Kung Fu Panda 4

Year 16, Day 271 - 9/27/24 - Movie #4,856

BEFORE: I'll probably end up posting something very late on Friday, though I finished watching this late Thursday night on Peacock, I have to work a double-shift today, both jobs, because I agreed a few weeks ago to cover someone's shift today, she'd accidentally double-booked herself or forgot about a previous engagement, who knows, but sure, I'll take the shift, I can sleep when I retire, if I make it that long. 

Awkwafina carries over again from "Migration", and yes, this is her fourth appearance in a row, and her sixth for the year, since I used her in a link back in January. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Kung Fu Panda 3" (Movie #2,496)

THE PLOT: After Po is tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, he needs to find and train a new Dragon Warrior, while a wicked sorceress plans to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the Spirit Realm. 

AFTER: It's more of the same for the "Kung Fu Panda" franchise (pan-chise?) only it's really not, because most of the Furious Five are off on other missions not seen on film, they only make a brief appearance at the end, and only one of them speaks.  Hmm, where have I seen this sort of thing before?  Right, in "Across the Spider-Verse", where they had cameos from the alternate Spider-People from various other realities, only they didn't SAY anything, so then they didn't have to pay Nicolas Cage or John Mullaney anything, just by giving their characters nothing to say.  Here they didn't have to pay Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu or Jackie Chan, and it's just as simple, just don't have their characters say anything and save some money to put towards the animation, I guess.  Or hire five new actors for what they would have had to pay Angelina Jolie, probably. 

I think only four of these actors have been in a "Kung Fu Panda" movie before, just Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong and Bryan Cranston.  What more do you need, really?  Just build a movie with new characters around these four, you'll be fine.  Besides, it's been EIGHT YEARS since the last movie, the teens who enjoyed the first three films are in college now, and they probably don't have time to watch a movie.  A perfect excuse to bring in Awkwafina as a stealthy fox thief character, who has ties to the main villain, the Chameleon, voiced by Viola Davis, another new entry to the franchise's cast. 

Po is supposed to be giving up his warrior role, now that he's been made the spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, but he just can't resist going on one last kung fu adventure, and one last chance to defy Master Shifu.  Besides, it's being the Dragon Warrior that allows him to eat so many dumplings and maintain his panda-like bulky shape.  If he didn't do the Kung fu, just imagine how fat he WOULD get. So sure, let's make him walk across China to the home city of the Chameleon, it's good exercise for him.  

What doesn't really make sense here is that a group of miners reports seeing Po's old enemy, Tai Lung, who's supposed to be dead - no, sorry, in the Spirit Realm.  Now it's explained that maybe it's the Chameleon taking on the shape of Tai Lung, but that doesn't really make sense either, because later in the film when she ends up with Po's staff, she opens the door to the Spirit Realm and Tai Lung is the first warrior she brings back.  But if she could already appear in his form, then why did she need to bring him back?  Or if he was already HERE, then how could he still be THERE and maybe she didn't need to bring him back?  That's pretty confusing, was it Tai Lung we saw in the first scene or not?  We never really get an answer.

It's stated that the Chameleon can shape-shift into any animal, but, umm, wait a minute, NITPICK POINT here, that's not what a chameleon does.  A chameleon (in the real world) can change its color to blend in with a tree or some green grass (supposedly) but it can't change its SHAPE, or its MASS to grow as big as an elephant, that's impossible.  I know, Kung Fu magic, ancient Chinese secret and all that, but just like lemmings don't really stampede themselves over cliffs and die, chameleons don't change their shape, just their color.  Sometimes. 

The Chameleon here was a female lizard who wanted to learn Kung Fu, but was told by the Masters that she wasn't good enough, or wasn't strong enough, basically wasn't male enough.  Well, sure, we should not permit sexism in any form, but you know, maybe it was a different time, and we shouldn't hold those individuals responsible for not training a woman, maybe the previous generations were sexist, but now it's the present, and she could probably train in Kung Fu now if she wanted to, there shouldn't be anyone standing in her way NOW even if they were then.  But no, she decides the easiest thing to do (instead of being persistent and asking again, or finding more equitable martial arts trainers) is to steal this staff and open up the portal to the Spirit Realm, then call forth those sexist past masters who wouldn't train her and steal their Kung fu abilities and powers.  Not cool, why not just train and put in the work?  

What's worse, the film sets up this pattern for the Chameleon to get powers, call the dead master back from the Spirit Realm, steal his powers, put him in a cage, then repeat.  There's then a big final battle between the Chameleon and Po and Zhen, during which the Chameleon looks at times like a giant panda.  But she never stole Po's powers, so what gives?  The film can't even keep its own rules straight about how this whole power-stealing ability works. Look, I guess audiences didn't really care because this film made like $548 million worldwide, but still, I'd like to see a little more consistency about how the magic works in this anthropomorphic martial-arts based world. 

Honestly, I'm too tired right now to try and figure out complicated things and the wah they SHOULD have been.  Gonna get some sleep, because we're driving out to Long Island tomorrow morning - so no movie tonight, but I'll still watch something tomorrow and get the review up before the end of the day. 

Also starring the voices of Jack Black (last heard in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Viola Davis (last seen in "The Woman King"), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), James Hong (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Ian McShane (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Ke Huy Quan (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Harry Shum Jr. (ditto), Ronny Chieng (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Cedric Yarbrough (ditto), Lori Tan Chinn (last heard in "Turning Red"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Jimmy "Mr. Beast" Donaldson, James Murray, James Sie (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Vic Chao (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Audrey Brooke, Lincoln Nakamura, Cece Valentina, April Hong (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 3"), Peggy Etra, Gedde Watanabe (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Karen Maruyama (last seen in "Self Reliance"), Tom McGrath (last heard in "Penguins of Madagascar"), Christopher Knights (ditto), Phil LaMarr (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Colleen Smith (last heard in "The Happytime Murders"), Sarah Sarang Oh, Paul Pape, James Taku Leung, Steve Alterman.

RATING: 6 out of 10 "Wanted" posters

Migration

Year 16, Day 270 - 9/26/24 - Movie #4,855

BEFORE: Yeah, it's an animation block, so I'll suffer through some movies made for kids if it means I can be current on this genre, it's my bread and butter, after all.  Though I've never worked for a BIG animation studio, I do have friends and co-workers that have done that. I never felt the pull to burn my life down and go move out to L.A. and sell out by making silly movies for kids, but I get it, that's where the money is in this market - though these days, an animation studio can be anywhere, Blue Sky was up in Connecticut for a long time, from 1987 to 2019, but they sold out to Fox, which sold out to Disney.  I know some of the creatives moved out to the West Coast, but the production stayed in the East.  Anyway, that also proves that a bigger studio is just as likely to go belly-up as a small studio is.  Every studio closes or gets bought or goes through layoffs at some point, really it's just a matter of time.  Blue Sky had a good run, with 13 feature films and some shorts. 

Both Awkwafina AND Keegan-Michael Key carry over from "IF". 

THE PLOT: A family of ducks try to convince their overprotective father to go on the vacation of a lifetime. 

AFTER: Finally, an animated film aimed at kids that sends the right message out to them, and that message is: if you want to go someplace fun on vacation, just keep pestering your parents until they take you there.  Surely no harm can come from showing this happening in a duck family in a movie, right?  

Mack Mallard is the father of the family, and he's portrayed as a needlessly over-protective sort who won't let his family leave the safety of their pond because there are so many things out in the larger world that can kill and eat ducks.  And he's not wrong, the number one job a parent has is to make sure their kids don't die on their watch, and it's the source of all parental anxiety, except for the anxiety that comes from not wanting their kids to have sex and/or become pregnant. But mostly it's a primal fear thing, goes back to protecting the cave-bear clan from predators. Stay in your cave, sit by the fire, don't go anywhere unless you need to get milk, but come right back, because someday your parents will be old and you'll need to take care of them. 

So migration is off the table for the Mallard family, who live somewhere in New England in a safe pond where migrating ducks stop each year to rest and maybe catch some fish before heading down to Jamaica.  But the other ducks talk about that island like it's a magical place, and Mack's wife and kids desperately want to go.  What changes Mack's mind is the loneliness of his Uncle Dan, who's never been anywhere, and has no mate, no other family.  So the family flies off, and that's the start of this movie's "Everything Goes Wrong" storyline, starting with the fact that all the other ducks seem to be flying the other way.  Well, the vacation's off to a great start, then, isn't it? 

They find themselves in a rainy swamp, confronted by a large, goofy heron, which is a bird that Mack had always warned his family about as a potential duck-eater.  After a nervous night in a shack with this female heron and her nearly-dead husband, the family finally learns to relax a bit, and their next stop on their journey south is New York City. Surely nothing can go wrong there, right?  Uncle Dan argues with a flock of pigeons over a found sandwich, and Mallard matriarch Gwen has to step in and negotiate a peace settlement with their leader, Chump, who has a tendency to keep getting run over by city vehicles. 

The pigeon can only give them directions to Jamaica, Queens, which is not really the same thing as the Caribbean island (although both places do sell beef patties, I can confirm).  But she knows a macaw parrot originally from the tropics who knows the way to Jamaica, the only thing is that he lives in a cage in an apartment above a restaurant where the head chef serves a lot of, you guessed it, duck dinners.  What are the odds?  The Mallards can't steal the key to the cage without alerting the chef to their presence, but they do get the key, injure the chef and free the parrot.  

OK, the trip is back on track, with directions and with a new guide, only after a bathroom break, the group of ducks find themselves adjacent to a duck farm, which seems like a true paradise, where ducks are fed all they can eat and they get massages and do yoga, and talk about ascending to paradise like some weird avian cult, and there's a spaceship coming from behind the comet.  Really, what could go wrong here, unless someone is fattening up all the ducks for a reason and then a certain chef comes by to pick up his latest order of ducks for his restaurant. Again, what are the odds?  

(I really hate to call a NITPICK POINT here, but would a very famous chef from New York really drive himself down to south Jersey or wherever just to hand-select the ducks for his restaurant?  Most likely he'd send somebody, or just have them delivered, right?  I also really hate to point this out, but the idyllic duck farm that is really anything BUT paradise seems to mimic the setting from "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget". Just me?) 

But the film needs a villain, and it needs to be somebody we'll remember and also somebody who would remember these ducks and have a grudge against them.  After his ducks get away from him for a second time, the gloves are off and he gets in his special helicopter just to track down these birds and catch them again, because no, other ducks won't do, he has to have THESE ducks because he did pay for them before they escaped, I guess.  And what celebrity chef doesn't have his own helicopter, I ask you?  He's THAT good and THAT famous, and well, this does all sound a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?  

The ducks do prevail and make it to Jamaica, and the mute and oddly-shaped famous chef gets his come-uppance, and if he's smart he'll stop cooking ducks and switch over to a vegetarian menu that won't fight back.  Sure.  And the Mallard family manages to find the exact ducks who visited their pond on the very large island of Jamaica, as you probably figured they would.  And they also manage to set up a new quest for the sequel film, which is probably being planned if this one made money. 

Well, I learned what a Pekin duck is today, which is different from a Peking duck, a famous dish in Chinese cuisine - that's a duck cooked a certain way to insure crispy skin.  But a Pekin duck is a common breed of duck, the white ones, as opposed to mallards or Muscovys or other kinds. I had not heard of Pekin ducks before, but now I know what they're called, and I wonder if you can make Peking duck with a Pekin duck. 

Carryovers Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key both have experience voicing birds in other animated films, they both were in "Storks" (did not see) and Awkwafina voiced a seagull in "The Little Mermaid", and Key also was in "The Angry Birds Movie", so I guess you can even get typecast doing voice acting. 

I've got two more animated films to go in this chain, but it looks like I won't be able to get to "Inside Out 2" this year, or "Despicable Me 4" either.  "Inside Out 2" just hit streaming, the other film has not, but I don't think the linking is there for either film, I just would not have been able to work them into this chain, not without massively overhauling it anyway, and my chain is set until Christmas, and I'd kind of like to keep it that way.  

Also starring the voices of Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Money Shot: The Pornhub Story"), Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Tresi Gazal, Caspar Jennings (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "When In Rome"), Carol Kane (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), David Mitchell (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Isabela Merced (last seen in "Sweet Girl"), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 salsa dancers

IF

Year 16, Day 269 - 9/25/24 - Movie #4,854

BEFORE: This is a movie that had its gala red-carpet premiere at the theater where I work part-time, and usually when a big-time Hollywood Studio rents out the theater, that means "all hands on deck", or everybody works.  But I had a vacation planned that week, my wife and I drove down to North Carolina to see my parents, it was a few days after Mother's Day, I shut down the Movie Year for a week. So I wasn't around to work the big premiere of "IF", and I did not get to see Ryan Reynolds in person or any of the other cast members who might have attended. Oh, well. 

That was really only four months ago, but it feels like much longer. And how is this film already on cable when it was in theaters in May of THIS YEAR?  Man, remember when a film would be in first-run theaters for two months, then maybe do a run in smaller second-run theaters, and then still take a YEAR to be on HBO or Showtime?  And what about streaming?  Nope, this one went right to cable for some reason, of course COVID did something to cut down the release windows, and now every major studio has a channel on premium cable, now that Paramount took over Showtime and MGM took over - umm, Epix, was it?  All I know is, movies are getting to my TV set faster, which is great because I work more now and have less time to go to the theater, even when work IS at a theater. 

Awkwafina carries over from "Jackpot!"

THE PLOT: A young girl who goes through a difficult experience begins to see everyone's imaginary friends who have been left behind as their real-life friends have grown up.  

AFTER: You know, I was debating whether to watch this one at all this year, because I noticed that it could come in handy linking some Christmas movies that are on my list - only they're not the Christmas movies I'm planning to watch this year, so if I shelved this one, it would be in the interest of linking Christmas movies NEXT year, maybe.  I can't possibly predict which Christmas movies I can get to next December, I just figured out which ones to watch THIS year, and there's 300 unknown films lying in-between.  Look, if the stars align and I do happen to watch exactly those two holiday movies next year, I'll just find another film that connects them, but I can't hold a film back just because it MIGHT be useful next December, not when it's useful NOW.  

It's such a stupid premise, because imaginary friends are not real, by technical definition they're imaginary, it's right there in the name.  But this movie asks us to picture a world where their host kids have grown up and forgotten about them, but yet they're still in existence, which means they're REAL, at least to some degree.  So the concept is self-contradictory and therefore makes no sense.  They either exist or they don't, they're either real or not-real, they can't display qualities or properties of both states of being.  If someone grows up and forgets about their imaginary friend, then that friend does not exist, and in fact never existed in the first place, so HOW could they then be walking, talking manifestations in any way?  How can they live under Coney Island in what appears to be a nursing home facility for imaginary friends? 

Sorry, IFs, or I.F.'s, the movie drills this two-letter acronym into our brains WELL past the point of the audience "getting it".  No, by all means, please explain again what I.F. stands for, because maybe somebody didn't get it the 13th time somebody explained it.  By all means, also spend the first hour of your film over-explaining the premise, too, even though it makes, as I said before, no sense. 

Young Bea lost her mother a couple of years ago, and now her father is sick, and she's afraid of losing another parent.  Sure, I get it, times are tough and sometimes we don't get enough time with the people we love, but maybe this is still some kind of learning experience or opportunity for growth, and retreating into a world of imaginary creatures is maybe not the best way to deal with her reality.  Or, in a similar fashion to "Spaceman", perhaps she just simply goes insane and imagines all of these characters we see.  Because other people can't see these I.F.'s, except for the person who imagined them in the first place, and also Bea for some reason.

Once Bea learns how many I.F.'s there are who are no longer in contact with their host kids who grew up, she tries linking up the I.F.'s with new kids, because there sure seem to be a bunch of lonely kids out there who need some cheering-up, only her efforts are futile, because the new kids can't see the I.F.'s either, even though they might want to.  So, phase 2 of the operation is to track down the now-adult kids who thought up these creatures and try to re-unite them.  Only they need to be reminded of what it was like to be a child before they can see the creatures they've forgotten about.  Umm, except for Bea, who can see all of them - man, is this way over-complicating things, or what?  This makes a film where a teen girl turns into a giant panda or learns she's a giant Kraken seem quite simple by comparison. 

Also, to what END are all these efforts taken?  Why is it so importantthat Bea re-unites them with the kids who thought them up?  Just so those adults can feel like kids again for five minutes?  Just go play a video-game or skip some stones or something, that's much easier.  You know what, go get an ICE CREAM, treat yourself and don't tell anybody about it.  Bea should probably be spending more time with her sick father or her grandmother, instead of running around NYC trying to catch I.F.'s like Pokemons or figuring out which depressed adult goes with which crazy creature.  What an appalling waste of everyone's time, including mine.

Also, NITPICK POINT here, why is Blue hiding in the hospital, and why is Cal so desperate to keep him from being seen, when the simple truth is that NOBODY can see him, except for the kid who thought him up, who's nowhere nearby?  There's an awful lot of fuss over not letting him be seen, and it's all wasted effort.  

Also, NITPICK POINT #2, why isn't Bea's grandmother concerned that Bea never seems to be around?  The hospital visiting hours probably end at some point, and Bea then spends hours running around NYC looking for those kids who grew up, and also going out to Coney Island to visit the I.F.'s, where does her grandmother think she is all that time?  Me, I had a very overprotective grandmother who wanted to call the police if I was ten minutes late getting home from school, so maybe it's just me, or maybe Bea's grandmother is senile and doesn't notice her granddaughter isn't there?  This whole movie has such a weird structure and not an accurate depiction of space and time, so like what's up with that? 

And do Cal and Blue and Blossom live in the same building as Bea's grandmother, or a different one?  This is unclear.  Who's the other older lady who lives in that building or the different one?  Also unclear. Why is Blue purple?  Again, very very unclear. And if nobody could see these I.F.',s how did one end up in the photograph of Bea's youjng grandmother?  That shouldn't be possible, according to the same rules that this film established for itself.

Also, there's a credit for Brad Pitt in this film, playing the invisible character.  Sure, it's a cute gag because it's riffing off him playing the Vanisher in "Deadpool 2" and the fact that his character was invisible for almost the entire film, except for a few seconds.  Was he ever really there on set?  But still, please don't make up credits for people who were never really in your movie to begin with.  That kind of thing just screws up my stats and my IMDB searches, so knock it off.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Cailey Fleming (last seen in "Peppermint"), John Krasinski (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Fiona Shaw (last seen in "Enola Holmes"), Alan Kim (last seen in "Minari"), Liza Colon-Zayas (last seen in "The Purge: Election Year"), Bobby Moynihan (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Catharine Daddario, Audrey Hoffman, Ed Herbstman (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Barbara Andres (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Alexander Rivero, Shauna Pinkett, David Weissmann, Craig Castaldo (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Ari Groover

with the voices of Steve Carell (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (last seen in "Man Up"), Louis Gossett Jr. (last seen in "Undercover Grandpa"), Emily Blunt (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), George Clooney (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Bradley Cooper (last seen in "Maestro"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Bill Hader (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "Wonka"), Blake Lively (also last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Sebastian Maniscalco (last seen in "About My Father"), Christopher Meloni (last seen in 'The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Matthew Rhys (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Amy Schumer (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Allyson Seeger, Jon Stewart (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here") and archive footage of James Stewart (last seen in "Call Me Kate")

RATING: 4 out of 10 flyers on the bulletin board

Jackpot!

Year 16, Day 268 - 9/24/24 - Movie #4,853

BEFORE: I've got "After-School Special" shifts, this week, three in the next 6 days anyway, that's a week of programming at the theater specifically chosen to showcase work by alumni of the School of Visual Arts (which is the college that Keith Haring went to, many other creative people have learned their crafts there, too).  So I'm working a Friday-night showcase of shorts followed by a reception, and Sunday there's a screening of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", which I've seen.  They're also re-screening "Barbie" with a couple of alumni guests who worked on visual effects for that film, but I'm not on that shift. This week's screenings are free and open to the public, so if you're in the NYC area, come by SVA on West 23rd St. and check them out. 

Tonight's screening is a film that's going to fit RIGHT into my chain for next week, and replace "5-25-77" that I was forced to drop.  So I'm going to try to watch it tonight (which I can do, unless it's a full house) and then I'll review it next week, just before October 1, it just so happens to have Steve Coulter in it, which would be an amazing coincidence, except that I've learned there's no such thing. There is only the chain, and the chain is filled with opportunities and happy accidents, not coincidences. 

John Cena carries over from "Blockers". 

THE PLOT: In the near future, a "Grand Lottery" has been established in California.  The catch: anyone can kill the winner before sundown to legally claim their multi-billion dollar jackpot. 

AFTER: Well, I've already had one film this year about winning the lottery ("Jerry and Marge Go Large") and last week I watched a film about a reality show where the participants can be killed ("Self-Reliance"), so really, how can I NOT watch this film, which ties both ideas together. Set in California in the 2030's, it features a lottery, followed by very public attempts to KILL that lottery winner, and the person who kills them wins the jackpot in their place.  THAT person is then safe from harm, and gets the giant novelty check. Jeezus, how did/will an American state come up with this?  

The answer comes in the form of the 2nd Great Depression. The state needed money, and what better way to raise money than by having a lottery?  We keep getting larger and larger PowerBall jackpots, right?  And after a few rollovers when there is no winner (the unlucky winner can choose to leave California with their life intact, however they then also forfeit the jackpot) the jackpot gets up to a few Billion with a B, and nearly all the average people are turned into homicidal maniacs who absolutely WILL KILL if it means they get all that money.  But come on, let's say they win $3 billion, but half of that goes to taxes, right?  So 1.5 billion, but then that probably gets spread out over 30 years, or they take a lump sum payment which is less, so with the lump sum that probably goes down to a flat billion, and maybe in the year 2030 $1 billion doesn't buy what it used to, because of inflation.  Then you have to figure after a depression the U.S. dollar might be worth even less, so really, is it worth it?  

They make a mention in the film about increased traffic leaving California just before the drawing - as anyone who leaves the state would be safe (AND also disqualified from "winning") this tracks.  The really lucky person would be someone who leaves Cali and then gets chosen, so then they can still walk down the street in the next state and not get killed by anyone and everyone passing by.  The only other rule in the competition is NO GUNS, and sure, this makes sense if liberal California passed some anti-gun legislation in the late 2020's, then wanted to have this lottery in place but couldn't repeal the anti-gun laws.  I'm way overthinking this, right?  It's just a dumb silly action movie meant for people who enjoy stunts and fight scenes. 

For a while there, I was buying 2 PowerBall tickets (one with chosen numbers and one random "quick pick") when the jackpot went over a certain amount, but I never came close to winning, or even getting two numbers right out of six.  I did win $500 from a Foxwoods slot machine once, and that pretty much paid for Christmas that year, and I think I won a similar amount on a scratch-off ticket once, I had an aunt & uncle who gave everyone lottery tickets for Christmas.  Also I won the "Hamilton" lottery once, and my wife and I got to see the show from front-row seats for just $10 each (a Hamilton for a Hamilton), so who knows, maybe I used up all my luck. 

Luck's a funny thing, maybe it's subjective and based on how you look at things.  Is that the point of this scenario, to make us question the nature of luck?  Hey, I've been married twice and divorced once, so I tend to think that over time, things tend to even out, and obviously the life expectancy of everything over time is zero.  So what is luck and what is the point of this movie?  Just to have fun and show off, I think - probably no deeper metaphysical meaning is there to be found. 

Former actress Katie Kim comes back in town, trying to revive her career after spending a decade back in Michigan, caring for her mother.  She rents an AirBnB that turns out to be a disaster, her roommate is another aspiring actress and also her audition leads her nowhere.  I must have missed the part where she buys the lottery ticket, and the Wikipedia plot doesn't mention it either.  But she's unaware of how the new Grand Lottery works, because she's been away for so long, and she doesn't realize what's going on when everyone at the casting agent's office and also the nearby karate dojo AND the yoga center all suddenly want to kill her.

Enter Noel Cassidy, the freelance Lottery protection agent who offers to help her stay alive until sundown so she can collect the prize, in exchange for 10% of the winnings.  Not a terrible deal, since 10% of $3.6 billion would still be $360 million. Right?  This gives John Cena's character a lot of great scenes as he fights off all those murderous karate guys and yoga moms and loads Katie into his car, which is bullet-proof and tricked out like a James Bond car.  However a drone camera in the sky tracks the winner's movements, and posts Katie's location to the internet and phone apps every 14 minutes, so really, nowhere is safe. 

First Katie tries to hide in a wax museum - a great idea, because nobody's paid to go to one of those in 20 or 30 years. But Katie's roommate calls her and figures out where she is, so Noel and Katie try hiding in a celebrity's panic room, which is another great idea.  But eventually the murder mob figures out a way in, and so Noel needs to call an old buddy, Louis, who runs a more sophisticated protection outfit, which will take a larger percentage of her winnings, however they have more resources to keep her alive, so perhaps it's worth it?  

However, Noel suspects that his old friend is not legit, and is only pretending to keep lottery winners safe, so Katie takes off and tries to head for the border, which means she'd forfeit the jackpot, but also still stay alive.  Louis kidnaps Noel, however, in order to force Katie to come back to L.A. and surrender to him, which means he might kill her himself and keep her prize, in either order.  This leads to a showdown at an abandoned Hollywood theater between all the main players - who will be left standing when the sun goes down and the time runs out? 

Originally, this film was going to be titled "Grand Theft Lotto", or perhaps "Grand Death Lotto", but they apparently couldn't get the rights to that name because it was too similar to the "Grand Theft Auto" video-game series.  So instead they just went with "Jackpot", which unfortunately seems almost as plain and boring as "Blockers" or "Spaceman" or "The Report".  Still, it's a lot of fun and very heavy on the choreographed fight scenes (as an actress, Katie had completed a "stage-fighting" course) so if action's your thing, this might be right up your alley. 

Also starring Awkwafina (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Ayden Mayeri (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Donald Elise Watkins (last seen in "Supercon"), Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) (last seen in "The Dirt"), Simu Liu (last seen in "Barbie"), Adam Ray (ditto), Seann William Scott (last seen in "Bulletproof Monk"), Marian Green, Rosanna Scotto (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Dolly de Leon (last seen in "Triangle of Sadness"), Murray Hill, Becky Ann Baker (last seen in "The Half of It"), Sam Asghari (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Monique Ganderton (last seen in "The Killer"), Steven Shelby, John Santiago, Bobby Lee (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), Leslie David Baker (last heard in "Vivo"), Rylea Hendreschke, David Conk, Josh Diogo, Jordan Salmon, Theresa Sutera, Lisa Catara, Mathew Seiden, Holmes, Cassidy Kahler, Vanessa Cater (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Holly Dowell, Stella Reimer, Taylor Ortega, Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Richard Nunez, Casey Hendershot, Cole Eckert, Imani Love.

RATING: 6 out of 10 homicidal tourists on a tour bus

Blockers

Year 16, Day 267 - 9/23/24 - Movie #4,852

BEFORE: I think this is the end of the back-to-school films, there might be ONE more this week, but no more than that.  I've really got to hustle if I'm going to start the October horror chain on time.  Silly me, I programmed three "skip days" into September, but then I just HAD to add "Transporter" and "Transporter 2" and that cut me down to ONE skip-day, and then I added two more but only took away one, and that was because it has the wrong Steve Coulter in it.  Suddenly there are NO skip days in September and I'll probably end up with 31 movies watched in a 30-day month.  Well, it's OK because now I know I can get by in November and December with just 14 slots, and we'll still make it to Christmas. OK, I promise, no more talk about Christmas movies until the trick-or-treating is over. 

Gary Cole carries over from "The Bronze". 

THE PLOT: Three parents try to stop their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night. 

AFTER: Really, this is another film that I was in no hurry to get to - it came out in 2018, so that's SIX years ago, and I guess I was avoiding it, because it just didn't look that funny when it was released, or maybe I was just ignoring it because so many other movies exist and seemed more important.  I only put it on my list a few months ago, it might have been on premium cable before, but I recorded it from the USA channel, so it's kind of had its day and it's not really on anyone's rader any more, at this point you've either watched the film or you haven't, I'd wager that nobody's paying to rent it if it's airing on the non-premium channels that are desperate to fill up air time. 

And yeah, I know it's about prom night, and proms happen in May or June, not in September, but work with me here, it's a wonder that it landed here as part of a school-based chain.  I won't tell the story again about how my boss mixed up the timeline in a high-school based animated feature because he was convinced that proms take place in the fall, not the spring. I tried to tell him he was confusing "homecoming" with prom, but he just wouldn't believe me.  No, I've told that story too many times, I won't tell it again.  But here I am, making essentially the same mistake, watching a prom movie in September - but I KNOW that it's a mistake and a side-effect of the chain-linking system, I'm not ignorant. 

Look, I'm 55 and child-free, so it's unlikely that I'll ever have the experience of having a kid in high-school or going to prom or being on the debate team or whatever.  That window has closed, unless my life takes some weird turn.  This whole film is based on that experience being a double-edged sword for a parent, because it means their son or daughter is close to graduation and college and (maybe) adulthood, but it also means they might be planning to have sex on Prom Night, especially if they've never had it before.  So it's a time to celebrate that they're getting older, but also to dread that they're getting more mature, if that makes sense. 

And just as there are all kinds of students (as seen in "Leo") there are also many kinds of parents, who would deal with this situation differently.  Sure, there are parents who are willing to celebrate their child's sexual awakening and not consider it a "loss" of something, but a gaining of experience.  Then there are those parents who prefer denial, they just don't want to know what their kids do on Prom Night, just go to bed early and pull the covers over their heads and try to not think about it.  But those kinds of parents aren't very fun or cinematic, are they?  Nah, let's make a movie about the parents who panic and lose their minds and set out to disrupt their children's plans, both AT the main prom and also at the hotel after-party, where, come on, it's a hotel, kids are totally doing it. 

Sure, we've come a long way, sex education is a lot better than it used to be (at least in some states) and teens are allowed to have attractions to both genders (again, in some states) and they give out condoms at school events and teens are taught to not be ashamed of their bodies or their feelings and they feel free to experiment or have sex, or to NOT have sex if they choose.  Yeah, right, it's probably more complicated and awkward than it ever was before, thanks to P.C. rules.  It's probably a miracle if anyone gets laid in high-school now because everyone's so hyper-sensitive and gender-non-conforming and also they're all riddled with anxiety or ADHD or their peanut and gluten allergies, all that probably gets in the way.  

Anyway, let's assume that somewhere there are teenage girls who pick Prom Night for their first sexual experiences, and their parents are pretty much NOT OK with it, because it's funnier if they're the type that fly off the handle, speed around on Prom Night trying to find their kids' rented limo, and get so inside their own heads and fall back on outdated attitudes that they feel they must stop their daughters' first times at any cost.  Again, because it will probably be funnier that way. Parents speaking to their kids in an open and honest dialogue about the risks and rewards of sex is just plain boring. 

You just KNOW somebody really wanted to title this film "Cock Blockers", because there's a prominent silhouette of a rooster in the title on the poster.  But the studio probably couldn't market a film with that word in the title, so they took it out.  But we all know it's there, now the question is, is it unofficially part of the title?  I'm reminded of the film "The Report" which looked like it had NO title at all, because they redacted (blanked out) the title on the poster and in all marketing materials.  It's a too-cute joke, because how do you get people talking about going to see your film if nobody even knows what the title is?  Everybody can't just keep saying "That movie, you know, the one with no title".  Or can they? 

The three close teen friends have something of a sex pact, they all agree to have sex on Prom Night, Julie with her long-time boyfriend Austin, Kayla with her science lab partner, Connor (they're not serious, but she just wants to get the first time out of the way) and Sam with the goofy but nice guy Chad, even though she's a closeted lesbian who would rather date her female classmate, Angelica. 

The parents of the three girls learn about the pact because one leaves her laptop open and awake and her text chains also pop up there, and the parents can therefore spy on her texts, and there sure are a lot of eggplant emojis in them...  Jeez, and their parents thought their daughters were so sweet and innocent - but over the course of the night, all the secrets come out, like how Julie's planning to go to college across the country in L.A. but she hasn't told her mother yet, and how Julie has sexual feelings that she can't talk to her father about, and yeah, how Sam is a lesbian, which at that point really wasn't much of a secret at all. 

Pro tip for the teens out there - before having sex with your casual non-girlfriend, maybe check to make sure her father isn't built like a pro wrestler who can pick yu up and throw you across the room.  Just a thought. 

NITPICK POINT: Who drives from Chicago to L.A. just to drop somebody off?  That's over 2,000 miles and about 29 hours of drive-time, would probably take three or four days, even with multiple drivers. Well, any teenagers who are considering themselves in a couple at the start of that trip might be headed for a break-up after spending so much time together in the car. 

NITPICK POINT 2: Can we all agree that butt-chugging beer just isn't really a thing?  As seen here, the teen doing it is only pretending, forcing the adult to be the only one. But come on, what a stupid stupid thing for anyone to do, how does that even work?  It's just a beer enema, right?  I mean, if you're doing that to get drunk then you're doing it wrong.  Does the beer at the party really taste that bad?  Usually people just drink a few glasses of it and then they can't taste it any more anyway.  Sure i get it's supposed to be a funny bit but it's just going to give teens bad ideas that they may copy.  

Also starring Leslie Mann (last seen in "The Bubble"), John Cena (last seen in "Barbie"), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Kathryn Newton (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Geraldine Viswanathan (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Gideon Adlon, Ramona Young (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Graham Phillips (last seen in "Evan Almighty"), Miles Robbins (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Jimmy Bellinger, Colton Dunn (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Sarayu Blue (last seen in "Lions for Lambs"), Gina Gershon (last seen in "LOL"), June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Unfinished Business"), Hannibal Buress (last seen in "Slice"), Anniston Almond, Noor Anna Maher, Hannah Goergen, Chad Sanborn, Aubree McGuire, Milana Alrayes, Rylee Whiteman, Audrey Casson, Madeline Paris Erwin, Aubrey Michele Katz, Andrew Lopez, Jake Picking (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), T.C. Carter (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Jill Jane Clements (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 rose petals on the bed (awww...)

The Bronze

Year 16, Day 266 - 9/22/24 - Movie #4,851

BEFORE: Well, sometimes I feel the need to fast-track a film, and to prove that, I've watched 14 films this year with release dates of 2024.  "Deadpool & Wolverine", of course, was out in theaters, so there was some urgency there, and the linking happened to allow it. But the documentaries about Jim Henson and the Beach Boys were brand new, too, and streaming made it possible to include them at the last minute.  "Unfrosted" caught my attention, and I also got really lucky with "Rebel Moon" that just as I was getting set to watch Part 1, Part 2 got released on Netflix. "LIft" came out in January, and I did a Kevin Hart chain a few months later, and "The Beekeeper" also came out that month, and it slid nicely into the Jason Statham chain seven months later. 

This film, well, it's not like that. It came out in 2015 and I ignored it for several years, then finally it came to streaming and I ignored it then, too - I think it was on Hulu for a good long time, but not long enough, because when I finally got around to it, it was gone, and now it's really nowhere, except on iTunes and cable on demand for $3.99.  And who knows, I may eventually pay that to put it on DVD, but let me watch it today on my free "pirate" site and see if it's worth the money.  I've been on a tear lately getting stuff on demand to put on DVD, and those $3.99 charges are starting to add up.

But yeah, maybe this is exactly the kind of movie you watch when you've been watching films almost daily for 16 years.  Cecily Strong carries over from "Leo". 

THE PLOT: A foul-mouthed former gymnastics bronze medalist with local celebrity status reluctantly trains a rising Olympics aspirant. 

AFTER: There was a summer Olympics this year, if I remember right, and I wasn't able to come up with a movie tie-in at the time, I think MAYBE I watched that documentary about Billie Jean King during the Olympics, and she was a U.S. team tennis coach, but that's a bit of a stretch. And "Next Goal Wins" wasn't about Olympic soccer but the World Cup trials, so that doesn't count. Still, I've watched maybe a dozen films this year about sports, just nothing that would tie-in direct with those Olympics.  

But look, I don't really know what to DO with the character I've been given here, I mean, the first rule of telling a story is to have a central character that people can root for, and it feels like someone went out of their way to make the main character very unlikable, and how am I supposed to root for her if I don't even LIKE her?  She's so obnoxious that I don't care what happens to her, whether she succeeds or not.

Look, I get it, writing is all about contrasts, and young, cute gymnasts are supposed to fall immediately into the "Likable" category, like they're all America's sweethearts, like Mary Lou Retton or Kerri Strug or some of the real gymnasts who had cameos in this film. Clearly some screenwriter thought along the lines of "What if you met Mary Lou Retton in real life and she was a real jerk?"  She may be, I don't know, but it sure seems unlikely.  So this fictional gymnast, Hope Ann Greggory, who won a bronze medal at "Rome 2004" (the Olympics weren't in Rome that year, though, I checked) but has since fallen on hard times and she just hangs around her home-town of Athens, Ohio, aimlessly getting free lunch from the food court in the mall and also stealing money out of her father's postal truck.  NITPICK POINT: Sure, anything that looks like a birthday card from Grandma might have cash inside, but who sends MONEY through the mail any more?  Who even mails anything any more?  Oh, right, this film is from 2015, before Zelle and Venmo. 

Any attempts by her father to get Hope Ann to stop stealing, get a job, take some responsibility for her post-gymnastic, post-injury career and stop living off her old glory just results in her pulling the "But Mom died when I was five months old" card and then just falling back into her usual routine.  

There's a new, up-and-coming gymnast also training in her hometown, at her old gym, and when her old trainer suddenly dies, her father reads her a letter promising Hope Ann $500,000 if she will take over the training of "Mighty" Maggie Townsend and help her qualify for the gymnastics event in Toronto.  Hope Ann takes the gig, but before long we realize that she's taken the job JUST to sabotage Maggie's training, and she lets her eat the wrong foods and gets her high and it's a bit too long before Hope Ann realizes that if she keeps going this way, Maggie won't qualify and she won't inherit the money.  It sure SEEMED like she understood the terms of the deal, but perhaps she's not as smart as we think.  Or too smart, or something. 

There's a budding romance with Ben, aka "Twitchy" who runs the gym and also helps with Maggie's training, but Hope Ann nearly blows that when she sleeps with the man in charge of training the U.S. team, and it's the guy who took her virginity back in the day.  With what we know now about gymnastics trainers and team doctors and some of them preying on the young girls who want to make the team, really, this plotline did NOT age well.  Any time a man in a position of power uses that to get sex, it's very wrong, and so I'm not exactly sure why Hope Ann got drawn back into his web, because it sure seemed like she hated him earlier in the movie. Perhaps it's the seductive lure of sex with another gymnast, and there is a scene that shows just how wild that could be.  For fans of "The Big Bang Theory", sure, it might fulfill some kind of sex fantasy because Melissa Rauch's character on that show was so sweet and innocent and naive, but come on, they clearly used a body double, I can tell that just from the way it's edited, how you never see her face and nude body in the same shot. Sorry, Big Bang fans. 

She now plays a naive and optimistic judge on the reboot of "Night Court", the daughter of Judge Harry Stone, played by Harry Anderson in the first series.  I have to say, I much prefer her playing the innocent types, hearing her swear like a trucker and go from being aimless and nasty to being focused and nasty doesn't really constitute much of a character arc for me.  I only hated Hope Ann slightly less by the end of the movie, and again, I don't really see the point in creating a main character who is so darn unlikable.  

I also can't believe this movie was produced by the Duplass Brothers, it doesn't feel like one of theirs at all.  I thought they were all about mumblecore and awkward relationships situations, like "Cyrus" or "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" and this just doesn't seem to fit into their oeuvre.  If anything it feels more like a Farrelly Brothers film, something more like "Kingpin" only not as outrageous, does that make sense? Only this film premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2015, and I think the Duplass Brothers are kind of like the Kings of Sundance, so that, at least, tracks.  

Also starring Melissa Rauch (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Gary Cole (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Thomas Middleditch (last heard in DC League of Super-Pets"), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Haley Lu Richardson (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Dale Raoul (last seen in "Beautiful"), Craig Kilborn (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Dominique Dawes, Olga Korbut, Dominique Moceanu, Barak Hardley (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Michael Shamus Wiles (last seen in "Lost Highway"), Christine Abrahamsen, Ellery Sprayberry (last seen in "Wakefield"), Kathryn Ding, Kyle Carthens, Mark Mazzocco, John Thobaben, Brian Binder, Stephanie Bertoni, Chris Van Vliet, Dave Durch, Olivia Macrae, Reese Garber, Thomas C. Butcher, Kathie Dice, David Gregg, Sherry Hudak, Ben Rauch (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?").

RATING: 4 out of 10 grilled cheese sandwiches (with the crusts cut off)