In Your Dreams

Year 18, Day 109 - 4/19/26 - Movie #5,307

BEFORE: Craig Robinson carries over from "The Bad Guys 2" and so does one other actor. Plus I've landed another Birthday SHOUT-out, this one's going out to Simu Liu, born April 19, 1989. Happy Birthday, Shang-Chi!

THE PLOT: Stevie and her little brother Elliot journey into the wildly absurd landscape of their own dreams to ask the Sandman to grant them the perfect family. 

AFTER: A couple weeks ago we screened "GOAT" at the theater, as it was directed by one of the college's alumni, and I got into a conversation with him, because I used to have a hand in making animated features. When discussing the film with my co-worker, I said it seemed like a mix of "Zootopia" and "Space Jam", and she said that I was probably spot-on with that analysis. In the same vein, tonight's film reminds me of a mix of "Inside Out" plus "Slumberland" plus a bit of "Wish" and I think I'm right on the money once again. Studio executives pay attention to what works in the marketplace, and then they try to copy elements from those movies when they make new ones. There's no secret formula and there are no guarantees, but you can look at what worked in other movies and try to have some of those elements in your upcoming film. 

Still, despite having seen other films that take place in the dream-world, this still feels fairly inventive, because this dream-world has specific rules, which a pre-teen girl and her younger brother stumble upon after finding a book in the basement of a thrift store. There's no real explanation where the book comes from, it looks like maybe that crate belonged to a magician or something, but then why would a magician have a book about how to enter the dream-world or petition the lord of that world to help make your dreams come true?  There's no way to use dreams in a magic act, unless the magician was using hypnosis or something, and that still doesn't seem to fit. Maybe the guy just studied weird rituals or something, and wishing on a star seems like a weird ritual, or falling asleep and trying to control your dreams could be another one. 

Anyway, what is very attractive about the book's contents are the instructions to call out to the Sandman, who lives in the Dream World, and supposedly if you can find him there and reach him then he will grant your wish, or more accurately, he will make your dreams come true. Yes, stop and think about how those could be two differen things. You might want SOME of your dreams to come true, but maybe think carefully about agreeing to ALL of your dreams manifesting themselves in the real world. Since getting this cold I've been subject to all kinds of fever dreams, some where you try to accomplish a task in your dream, something very simple like getting on a bus and going somewhere, or just finding a file on your computer, and you can't do it but keep trying it again and again in your dream, because you're locked in. 

Kids have different dreams than adults do, I suppose, so Stevie's dream is for her parents to stay together and stop fighting about the future of the family. Stevie's mother, Joanne, wants to interview for a teaching position in Duluth which would pay pretty well, but she'd have to live there, so getting that job would mean moving the family or breaking up the family, and her dad, Michael, doesn't want to move, he wants to stay in Duluth and keep trying to chase his dream of leading a great local band, though that doesn't pay very well or at all. Well, you know, times are tough and raising kids is probably expensive so I'm kind of with Joanne on this one. Stevie's wish is that her parents won't divorce and they can kind of keep the family together somehow and maybe even fall in love again, so things can be like they once were. 

The kids (who share a bedroom, which is another argument for moving to a bigger house, so the kids can each have their own room) speak the magic words in the book, and this allows them to enter the dream world together, control (to some extent) what happens in the dream, and then remember vividly what happened in the dream. On their first trip to dream-world Elliot's bed flies them around, they ascend into the sky and learn that's where the Sandman lives, but they'd have to travel further next time to find him, and also there is Nightmara, Queen of Nightmares, who is set on NOT allowing them to reach the Sandman, she confronts both kids with nightmarish scenarios that cause them to wake up, which cuts their journey short and forces them to start over, again and again. But they do meet Baloney Tony, a moving, talking version of Elliot's favorite stuffed animal, a giraffe that smells like old bologna (because Elliot stored cold cuts in his pockets) and Tony reveals that Stevie stashed him behind the refrigerator in the real world, which turns out to be true. 

So the kids have to train themselves to NOT be scared by what they encounter in the dream-world, facing their nightmares is enough to stay in the dream-world, and after traveling through some bizarre places, like Breakfast Town, which are apparently places they've dreamed about, they do reach the Sandman, who offers to make their dream a reality, once they turn a sand-filled hourglass over, and when the last grain of sand falls, Stevie's dream of parents who love each other again will be incorporated into reality. However, Stevie learns quickly that this "dream" scenario is one where her brother never existed, and also her fantasy is a bit too "perfect" in that her parents don't have free will, and also she can't escape from it, meanwhile her body is comatose in the real world. 

The "lucid dreaming" power only worked, however, when the siblings joined hands, and without Elliot in the fantasy (which is soon to become reality) Stevie has no control over the dream. Stevie is determined to wake his sister up, though, so he forces himself back to sleep so he can team up with Nightmara, who isn't so much of a villain, but rather a mentor who scares kids with intent, allowing them to see small terrible scenarios at night so they'll be better able to face their real-life problems and then try to solve them or deal with them. The parents also get involved, after finding the book with the instructions on how to enter the dream-world, they join in to help defeat the Sandman and preserve the imperfect, uncertain reality over the "perfect" but unchangeable substitute one. 

And Stevie, the control freak, learns the lesson that life will always be a little bit chaotic, especially with her brother around, and the family that united to defeat the Sandman is maybe a little closer together after working as a unit toward a common goal. Her parents still have issues to work out, but they're trying to do that, and Michael agrees to move to Duluth because it's what's best for the family. The future isn't going to be easy, but hey, nothing is, and that's maybe an OK lesson to send out to the kids in the audience. 

Directed by Erik Benson (writer of "The Good Dinosaur") and Alexander Woo

Also starring the voices of Jolie Hoang-Rappaport (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Elias Janssen, Simu Liu (last seen in "Jackpot!"), Cristin Milioti (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Omid Djalili (also carrying over from "The Bad Guys 2"), Gia Carides (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Erik Benson, Zachary Noah Piser, Bob Bergen (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Maisie Benson, Jorge Diaz (last seen in "Other People"), Quinn Minichino Eakins, Lizzie Freeman, Kellen Goff, Scott Menville (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), SungWon Cho, Alex Cazares, Reese Warren, Hailey Magpali, Kai Zen (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Francis Benson, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 teeth falling out of your mouth (it's a fairly common dream, apparently)

The Bad Guys 2

Year 18, Day 108 - 4/18/26 - Movie #5,306

BEFORE: OK, so the Springsteen film was a "big" film, and then "Sword of Trust" was kind of a little dud. So tonight's film needs to be big, right? Look, I'm not saying "Sword of Trust" was burned toast, not exactly, but it wasn't great. Now I have to move on and try to figure out if there was a purpose to burning the toast, if that's what I did. I think Springsteen would approve of the concept, as he sang in "Hungry Heart" - "Like a river that don't know where it's going, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." That's a songwriter who burned a lot of toast, if you know what I mean - anyway, I'm going to keep going, the chain is still active even if the films aren't all bangers. 

Marc Maron carries over again from "Sword of Trust". Maron's third film of the year is also Craig Robinson's and Omid Djalili's third film this year, so they'll all make the year-end countdown, and Paul Walter Hauser, who may come back for a fourth film if I can swing it, qualified by appearing in "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere". Nobody's close to de-throning Jason Statham, though, I'm fine with that, the man works very hard.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bad Guys" (Movie #4,166)

THE PLOT: The Bad Guys are struggling to find trust and acceptance in their newly minted lived as Good Guys, when they are pulled out of retirement and forced to do "one last job" by an all-female squad of criminals. 

AFTER: They can make four or five of ten of these "Bad Guys" films, as far as I'm concerned, I know there could be franchise burn-out at some point, as with the "Ice Age" and "Shrek" and "Toy Story" movies, but at least with "Toy Story" they make a point of adding a bunch of new characters for each sequel, and that's the path that "Bad Guys" is on, so OK, by all means, let's make more. I've got "Zootopia 2" on the books and coming up in May, that will kind of be the pivot film that pushes us in the direction of Mothers Day, if that makes sense. Look, I'll admit some of the May films, I'm not sure yet HOW I'm going to watch them, but if necessary I can drop the ones that aren't streaming and I've got a way to fill in the gap with 2, 4 or 6 movies if necessary. 

But let's deal with "Bad Guys 2" first, what great timing to have a bunch of characters stealing a rocket ship and going to space, since we just all watched the first moon mission in a long time take place. Sure, this movie came out in July 2025, and the filmmakers probably weren't thinking that far ahead, but I watched it now, post-Artemis, so to me, the timing is spot on. The scheme is that somebody is collecting this rare metal that when electrified, can act as a magnet for gold, so with the rocket in orbit, the gang can steal all of the world's gold at once, and this probably seems like a genius idea IF you are a kid, the kind of kid who wants to take over the world someday. OK, but I've got a couple of NITPICK POINTS here. If you're going to steal gold, which is on the Earth, held down by gravity, does it make sense to go into orbit to steal the gold? I mean, if you want to rob money, you go to the bank, where the money is. Why go to space, where the gold is NOT, in order to steal it? Even if you had a magnet that was powerful enough to draw gold from earth to the space station, how far is that, and how much time would it take? It takes hours for a rocket to get to orbit, but it's traveling fast, like, umm, like a rocket. Loose gold would not be rocket-powered, so even if you could exert enough magnetic force on it to counter Earth's gravity, it's going to take a lot of TIME to travel up to space station. Of course, this is a movie, so it takes only a few seconds for the gold to roll in, which is misleading and impossible. 

I don't want to say too much about how the film ends, but there are a few fake-outs and our heroes don't end up with the gold, but who does? According to the film's Wikipedia page, once the magnet is destroyed, the gold is "returned", but would it be? Once something's in orbit around the Earth, doesn't it kind of stay there, assuming it's at the point of balance where its high-speed momentum is countered by the constant downward pull of gravity. In other words, a satellite or space station is in a constant state of "falling", however it's moving forward fast enough that it doesn't fall to earth, the earth is round (I swear) so the Earth kind of moves out from under it as it goes by, therefore a constant (more or less) distance from the planet is maintained. Like imagine throwing a baseball, it falls to earth in a matter of feet, while a cannonball can maybe go a few miles before gravity pulls it down, but a space shuttle or a rocket can travel fast enough that it stays in orbit and won't fall down until you change its course. 

Anyway, even if that gold all DID fall to Earth, it would probably be extremely dangerous, the heat of re-entry might even melt it, so yeah, hot liquid gold falling from the sky, what could possibly go wrong there? Plus nobody would get their own gold back, because what are the odds, if you're lucky enough to have hot molten gold fall on you, it would probably be somebody else's, like who has the time to sift through thousands of pieces of gold and figure out who should get which ones back? Umm, yeah, I lost three candelabras and four gold bars in that heist from orbit, so please put me down to get an equal amount of gold back, OK? I'm sure whoever finds that much gold will turn it in - like there's a guy who comes into the theater every few weeks and reports that he lost $50 at a screening, just in case we find some money after cleaning the theater, I guess. 

Anyway, a lot of the other things in this film are rather complicated and unbelievable, more so than your average cartoon, maybe, but so what? It's an animated film so you can make whatever impossible thing you want happen. Remember in "Despicable Me" when Gru stole the moon? Yeah, it's kind of like that - swing for the fences, because why not? If you can think it then somebody can draw it or make a computer pixellate it, there really should be no limits in the storytelling. It should be fun at some point to see what unhinged things A.I. software starts coming up with when they fire all the writers in Hollywood and turn the whole process of making kiddie films over to computer-generated stories. Yeah, there were more layoffs at Disney/Marvel this week, so that's what's happening, human input will soon no longer be required. 

The overarching storyline is that the Bad Guys reformed at the end of the previous film, Wolf got into a situationship with the Governor, who was a secret high-tech thief herself, maybe having stolen the election or something. They're hurting for money, however, because Wolf can't get hired at the banks he robbed and Tarantula has a huge gap in her resumé where she was doing crime stuff. When a series of crimes are committed by the Phantom Bandit, the public assumes that the Bad Guys are behind them, so Wolf offers his team's services to the Commissioner, if they can deduce the identity of the Phantom Bandit, they can put "police consultant" on their job record and maybe that will lead to something. What could possibly go wrong? 

The clues seem to point to Snake, the one member of the Bad Guys who didn't help solve the recent crimes and who has been very happy lately, for some reason. He's even planning to attend the wrestling event which has been determined to be the site of the next heist, as the championship belt is made for that same mystery metal, MacGuffinite (the name is an inside joke for film fans, sure).  But even though the Phantom Bandit was there disguised as a wrestler, the crowd only saw the Bad Guys running off with the belt. They're rescued by Snake's new girlfriend driving a getaway van, but it's all a dodge to get the old Bad Guys working with a new team of female criminals, led by a snow leopard. 

Kitty Kat has footage of Diane Foxington, the governor, doing crimes as the Crimson Paw, so she uses that to blackmail the Bad Guys to help steal the rocket, if they don't, she'll upload the footage to the dreaded internet and that would end Diane's political career. Umm, somebody didn't get the memo, politicians can do crimes now as long as they don't get caught, or even if they do, they can just threaten to sue the press for slander and they'll probably win so who even cares any more if our government is completely corrupt? Oh, right, this is for kids so maybe we can wait a few more years before we shatter their dreams of a fair and just political system in America. 

Somehow, the Bad Guys catch up with the launched rocket by using a helicopter (NITPICK POINT #2, that's got to be impossible) and everybody ends up in space for the final heist of the Earth's gold, as I mentioned before. Meanwhile Professor Marmalade (who was imprisoned, but then met with Diane in a sort-of parody of "Silence of the Lambs" where they played Connect Four) got his crimes acquitted, I guess because he gave up Kitty Kat, only he had the bad luck to step inside his gold limousine just before all the gold on the planet got sucked in to orbit. Hey, I just thought of NITPICK POINT #3, you could really only steal the gold from half of Earth at one time, again because the Earth is round and even though the space station completes an orbit every 90 minutes, it's only 250 miles high, so it can only see part of the earth (much less than half) at any given time. 

Well, apart from giving kids some very wrong information about how rockets and space stations work, this was a pretty entertaining film. Since it's set in a fantasy world where perhaps different rules apply, and there are humans interacting with talking animals and that doesn't really weird to anybody, we may have to let a few things go and perhaps grade on a curve. Apparently this film was going to be released in spring of 2026, but then production was rushed to get out ahead of "Zootopia 2", so yeah, maybe they cut a few corners here and there. 

Directed by Pierre Perifel (director of "The Bad Guys") and JP Sans 

Also starring the voices of Sam Rockwell (last heard in "IF"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Daddy's Little Girls"), Awkwafina (last seen in "Renfield"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Danielle Brooks (last seen in "A Minecraft Movie"), Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"), Maria Bakalova (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Alex Borstein (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Lilly Singh (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Omid Djalili (last seen in "Love Again"), Colin Jost (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Jaime Camil (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Hugo Savinovich, Michael Godere (also last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Kelly Stables (last seen in "The Ring Two"), William Calvert (last heard in "Haunted Mansion"), Arthur Ortiz, Jason Griffith, Shelby Young (last heard in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Bridget Hoffman, Christopher Knights (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Ashley Lambert, Jorge R. Gutierrez (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Ashley London, Juan Pacheco, David Michie, R.B. Ripley, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 tranquilizer darts

Sword of Trust

Year 18, Day 107 - 4/17/26 - Movie #5,305

BEFORE: I would say that April so far has been a little "hit or miss" and that's really been by design. In trying to link these big hit movies, I've relied on little indie films that fly a bit below the radar, that's just the way this linking thing works. So it's big blockbuster, then sleeper hit, then another big blockbuster, then another sleeper. This is WHY the sleepers are on the list, I need mortar to link the bricks together, that's how you build a wall. Otherwise you just have bricks stacked together and there's no structural integrity, the whole thing's going to fall apart. The upside is that I end up watching a lot of films that I might otherwise never have paid attention to, and the whole thing "works" if I say it does, and I put in the effort to build chains, let's say 9 or 10 chains make up a Movie Year, and Christmas will be here before you know it.

I'm just surprised that I've been able to get to certain films that have spent maybe two or three years on the someday/maybe list - "iBoy", "Southside with You", "Society of the Snow", "Walt Before Mickey", "The Saint of Second Chances", "Roger Dodger", "The House of Mirth", "Wicker Park", and "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul" - I had deemed all of these impossible to link to, at one point or another, and usually adding more movies to the watchlist, to replace what's been watched, has been the solution to the puzzle. Maybe nothing is unlinkable this year, it just takes time, effort and more movies. The average cast size is WAY down this year, some movies, like today's, have had 25 people or less in the cast, and one movie only had THREE actors. 

Marc Maron carries over from "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere". 

THE PLOT: Cynthia and Mary collect inheritance from Cynthia's deceased grandfather, and the item she receives is an antique sword that was believed to be proof that the South won the Civil War.

AFTER: Well, after all that - after putting this film on my watchlist and then forgetting about it for a couple years, then working so hard to schedule it, in between the bigger films, and then, you know, actually watching it, I really wish it had been a better film. It's kind of mercifully short, coming in at just 88 minutes, but honestly there's only about FIVE minutes worth of story, and the rest is just filler - delays and awkward conversations. 

Really, seriously, almost nothing happens here - half of a lesbian couple inherits a sword, takes it to a pawn shop and tries to get more than it's worth, based on this legend that somehow it "proves" that the South won the Civil War.  Then the pawn-shop owner finds videos on YouTube about collectors who value this sort of artifact, and the lesbian couple, the pawn-shop owner and his employee are all taken in a windowless van to the compound of some die-hard southern good old boys, and sure, there might have been some danger there, but it's minimized very quickly, I won't say any more about the plot twists, but trust me, there's not much there for me to conceal. 

The filmmaker didn't do everything wrong, she did quite a few things right, like she cast Marc Maron as the pawn-shop owner, and casting Marc Maron is almost always a very good idea. I like him in every movie I've seen him in, I've watched all of his stand-up specials, too. Nobody is better than contrasting the little joys and absurdities in life with the very dark tragic moments and the responses that we have to them in order to survive. It's through those stand-up specials that I know that the director here, Lynn Shelton, had a relationship with Maron after casting him in this movie, and they were quite happy together until she died suddenly from myeloid leukemia. Again, that's terrible but we're also balancing the good and the bad here, it's great to be in a relationship with someone until it isn't. 

The other thing this film does right is make fun of Southern people, especially those rednecks who are more than willing to believe that the South won the Civil War, or Trump was robbed in the 2020 election. Yeah, I'm betting it's the same people, prove me wrong. As a side note it also makes fun of people who believe the Earth is flat and can't be convinced otherwise. But that's about it for the good things the film does, the rest of the film doesn't really go anywhere - it can't even keep the alternate story about the South winning straight, because the story was written down by a senile old man the names keep changing or are uncertain, and the same goes for all the other details. Still, some people are going to believe what they want to believe, however I shouldn't have to waste my time hearing about it. 

I'm just grasping at straws, trying to figure out what the point of this little exercise was, and I'm coming up empty. OK, well, at least I got it off my list, and I've opened up another slot on the someday/maybe list, I guess for tonight that's going to have to be enough. 

Directed by Lynn Shelton (director of "Outside In" and "Your Sister's Sister")

Also starring Jon Bass (last seen in "Baywatch"), Michaela Watkins (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Jillian Bell (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Nutcrackers"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "The Starling"), Lynn Shelton (last heard in "Prince Avalanche"), Whitmer Thomas, Tim Paul, Benjamin Keepers, Al Elliott, Michael Patrick O'Brien (last seen in "Booksmart"), Scotty Lee, Robert Longstreet (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Elise Mayfield, Prasanna Avadhanula, Tilcia Furman, Patierra Knight, Blake Funderburke, Joshua Alford, Brian Bremer, T'Darius Murphy, John Winscher (last seen in "The Out-Laws")

RATING: 4 out of 10 "truther" videos

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Year 18, Day 106 - 4/16/26 - Movie #5,304

BEFORE: We're still on the path to Mother's Day, I'm just going to tweak things along the way, just to make sure everything works out. I was out all day yesterday, working - yes, the shift started at 7:30 am and I didn't really understand what the presentation was, something about preserving the homes and studios of American artists, but I don't always have to connect with all of the presentations, it's more important that I supervise the screening and the reception and make sure that all goes well. I got home at 8:30 pm, took an hour nap, we watched "America's Culinary Cup" and then I watched "Survivor", because Wednesday is the BIGGEST night in TV right now, and then I had to post yesterday's blog entry and only THEN could I start today's movie. I'm still very behind on my sleep, but I need MORE sleep, not less, to shake this damn cold. 

Well, Paul Walter Hauser seems like he's everywhere these days, doesn't he? He's in the "Naked Gun" reboot, he's in the "Press Your Luck" movie, and he's here in the Springsteen bio-pic. I even dropped one movie with him that COULD have gone here, and I did that because it seems to be a comedy about fathers, and it's very link-able, so I've got a good chance of working it back in come June, which would be seasonally appropriate. OK, so there's a chance that I won't be able to do that, but what would be even worse would be watching it HERE and then needing it for linking THERE. Right? 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "A Complete Unknown" (Movie #5,051) and "Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band" (Movie #5,074)

THE PLOT: Bruce Springsteen's journey crafting his 1982 album "Nebraska", which emerged as he was recording "Born in the USA" with the E Street Band.

AFTER: Damn it, this one could have made a good Father's Day movie, too - but I just didn't know that going in. There's a bunch of stuff about Bruce's relationship with his father, who was something of an abusive bully when Bruce was a young boy, also his father drank a lot and was one of those old-school tough guys from the 1950's, and well, it was a different time. The majority of those fathers from that generation were raised a certain way, not to be "weak" for, you know, the sake of America, and they worked in factories and they all drank and smoked and beat their wives. I'm generalizing here, but also I think this is true to some extent, how one generation impacts the next and real change and growth takes time. If this movie plus that one that I cut had ended up next to each other in June, I could have worked with that. 

It would be impossible to put the story of Springsteen's entire career into a movie, without it being fifteen hours long - geez, that "Road Diary" documentary was over two hours, and that was really just about the concerts. How do you take a forty-year career in music as one of the really really big acts and make that into a two-hour movie? You just can't, so you kind of have to pick a couple of weeks or a few months in the man's life and focus on that, hoping that by looking at the small, you can at least get a sense of the bigger thing. So here they picked a period when Bill had just come off of a big tour promoting "The River", a double-album, and he wanted to rent a house somewhere in New Jersey and just chill for a while, decompress, maybe focus on writing some more songs. But that proves to be problematic because 1 am invariably rolls around, and he can't sleep, so he heads down to the Stone Pony and sits in with whatever band is playing. Sure, that tracks. 

Bruce's parents moved to Los Angeles shortly before this - look, I don't understand that either, why would an older couple who lived their whole lives in New Jersey just pack up and retire to L.A., of all places? It doesn't make sense, unless they were trying to live near another one of their kids or something, but you know, I do have a bias against Los Angeles, so there's that. San Diego, sure, I could see moving there, but L.A. is a giant shit-hole, and I'm talking about Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Just me? But then Bruce's father disappears while Bruce is driving around New Jersey feeling all sentimental and moody about places he spent time with his parents, so he has to drop everything and fly to L.A. where he finds his father drinking in a Chinatown bar, and of course this is very triggering, it reminds Bruce of all the times his mother sent him in to some bar or diner to tell his father it was time to come home, knowing this could lead to a beating later on.

Yeah, nice try, the film almost got me with this one - poor Bruce Springsteen, who has to search all of Los Angeles to find the needle in a haystack that was his father. Any guess how many bars there are in the L.A. area? But not all of us have the resources to fly across the country after paying FULL PRICE for a plane ticket bought at the last minute, and he probably stayed at a very nice hotel and he didn't worry about the expenses involved in renting a car, driving across a giant city and checking out a couple hundred bars over the course of two or three days. He's still Bruce Springsteen, he had the money and time to do this, he had the resources that you or I would not have. If my father wandered off somewhere in North Carolina, I'd have to say, "Well, I hope he turns up soon, but maybe he won't..."  I mean, OF COURSE we would drive down there to look for him, but doing that would put a big strain on my finances.  Just saying. 

Really, the whole film is like that, they really tried to get me to feel sorry for Bruce Springsteen - he's coming off the road, he's tired, he just wants to decompress, he wants to write some very personal songs but he can't seem to find the time. BOO-fuckin'-HOO, you're a rock star, this is the life you chose, it's what you wanted. Springsteen's also going through that parental stuff, he's haunted by memories from his childhood, and he's having trouble committing to this woman he met who's the sister of a classmate, has a daughter and lives near Atlantic City or something. Well, Bruce, something's got to give, you can't have a committed relationship and spend time with Faye and her daughter if you have to tour, and write music, and play at the Stone Pony on Sunday nights with Southside Johnny. Also brooding, you have to maintain that very strict brooding schedule, so you know, there's bound to be some conflicts because there are only so many hours in the day. 

We were supposed to feel sorry for Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown" because he had to balance songwriting and appearing at the Newport Folk Festival with the relationships he was having with TWO women at the same time, only one of which was Joan Baez. Yeah, that film ALMOST got me, too, but again, at the end of the day, he's still mega-star Bob Dylan, he's having wild sex with (at least) two women simultaneously, and he's well on his way to mega-stardom, dozens of hit albums and eventually a Nobel prize. So I really didn't have much sympathy to spare for Dylan - like I'm sorry your life is so complicated right now/then, but that's really on you, you chose this life for yourself, and now you have to follow through and become what you always wanted to be. 

Really, we're back on "artist brain" because initially as a music star you just want to perform, you want to write a few songs because they have meaning to you, you want to meet other music stars and jam with them, you want to have a hit record, you want to be on TV or MTV and eventually maybe win some Grammys, have enough money to do whatever you want, and fame and glory and groupies and sex and drugs and fast cars (or motorcycles, whichever). Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, as they say, so maybe your personal life is going to be in the crapper for a while, and maybe you'll need therapy of some kind to sort everything out, but really, that all comes with the territory. 

The "artist brain" delusion kicks in once the record company doesn't agree with your vision, and you find yourself going to the mat because only YOU can see the potential in these songs, or in how they're recorded or mixed or edited, and if you're lucky, you've got producers or editors or sound mixers who share your vision, and if you're SUPER lucky, you get proven right and your work has meaning for fans and you form a connection with your fan base and it all works out. But surely there must be instances where music performers were WRONG and nobody else shares their vision for the small, intimate acoustic album or it does NOT connect with the fans and the album doesn't sell and the ride is over. I mean, the highway's jammed with broken heroes, right? 

What would have happened if they'd shelved "Nebraska" and the record company moved ahead with "Born in the USA" instead? "Born in the USA" was like the biggest album of 1984-85, so it was probably going to be a hit record no matter what, but who's to say? Maybe if it had come out two years earlier the pro-American Reagan-era zeitgeist would not have been ready for it, and perhaps it would have been a minor success instead of the cultural phenomenon that it was. This is the "Burned Toast" philosophy all over again - we look at a potentially bad thing that happened, Bruce fighting with the record company, Bruce in deep emotional turmoil while releasing a very personal acoustic album, a bad review of "Nebraska" from Rolling Stone, but maybe things worked out better because the toast got burned, and "Born in the USA" got a little extra polish and Courtney Cox was hired to be in one of the music videos, and Springsteen got married, divorced and married again. It seems like maybe things worked themselves out over time, but we'll never know what could (or couldn't) have been.

This is all still very fascinating to me - my favorite part of "A Complete Unknown" was watching the song "Like a Rolling Stone" come together in the studio, and I kind of like the little parts of the studio sessions we see here, but they're not as prominent, and also I just don't know enough about the "Nebraska" album and what that all means. This does kind of work as a primer, dumbing it all down for those of us who only know "Hungry Heart" and "Born to Run" and maybe "Rosalita", but all of this brooding and depression and psycho-babble only gets me so far. I'm going to go take a spin through Springsteen's Greatest Hits album and see if I gain any additional meaning to it all, after watching this film. But really I just have to take the events portrayed in this film and make my ruling based on that. 

There's so much more to Bruce Springsteen than can possibly be contained in one film, you could make three or four more films like this and not even come close to what happened to him over forty years plus. There's the early days, the formation of the E Street Band, the "Born to Run" era, the "Born in the USA" superstar era, winning the Oscar for "Streets of Philadelphia", the break-up of the band, the re-formation of the band, playing a Super Bowl, getting into the Rock Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors and then the Broadway years. And then there's all the activism and causes and political views, which have come to a head here in the disastrous Trump-fueled end times. I had a run-in earlier this week with a different rock star, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, because I worked an event at the theater where he was promoting the re-working of his song "Comfortably Numb" to accompany a short film all about support for Palestine and the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. As I usually say, how can you tell when a rock star has a cause they support? Don't worry, they'll let you know. 

I was just worried that the event would somehow be targeted by activists on the right, or worse, on the left. But thankfully nobody protested the event, we got Roger Waters in and out with no trouble, except for some over-eager autograph hounds. I cleaned out the green room afterwards and found a few bottles of wine, which could easily have come from the PR people, not Mr. Waters himself. Hey, he's a rock star, really there's nothing I could have found in the green room that would have shocked me. His reputation alone has kind of earned him the right to do whatever he wants (within reason, of course) and if he wants to re-work one of his songs to support a cause, of course, he can do that. I did not talk to the man, of course, really it was just enough to see him in person and hear him perform one song in my place of work, then I had to coordinate with the piano movers to get the baby grand off the stage and into their van without damaging the piano, the stage, or anyone or anything else. Mission accomplished - if Mr. Springsteen wants to come to the theater and support a cause and perform something, I would be happy to help out then, too.

If I had a NITPICK POINT tonight, it would be with the end of the film, where Bruce moves to Los Angeles and his friend Matty drives him there. Wow, that's a long way to go for a friend, but I guess if your friend is a rock star, you make the time and you put in the effort. But Bruce flies to Los Angeles when his father is missing, but when it's his own move, he makes his friend drive him? It's not like he had a moving van full of stuff, but still, that's a week's drive at least, plus there's hotel costs and sightseeing along the way, it must be nice when you can afford the cost and that much of your time. Along the way they stop at a Texas fair, and that sure didn't look like the Texas State Fair that I went to twice. If anything it looked like the stockyards in Fort Worth, BUT it was filmed in New Jersey, on a farm in Harding. To be fair, they never said it was supposed to be the big State Fair outside Dallas, it was meant to be the Archer County Fair, which probably would have been smaller, especially back in 1982. So it's fine, ignore my complaint. 

Directed by Scott Cooper (director of "Antlers" and "The Pale Blue Eye")

Also starring Jeremy Allen White (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Jeremy Strong (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Odessa Young (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Harrison Sloan Gilbertson (ditto), Gaby Hoffmann (last seen in "13"), Grace Gummer (last seen in "The Homesman"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Get a Job"), Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr., Jayne Houdyshell (last seen in "Little Women" (2019)), Jeff Adler (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Chris Jaymes (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Bartley Booz (last seen in "Babygirl"), Craig Geraghty (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Laura Sametz, Vienna Barrus, Vivienne Barrus, Arabella Olivia Clark, T. Ryder Smith (last seen in "Birth"), Clem Cheung (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Stephen Singer (last seen in "The Prince and Me"), Judah Sealy, Johnny Cannizzaro (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Brian Chase, Charlie Savage, Andrew Fisher, Mike Chiavaro, Pappy Faulkner, Lynn Adrianna Freedman (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Bailey Rae Allen, Ryan Bourque, Tom Konkle and the voice of Jimmy Iovine (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple") 

with archive footage of Jane Fonda (last seen in "Here"), Mark J. Goodman (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Robert Mitchum (last seen in "The Last Tycoon"), Martin Sheen (last seen in "Brats"), Sissy Spacek (last seen in "Music by John Williams"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 radio ads for Action Park

The Luckiest Man in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directed by Samir Oliveros

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

RATING: 6 out of 10 parting gifts

The Book of Love

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

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

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

Maisie Williams carries over from "iBoy". 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RATING: 4 out of 10 Scrabble tiles

iBoy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directed by Adam Randall

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

RATING: 5 out of 10 riot cops