Spiderhead

Year 18, Day 121 - 5/1/26 - Movie #5,318

BEFORE: It's May 1, which used to be a holiday called May Day, primarily I think it was some kind of Russian holiday? Oh, if only I hadn't just watched "The Package" two days ago, which had a lot of Soviet officials in it, and a nuclear treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. I supposed I could have skipped two days and lined that film up with May 1, but then I was a bit in danger of not getting to the Mothers' Day film in time. Let's just say that two days ago, I watched my "May Day" film, OK? 

I think maybe this holiday has fallen out of favor in the U.S., now it kind of goes by International Workers' Day, which is, you know, a lot easier for me to find a film that's appropriate - somebody has a job in just about any film, right? 

Jurnee Smollett carries over from "The Great Debaters" and here are the rest of the links to get me to Mothers Day: Dwayne Johnson, Danny Trejo, Kelsey Grammer, Andy Daly, Kristen Bell. That's 8 more films until I break for a week, and drive down to North Carolina for a bit. I've got some options when I get back, I just haven't figured out which gets me to Memorial Day or Fathers Day or both. 

THE PLOT: Prisoners participate in experiments involving mind-altering drugs. 

AFTER: I could have just dropped this film, it's the middle of a three-film chain with the same actress, but I've got two films coming up in the chain that don't seem to be streaming anywhere any more, those are also middle films so I'll probably have to drop them, for now at least. So I need this one here, or I'm going to get to the Mothers' Day film too early, and I can't have that either. It's a tough dilemma, really, but I just need the count to be not too many films and not too few. 

I don't really know what to do with this film, it's just kind of odd. Why does this film exist, what purpose does it serve? Is it meant to be a takedown of the pharmaceutical industry, or is it a call for prison reform, like a call to not test experimental drugs on prisoners, or something? I'll have to look this one up on Wiki to see if I can grok what its intentions were. It's not looking good, in terms of understanding it, but it seems to be based on a dystopian short story from 2010, called "Escape from Spiderhead" - what a terrible name, they really should have come up with a better name for the film, they didn't HAVE to carry over the "Spiderhead" name, which doesn't seem to mean anything. 

Really it's about Big Pharma getting in bed with the incarceration industry, because prisoners are a great source of test subjects for new drugs, and here there's one drug that makes people laugh, there's another that makes them horny, and another one that induces fear and psychological pain, it's just a matter of who gets which drug at what time, and what the effects of each are, and they're all administered by packs that are strapped to the prisoner/patients' backs, and they can't reach them. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with this scenario? 

Steve is the owner of the chemical company, and Jeff is one of the inmates, and Jeff's in some kind of relationship with Lizzy, a female inmate. It does seem a bit weird that the inmates have enough freedom to get together and form relationships, so they're not confined to cells, there must be some common spaces, but that implies a certain level of trust, and also it's bound to cause problems down the road. Steve loves to pair Jeff up with different women in the testing suite and administer the love drug (with consent, of course) and then watch as they both become very horny and have sex, it's all part of the test, but you get the feeling that Steve digs it. It's very awkward after the drugs wear off, though, and people who just had sex while under the influence of "Luvactin" meet in the cafeteria and no longer are attracted to each other. 

But this is what Steve is supposedly there to test, are there long-term effects of the love drug that would linger after they're intimate, like would Jeff be willing to administer the "fear drug", Darkenfloxx, to one of the women that he had sex with a few days ago? Jeff's a little smarter than most, though, and in this case he chooses to not administer the drug to either of them, it sounds like he took this drug in an earlier study and had a bad reaction, which of course is the intent of the drug in the first place. 

In the next test, Steve tells Jeff that he HAS to administer the fear drug to someone, and this rule came down from the head of the research department - which then becomes awkward when Jeff learns that Steve is the CEO of the drug company, and there really is no research department, other than Steve. Steve has also been self-administering the "good" drugs to himself, which itself is probably some kind of research violation, but hey, it's good to be the CEO. Jeff and Lizzy draw closer by sharing their backstories with each other, Jeff is in prison because he was driving drunk and had an accident in which his friend and girlfriend died, so that probably explains why he volunteered for the experiments, all that guilt makes him willing to sacrifice his health as a test subject, by way of making some atonement for his actions. 

I'm reminded here about The Trolley Problem - perhaps it has something to do with the fact that a couple of days ago, I worked at thesis presentations from the Design Department from the college that runs the theater where I work. They had an arcade-style video game console, with games designed by some of the students, and one video-game was inspired by the Trolley Problem. If you don't know it, it's a thought experiment where you imagine a switch that controls what track a trolley will travel on - Track A will allow the trolley to run over five people who are tied to the track, but if you pull the switch, Track B will lead the trolley to run over and kill just one person tied to it, so do you pull the switch or not? Do you sacrifice one life to save five, and if so, how do you justify that? If you do nothing, five people will die but YOU did not cause their deaths, however if you pull the switch, you will have one death on your conscience, ethically are you OK with that, can you bargain/justify the taking of one life to save five others?  

This is the simplest version, however there are more complex, like in one version you can pull a switch that brings the trolley on to a looped track with nobody tied to it, however you have to remain there and pull the switch every minute or so, it won't stay in the proper position, but if you leave then the trolley will go on the strait track and kill some people tied up further down. In this version, are you willing to give up YOUR life (standing there indefinitely, pulling the switch every couple of minutes) to save somebody else, however you also have to realize that you are human and fallable and eventually you will need to sleep or leave and you can't perform your duty forever. So at some point the person on the tracks will therefore die, so you might as well get it over with sooner, and get on with your life, right? 

Some people use this thought experiment for various reasons, like to justify organ donation - is it right to keep a terminally ill person alive if their death now could save the lives of five people after their organs are harvested? Is it better to act and save the maximum number of lives, or to do nothing and therefore not be morally involved in the disastrous outcome. I think we're asking the wrong question entirely, like we should be asking, "Who built this crazy, unhinged trolley system in the first place?" and "Who tied all these people to the trolley tracks?" and after I pull the switch and divert the train on to Track A, can I just go and untie the one person, and save them from getting hit?"  Now, from a criminal law standpoint, a failure to prevent harm is very different from actively causing it, however in certain cases defendants can still be blamed for NOT taking appropriate actions to insure other people's safety, so maybe it's worth talking about. 

The whole thing in this film with the Bingo card was very bizarre, I'm not even sure I understood it, or what the implications of that are. But there is a point to all these experiments, I just don't want to reveal that here. But once Jeff sets his mind to it, he and Lizzy are able to work out an escape, they just have to fight off a bunch of other prison inmates to do it - and Steve needs to escape the prison, too, because somebody called the authorities about all the weird drug trials going on at the prison and the ethics violations taking place as part of the process. OK, good talk, but what have we proved here? 

Directed by Joseph Kosinski (director of "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Only the Brave")

Also starring Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Miles Teller (last seen in "Get a Job"), Mark Paguio, Tess Haubrich (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Ben Knight (last seen in "The Fall Guy"), Daniel Reader, Sam Delich, Ron Smyck (last seen in "Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire"), BeBe Bettencourt, Joey Vieira, Stephen Tongun, Nathan Jones (also last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Angie Milliken (last seen in "Elvis"), Debbie Davis (ditto), Luca De Massis, Charles Parnell (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Wyomi Reed.

RATING: 4 out of 10 jokes that really aren't very funny at all

The Great Debaters

Year 18, Day 120 - 4/30/26 - Movie #5,317

BEFORE: It's the last day of another month, so here are my format stats for April: 

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Freedom Writers, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, Burke and Hare, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul., One Battle After Another, Knox Goes Away, Goodrich, The Alto Knights, The Comeback Trail, The Package, The Great Debaters

10 watched on Netflix: I Am Mother, Paddington in Peru, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Jay Kelly, I Used to Be Famous, Jurassic World: Rebirth, iBoy, The Bad Guys 2, In Your Dreams, Atlas

1 watched on Amazon Prime: G20
3 watched on Hulu: Terminal, The Luckiest Man in America, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

1 watched on Roku: Sword of Trust

1 watched on Tubi: The Book of Love

28 TOTAL

I skipped three days, and that STILL feels like a full month, or at least it's fuller than last April, because we took a week off to go on a quick cruise. So I'm still a few films ahead in the count from where I was on April 30 last year. I'll post the links to Mother's Day tomorrow.

John Heard carries over from "The Package". 

THE PLOT: Based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley College in Texas. In 1935, he inspired students to form the school's first debate team, which went on to challenge the Harvard debate team, which had won the national championship. 

AFTER: I'd say this was a follow-up to "Freedom Writers", but it's not, really. The two films are set like 70 or so years apart - but I thought they sounded alike enough to put them on the same DVD, even though they share no actors in common. Oh, well. They're both kind of Oscar bait in the same way, right? 

"The Great Debaters" is set back in 1935, but in Texas, so yeah, long after the Civil War and the 13th Amendment, but still, you know, down South during the time of Jim Crow laws, so there was still plenty of racism and oppression to go around. Schools were still segregated, that's the bad news, but there were black colleges, I guess that's the good news. Blacks were technically full Americans on paper, but still treated like second-class citizens in many places. Still, that's an upgrade, right? JK. But a second-class citizen is still a citizen - but still, there are lynchings, so it's kind of a good news/bad news situation. 

Also, this was back when debating was still a popular thing - well, nobody had Playstations or Marvel Comics or IMAX movies yet, so sure, debating. Teams of four were given 48 hours to research a topic and were then told if they were arguing FOR it or AGAINST it, whatever "it" was. There really was a Wiley college, and as a black college it had a black debate team, only more bad news, the national competitions were still segregated. So yeah, a couple of things - this film has Wiley College invited to debate against Harvard's team, and the tagline says they challenged Harvard "in the national championship". No, that's wrong, in the movie Harvard's team was the national champion but since Wiley, as a black college, wasn't recognized in the competitions their debate was only an exhibition match, it did NOT decide the national championship. 

Also, in real life, the Wiley team faced the University of South Carolina, not Harvard, but USC was the national champion at the time. Again, it was an exhibition match only, the title was not on the line. The filmmakers decided that more movie viewers knew what Harvard was and what Harvard stands for (mostly white students, even in liberal Massachusetts...). Why the need to change the facts to try to make the story bigger? It's not enough that they faced USC and won, sorry, but reality doesn't fit the narrative you want to tell?  

There's a love triangle on the team, too - there are four members on the team, but Burgess kind of disappears early on with no explanation (did he graduate?) leaving three people, who form that love triangle. Henry hooks up with Samantha, but James Farmer Jr. (who entered college at 14, that's why he looks so young) is infatuated with Samantha, too, and is jealous of her being with Henry. Yeah, but Henry's probably 19 or 20, and that makes a difference... 

The implication here is that being on the debate team helped these college students find their voices and express themselves - James Farmer Jr. went on to become an activist who co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality, while debate coach Melvin Tolson went on to become a union organizer, poet, and politician after teaching at Wiley, which was located in Marshall, Texas, ironically called the last city to admit defeat in the Civil War. I'm not sure if that's a joke. But Tolson also got his Masters Degree at Columbia University, his thesis project was based on extensive interviews with members of the Harlem Renaissance. In his spare time, he apparently organized farm laborers and tenant farmers as this film depicts, and had associations with radical leftist movements (Communists, Socialists, Baptists...).

It's weird to say, but I think the film maybe placed too much emphasis on the college kids, Tolson sounds like he was the more interesting subject. This film's not really about him, but maybe it should have been?  A teacher with an Ivy-League education dresses down like a sharecropper to go run discussions with tenant farmers about how to form labor unions. Jeez, man, THERE is your movie, not debating the finer points of racism with students at a white college...I can't help but think that the filmmakers here missed out on a much more compelling subject, and he was right under their noses, the whole time.

Directed by Denzel Washington (director of "Fences" and producer of "The Piano Lesson")

Also starring Denzel Washington (last seen in "Much Ado About Nothing"), Nate Parker (last seen in "The Secret Life of Bees"), Jurnee Smollett (last seen in "Eve's Bayou"), Denzel Whitaker (last seen in "Warrior"), Jermaine Williams (last seen in "CHIPS"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Big George Foreman"), Gina Ravera (last seen in "Kiss the Girls"), Kimberly Elise (last seen in "Dope"), Devyn A. Tyler (last seen in "Unhinged"), Trenton McClain Boyd, Ritchie Montgomery (last seen in "Homefront"), Jackson Walker (last seen in "42"), Tim Parati (last seen in "Safe Haven"), Robert X. Golphin, Justice Leak (last seen in "Insurgent"), Glen Powell (last seen in "Hit Man"), Brad Watkins, Brian Smiar (last seen in "Regarding Henry"), Damien Leake (last seen in "He Said, She Said"), Stephen Rider (last seen in "The Host"), Donny Boaz, Bonnie Johnson (last seen in "Affairs of State"), Charissa Allen, Michael Beasley (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), Gary Mattis, George Wilson (last seen in "The Book of Love"), Fahnlohnee R. Harris (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Harold Evans (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), JD Evermore (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), Sharon Jones (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Kelvin Payton (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Southey Blanton, Marcus Lyle Brown (last seen in "57 Seconds"),

RATING: 5 out of 10 quotes from Thoreau

The Package

Year 18, Day 119 - 4/29/26 - Movie #5,316

BEFORE: April's almost over, just this film and one more, and then I can start the 9- or 10-movie chain to get to Mother's Day. There are a couple films that still need to be dropped, because they're middle films and also not available on streaming right now. So in the next couple days I'm going to cut what I need to cut and I think we'll be left with the right number of films for early May.  Tommy Lee Jones carries over from "The Comeback Trail". 

THE PLOT: Experienced Green Beret sergeant Johnny Gallager is escorting a prisoner back to the U.S. but he escapes and Gallagher must risk life and limb to catch him. 

AFTER: It's a bit of a weird coincidence, given what's been in the news, that this film which starts out with a summit between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over limiting nuclear weapons ends up with an assassination attempt outside a Hilton hotel. We JUST HAD, days ago, some guy with a gun break through security at the White House Correspondents Dinner, with TRUMP in attendance, and of course he was stopped by security before he got too far, and this was in the ballroom of the Washington D.C. Hilton. Yes, yes, I know there's a big difference between the inside and the outside of a Hilton hotel, plus "The Package" is set at the Chicago Hilton, not the D.C. one, but STILL it's a hell of a coincidence. Or, you know, maybe not - one recent news report mentioned how there were six attempts on Barack Obama's life that we all never heard anything about, because the Secret Service did their jobs and nothing came of them. OK, so, umm, WHY have we heard about the three times Trump was shot at (or near), again and again. 

Hang on, I've got to go back a bit here. This film was made in 1989 and was set during the Cold War, so it was made during the Reagan era, which nobody realized had been a Presidency full of lies and deceit second only to the Nixon years. I think later people found out about funding of Sandinistas in Nicaragua and some kind of "arms for hostages" deal with Iran. So in other words, Reagan, as much as people liked him, was a typical lying Republican P.O.S. Sound familiar? Our current POTUS is really a mix of the worst Nixon bits with the worst Reagan parts mixed in. Like, Reagan once claimed in 1980 that trees cause more air pollution than cars do, which is both bonkers AND ridiculous in addition to being untrue, and it kind of reminds me of Trump saying that windmills cause cancer in whales and also kill thousands of birds. Reagan also repeatedly told a story about a WWII Congressional Medal of Honor recipient that no historians could ever verify, most likely he was just repeating a story from a movie he was in. 

The real difference between Reagan and Trump is that one of them survived a REAL assassination attempt, Reagan was shot and everything, they had to do surgery. Trump, not so much, and I have never come close to believing that the first attempt in Butler, PA was real. Umm, yeah, you can try to prove me wrong but that just felt like a complete set-up, with fake blood and everything. They found an Oswald-like patsy to shoot into the crowd and then they shot HIM dead so he couldn't talk about where he was aiming. There's never been a photo of Trump with any kind of scar on his ear, everything healed up really good for someone whose immune system is in complete collapse because of his diet and terrible circulation. Just saying. OK, the second assassination attempt, the golf course one, I really don't know much about - but I'm sure this third one is another "false flag", a set-up from the get-up, Trump was never in any danger and once again, they found some guy willing to say he had a beef against Trump - or who knows, maybe he really thought Trump was a former pedophile and decided to take matters into his own hands - but word is leaking out now about how they knew this Cole Allen was coming for him and did nothing about it, letting the guy take some shots at nothing to prove the need for a super-secure ballroom being built where the East Wing used to be. Funny how this happened shortly after the courts saying Trump had no legal justification for doing construction at the White House, because he doesn't OWN the property, the country just lets him live there. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts on current events - I'll believe that the Trump assassination attempts are real when one is successful, until then I'm a conspiracy theorist. Plus I don't believe anything Trump says, why should I start now? Let me try and get back to the movie and wrap up, because I'm already running late. In "The Package" there's a rogue part of the military that does NOT want there to be a nuclear treaty, or a ban, or a reduction in the number of missiles, so they're willing to assassinate the President to prevent it. Perhaps his Vice President will get the message and nix the treaty, I guess that's the plan. After the team of thugs frees "Walter Henke" from custody at the airport, Gallagher goes to visit Mrs. Henke and the photo of her husband on the wall shows a different guy... Meanwhile the real Henke has been sent on an undercover mission inside some Neo-Nazi group in Chicago - it's really just a dodge so the assassin, Thomas Boyette can pretend to be Henke, and then he finds the real Henke to get him to hold the sniper rifle for a bit, get his fingerprints on it. Who knows, maybe this is what happened with Lee Harvey Oswald, right? Didn't he say under investigation that he'd never owned a rifle? 

Gallagher goes to visit his ex-wife, who works in some kind of army data center, and she and her assistant use the clues from his conversation with his "package" to determine the real identity of the man he escorted back from Berlin. His ex had just been promoted to Lt. Colonel, and she and her assistant figure out the mystery man's identity, but Gallagher still needs the help of an old army buddy to sneak off the base, and a Chicago police detective who's got undercover contacts that can help locate the group of thugs that is going around town killing anyone who Gallagher meets with. But after a shoot-out, a group of conspirators dressed as cops capture Johnny, and for some stupid reason, take him to basement of the safe house where Boyette is hiding out. Once Boyette leaves to do the job, Gallagher escapes and finds a stack of his surveillance photos, which he then uses to figure out the location of the sniper's nest, where Boyette is planning to shoot the U.N. General Secretary from.  

Back in the safe house, Gallagher had confronted Colonel Whitacre, who seemed to be the brains of the conspiracy to bust the treaty by killing the U.N. Secretary - oh, like they won't just appoint ANOTHER U.N. Secretary if you kill this one? - and Gallagher wants to know why Whitacre is trying to start a war, for apparently no reason. Whitacre's response is that nuclear weapons were the only thing preventing war, and getting rid of nukes would only mean a return to conventional war, and then we'd see Russians attacking Washington the very next day. Well, he's not wrong, some people back then felt that nuclear weapons were kind of their own deterrent, thanks to the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, calling for the side that gets fired on to fire THEIR missiles, and then both sides of the conflict would get blowed up, essentially starting a nuclear war would mean the end of the world, so then why would anybody start one? It sounds bizarre, but this was the prevailing theory about nuclear weapons back in the 1980's. 

Directed by Andrew Davis

Also starring Gene Hackman (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Joanna Cassidy (last seen in "Stay Hungry"), John Heard (last seen in "The Tale"), Dennis Franz (last seen in "City of Angels"), Pam Grier (last seen in "Poms"), Kevin Crowley (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Ron Dean (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Nathan Davis (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Chelcie Ross (last seen in "The Gift"), Joe Greco (last seen in "About Last Night"), Ike Pappas (last seen in "Matinee"), Marco St. John (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Reni Santoni (last seen in "28 Days"), Michael Skewes (last seen in "Payback"), Johnny Lee Davenport (last seen in "Joy"), Thalmus Rasulala, Joe Guzaldo, Michael Tomlinson (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Cody Glenn, Harry Lennix (last seen in "State of Play"), Carlos Sanz (last seen in "Crank"), Diane Timmerman, Charles Mueller, Wilhelm von Homburg, Katherine Lynch, Mary Seibel (also last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Joe D. Lauck, Dick Cusack (last seen in "Return to Me"), Danny Goldring (last seen in "Captive State"), Gregory Alan Williams (last seen in "Geostorm"), Tina Gluschenko, Kathryn Joosten (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Oksana Fedunyszyn, Dennis Cockrum (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Nancy Baird, John D'Amico, Ray Allen, Billy Bosco, Chad Smith (last seen in "Hostage"), Jack Gold

RATING: 5 out of 10 bicycles hanging in the parking garage

The Comeback Trail

Year 18, Day 118 - 4/28/26 - Movie #5,315

BEFORE: I finally figured out what the chain was trying to tell me, I think - why so many films about fathers showed up here, a bit out of turn. The continuing pattern was about the need to let go, like Knox in "Knox Goes Away" was trying to get out of the hit-man life and clear his accounts, and Andy Goodrich in "Goodrich" was dealing with the closing of his art gallery, again trying to get out of his job and lifestyle and balance that with his life, as best as he could. During that same weekend, my boss of 30 years was part of a celebration of his career and the fact that he's turning 80 (and still not retiring, despite my rejected sane advice to do so) so like those characters, I need to be comfortable with MY decision to get out of that life, just about a year ago I "got clean" and I refused to participate in the birthday celebration/roast/tribute or whatever it was. 

Oh, oh, and Frank Costello was seen trying to retire and get out of the mob, which most people are unable to do while they're still breathing. So that's THREE films in a row with main characters deciding to get clear of their job/lifestyle, and move forward. OK, chain, the message has been received. I made the right move when I did, now it would be great to get that one last sign from the universe that I managed to get off the sinking ship before it sank. So now would be a really good time to learn that the ship did indeed sink, just saying. Robert De Niro carries over from "The Alto Knights". 

THE PLOT: A film producer who owes money to a mobster tries to "accidentally" kill his aging movie star for an insurance scam to pay off his debt, but he begins to realize that the movie they're shooting is a masterpiece in the making. 

AFTER: As I mentioned yesterday, I'm in the process of previewing docs for my summer (?) Doc Block, and one of the docs I took a spin through yesterday was about Roger Corman, the producer of over 450 films in his career, some very famous ones and really, a lot of low-budget flops. Mr. Corman also reminds me of the animator I worked for, somebody with "artist brain" who sees themselves like a shark, as if they'll die if they don't keep swimming forward. Which is not true, a filmmaker CAN retire if they want to, it's just practically unheard of because of their giant egos (they'll somehow cease to exist if their name's not on a marquee somewhere) also they HAVE to keep working because they're so far in debt that they need to make another film that isn't going to do well to help pay for the last one they made that didn't do well. It's a form of madness, I know - but that perfectly sets up De Niro's character in "The Comeback Trail", Max Barber, who is similarly deep in debt, but also just ONE successful film away from clearing his debt and also being relevant again. Yeah, I'm going to get the stress dreams again tonight, for sure - I've lived this exact situation for a long time. 

To be fair, I worked mostly in animation, and that's a whole different animal - umm, except when it isn't. When I started working for the studio my boss had finished an animated feature two years before, and was working on two live-action features, despite having a reputation for cartoons, he for some reason wanted to work in the regular film medium (one feature did have a little animation in it) so for the first two or three years of my animation career, I wasn't working on animation at all, instead the company was employing an editor, an assistant editor and a sound editor, with a weekly rent on an editing suite uptown. My job involved not only running the office but also sending boxes of VHS collections of my boss's short films to distributors, but also getting weekly bank checks to a payroll service so those editors and I could get properly, legally paid every Friday. Now, one of those features turned out to be a mockumentary (this was after "Spinal Tap" but before "Waiting for Guffman") about the making of a Western movie, and everything during the production of the film-within-the-film went horribly wrong, like several cast members died due to faulty equipment or bad catering...so yeah, I may know a thing or two about the subject matter here. 

This film is also kind of a riff on "The Producers", where two stage producers try to make a play so bad that it will close after opening night, and they won't have to return any profits to the investors and can keep all the money. In "The Comeback Trail", Max Barber learns that when a famous Hollywood actor/stuntman died on set, the producer collected on a $5 million insurance policy - so that's when he hatches his own scheme, to hire a very old (and suicidal) actor as his lead, and then look for ways to make the stunts go wrong on the set, and when he dies, that's $5 million he didn't have before, which is even more than the $1 million he's offered for that magic screenplay that he's sitting on. With $5 million he could clear all of his debts, get ahead of things, maybe even retire. Umm, who are we kidding, he's only going to blow that money on making more terrible movies, and/or keeping the studio open for another three years, at which point he'll be RIGHT back in the same situation, and in debt once again. Trust me, I understand exactly how that "artist brain" works. Max Barber, just like Max Bialystock, can't stop making more productions, because he would then cease to exist. 

So once Barber has his leading man cast, first he learns all the commands for the stunt-horse. One code word makes the horse run away very fast, another makes the horse rear up, and still another word makes the horse go completely crazy. But somebody spills water on the list of code words, so Max gets them all mixed up, of course, True to form, whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and here there's another dimension, since Max is TRYING to make an accident happen, naturally nothing works out as it should, so all attempts to cause disaster and kill Duke Montana fail, and then this starts to resemble a Road Runner / Wile. E. Coyote situation. 

Next Max suggests filming the most dangerous stunt first, which means setting the wagons on fire and having Duke and the horse jump right through it. Then there's the rope bridge over the canyon, and Max monkeys with the ropes the night before so that Duke will fall to his death. Then there's the scene with the wild bull, when Duke fails to wear the red hat and decides to stick with his regular one, you know, for continuity purposes. But in all cases, two fails means that things start going WELL, and despite Max's best efforts, they start making an actual movie.

NITPICK POINT: I thought it could have been a great gag if Max had neglected to actually take out that insurance policy on Duke, but I guess I'm the only person who thinks that would have been funny. You know, the producer's got a scheme to pull the insurance scam, but also he's too cheap to lay out the money for the policy, or he's too stupid to realize that he'd have to do the paperwork to set all that up. From my experience, that's exactly how that should have gone down, I can't tell you how many times I had to get a replacement policy for workmen's compensation or disability insurance, both of which are legally required to operate a business with employees, only the boss couldn't understand that the monthly bills need to be paid, err, monthly. 

Against all reasonable expectations, "The Oldest Gun in the West" turns out to be a hit movie, so I guess the lesson for us all is that if you plan to fail, and your plans don't work out, you might succeed?  Wait, I thought that nobody plans to fail, they only fail to plan... Nah, let's go with the first one, it makes much more sense than that stupid line about how "If you shoot for the moon, and you miss, you still land in the stars." Umm, no, you don't, if you shoot for the moon and you miss, you get stranded in empty space and you die. Just saying.  

Directed by George Gallo (director of "Middle Men" and writer of "Bad Boys: Ride or Die")

Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Faye"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Zach Braff (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Girl Next Door"), Sheryl Lee Ralph (last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Kate Katzman (last seen in "Walt Before Mickey"), Eddie Griffin (last seen in "The New Guy"), Chris Mullinax, Patrick Muldoon (last seen in "Marlowe"), Julie Lott (last seen in "Middle Men"), Aighleann McKiernan (ditto), Blerim Destani, Vincent Spano (last seen in "The Black Stallion Returns"), Paul Witten, Melissa Greenspan (last seen in "Senior Moment"), Joel Michaely (last seen in "The Card Counter"), Jermaine Washington (last seen in "Fast Color"), Desiree Geraldine, Morse Bicknell (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Michael Davis, Robert Benedetti (last seen in "Legal Eagles"), Danno Hanks, Ray Bouderau (last seen in "The Clapper"), Dylan Flashner (last seen in "Bandit"), Leslie Stratton (ditto), Leroy Morgan, Garrison Cahill Griffith, Malcolm Barret (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), Frances Lee McCain (last seen in "Brats"), Bill Luckett, Jake Hunter, Chelsea Newman, Dobromir Mashukov, Kyron Bonner, Christina Ann Sweeney, Michelle Maylene, Natalie Burn (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Josefine Lindegaard (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Kiersten Dolbec, Ekaterina Baker (last seen in "Fatman"), Emily Casazza, Nick Vallelonga (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Hansel Ramirez, Erik Sahlein, Leonard Waldner

RATING: 6 out of 10 old people desperate to get out of the nursing home (was this supposed to be funny? I'm not seeing it...)

The Alto Knights

Year 18, Day 117 - 4/27/26 - Movie #5,314

BEFORE: It's still April, but all of a sudden, I've got a plan for the Doc Block. I'd been working on it here and there, whenever I had the time, mostly I go by the cast lists on the IMDB, but those can be unreliable, so sometimes I feel the need to scan through each doc at maybe double-speed, not slow enough that I learn about everything the doc, but not so fast that I miss seeing who appears in it. I had 7 slots open on my streaming/maybe list, so I decided to fill those up with docs, and that brought me to a place where I had everything in three clumps, one with 10 films, one with 11 and one with 12. A little bit of monkeying around with the order, and suddenly I connected everything into ONE big doc chain of 33 films. That's certainly enough for a month of programming this summer - OK, so they're not in a circle, they're just in a line, but that gives me a tentative entry point and an exit point, all I have to do in June (or July) is get to that entry point, at which point the IMF team will cut a hole in the ice and revive me with a special depressurization tent. No, wait...

It's early, I know it's early, but I'm not just stumbling in the dark, guessing which docs I'm going to watch this year, I've got a framework, and if some new docs come along, or I go through some more cast lists, I can try to find a place for each new one somewhere in the mix. So the planning isn't over, not by a long shot, and with each new film I might need to shuffle things around, and you know, too much of that and I'll probably end up scrapping the whole order and start over again, re-grouping the films by subject matter, all the film stars first, then the comic actors, then the rock bands. It's been known to happen, but maybe, just maybe, this order will hold up, I can add 5 or 6 more and call it a chain, because the first doc is SUPER easy to link to, there are about 30 possible people to link to, I guess first I'll have to see where I'm going to be on Fathers Day, and then I can finalize my decisions then. It's cool, I don't want to lock anything down just yet, but there's a plan in place that could work if I have no time between now and then to re-organize everything. And you know from the end of the Doc Block it's usually just one long stretch to Halloween, and then another short one to Christmas movies, and then, well, the year's basically over, innit? 

Sydney Miles carries over from "Goodrich". 

THE PLOT: Two of New York City's most notorious crime bosses vie for control of the city's streets. Once best friends, petty jealousies and a series of betrayals set them on a deadly collision course. 

AFTER: Yes, tonight's film is THAT movie from 2025, the one where Robert De Niro played two different notable mobsters, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, and sometimes those two characters interacted with each other, at some points they were the only two characters on screen. It was all done with make-up and split screen work, or they used a body double for one guy when they filmed De Niro as Costello, and then put De Niro's face on the body double playing Genovese. Or maybe it was the other way round - but this is simultaneously somehow both the best thing about the movie and also the worst, because De Niro didn't do much to change his voice, so obviously both characters sound like him, and that ruins the illusion, so you're really aware at all times that he's both of them, even when they're talking to each other. 

It's a gimmick, and the thing about gimmick is that they stick out, they may be memorable but sometimes they are also annoying. Was I supposed to pretend like I didn't KNOW both characters are Bobby D, just wearing different prosthetics and make-up? It would be impossible not to know, also this messes with my suspension of disbelief, in addition to being confusing as all hell. Do you mean to imply that all Italians sound exactly alike? That's a little disturbing if not flat-out racist. I suppose another implication is that all Italians are gangsters, because I don't think we see any Italian people in this film who are NOT mobbed up, so really, that IS what somebody is trying to say, isn't it?  

The film also starts with a hitman, sent by Genovese, shooting Costello as he enters the elevator in his apartment building. Is this an occurence meant to take place early in the relationship, or are we starting the film in media res, meaning "somewhere in the middle, but the most important part" and then is the film going to flashback to the mobsters' teen years and friendship, during Prohibition when gangsters could make a killing just getting to the "hospitality" business. Are we going to flash back and then catch up to the hit on Costello, which really belongs in the MIDDLE of the film, but is seen at the very beginning?  I'm genuinely asking, because I'm not really sure. That seems to make the most sense to me, I mean, Vito wouldn't have any reason to put a hit on Frank at the start of the film, and flashing back would be very helpful to explain the WHY of the hit, not just the HOW. But Costello survives the hit, the bullet bounced off his skull but did not go inside, and then Costello is more motivated to try to get out of this life and retire. Ah, but the mob doesn't really LET people retire, right? So was the hit personal payback, or just the mob tying up some loose ends, by not letting anyone out alive? 

Again, I'm not sure. There's a scene where Frank Costello testifies to some kind of government committee about organized crime (led by Estes Kefauver), and he spills secrets where most of the other mobsters evoked their Fifth Amendment rights, which is basically just like saying they were guilty, just unwilling to say they were guilty, and the burden of proof would be back on the government.  So was the hit on Costello taken out as retaliation for speaking to the committee?  I don't know because the answer would be NO if the scenes here are being shown in chronological order, but maybe YES if the film was jumping around a bit in time. 

Let me see if I can reorganize a few things here with some actual dates - in 1936, boss Lucky Luciano was convicted of running a prostitution ring, sentenced to at least 30 years. He tried to run the family from prison with the help of Frank Costello, but it was too difficult, so Genovese became acting boss of the Luciano crime family. But then in 1937 Genovese fled to Italy to avoid prosecution for a murder in 1934, so Costello was appointed acting boss, until Genovese came back to the U.S. in 1945, after the murder charges were dismissed due to the death of two witnesses (what are the odds?). Rather than be allowed to run everything again, Genovese was given some territory, but Costello remained acting boss. Most of this is shown in tonight's film, just not necessarily in that order. 

The Kefauver Hearings were held in 1950 and 1951, that's when most other mobsters pled the fifth, but Costello started offering up actual information, when the questions got too close, Costello walked out, saying he had a sore throat. Several days later he returned but would not answer every question (what a shock!) and he was found in contempt of Congress and sentenced to 18 months. Then Costello was indicted in 1952 for tax evasion, and he was sentenced to five years, plus the government started proceedings to strip him of his citizenship, BUT in 1954 Costello appealed and was released on bail, THEN came the Genovese hit on Costello in May of 1957. So yes, the movie kind of started in the middle of the story and then flashed back to the beginning, and the hit was likely retaliation for testifying before Congress, plus maybe not giving Vito Genovese back his territory or position, plus maybe also Vito just didn't like him any more. Either way, the hit persuaded Costello to relinquish power and retire. 

In November of 1957 was the famous Apalachin meeting, this was the big nationwide meeting held in upstate New York, with bosses from all over the country getting together to discuss new ways to divide up the territory, plus I think there were seminars on loan-sharking and this new thing (at the time) called narcotics. Over 100 Mafiosi attended, and really the whole thing was put together to maybe make Vito Genovese the capo di tutti capi, or "boss of bosses". But somebody tipped off the police about the meeting in this sleepy little town, and the place got raided. The movie depicts Frank Costello as being late for the meeting, suddenly deciding to stop at a farm and pick some apples, which strongly suggests that he might have been the one who dropped a dime on the other mobsters. But you didn't hear this from me...

The state police started taking down plate numbers, from all the luxury cars from around the country that were parked outside a farm for some reason, and when they ran the plates and learned many cars were registered to known criminals, well, suddenly J. Edgar Hoover's claim that there was no national crime syndicate started to seem a bit short-sighted. This was kind of like the Woodstock Festival, only 10 years earlier and the focus was crime, not rock music, but you get the idea. The police set up a roadblock, and when the mobsters spotted it, they all bolted, maybe 50 got away and 60 others were apprehended, including Vito Genovese, and they were all charged with "conspiring to obstruct justice by lying about the nature of the meeting", and fined up to $10,000 each. So they served time for NOT telling the cops what the meeting was about, but I bet they would have served more time if they HAD told the cops what the meeting was about. Oh, and Frank Costello showed up too late to get arrested, imagine that. 

Costello did get to retire after that, but he also had to serve 15 years at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta for dealing heroin, and for at least part of that time, Vito Genovese was also a prisoner there. That must have been awkward - but Costello did get out, and managed to outlive Genovese by 4 years. 

Directed by Barry Levinson (director of "Here Today" and "Sphere")

Also starring Robert De Niro (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Debra Messing (last seen in "Bros"), Kathrine Narducci (last seen in "Capone"), Cosmo Jarvis (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Michael Rispoli (last seen in "Nonnas"), Robert Uricola (last seen in "Raging Bull"), Frank Piccirillo, Matt Servitto (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Louis Mustillo (last seen in "One for the Money"), Anthony J. Gallo (last seen in "The Irishman"), James Ciccone (last seen in "Somewhere in Queens"), Joe Bacino (last seen in "Kick-Ass"), Luke Stanton Eddy, Antonio Cipriano, Brian Scolaro, Wallace Langham (last seen in "Draft Day"), Ed Amatrudo (last seen in "Till"), Mike Seely (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Todd Covert (ditto), Abi Van Andel (ditto), Jeffrey Grover (ditto), Wynn Reichert (ditto), Amadeo Fusca, Bob Glouberman (last seen in "Queenpins"), Kimeron Collins, Peyton Stockdale, John Dinello (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Jocelyn Sluka, Bryant Carroll (last seen in "Nutcrackers"), Robert Arce (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Brian Spangler, Alex Safi (last seen in "Set Up"), Christine McBurney, Rich Williams (last seen in "Tammy"), Ashton Wolf, Josh Innerst, Mark Axelowitz (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Glenn Cunningham (ditto), James P. Harkins (last seen in "The Accountant 2"), Zach Meiser, Louie Lawless, Andy Knode, Mark Tierno, J. Barrett Cooper, Liam Cronin, Robert DiDonato (last seen in "Striking Distance"), Michael Patrick Trimm, Jeremy Dubin (last seen in "Miles Ahead"), Michael Adler (last seen in "Peppermint"), Itala Sona Ennor, Jean Zarzour, Tino Roncone, Nick Ferraro, Mike Dennis (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Belmont Cameli, Ed Formica, Seve Esposito (last seen in "Green Book"), Noan Bain Garret, Shantel Routt,

with archive footage of James Cagney, Benny Goodman, J. Edgar Hoover (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr.") and Little Richard (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself")

RATING: 4 out of 10 patrons at the Copa club

Goodrich

Year 18, Day 116 - 4/26/26 - Movie #5,313

BEFORE: The chain has seen fit to throw another film about a father into late April - that's three in the last week, meaning that this week COULD have, maybe SHOULD have, been programmed into June, the home of Father's Day. Sure, films about fathers are all over the place, and I've got a little separate list of them that did NOT include "One Battle After Another" or "Knox Goes Away". If I had known this week would have been so father-centric, I might have worked harder to find another way to get from, say, "Honk for Jesus" to tomorrow's film, saving this little part of the chain for later, June would have been great. But you know, there's a chance that I would not have been able to link to it then, plus I was in such a rush to watch the film that won Best Picture, nothing else really mattered. Look, if it turns out I can't find any appropriate material for Fathers Day, then I'll just look back on what I've already watched this year, and say, "Well, at least I had the topic covered, even if I didn't hit the holiday spot on."  But again, films about fathers are all over the place, surely something else will pop up at the right time. 

Michael Keaton carries over from "Knox Goes Away". 

THE PLOT: Andy Goodrich's life is upended when his wife enters a rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Goodrich leans on Grace, his daughter from his first marriage, as he ultimately evolves into the father she never had. 

AFTER: We're ushered in to Andy Goodrich's life at a time of great turmoil, his second (and current) wife calls him from a rehab facility where she's just checked herself in, and her addiction comes as something of a shock to Goodrich, he hadn't noticed that she was overworked and strung out and needed to take pills to go to sleep, and then other pills to stay awake during the day, in addition to being tired all the time because she was taking care of their twins, and just maybe he'd been spending just a bit too much time running his art gallery, because he didn't even notice that his wife wasn't sleeping next to him. Oh, and in addition to checking into rehab, his wife wants to check out of their marriage. Goodrich drives to the rehab facility, but of course he's unable to visit her, and then he's got to rush back because there's nobody to pick the kids up from school. He's also late in getting them to school the next day, because he didn't even know somebody had to pack lunches for them. Do you get the feeling that this guy's been a little out of touch? 

He also can't seem to find a way to tell his kids what "rehab" is, so he makes up a story about his wife spending time with her mother in St. Louis. I'm sure there will be no repercussions over him lying to his own kids, right?  Suddenly Goodrich has to learn how to be a father, with only the help from their nanny, who came straight from the Israeli military - so he also enlists the help of Grace, his adult daughter from his first marriage, but she's eight months pregnant and also very resentful that her younger half-siblings are getting the attention from their father that SHE never got when she was a child. Oh, there will be something to unpack there, eventually. Andy's only friend seems to be Terry, the single father of his kids' classmate, who also can't seem to get a kid to school on time, and he's a part-time actor whose husband left HIM three years ago. Everybody's got some issues, it seems. 

Meanwhile Goodrich's art gallery has fallen on tough times, their artists aren't selling enough paintings to bring in enough revenue to off-set rising rents and labor costs. Yeah, I worked for an animation studio like that, the owner just kept getting into more and more debt from making films and refused to get a proper agent, so that meant we were constantly struggling to sell more signed art and the schemes to raise money were getting wackier and wackier, like I sold $11,000 worth of animation art to a French museum, it took an extra month for the money to arrive, so when it finally did, it was all spent in three days just to pay enough bills to stay in business another month, that's when I knew the writing was on the wall. So I understand the position Goodrich is in here, he makes a desperate play by befriending the daughter of an artist who has recently died, to try to get exclusive rights to her mother's paintings, as we know an artist's work is likely to go up in value after their death. 

Goodrich has a lot to do in a short period of time, and to do it all, he kind of has to become a different sort of person than he's been in the past - to repair the relationship with his pregnant daughter, save his business and take care of his kids, he's got to actually, you know, CARE and start paying attention to what he's maybe been doing wrong, it's time to give a shit. It's time to realize that the world doesn't necessarily revolve around HIM, and it's time to maybe sacrifice a few things before everything in his life is completely gone or past saving - and even then, things may not work out, but he's got to try. Or learn the art of letting go, that would be another way to deal with the inevitable failure of all things. Maybe both skills are going to be necessary here, try to fix what can be fixed and learn to let go of the things that can't. 

He keeps promising things to his daughter, they'll go out for ice cream and talk or he'll take her to her last pre-natal exam, but things keep coming up, and bottom line, he keeps missing those chances to help her out. I don't know, maybe try using a calendar? Maybe try an app that will give you alerts about your appointments or the places that you said you'd be? It's not hard for most people, but Goodrich has a form of "artist brain" where he can sort of run his business, but he can't run his own personal life, not without several assistants. So yeah, it all comes to a head when Grace chews him out for not being there for her, both in the present and really, for her whole life. Perhaps Goodrich has a chance to be a better grandfather than he was as a father, I know I saw that happen with my own dad. Well, when you have kids you're always working, and therefore always tired, I get it - but when you're a grandfather, you're more likely to be retired and have some extra time on your hands. 

This explains why Goodrich doesn't quite get along with his son-in-law, Pete. Grace chose to be with someone completely unlike her father - dependable, in other words. But at least Goodrich is aware of his faults now, and he's trying to do better. But his art gallery might be beyond saving, and perhaps his second marriage, too, even after Naomi finishes her 90 days in rehab. 

Everyone is way too entitled these days, and this film showcases a lot of people like that. I think just a few generations ago kids were working in factories or mines and there was a Depression going on, and then somebody said that was a bad idea, kids shouldn't be working in factories and mines, at least not until they're 16, and by then World War II ended and things were "great" but also somehow the pendulum swung maybe a bit too far in the other direction. So now we have this generation Z or Gen Alpha or whatever, and they're completely used to getting whatever they want. Cel phones, computers, and ChatGPT and AI have made it so they don't even have to do homework if they can just Google everything they need to know. And they all have peanut allergies or need to be gluten-free and this enables an entire culture of super-picky eaters, if their lunchbox doesn't include 3-inch diameter cucumber slices with the centers removed then they just can't deal with anything that day. 

These kids grow into adults who will BAIL on a relationship if it's not 100% perfect and meeting their outrageous expectations in every way. Just saying. If you can't choke down a lunch that isn't 100% what you wanted it to be, then you can't work a difficult job or navigate a troubled relationship, and you're going to spend your whole life running away from things that you deem too tough to handle. I'm sorry, but life is struggle and life is dealing with the hard things sometimes and you're going to have to get a job and make some money and it's NOT going to be easy. Look, I don't know if this is an L.A. thing or a rich person thing, but everybody's got to come together and use what we used to call "tough love" and STOP babying their kids, because not everything is going to go their way down the road, and they need to be prepared for that. 

Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (director of "Home Again")

Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Luckiest Girl Alive"), Carmen Ejogo (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Michael Urie (last seen in "Maestro"), Kevin Pollak (last seen in "Three Christs"), Laura Benanti (last seen in "Worth"), Andie MacDowell (last seen in "Ready or Not"), Viviena Lyra Blair (last seen in "Bird Box"), Nico Hiraga (last seen in "Moxie"), Jacob Kopera, Danny Deferrari (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Poorna Jagannathan (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Andrew Leeds (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Kimberly Condict, Noa Fisher (las seen in "Uncut Gems"), Jessica Heller, Monique Moses, Carlos Solorzano, Chloe Troast (last seen in "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain"), Liza Treyger (last seen in "Nope"), Lois Shih, Carlos Ragas, Sydney Miles (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Miles Anderson (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Michael Chieffo (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Roshni Shukla, Crosby Fitzgerald, Maria Bata, Shannon Bengston, Susan Thomas Walker

RATING: 5 out of 10 deep breathing exercises

Knox Goes Away

Year 18, Day 115 - 4/25/26 - Movie #5,312

BEFORE: I'm going to skip Friday, as I have to work late on Friday night, so my next movie counts for Saturday. I'm going out on Saturday, too, there's a beer festival in the afternoon so when I get home from that I won't be in any condition to watch a movie. Moving my review to Saturday accomplishes the following and I can still get to Mother's Day movie on time: 

John Hoogenakker carries over again from "G20" and today we've got a special Birthday SHOUT-out to Al Pacino, born on 4/25/1940. That's right, he's turning 86 today, but he's a very young 86, to be sure. 

THE PLOT: When a contract killer is diagnosed with a rapidly evolving form of dementia, he is offered an opportunity to redeem himself by saving the life of his estranged adult son. 

AFTER: Al Pacino is OLD, sure - his character here claims to be pushing 90, and so we don't see him running around or shooting anybody, his role in "Knox Goes Away" is to be a mentor to the main character and give him advice over the phone. We do see him, but he's usually sitting in a chair, or once in a bathtub I think, but there's nothing physical he has to do, just talk on the phone. He's done a LOT of movies, man, I think he's earned his break - he hasn't retired from acting like Jack Nicholson or Robert Duvall did, but clearly what he can do in a movie is limited due to his age. 

I've seen a fair number of Michael Keaton movies over the years, and I think I finally figured out what "type" of character he prefers to play, and I think if you see most of his movies like I have, you start to put it together. He either plays really smart characters or really stupid ones, and maybe sometimes both at the same time. Seeing him in February in "Much Ado About Nothing" kind of cemented that, his Dogberry was very dumb, to the point of serving as comic relief, yet he figured out the scheme of Don John and saved the wedding day for Hero and Claudio. Sure, he arrested Borachio without fully knowing what treasonous act he had done, but he knew he was guilty of SOMETHING and took him to a town official when he couldn't figure it out himself. In other films ("American Assasin", "Protege") he's played master assassins, and those people have to be pretty smart, and then in the Spider-Man movies he played the Vulture, and was able to figure out that Peter Parker had a secret. And while "Batman" is called the world's greatest detective (smart) he also played Bruce Wayne as a clueless playboy (dumb) - and I think "Beetlejuice" is another great example of a character who's somehow smart and stupid at the same time. His character in "Birdman" was a smart playwright who was maybe also going insane, that counts, too, right? 

So here he plays a contract killer who used to be a college professor - so we're back on "smart", I mean he's killed a lot of guys and never got caught, so he's got to be both book-smart and street-smart. BUT, he learns that he's got a fast-developing form of dementia, so as time goes on he's going to be less and less lucid, and he may start forgetting names and details, so he's going to end up "dumb", in a sense, very soon. He can't reveal his diagnosis to his handlers, his only plan is to get out of this lifestyle before his brain stops working right, I mean what good is a hit-man who might forget who he's supposed to kill, in the middle of doing a job? Sure, you can write a bunch of stuff down, but that only works if you read it, plus then he's leaving a paper trail. 

So this plays out a little bit like "Memento" did - a guy who's got a job to do, only he knows his memory is shot, so he's got to leave himself little notes if he wants to get out of this life and have some time left when he's not tracking down people and killing them before he dies. I still have to re-watch "Memento", I'm overdue but I've been pretty busy.  Knox can't officially quit, with his knowledge of all his hits then his boss might have to take him out, but he can cash out the money he's earned and invested, launder it, and divide it into thirds, leaving it to his ex-wife, his estranged son, and the woman he spends Tuesdays with, who I assume is a hooker. 

The whole plan is complicated when his son, Miles, shows up at his door, covered in blood and with a bad cut on his hand, he's killed someone, but he had a very good reason, and he needs his father's help to cover it up. Knox does know a thing or two about disposing of bodies, however, that's not what he does here. He helps his son calm down, gets him cleaned up and then he goes to look at the scene. The victim was a total scumbag, a low-level criminal who got Miles' daughter pregnant, and instead of dealing with that some other way, Miles lost control and stabbed the guy 17 times. 

Rather than clean up the crime scene, which would eventually raise suspicion, Knox does something totally different, he gets rid of the actual evidence, and then plants a bogus knife with Miles' fingerprints in a place where the cops can find it easily, also he gets rid of Miles' real bloody clothing and then plants a bogus bloody shirt in his son's trash. Man, it took a while for me to figure out what Knox was doing here, but it actually was pretty brilliant. He assumed that Miles would not be able to keep his cool, and eventually he would be arrested for the murder, and there was enough evidence (the cut on his hand, the motive) for the cops to detain Miles, however when they REALLY examined the evidence, it would tell a different tale. 

God, this was so smart. I'm blown away by it and I'm left wondering how somebody came up with it. For the majority of the movie, it sure looked like Knox was framing his son while pretending to help him, and then I was also wondering if the dementia had already kicked into high gear, and if he knew what he was doing, or just going through the motions of some past hit, and his actions didn't seem to make much sense, but then of course they did. "M'wah", chef's kiss. No notes. 

Except, of course, for the notes that Knox had to make this plan, but he burned those. Also he knew that by the time the cops fully investigated the murder scene, he himself might be completely incoherent and therefore unable to stand trial or adequately defend himself. Meanwhile Knox also was taking those last steps to acquire his stash, get that money laundered and split three ways - no, wait, two but that's another story.  So in the end this turned out to be a very smart, touching story about a father making a sacrifice to save his son, and damn, this would have been a great thing to save for Father's Day, if only I had known to do that. 

What's weird is that this film is the opposite of a murder mystery, here we all KNOW who did the murder, and the question becomes, can the evidence be made so confusing that the police can NOT properly solve the crime? I don't think I've seen this before, although maybe "Memento" did come kind of close....

Directed by Michael Keaton (producer of "Worth")

Also starring Michael Keaton (last seen in "Much Ado About Nothing"), James Marsden (last seen in "The Best of Me"), Suzy Nakamura (last seen in "Horrible Bosses 2"), Joanna Kulig (last seen in "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters"), Ray McKinnon (last seen in "News of the World"), Lela Loren (last seen in "Bruised"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Get a Job"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Hangman"), Dennis Dugan (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Jay Paulson (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Paul Perri (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Edwin Garcia II (last seen in "Holes"), Nicole Reddinger, Charles Bisset, Martin Garcia (last seen in "Ingrid Goes West"), Morgan Bastin, Natasha Galano, Rena Bobbs, Chad Donella (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Marisa Echeverria, Gugun Deep Singh, Cassie Moronez, Kristofer Gordon, Jimmy Ortega (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), Sasha Neboga, Benita Krista Nall (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Anthony Molinari (last seen in "The Rental"), Zedric Harris (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Lee Dawson, Dan Ringey

RATING: 6 out of 10 storage units (at different locations, of course)