Prince Avalanche

Year 16, Day 356 - 12/21/24 - Movie #4,898

BEFORE: Emile Hirsch carries over again from "Speed Racer". I promise, I'm back on Christmas stuff RIGHT after this, with just two films left in the year.  This weekend is going to be all about getting into the Christmas spirit, or at least trying to.  I've got one of my famous Christmas music mixes playing as I type this, I went out for drinks with the theater staff on Thursday - that's as close as I'm going to get to an office holiday party this year - and I watched the last hour of "Bad Santa 2" since it was airing last night while I had the TV on. 

I didn't send out Christmas cards last year or this year, I also didn't make a new music mix CD for family and friends, I feel a little guilty but November has been very busy for me since taking on the second job.  That's when I usually compiled and field-tested my mixes, and I don't know, maybe I'll get back to doing that in the future, but I just haven't been in the mood.  I did that for 30 years and I've got plenty of mix CDs to re-listen to, so hopefully others feel the same way, assuming they saved my cassettes and CDs over the years. 

Have not done any Christmas shopping either, and it's nearly too late now anyway - we did our shopping between Christmas and New Year's during the pandemic, and honestly, that was easier and stores were less crowded and it made me wonder why everyone doesn't do it that way.  Sure, it helps that my family lives in another state and presents are probably going to arrive late no matter what, so sure, I kind of get a pass now.  Maybe if I listen to some more music I'll be more motivated - but really, I just want to make our Christmas lasagna and drink some Christmas-themed beer.  OH, I also bought eggnog tonight, I found some at a liquor store near where we went out to dinner with a friend, so there's that.  It's the kind that already has the alcohol in it, so after I write this review I'll drink some and maybe feel more merry.  It's got rum, brandy AND whiskey in it so if that's not merry, I don't know what is.  

THE PLOT: Two highway road workers spend the summer of 1988 away from their city lives. The isolated landscape becomes a place of misadventure as the men find themselves at odds with each other and the women they left behind. 

AFTER: This is a strange little film, by that I mean that there's not much too it, it's a simple story that doesn't feel like it's going to go anywhere for the majority of the time, and then when it finally does go somewhere, that's probably not a place you were expecting it to go.  Feels a lot like a film festival film, so I wonder if this did well at Sundance or Slamdance or a bunch of quirky festivals.  Yes, I'm exactly right, it was nominated for the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival, a notorious indie film haven.  Also did well at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sitges International Film Festival in Spain. I've worked on animated films that did well at Sitges.  And yes, it also played at Sundance in 2013 - I KNEW IT, I could just sort of FEEL it. 

The film opens with a message telling us that 1987 was a particular bad year for wildfires in the state of Texas, and it's a bit hard to see how that plays into the story, unless it means that there were more road crews at work than ever before the following year, not only restoring burned road posts but also re-painting lines and clearing fallen trees and brush to prevent more fires.  I guess that makes sense? 

Alvin, the older one, runs a two-man road crew and is the kind of guy who took the job to get out of the city and commune with nature, also it sounds like there's a relationship with a woman that is vastly improved by him being somewhere else, if that makes sense.  Alvin has hired the younger brother of his wife (or girlfriend) as his second, and if that isn't awkward to begin with, well, just wait.  They're different ages so they're at different stages of life, and so maybe that's one reason it's hard for them to find some common ground.  Lance, the younger one, finds it harder to focus on the tasks at hand, and spends more time thinking about the upcoming weekend, and how he's going to drive into town and dance and party and maybe get laid. 

Well, different strokes for different folks, and Alvin doesn't mind if Lance takes the truck into town, because he's fine camping by himself, sleeping in a hammock and catching fish or small game animals, or just lying in the middle of the road when there's no traffic.  He writes letters to his lover about how the time spent outdoors is improving his outlook on life, so we can only wonder what things were like for him in the city.  Hey, this was back before Austin was a cool place to live, maybe, so who knows, maybe it was quite boring.  I've been all through the major cities in Texas myself, but that was on BBQ-themed vacations, so I can't really say I've held a job there or been bored there.  Perhaps for Alvin that was hell.  

I do know something about being the older person with younger workmates, since I am the oldest person working at the theater, and usually I'm paired with someone in their thirties or even twenties, so I have to try to relate to them and not just sound like an old fart all the time.  My fun stories are all about working on music videos in the late 1980's or my second wedding in 2001, and these people weren't even alive in the 80's and most haven't been married once yet, so I don't really know what they think of me, other than that I've been around and seen some things.  

Naturally, Alvin and Lance end up rubbing each other the wrong way - Lance fills in the crossword puzzle in one of Alvin's comic books (unforgivable) and Alvin breaks Lance's new watch (uncalled for) and so before long they're chasing each other around the forest with tools and you wonder if they can ever get back to being friends after all that.  Well, you know, drinking together might help, as would finding a common foe to rage against.  But then Lance goes through Alvin's letters from home and learns that the relationship with his sister is not great, it's been going downhill for some time, and sure, this explains a lot.  However, once the link between the two men is severed, really, all bets are off.  

Upon further reflection, perhaps this weird little movie isn't so weird after all - I'm going to have to write my year-end wrap-up post next week and "most weird" is definitely going to be a category, but when you compare this film to "Spaceman", "Beau Is Afraid" "infinity Pool" and "IF", I'm afraid there's really no comparison.  So I'm just going to let this one be, leave it alone and let it be whatever it is, it's free to exist in its own little corner of the movie multiverse, because really, what's the harm?  Are there lingering questions about the woman whose house burned down, and whether or not she got into the truck driver's truck, hell I'm not even sure if she's real or a figment of Alvin's imagination.  I'm just going to smile, nod, and slowly walk away.  It's Christmas time and I'm suddenly in a giving mood and I'm not going to tear this one apart.  Must be the egg nog. 

Also starring Paul Rudd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Lance LeGault (last seen in "Coma"), Joyce Payne, Gina Grande, and the voice of Lynn Shelton (last seen in "Outside In"). .  

RATING: 5 out of 10 free-range chickens

Speed Racer

Year 16, Day 353 - 12/18/24 - Movie #4,897

BEFORE: Emile Hirsch carries over from "Force of Nature", and I'm not sure yet, but it's possible that Emile Hirsch could be the last actor with three or more appearances this year who will get added to my year-end countdown.  The leader at the end of the Doc Block is still the leader, that hasn't changed, all that remains now is for me to double-check my stats, as anyone with three or more appearances will make the cut.  Paul Rudd is already in with four appearances, but he's going to make two more in the last three films of the year, while Emile Hirsch also has four appearances after tonight, but he's only got one more coming up. 

You never know, there could be a surprise latecomer, but I'm going to start totalling things up using a different method in order to check my own work.  This process usually takes a few days, a lot of cutting and pasting names into a spreadsheet, but when all that's done, I'll feel a lot better about the certainty of my record-keeping. 

THE PLOT: A young driver, Speed Racer, aspires to be champion of the racing world with the help of his family and his high-tech Mach 5 automobile. 

AFTER: I stand corrected - I'd cut "Speed Racer" from my chain back in June, initially it was going to go between "The Company You Keep" and "Blue Beetle", with Susan Sarandon appearing in all three films.  But I cut it so I could land the right film on Father's Day, and what a great idea that turned out to be - I couldn't possibly have known that I'd have another chance at the end of the year to work it in, but I suppose it doesn't matter whether I watched this in June or December, either way it's the middle film in a chain of three films with the same actor or actress.  And either way I get to delete it from my DVR and clear up some space.  BUT, now Susan Sarandon's going to make the year-end countdown, too.  It's funny, just last night I watched a few minutes of her on the big screen in "The Six Triple Eight", the new Tyler Perry movie in which she plays Eleanor Roosevelt.  

OK, I really don't know how to process "Speed Racer".  I never watched the old cartoons, not in any form or incarnation, and I certainly never read the old manga (?) comics that are the original form of the stories.  How do you even write a comic book about racing cars?  I mean nothing even MOVES in a comic book, and racing is all about fast movement.  How do you even DRAW that to being with?  

Then there are aspects of this story that are so silly, so childlike and simplistic that I don't even understand how they can exist - "Speed Racer" is his actual NAME?  I thought it was a title, like "Grand Champion" or a job description, not the name on his birth certificate.  First name "Speed", last name "Racer"?  That's just stupid, right?  Everyone in his family has the last name of "Racer", I mean I guess that works but most people with the last name "Baker" are not really bakers, maybe some are but I'm thinking only a very small percentage.  How many people with the last name of "Cooper" actually manufacture barrels, or wagon wheels or whatever that means?  Sometimes people have a first name that tips off what their parents wanted them to grow up and do, like there's a football player named "Lawyer Milloy", and he's, well, he's not a lawyer but I guess you can't really name your kid "Football Player" or "Running Back", so I guess you do what you can.  So OK, if he was born into a family of Racers who are also racers, I guess maybe "Speed" works as a first name - hey, his older brother was named "Rex", which means "king" and his younger brother is named "Spritle" which is three times as ridiculous.  And his father is Pops Racer and his mom is just "Mom", again, what are the odds?  Or was some writer just too lazy to give them first names? 

Then there are the racetracks which are all over-the-top, flat-out ridiculous, I mean there's not one of them that could exist in the real world.  This is because the movie was made in a world where we have fantastical video-games, and supercomputers that can do CGI animation, making the impossible look real.  OK, real-ish.  There are racetracks that are hundreds of miles long, they do spiral shapes and loop-de-loops and they go up mountains and across deserts and ice fields, it would all be impossible in actual live racing, but hey, it's a movie and it doesn't have to be real.  But the flipside of that is, just because you CAN animate these impossible racetrack scenarios, that doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD.  I was left with this whole artificial feeling, like I know that movies don't reflect reality, but then if nothing is really real, then what the hell am I watching?  I guess it's like "Star Wars", we don't have any spaceships that can go into hyperspace and fly from planet to planet, but it's a fun thing to see happen in a movie, and we all get to visit Tatooine and Hoth and Bespin vicariously. 

The problem here is, I just don't CARE about these characters, not in the way I found myself caring about Luke, Leia, Han & Chewie over the years. Who gives a crap whether Speed Racer joins this racing team or that one?  Whether he knocks Snake Oiler's car off a mountain or gets rear-ended by Pitter Pat?  Again, it's all cartoony, I get it, and expecting all these minor character to be realistic is a bit like wishing that "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" more closely resembled real boxing.  It's just not going to happen.  

What's also kind of weird here is how straight everybody is forced to play things - like discussing these cartoony races where cars have circular saws coming out of their wheels, trying to slash the other racer's tires, or cars that can dispense oil slicks at the push of a button.  It's ridiculous on top of ridiculous, and it's all so over-the-top that I didn't know which end was up, I couldn't keep track of where reality stopped and fantasy took over, and I sure couldn't tell which car was ahead in any race at any given time.  To be honest, I can say the same thing about "Gran Turismo" or any auto race on TV, I can never tell who's winning without the graphics on the screen pointing that out.  Auto racing is a very confusing sport, and this movie about it doubly so.  

Supposedly there's a big villain here, and it's the corporate billionaire who signs racers to his team, wines and dines them, gets them to wear his uniforms and puts his team logos on their cars, but make no mistake, he's EVIL.  And because the movie can't really express this simply, there's the fact that the Grand Prix Championship Super Bowl of Racing is always fixed, and that's about the only way we know how bad this guy really is.  Look, I don't have any idea how NASCAR works or what it takes to run a racing team or be competitive in this particular sport, but as far as I know, every racer has an equal chance of winning any given race.  Or so I've been led to believe.  Or maybe it comes down to the pit-crew, right? 

Speed Racer doesn't really have a pit crew, instead he's got a spotting team out in the field with binoculars, or a girlfriend flying in a helicopter to alert him to the ludicrous dangers coming up on the track. But who needs a pit crew, since it's a movie and he doesn't need to change his tires or even refuel?  Movie magic is in play and we wouldn't want nasty reality having any effect on our characters.  It's a fantasy film across the board, but that's what makes it weirder that everyone takes things so seriously.  Kind of like "Fatman", the story dictates that Santa needs to work with the Pentagon so he can fly all around the world in one night and NORAD doesn't totally freak out or confuse him with a missile, he's traveling THAT fast after all.  Really, it's not the speed that Santa Claus would have to travel at that makes his annual journey impossible, it's the fact that he has to stop every 100 feet or so if he's going to visit every damn house.  Do you have any idea how many houses are in just one city, let alone every city and town?  Even if you factor out the non-believers, and the people of other faiths, still, the number of Christian households alone is a killer, that's why he travels east to west and takes advantage of the time-zones.  Right? 

Anyway, somebody spent a LOT of money making "Speed Racer", I'm almost afraid to see how much, it was probably bigger than the GDP of most countries.  Which number do you figure is larger, the amount of money Hollywood spends each year to make movies, or the amount the U.S. government spends across all its cabinet departments?  When you include movies like "Speed Racer", I'm guessing it's the former. EDIT: I guess I'm wrong, thanks to Google I learned that the U.S. film & video industry spent $66 billion in 2021, while the U.S. federal government spent $6.2 trillion in 2023. Different years, but a trillion is a lot more than a billion.  OK, good to know. But "Speed Racer" only made $93 million against a $120 million budget, so it was not profitable.  Therefore maybe a big waste of everyone's time. 

That's really how I'm going to treat this one, a big pile of mindless fun, or it would have been fun if I could have just relaxed and enjoyed it.  But I think I'm out of the age-bracket for this one, the subject matter doesn't really appeal to me, and I just have more important things to think about, sorry.  They shot this in super HD, which meant they could basically do anything they wanted with every image, like pixel-wise, but mostly they just did a bunch of fancy wipes which created this weird layering effect.  I'm not really impressed by that, like you could do ANYTHING you wanted, so why that? 

Well, anyway, it's off the DVR and I freed up some more space.  Three films left to go in this Movie Year before the break.  I'll be back here Friday or Saturday and then I'll watch the other two films next week.  I've also got to save some time for my annual viewing of "Bad Santa" and "Bad Santa 2". 

Also starring Christina Ricci (last seen in 'The Matrix Resurrections"), John Goodman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Matthew Fox (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Roger Allam (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Paulie Litt (last seen in "Doubt"), Benno Furmann (last seen in "Joyeux Noel"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Rain (last seen in "The Prince"), Richard Roundtree (last seen in "Shaft" (2019), Kick Gurry (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Ramon Tikaram (ditto), John Benfield (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Christian Oliver (last seen in "The Good German"), Ralph Herforth (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Scott Porter (last seen in "Music and Lyrics"), Yu Nan (last seen in "The Expendables 2"), Nayo Wallace, Melvil Poupaud (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Ben Miles (last seen in "Napoleon"), Cosma Shiva Hagen, Moritz Bleibtreu (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Karl Yune (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Togo Igawa (ditto), Joon Park, Nicholas Elia (last seen in "White Noise"), Ariel Winter (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Corinne Orr, Milka Duno, Melissa Holroyd (last seen in "Mute"), Giancarlo Ganziano, Peter Fernandez (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Harvey Friedman (last seen in "She Said"), Sadao Ueda (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Valery Tscheplanowa, Sami Loris, Olivier Marlo, Sean McDonagh, Mark Zak (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Julia Joyce, Clayton Nemrow, Ricky Watson, Brandon Robinson, Julie T. Wallace (last seen in "The Living Daylights"), Waldemar Kobus (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Matthias Redhammer, Eckehard Hoffmann, Art LaFleur (last seen in "Maverick"), Peter Navy Tulasosopo (last seen in "Fun Size"), Paul Sirr, Kady Taylor, Jana Pallaske (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Bojidara Maximova, Werner Daehn (last seen in "The Operative"), Komi Togbonou, Joe Mazza, Ludmilla Ismallow, Ashley Walters, Jeng Neuhaus, Sesesa Terziyan, Ill-Young Kim, Yuriri Naka (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Oscar Ortega Sanchez (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Yu Fang, Nargess Rashidi, Andrés Cantor (last seen in "Muppets Most Wanted"), Luka Andres, Joel Cross, Alister Mazzotti

RATING: 4 out of 10 pancakes

Force of Nature

Year 16, Day 351 - 12/16/24 - Movie #4,896

BEFORE: After that Santa Claus movie, I'm back on heist films.  But really, if you think about it, isn't the Santa Claus story REALLY a heist story, only in reverse?  I mean, here's a guy who's an expert in breaking into every house in the country, at like lightning speed, and the only difference between him and a thief is that he GIVES you stuff instead of takes it away.  Sure, that's an important distinction, but really, it's kind of the same principle, right?  Get in, don't get seen, eat the cookies, drink the milk and get out without being seen.  Santa is the legendary, ultimate second-story heist guy.  

Mel Gibson carries over again from "Fatman", where he played a happily-married Santa who just happened to be married to a Mrs. Claus of color.  Not a coincidence, I'm thinking, if Mel was really on the apology tour and trying to prove he's not racist. (But you know what that means, then.) It's great to see Santa being faithful to Mrs. Claus, because I know the temptation just HAS to be there.  After all, Santa knows where all the naughty girls live, and he also knows when they're awake. Just saying. 

THE PLOT: A gang of thieves plan a heist during a hurricane and encounter trouble when a cop tries to force everyone in the building to evacuate. 

AFTER: Right off the bat, I recognized the opening logo at the start of the film - this was made by the production company that made all of those Bruce Willis Action movies a few years ago, the ones that were all made on the cheap, and each one only had Bruce Willis in it for a few scenes, so you just KNOW they shot all of his scenes on the same day, because they could only afford him for one day of their shoot.  Hell, maybe they hired him for five days and shot all of his scenes for ten movies, back to back, who can say?   

I also recognized a bunch of the background players, like Tyler Jon Olson, from the same group of films, which includes "Precious Cargo", "Hard Kill", "Reprisal", "Extraction" and "Acts of Violence".  So I don't even have to look it up, I'm 95% sure this was shot in Florida, not Puerto Rico where the story takes place.  They had just a few too many aerial shots of the real Puerto Rico, which makes me think they were over-selling that point, trying to cover up the fact that they shot no scenes there.  Huh, i was wrong, shot in New Mexico.  OK, but yesterday I was able to tell that "Fatman" was shot in Canada, not Alasks, because of the supporting cast of Toronto actors.  Yeah, I may have seen a few too many movies. I'd say last week was an all-Canadian week except "Bandit" was set in Canada and FILMED in Georgia.  The U.S. state, not the former Soviet republic.  

Amyway, in tonight's film a gang of bank robbers tries to pull of an art heist from a Puerto Rico apartment complex in the middle of a hurricane.  Which only sounds a little less dangerous than a gang robbing a casino vault in Las Vegas in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  But that happened too this year, I don't want to forget about it.  But come on, it's like Mad Libs, right, somebody in Hollywood just names a noun to steal, a city, a type of building and a disaster, and that's a movie.  A gang tries to rob a safe full of gold from an airplane during a hostage crisis, and that's "Lift".  Right? 

OK, maybe I'm over-simplifying things.  There's really a LOT going on here, maybe too much, and maybe it all comes together neatly in the end, and maybe it's a little too neat.  The lead is Cardillo, a former NYC police officer who got disgraced after a shooting that went wrong. Like, really wrong.  So he ended up on a police force in Puerto Rico, and he's checked out, he doesn't really care about the job, he's just biding his time while he contemplates suicide. Then during the hurricane he gets paired up with a female rookie and they're assigned to clear buildlings, to make sure everyone has been evacuated.  Before long they're sent to a buildling where two old men, one a retired cop, are refusing to leave.  By coincidence, it just happens to be the same building where another suspect accused of stealing meat from a grocery lives, and he's got a pet that needs to be fed, a very hungry cat. (hint hint, he was trying to get 100 pounds of meat to feed his cat.  Nope, nothing suspicious about that at all...)

By another coincidence, the art thieves strike the building soon after the police arrive, and they find the safe in the basement where one of the older men may have stashed some very valuable paintings.  No luck, the safe is empty, so they have to search this whole complex, room by room, which naturally puts them into contact with our two young police officers, also the retired cop (who's getting way too old for this shit...) and his daughter, who happens to look a lot like the girlfriend Cardillo had back in NY, and come on, that's not a coincidence, they're just setting up the ending WAY in advance.  

The retired cop's daughter is a doctor, and she's trying to get him to go to the hospital for his dialysis, also it's the safest place for him to be if a bunch of art thieves are going to be coming around.  But they miss their window for evacuation - too much standing around discussing their back-stories, I think - so now they all have to hunker down in this apartment complex and make the most of it.. And wouldn't you know it, the police radios don't work during the intense storm, so they can't call for back-up, they're cut off from society and they're going to have to fight the thieves, like "Home Alone" style.  Only without the comedy and the holiday-themed booby traps.  

Things go from bad to worse when that cat-owner is mauled by his own very-hungry cat, and so they have to find a doctor in the building, or at least some medical supplies.  Then the rookie police officer gets captured by the thieves, and meanwhile Cardio and his future love-interest are shot at while looking for those medical supplies.  Even worse than that, the retired cop frees the rookie, but then he remembers that being in the movie any longer would require another day's pay to Mel Gibson, so he manages to get himself shot, because the filmmakers just can't afford that. 

Finally the thieves track down the other old man and learn that there's a room in his apartment JUST filled with valuable paintings, some of which have been lost since World War II.  It's a big payoff for the thieves, they take Cardillo's uniform and the keys to his police van, and they're in the clear, they'll be richer than they ever imagined, as long as they don't fall for the oldest trick in the book.  And it's pretty easy to figure out exactly what that's going to be.

The official word on this one is that it's not terrible.  However, it's not all that great either.  That company I was talking about that cranked out all those stinker Bruce Willis films is called EFO, Emmett/Furla Oasis Films.  I have no idea how this comany manages to stay in business when their films have budgets of $15 million and tend to gross under $1 million, like this one did. That's just not a viable business plan, unless they're laundering money or they're a front for a criminal organization - it's worth looking into, but that's just my opinion. 

Also starring Emile Hirsch (last seen in "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Barbarian"), Stephanie Cayo, David Zayas (last seen in "13"), Jasper Polish (last seen in "The Astronaut Farmer"), Will Catlett, Swen Temmel (last seen in "Bandit"), Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Precious Cargo"), Jorge Luis Ramos, Blas Sien Diaz, Joksan Ramos, Julio Ramos Velez (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Jorge Antares (ditto), Javier Ortiz Cortes (ditto), Sebastian Vazquez, Jesy McKinney, Xavier Reyes, Luillo Ruiz, Johanna Rosaly, Rey Hernandez (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Jerry D. Medina, Leslee Emmett (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Anil Raman, Geoffrey M. Reeves (last seen in "Reprisal").

RATING: 4 out of 10 "oxy-moron" pain pills