Deadpool & Wolverine

Year 16, Day 223 - 8/10/24 - Movie #4,810 - watched on 8/6/24

BEFORE: What do you know, I went to a movie theater, for the first time in a year - I think the last movie I saw in a theater was "Asteroid City", despite the fact that I'm technically at a movie theater to work two or three times every week.  But, I'm working, and as I keep saying, "Don't get high on your own supply."  Every film ever made is streaming, and even if it's not, it's on the web somewhere, and even if it's not, it will be in just a few months.  So, remind me why I should pay $20 for a ticket and another $20 for popcorn and a drink?  Just asking. I didn't pay $20 for the ticket, though, because I'm in the AMC program and there are discount tickets on Tuesday, which not everybody knows about, because they publicize this fact, but not to the point where the company is going to lose a lot of money, they only want the RIGHT people to know about this, and I've been in the program since I worked there three summers ago and then left after three months.  So I paid $7 plus fees, so $9 instead of $20.  Yeah, I'll pay that to watch a first-run Marvel movie. 

I treated "Deadpool & Wolverine" like a nexus movie, the cast is so huge that there must have been a dozen ways to get here, like I could have come straight from "The Son" but I held off another few days so I could cross another couple of indie films off my list, but the road here was always going to be through Hugh Jackman, who carries over from "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", and this is because I didn't want to look at the cast list before, I managed to watch this movie while avoiding all spoilers, even casting ones - and those were the best ones!  Look, if you don't want to know who's in this film, just DON'T read the cast list below.  That's all. 

Now, the problem I have is that there were a dozen ways to get here, but a HUNDRED paths lead out of this nexus movie.  The map leads almost EVERYWHERE from here, but you know what, it's not a map's job to tell me where to go, it's my job to figure out the next destination and then the map's going to help me get there, because that's how maps work.  But I think I'm going to go with these links, and that should get me ALMOST to the end of August: Emma Corrin, Kaitlyn Dever, Elisabeth Moss, Claes Bang, Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Rachel McAdams, Anton Lesser, Jai Courtney.  Then I kind of hit another nexus point, with a lot of roads leading out of it, and hopefully from there I can work out a way to get to a good film for October 1.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Deadpool 2" (Movie #2,969), "Logan" (Movie #2,613)

THE PLOT: Deadpool is offered a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by the Time Variance Authority, but instead recruits a variant of Wolverine to save his universe from extinction.  

AFTER: Theme of death or losing a loved one - you might think this one doesn't fit in, because each character can heal and is therefore invulnerable and nearly immortal, they can't die!  But this actually does fit this week's theme because Deadpool is threated with the loss of his friends and adopted family, because their whole timeline is in jeopardy, so all of his loved ones are about to be wiped from reality.  Also, Deadpool apparently comes from the same timeline as the X-Men movies and "Logan" (which doesn't really make sense, because "Logan" was set in the future, only it does maybe because Deadpool's timeline is screwed up anyway and also he doesn't care about continuity at all).  So Logan's dead, and can't be brought back to life, as Deadpool discovers, so he's got to come up with another plan if he wants a good team-up for his third movie.  

When I recently re-watched "Deadpool 2" I paid particular attention to the ending sequences, where Deadpool used Cable's time machine to right a few wrongs, like stopping Vanessa from getting killed and killing the weird Deadpool-ish thing seen in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine".  Neither of these make sense, sure Deadpool killing the weird Deadpool with no mouth is funny, but remember the part where he HEALS?  And by saving Vanessa, Deadpool set up a time paradox, because later in the film he was so despondent over her death that he blew himself and his (her?) apartment up, that led to Colossus putting him back together, which led to hanging out with Colossus and meeting Firefist, which led to working with Cable, which led to him having the power to time-travel.  So if he saves Vanessa, none of those things happen and he doesn't gain the power to time-travel, so he DOESN'T save her.  Maybe it's a double time-loop, he saves her then he doesn't then he saves her then he doesn't, etc. etc.  Or if you believe in branching timelines then he creates a new timeline where he saves Vanessa, doesn't blow himself up and things proceed from there in that timeline, and maybe he meets Cable a different way, we don't really know.  

So when I saw that Deadpool was in trouble with the Time Variance Authority, I thought, "Well, sure, he created a paradox in the last film, PLUS he killed a variant of himself, which could be another no-no, so OF COURSE the TVA wants to round him up. But it turns out that isn't why they're mad at him at all, in fact we find out that a guy from the TVA, Mr. Paradox, wants to help him out, by letting him relocate to the main (?) timeline, aka the MCU, because his whole timeline is about to be "pruned", just because the anchor being of that reality (Logan) has died.  Sure, it seems like a waste to ruin a perfectly good reality just because one superhero kicked it, but that's where we find ourselves, assuming that you believe Mr. Paradox, and maybe you shouldn't. 

But this leads Deadpool on a multiversal search to find a new Wolverine, this one's too short and that one's too stabby, and THAT one isn't even played by Hugh Jackman, which is all a bit weird.  Finally he finds one that he can work with AND he wears the cool yellow and blue costume from the comics (Deadpool seems to know all the comics, even the ones he doesn't appear in) but he accidentally chooses the one that the TVA thinks is the WORST Wolverine of all, and anyway the TVA guy tells him that you can't just replace an anchor being with a variant, OK, that would have been good to know earlier.  So Paradox deals with this naughty Deadpool and this unworthy Wolverine by sending them both to the Void, which was last seen in the Marvel TV series "Loki" and it's where comic-book characters go when they're no longer needed or are basically forgotten by the writers.  

(Regarding the multiple Wolverines, I'm reminded of a recent comic-book mini-series called "Weapon X-Men", which had a team of five different Logans from five different realities teaming up to defeat Onslaught, a villain who traditionally was a mix of Professor X and Magneto, but in this reality was a mix of Magneto and Jean Grey. Yeah, I don't know how that works either, combining two heroes to form a villain, but let's roll with it.  The assembled Team Wolverine includes a one-handed berserker from the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, an old Logan from the Old Man Logan future, a zombie Wolvie from the "Marvel Zombies" comic, a retired fat Wolverine from a comic called "Earth X" and a female Wolverine named Jane Howlett from the 1800's. Well, Wolverine calls himself "the best there is at what I do", so five Wolverines should really be outstanding, right?  Eh, not so much, these guys have a lot of problems, but I think they still managed to defeat the evil power in five issues.)

Back to the Void, which looks a bit like that trash planet in "Thor: Ragnarok", only with a lot more space.  Actually it looks more like the Wasteland seen in the "Mad Max" movies, and this kind of gets confirmed when a bunch of punk leather-clad villains roll up in vehicles from other Marvel movies (including a Fantasticar) and they're all cast-offs or variants from the other realities - like the old Sabertooth from the first two "X-Men" movies, or Pyro from the same series, and they all work for Cassandra Nova, the little-known twin sister to Professor Xavier, who was really only in a few Marvel Comics (New X-Men, I want to say) before most writers and fans completely forgot about her, so yeah, she definitely belongs in the Void.  She's also got a Juggernaut, a Blob, a Toad, a Bullseye, and a Lady Deathstrike working for her, among others.  

They also encounter someone that at first looks like Captain American, but nope, he's the Human Torch from one of the THREE failed attempts at getting the Fantastic Four to catch on in a movie. Honestly, I can't decide whether the first or third try was the worst, but the second one wasn't THAT bad, it got a sequel, right?  Anyway, it seems like Human Torch has been in the Void for quite a while, and he manages to pass along some information to Deadsy and Wolfy about a band of Outlanders that lives on the outskirts of the Void, which might have the ability to figure out how to get them home.  But first they've got to escape from the clutches of Cassandra Nova before they find the resistance group. 

With help from a Deadpool variant they find wandering through the Void (just wait, more are on the way...) and his car, they reach the resistance, and they're made up of more former Fox Marvel Heroes, but you've got enough spoilers from me already.  Big names, heavy hitters mostly, only if you look at them another way they're two has-beens and a never-were, really.  Which maybe explains why we never saw more "Daredevil" or "Blade" movies, for example, because for some reason those franchises' realities were pruned and their non-anchor beings just ended up in the Void, aka Movie Limbo.  Plus we all know that rights to all those Fox movie characters reverted back to Marvel/Disney when they bought up the assets of 20th Century Fox.  Yes, we're seeing corporate deals being played out in the plots of these movies now, but only Deadpool references them directly.  

(Regarding the resistance group, or Outlanders, or whatever, I'm reminded of another Marvel comic called Exiles, and there were two volumes, I think - in both cases five or six heroes (some were variants of the ones in the main Earth-616 reality) would come together because their realities were in trouble or in danger of not existing any more, and they had to dimension-hop across the multiverse fighting evil, but also looking for a way to fix their own realities and maybe return to them, if possible. That's what this group of forgotten heroes reminded me of, I just wish they'd called themselves the Exiles.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Paradox is planning to use a device called a Time Ripper to destroy Deadpool's reality, however Deadpool's friends and love interest are still inside it, so after defeating Cassandra Nova with the help of the Resistance, they have to portal back to Earth-10005 and try to find the device, however first they have to fight about 100 Deadpools from the different realities, who are standing in their way.  There's Nicepool and Ladypool and CowboyPool and even Headpool, who's just a floating zombie Deadpool head that can still somehow talk.  

(Regarding the multiple 'Pools, there was another comic called Deadpool Corps, which featured, you guessed it, Deadpool variants from across the multi-verse coming together to defeat the evil power. I don't remember as much about it as "Weapon X-Men" or "Exiles", but I remember that it exist, as the comics have been pulling this Multiverse shit for a long time to sell more comics - jeez, if one character is popular then we need 10 more just like him, stat!  The movies, meanwhile, are allegedly now half-way through the "Multiverse Saga" that began with "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and then continued with the "Loki" show and "Ant-Man: Quantumania" and a bit at the end of "The Marvels".  Guys, let's wrap this up early, what do you say, because the guy who was playing Kang got cancelled, so, come on, enough Multiverse stuff.  That's all that announcement from Comic-Con about Robert Downey Jr. playing Dr. Doom was, it's just more multiverse crap.)

No shocker ending, as WolvPool and DeadErino team up to defeat Cassandra Nova while she's using the Time Ripper, because good will always defeat evil because it's nicer and has better abs.  Also teamwork makes the dream work.  And the worst Wolverine gets to live on in the reality where old Logan died, so that's something, everyone deserves a fresh start now and again. And Deadpool saved his friends and his reality, and that's enough for now, until we see him in "Secret Wars" where Dr. Doom takes bits and pieces of all different realities and stitches them together to form BattleWorld, where all the heroes and villains will have to fight each other.  Or so I predict.  

One final note about the cast list below - there's a clip reel of footage and outtakes from most of the Marvel movies made by Fox, as a partially tongue-in-cheek tribute to those movies, and the era that they represent, when some Marvel movies were made by one company, and other Marvel movies were made by another, and that's the genesis for the split-universe or multi-verse, and the reason why some characters can't interact with others in movies, unless they use a time-machine or go dimension-hopping through the void.  So there's archive footage in "Deadpool & Wolverine" from the "X-Men" movies and the "Fantastic Four" movies and even "Daredevil", but the IMDB does NOT officially count these as "appearances", because they're not part of the main narrative, or they're from behind-the-scenes or some stupid reason.  Now, to me, an appearance is an appearance, any time some actor is on the screen, it counts (unless their vocals appear in a song, that's out of my purview).  So usually the IMDB is the definitive source for who "appears" in a movie, but now for this I have to do my own record-keeping, which is a lot more work, and it means I can't trust the IMDB search function for the rest of the year.  I have a similar problem with documentaries, but eventually the IMDB comes around and gives in and listens to me about who's in archive footage, but they're digging their heels in on this one, which is very frustrating.  

There are still a few things that don't quite make sense, like we see Deadpool applying to be an Avenger in the main Marvel timeline.  Umm, why?  And how?  We don't seem him traveling to this timeline to do this, and how does he know about Earth-616 and how does he even know about the Avengers?  Also, why is Happy Hogan acting like Iron Man is still alive, when he isn't alive any more in that timeline?  It's a puzzling aside, but just like Deadpool's present is somehow Logan's future, it doesn't really have to all line up, everything just takes place in "story time", which means that everything is possible and continuity doesn't matter at all, things just happen when they do because that's what the writers want to have happen.  

Now I've got a difficult choice to make, because this movie's cast is SO big and there are so many connections, I could go almost anywhere from here.  But I've found that I can't really GO anywhere without a destination in mind - but as George Harrison once sang, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."  So I guess I just have to pick one road out of town and take it. 

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Dafne Keen (last seen in "Logan"), Jon Favreau (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Chris Evans (ditto), Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Leslie Uggams (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Jennifer Garner (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Wesley Snipes (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "She's the Man"), Henry Cavill (last seen in "Black Adam"), Wunmi Mosaku (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Aaron Stanford (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Tyler Mane (last seen in "Troy"), Karan Soni (last heard in "Strange World"), Brianna Hildebrand (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Randal Reeder (ditto), Shioli Kutsuna (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Lewis Tan (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Nicholas Pauley (last seen in "The Prom"), Sonita Henry (last seen in "Star Trek"), Ryan McKen (last seen in "Hope Gap"), Nanak Phlora, Aydin Ahmed, Leemore Marrett Jr. (last seen in "The Batman"), James Dryden (last seen in "The Dig"), Ollie Palmer, Greg Hemphill, Aaron W Reed (last seen in "Free Guy"), Mike Waters, Rob McElhenney (last seen in "13 Conversations About One Thing"), James Reynolds, Ed Kear, Paul G. Raymond (last seen in "Wonka"), Inez Reynolds, Olin Reynolds, Paul Mullin, Alex Kyshkovych, Billy Clements (last seen in "Heart of Stone"), Daniel Medina Ramos, Eduardo Gago Munoz, Jade Lye, Ayesha Hussain, Curtis Small, Harry Holland, Kevin Fortin (last seen in "Good Boys"), and the voices of Nathan Fillion (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Stefan Kapicic (last seen in "The Brothers Bloom"), Blake Lively (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Matthew McConaughey (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only")

with archive footage of Ben Affleck (last seen in "The Flash"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Halle Berry (last seen in "The Program"), Michael Chiklis (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Brian Cox (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Alan Cumming (last seen in "Loser"), Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Stan Lee") Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "The Menu"), Kelly Hu (last heard in "Batman: Under the Red Hood"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "All I Wish"), Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Creed III"), Jennifer Lawrence (also last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Stan Lee (also last seen in "Stan Lee"), James Marsden (last seen in "Unfrosted"), James McAvoy (last seen in "The Bubble"), Ian McKellen (last seen in "Cats"), Evan Peters (last heard in "Wish"), Rebecca Romijn (last seen in "De Palma"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "Elvis"), Patrick Stewart (last seen in "Good Night Oppy"), Miles Teller (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Sophie Turner (last seen in "Barely Lethal")

RATING: 8 out of 10 references to other Hugh Jackman movies

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Year 16, Day 222 - 8/9/24 - Movie #4,809

BEFORE: I have NOT worked my path to October 1, the gap between here and there is simply too big - I don't even know how to calculate the odds of there BEING a path, let alone the odds against me finding it. Let's say there are 40 to 50 slots between here and there, even with an average of 10 actors that I could use to link out of each film, that's 10 times 10 times 10... OK, 10 to the fortieth power, that's a lot of possible chains.  Maybe it's easier to program just a few days at a time for now, until I can really get busy with some scrap paper and work out a chain when there are like 20 slots left.  30 to be on the safe side.  

But what I did was create some possible horror-film chains, played around with some chains on scrap paper, and kind of organized 2/3 of the horror movie list into strands of 13 or 14 films - now in a typical year maybe I could just dig a little deeper into the cast lists and find a way to put two strands together, thus creating a larger chain that's close to 30 days long, maybe drop in a documentary about a director who makes horror movies or a Marvel movie about Venom or Morbius or Werewolf By Night and then go with that.  But this year, if I factor in a few days off for NY Comic Con and possibly also a week down in North Carolina or a vacation somewhere else, maybe I'll just stick with one of the larger strands I already have, there's one that's 16 films long, and that's the most appealing one to me, with 3 or 4 films I really want to see, and another 5 or 6 that have been on the list for simply too long, having been passed over the last couple of Octobers.  OK, so I don't have a set chain for October yet, at least I have a target to aim for on October 1 - well, two targets, because I can always flip the chain over. And if I can't get to that target, I just came up with 6 other potential targets, which greatly increases the chance of me hitting one of them around that time. So something CAN happen, I just needed to know what to try to link to, maybe. 

Molly Shannon carries over from "Year of the Dog". 

THE PLOT: High schooler Greg, who spends most of his time making parodies of classic movies with his co-worker Earl, finds his outlook forever altered after befriending a classmate who has just been diagnosed with cancer. 

AFTER: You might expect this film to be another total bummer, because it's apparently "Loss of a Loved One" theme week here at the Movie Year.  AND, you would be RIGHT, well, mostly.  There is some comedy here, some dark and some not-so-dark.  Since the film.is set in a high school, which is by its very nature a ridiculous place, then naturally there will be at least some slice-of-life comedy.  Like Greg narrates his thoughts to us as if he's writing a screenplay (gee, HOW do these screenwrters come up with these things?) and he takes us on a tour of the school and shows us all of the social groups, and how he maintains a loose relationship with all of them, as a defense mechanism.  It's kind of like how Ferris Bueller completely ran his school, only Ferris was much, much cooler than Greg.  Everyone thought Ferris was a righteous dude, but Greg just wants to put his head down and survive high school without making any mortal enemies.  

College?  He hasn't even considered it as an option yet, because he's so busy slacking off and making amateur movies, "Wolfpack"-style, with his friend Earl.  Actually they don't call each other "friends", even though they sure seem like it, they call each other "co-workers" because they spend so much time working on their films.  Together they take classic films like "The Third Man" or "Nosferatu" and they change the title in an intentionally dumb way and then make whatever movie that title suggests.  Look, I don't know why Greg hasn't considered filmmaking as a career, or realized that many colleges offer a film production major, maybe he'll get there, I don't know.  It took me until I was 17 to figure out that I could study film, and inspiration for me came from reading George Lucas' biography - and visiting my sister at NYU certainly opened my eyes, too, suddenly I wanted what she had, a room in New York City and access to higher learning. (To be fair, yes, I followed her, but she was studying acting and I wanted no part of that, my eyes were on the film program.)

Earl gets sidetracked, however, when his mother finds out that a girl in his class is sick, she has leukemia, and somehow having the idea that her son is some kind of social butterfly (he really isn't, he's just trying to navigate all the cliques) she keeps nagging him to go and visit her, cheer her up or something, spend time with her.  Look, moms know best most of the time, but Greg's mom really doesn't understand how high school works on a social level.  But Greg goes to visit Rachel anyway, even though she doesn't want it and her divorced (?) Mom kind of creeps on him, but he sticks it out and he and Rachel find they have some things in common, and they do become friends.  

Earl keeps Rachel company during her chemotherapy and against his own better judgement, shows her some of the films that he and Earl have made.  She enjoys them, for some reason - bear in mind this was made in 2015 and Netflix wasn't really a thing yet, that's the only explanation I can come up with. Meanwhile, Madison, one of the hot girls in school (and Greg keeps telling us that the hot girls are like moose, and boys are chipmunks, and moose will just walk on chipmunks and crush them and not care.  It's not really a great analogy, but whatever) suggests that Greg and Earl should make a film for Rachel to cheer her up.  Greg starts spending more and more time making this film for Rachel (and/or to satisfy Madison?) and less time on his schoolwork, and meanwhile Rachel finds that her chemo is doing more harm than good, so she chooses to stop her treatments. 

Greg somehow blames Earl for the falling-out he has with Rachel, and Earl accuses Greg of being unable to care about anybody but himself. And Greg's admission to college gets rescinded because of his poor grades in senior year, because he focused so much on making that film and not on his schoolwork. Everything has turned into a kind of downward spiral, and even though Madison asked Greg to the prom, he instead chooses to visit Rachel, who's back in the hospital.  Yeah, the outlook isn't good for anyone here, especially Rachel.  But later on Greg gets a card from Rachel, who wrote to his college on his behalf and explained the whole situation, so who knows?  Maybe some lessons were learned in the end, however the movie kind of ends there so we never really learn if Greg ever made a career for himself in filmmaking.  

From what I just read on Wikipedia, the book this is based on actually has more of a "should I go to film school" angle to it, which sure, makes total sense.  However it also ends with a "should I make a film about Rachel" question, and I despise films about screenwriters or wanna-be directors that end with them writing or making the film you just watched.  It's a total narrative cop-out, so kudos to the movie here for avoiding that well-worn cliché. 

I'm going to let this one slide a bit, go easy on it because it's got a bunch of actors I like in it, like Nick Offerman, who is always great.  Nick Offerman plays Greg's father and he has a cat named Cat Stevens, so another point there.  Also in addition to the voice of Hugh Jackman, Jon Bernthal appears as a high-school teacher, and he played The Punisher on Marvel's Netflix series of the same name, so we almost get a Punisher and Wolverine team-up in this film, only not really at all. 

Also starring Thomas Mann (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), RJ Cyler (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Olivia Cooke (last seen in "Thoroughbreds"), Nick Offerman (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Connie Britton (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "Wind River"), Matt Bennett (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Katherine Hughes, Masam Holden (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Bobb'e J. Thompson (last seen in "Cellular"), Gavin Dietz, Edward DeBruce III, Natalie Marchelletta (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Chelsea Zhang (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Marco Zappala, Kaza Marie Ayersman (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Etta Cox (last seen in "Warrior"), Karriem Sami, Cheryl Kline, Joan Augustin (last seen in "Love & Other Drugs"), Nicole Tubbs (last seen in "White Noise"), and the voice of Hugh Jackman (last seen in "The Son") with archive footage of Klaus Kinski (last seen in "Count Dracula").

RATING: 6 out of 10 extra pillows

Year of the Dog

Year 16, Day 221 - 8/8/24 - Movie #4,808

BEFORE: Yes, I know this was supposed to be the slot for "Deadpool & Wolverine", with Hugh Jackman carrying over, but that was just a bit obvious, don't you think. I saw a way to cross a couple more films off my list on the way there, so I'm just delaying the review of that big mega-hit for two days while I deal with a couple little indie (?) movies, because eventually everything's got to be watched, right?  If I see a way to work in another film or two, things that have been on the list for months, I should seize the opportunity now, before I start running out of slots for the year. 

Laura Dern carries over from "The Son".  

THE PLOT: A secretary's life changes in unexpected ways after her dog dies. 

AFTER: This is the first film directed by Mike White, the guy who co-wrote and starred in "Chuck & Buck" and "The School of Rock" and "The Good Girl" before he became a contestant on both "The Amazing Race" and "Survivor", then he wrote a few more films and is now the writer/director of "The White Lotus" series, which I don't watch.  But I know him from the other things, like as the screenwriter for "Beatriz at Dinner" and 'Pitch Perfect 3" and "The One and Only Ivan".  Some writers just seem to be everywhere, but I guess there must be people who write one screenplay and then get out of the business, it stands to reason.  

Mike White wrote this film after the death of a stray cat that lived behind his house, one that he had grown attached to, and the death of the cat made him depressed and as a result he fell behind in his writing work, and supposedly a TV show that he was a show-runner for started to suffer, and according to Mike, it got cancelled shortly after that.  While he didn't name the show, it could be "Pasadena" or "Cracking Up" or who knows, maybe something else.  But the cat dying was changed to a dog dying for this film, because dogs are easier to work with in movies, probably.  White said it was easier to depict the emotional connection someone would have with a dog, although he's a cat person, as am I.  There are really two types of people, dog people and cat people, and I identify with the latter. 

So here an office-worker's beloved dog, Pencil, dies, and Peggy goes through many different feelings and stages as a result.  Although she had been forming a friendship with her neighbor,

and even goes on a date with him after Pencil dies, he relates a story about accidentally shooting his own dog while hunting, and so clearly these two are probably not going to end up together. Instead she becomes convinced that her dog ate something poisonous in her neighbor's garage, and that becomes a point of tension between them.  

Peggy gets a call from Newt, one of the assistants in the vet's office, who saw her come in with her dying dog, and he also works for the SPCA, and he offers her a replacement dog to adopt, one that he has been training (poorly) and one he can't keep because he already has three dogs.  Peggy accepts this dog, Valentine, to fill the void in her life, however Valentine has behavior problems and even bites her at one point.  But she keeps up the dog's training with Newt, and grows closer to him as a result.  However, Newt claims to be celibate and doesn't seem to have room in his life for a relationship - also, Peggy can't quite figure out if he prefers the company of women, men or dogs for that matter, he's a tough one to read. 

Meanwhile, Peggy starts to get more involved with the cause of animal rights, and starts writing fraudulent checks from the corporate account to various activist groups and farms that she finds on the web that claim to function as animal shelters for rescued or discarded animals.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  Also, over the New Year's break, her brother and his wife take a trip and leave Peggy in charge of house-sitting and babysitting their two kids.  Peggy takes her niece and nephew to a farm to show them the animals she "adopted" for them as Christmas gifts - but probably with the office's money.  She also discards her sister-in-law's expensive furs, which aren't as fake as she was led to believe. 

But when she goes to pick up Valentine from Newt's place, she learns that Valentine got out of control and killed one of his crippled dogs, and so he felt obligated to take Valentine to the pound and have him euthanized.  Peggy tries to reach the shelter in time to stop this, but she's too late. Once again making decisions out of grief, she decides to adopt all the dogs out of the shelter, 15 in total - and that's way too many dogs for her to handle.  I get it, her heart's in the right place, I might be inclined to do the same, this is why I like to cap the number of cats in the house at one time at two.  OK, sometimes three, but three really is the limit. 

There's more to the story, but I won't reveal the other twists and turns in Peggy's story.  Suffice it to say that the film keeps building to more illogical scenarios, but this kind of makes sense because when you're grieving you might be inclined to make rash decisions, any loss of a family member or a pet can easily depress you to a point where you may want to just burn down your whole situation (literally or figuratively) and just start fresh somewhere else, doing something else.  It's an understandable reaction, or over-reaction perhaps, to tragic events.  Still, I'm just not sure about how it works, either as a comedy or a black comedy.  

Still, I've got a clear-ish theme for the week, starting with "Armageddon Time" and continuing with "The Son" and now this one, and I assume tomorrow's film as well.  It's all about loss of family members, once again the chain knows how to properly link films together, even if I don't. 

Also starring Molly Shannon (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Regina King (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Thomas McCarthy (last seen in "Jack Goes Boating"), Josh Pais (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Sr."), Peter Sarsgaard (last heard in "The Guilty"), Amy Schlagel (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Zoe Schlagel, Dale Godboldo (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Inara George, Liza Weil (last seen in "Dragonfly"), Jon Shere (last seen in "The Good Girl"), Christy Moore, Audrey Wasilewski (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Brenda Canela (last seen in "Spanglish"), Craig Cackowski (last seen in "Wine Country"), Steve Berg (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Susan Mackin, Chuck Duffy, Sonya Eddy (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Ursula Brauner, Giddle Partridge, Benjamin Koesling, Dominik Koesling, Marilyn Zack.

RATING: 4 out of 10 stuffed animals

The Son

Year 16, Day 219 - 8/6/24 - Movie #4,807

BEFORE: OK, here's the film that's going to get me to "Deadpool & Wolverine", although I may want to change the plan a bit, I haven't decided. It's very unsettling to not have a plan to the end of the year, or even to October at this point. Sure, there's two months until the start of the horror chain, but any wrong movie choice COULD prevent me from getting there. I need to put some time toward figuring out which horror movies I want to watch this year, also how many, that's important too.  Also I need to allocate the right number of slots for August and September, that process goes hand in hand, I can't just keep looking two or three steps ahead, there's too much chance of breaking the chain.  So even if "Deadpool & Wolverine" is my next nexus point, where the hell do I go from there? 

OK, relax, let's take this in baby steps.  Step 1, get to "Deadpool & Wolverine", that leads to step 2, figure out the cast list for that movie, because that may give some direction to the process. Step 3, go through the list of new movies streaming in August, and also maybe new movies coming out in theaters this fall, that could be important.  Then Step 4, pick the damn horror movies for October, it's OK if there's just 15 or 20 in a small chain, that can work, too.  And THEN, and only THEN can I start to figure out how to connect from here to there.  Until then, I can only safely program two or three movies at a time. Life on the edge. 

Anthony Hopkins carries over one more time from "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver". 

THE PLOT: Peter has his busy life with his new partner Beth and their baby thrown into disarray when his ex-wife Kate turns up with their teenage son, Nicholas. 

AFTER: This is another film that played at the theater where I work, and I worked at the screening (late October, 2022), but it was during the weekly Tuesday night class, and I'm not allowed to sit in.  I have to be in the office, just in case of emergency, because if there's a fire or something, steps need to be taken.  Preferably very quick ones, out of the building. JK. But I think I remember something about the Q&A after the movie, the director or writer was there, perhaps it was by Zoom, so maybe I had to move the microphone around the theater so people could ask questions, but then of course that's not akin to watching the movie, and also I may find out spoilers while doing that, so honestly I try to tune out the discussion, so I can see the film cold later on. 

Let me try to get my mind off of "Deadpool & Wolverine", which is not easy for me, so I can focus on "The Son".  I'll get to Deadpool and whats-his-face soon enough.  Honestly, I was going to save this film for a Father's Day, but realistically, two Fathers Days have come and gone since this film was put on the list, and I'm not sure it's going to line up next year, so let me put it HERE and it serves a greater purpose, as a movie that helps connect the end of the Doc Block to this very important (?) Marvel movie.  Look, I know I'm going to get there eventually, but it's a SLOW week for TV, everything's on hold like talk shows and stuff because of the Olympics, which is usually a ratings giant, although I couldn't care less about it.  

Maybe it should be a Father's Day film, IDK - or maybe since it's about Peter Miller, a man in his second marriage, after a divorce, it belongs in a February chain since it's about a lot of relationship stuff.  Maybe I should just stop overthinking it and just appreciate this film being where it is, OK?  The film is really about the relationship between Peter and Nicholas, his teen son from his first marriage, who's been ditching school for a solid month, and has asked his mother if he can go live with his father for a while, instead of with her.  Somehow, Peter's second wife, Beth, is OK with this, there's a newborn baby in the apartment and also, she and Peter haven't been together very long, maybe just two or three years, you'd think this situation would be very problematic, which of course it is. 

Nicholas is struggling with depression, he can't explain why he ditched school for a month, or where he went every day when he was supposed to be at school, also he might be cutting himself, which is not a good sign.  Sure, it's a side effect of the depression but it's still a form of self-harm and indicates that he may need therapy or a more serious treatment for his depression.  There really should have been a point here where Peter maybe should have looked into this, but he's a busy man with a high-stress job and he's probably guilty here of both looking the other way and also being overly optimistic about Nicholas's prospects of getting better. 

Eventually, it all comes out, when Peter finds out that Nicholas hasn't been to his new school in some time either, and he's fallen back into all of his old bad habits.  Nicholas blames his depression on his father, for leaving his first marriage to start a second one, however this falls on deaf ears, Peter never really takes responsibility for the damage he may have inadvertently caused by falling in love with a new partner, and realizing that he was only staying with his first wife for the sake of his son.  However, Peter reached a point where he couldn't do that any more, but there are still repercussions any time you burn down your whole life and head out to start a new one. 

Nicholas is hospitalized after what we assume is a suicide attempt, and then placed in some kind of psychiatric facility, where the doctors want to limit his contact with his parents. Peter doesn't go on his summer holiday with Beth and their baby, because he wants to stay close to Nicholas while he's in treatment.  When Peter and his ex-wife Kate finally do get to visit him, Nicholas tells them that he wants desperately to come home, that the facility is terrible, that he'll behave and go to school - really, it seems he'll say anything at that point to get his parents to sign his release, which the medical staff can't prevent, although they strongly recommend that Nicholas stays in treatment longer.  Peter and Kate are faced with a very difficult decision to make, do they follow the advice of the doctors who want to keep him under observation and treatment longer, or do they listen to their own son, who claims he's thinking more clearly and wants to come home.  I'd say to err on the safe side here, but you guys do you, what could possibly go wrong? 

Anthony Hopkins plays Peter's father (Nicholas' grandfather) who similarly left Peter and his mother when he fell in love with someone new - Peter goes to visit him in D.C. at one point after Nicholas moves in, as if to demonstrate to his own father that he's a better father than he ever was.  Sure, you're taking care of your son, Peter, but you STILL walked out on him and his mother, nothing can change that, so really, aren't you just like your own father, at heart?  So, yeah, there's a lot to unpack in this movie, a lot of people feeling guilt about their own actions, and maybe remorse over the way things have gone down over time, but still, people make mistakes, it's part of being human, and naturally all relationships end at some point, but it's how we deal with these things that matter.  How can we live our lives without having negative impacts on other people?  Sometimes it's just not possible, and sometimes we end up making bad choices for that reason.  

We might think we're doing well and winning at life, but honestly, that often remains to be seen.  We could just be moving forward and continuing to make the same mistakes over and over, or worse, making the same mistakes our parents did, just in new ways.  But that's kind of a bummer, isn't it? 

Also starring Hugh Jackman (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Vanessa Kirby (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), Zen McGrath, Shin-Fei Chen (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), William Hope (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Nancy Baldwin (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Akie Kotabe (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Isaura Barbé-Brown (last seen in "The Favourite"), Erick Hayden (last seen in "The Gunman"), Joseph Mydell (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Rachel Handshaw (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), George Potts (last seen in "The Current War"), George Cobell, Yolanda Nieto, Danielle Lewis (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Gretchen Egolf (last seen in "The Namesake"), Alex Mugnaioni, Hugh Quarshie (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Mercedes Bahleda, Van Pierre. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 boardroom meetings

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver

Year 16, Day 218 - 8/5/24 - Movie #4,806

BEFORE: The voice of Anthony Hopkins carries over from "Rebel Moon - Part One" and so does pretty much the entire cast. I might set a record tonight for most people carrying over from one film to another. 

This is one more way that "Rebel Moon" is either ripping off "Star Wars", or paying homage to it, whichever way you want to look at it. Hopkins voices the robot named "Jimmy", and to hear a beautiful British male voice coming from a droid, naturally that's going to call to mind Anthony Daniels as the voice of C-3PO.  But this Jimmy droid is kind of a cross between C-3P0 and those battle droids seen in "Star Wars: Episode 1", or maybe K-2SO from "Rogue One", I'm not sure which.  But I think a lot of characters here aren't direct rip-offs of specific "Star Wars" characters, they're more like amalgams of several put together, if that makes sense. 

THE PLOT: Kora and the surviving warriors prepare to defend Veldt, their new home, alongside its people against the Realm. The warriors face their pasts, revealing their motivations before the Realm's forces arrive to crush the growing rebellion.  

AFTER: The semi-magnificent Seven warriors make it to the village they were hired to defend, but they do so believing that they won't have to fight, because Atticus Noble is dead, for sure, Kora definitely killed him and it would be EXTREMELY unlikely for him to somehow be alive in the second film, like if he got revived by future science or dark magic and came back stronger than before, which would, I don't know, prompt the need for a second film with even more fight scenes than the first one?  Come on, that's crazy talk, once a character in a sci-fi or fantasy film dies, they're dead forever, right?  I mean, except Boba Fett. And Emperor Palpatine. And Darth Maul. And Gandalf.  And Spock.  And Ellen Ripley.  And half of the Marvel heroes.  

You see where I'm going with this - we just can't do this without a good villain, and the good bad ones always find a way to come back, right?  Sometimes just a week later or maybe even a day, because why think up a new one when you can just bring back the old one?  Writers are funny that way. I've seen every Marvel hero get "killed" at least twice since I've been reading comics, and the villains ten times more often. It's almost meaningless to say that a comic book character died, because none of them have managed to stay dead.  There used to be a saying that "everyone comes back...except Bucky" but then some writer brought him back as the Winter Soldier, so he was no longer the exception that proved the rule. 

This sequel took a while to get going again, because the whole second half is just one giant fight scene, but if we get there too quickly, then there's no suspense at all.  So the Imperium is on the way to Veldt, they want to use that grain deal as an excuse to blow the whole village up from space, but, you know, space is really really big so it's going to take them a few days to get there.  The heroes, meanwhile, got there in a flash, why is their spaceship so much faster than the villains ship?  The heroes went all over the galaxy assembling this team, and then had to fly back to Veldt, and wouldn't you know it, they somehow got there five days before the villains did.  What are the odds, now the humble villagers have time to harvest their grain AND learn how to use guns and explosives to defend themselves.  Wow, if their spaceship had been just a little bit slower, they really would have been in a pickle.  (COME ON!)

I've technically never seen "Seven Samurai", but I've seen "The Magnificent Seven" - both versions, and so I know the drill here.  The heroes are there to defend the village, but they also serve to inspire the farmers to defend themselves, which is better all around in the long run.  However, I wonder if it really serves these noble peasants to be turned into killers, even in the name of self-defense.  They're not warriors at heart, after all, and how are they going to feel about themselves after they've killed their enemies?  Well, alive, for one thing, but what effect will the battle have on their souls, if they're not noble innocent peasants any more?  What if they get a taste for killing, or worse, can't live with themselves after their actions.  It's a valid question that only I seem to be asking.  Like, they hired the seven warriors for exactly this reason, to defend the village against the evil power, to kill on the villagers' behalf.  OK, so sure, train them to slice up scarecrows and blow up vehicles, and I guess we'll sort out the morality of it all later. 

So I'm afraid the sequel is a bit more predictable than the first film, if that's even possible.  If you've seen "The Magnificent Seven" and/or "Seven Samurai" then this is all going to feel a bit old-hat to you, as if you've seen it before and you know exactly where.  They had to dive deeper into the back-story of each team member here, which helps fill that time before the attack.  And we also get more of Kora's back-story, which just happens to also be the back-story of what happened to the King and Queen, why they're no longer among the living, and that's also how the Imperium (Empire/First Order) took over the galaxy.  Kora felt extremely guilty about her role in the coup, so that's why she ended up on the most remote moon she could find, and started living among the simple farmers, and trying to forget.  Forget what?  Exactly.

Finally the bad guys get to the moon, and we can start the battle that we've been anticipating for the last movie and a half. There are more call-backs to the Star Wars franchise, I couldn't help but think of the AT-AT snow walkers when I saw those walking tanks slowly advancing toward the village.  Sure, it's not a snowy world like Hoth (nor a desert planet like Tatooine) but a battle is a battle, no matter where you go.  The Imperium attacks from space, but also sends down "dropships" to get those tanks close to the village.  But not too close, they still need to build up some suspense here. 

Nemesis fights valiantly with her two laser swords (that are kind of like, but not completely like lightsabers) and Tarak teams up with the woman who looks like Furiosa from the "Mad Max" franchise, only she's not, and Kora and Gunnar have a mission of their own, to disguise themselves as stormtroopers and get aboard the Star Destroyer. No, wait, that can't be right.  But it kind of is, isn't it?  And Jimmy finally gets something done, he somehow overrode his programming and was able to fight again, something about hearing the dead princess's name?  Anyway it was great to finally see him pulling his weight.  I'm going to count him as the Seventh hero here, because as we established yesterday, there always have to be seven, because eight or more is too many for audiences to keep track of. 

Look, we all really know how this one is going to end, the only question really concerns how many of the team of plucky heroes will survive the battle.  And it can't be all of them, that's just a bit too unrealistic.  Then they throw out a teaser for the next film's mission, a reason to keep the team together and focused, and roll credits. Again, after the huge set-up that was Part One, it just feels like the whole of Part Two was just following the formula, painting by the numbers and ticking all the boxes.  A "fait accompli" if you will, look, I'll hang out long enough to see where everything lands, and sure, put me down for another installment, but they've got to get more original than this if they want to really hold my interest.  Maybe I'm just jaded and I've seen it all before, though, I can't really say. 

Also starring Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Staz Nair, Fra Fee, Cleopatra Coleman, Stuart Martin, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Alfonso Herrera, Cary Elwes, Rhian Rees, Elise Duffy, Sky Yang, Charlotte Maggi, Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Dustin Ceithamer, Josefine Lindegaard, Melissa Hunt, Sisse Marie, Thomas Ohrstrom, Thor Knai, Savanna Gann, Danielle Burgio, Julian Grant, Patrick Luwis, Tomm Voss, Christine Kellogg-Darrin, Skylar Okerstrom-Lang, Caden Dragomer, Kayden Alexander Koshelev, Kingston Foster, Brett Robert Culbert, Max Pescherine, Matt Nolan, Hamish Sturgeon, Adam J. Smith, MIchael James Bell, Richard Cetrone, Paul Sinacore, Raphael Corkhill, Kendall Wells, Daisy Davis, Zoe Sansanowicz (all 46 carrying over from "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Kevin Stidham, Charlie Clapham (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2"), Darren Jacobs, Gildart Jackson, Soma Mitra.

RATING: 5 out of 10 booby-traps (you know, like the ones the Ewoks set)

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

Year 16, Day 217 - 8/4/24 - Movie #4,805

BEFORE: I've got a busy week coming up, even though I'm not due back at the theater until next Sunday.  My ex-boss is having her 60th birthday party, and I have to start preparing for a colonoscopy exam a week ahead of the date, by changing my diet, that's not going to be fun. I'm not supposed to eat any nuts, seeds, corn or beans for a week, but those are some of my favorite things, so I really don't know what I'm going to eat. That fun starts on Thursday, after the party on Wednesday.  On Tuesday I'd really like to go see "Deadpool & Wolverine", because I won't be able to eat popcorn for a while after that.  Also, I have not seen a movie in a theater for almost a year. I know, it almost doesn't make sense because I WORK at one.  But I may not be able to post the review until Thursday. It's OK, just like the beer festival I was at yesterday, anything that slows down my movie watching right now is a good thing.  If I don't take breaks, I may run out of slots for the year.  But since there's really nothing on TV except the boring Olympics, I have to watch movies this week just to keep myself entertained. 

Anthony Hopkins carries over from "Armageddon Time".  

THE PLOT: When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by a tyrannical ruling force, a stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival. 

AFTER: What I really should be doing is figuring out my horror movie chain, October is closer than I think it is, however in my defense I haven't figured out how many slots I have for October, because if you take away a few days for vacation and a few days for NY Comic-Con, I may not have a full month to program, it could be more like 20 days or even 15, and that's a lot easier than 30 days. I probably couldn't even link 30 horror films together any more, so maybe it's for the best.  Still, I should devote some time this week to blocking it out, or just picking a smallish chain (or two) and running with it.  I also can't even start to link there until I watch the new Deadpool film, I want to be surprised by the cameos so that means I can't program after it until I, you know, watch it. But not having a destination past the next 3 movies or a way to get there is a very unsettling feeling, I don't like it. 

Let me try to stay in the moment and just focus on "Rebel Moon".  I worked at a screening of this film last December, so I saw little bits of it, but I also tried to not learn too much, I wanted to go in to it cold, when I could link to it.  It's definitely a riff on "Star Wars", but really, what sci-fi movie isn't?  I heard the rumor that at one point Zack Snyder pitched these "Rebel Moon" films as potential Star Wars sequels, but it didn't work out. So this film COULD have become SW: Episode 7, maybe?  Only Lucasfilm wanted to go in a different direction?  So the Imperium here is a stand-in for the Empire, there's a bunch of plucky rebels who need to work together to take down the evil forces ruling the galaxy, sure, it all fits.  But Snyder now claims that the real inspiration for this film is "Seven Samurai", or the American Western version, "The Magnificent Seven", because in both cases a team of 7 warriors has to be put together to defend a small town from the Imperialist forces.  George Lucas cited Japanese films as an inspiration for the first "Star Wars" film, too, only it was a different Kurosawa film.  

But then there's also Zack Snyder drawing on his own work, because this film also brings to mind "Justice League", which also has 7 heroes with different powers and different backgrounds working together to defeat the evil power.  So Part One of "Rebel Moon" is therefore really about bringing the team together, and we probably won't get to see what they can do when they work together until Part Two. Yeah, this tracks - so really today's film is "Star Wars" meets the first half of "Justice League", but maybe with a little bit of "Guardians of the Galaxy" thrown in.  Don't get me wrong, that's a fine formula, but it also seems just a bit derivative, like it can't just be it's own thing, we have to have two people travel to other planets and recruit five more warriors, because the number in the group has to be seven. They found out through a focus group that movie watchers can't handle eight people on a team, it has to be seven. (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and 2 droids. Yep, 7 seems about right)

The trouble starts when a small farming colony on a remote moon is visited by an Imperial Dreadnought ship (kind of like a rectangular Star Destroyer) and the soldiers want to buy the colony's excess grain. The farmers claim there is no surplus, no excess, they only farm enough to keep themselves fed. But the Imperium leader, Atticus Noble, digs a little deeper with conversation and finds out that there IS a reserve of grain, so he gets to accuse the village leader of lying, and then he gets to kill that leader and take the grain - but you feel the negotiations were probably always going to come down to this, with the army taking what they want and paying the minimum for it, with the intent of allowing the farming colony to starve. They leave a bunch of mean, rapey soldiers behind and say they'll come back in nine weeks for the grain.  This at least gives Gunnar (the lead farmer) and Kora (a stranger from another world living in the farming colony) time to put a team together to defend the moon, after they fight and kill the soldiers who were about to rape an innocent farm-girl.  

Somewhere else on their moon, they find a bar with a lot of weird aliens (kind of like that cantina in, well, you know) and Kora and Gunnar have an incident with some shady people there, but they meet a smuggler and starship pilot named Kai in the cantina. (Reminds me of Han Solo in the Tatooine cantina, but whatever...). Kai agrees to take them to Pollux to find the fabled General Titus, who's fighting in the gladiator arena there, but Kai also has some other ideas about people they can pick up along the way, heroes from different worlds who will join their cause.  There's Tarak, a sort of Tarzan/John Carter character who can tame large beasts, and Nemesis, a cybernetically-enhanced swordswoman who has two swords that light up but are somehow not lightsabers. (Hmmm again...). Finally they get to Pollux and find the great warrior Titus, but he's drunk and sleeping in an alley, which is very kind of "Magnificent Seven". 

The rag-tag bunch of misfits with different powers picks up one more member, when they reach the rebel base - I mean, the hide-out of the Bloodaxes, they get Darrian Bloodaxe himself, one of the leaders of, well, the rebels. This conveniently brings their force up to seven major people with a bunch more rebels tagging along as cannon fodder.  Focus on the seven.  But that's all the plot I'm willing to give out, no spoilers here, but it's obvious that since the team was put together to battle Atticus Noble and the Imperium, that's what they end up doing.  And they appear to win, sure, but come on, remember this is Part One of Two, if they really won at the end of this film there would be no need for Part Two.  Sorry, Mario, your princess is in another castle, and really, it was no surprise at all that the bad guy would be only MOSTLY dead, and get Darth Vadered (or something close to it) so he'll be back again tomorrow, when the real fight begins, I assume. 

I wish Part One could have been about something more than getting the team together, and in a way it is, but this is a necessary part of the storytelling, to show us the hero's journey for each character, especially Kora.  Whenever there's some downtime she reveals a bit more of her backstory to Gunnar, and really, there's a lot to sort through, she had a whole different life before she had to hide out on that tiny moon, and eventually we're going to figure it all out, it's just a bit unfortunate that flashbacks were the chosen method of relaying this all to us, because it's coming in a form where some assembly is required.  You get the feeling that it's all eventually going to come together, well, here's hoping anyway.  The advantage of waiting so long to watch Part One is that I can just go right into Part Two tomorrow.  So we'll see where this story ends up landing, is it all just more stuff that will call other films like "Dune" to mind, or is there something original here that doesn't just rip off other movies?  

True to form for a Zack Snyder outing, there is now the original cut of Chapter One (2 hrs, 14 min.) and a Director's Cut (3 hrs, 24 min.) so I had to make a choice. I went with the original cut, there will always be time later to watch the longer cut if I should deem it necessary to do so. Still, it's really great to be watching fiction again.

Also starring Sofia Boutella (last seen in "Prisoners of the Ghostland"), Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Ed Skrein (last seen in "Midway"), Michiel Huisman (last seen in "Kate"), Doona Bae (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Ray Fisher (last seen in "Justice League"), Charlie Hunnam (last seen in "A Million Little Pieces"), Staz Nair, Fra Fee (last seen in "Les Miserables"), Cleopatra Coleman (last seen in '"In the Shadow of the Moon"), Stuart Martin (last seen in "Slow West"), Ingvar Sigurdsson (last seen in "The Northman"), Alfonso Herrera, Cary Elwes (last seen in "Georgia Rule"), Rhian Rees (last seen in "Babylon"), Elise Duffy, Jena Malone (last seen in "Lovesong"), Sky Yang (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Charlotte Maggi, Corey Stoll (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Greg Kriek (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Brandon Auret (last seen in "Chappie"), Ray Porter (last seen in "The Runaways"), Tony Amendola (last seen in "Father Stu"), Dominic Burgess (last seen in "Ma"), Derek Mears (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Dustin Ceithamer (last seen in "The New Mutants"), Elizabeth Martinez, Josefine Lindegaard (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Melissa Hunt, Colby Lemmo, Sisse Marie, Thomas Ohrstrom, Thor Knai, Savanna Gann, Danielle Burgio (last seen in "The Dictator"), Julian Grant, Patrick Luwis (last seen in "Barbie"), Tomm Voss, Christine Kellogg-Darrin, Skylar Okerstrom-lant, Caden Dragomer, Kayden Alexander Koshelev (last seen in "Me Time"), Kingston Foster, Christopher Matthew Cook (last seen in "Black Adam"), Ben Geurens, Raphael Corkhill (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Kendall Wells (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Daisy Davis, Rayne Bidder, Kristen Endow, John Fantasia, Maeve Garay, Yu-Beng Lim, Pia Salo, Zoe Sansanowicz.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 Hawkshaws (bounty hunters, hmmm....)