything whizzes by so fast here, it's no wonder a whole generation has ADHD. But I get it, kids like animals and kids like bright, shiny colors and a lot of fast-moving action, that doesn't mean we have to GIVE all that to them. Isn't it all going to overload their senses and give them seizures or something, like shouldn't we be giving them the film version of downers, rather than uppers? This is the Disney version of cotton candy, sure it tastes good and looks colorful, but it's only going to make their hearts race and their synapses fire, and then when it wears off, they're just going to crash unless they can get another hit. 

Then there are in-film references to "The Silence of the Lambs", "Ratatouille", "The Shining" and "Babe", and I think kids are a little too young to have seen a couple of these movies. The "Ratatouille" tribute scene also has a raccoon in it, which I think is a reference to "Everything Everywhere All at Once", where they mistakenly call the Disney film "Raccoon-Coonie". I got most of the jokes, I think - but I can't be certain. I'd probably score this a little higher if there just weren't a hundred different things going on at a time, it's all kind of exhausting. Older people will probably need a nap after watching this with their grandchildren. 

Directed by Jared Bush (director of "Encanto" and "Zootopia") & Byron Howard (ditto)

Also starring the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Carry-On"), Ke Huy Quan (last heard in "The Electric State"), Fortune Feimster (last seen in "You're Cordially Invited"), Andy Samberg (last seen in "Self Reliance"), David Strathairn (last seen in "The Luckiest Man in America"), Idris Elba (last seen in "Daddy's Little Girls"), Shakira (last heard in "Zootopia"), Patrick Warburton (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Quinta Brunson (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Danny Trejo (last seen in "Clerks III"), Nate Torrence (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), Bonnie Hunt (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Don Lake (last seen in "Mascots"), Michelle Gomez, David Fane (last heard in "Moana 2"), Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoa'i (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), CM Punk, Stephanie Beatriz (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Wilmer Valderrama (last heard in "Encanto"), Jean Reno (last seen in "Die Hart"), Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Superman" (2025)), Macaulay Culkin (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Brenda Song (last seen in "The Last Showgirl"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "Violent Night"), Maurice LaMarche (last heard in "Spielberg"), Leah Latham (last heard in "Zootopia"), Josh Dallas (ditto), Hewitt Bush (ditto), Byron Howard (ditto), Jared Bush (ditto), Melissa Goodwin Shepherd (ditto), Fabienne Rawley (ditto), Raymond S. Persi (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Jenny Slate (last heard in "The Electric Slate"), Tommy Chong (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Auli'i Cravalho (last seen in "Mean Girls" (2024)), Blake Slatkin, Nick DiGiovanni, Tig Notaro (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Mae Martin (ditto), Sasha Pique, Milan Pique, Jake Robards (last seen in "Lucky Them"), Robert A. Iger (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Michael J. Fox (ditto), Daniel V. Graulau (last seen in "Cry Macho"), Amanda Gorman, Ed Sheeran (last seen in "Red Notice"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Tiffany Lonsdale (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), George Pennacchio, June Squibb (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Rachel House (last heard in "A Minecraft Movie"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise"), Allegra Leguizamo (last heard in "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs"), Mario Lopez (last seen in "Heads of State"), Mark Rhino Smith (ditto), Josh Gad (last heard in "Strays"), Peter Mansbridge (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Robert Irwin, David VanTuyle, Anika Noni Rose (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Taylen Biggs, Kellan Tetlow and archive sound of Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr. (also last heard in "Zootopia")

RATING: 6 out of 10 polar bears who work for the arctic shrew somehow

The Smashing Machine

Year 18, Day 123 - 5/3/26 - Movie #5,320

BEFORE: We're not just heading toward Mothers Day, also Star Wars Day (May the 4th) is coming up fast, and of course I don't have anything ready, like on Instagram I just posted all of my autographs from Episodes 4-6, and that's good for three posts. That's a little more than a third but a little less than half of my collection, I can probably wait a year before posting my signed 8 x 10's from Episodes 1-3 and then the next year I could do the sequel and spin-off films. That will give me a chance to beef up the collection a little bit if I can get a little extra money to buy a few more, between now and then. The collection's just not complete without Celia Imrie and Richard E. Grant in it - just kidding, the collection will never be complete.

Anyway, more about "Star Wars" tomorrow, hopefully. Dwayne Johnson carries over from "Gridiron Gang". 

THE PLOT: The story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Mark Kerr. 

AFTER: Like yesterday's film, this is a film based on a true sports story, and one that had a documentary made about it before it was turned into a bio-pic. I wonder if directors comb through lists of docs every year, looking for the best underdog or comeback story to turn into a fiction film with a name actor attached. It's a process, I suppose. Both films have similar endings, and you have to wonder if that held back both films when it came to the box office. People love underdog stories, but they also love to root for winners, just saying. 

It's a weird time in filmmaking, all of the famous directing sibling pairs seem to have broken up. The Coen brothers aren't making movies together any more (one is directing movies with his lesbian wife, but that's a whole other story...) and the Wachowski brothers (who became the Wachowski sisters, another story...) aren't active either, that just left the Safdie brothers, and now they seem to be on the outs as well. They made "Uncut Gems" and "Good Time" together, and now you're more likely to see the Gallagher brothers perform as Oasis again than to get these two guys working on the same film. 

But whatever, I only need ONE person to carry over to the next film, and I'm good. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will be here tomorrow, but in an entirely different capacity. There's one person in this film I know in the real world, I used to play pub trivia against him before he became a minor celebrity in the world of game-show contestants with immense trivia knowledge - you can see him interviewing the Rock as Mark Kerr near the start of the film.  

It would be too simple to blame Mark's girlfriend (later his wife, for a few years) for his failure. But she did spend time drinking and partying with him when he was supposed to be training. The old myth about training for boxers is that they're not supposed to have sex, because that would weaken their legs, but I'm not sure if there's any truth to that, or if that's even a thing any more. But I'm guessing drinking and doing drugs is still considered taboo during training. Another part of the problem here might have been ego, Kerr went to wrestle in Japan with the mind-set that he had never lost a match, well, that could have something to do with where he wrestled before and many other factors, once someone gets to the championship level in a sport, they're going to have to learn to deal with the losses, because, well, theoretically everybody's good and nobody wins all the matches. The last undefeated football team was ages ago, and I doubt it's possible in the other U.S. sports to go through a season without a loss, because they play so many games. 

We're watching "24 in 24" now on the Food Network, since "Tournament of Champions" is over, but T.O.C. follows a bracket system akin to the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament, or the NBA playoff system. You win, you move on, you lose, you go home. Just to GET to the playoffs is some kind of accomplishment, though, and for a chef to get to T.O.C., they must have done something right - but the genius of the bracket system is that there's going to be a winner and loser in every battle, so SOMEBODY is going to win five matches in a row, that's a mathematical certainty. And even though "24 in 24" uses different non-bracket methods to eliminate chefs, it's similar in that it starts with 24 people and eventually only 1 will be left. So 24 people think they have a shot at winning, and 23 of them will be proven wrong. For a game-show like "The Floor" the odds are even worse, 99 players will be proven wrong, but still, it's guaranteed that even if the topics are random, the system is there to guarantee one winner. 

Mark had gained success in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (which started out as "no holds barred" fighting, but had to modify the fighting rules in the late 1990s) but then when he attends the 1997 Pride Fighting Championship in Japan and loses to Igor Vovchanchyn via some illegal knee strikes, and the goes through the stages of grief - bargaining (pointing out the illegal moves) and denial (my drinking and drug use had nothing to do with it), and then anger and depression show up a bit late for the party. Back at home he argues with Dawn and then overdoses, forcing him to enter rehab to get clean, an attempt to break up with Dawn, and starting with a new trainer, Bas Rutten. I do know who Bas Rutten is, but only because he appeared on "The King of Queens" was in the movie "Here Comes the Boom".

Anyway, training with Bas Rutten turns out to be a good thing, and Kerr gets clean and back into shape, even wins a couple fights. But then he reconciles with Dawn, leaves training camp, breaks up with Dawn again, and when Dawn tries to kill herself, Mark is distracted, to say the least. Back in Japan for another Pride FC, he loses a brutal fight and has to get stitches, while his friend and former training partner Mark Coleman advances to the finals. Well, at least the two friends didn't have to fight each other for the championship, that could have been very awkward, right? Right after than, Kerr married Dawn, they had a son, but they broke up after six years, he retired in 2009, and is mostly unknown today, despite the influence he had on the early MMA events. 

Directed by Benny Safdie (director of "Good Time" and "Uncut Gems")

Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Fall Guy"), Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten (last seen in "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2"), Oleksandr Usyk, Lyndsey Gavin, Satoshi Ishii (last seen in "Here Comes the Boom"), James Moontasri (last seen in "End of the Road"), Yoko Hamamura, Stephen Quadros, Paul Cheng (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Roberto de Abreu Filho, Andre Tricoteux, Marcus Aurelio (last seen in "The Humanity Bureau"), Whitney Moore, Paul Lazenby, Jonathan Corbblah, Nala Sinephro, Jerin Valel, James McSweeney, Ilan Rosenberg, Nick Toren (last seen in "The Pink Panther"), Jill Basey (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Raja Flores, Egidyus Klimas, Olga Dzyurak, Chris Franco, Takao Osawa, Zoe Kosovic, Tomoyasu Hotei,  Gary Copeland, Yushin Okami, Marcus Vinicios, Adam Santos, Kirk Langer, Bethany Brown (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Randi Lynne, Takaaki Nagata, Jugo Hashimoto, Haruo Tokashiki, Yasuhiro Nakatsuka, Hiroko Taki, Yasuko Mitsuura, Shinpei Otsuki, Midori Takiya, Naoshi Sasaki, Royal Johnston, Adrienne Lovato, Ryan Ventura, Paul Wu, Jaime Fair, Jordan Greer, Byron Capers, Annette Alvarado, with a cameo from Mark Kerr.

RATING: 6 out of 10 demolition derby cars (must be a metaphor, right?)