BEFORE: I took some time today and made another list, the Top 250 most popular features from 2023, because I want to know how many I've already seen. I went to the movie theater A LOT last year, mostly to work at them, but also I saw some movies there. So I've got a head start on watching those movies that came out last year, or so I thought, but really, I've only seen 16 out of those Top 250. Now bear in mind "most popular" doesn't mean "the best", nor does it means "the movies that I want to see or are most likely to watch", it's just based on the IMDB ratings at this moment. BUT, it's something of a benchmark to let me know how far I've come, and how much further I may have to go.
By comparison, I've seen 62 of the top 250 movies of 2022, with another 17 on the main watchlist, and probably more available on streaming, which I'm not counting. Maybe another 30 that I'll watch streaming at some point, so that's about 110 total. I've seen 91 of 2021's top 250 films, with another 8 on the main watchlist, and let's say another 12 that are streaming that I would consider. That's about 111 total, same ratio. OK, at least I'm being consistent. 2020 was a slow year for movies because of COVID, but I still saw 76 of the top 250, with another 5 on my list and another 5 I might watch someday, that's 86. 2019 was a BIG year for movies, I've seen 125 of the top 250, with another 2 still on the list and another 4 or 5 I might consider.
So I'll probably spend most of 2024 watching the movies of 2023 when they become available, and then catching anything else from previous years as linking material. During 2023 I watched 61 films that were released the previous year, so that's about 20% or 1/5 of my slots for that year. OK, that seems about right. It means I'm staying relatively current, I've got a pattern and the system works - as long as I don't need to run out and see a movie right away, I can be fairly sure that I'll catch it in the next few months when it becomes available.
Joe Chrest carries over from "Quiz Lady" to play Tommy Lee's dad.
THE PLOT: Based on the bestselling autobiography from Mötley Crüe, the film is an unflinching tale of success and excess as four misfits rise from the streets of Hollywood to the heights of international fame.
AFTER: The other thing I did yesterday, before watching "The Dirt" after midnight, was convince my wife to join me for my re-watch of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story". I rented the film on Demand so I could burn it to DVD, because I loved the film, I'm a big fan of Weird Al and also I thought she would really enjoy the humor, how the film doesn't take itself seriously at all, not even for a minute. I can't tell you the last movie we watched together, we're just not interested in the same films, or I'll watch my movies after she goes to bed and then I can tell her the next day what I watched, if it's something she might be interested in. But mostly we go our own ways where movies are concerned, I don't think she's been in a movie theater in years, it's got to be pre-pandemic, at least.
And I loved re-watching "Weird", it hit even harder for me the second time, and now I can watch it whenever I want, without connecting to Roku. (She said she would watch it on Roku, but WHEN?). The problem then was that that film is a parody of ALL biopics, especially music-based ones - so how could I possible take "The DIrt" seriously after that? Whether I'm a Motley Crue fan or not (not, mostly) is beside the point, because that Weird Al fake biopic totally crushed it, and how is any movie on a similar topic going to hold up? Not well, at least not for me. I was still in the vein of not taking anything seriously because that was the tone of "Weird", with Daniel Radcliffe not being a dead ringer for young Weird Al, and lip-synching (well, but still...) to Al's vocals, and completely acting in a way that the real Weird Al never did. If you know about Al, you know he's never had a drinking problem or a drug problem and is a vegetarian and from all accounts, a super nice guy, so of course his parody bio-pic has him getting stoned, drinking bottles of whiskey, having sex with Madonna and acting like a huge conceited jerk. It's funny because none of it is true, yet the film is marketed as if it is.
In a similar vein, I've got to wonder about the motivations here, to depict the Motley Crue story in exactly this way. Remember that this is based on a book written by the band members, so they may have an agenda in promoting themselves in a certain way, no matter what behavior they want to talk about, good or bad, it's going to come across as bragging, or perhaps a form of therapy, or part of their mandated community service, I'm not sure which. Yeah, the band decided to get clean and sober at one point, because they realized they couldn't maintain the party lifestyle, and that's usually the kiss of death for a rock band. Once they go vegan or gluten-free and kick out the band member who won't toe the line, forget it, they've got one more good album in them maybe and then the career is nearly over. You either ride that van until the wheels come off, like Keith Richards, or get out of the business, because you're not a true rocker at some point.
But yeah, let's talk about that, why do rockers have such a bad reputation, because come on, in your mind you're thinking about the girls and the booze and the blow and trashing all their hotel rooms, right? I read an e-mail newsletter once in a while from a guy who used to tour with the Sex Pistols, and it's all that and more, but WHY does it have to be that way? Why can't the heavy metal band be made of people who are pure at heart, sober guys who just want to focus on the music, are faithful to their wives and carefully save their money from their tours so they'll have a retirement fund as a safety net? Ha ha, just kidding, that's never happened. I watched enough documentaries about rock bands, from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead to Nirvana and I'm sure the pattern continues today.
I think it started with Elvis, honestly, or maybe Chuck Berry. Somewhere back then the music and the popularity and the MONEY, so much money, came together and made it impossible for successful rockers to be normal people. When we visited Graceland back in 2017, we were blown away by how many buildings there were on the estate, from the main house to the office building where Col. Parker worked, to the building with the squash court and the pinball machines and the gun range. My wife said, "THAT is what you get when you give a 20-year old guy a million dollars," and she was right, he was like the Justin Beiber of the 1950's. And I don't need to remind you that the drinking and the drugs followed soon after, and if you think he was faithful to Priscilla, you're fooling yourself. Millionaires (OK, now billionaires) get to write their own rules, and they live like there's no tomorrow, and then you follow that path through the Beatles and the Stones, you hit Motley Crue at some point, following the same pattern.
At one point the film follows a day in the life of Tommy Lee on tour - 5 pm, wake up in the hotel room, handcuffed to the bed, with no memory of what happened the previous night. Hang out backstage, get drunk, punch out a record executive, then play the concert, have sex with a groupie backstage, then catch the plane to the next city, do some blow on the plane, get to the next hotel room, trash the hotel room, get punched out by the road manager and get handcuffed to the bed again. And this went on for HOW MANY tour dates? I'm always fascinated by those tour schedules, and how they're organized, as it's clear somebody with a brain puts them together, deciding the band would go from Detroit to Chicago to Milwaukee and then over to Minneapolis. The dates of Crue's 1989-1991 tour scroll by on the screen, and the band complains that the record company keeps adding more dates at the end, so they'll never be done.
And so what do you THINK is going to happen, given that two band members are in (semi-)stable relationships, and are then out on tour for two years straight? And all that time, they're keeping count of how many women they've screwed in each city. Add in all the money they spend at strip clubs, and it's a recipe for disaster. Show me the rock and roll marriage that has stood the test of time, I dare you - and Paul & Linda McCartney don't count. And yet some people still marry rockers, thinking their experience is going to be different? Keep dreaming. So how am I supposed to find any sympathy for these band members, when they spend all their money, screw around, get drunk and wasted every night and well, completely act irresponsibly 24/7 - so I'm just watching and waiting for the time when it all comes crashing down.
Mick Mars has a degenerative bone disease, and Vince Neil has a young daughter who's sick, those are two things that could go some way toward garnering these rockers some sympathy, but if anything these plot points are de-emphasized and so everything feels out of balance. You want my support? Show the parts of a typical day where the band meets with a financial adviser to plan for their post-rock retirement, or when they call home to talk to their girlfriend or daughter and actually take a minute to think, "Hmm, what time is it in L.A. right now?" because you'd think after a while on their trip around the country, they'd figure out how time zones work. Ha ha, just kidding again, they never quite figure this out.
The best moment in the film, for me, is when Motley Crue is on tour with Black Sabbath, and they're hanging out by the pool when Ozzy Osbourne comes along, and he's flashing his privates to the other people poolside before he urinates next to the pool, and meanwhile the M.C. band members are counting how many women each one screwed in the last city. They say to Ozzy, "Gee, it's great that you can still go out on tour and keep up with us younger rockers!" And Ozzy says, "You wankers, I don't have to keep up with YOU, I've already LAPPED YOU!" Oh, that's so great, I'm going to steal that whenever any of my co-workers comment about me being older than them. And the guy they got to play Ozzy looked EXACTLY like he did in the 1980's.
Well, OK, so this one was a bit of a struggle to get through, and I couldn't take it seriously, not at all. But it's off the Netflix list now, which means there are only 125 films on that list to go. Geez, I never seem to make that much progress on the Netflix list, do I? For every film I add there, two more come along the next month and I'm starting to think I'll never clear it. But lately it seems they're adding a lot of older films I've already watched, so that's helpful, I don't have to track those. But will I ever CATCH UP? No, probably not. I'll just die one day with a long list of films that I wasn't able to get to in the time that I was given, more than likely. Such is life.
Also starring Douglas Booth (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Iwan Rheon (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) (last seen in "Project Power"), Daniel Webber, Pete Davidson (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), David Costabile (last seen in "Side Effects"), Leven Rambin (last seen in "Mank"), Kathryn Morris (last seen in "Paycheck"), Rebekah Graf, Tony Cavalero (last seen in "When We First Met"), Max Milner, Katherine Neff (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jordan Lane Price, Christian Gehring, Anthony Vincent Valbiro, Kamryn Ragsdale, Melanie Hebert (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Trace Masters (ditto), Courtney Dietz, Elena Evangelo, Vince Robert Mattis, Betsy Holt (also carrying over from "Quiz Lady"), Alyssa Marie Stilwell, Matthew Underwood, Aaron Jay Rome, Mark Ashworth, Avis-Marie Barnes (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers"), Eleanor T. Threatt, Kabby Borders (last seen in "Game Night"), Carol Ann Scruggs, Peter Jaymes Jr., Bernard Hocke, Alexanne Wagner, Martin Bats Bradford (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Anthony Marble (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Michael Hodson.
with archive footage of Nikki Sixx (last seen in "Count Me In"), Tommy Lee (ditto), Vince Neil (ditto), Mick Mars, Sammy Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, Nancy Reagan (last seen in "The Special Relationship")
RATING: 5 out of 10 TVs thrown through hotel room windows
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