Meg 2: The Trench

Year 16, Day 244 - 8/31/24 - Movie #4,828

BEFORE: I'm back again to ruin your last good beach weekend for the summer. You're welcome.  My wife is currently re-watching all of "Survivor", she stopped watching at some point around season 30, but I kept going, just made it part of my weekly routine.  Anyway, she said there was a Survivor "quiz" in one of the episodes about the best way to avoid a shark attack, most of the contestants chose answer "A" which was "punch the shark in the nose", and totally missed the CORRECT answer, which was "D" - "don't go in the water".  Really, it's the only safe move, I know you love the beach and you're a great swimmer, but please, please stay safe out there.

If you're like me and you don't go to the beach (for reasons I've described here before at length, so there's no reason to get into them again) then a three-day weekend is a terrible thing - you can fly somewhere, but thousands of other people are doing that too, so good luck with that.  You can go on a road-trip, but same problem, tons of traffic on Friday night or Saturday morning and even more on Monday night, because everybody gots to get home at the same time.  So unless you know some less-traveled out-of-the-way fun thing to do somewhere, and a secret way to get there, here's how your three-day weekend's going to go.  Day 1, sleep late and sit around the house, maybe watch a movie but feel guilty about the fact that you're not accomplishing anything or going out to do anything fun.  Day 2, maybe a couple loads of laundry, if you're into it maybe a nice dinner out or more likely, take-out from that place you rarely order from.  Day 3, forget it, you have to work tomorrow so you can't go anywhere or stay up late because you need to be back at your desk early Tuesday morning.  Look, it's going to go by very quickly, so just relax and try to enjoy it if you can.  Hey, that's a metaphor for life, really, it's going to go by very quickly so just relax and try to enjoy it if you can. 

That's my plan, I've got three more Jason Statham films to watch, and so he's my Labor Day action hero, carrying over again from "The Meg" along with three other survivors - I mean, actors.  I've got Tuesday off as well, so it's really a four-day weekend, maybe we'll go out for dinner tonight or tomorrow, or just order take-out from that place we rarely order from.  Maybe I can start another TV series, now that I finished "What If?" and "Pennyworth" - I heard there's a new season of "Only Murders in the Building", I could start on that, and then there's "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds", it's still only 20 episodes, maybe I could knock that out.

Here's the format breakdown for August, September linking will be due tomorrow:

7 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Year of the Dog, The Last Vermeer, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Beau Is Afraid, C'mon C'mon, 13, Expend4bles

7 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Square, The Rover, High Life, Good Time, The Meg, Meg 2: The Trench

6 watched on Netflix: Call Me Kate, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver, The Son, Good Grief, Pieces of a Woman

1 watched on Amazon Prime: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
1 watched on Hulu: Next Goal Wins

1 watched on Peacock: Armageddon Time

2 watched on Tubi: Famous Nathan, Her Smell

1 watched in theaters: Deadpool & Wolverine
1 watched on a random site: Napoleon

27 TOTAL

THE PLOT: A research team encounters multiple threats while exploring the depths of the ocean, including a malevolent mining operation. 

AFTER: There's kind of a reason Jason Statham got to shine in these "Meg" movies, he was a competitive diver in the past, according to IMDB he was in the Olympic trials in 1985 and also represented England in something called the Commonwealth Games.  I guess it's helpful here to have an actor so familiar with swimming and diving and maybe scuba diving as well.  I mean, I'm sure there are stuntmen and they didn't let him do anything totally dangerous, but still, some knowledge of how to do certain things was probably a plus. 

The film starts off in prehistoric times, where there are these early pre-evolution things that aren't sharks, they're more like crocodiles, but here come the "Jurassic Shark" comparisons again.  If you're impressed by the awesome power of a T. Rex, just wait, because it's not the biggest predator that was around back then, just wait until you see what happens when that dinosaur stands just a little too close to the ocean. He also should have learned the lesson about staying away from the beach.  

Evolution is a funny thing, because horses used to be really small and apparently sharks used to be gigantic - so they kind of switched places over the years, and dinosaurs became birds somehow but prehistoric crocodiles stayed more or less the same.  I don't know, it's got something to do with the ice caps melting and the oceans receding and the land being more important than the water, plus maybe diet and exercise over a few epochs, who can say?  

But if there's one thing that humans should have learned from the last few years, it's to not trust any evil billionaires who fund things like space exploration or in this case, deep-sea exploration.  I say even more, don't trust people who SAY they're billionaires but are really only millionaires - they know who they are, but if they're lying about THAT, then they're also lying about protecting abortion rights and fighting inflation and tax cuts for the middle class. Just saying. The new billionaire funding the deep-sea exploration here also has a second team of miners in the trench, who are plundering the rare earth minerals from the sea floor because they can be used in semi-conductors and such, billions of dollars in profit, and absolutely no repercussions because nobody can see what they're doing.  The big twist here is that the new evil billionaire is a woman, so congrats on breaking that glass ceiling, I guess?

So the team of oceanographers not only has to worry about giant sharks and giant squids and the other things in the trench that want to kill them, but also the mercenary miners and the miners' boss who is also THEIR BOSS, who allows them to all get stuck in the bottom of the ocean.  Really, they should have read their employment contracts more closely, because somehow they authorized this when they took the job, so next lesson, always read the fine print.  But thank God they've got Jonas Taylor on their side, he's back on the case after a few years spent with the woman he met in the last film, and becoming a father figure to her daughter, who keeps insisting on putting herself in jeopardy and going on missions with him.  This equates to more of the "tempting fate" equation, as in, I've got my step-daughter with me on a dangerous deep-sea mission, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? 

That's really the mantra for the whole film, as in "we've got a Megalodon shark kept in a tank, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?" or "we're going back down into the Marianas trench, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?" or "we're mining the sea floor surrounded by giant sharks, what could..." well, you get the idea.  A lot goes wrong, and Jonas Taylor and his crew have to fix it all, with the help of explosive harpoons and underwater suits and very few. guns, can they defeat the evil mercenaries AND the mega-sharks AND the giant octopus and save the beach resort of Fun-Fun Island?  We just love to see billionaires and bratty tourists get eaten, don't we, folks? 

Effects-wise, there are a few nods to the "Indiana Jones" franchise, like there's the fight on the mining conveyor belt, which calls to mind "The Temple of Doom", and the run across the pier as it's collapsing seems a bit like the rope bridge bit from that same movie, making this film kind of. a synthesis of "Jaws" and "Indiana Jones", which of course would be "Raiders of the Lost Shark".  But not really.  And by the way, totally different ending from the last film, where Jonas has to kill a giant shark with a submersible and a harpoon - here he uses a jet-ski and a helicopter blade.  See, totally different!  

One point off for the "song" that runs during the closing credits, performed by one of the actors, and it's not just the worst rap song, but the single worst song I've ever heard in my life.  Sample lyrics - "chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp".  WTF?  That alone should be enough to veto a third film in this series, however this film did well at the box office last summer, so yeah, there's probably another one on the way. 

Also starring Sophia Cai, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy (all three carrying over from "The Meg"), Wu Jing, Sergio-Peris Mencheta (last seen in "Life Itself"), Skyler Samuels (last heard in "Furry Vengeance"), Melissanthi Mahut (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Whoopie Van Raam, Kiran Sonia Sawar, Felix Mayr, Sienna Guillory (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Robin Hill, Ivy Tsui (also carrying over from "The Meg"), Stewart Alexander (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Cai Jingjing, Matthew Stirling, Billy Clements (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Jonny James (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), and the voice of Sara Dee.

RATING: 5 out of 10 bags of ammonium nitrate

The Meg

Year 16, Day 243 - 8/30/24 - Movie #4,827

BEFORE: August is coming to a close, which means I'll count up the format totals for the month tomorrow and then reveal my linking plan for September on Sunday, and man, it's a doozy. But first we've got Labor Day weekend, which is going to account for half of this Jason Statham chain - man, he's been in a lot of movies, and I guess I just haven't been paying attention, or else I'm just actively avoiding any movies from the "Fast & Furious" franchise.  But even if I never watch any of those, Statham still has quite the filmography to draw from.

But yeah, get outside this weekend if you can, if it's not too hot, I personally don't like the beach - too hot, too sunny, too sandy and too many things can kill you. Case in point, giant sharks.  Or even regular sharks, I'm not really fond of them either.  I don't swim so even if I WERE to go to the beach, there's very little chance I'll be attacked or killed by a shark, it would take a really wild aquarium accident for me to die that way, but other than the aquarium in Mystic, CT, I don't think I've been to an aquarium in a long time, either. 

Jason Statham carries over again from "Expend4bles".  I had the "Meg" films on my horror list, but there are very few connections to other horror movies (Rainn Wilson's in one, but that's about it) so I can't really schedule this film during October, because I've got an intro but not an outro AND I just finished making the schedule for this year's horror chain, and I've got no room for the two "Meg" films, so they'll have to go here and act as summer-themed beach films.  They're taking up space on the DVR, so I don't want to re-schedule them, I just want to get rid of them, good or bad. 

THE PLOT: A group of scientists exploring the Marianas Trench encounter the largest marine predator that has ever existed - the Megalodon.

AFTER: Of course you can't make any shark film without referencing "Jaws", and really, for many years, the "Jaws" movies were all we had by way of shark entertainment.  OK, "Deep Blue Sea", it's on my list but even harder to link to.  And "Open Water" is even harder than THAT.  OK, so there's a few, like "48 Meters Down" and "The Shallows" and "The Reef", but they're all so under my radar. Then came the "Sharknado" films, but come on, I'd really have to be DESPERATE to consider watching those.  Even I have standards - not many, but a few. Now a few TV channels have "Shark Week", but I guess I missed it, it was back in July.  Makes sense, everyone wants to go to the beach, regular broadcast channels are in reruns then, the only new TV is game shows and late-night shows that month. 

(EDIT: I found a list of 180 shark movies on IMDB. Most of them look like trash.  Way WAY down on the list are titles like "Jurassic Shark" and "Raiders of the Lost Shark", also "Spring Break Shark Attack" and "Jersey Shore Shark Attack", so the one thing I know for sure is that makers of shark moves simply have no shame at all. None. "Roboshark"? "Sharkenstein"? "Shark Exorcist"?  Now they're just making me mad. Come on, no "Zero Shark Thirty" or "The Shark Knight Rises"?  "The Shark Crystal"? "Gorky Shark"? "Sharks & Recreation"?  I can do this all day.)

We've kind of come full circle, though, because this is really just "Jaws" again only bigger.  The deep-sea exploration of the Marianas Trench reveals a very thin layer of ice on the bottom, and a whole other, deeper part of the ocean under that, cut off from the rest of the ocean for possibly millions of years, that's the reasoning behind how the believed-to-be-extinct species of megalodon sharks can still be around, only, umm, if they're so big, what did they all EAT for those millions of years? AHA, gotcha!  OK, maybe giant squids - the megalodons apparently love calamari, even in a raw state.  (Me, I don't eat a lot of octopus or squid, but if there's some takoyaki on the menu, man, let me at it.)  And then when Meg gets loose, she gets to sample whale, and it's a whole new taste sensation - not very PC, but apparently delicious.

Jason Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a diving expert who's trained for deep-sea rescue, and I honestly did not even know that was a thing.  In the opening sequence he's seen rescuing seamen from a sunken vessel, maybe a submarine, he comes down with HIS submarine and a couple of his crew, and they search the sunken sub for survivors.  However, something out in the deep ocean makes contact with the linked vessels, and he's forced to cut the mission short, and leave a couple men behind, because SOMETHING is putting pressure on the sub and forcing it to collapse. Care to bet what it is?  (Spoiler alert, it's on the poster.)

Following that incident, there's an investigation where he's accused of being crazy or having a psychotic episode, because it would be impossible for there to be a deep-sea creature capable of collapsing a sub.  But shortly after Jonas disconnected his sub, the sunken one blew up, so he was right, it was too dangerous to stay there, they all would have died.  Why didn't he get credit for at least saving the people that he saved?  

Five years later, the billionaire who funded this new deep-sea exploration lab (let's just call him Schmelon Schmusk, no reason) is visiting it for the first time, and he's there when a submersible with three scientists on board goes deeper than ever before, into that new region, and they're attacked by some large creature (bet you saw that one coming, too) and stranded on the ocean floor.  Time to call in Jonas Taylor, the world's expert at deep-sea rescue, only he's retired and drunk in Thailand, he doesn't dive any more.  But perhaps a visit from some old associates and the emergency situation could coax him out of retirement. Also, of COURSE one of the scientists who needs to be rescued is his ex-wife, of COURSE. What are the odds?

NITPICK POINT: The crew of the sub only has a few hours of oxygen, most likely.  But somehow there's time to fly two people to Thailand AND track down a man who's trying very hard to not be found, AND fly back?  Sorry, I'm having a hard time believing they could get Jonas back to rescue those people.  That clock is ticking the whole time...and how far away is Thailand from the Marianas Trench, anyway?  Let's say they were near Guam, that's a six and a half-hour flight, each way.  That's thirteen hours at minimum, so I think I'm right.

Anyway, Jonas faces the challenge of distracting the shark and rescuing some of the scientists (hey, two out of three ain't bad) but then the giant Meg follows them out of the trench. Stupid, stupid, people and smart, smart shark?  (SMARK?). Meg basically chows down on all the whales and other fish in the nearby area, then starts treating the glass undersea lab like its own personal snack machine.  Ohh, don't you hate it when you press the button for an oceanologist and it gets stuck on the way down, then you have to shake the whole lab to get it, or stick your fin inside to knock it down?  Very annoying.  

Our intrepid team of marine biologists and amateur fishermen start getting picked off one by one, despite the fact that the shark is SO BIG that it really wouldn't consider any human to be filling at all, though maybe we're like peanuts, once the shark starts eating us it just can't stop.  Then it heads for a big beach in China where thousands of people are chilling out on inner-tubes, and it's really a full-on Chinese buffet for the Meg.  Hey, I get it, I love those too.  

But things keep getting more ridiculous, and there are more and more excuses about why they can't just blow up the shark with a bazooka or a grenade or something.  Or would that be too much like the classic ending of "Jaws"?  So Jonas Taylor has to pretty much fight it hand-to-hand, or hand-to-fin I guess, which is patently beyond ridiculous.  OK, he stabs it in the eye at one point and maybe that's a good strategy because even a giant shark needs to see where it's going, but really, the only correct way to deal with a shark this big is to immediately point your sub in the opposite direction, and get as far away from it as possible, for God's sake, don't try to fight it up close!

I'm going to try to be a little kind here tonight, because, really, it's "Jaws" meets "Jurassic Park" and it kind of works on that level, and the only thing people should have against that is that THEY didn't think of it first. 

Also starring Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Cliff Curtis (last heard in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Winston Chao, Sophia Cai, Ruby Rose (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Page Kennedy (last seen in "S.W.A.T."), Robert Taylor (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Olafur Darri Olafsson (last seen in "Contraband"), Jessica McNamee (last seen in "CHIPS"), Masi Oka (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Hongmei Mai, Wei Yi, Vithaya Pansringarm (last seen in "The Hangover Part II"), Rob Kipa-Williams, Tawanda Manyimo (last seen in 'The Rover"), James Gaylyn (last seen in "Avatar"), Andrew Grainger (last seen in "Spy Game"), Ivy Tsui, Jeremy Tan, Teresa Lee. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 depth charges

Expend4bles

Year 16, Day 242 - 8/29/24 - Movie #4,826

BEFORE:  All right, I'm dropping two films from September's line-up, right off the bat, before we even get there. 29 films is too many, 27 I think I can handle. I can still drop more if I have to, but I like the line-up as it is - this opens up two more slots for post-October, if I decide that "Dune: Part Two" needs to be put on hold then that's three gone from the plan, leaving an even 20 slots for November and December.  Until I figure out the path from Halloween to Christmas, I have no way of knowing if that's too much, not enough or just about right, but it's what I worked with last year for those months.  I'm in a good place, linking-wise, just knowing there's a path to Movie 4,880 has a calming effect, and I'll work out the end of the year before September is over. 

Jason Statham carries over from "13" and I just don't know about this one, they did that cutesy thing where they worked the sequel number right into the title, putting the "4" in place of the "A" and I just can't support that.  Really, did we learn NOTHING from the other franchise films?  Consistency is the key, you can't change the title format to try to confuse people - I know there's one school of thought that says a certain percentage of the audience does NOT go out to see sequels with numbers in the title, because they maybe haven't seen all the previous films, or they believe there's a drop in quality the more films there are in a sequence, so numbers in the title are a kind of box-office poison.

But now, what do I call this film?  Do I say "Expendables 4" or is it pronounced "Expend-four-bles"?  Why are we even putting a number in the middle of a word, like it's a letter?  And the other three films had a "THE" in the title', so is the overall name for the franchise still "The Expendables" or just "Expendables"?  It's important, at least to me.  Am I the only one who gives a damn about consistency?  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Expendables 3" (Movie #2,229)

THE PLOT: Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on, the Expendables are the world's last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. 

AFTER: This is Jason Statham's movie, no doubt about it - I mean, Stallone is HERE, except for when he's not, which is a good chunk of time, and when he is there, he's either flying in the plane or the helicopter or he's talking about his back injury and I wonder if art is imitating life here - it feels like one of those 27 Bruce Willis movies that came out five years ago where he only spent one day filming on set for each one and they had to shoot of all of his scenes on that day.  Whatever, Stallone can do whatever he wants and he's earned an easy shoot. At least he's IN the movie, there's a long list of actors who have been in this franchise who are M.I.A. - like Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes, Terry Crews, Kelsey Grammer, Antonio Banderas, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell and Kellan Lutz.  And that's just from "Expendables 3", I can't even remember who else was in the first 2.  Jet Li? Mickey Rourke?  Arnold? Chuck Norris? JVD?  Where the hell is everybody, did they all just age out of the program?

I feel like this franchise is a rock band, one that's been around for a few decades and they can still put on a show and rock their old hits, but not all of the original band members are still there, some have retired and maybe some have died, this is something i know about because for a long while there we were going to concerts at Jones Beach once a summer, so we saw Journey (with no Steve Perry), REO Speedwagon (no Gary Richrath), Styx (no Dennis DeYoung), Chicago (no Peter Cetera), and Foreigner (no Lou Gramm).  I mean, sure, great to see you guys and I'm glad you're still out on the road and technically still a band, but it's not exactly the band I remember listening to as a kid, only mostly.  The worst offender in this regard was probably Air Supply, we saw them twice at B.B. King's in Times Square, back in their heyday there were like 13 band members in Air Supply, but by the time we got to see them, only the two principals were still playing, the rest were contract musicians, hired guns so to speak.  

That's the Expendables now, two or three original guys are still in the band, but the rest have retired or are too busy on other projects, or are maybe too expensive to come back for another appearance in this franchise.  So there's a focus on the bromance between Stallone's character and Statham's character, are they really besties or do they just share a common bond in being the most durable and/or the most available band members?  Not sure.  But still, let's put on a show because Dolph Lundgren needs to keep active to get his SAG pension and also we've got some slots open for some of the new kids with action-film star potential.  According to Stallone, this fourth film is the first of a new trilogy, so they're planning two more at least. Well, OK, it's been 14 years since the last one, and only part of that can be attributed to the pandemic, so some of that delay was what they call "development hell", if the iron is hot, you might as well keep that momentum going and make two more films ASAP. 

This one got some LOW ratings, though, it's a 4.8 on IMDB, and it only made $37 million worldwide, and cost an estimated $100 million to make. That's, umm, well, it's not good, so maybe this will turn out to be the last film in the franchise. Everything's gotta end sometime, that's a truth we all have to face sooner or later. Maybe they waited too long to revive the series with a new installment, but you know, people are getting excited now for the upcoming "Beetlejuice" film, and it's been what, 36 years?  Maybe less is more sometimes, I don't know.  Or maybe it all comes down to marketing, and they tried to soften the "Expendables" franchise with PG-13 ratings, and now they're back on R. Sure, they're giving the hardcore fans what they want, but also limiting who can see the movie at the same time.  Then of course there's that dumb placement of the number "4" within the title, just saying.  Ugh, I just saw the very stupid tagline "They'll Die When They're Dead".  That's beyond stupid, that's the R-word that I'm not supposed to use.

Anyway, there's two big missions here, the first one's in Libya where the new villain takes over the country or something just to get a bunch of detonators.  The Expendables are called in while the situation is unfolding, and it's very nice of the villain to wait until they fly halfway across the world before he decides to take what he wants.  Well, you can't say he's not a good sport.  But when he finally decides to make his move, the Expendables are there to stop him, only they don't, because Christmas makes a bad decision, instead of going after the villain, he decides to save Barney Ross, his best friend and team leader. His decision has terrible consequences, and in addition to that, the villain gets away with the detonators (remember that, it might come up later).  

On top of that, word is that the villain works for the mysterious Ocelot, someone who's been working behind the scenes for decades, after a run-in with Barney Ross years ago and a mission that went south, killing the whole team except for Barney.  The Expendable's new CIA contact, Marsh, sends them out on the second mission, to retrieve the detonators, only he kicks Christmas off the team for not following orders.  He gets replaced by his ex-girlfriend, but you just know he's not done, right?  He's going to go rogue, execute his own mission and probably hook up with the team for a last-minute save later.  

Ocelot has placed a nuclear warhead on a ship disguised as an American aircraft carrier, which is transporting the explosive device into Russian territory - he intends to jump-start World War 3, since Russia invading Ukraine apparently didn't bring about the intended result.  The Expendables land on the ship and do their best, however it's not good enough, and they're all taken hostage.  Oh, if only there were a rogue member of the team who was kicked off the mission and could be working his way toward them on his own...

Look, it's big, stupid and ridiculous, I admit all that.  In particular, having a nuclear bomb that's absolutely COVERED in detonators makes no sense, because really, you only need one, or so I imagine.  But this film means well, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and World War 3 gets postponed for another month, I know that's not a lot, but can't it just be enough?  Some people take these things too seriously, this movie is just not something that can be taken seriously at all, so why even do that?  This may not be a home-run but it's a ground ball up the middle that advances the runners, that's something, isn't it?  Sylvester Stallone is 78 years old now, and maybe he doesn't look it, but he can't be doing this for much longer, let's just celebrate the fact he's still around, and Statham and the young kids can do the fight scenes.  

Instead of acting sad that it's over (maybe) and being upset that we can't have any more, let's just be thankful for the times we had, OK?

Also starring Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Sly"), Dolph Lundgren (ditto), Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (also carrying over from "13"), Megan Fox (last seen in "Zeroville"), Tony Jaa (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Iko Uwais (last seen in "Stuber"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Randy Couture (last seen in "Setup"), Jacob Scipio (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Levy Tran (last seen in "Secret Headquarters"), Lucy Newman-Williams (last seen in "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"), Daren Nop, Kenny "Cowboy" Bartram, Cody Mackie, Cokey Falkow (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Dan Chupong, Karim Saidi, Sam Black, Adam Masto, Sheila Shah, Nicole Andrews (last seen in "Lovelace"), Oat Jenner, Susanne Potrock, Eddie Hall, Mike Möller, Igor Pecenjev, Stefan Ivanov, Tjasa Perko.

RATING: 5 out of 10 dirtbikes on an aircraft carrier (wait, what?)

13

Year 16, Day 241 - 8/28/24 - Movie #4,825

BEFORE: Chain update, I believe I have closed the gap.  Since I didn't have a Tuesday movie, and I worked Tuesday morning and came home and napped in the afternoon, that gave me a bit of time to work on September's chain - I just needed to prove there was at least one path from the end of the "Divergent" trilogy to the start of the horror chain on October 1 - and there is, I have one and I can always fine-tune it later.  What helped make the gap smaller was noticing that Gaby Hoffman from "C'mon C'mon" was also in THIS film with Jason Statham.  That means I can drop in four or even six action movies with him here, instead of going right to back-to-school stuff.  A little tinkering, finding another two films to close the tinier gap, and in just over a week, I can get back to the film I had originally scheduled for today, only now it and another school-based film are in September, where they kind of belong.  

Pushing everything back a week narrowed the gap, down to a maximum of 16 slots, making it easier to connect to where I want to be on October 1. Oh, and BTW, I realized yesterday that my planned horror chain was no good, there was a bad break in the middle, I think I assumed that just because I had two horror films next to each other on the list that there was a connection, and, umm, there just wasn't.  Always good to double-check these things before the month begins.  Anyway, "Ghost Ship" and "What Lies Beneath" do NOT share an actor, so my smaller October plan of 16 films is gone, out the window, not gonna happen. Can't happen. BUT I can salvage the first 8 films of that chain, and then go in another direction. \With a little more tinkering, I can connect to two tiny blocks of 2 or 3 movies each and then hook up with the last half of the chain I was planning for NEXT year, that's another 9 or 10 films, then circle back to the planned end of the ORIGINAL chain, so the October chain will still start and end as planned, I just took out the bad links and dropped some new stuff in the middle.

Now, the bad news, this means the October chain just grew from 16 films to 26. I'm fine with it, because there are a LOT of horror films and the more I cross off each year the better, plus my wife and I figured out that we're 99% sure we can't possibly take a week off in October as usual, we're both too busy with work and we couldn't find a week we were both free, I've got NY Comic-Con and she's got her stuff, so that's off the table. Not gonna happen. Can't happen. OK, more time to watch movies, but 26 films could be tricky since I still have two jobs  I guess I'll sleep in November, I'm trying to look at the bright side here - well, when I'm knee deep in the horror chain, who can sleep, anyhow?  

The other bad news, the September schedule is now really crowded, too, it's 29 films and that means only one skip day, unless I start dropping the middle films from the tri-chains here and there or cutting out a whole block of seven and making it 22 films instead of 29.  I'll consider either, because when I look at the planned monthly totals, it only leaves 17 slots for November and December, and man, that's a lot of down time for two months.  It happened like that last year and I was bored stupid. Maybe I can cut some films now and get that number up to 20, 10 slots for November and 10 slots for December, but that's still not a lot to play with if I want to link to Christmas movies.  I'll have to see how next month goes and try to trim things down along the way. 

Anyway, the good news is that there's a definite path to Halloween right now, and I'm going to try to stay on it.  Then of course if I can link from Halloween to Christmas, that's another Movie Year in the books. Gaby Hoffman carries over from "C'mon C'mon". And as an added bonus for switching up my chain, I get to send a late (as in deceased) Birthday SHOUT-out to Ben Gazzara, born August 28, 1930.

THE PLOT: A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men. 

AFTER: I suppose it was inevitable that someone would make a movie like this one day, but why give it the very non-descript title of just a number.  Or is it a number and then the number spelled out, as on the poster?  Not sure.  The title "13" just tells you nothing about what's going to happen in the film, it just feels like someone stopped trying, or didn't even try, to come up with something better.  Maybe "Russian Roulette: The Movie" did have the right punch to it, but come on, "13" is too far in the bland direction.  Is the film about bad luck?  Good luck?  Fear of the number 13?  Well, not really, but it is kind of about good luck, 13 is the number written on the shirt of our main character as he competes in an underground (literally, it looks like it was shot in a basement, maybe a basement in a fancy building, but still, a basement.)

Vince travels from Ohio to New York, and sure, maybe NYC is known for its underground fight clubs, who knows what goes on in this city once the lights go down.  There are three kinds of people participating in these events, the promoters, the gamblers, and the unlucky contestants themselves.  Vince had overheard a neighbor talking about this great way to make a lot of money quickly, while he was doing some electrical work in his house.  But apparently in order to win a lot of money, someone would have to be very lucky, which this man was - so lucky that he got an invitation to the next event, only he died from an overdose of drugs before the next event.  So Vince sneaks into this guy's study and finds the letter with $500 and instructions, you may ask why Vince doesn't just keep the $500 and walk away, well it's because he needs a lot more money to pay his father's hospital bills. 

OK, so he's motivated to do whatever it takes to earn this giant pile of cash, however he probably didn't realize he would be playing an organized game of team Russian Roulette, where each participant aims his gun at another man's head, while yet another man aims a gun at HIS head. Right. And in the first round there's only one bullet in every gun's chambers, then whoever survives moves on to the second round, where there are TWO bullets in every gun. Follow the logic, there it is, you can see what might happen if this game gets to the sixth round, everyone's dead.  Actually before that, there's a way that they narrow the field from whoever survives from five people down to two, then there's a final duel that only one will walk away from.  There's just a little flaw in the logic when it gets down to the finals, because what if the two men shoot each other in the head, is that a draw?  Who wins in that event?

There are side bets on everything, or else the promoters are willing to take odds for or against their own shooters, honestly that part's all just a bit confusing.  But then, I don't really understand normal sports betting either, so what chance did I have here to understand the betting on whether men shoot each other or not, based on random chance?  The lucky few who survive this competition get a share of the winnings, those who don't survive get nothing, apparently, except a burial in a mass grave, and those who are wounded and unfit to continue, well, you don't even want to know what happens to them.  It's all clearly laid out though in the rules, which you probably signed off on without even knowing when you joined that streaming service, so watch as many movies as you can before it's your turn in the competition. 

I don't know, could this sport ever catch on?  Are the top male Wall Street executives going to show up and bet on an underground Mexican Standoff-Fest, where they're likely to get blood spatter all over their nice suit?  The survivors are supposed to be left alone, the reasoning being if they were lucky enough to somehow survive, they deserve the six-figure or seven-figure payout they get, because the PTSD is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives, and therapy is expensive, after all. 

This sport needs some sponsors, though, and maybe a catchy name before it becomes the next Pickleball - "Russian roulette" makes it sound like the Russians would be good at it, so can we call it something else?  Maybe "Last Man Standing"?  But honestly if the next Olympics are in Los Angeles, well, it just seems tailor-made for that city, doesn't it?   

As vulgar as this is, there's something like the germ of a good idea here. My BFF once told me about an idea he had for a reality show competition, he called it "The Luckiest Person in the World". The competition would start with a large number of people, maybe 1,024 because that's 2 to the 10th power, and they'd be paired up for 512 coin flips, one person choosing heads and the other tails. (It doesn't matter which one chooses.). Whoever loses the flip is out of the contest, then the remaining 512 people would be paired up for the next flips, and half would get eliminated again, down to 256 people who have all won two coin flips in a row, they're all equally "lucky", whatever that means.  After the next flips you'd have 128 people who have all won three rounds, and so on, until you get down to just two people who have both won NINE coin tosses in a row, but you guessed it, only one can be the Luckiest Person in the Game. Unless the coin lands on its side once in a while, it's a certainty that only one person can win 10 flips in a row in that scenario, and they win $10,000 or something. Yeah, I'd watch that, if it was like an hour show one time.  Would that person consider themselves very lucky, like would it go to their head, or would this just be considered a game of chance, and not luck?  

Also starring Sam Riley (last seen in "Rebecca" (2020)), Jason Statham (last seen in "Sly"), Mickey Rourke (ditto), Ray Winstone (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), David Zayas (last seen in "Wit"), Emmanuelle Chriqui (last seen in "Waiting..."), Michael Shannon (last seen in "The Flash"), Ben Gazzara (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "The Giver"), Michael Berry Jr. (last seen in "The Hangover Part II"), Chuck Zito (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Alice Barrett (last seen in "Choke"), Stephen Beach (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Mike D'Onofrio, Starla Benford (last seen in "A Perfect Murder"), Daisy Tahan (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Carlos Reig-Plaza, Forrest Griffin, Doug Kruse, Anthony Chisholm (last seen in "Beloved"), Alan Davidson (last seen in "Frailty"), Stephen Gevedon (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Jamison Ernest, Ronald Guttman (last seen in "Green Card"), John Bedford Lloyd (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Eddy Toru Ohno, Chris McKinney (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Frank Senger, Wayne Duvall (last seen in "A Quiet Place Part II"), Darrell Larson (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Glen Trotiner, Ashlie Atkinson (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding").

RATING: 4 out of 10 trash bags (and oddly, this is the SECOND film this month, after "The Square", to feature someone searching through a giant pile of trash bags to find something important)

C'mon C'mon

Year 16, Day 239 - 8/26/24 - Movie #4,824

BEFORE: OK, so here's the dilemma, I've got my current programmed chain due to run out in just about a week, and there's a HUGE gap where September's supposed to be, the month is like this 20 to 28-slotted blank, and I have no idea what to put there.  Second problem, tonight's film leads into something that's kind of back-to-school-ish, and it feels too early, September hasn't even started yet.  

So, I started playing around with some new ideas, because it seems like the last "Divergent" film is going to connect quite easily to the start of my Halloween chain - a bit TOO easily, I could get there in two or three steps instead of 25 or 27.  I search my list for the other stars of tonight's film and I've got the germ of an idea here, I think I may change the plan and go off on a tangent after tonight, get into some action films with Jason Statham or something and then try to re-connect to the chain as originally planned.

The more I played around with it, the further I seemed to get from the original plan, until I started to see a path back.  So there's another option, instead of trying to fill a giant 28-day gap, I can delay tomorrow's film by dropping in 9 or even 11 films, and there are three "outs" that circle back to the film I had planned for August 28, which would then be delayed until September 6, and that's perfect timing for a back-to-school film.  This could work, and it would leave me with just a 15 or 18-movie gap on the back end, which might be easier to fill. Assuming that I can connect from there to the first horror film, which I really should start figuring out anyway.

I've got about a day to decide - do I want to go off on a tangent now or leave more slots open for late September? There's no movie tomorrow because I have to work Orientation again Tuesday morning at 7 am, so right after I post this I'm going to try to go to sleep and get up at 5 am so I can leave the house by 6.  That would be more ideal than trying to work an 8-hour shift again on zero hours of sleep.  Then tomorrow afternoon I can try connecting the two ends of the September/October gap, if I can do that then I'll have a path to Halloween, and 72 slots left as of September 1.  Even if September uses 30 slots and October takes 17, that still leaves 25 to play with in November and December, hopefully that's enough.  And if I have a couple skip days in September, that will just free up more slots to connect to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Joaquin Phoenix carries over again from "Beau Is Afraid". 

THE PLOT: When his sister asks him to look after her son, a radio journalist embarks on a cross-country trip with his energetic nephew to show him life away from Los Angeles.

AFTER: We had dinner last week with another couple (rare), someone my wife knew in high school and her boyfriend, and thankfully we're at a point where people can talk politics again, after you confirm that your dinner companions are on the same side as you, at least.  Naturally I was charming and funny, but in that self-deprecating way I have.  The recent buzzword from something that human thumb/vice president candidate said was something about "childless cat ladies" running his party, and this guy could really learn a thing or twelve about tact.  Even if you think those are the people running your political party, good God, man, then why would you want to make fun of them? THEY RUN YOUR PARTY, according to you, even though they don't, but why not be nice to them then, if they hold your fate in their hands.  Anyway, my wife's friend is like us, no kids, and she prefers the term "child-free" rather than "child-less".  Sounds better, right?  Plus we're free, we're not tied down by some being that controls our life with its silly needs and cries all the time and can't even form a sentence yet.  We can pack two bags (OK, three) and jump in the car and go away for the weekend any time we want, and not have to think about who's going to take care of the kid while we're away.  Or worse, take the kid with us.  Uh-uh, no thanks, we're the couple who wouldn't take a Disney cruise or even a Carnival cruise, because too many kids, we researched and found the cruise line with the most old people, because duh, then we'd look young by comparison.  (It's Holland America, BTW.)

Joaquin Phoenix here plays a radio journalist (that's a thing?) who is middle-aged and child-FREE, and yet for some reason he agrees to watch his nephew for a few weeks while his sister's husband gets his mental faculties together, or gets clean or gets his head straight or something. It's maybe a bit unclear, but hey, some relationships are like that.  But dude, WHY would you agree to this when you've never taken care of a child before?  You were WINNING, man, child-free and devil-may-care, OK, maybe a bit lonely but that's no reason to do something drastic like baby-sit for what, two weeks?  I'd love to connect more with my niece and nephew, but I'd rather do it when I'm not also responsible for them. 

So Johnny comes to Los Angeles and stays at the house and takes care of Jesse while Johnny's sister goes to Oakland and makes sure her estranged husband gets the mental care he needs for his bipolar disorder or his drug problem or whatever it is.  This takes longer than intended, and Johnny has to go back to his life in New York City, so he gets permission to take Jesse with him.  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?). Actually, not a lot goes wrong, there's maybe once or twice where Jesse ALMOST gets lost and then a couple times where Johnny gets mad at him and Jesse shuts down, but generally speaking here, no permanent harm is done. 

Later on they both travel to New Orleans, where Johnny's job is to interview school kids about, I don't know, the future or something. I tuned a lot of this out because listening to kids today and the way they talk is an absolute nightmare - it's not even the slang, it's the overuse of the word "like" every two seconds and their overall inability to put words together in a sentence to form a coherent thought.  Couldn't they find any kids to interview in this movie that were just a bit more eloquent than normal?  

Anyway, that's it, that's the film. Uncle takes care of nephew and they work some shit out and they create a bond that may stand the test of time.  Big whoop, I'm not really impressed.  But then, I'm coming off of "Beau Is Afraid" which is totally super OUT THERE and maybe I need some normalcy in a movie after watching that, but then maybe this is too far of a swing in that direction. It's so freakin' normal that it's incredibly boring, so what's the worse sin, being three hours long and radically unique and weird and impossible to take seriously, or being under two hours long and never really taking any risk at all and going nowhere and ultimately being nothing to write home about?

I have to think being boring is worse than being weird, because I'm going to talk to people about "Beau Is Afraid", I'm going to find out if they've seen it and if not, I'll tell people how freakin' weird it is.  But this movie?  I doubt I'll ever mention it again to anyone, because why would I?  There's no THERE there, really.  I'm just going to use this as a connector to other things and move on, in fact I've forgotten about most of this movie already, and I just watched it last night. Who cares?  The main message of the film is that you've got to "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" as the kids says, which I guess in kid talk means you've got to keep going in life because really, what other choice do you have?  But we learned this before from "Shawshank Redemption", that we'd all better get busy living or get busy dying, and there it was stated much better.  Anyway, be a good film, be a bad film, be a weird film, just don't be boring.

This whole film is in black and white?  We have color film now, you know, they invented it in the 1930's.  Why any director insists on filming in black and white in this day and age is beyond me.  I understand the old films are in black and white, because that's all they HAD back then, and people accepted it only because they had no choice.  But why go back to that?  It makes no sense.  People can leave the theater and remember that their lives and the world are in color, and suddenly they feel better about themselves?  That's the only reason I can imagine.  I kept thinking at some point this film is going to transition to color, like in "The Wizard of Oz", that was like the big change-over moment, and quite frankly, I think we should keep moving forward, not backwards.  There was an opportunity here to start the movie in Detroit and Los Angeles and have those terrible (so I've heard) cities appear in black and white, but come on, when the action changes to New York City, the film should have transitioned to full color, right?  New York is only black and white in Woody Allen movies.  That would have made a statement. Like the kid gets to see the Atlantic Ocean and realize that oceans should be blue, not like that crappy one on the West Coast is. (I've seen the Pacific from San Diego, and it looked fine, but I just assume the water around L.A. is some terrible other color. Prove me wrong.). And then they go down to New Orleans and again, COME ON, if ever there was a city that deserves to be seen in color, it's that one.  Just saying. 

Also starring Gaby Hoffman (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Woody Norman (last seen in "The Current War"), Scoot McNairy (last seen in "The Rover"), Molly Webster, Jaboukie Young-White (last heard in "Strange World"), Deborah Strang (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Sunni Patterson, Brey'on Shaw, Keisuke Hoashi, Gita Reddy (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Elaine Kagan (last seen in "The Big Fix').

RATING: 3 out of 10 chapters from "The Wizard of Oz" read at bedtime

Beau Is Afraid

Year 16, Day 238 - 8/25/24 - Movie #4,823

BEFORE: It's the last film of my Long-Movie Weekend, thank God, and Joaquin Phoenix carries over from "Napoleon". Really, it was my own mistake to let the chain schedule Long-Movie Weekend around the same time as Orientation Week at the theater.  The theater is run by a college, after all, and today was the first official day of orientation, freshmen are at the school for their first few events, and I guess that means classes start soon - get busy on making your art, kids!  But that meant I had to be at the theater at 8:30 am on a Sunday, to accept delivery of a giant ostrich sculpture (long story, plus it wouldn't mean anything to you, just another indication of how crazy my life can get sometimes).  

Yeah, so after finishing "Beau Is Afraid", on Saturday night, I was faced with two choices - force myself to go to sleep for two, maybe three hours which would GREATLY increase the chance of me oversleeping, or just doze a bit, maybe take a short nap and hope to hear the alarm at 7:00 am and not just hit the snooze button, and then again, oversleep and risk getting fired.  But it's OK, because my body had a plan that would allow me to get to work this morning on time - I was so stressed out over the possibility of over-sleeping that I didn't really sleep at all!  Problem solved, right?  I can work an 8-hour shift on no sleep, I used to do it back in the late 1980's when working as a P.A. on music videos.  Of course, I was a lot younger then.  Look, I got to work on time today and did what I had to do, maybe had a few iced coffees, but that did the trick and I didn't crash during the shift, I got home at 5:30 pm and crashed then, woke up in time to make a quick dinner, now I'm back and ready to write my blog and get ready for Monday.  I'm on an Orientation shift again on Tuesday, but I just won't watch a movie on Monday night, another skip day and I'll probably be fine. 

THE PLOT: Following the death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.

AFTER: Perhaps you've been reading my blog for a while now and maybe you think you've got a handle on what I look for in a movie, what kind of film do I gravitate toward?  Or maybe you've realized that I tend to say this a lot: This is a very weird movie.  I think that kind of undersells it, perhaps because I do say that a lot, but out of the past 4,800-plus movies that I've watched since 2009, this could be the champion, the hands-down weirdest film I've watched, and as stated, I do watch a lot of weird movies.  That will probably be a whole category at the end of this year, movies that are just plain weird, but this is over-the-top, can't-believe-they-went-there, unabashedly and without reservations, super weird.  At least it felt that way when I was watching it, that constant feeling of "Where are they even GOING with this?", and more often, "What else could POSSIBLY happen here?".  It's that far out there, really, but if you want to confirm that for yourself, be warned that's going to take up about three hours of your day, so only do that if you like 'em good and weird, and of course "good" is subjective, but weird is weird. Like "The Square was weird, "Under the Silver Lake" was weird, but this is something else beyond all that. 

I can only imagine the idea behind this - and it's from the same director as "Midsommer", which was another weird film, but that was a slow burn, and come on, they made you wait almost the whole picture before the crazy started to happen, and then when it did, hoo boy, LOOK OUT.  "Beau Is Afraid" is wall-to-wall weird, from the start to the finish - and OK, as with many weird things you can get used to it, so if you go back and watch this movie a second time (but, why would you?) it probably wouldn't come off as so fantastically weird, but that first time through, when you just don't know what to expect, it goes off on some extremely unusual tangents. A lot of pieces to this puzzle, and I'm not saying that they're all going to fit together neatly, but those puzzle pieces form a big image that is just too far out there to seem reasonable at all.

Let me point out that the film is essentially in three parts, one covers Beau Wassermann, a man with apparently no fixed income or employment, and we first meet him in a session with his therapist, during which he is dreading an upcoming trip to visit his mother.  Clearly there's some history or bad blood between Beau and his mother, and as his therapist points out, if you drank from a well and it made you feel sick, of course you might think twice about going back and drinking from that well again.  (And to think I was considering saving this film for Mother's Day, that would have been a pretty effed-up holiday tie-in.). Back to his apartment, and Beau apparently lives in the most normal apartment in the craziest city in the world, there are random people doing all kinds of crazy things, like trying to jump off buildings, aggressively begging for money and according to the news, there's a man who runs around naked and stabs people.  OK, tell me this guy lives in New York City without telling me he lives in New York City.  But no, don't say it because I get it, other people need to think Beau might live in their town. But. come on...

Beau's been packing for his flight home, and he's all set to go, but he runs back to get his dental floss, and while he does that, someone in his building steals his luggage, and also his keys from his door, as he was in the process of locking up.  Great, now he can't take the trip because he has no clothes, his passport was probably in that bag, and also he can't possibly lock his apartment door, so chances are when he got back he'd be all cleaned out.  Perhaps he can get a locksmith to come and help him out, but that's going to take time, and he'd miss the flight.  All of this triggers his anxiety, so he goes to take his new anxiety medication, which absolutely must be taken with water, and he finds that the water has been shut off in his building.  It's almost like some writer was trying to envision the worst possible set of circumstances, and then just kept piling it on with one more thing after another. 

So Beau needs some water, quickly, he's already taken the pill, but the water's been shut off for repairs, so he needs to run across the street and grab a bottle of water at the deli.  But he has no keys, how's he going to get back in the building?  So he puts a phone book down to prop the door open, and runs across the street, avoiding all the crazy people, and grabs a bottle of water, drinks it down.  But then his credit card won't work, tries it again, no good, and so he starts counting out the $1.75 to pay in cash.  But he looks back and sees that an enterprising homeless person has spotted the door propped open, and is entering his building.  Counting out more coins, trying to reach the total, but more people are starting to enter his building illegally.  This leads to a large number of homeless people taking over Beau's apartment, and he can only watch from a nearby scaffolding as a few dozen people eat the food from his cabinets, throw a little party and enjoy not sleeping on the street for a change.  Oh, and then they totally trash the place. 

The next day, he calls his mother to explain the situation again (originally, she did not believe his story about having his keys stolen, and seemed to be very disappointed that he wasn't coming to visit her on the anniversary of his father's death).  But her phone is answered by a random man who says he's a UPS deliveryman who's investigating her house because of a weird smell.  Yeah, it turns out he's found the body of Beau's mother, and apparently something heavy fell on her and crushed her head.  Beau is frantic and more anxiety-ridden than ever, he still can't leave to confirm all this because no luggage, no keys, etc.  And then while taking a bath he realizes there's still one more homeless person hiding in his apartment, and after a confrontation he runs out into the street and gets mistaken for that naked guy who's stabbing people all over town.  So yeah, let's say Beau is not having a very good day.  And then he encounters the REAL naked guy stabbing people around town, and it does not go very well.

In the second hour, Beau is recovering at the house of a married couple, Grace and Roger.  Grace hit the naked Beau with her car, and Roger was the doctor who patched him up after being stabbed.  They have a bratty Gen Z daughter, Toni, who doesn't like the fact that her parents have taken in a stray wounded person who is sleeping in HER bedroom, and seems to be taking the place of her late brother, who died while serving in the military.  They also care for an unstable veteran who knew their son, but who suffers from PTSD, and apparently lives in half of an RV that is attached to their house.  The couple offer to deliver Beau to his mother's funeral, which is apparently being held off until Beau can get there, but then they keep coming up with either medical reasons or scheduling conflicts, so it doesn't seem like they're ever going to drive him there. Toni finally can't take the new stranger living in her parents' house for one second longer, and this leads to a disastrous confrontation, and Beau is suddenly on the run for something he didn't do, and he ends up hiding in a forest with a bunch of other people who are orphaned from society, and they run a theater company in the woods where they put on stage plays.  Yeah, this weird film suddenly gets a lot weirder when Beau recognizes that their play is somehow about him, which is impossible because they don't know him at all, and also then his memory seems to change to resemble the stage play, or something like that, it's all a bit confusing to be honest.  

Then that unstable veteran shows up, hunting for Beau, and well, that doesn't go well either.  However Beau had met another man watching the stage-play who recognized him, and kind of suggested that maybe Beau's father isn't dead after all.  Curiouser and curiouser, but at some point here the whole movie starts to resemble someone's dream, perhaps Beau's, and sometimes our dreams just don't make any sense, and sometimes they go on for hours and change part of the way through, so suddenly everything is different and what was true at the start is now false, or vice versa, or the dream changes so much that the ending does not logically seem to follow the beginning.  The whole middle part is very dream-like, in that sense, I certainly could no longer tell what the truth was.  

I'm not even going to get into the final third of the movie, because spoilers, but at some point Beau started to remember repressed memories, some were about taking a cruise with his mother after his father's death and meeting a young girl named Elaine and having his first kiss with her.  Beau said he'd remain a virgin and wait for Elaine, so remember that because it could be important later.  Beau also has a memory that would seem to suggest that he may have had a brother who asked too many questions about what happened to their father, and after that he was never seen again.  But these are dreams-within-dreams, I think, so perhaps they're not meant to be real or believable.  Or, are they?  You'll have to reach the third hour of the movie, just like I did, to find out more.  

There's just nothing to compare this to, because so many, many things go wrong for Beau over the course of this movie, and he maybe finds out by going to his mother's funeral that nothing he was ever told was true.  Who's to say what's true, anyway?  If somebody tells you something and you believe it, and have no evidence to the contrary, isn't that true enough?  If you never even try to find out that everything in your life is a lie, wasn't it all true for you, on some level?  And when you have those three-hour long dreams every night, you know, the ones that stick with you for about five minutes after you wake up, and you say, "Huh, that was crazy!" before you start to forget about it, what the hell happened there?  

But I've just seen this film described as "Kafka-esque" - geez, I wish I knew more about Kafka so I could weigh in on that, but I only know the story where that guy woke up and found himself turned into a giant cockroach, and that doesn't seem relevant here.  Maybe Kafka wrote more about weird events and the futility of life, dream-states or such maybe.  But really this is about how much bad stuff can happen to ONE person over the course of, what, a week?  And also over his whole life, and this brings to mind the Book of Job, also the trip to try and get to his mother's funeral calls to mind other stories like "The Odyssey", where there's a clear destination and then the author just keeps the main character from getting there, for as long as possible.  See also "Tristram Shandy", Mark Twain, Voltaire's "Candide" and maybe the movie "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".  Then there's a bit at the end that maybe calls to mind "The Truman Show" or "Defending Your Life".

Looking back on my day today, I was working on no sleep, so that altered my perceptions of things quite a bit perhaps.  This is perhaps appropriate, I watched this three-hour dreamlike very crazy film last night, and then today I had a crazy day myself.  Sure, let's start with the ostrich sculpture and then move on from there.  I had some good ideas about how to get the very tall piece of art inside, because I'd grown up watching my dad move freight as a truck driver, and really, if you needed somebody to pack a truck or move a very oddly-shaped object, my dad was THE MAN.  I must have picked up something from him, because I may not have done the lifting, but I advised two delivery guys how to tilt the ostrich diagonally to get it in the front door, and then how to tilt it a different way to get it in the small elevator that would take it to the stage.  How did I know it would fit?  I don't exactly know, but thanks, Dad.  The screenings got a little crazy, getting 260 clueless students checked in and seated always is, but nothing we couldn't handle. I know the teacher who was doing the presentation for the incoming students, he's a bit of a wild card, does his own thing, doesn't really follow the rules, but hey, he's an artist, and I have some experience working with those.  The capper of the day was that someone came off the bus and told me there was a guy in the garden area next to the theater and he was, well, umm, jacking it.  Great. I told our security guard right away and let him deal with it, I didn't need a random encounter with a crazy man with no pants on putting on a show for the freshman students.  But hey, welcome to New York, kids!

Also starring Patti Lupone (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Amy Ryan (last seen in "Worth"), Nathan Lane (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Kylie Rogers (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Denis Ménochet (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Zoe Lister-Jones (last seen in "How It Ends"), Armen Nahapetian, Julia Antonelli, Stephen McKinley Henderson (last seen in "Bruised"), Richard Kind (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!"), Hayley Squires (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Julian Richings (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Bill Hader (last heard in "Belushi"), Alicia Rosario, James Cvetkovski, Catherine Bérubé, Stephanie Herrera, Bradley Fisher, Peter Seaborne, Michael Esper (last seen in "Ben Is Back"), Manuel Tadros (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Karl Roy, Marc-Nadre Brisebois, Tyrone Benskin (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Ernest-James Chupka, Archie Madekwe (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Greg Halpin, Luis Oliva (last seen in "Fatherhood"), Charles Hardy, Marie-Michelle Garon, Maev Beaty, Patrick Kwok-Choon, Michael Gandolfini (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Théodore Pellerin (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Mike Taylor, KWasi Songui (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Tristan D. Lalla (ditto), Arthur Holden (ditto), Sylvain Landry (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Anana Rydvald, John Walsh, Lee Villeneuve (last seen in "Death Wish"), Julien Fortin, with a voice cameo from David Mamet.

RATING: 4 out of 10 employee ID badges