Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Year 11, Day 229 - 8/17/19 - Movie #3,327

BEFORE: OK, so this is not a heist film, but it deals with Mexican drug cartels, so let's call it a crime film - I guess this has been "Crime Week", not exactly "Heist Week", but I take what I can get these days.

It's kind of funny that both Jon Bernthal and Daniel Kaluuya from "Widows" were in the original "Sicario" movie, but neither one made it to this sequel - so Manuel Garcia-Rulfo carries over from "Widows" instead.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Sicario" (Movie #2,488)

THE PLOT: The drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated as the cartels have begun trafficking terrorists across the border.  To fight the war, federal agent Matt Graver returns with the mercurial Alejandro.

AFTER: Maybe this is sort of a heist film, because the U.S. CIA agents travel into Mexico to kidnap the daughter of a cartel drug-lord, and a heist is taking something valuable, so perhaps this qualifies after all.

I looked up the plot of "Sicario", which I watched at the end of 2016, as a refresher, but it wasn't necessary - the franchise has a new director, a new story, and only a couple of characters carry over from the first film. (The ones who survived, duh)  And there's a new mission, instead of taking down one drug cartel, the point here is to disrupt ALL of them.  Wait, that's really the old mission, just bigger.  By kidnapping one cartel leader's daughter, and framing another cartel for it, they hope to spark a drug war between all the cartels, and then they'll be too busy to bring terrorists across the border.

That's right, the real point here is to stop immigration, because it turns out that when Mexico sends people, they're not sending their best.  They're bringing gang members, rapists, and people who will commit suicide bombings in Kansas City.  (Work with me here, OK?).  It's like some screenwriter tried to predict what would be the big news headline of 2018, (because a film like this probably takes years to write and produce) and they got it ALMOST right.  But it seems odd to stop the flow of incoming terrorists by sparking a drug war, when the much simpler solution, and I hate to say it, is to "Build that wall!"

There's some material here about crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, and human traffickers charging hefty fees to bring people into the U.S., but where are the detention camps for children?  Where's the caravan heading up from Guatemala?  Why is the Secretary of Defense getting involved in solving the problem at the border, when that should be the job of the Department of Homeland Security?  (For that matter, I'm not sure that the Secretary of the Defense controls the actions of the CIA - I'll have to look that one up later.).

Anyway, the good news is that Agent Graver is back to do what he does best, which is disrupt the cartels.  And he brings back his old buddy Alejandro - every time he thinks he's out, they pull him back IN - and this time, he's going to allow Alejandro to cut loose.  Which is great, because I think he maybe took things a little too easy on the drug gangs the first time around.  Taking down the cartels won't bring back Alejandro's family, but he doesn't let that stop him from trying.

And just as in some other notable heist films, the first operation goes fine, they kidnap the daughter and bring her back to Texas, where they then do a sting operation to make her believe that the CIA saved her from her kidnappers, which was also them.  That's a bit of clever - but the operation to bring her back to Mexico and hand her off to the army goes horribly wrong, they're ambushed by their own Mexican police escorts.  Which puts the CIA in a lose-lose situation, they either get shot and lose the prize, or they kill their ambushers and become the guys who kill Mexican cops.  Couldn't they have just mailed her back to Mexico?  Or why not have the Mexican army pick her up at the border, did this HAVE to be handled in person?

Alejandro's left on the wrong side of the border, and the only safe thing to do (and this is all relative, of course) is to sneak the girl back over the border to Texas by pretending to be an immigrant with a daughter, paying the coyote and hoping nobody makes him as a CIA agent.  Murphy's Law, right? But hey, at least he got to bond with someone else's daughter for a while, and his knowledge of ASL came in handy. (OK, that's two films this week with people speaking sign language...)

The teen girl playing the kidnapped drug-lord's daughter is the suprising stand-out here, and now she's starring in that Dora the Explorer live-action movie that came out last week.  If that film becomes a big hit, she could be the next superstar, stranger things have happened.

Also starring Benicio del Toro (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Josh Brolin (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Isabela Merced, Catherine Keener (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Matthew Modine (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "Sicario"), Raoul Trujillo (ditto), Shea Whigham (last seen in "First Man"), Elijah Rodriguez (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Howard Ferguson Jr. (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Jake Picking (ditto), David Castaneda, Jacqueline Torres, Bruno Bichir, Arturo Maese Bernal, Ian Bohen, Faysal Ahmed (last seen in "Captain Phillips"), Sherman Allen, Christopher Heyerdahl (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday").

RATING: 5 out of 10 rolls of duct tape

Widows

Year 11, Day 228 - 8/16/19 - Movie #3,326

BEFORE: Just 75 more films to go (74 after today) and I just might be able to complete my first Perfect Year, with a linked chain of actors that started on Jan. 1 with "Game Night", and is still going, for 225 films so far.  I've never made it THIS far into a year before without breaking the chain.  The plan is in place to finish, it's all mapped out, I just have to make sure nothing goes wrong.  It's kind of like a heist, in that it took a lot of planning, but I still have to expect the unexpected - what if a DVD suddenly decides to not play?  What if a film was on Netflix or Hulu, but disappears from that service before I get the chance to watch it?   What if my hearing loss suddenly gets much worse and I have to watch everything with captions (I already do, whenever possible, but that's largely because it's easier to understand people with thick British or Scottish accents...)  See, I have to be ready for anything, especially when I'm getting so close to the end of the year.

Jesus, there's a new "Star Wars" film waiting at the end of the year.  What if I can't get a ticket for opening weekend?  I need to arrange this with my friends as soon as tickets go on sale...  If I see that film on opening day, then I'll still have time to watch four more films before Christmas, and then I'll have a week after that to plan the next heist...I mean, the program for January 2020.

Jon Bernthal carries over from "Baby Driver".

THE PLOT: Amid a time of turmoil in contemporary Chicago, four women with nothing in common, except debts left behind by their dead husbands' criminal activities, take fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.

AFTER: I think my rating for today's heist film is going to end up reflecting that this film is JUST a bit harder to believe, and makes JUST a bit less sense than "Baby Driver" does, at least where heists are concerned.  This film wanted SO bad to be like "Ocean's Eight", only without all the glitz and glamour, because it's got that same sort of "Sisters are doing it for themselves" vibe.  But there's a big difference to me, "Ocean's Eight" had women getting together to plan a heist, and they were all experts in their chosen fields, whether that was hacking or planning or getting inside information about the event by getting a job at Vogue magazine.  While I agree that women can do (just about) anything men can do, it's hard to believe that three women can gain all the knowledge and skills to pull off a caper like this in just a few weeks.

No offense intended, and I get that showing them starting from scratch means that there will be a steeper climb toward ultimate victory, but out of the three main characters (there's also a driver, but let's discuss the main three for a minute) only one seems to have the necessary determination and wherewithal to support that "Sisters can do it" theory.  Regarding the other two, I'm not as impressed. One is charged with getting guns for the caper (which as we all know is way too easy in America) but she pulls the old "I'm an immigrant, no speak-a English" routine to get help, and then when she's tasked with buying a van at an auction, she neglects to mention she doesn't have a driver's license.  Seriously?  She thought the van would be delivered?  Talk about entitled.

The other woman is tasked with figuring out the location of the safe room seen in the blueprint-like plans, and when she can't make any progress with the architects, she also falls back on the "Please help me, I'm just a girl..." routine.  Has she never heard of the internet?  Even then, she palms the task off on a different team member, who happens to be sleeping with a man who somehow knows every building in town (apparently he's a big fan of buildings?  Is that even a thing?) so that's another poor depiction of female empowerment - the whole point is them DOING things after their husbands die, and falling back on a new boyfriend for help doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

But let me back up, because the whole thing gets set in motion when a team of criminals die mid-heist in a shootout with the Chicago police (this makes sense at the time, but fails to do so after later information is revealed) and the money stolen in that last heist apparently belonged to a political campaign, and representatives from that campaign pay a visit to the crime boss's widow, demanding the money.  Her solution to this problem is to find her husband's notebook filled with incriminating evidence, and also plans and notes for the next heist.  So the "logical" step she takes is to recruit the other widows and pull off the heist.  Only the notes are incomplete, they don't know where the safe is, for example.  Right.

This feels like a great idea for a film on paper, but then this gets torpedoed by the details, or lack thereof.  If I take a step back from it, many solutions to this problem seem to be much easier than training the team from scratch in the ways of criminal activity, buying the van, guns, and stealth suits, then having the stones to go through with it all.  The lead character could, for example, trade the notebook to someone else in the criminal underworld, perhaps even for the money needed to pay off the people threatening her.  (To be fair, the movie acknowledges this as a possible path, but it's rejected for some reason, I guess because it would end the movie too soon.)  Or you know what else is cheaper and easier?  Cashing in her chips, selling all her property and belongings, and buying a one-way ticket to Patagonia or someplace equally remote, and starting her life over there.  That seems less risky, too.

There are too many flashbacks, overall - specifically dealing with the death of Veronica's teenage son, and while this does become sort of important later, I'm not sure that justifies putting a flashback inside another flashback.  I don't want to say any more about this for fear of giving too much away.  The whole opening sequence detailing the first heist and the daily lives of the characters also did a lot of time-jumping - so really, it should be called an "opening out-of-sequence".

Another thing that doesn't make much sense to me is her knowing, at least on some level, that her husband is involved in organized crime, and then not having any plan for what happens when he dies.  She had to know that was a distinct possibility, right?  He didn't save any money for her in a special account, they didn't own their home but lived in a rented apartment?  He didn't have a will or any plan or any investments to provide for her in the event of his own death?  Geez, I guess it's true what they say about crime not paying, or at least maybe it doesn't pay very well.  What it all adds up to is a story that's clunky at best, and hard to believe at worst.

Also starring Viola Davis (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Michelle Rodriguez (last heard in "Turbo"), Elizabeth Debicki (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Beguiled"), Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "White Boy Rick"), Daniel Kaluuya (last seen in "Get Out"), Garret Dillahunt (last seen in "Winter's Bone"), Carrie Coon (last heard in "Avengers: Endgame"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "The Voices"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "Lucky You"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Lukas Haas (last seen in "First Man"), Kevin J. O'Connor (Amistad), Michael Harney (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Coburn Goss, Molly Kunz, Matt Walsh (last seen in "Movie 43"), Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, Eric C. Lynch, Brian King, Josiah Sheffie, Adepero Oduye (last seen in "The Dinner"), Ann Mitchell, Chuck Inglish, Sir Michael Rocks, Cameron Knight.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Quinceanera dresses

Baby Driver

Year 11, Day 227 - 8/15/19 - Movie #3,325

BEFORE: I was going to point out that I'm back on "heist" films, but the truth is that this topic has already been going on for two days - what is "Robin Hood", if not a heist movie?  And it's a bit of a stretch, but the Ponzi scheme in "Billionaire Boys Club" is also something of a heist, just one that went horribly wrong.  So there you go, without even trying, I accidentally programmed four heist movies in a row (I'm counting tomorrow's film, too) and I've got another theme week going on. After years of doing this, I've found that not thinking about the plan is often the best way to go - my subconscious mind sort of knows what it's doing by now.

Ansel Elgort carries over from "Billionaire Boys Club", and so does that actor that we're not supposed to talk about any more.

THE PLOT: After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.

AFTER: God, this film is so cool - to say that I've been waiting for this one to float up to the top of the list with great anticipation would be a vast understatement.  I remember when the trailer for this first came out, and I think it was just Baby in the car, waiting for the others, and some bits from the first chase scene.  It was back in 2017 and I think they were still casting the "Solo" Star Wars spin-off movie, and after I saw Ansel Elgort driving really cool, and acting all aloof, and wearing what looked like a vest (though it was really just a jacket with lightly colored sleeves), I thought, "Well, DAMN, there's young Han Solo, if they've got any sense."  It turns out Elgort was one of the eight actors in the running to play young Solo, but they went another way with it, and now that I've seen the full movie of "Baby Driver", I think maybe it was for the best.  He's too tall, for one thing - they probably needed more of a height contrast between him and Chewbacca.  Plus I'm not seeing as much Harrison Ford in his face after looking at it for a bit longer.

Anyway, now that I've seen an awful lot of heist movies (including a lot of awful heist movies) it's a little easier to distinguish what makes one rise above the rest.  Here it seems like some writer said, "Hey, you know what the best part of a heist movie is?  The getaway scenes.  What if we did a movie that was ALL getaway scenes?"  This is the same mentality that brings us special "Chopped" episodes where every round is a dessert round, or breakfast cereals like "Oops! All Berries Cap'n Crunch" or some twisted version of Lucky Charms that's all marshmallows and no actual cereal pieces (wait, is that a real thing or did I dream it?).  But damn it, it WORKS here, when you cut away from the bank robbery and focus on the guy in the getaway car (because really, who wants to see the shooting and the stuffing the money into bags, we've seen all that before) as he grooves out to music, then the robbers get back in the car, and we're off to the races.  It's completely crazy-ass bonkers, it shouldn't work, I don't know who signed off on this, but somehow it's very entertaining.

"Baby" (not his real name, or is it?) is a character that's a bit hard to grasp at first - is he deaf?  Is he learning-impaired (they use the "R" word here, but they really shouldn't) or autistic or somewhere on the spectrum?  Was he scarred as a child by some trauma?  Or is he just too cool to talk, keeping his words and thoughts on the inside.  Or, is he just really really into his music, and driving like a skilled maniac?  How about some of the above, or maybe ALL of the above?

We learn about this criminal mastermind who puts the heists together, and Baby's in deep with him, but trying to work his way out of this world.  But the mastermind, Doc, considers Baby to be his lucky charm, and wouldn't dream of planning a heist without using the best getaway driver that he knows.  It makes sense, but the rest of the team is always changing, supposedly Doc never uses the same team of robbers twice, which makes sense on one level, but is also completely bananas on another, if you think about it.  Because while there's an advantage to using different players each time  - nobody knows anyone's real name so they can't inform on each other, team members are more expendable and easily replaced if caught, friend bonds aren't formed so the team members don't get attached to each other, plus after it's done, everyone gets their cut and moves on, and the next team has a different look and a different m.o. - there's also a distinct disadvantage, namely that there could be a lack of teamwork, disputes between different people who don't work well together, and so on.

And I think that's what we see here in "Baby Driver" - the second heist in the film goes a little wonky, and then I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the third one really goes south.  It's the personalities that don't gel, because if you put too many alphas on a project together, everyone's going to be jockeying for control.  Geez, anyone who's worked in an office or watched an episode of "Survivor", "MasterChef", "Top Chef" or "Hell's Kitchen" can tell you that.  Besides, and here comes my first NITPICK POINT, the first heist has three of the same team members as the third one - that's almost the exact same team, and so any advantage gained by constantly switching things up seems nearly negated by doing this.  Plus, two of the team members are married (at least they say they are) so this also seems to violate the rule about putting strangers together on the team - what if it's a choice between completing the heist and saving one's spouse, why introduce that possibility for a conflict of interest into the mix?

Ah, but there's a reason for everything here, really.  There's foreshadowing when someone points out that the getaway driver never has to hurt anyone or get his hands dirty, but this might not always be the case.  And when Baby falls for a waitress at the diner, and leaves the life of crime only to get pulled back in, what's he going to do when his two worlds collide?  I thought it was pretty clever how Baby's quirks and hobbies could also be seen by his comrades as a threat, as proof of disloyalty - and then we have to watch as the life he's tried to build for himself comes crashing down.

But that's probably not why you found this movie, is it?  You may have come for the great driving moves and stunts, and there are a ton of them.  So far in my project I've avoided all movies that claim to be either fast and/or furious, but that's a franchise that I may have to tackle eventually.  I came here for the heist stuff, but if you arrived for the driving stuff, that's OK too.  I can appreciate the car chases and stunts, even if I haven't driven a vehicle in close to a decade - I live in one of the few cities where not driving doesn't affect my daily life much, but I do rely on my wife's driving when we go on road trips.  But I can appreciate boxing movies, too, even though I'm not good with fighting skills.

I forgot that "Baby Driver" is a song by Simon and Garfunkel, which they make you wait until the end credits to hear.  But there's plenty of other music in the film, whether you like classic Motown (Sam & Dave, Martha & the Vandellas, Barry White) or classic rock (Queen, T.Rex, Focus), or classic jazz (Dave Brubeck, "Tequila").  It's practically wall-to-wall music, and there's nothing really wrong with that.  Some of the cuts are so standard in movies that they're practically cornball, but there's also plenty I haven't heard before.

This could easily be the winner of the week for me, and I'm glad to hear that they're already working on a sequel. I can see how some people may take issue with the final act, but if you think about the different ways they could have ended this story, you may realize there weren't that many options.  Do you prefer to see your heist films end well for the criminals, or do like to see justice get served?  As always, your mileage may vary, but either way you're in for quite a ride.

Also starring Kevin Spacey (carrying over from "Billionaire Boys Club"), Lily James (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "The Accountant"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Tag"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Robin Hood"), Eiza Gonzalez (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), CJ Jones, Flea (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Lanny Joon, Sky Ferreira, Lance Palmer, Big Boi (last seen in "Idlewild"), Killer Mike, Paul Williams (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Jon Spencer, Hudson Meek, Brogan Hall, Hal Whiteside, R. Marcos Taylor, with archive footage of Meryl Streep (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), John Krasinski (last seen in "A Quiet Place"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Noel Fielding (last seen in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Michael Smiley and the voice of Billy Crystal (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind").

RATING: 7 out of 10 money orders

Billionaire Boys Club

Year 11, Day 226 - 8/14/19 - Movie #3,324

BEFORE: I didn't even mention yesterday what happened to me in the morning - but it was one of those days where you get halfway through it and start wishing for a do-over, like if you knew in advance how bad things were going to go, you'd be better off just staying in bed and cancelling everything.  (Next time you feel that way, consider it, because you could be right about the impending day...)

We had to take one of our cats to a vet in another part of Queens, as our local vet office didn't have the resources to do an ultra-sound scan of his organs (a substance has been building up in his liver, and they don't quite know why - as opposed to MY liver, where the reasons for any problems are very well known.)  The plan was simple, leave the house at 8, get to Forest Hills before the 9 am appointment, get back in the car with the cat at 10, and be back home around 10:30, so I could leave for work in Brooklyn and still put in something close to a full day.

And everything was fine, until we got back to the car just after 10 am, to find that my wife couldn't open the driver's side door, and then once she DID open it, it wouldn't stay closed.  A closer examination showed a large dent at the bottom of the door, which meant that another vehicle had either hit or backed into her car, then drove away.  While she called her insurance company, I went into full on "Law & Order" mode, canvassing businesses on the block to see if anyone saw or heard one car hit another, or if anybody had a security camera with revealing footage.  (Not yet, but my investigation is still open...)

Since she couldn't drive us home with one hand holding the door closed, we had to wait for a tow truck, which was supposed to take an hour, but then after 90 minutes, we were told it would take another hour.  Meanwhile, our cat hadn't eaten since an early dinner the night before (he couldn't eat for 12-hours before the ultra-sound scan) so I took him back to the vet to see if they had any cat food they could spare.  They did, but he was too worked up to eat it (or he wouldn't eat it because it was that "healthy" brand) so I had to take a cab home across Queens with the cat, while my wife waited another hour for the tow truck.  I didn't make it in to work until about 2 pm, and if I had been delayed any longer, I might have written off the whole day.  Sometimes you just need the equivalent of a sick day, only you're not sick, it's just that things seem determined to not go your way.  We really need a term for this - like, can you call into work unlucky?

Taron Egerton carries over from "Robin Hood" - I don't have access to "Rocketman" yet, so I can't add that one in here, even if I wanted to.  It's on iTunes, but only for purchase at $19.99, and I'm not going to spend that much for that film.  I'll have to put it on the list for next year, but it may arrive on an Academy screener at the end of this year, which would be a lot cheaper for me.

THE PLOT: A group of wealthy boys in Los Angeles during the early 1980's establish a "get-rich-quick" scam that turns deadly.

AFTER: Well, if "Robin Hood" was considered a box-office bomb from 2018, here's one that completely took that concept to the extreme.  The studio that released this one decided to not do any marketing or promotion, because the news had broken in 2017 about sexual harassment charges filed against Kevin Spacey, along with the #metoo scandals of that year that started with Cosby and Weinstein but extended down to Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Bill O'Reilly, Louis C.K., Brett Ratner, Al Franken, Les Moonves, Mario Batali and others.  As a result, this movie with a $15,000,000 budget opened in theaters with little fanfare, and made a whopping $618 in its opening weekend.  (No, I did not leave out a few digits there, that's six hundred and eighteen dollars.  It played in just 12 theaters.)  People either didn't know this film existed, or they stayed away in droves.

Which is a shame, because regardless of how you feel about the #metoo movement or Time's Up, or whether the people involved should be fired or removed from office and never, ever be allowed to work again, it's a case where people avoided this movie for the wrong reasons.  They SHOULD have avoided it because it's a terrible movie, not because of any harassment allegations - but I suppose the results were the same at the end of the day.

The main problem, for me, is that we've all seen this exact story before, in different iterations.  "The Wolf of Wall Street" most notably, but also "Boiler Room" and "The Big Short" and "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps", and that one about Bernie Madoff - "The Wizard of Lies", which I haven't seen yet, but it's on my list.  There's nothing here that seems new or different in any way from "The Wolf of Wall Street" - 80's kids get high, party, defraud investors, and nobody learns a better way of doing things.  This film would have you believe that Joe Hunt (another real person, just like Jordan Belfort) was the first person who came up with the idea of lying to investors, "accidentally" putting a debit in the credit column, or taking one person's investment money and handing it to another person as their dividend.  Jesus, WE the audience know this is a Ponzi scheme even if the characters doing it here refuse to admit it to themselves.

Everybody wants to be well-liked, and every broker or businessman wants their investors to be happy, but at what cost?  Even if you defraud them and make them think that they're earning money when they're not, or their investment is still sound when it's not, they're GOING to find out eventually, right?  This film suggests that it's OK to pull a fast one and defraud people, as long as you're doing it to the people who were mean to you in high school, so they can finally treat you like one of the gang.  So yeah, it seems like Joe Hunt had some issues left from his teen years, and was working them out, but still, not in an entirely legal way.

Then the movie really falls apart at the end, like I mean completely, because it portrays only ONE version of what happened to investor (and even larger con man) Ron Levin.  Hell, a few hung juries in California couldn't even seem to agree what happened to him, and who did it.  Some people say he was seen years later in Greece or maybe Spain, so it's possible that he skipped town in 1984 with plans to never return to the U.S.  And if nobody really knows for sure what happened, maybe that's not the best case to make a movie about, just sayin'.

I didn't realize at first that this was based on a true story, and for that matter I didn't realize at first that it was set in the 1980's.  One reason for that is the fact that the two leads attend an 80's theme party, and having been alive during the 80's, I can confirm that we did not HAVE 80's-themed parties back then, we only had "parties", and the ironic nostalgia for things like Mr. T. and Nancy Reagan came much later, so that all seems very out of place here.  I don't think 80's parties became a thing until the early 2000's, but I could be wrong.

Overall this just felt like a story that didn't really even need to be told in the first place, so I'm left wondering why anyone bothered.  Also, it's a tremendous waste of money, so many better things might have been accomplished with that $15 million budget - unless the making of this film was part of some kind of investment scam.  I'm not ruling that out.

Also starring Ansel Elgort, Emma Roberts (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Kevin Spacey (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Ryan Rottman, Jeremy Irvine (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Thomas Cocquerel, Bokeem Woodbine (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Barney Harris, Waleed Zuaiter (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Suki Waterhouse, Billie Lourd (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Judd Nelson (last seen in "St. Elmo's Fire"), Maurice Johnson, Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Justin Arnold, Marc Mani, Carmen Illan, Kevin Bratcher, Wayne Pére (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Jayson Warner Smith (last seen in "American Made"), Bryan Batt (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), with cameos from Rosanna Arquette (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Jimmy Buffett (last seen in "The History of the Eagles"), and archive footage of Johnny Carson (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley").

RATING: 3 out of 10 Rollex (sic) watches

Robin Hood (2018)

Year 11, Day 225 - 8/13/19 - Movie #3,323

BEFORE: And just like that, I've come to the end of Britfest 2019 - that went by so quickly!  Ten films, almost a week and a half, and I covered several queens (Anne, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I), a couple of kings (George VI, Edward VIII, Robert the Bruce, and Arthur) one prime minister (twice) and one poet, John Keats.  I'm closing with the very fictional Robin Hood, so between him and Arthur it hasn't been all about stuffy textbook history, a bit of fiction crept in after all.

Ben Mendelsohn carries over from "Darkest Hour" - from King George VI to the Sheriff of Nottingham...

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Robin Hood" (2010) (Movie #1,079) & "Robin Hood" (1991) (Movie #1,078)

THE PLOT: A war-hardened Crusader and his Moorish commander mount an audacious revolt against the corrupt English crown.

AFTER: Essentially, this film reminds me of "The Wild Wild West" franchise - it's not meant to be taken seriously, or historically accurate in any way.  When Robin is "drafted" (even though military drafts did not exist at the time of the Crusades) and sent off to the Holy Land, the archers are wearing what look like bullet-proof vests, or flak jackets, and they look almost like a modern squad of U.S. soldiers on a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan.  And when they come up against an Arab sniper who's using the equivalent of a rapid-fire assault weapon (only with arrows, somehow) it's quite ridiculous, and impossible.  But you sort of have to turn parts of your brain off in order to have any hope of enjoying this one, and my guess is that large portions of the audience just weren't able to do that when this was released late last year.

It sort of feels like the ONLY research that this film's screenwriters did was to ignore the last few Robin Hood films and go back to the "classic" story - and by that I mean the 1991 film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" with Kevin Costner.  They clearly started there, since both films have a Moor character, so as to appear more ethnically diverse (Morgan Freeman in the 1991 film) and both make liberal use of gunpowder, which hadn't been invented yet, or if it had been invented in China, it certainly wasn't used in the U.K. at the time of the Crusades.  Then some writer probably said, "Hey, what if Robin of Loxley was more like Bruce Wayne, and Robin Hood was more like Hawkeye, or that Green Arrow guy?  Superheroes are very popular now, so why not just write Robin Hood like he's a superhero? A couple other minor tweaks, like turning Will Scarlett into a foil character and making a love triangle between him, Robin and Maid Marian, and this thing practically writes itself!"

Umm, sure, that probably all looked good on paper, but it just didn't translate well to audiences, not at all.  This was widely regarded as a box office bomb, despite bring in $82 million in box office - it did cost $100 million to make, after all, and that's not including marketing costs.  (Remember, though, they saved money on the script by just tweaking that Kevin Costner film from 1991.)  It used to be that a film could have a second life and still be profitable after DVD sales, but those days are over and done - now you just sell the stinker to some cable channel and try to walk away from it.

Speaking of Kings, where the hell is King Richard in all this mess?  The whole point of the Robin Hood story is that the U.K. fell apart when King Richard was captured during the Crusades, and his brother, King John, was left in charge. And we all know he was one of the worst kings that England ever had, right?  You'd think this would have been a no-brainer to include King John and make him a thinly-veiled Donald Trump character, as a completely incompetent king.  Instead they used the Sheriff of Nottingham character to get in some digs at Trump, because when the Sheriff talks about the Crusades here, he mentions the caravans of Arabs that want to invade England, and when they come, they're not sending their best people, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and they want to burn England down to the ground.  I'm surprised that the Sheriff here is raising taxes to fund the war campaign, and not to build a wall.

Ah, but there's a TWIST!  The Sheriff is not collecting money to fight the Arabs, he's secretly funding the Arab campaign AGAINST England - yes, this would make sense, if only they mentioned that King Richard was captured by the Turks or Saracens, and they had to raise money for his ransom.  (Then the twist could be that the Sheriff was paying them to KEEP King Richard in the Middle East, and off the throne.  Ooh, so close here, but not a match, so the board goes back.)

This is not the end of British films for me, because I still have one more King Arthur movie to get to before the end of the year (and like this Robin Hood film, it was also criticized for poorly modernizing a classic story) but I've got to move on to other topics for now.

I didn't really follow the point of the Sheriff kicking everyone out of the town, however, and forcing them to go live across the river in the mines.  From a political and economic standpoint, this made no sense.  Someone collecting taxes shouldn't really want to evict as many people as possible, because then with nobody owning any property, there wouldn't be any tax to collect.  I suppose foreclosure is a valid goal, but if everyone in town has been made poor by the taxes, then who's going to buy all the foreclosed property?  This part of the story is very clunky at best, and at worst makes no sense at all.  And wouldn't you think that if Robin Hood is stealing all the collected money, and Robin of Loxley appears to be the only person in town with any money at all, that the Sheriff would figure out "The Hood's" identity very quickly?  Robin was thought to be dead, his property was seized, so how come he suddenly has all this money?  Plus, NITPICK POINT, he just walks back into his former property and starts living there again - but it was foreclosed on (those medieval mortgages were very, very strict - you miss 10 or 12 payments while you're serving in the military and you never get the properly back again!)  Shouldn't he have had to buy the property back, and then wouldn't everyone wonder where the hell he got the money to do that?

Then the film really, really went out of its way to wrap up the story in a way that would set up a sequel, but based on this film's performance, I doubt that will happen.  (To keep up the "Batman" references, they totally "Two-Faced" one of the characters, to set up the next villain...)  Taron Egerton has expressed a disdain for franchise films, anyway - he didn't even want to be in the third "Kingsman" movie after starring in the first two.  So most likely, this is a one-off, as in they're only going to make one film, and we're all better off that way.

Also starring Taron Egerton (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Tim Minchin, Jamie Dornan (last seen in "Fifty Shades of Gray"), Paul Anderson (last seen in "Hostiles"), F. Murray Abraham (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Josh Herdman (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Ian Peck (ditto), Cornelius Booth (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), Bjorn Bengtsson, Scot Greenan (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Kane Headley-Cummings (last seen in "Exodus: Gods and Kings"), Lara Rossi, Kevin Griffiths, Catriona Temple, Nicholas Wittman, Yasen Atour (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Jerome Holder.

RATING: 4 out of 10 hoodies (yeah, they went there...)

Darkest Hour

Year 11, Day 224 - 8/12/19 - Movie #3,322

BEFORE: Here's the OTHER 2017 movie about Winston Churchill, I feel bad that I'm not watching them in chronological order, but what can I do?  Ideally I think I should have watched this one, then "Dunkirk", then "Churchill" but the linking I came up with suggested a different order.  We're going back to May 1940 for this one, closer to the start of World War II.

Stephen Dillane carries over again from "King Arthur".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Churchill" (Movie #3,319)

THE PLOT: In May 1940, the fate of Western Europe hangs on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler, or fight on knowing that it could mean a humiliating defeat for Britain and its empire.

AFTER: So, who wore it better, Brian Cox or Gary Oldman?  Brian Cox didn't need to use extensive make-up or prosthetics, he just gained 20 pounds and shaved his head.  I think more work was required to make Gary Oldman look like Churchill, but that shouldn't be confused with acting ability. Oldman won the Best Actor Oscar that year, so the tendency is to give him the nod, but that's equating results with effort, and that's a bit like putting the cart before the horse.  To me it's a toss-up, but the key difference is that in "Darkest Hour" we're seeing Churchill's rise to power, his appointment to Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain got the sack, and in "Churchill" we see him right before D-Day, and he's dealing with the fact that his role in the war effort has dimmed somewhat, Eisenhower didn't even want to hear his concerns over what could go wrong with Operation: Overlord.

"Darkest Hour" has the more depressing title, but the overall message is brighter, as we get to see the Dunkirk evacuation from another angle, since apparently it was Churchill who thought of enlisting civilian boats to travel across the English Channel, after he was unable to convince Franklin Roosevelt to lend Great Britain 50 destroyers, or even 40.  30?  How about a couple of rowboats and a life preserver?

You have to keep in mind here, that this was before the U.S. was involved in World War II, and Roosevelt makes reference to some kind of non-interference pact.  I just looked it up, this was the Neutrality Act of 1939, and it prevented the U.S. from taking sides in the European conflict, I assume this went out the window after Pearl Harbor.  But at this moment in 1940, the U.S. couldn't send any ships to help the U.K., they couldn't even deliver the airplanes that Great Britain bought from the U.S., with money they borrowed from the same party.  Sounds like a work-around.  The best FDR could offer was to land the planes within a few miles of the Canadian border, and have someone pull the planes across to Canada with horses.

The British Parliament was in a bit of a pickle, also.  One faction refused to commit to war with Germany until they'd tried in every possible way to negotiate for peace.  But this was before everyone realized exactly how much of a madman Hitler was, and Churchill, as the new prime minister, had to navigate these tough waters, with Chamberlain and the Viscount Halifax urging him to set up meetings with the Italian ambassador and also Mussolini, to act as a go-between with the Nazis.  There's no good cop/bad cop there, and eventually Churchill came to the realization that peace with Nazi Germany would come at too high of a cost, essentially they'd be losing the war before even fighting it, and it would be almost equivalent to surrendering, and accepting a new status as some kind of slave state.  The royal family would have to move to Canada and rule in exile, at least until things got properly sorted out.

Of course, negotiating for peace seemed like a better option with 300,000 soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, with no way to get them home.  And this was the vast majority of the British army, so if they were lost through fighting, or abandoned on the beach, what other option would there be, apart from surrender?  So this film really is the companion piece to "Dunkirk", it lends an added importance to getting those troops back across the Channel, by any means necessary.  Once the troops were back, negotiations became less important, and the war could really begin in earnest - it's a lot easier to defend your country when you have control of your troops.

But we're led to believe that Churchill took advice from King George VI (who doesn't like Churchill at first, because he supported Edward VIII's marriage to Wallis Simpson, so there's also a connection here to the film "W.E") as the king told him to go out and listen to what the British people had to say. Allegedly this happened by Churchill riding on the Underground (subway) to the shock of the other riders, but to a person, they all supported the war and the defeat of fascism in Europe, no matter the cost.  But is this really how it happened?  Did all the citizens he spoke to agree on this point?  Their descendants sure didn't seem able to agree about Brexit 75 years later....

In addition to being released in the same year, and focusing on the same British statesman, "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour" also use (almost) the same story point - in "Churchill" there is a typist/stenographer whose boyfriend is part of the D-Day invasion, and in "Darkest Hour" there's a typist whose brother is among the troops on the beach at Dunkirk.  Sure, it's possible that in both cases that Churchill had a woman typing his messages with a personal connection to the current battle, but the simpler answer is that two screenwriters were drawing from the same well, and using the same bit of poetic license to shoehorn in some kind of personal investment in the current conflict to someone who happened to be close to Churchill at the same time.  I'm inclined to believe this once, but not twice - now I think this didn't happen at all and in both cases was a cheap use of coincidence, even though the ends of those B-stories are different.

One of the posters for this film pitched it as "The film we need RIGHT NOW", which I presume was a dig at Trump - in other words, here's what a strong, decisive, commanding leader should look like.  But I think we should be paying more attention to the depiction of Neville Chamberlain, the outgoing prime minister at the start of this film.  It's a case where BOTH major parties in the British Parliament formed a coalition to work together to get rid of their ineffectual leader who was proposing negotiating with the countries enemies.  You feel me?  When your prime minister (or President, whichever) seems to be controlled, or suggesting support for, a dictator in a far-off country, one possible scenario is that BOTH major parties could join forces and work toward a common goal, that of removing him from office.  Just saying, it CAN be done.

Also starring Gary Oldman (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Kristin Scott Thomas (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Lily James (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Ronald Pickup (last seen in "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Samuel West (last seen in "Notting Hill"), Richard Lumsden (last seen in "Sense and Sensibility"), Malcolm Storry (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), Nicholas Jones, David Schofield (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Hilton McRae, Benjamin Whitrow (last seen in "Quadrophenia"), Joe Armstrong, Adrian Rawlins (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), David Bamber (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Paul Leonard, Jeremy Child (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Brian Pettifer (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Michael Gould (last seen in "Rogue One; A Star Wars Story"), John Atterbury (last seen in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Pip Torrens (last seen in "The Danish Girl"), Hannah Steele, Nia Gwynne, Ade Dee Haastrup, James Eeles, Flora Nicholson, Roisin O'Neill, John Locke (last seen in "The Favourite"), the voice of David Strathairn (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn") and archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9").

RATING: 6 out of 10 "V for Victory" signs (turned the correct way)

King Arthur (2004)

Year 11, Day 223 - 8/11/19 - Movie 3,321

BEFORE: To wrap up Britfest, it seems like I need to move away from real kings and include a fictional one, and so I find myself back on King Arthur, for the third time this year.  And I still have one Arthurian film to go, but I won't be able to get to the last one until next month, just before back-to-school films.

Stephen Dillane, who played King Edward I in "Outlaw King", carries over to play Merlin today.

THE PLOT: A demystified take on the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

AFTER: Depending on where you stand, this is either an updating of the Arthurian legends for today's audiences, or a complete bastardization of classic fiction.  Because they threw a lot of the familiar parts of the story out, and tried to add a bunch of elements from contemporary action movies.  Some people may be so used to that form that they may not notice the difference - but when Guinevere is shooting arrows and fighting alongside the Knights of the Round Table, that tends to feel a little bit like they held a focus group and asked people what they'd like to see in a movie, and obviously in today's society you'd see more active women, and a queen back then wouldn't do stuff like this (but then again, she probably wouldn't do tend to horses and do stable chores either, as seen in "Camelot").

One point of view says that Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere never existed anyway, so what's the harm in turning their story on its ear and making them into different characters?  Again, it depends on how you value classic fiction and how mutable you want your stories to be.  They sort of merged Guinevere's story with Merlin's here, making them come from the same tribe of Woads, whatever that is.  And they moved the whole story back a few centuries to take place around the fall of the Roman Empire, attempting to morph Roman centurions into medieval knights and basically pretend that the Dark Ages never happened.  Supposedly the Roman Empire needed people to help defend Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain, so they drafted people from across Europe to serve 15 years in the military, not counting the amount of time it would take to travel from wherever to the U.K.

It's at least an interesting way to explain why knights from all over would head to Britain and form the equivalent of Camelot's court, with the Round Table expressing a sort of Roman democracy or socialism, where nobody sits at the head of the table.  But it's a bit weird that Rome had turned Catholic by this point, and therefore there's an Emperor AND a Pope, plus half of the soldiers practice some kind of pagan religion, so there's no consistency in what everyone believes or is fighting for.  Whose interests are the knights serving by going on this one last mission, before their service is over, they become free men, and the Empire collapses, rather conveniently all at the same time?

It's also very unclear who the villains are, at least for a while.  The knights are there to guard Hadrian's Wall and the territory south of it from the Woads, but then they're sent on a mission to rescue a family from the Saxons.  Wait, which tribe is the dangerous one again?  The Woads turn out to be a bunch of forest-dwelling hippie types led by Merlin, but the Saxons are real badasses, with actual weapons and stuff.  But they seem very crude and brutish and dumb, at least compared with the knights (who are also pretty crude and brutish, but at least they fight with smarter tactics).

I honestly had to check to see if this film and "Outlaw King" had the same writers, because the two movies share some key story elements - a small army is vastly outnumbered, but gains an advantage by putting the terrain to good use.  In "Outlaw King" that meant digging a trench and using the muddiness of the highland bogs, but here it's a large frozen river, and the knights know to break their marching step and tread lightly, yet the Saxons just keep on marching in step.  I know that an army needs to stop marching when crossing a bridge, I didn't realize that also goes for ice, but I guess it makes sense.  Plus there's the whole idea that marching across the country increases the size of the army, yesterday it was the various clans joining up with Robert the Bruce, and today it's the Woads joining the fight against the Saxons.  Yeah, I think we're dealing with a formula here.

They really throw the whole Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle away here, Guin and Lance exchange a few looks over the battlefield in the thick of it, and that's about all.  So, no greater argument against arranged marriages or advice on what to do when you meet the love of your life JUST a bit too late.  And the "sword in the stone" plot only appears in a flashback of that time that Woads attacked young Arthur's village, and he had to pull Excalibur out of his father's burial mound in order to save his mother from a burning building.  Umm, exactly how was a sword going to help with that?

The film ends with the (remaining) knights no longer wanting to return to their homelands, but realizing that they've spent so much time in England that it's become their kingdom, with Arthur as king after marrying Guinevere, uniting the former Romans and the Woads.  Well, I guess home is where you hang your hat, even if it's a crown.  But the film pitched itself as the more "realistic" version and on the poster it says it's the "untold true story that inspired the legend".  This seems like an unsupportable sales pitch, even if you look past the oxymoronic "true story" - well, which is it, is it true or a story?  And "untold"?  You're telling it now, so how can it be "untold"?  It seems like a long way to go to cover up the fact that this is an even more fictional version of a thing that never happened.

As a bonus, the soundtrack manages to use a bunch of swirling Hans Zimmer motifs left over from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise...

Also starring Clive Owen (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Ioan Gruffudd (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), Mads Mikkelsen (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Joel Edgerton (last seen in "Life"), Hugh Dancy (last seen in "Adam"), Ray Winstone (last seen in "Sexy Beast"), Ray Stevenson (last seen in "Big Game"), Keira Knightley (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Til Schweiger (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Sean Gilder, Pat Kinevane, Ivano Marescotti (last seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"), Ken Stott (last seen in "Café Society"), Lorenzo De Angelis, Stefania Orsola Garello, Alan Devine, Charlie Creed-Miles (last seen in "Hereafter"), Johnny Brennan, David Murray, Ned Dennehy, Dawn Bradfield, Maria Gladkowska, Clive Russell (also carrying over from "Outlaw King"), Shane Murray-Corcoran, Elliot Henderson-Boyle, Owen Teale (last seen in "Robin Hood (1991)), Graham McTavish (last seen in "Aquaman").

RATING: 5 out of 10 trebuchets (ah, THERE they are, where were they yesterday?)