Reptile

Year 17, Day 18 - 1/18/25 - Movie #4,918

BEFORE: It's funny that the other day, I had an occasion to read that Robert Frost poem, you know, the one about "The Road Not Taken"?  It was a crossword puzzle answer, but I needed to confirm the exact title, so I looked it up online - a lot of people think the name of the poem is "The Road Less Traveled", but it's not.  It's about deciding between two paths in a yellow wood, there's a fork in the path and for once, Yogi Berra's advice turns out to be not so helpful - he had said "When you get to a fork in the road, take it." but it turns out he was just giving directions to his own house, not dispensing mildly confusing life advice. But Frost was detailing a dilemma, because at first both paths look JUST as good, equal in most discernible ways, and also he knows that paths have a tendency to loop back on themselves, or maybe join back together later on, so in the end, it really doesn't matter EXCEPT for the fact that one path is a little less worn and was nearly begging to be walked down. He knows that no matter which path he takes, there could naturally be some regret, and he'll always be wondering what would have happened if he'd chosen differently, that's kind of a given. You know, it could just be about a guy out on a walk, but many people have seen it as general good advice, because walking on the less-beaten path has made a difference in his life, and Frost doesn't even tell us if that was a GOOD thing in the end, or a BAD thing, all we know is that the outcome is different, but really, that's the nature of ANY choice you make. In the little things we see reflections of the bigger things, after all, and one choice has consequences, so the poem ends up being both satisfying and maddening because he's told us everything and nothing at the same time.  Maybe because he doesn't know his own future himself?  

Anyway, I'm pulling a "Robert Frost" myself, I did not trod down the "Killers of a Flower Moon" path, I have saved that path for another day. I've learned a lot about paths myself, you can look down a path as far as you can, and still not know where it leads, because there are going to be twists and turns. And TWO PATHS? Jeez, what a luxury to have only two paths, because really, there are dozens, hundreds of paths to walk down and Frost was right, they have a tendency to connect with other paths and loop back on themselves even, and also you're always going to wonder whether it was a better idea or a worse idea to take the one you did. Self-doubt will kill you if you let it, it will eat you from the inside and the only way to fight back is to either be proud of the choices you made, or at least have the appearance of being able to defend them.  Remember that no matter where you go, there you are, and it's YOUR walk and YOUR choice of path to take. Also, keep track of where you've walked and maintain the ability to get back to that other path in the future if you need to. Good advice for both walking on paths and major life choices. 

So Domenick Lombartozzi carries over from "The Yards" and tomorrow my path's going to link up with the planned one again, so did I take the road less traveled by, or did I only convince myself that I did?  It doesn't really matter, because I doubt that I'll come back this way again. Thank you, Mr. Frost, wherever you are, for mansplaining walking down paths for us all. 

THE PLOT: Tom Nichols is a hardened New England detective, unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems and it begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life. 

AFTER: This is a crime drama that takes place somewhere sort of rural, but there's still a modern police department with a forensics lab. Georgia? Western Massachusetts? This game is part of the fun for me... There are upscale houses and realtor seminars, but also drug stash houses and what my wife and I jokingly call "murder sheds". So you know, somewhere in America. Wikipedia says it's set in Maine, so let's go with that. Scarborough, Maine, which is only weird because one character mentions an upcoming trip to Scotland that ends in Scarborough Castle, which is supposedly haunted. This just can't be a coincidence, I think it's meant to be symbolic, like that castle, the town of Scarborough is haunted, perhaps there's more going on in the town than you think, things that you can't see but you can feel. 

Detective Tom Nichols is also haunted by his past, or the choices he made in another city, Philadelphia, apparently his police partner of six years was a dirty cop, and they don't say a lot about it, but that experience might be still affecting him, did he rat out his partner, or was he considered guilty by association?  How do you work side-by-side with someone for six years and not realize they're corrupt?  Lots of questions and few answers, but really, the whole film is like that. 

A realtor woman, Summer, is found stabbed to death in one of those upscale houses, her boyfriend (also a realtor) found her there, and he's got to keep showing the house to people after that, like nothing's wrong. Even people who are pretending to be interested JUST so they can see a murder scene. Because America. A little digging by the detectives reveals that she was still sleeping with her ex-husband, which her boyfriend didn't seem to know. Usually it IS the boyfriend in cases like this, because he found out she was sleeping around. Or, you know, maybe the ex-husband or maybe it's somebody else. The police literally place bets on whose DNA they're going to find, and probably there's another round of betting over who killed her.  Keep it classy, cops. 

There are dozens of red herrings here, more information comes to light after the autopsy, more after video camera footage is reviewed, and then of course more after the police run background checks on everyone. Not all of this is relevant, but hey, maybe some cases are like this, there are maybe many paths a detective has to walk down before getting something like a definitive answer. This isn't "Law & Order", where the crime has to be solved in 47 minutes on a weekly basis, we've got a couple hours here so there's really a chance to do a deep dive.  Maybe a little TOO deep, but that's a debatable point. 

Detectives also check out Summer's real estate transactions, she sold six houses and got NO commissions for that, like isn't that why you get into real estate in the first place?  But Will Grady, her boyfriend, and Will's mother have an explanation for that, her commissions were going into a blind trust so that Summer could buy a house of her own some day, maybe this tracks, who's to say? Or maybe there's more to the story.  

One of those rural dirtbags who showed up at the murder scene comes around, he's got a bone to pick with Will Grady, because he thinks the realtor forced his father out of his own farm, leading him to commit suicide, so there's some history of shady dealings buying up real estate. Great, another thing for the detectives to check out - but when Nichols just scratches the surface and the paths lead back to possibly corrupt cops, is he following the right leads, or is he being influenced by his past and possibly seeing things that aren't really there?  A shoot-out with a suspect goes wrong, and the police just want to pin the murder on the dead guy and close the case. Who benefits from that? And should Nichols follow the evidence or the instructions of his superior officers?  There you go, another fork in the road and no matter which one he chooses, he'll always be wondering what would have happened if he chose the other. 

It really takes a long time to get the whole story here, or maybe it just feels like it takes a long time. Is the payoff worth it? Well, that depends on you, I suppose.  At least everything makes some sense at the end, I can't say that about every movie. (Looking at YOU, David Lynch...). This movie did pretty well on Netflix about a year and a half ago, I would imagine that interest has kind of cooled a bit since then, but I'm glad I got to it before it scrolled off the service. For me it was worth watching, worth clearing off the list while it was convenient for me to do so, if I had to track this one down somewhere else, nah, I don't think it would have been worth that. 

I still don't know why it's called "Reptile", though, maybe to just distinguish itself from other crime movies with names like "No Good Deed" or "Murder in the First"?

Also starring Benicio del Toro (last seen in "Fearless"), Justin Timberlake (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Eric Bogosian (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "Senior Year"), Frances Fisher (last seen in "Another Kind of Wedding"), Ato Essandoh (last seen in "Blood Diamond"), Michael Carmen Pitt (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Karl Glusman (last seen in "Nocturnal Animals"), Mike Pniewski (last seen in "My Future Boyfriend"), Matilda Lutz, Catherine Dyer (last seen in "The Blind Side"), Tom Nowicki (ditto), Thad Luckinbill (last seen in "12 Strong"), Michael Beasley (last seen in "Allegiant"), Amy Parrish (ditto), JC Capone, Sky Ferreira (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), James Devoti (last seen in "Middle Men"), Elizabeth Houston, Jesse C. Boyd (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Owen Teague (last seen in "To Leslie"), Matt Medrano, Michael Rene Walton, Mel Pralgo, Steve Wedan (last seen in "I, Tonya"), Africa Miranda, Danny Bevins, Bonita Elery, Dianna Catterton, Kathryn Boyd Brolin (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Laura Whyte (last seen in "Lizzie"), Lee Perkins, Kurt Yue (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Monique Grant (last seen in "Brothers"), Elena Varela (last seen in "Savages"), Jon Levine, Dani Deetté (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Jp Lambert, Kathleen Hogan (last seen in "Irresistible"), Victor Rasuk (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Tiffany Fallon, Deena Beasley (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Steven McCormack, Brooke Jaye Taylor (last seen in "Freaky"), Regina Ting Chen, Grant Weaver (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Martin Singer. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 slices of pizza (sausage AND pepperoni, nice!)

The Yards

Year 17, Day 17 - 1/17/25 - Movie #4,917

BEFORE: Here you go, this film (running on cable) and tomorrow's film (streaming on Netflix) will serve the same linking purpose as "Killers of the Flower Moon", which will be re-scheduled for a later date, due to the fact that no footage of Robert De Niro appeared in yesterdays's film. I trusted Wikipedia to be right and IMDB was wrong, and that was my mistake. I have another link later this month that also relies on archive footage in a franchise film, so here's hoping that one goes in my favor, because if not, I may be unable to find a substitute path to pull myself back to the planned chain. I guess we'll find out. 

Joaquin Phoenix carries over from "Joker: Folie à Deux". This is a safer path, just a slightly longer one. 

David Lynch passed away, I don't really have a lot to add to all the tributes already popping up on the web, calling him a genius filmmaker and such. He really only directed 10 features, and I have seen 9 of them, but I hate-watched the more recent ones, like "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive". I guess there's some kind of balance in nature, because I loved "Blue Velvet" and I admired "Wild at Heart". I loved the original "Twin Peaks" series, but hated "Twin Peaks: The Return" which was just a complete waste of my time.  Honestly, I didn't much care for "Eraserhead" either, but I watched it, and I will champion his right as an independent filmmaker to make whatever film he wanted to make, even a shitty one. Now comes the debate - should I put that 10th film, "Inland Empire" on my watchlist?  

THE PLOT: Ex-con Leo tries to go straight, but his plans are derailed after reuniting with his old crew and a well-connected railway contractor. 

AFTER: I'm only about 5% into the new Movie Year, but strong themes have been recurring, an emphasis on mothers, for one thing. I don't really know what the chain is trying to tell me here, other than this chain could have worked really well if I'd planned it for May.  "Anatomy of a Fall", "The Zone of Interest", "Proxima", "Brothers", "The Creator", "Sun Dogs", "Lou", "To Leslie", "Queenpins", "Inside Out 2", "The Lost King" all had strong mother characters, and yes, even "Joker: Folie à Deux" had a nod to motherhood. But here's another running theme, prisons and ex-cons, seen in "Brothers", Queenpins", "Despicable Me 4", and of course half of the "Joker" film was set in a prison. I can total these up at the end of the year, but that process is somewhat unreliable, there's too great of a chance that I'll forget the plot points of January's movies by December, so I'm kind of keeping a running tally, only it's tough to know in advance what else is going to make the list of themes I've seen again and again each time around.  I just have to keep good notes, that's all. 

This is a rather simple film, really - Mark Wahlberg plays Leo, a man in Queens, NYC who just got out of jail for stealing a few cars. (Really, what's the harm?) His family is waiting to throw him a party, but his parole officer is also there, wondering why he hasn't checked in yet. Dude, he JUST got home... The important thing now is to find a job, a real job, a clean job, and NOT associate with any criminal element - which, given who's in his family, is sure not going to be easy - Sunday dinner itself probably constitutes a parole violation. He decides that the best thing to do it visit his cousin's stepfather, Frank, and inquire about a job with his company, which repairs NYC subway cars. Frank suggests he take a 2-year course to learn how to be a machinist, get the training he need for a job in the transit system.  He even offers to pay for the course, but Leo needs money now.  

Leo's cousin's boyfriend, Willie, once got the same run-around from Frank, but he offers Leo cash money NOW if he'll come with him to the subway yards and vandalize some trains.  Willie apparently works for a company that bids on the repairs and supplies to fix the subway cars, and they vandalize the trains that the other companies work on, so that those companies lose money.  I KNEW IT.  This perfectly explains why the "L" train, which I take home from Manhattan, has so many service problems.  I signed up to get alerts from the NYC Transit phone app every time this one subway line goes out, and it's several times a day, every day. I'm sure someone is committing vandalism and they've targeted the L train, really there can be no other explanation.  

This all seems a bit backwards, though, wouldn't it make more sense to vandalize the trains that their company IS in charge of repairing, so there will constantly be work for them to do, and the city will always need their services?  I'm just saying, but hey, no need to thank me, this is why I'm here. I see the flaws in logic in movies that other people just seem to overlook.  Anyway, this trip to the subway train yards ends in disaster, the yard master trips the alarm and Willie stabs him, so he bleeds out and dies.  Meanwhile Leo is spotted by a cop and if he gets caught doing crime, he'll go back in prison, so he knocks out the cop with a nightstick and puts him in a coma. 

Later, Willie won't admit to the murder, so Leo is the prime suspect by default.  Leo goes into hiding, which also is a parole violation (not checking in) and the cops raid his mother's apartment.  They don't find him, but his mother has a heart attack, or a panic attack, or something.  Leo gets convinced that if the cop wakes up, he'll be identified as the assailant, so now he's got to sneak into the hospital and kill the cop. OK, so not checking in with his parole officer is bad, but killing a cop is somehow OK?  JK, it's not, but somehow that ends up being the potential solution here, and thus the lesser of two evils.  Really, that's just going to make things worse, if he kills the cop he'll be forced to leave town and spend the rest of his life in Montana or something, and he can never come back to New York, which is a fate worse than death. 

While Leo sneaks back to visit his sick mother, his cousin Erica learns that her boyfriend, Willie, is really the one that killed the yardmaster.  This puts a bit of a damper on their relationship, of course. She calls off their marriage, which is probably for the best since her mother didn't approve of it, anyway.  The Queens borough president calls a public meeting to address corruption in the transit system, because of course there is.  Leo's only opportunity to clear his name is to work with one of his uncle's competitors, basically blackmailing Frank to help him and give up Willie to the police as the killer, which he is.  Frank then blackmails the Queens borough President, because he's got copies of the checks he used to buy that guy a house.  And Frank's competition blackmails HIM to get 20% of every subway repair contract going forward.  Wow, it's a beautiful tapestry of corruption, isn't it?  Everybody's got dirt on everybody else, and they're all willing to use it to get what they want. And you wonder why the subway fare keeps going up...THIS is why.  

Meanwhile, Willie visits Erica, to try and reconcile with her, and he reveals what Frank told him, that Erica and Leo (cousins) were caught making out when they were fifteen.  It's a bit unclear whether this is true or not, but hey, even if it is, that's really not as bad as it used to be, I think.  Anyway Erica does not want to get back together with Willie, because it turns out that if you want to get back together with someone, threatening to blackmail them with their teenage secrets might not be the way to go.  He ends up throwing her down the stairs and it doesn't end well - but you know, the police are already on their way to the house to arrest him for murder, so they really get a two-for-one deal.  Leo ends up testifying about the corruption that's inherent to the transit system, so I guess after that everything in NYC was perfect and fine forever. Ha ha, JK.

This movie is now 25 years old, it was released in 2000. It features a bunch of actors who have played cops so many times they probably have their own uniforms at home. And also a bunch of NYC sports stars and NYC news anchors, mostly from the channel called NY1, which used to be the Time Warner Cable news channel, and is now the Spectrum news channel.  Good gig, I think.  This comes from James Grey, the director of "Armageddon Time" and "Ad Astra" and "The Lost City of Z".  This just FEELS like it's somebody's 2nd or 3rd film, made when they've figured out how to tell a complete story and resolve everything in the end, no loose ends, but they haven't quite figured out how to make sure the whole story is compelling, start to finish.  

Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Sr."), Charlize Theron (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), James Caan (last seen in "The Program"), Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Steve Lawrence (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Andy Davoli (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Tony Musante (last seen in "The Pope of Greenwich Village"), Victor Argo (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Tomas Milian (last seen in "Havana"), Robert Montano (last seen in "Shame"), Victor Arnold (last seen in "The Seven-Ups"), Chad Aaron, Louis Guss (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Teddy Coluca (ditto), Joe Lisi (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), David Zayas (last seen in "Forces of Nature"), Joseph Ragno (last seen in "Worth"), Teresa Yenque (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Jose Soto, John Tormey (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Jack O'Connell (last seen in "Hustlers"), Garry Pastore (last seen in "The Irishman"), Ron Brice (last seen in "Clockers"), Andi Shrem, Joe Dimare, Maximiliano Hernandez (last seen in "The Namesake"), Marc Romeo, 

with cameos from Ernie Anastos (last seen in "Run All Night"), Keith Hernandez (last seen in "Knuckleball!"), Allan Houston (last seen in "Laws of Attraction"), Lewis Dodley (last seen in "Good Time"), Annika Pergament (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 breakfast plates at the Sage Diner (I know EXACTLY where that diner is, only it's changed hands and names three times since this film was made. It's now called the Georgia Diner.)

Joker: Folie à Deux

Year 17, Day 16 - 1/16/25 - Movie #4,916

BEFORE: Here we go, another Oscar-eligible film tonight, though I'm getting the feeling that this one just doesn't have the same Oscar buzz that "Joker" did, which was what, four years ago?  Man, a lot can change in four years, one film gets an Oscar and a lot of praise and then the sequel gets NO buzz and people are left kind of scratching their heads over the decision to make a super-villain story as a jukebox musical.  Such decisions are way above my pay grade, all I can do is watch the movies and then write down my thoughts.  I'm still coming in hopeful, but the odds are not good here. 

Steve Coogan carries over again from "The Lost King". This one was in theatrical release last October, and I had already done a Joaquin Phoenix thing a few months previously - "Napoleon", "C'Mon C'Mon" and "Beau Is Afraid". So that explains why I didn't go to the movie theater to see this, I just couldn't link to it at the time, I figured (rightly so) that it would be on cable within a few months. Worth the wait? Let's find out...

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Joker" (Movie #3,421)

THE PLOT: Struggling with his dual identity, failed comedian Arthur Fleck meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital. 

AFTER: Yeah, I can kind of see why the people who liked the first Todd Philips "Joker" movie don't really dig this one. Where's the action, where's the Joker being JOKER and killing people?  He killed six people in the first film, and ZERO in the second?  He sings a lot, sure, but that's not what we came here for.  I expected, at the very least, for him to gas everyone in the courtroom during his trial, because that's exactly what an insane Clown Prince of Crime would do, and I'm left very very disappointed.  He fell in love, great.  He tried to make some sense of his life and seek some form of forgiveness, well whoop-de-freaking-doo, but again, not why I tuned in. 

I'm also very confused about WHICH Joker this is supposed to be, like in the first film we saw Bruce Wayne as a young boy - not Arthur Fleck's half-brother, as suspected, but still, he's alive and his parents were alive and he wasn't on the road to being Batman yet.  OK, so that places this Joker a couple decades in the past, is he going to STAY Joker, is he going to inspire the NEXT Joker, is he going to be the next Joker's father, uncle, second cousin once removed, what is the freakin' deal here?  The movie defiantly doesn't even get around to ASKING these questions, let alone come close to answering them. So yeah, more disappointment there. 

Same question for Harley Quinn, annoying referred to as "Lee" here, and again, it's some kind of proto- or pre-Batman version of the character.  To be honest, we're not even sure what corner of the DC multiverse this takes place in, is it the SAME universe as "Justice League" or is this a pre-cursor to the Robert Pattinson "The Batman"-verse, or does this exist in its own little universe by itself?  Again, we don't know, it's all very unclear and what is reality, anyway?  Once you introduce the multiverse there's the small possibility that this takes place in a pocket reality created when The Flash went time-traveling, and then negated out of existence just as easily once he set things straight. The whole show "Gotham" is now pretty much retconned out of existence, and they're just about to scrap the whole DC Movie Universe and start it over again, so bad news if you liked the "Shazam!" movies or Justice League, because half the cast got cancelled or replaced and probably won't carry over to the NEW DCU, which I think starts when the new "Superman" movie comes out.  Well, it does explain why Batman looks like Michael Keaton in some movies and like Ben Affleck in others - I'm used to it, I'm a comic book fan and I've seen at least four DC Universes come and go in my time, I started reading "Batman" and "Superman" right after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I've learned to not get too attached.

Most people don't even seem to care, I guess they're just casual fans with short attention spans, and that's why I maintain they didn't need to depict three different Spider-Man-verses in the Sony films, because really, who gives a crap?  We just want to see a good story with a lot of action, nasty villains and some cool web-slinging, and we'll work out the continuity later, or not at all. 

This is my way of justifying "Joker: Folie à Deux", they could have gone anywhere with it, but no, they chose to kind of just go nowhere with it. Cardinal rule #1, at the very least, please be interesting, and this just isn't interesting at all. Trial scenes are BORING, the latest proof of that was "Anatomy of a Fall" which spent WAY too much time in the courtroom, and worse, it was a French courtroom with nine judges and seventeen lawyers and they all had something to say. Which is great if you want to watch a movie that will help you fall asleep.  But hey, we've got Harvey Dent here working for the prosecution, so that's something. Finally, a character we recognize as a future Bat-villain, and a hint of where the story's going to go.  Gee, you don't suppose he'll be in an accident in this movie that will damage half of his face, do you?  I'm surprised there wasn't someone here accusing him of being a two-faced attorney.  

But the rest of this is really junk - Joker's not in prison, but also frequently gets treated at the Arkham Hospital, and the movie has to bend itself over backwards here to get him into a music therapy class, where he can fall in love and also learn to express himself through song.  This also explains the apparent NITPICK POINT that men and women are not supposed to be held in the same prison, but you know, "Despicable Me 4" made this exact same mistake in its ending, and nobody really cared about that, either. It's fine. I'm the only one complaining, but nobody listens to me, do they?  So it's kind of set in both a prison AND a hospital, which is a bit confusing, to say the least. Would a man accused of killing 6 people be left alone and unsupervised in a somewhat-public place like a hospital?  Probably not. So it's still a NP, just a different kind. 

I can't really fault the song selections, except that format-wise it's kind of everything I hated about "Moulin Rouge" without anything that I liked about "Joker".  And it kind of drives my point, if someone in a Joker movie is singing, "Come on, Get happy, get ready for the judgement day" they really should be killing the person they're singing to at that moment. Am I right? I do kind of like the mix of fantasy and reality, like seeing Joker and Harley acting like Sonny & Cher hosting a variety TV show, that is unusual and out there, I'll give you that. But they really missed an opportunity to have Lady Gaga sing her famous song "Poker Face" but retitled as "Joker Face".  I can't be the first person to have thought of that. 

I'm just going to move on, because even the current DC comic book continuity has acknowledged the fact that there could be multiple Jokers, there was even a miniseries called "Batman: Three Jokers" where Batman & Robin finally noticed that Joker often looks different during their encounters (because he's drawn by different artists, duh) and after some investigating, they determine that over time, they'd encountered at least three different men in the Joker make-up and acting psychotically. Now if you ask me, this kind of takes some of the strength away from the character, however it does explain why they keep putting him in jail or Arkham Asylum and a few comic book issues later, he's back committing crimes, or rather another guy who looks almost exactly like him is.  Whatever, man, I mean, you run your comic book company the way you want, whatever sells more comic books is fine, but it's also a cheap move to cover up the fact that multiple artists and writers work on these stories, and they DON'T talk to each other, and editors are doing very little to maintain continuity and consistency across the DC line. 

Well, for the linking, I kind of painted myself into a corner here, but it's not really my fault. Wikipedia told me that there was archive footage of Robert De Niro in this film, as deceased talk-show host Murray Franklin. It makes sense, Joker is on trial for his murder, so you would naturally think that in the courtroom, they MIGHT show footage of Joker appearing on his show, on that fateful night.  Umm, it didn't happen - perhaps everyone is SO familiar with that infamous footage that there was no need to show it again, and doing so might prejudice the jury.  Nope, still doesn't make sense. But we're not really here tonight for legal procedures, such is the nature of this jukebox musical. I was planning to follow this with "Killers of the Flower Moon", and now I can't. Oh, you'd better believe I went back and LOOKED for De Niro footage, there was just a still photo of him during the opening animation and another one on a book cover - guys, I need more than that. (I do, don't I?)

Luckily I can drop a film and still get back to the rest of the chain, it's just going to take me an extra step... I promised I wouldn't overload my January this year, but that's exactly what I need to do to get myself out of this jam.  I'm going to try to watch an extra film over the coming weekend and then I think I'll be back on track, for sure I can still get to "Civil War" and proceed with the rest of the plan, and then still be where I need to be on February 1. It's not a problem, just, you know, a little heads-up would have been nice, and getting Wikipedia and IMDB on the same page would also have helped me out. Honestly, it's a bit of a relief, because I don't have AppleTV so I'd have to watch "Killers of the Flower Moon" on that pirate site, and it's 3 1/2 hours long - if I watch it on that pirate site and the connection's not good, it will just keep re-buffering every minute or so, and then the whole process will take like forever. 

Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "C'mon C'mon"), Lady Gaga (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Catherine Keener (last seen in "Begin Again"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Harry Lawtey (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Leigh Gill (last seen in "Joker"), Ken Leung (last seen in "The Family Man"), Jacob Lofland (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Bill Smitrovich (last seen in "The November Man"), Sharon Washington (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Alfred Rubin Thompson (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Connor Storrie, Gregg Daniel (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Mac Brandt (last seen in "To Leslie"), George Carroll (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), John Lacy (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Tim Dillon, June Carryl (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Don McManus (last seen in "Senior Moment"), G.L. McQueary, Angela D. Watson, Murphy Guyer (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Carson Higgins (last seen in "Babylon"), Gattlin Griffith (last seen in "Labor Day"), Hudson Oz, Stephen Stanton, Martin Kildare (last seen in "Palm Springs"), 

with archive footage of Frances Conroy (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Fred Astaire (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Jack Buchanan (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), Nanette Fabray (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Oscar Levant (last seen in "The Barkleys of Broadway"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of burning sheet music 

The Lost King

Year 17, Day 15 - 1/15/25 - Movie #4,915

BEFORE: Before I get started, an almost-but-one-day-off Birthday SHOUT-out to actor Mark Addy, born January 14, 1964. Well, I could say that I started watching this film late on January 14, so of course that counts. Being just one day off is pretty good, too. 

I remember when this story made the news a few years ago, if you remember that too then that's a pretty big SPOILER ALERT for this film, namely whether the remains of King Richard III were found or not.  Hmm, I don't think reporters would write a news story about them NOT being found, hint hint. 

Steve Coogan carries over from "Despicable Me 4". I'll admit I was way off again, going in to this one, I naturally assumed that Coogan would play King Richard, either in flashbacks or on stage, but no, he's too old.  Richard III apparently died at the age of 32, and plus I saw a trailer for this film, I should have noticed that it wasn't him playing the king. Still, my brain wanted to remember it that way, stupid brain. 

THE PLOT: An amateur historian defies the stodgy academic establishment in her efforts to find King Richard III's remains, which were lost for over 500 years. 

AFTER: Steve Coogan plays John, the ex-husband of Philippa Langley, but he's always over at the house because they're co-parenting two boys, so they maintain an amicable relationship while he dates someone new, and money's tight because together they have to pay for two residences. Clearly there's a story there about why they're no longer married, but the film doesn't really get into it, whether it's him or her or both of them or they fought over money or one was unfaithful, so I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?  Typical British movie, trying too hard to respect the privacy of its main characters. Discussing what went wrong in their marriage just wouldn't be proper, I suppose. Well, we don't want to be vulgar. But hey, good for them for putting their sons first and both being a daily presence in their lives, it's important. Also awkward at times. 

Things get worse when Philippa gets passed over for a promotion, and kind of just stops showing up for work after that.  John is not happy, did she forget the part about them needing two incomes to maintain the two residences?  But she's caught "the bug" of being an amateur historian, and after seeing a staging of Shakespeare's play "Richard III" she gets it in her head that history may have given Richard an unwarranted bad reputation, after all, Billy Shakes didn't write his play until over 100 years after Richard III died. So really, what were his sources?  Did he just tow the party line about how Richard was a usurper to the throne, and had his two young nephews killed because they were ahead of him in the line of succession?  

Philippa buys a bunch of (non-Shakespeare) history books and then tracks down the Richard III society, a bunch of like-minded people who frequent a pub and discuss their truths about Richard III - the prevailing theory among his fans was that lies and propaganda about him was spread by his successor, Henry VII in order to discredit him, and to prove that the Tudor House was superior to the Plantagenets, of which Richard III was the last male heir. It turns out that partisan politics ruled even back then, only they didn't have social media to spread lies about other royals, so they did it through paintings and rumours and claims that this person was born out of wedlock, or that one committed adultery, but you know probably they all did bad stuff and whoever was best at spreading rumors and lies came out on top.  A bit like today, and we've seen how once a story gets going about liberals drinking the blood of the babies in the basement of a D.C. pizza place or Hunter Biden's laptop containing the truth about Benghazi, those stories become very hard to dispute, because how do you prove things DIDN'T happen?  

If only someone could find the remains of King Richard III - the Tudors made sure that there's no grave containing his body or monuments dedicated to him - then maybe we could learn a few things. Was he really a hunchback, as Shakespeare depicted him?  Even if he was, would a deformed body naturally mean that he had a twisted, evil soul?  Did he, you know, have any hobbies or good qualities that we should know about, instead of just believing the party line, which dictates that the current Royal Family had to declare that they don't really acknowledge him as one of England's rightful sovereigns?  Ouch, that kind of stings, doesn't it?  You claw your way up to the throne by doing so much work, waiting for your older relatives to die, and then you end up with your remains thrown in a river, no grave, no monuments, and no legacy, all your deeds and accomplishments just added up to nothing in the end. Poor Richard. 

So Philippa sets out to find out what really happened to Richard, after he died following injuries sustained at Bosworth Field, the last battle of the War of the Roses, between the houses of Lancaster and York. (I looked it up, I'll admit.). Richard still put in the work, he was made the Duke of Gloucester in 1461 when his older brother, Edward IV, became king.  22 years later, when Edward died, his son (also Edward) was only 12 so Richard was named Protector of the Realm, essentially ruling England until Edward V got old enough to do so. However Edward IV's marriage was declared invalid, therefore young Edward V couldn't be king, nor could HIS younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, so Richard III became king by default.  Those two young nephew-princes were taken to the Tower of London and disappeared a month after Richard's coronation, that's what led to Shakespeare's depiction of Richard III ordering his nephews to be killed, apparently.  But, nobody really knows what happened to them?

Philippa finds a lot of information about King Richard's body being taken to Leicester (pronounced "Lester") and buried near a church, however whatever tomb or monument might have been made is long gone, and once he got all that bad press, somebody allegedly dug him up and threw him in the River Soar, but did they?  What if he's still buried somewhere, only nobody has yet superimposed the old map from the Middle Ages over the map of today, to see where that monument WOULD BE, if it were still standing, which it is not.  Philippa pretends to go to a work-related seminar in Leicester, but really it's a seminar about Richard III, and she's allowed some time after to explore the city and see if she can figure out where he might be buried based on whatever landmarks still remain.  Others have apparently tried this and failed, but she's read all of those books!  And she's asked questions of the other members of the club in the pub AND she knows a guy who's been tracing descendents of the royals using DNA, so if she COULD find a body, there would now (2012) be a way to use DNA to prove it's him.

Oh, if only it were that easy.  She's got to apply for funding from the city of Leicester, and the University of Leicester (Go, Fighting Pine Martens!) and then she's got to hire a whole team of archaeologists, get approvals to dig from the city council, and then there's the matter of closing down that car park (what we in America would call a parking lot) and even harder, finding other parking spaces for those 12 cars!  Parking's pretty scarce in Leicester already, there's like one multi-storey (garage) and it's always full. So while the team starts digging, Philippa's got to keep driving cars around the block so they don't get ticketed. 

Oh, and Philippa at some point begins seeing (and talking to) an apparition of Richard III, who's got some great life advice for her, but unfortunately he's not very helpful in remembering where he got buried.  Well, to be fair, who would?  I mean, he was kind of busy being dead at the time, so really, he's no help except maybe he is, in the broader sense.  Wisely she does not tell anyone that she's getting advice from a King who happens to look JUST like the actor she saw portray him in that Shakespeare play.  Well, maybe it turns out Shakespeare was a total tool, we really have no way to know.  Maybe Shakespeare had a little something going on the side with that hot actress, and maybe he would have been cancelled if there were social media back then and people weren't comfortable with men dressed up in drag on the stage, or women weren't happy that they were forbidden to act in his plays. Just saying. 

When nothing is found under the ground using radar, the funding drops out.  BUT, Philippa taps the resources members of the Richard III society, and also starts crowd-funding, because there are plenty of people out there who, thanks to the internet, become fascinated by the search for a King's body, even a supposedly evil, non-legitimate hunchback king.  Also, wouldn't it be really cool if she FOUND him?  

Also starring Sally Hawkins (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Harry Lloyd (last seen in "The Wife"), Mark Addy (last heard in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Lee Ingleby (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), James Fleet (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), Bruce Fummey, Amanda Abbington, John-Paul Hurley, Shonagh Price, Helen Katamba, Lewis Macleod, Jenny Douglas, Benjamin Scanlan, Adam Robb, Robert Jack, Sarah MacGillivray, James Rottger, Jessica Hardwick, David Ireland, Glenna Morrison, Allison Peebles, Kern Falconer (last seen in "Slow West"), Nomaan Khan, Harvey Reid, Annie Griffin, Simon Donaldson, Julian Firth (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Iman Akhtar, Alasdair Hankinson, Sharon Osdin, Ian Dunn, Phoebe Pryce, Leigh Biagi, Violet Hughes, Josie O'Brien (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Katharine Edwards, Sinead MacInnes, Robert Maloney, Mahesh Patel, with archive footage of Charlie Rose (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love") and a cameo from Philippa Langley.

RATING: 6 out of 10 press conferences

Despicable Me 4

Year 17, Day 14 - 1/14/25 - Movie #4,914

BEFORE: You can see here why I moved "Will & Harper" out of the Doc Block and into January, this put THREE movies in a row that are all eligible for Oscar nominations, though I think it's probably a lot more likely that "Inside Out 2" will get one over "Despicable Me 4", the idea is the same. After all, it's not up to me which films get nominations, right now I can only work with what is Oscar-eligible, which is, umm, nearly everything. But for animated features, there aren't that many of them each year, so I should probably do what I can do, and cross another one off the list tonight. Even if I end up seeing two or three movies that win Oscars in any category, I'll feel like I'm ahead of the game. 

Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig carry over from "Will & Harper". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Despicable Me 3" (Movie #2,720), "Minions: The Rise of Gru" (Movie #4,246)

THE PLOT: Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith and Agnes welcome a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad. Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal and his girlfriend Valentina, and the family is forced to go on the run.

AFTER: This is certainly not a franchise that thinks that "Less is More" - no way, more is more.  More villains, more children in the family, more minions, more more more!  Only sometimes more isn't better, it's just more. They added four new emotions in Riley's brain in "Inside Out 2" and the story justified it, because puberty, but then it all added up to something meaningful, it was more but it was also so much more than more.  This franchise doesn't really have a purpose, maybe it never did, except to entertain, but then I'm left kind of scratching my head, wondering why they're choosing to go about doing that in such an odd fashion.  Just me?  

Gru was a villain, he stole the moon, they made sure we understood where he was coming from, he likes to steal things because that's what villains do. The fourth installment in the direct storyline of the franchise (and sixth overall if you count the "Minions" prequels) takes pains to remind us that Gru once stole the moon - but he put it back, the numbskull and oh yeah, was he just bad at being a villain, because that seems almost like it's ironic, but it's not.  He joined the Anti-Villain League, which seems like maybe a bunch of self-hating heroes who can't bring themselves to use that word, or that we're being tricked into still liking these movies even though we're all suffering from superhero burn-out after watching 87 Marvel movies and a few more from DC.  

So there's no capes in the "Despicable Me" movies, and the villains greatly outnumber the, umm, anti-villains, but you know, that's OK because there's only one Spider-Man (OK, actually there's two now, three if you count the one from 2099, more if you count the Peter Parker clones, and like a zillion if you count the whole multiverse) but there are like 100 villains for that one hero.  Ah, so THAT's why they created the other-dimensional Spider-Mans, so the original wouldn't be outnumbered and he'd have a fighting chance. Just kidding, he's still that guy who can't get to his aunt's house for dinner or get his photos to the Daily Bugle before deadline. 

Gru keeps on doing what he does, too, and so they have to keep thinking up weirder and weirder villains for him to secretly take down. There was that one voiced by Trey Parker in "Despicable Me 3", Balthazar Bratt, but honestly he wasn't that remarkable, or memorable. Really there hasn't been a GREAT villain in the franchise since Scarlet Overkill in the "Minions" prequel. And the second "Minions" film had too MANY villains, which is the same problem but in reverse, and it was similarly out of balance. There, I said it. 

The villain here has cockroach-based hybrid powers, which is not only very weird but a bit disgusting, also you don't really think about roaches as being strong or durable, not unless there's a nuclear war and we've been told, perhaps incorrectly, that they're the only creatures who will survive it.  Also they're not smart, not attractive, they're just nasty.  Why would Gru's rival want to turn himself into a cockroach, and then why would any of us in the audience want to see that?  Just because "kids like bugs"?  Sorry, but parents and other adults have to watch these movies, too, and you're grossing us out. 

Also he hates Gru because Gru sang "Karma Chameleon" in a high-school talent show before he could?  That's stupid. Why not hate Gru because he trained to be a villain and he's not fulfilling that, he betrayed all villains everywhere by working for the AVL, or is that a secret?  It's still a much better reason to hate Gru. Or Maxime could hate Gru because he's got a family and Maxime doesn't, that would make a bit more sense than this whole Boy George thing. Come on, be honest, was this plot based around which 80's songs the production company could get the rights to?  The use of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" at the end fits in this film a LOT better than "Karma Chameleon" does - but for both songs, the question's the same, are today's kids even going to KNOW either of those songs? 

When Maxime escapes from prison, he vows to take revenge on Gru and Gru's family, so the agency moves them to a safe house in another city, while the Minions are housed at the AVL and five of them are turned into super-hero Minions, which is sure to be both a terrible idea and also very important when the storylines intersect near the end.  Sure enough, the Mega Minions cause a great deal of collateral damage and they are retired, because who knew giving super powers to creatures that can't talk or think and just want to prank everyone would be a bad idea?  Umm, pretty much everyone could have seen that coming. 

But meanwhile in the quiet, upscale town of Mayflower, the Gru family becomes the Cunninghams and tries to blend in, with their three daughters and the three minions they were able to keep for some reason, despite the fact that nobody else in town has three yellow chattering non-definable creatures in their house. Umm, so how is that "blending in" if they still have three disastrous minions living with them?  Their neighbors are the Prescotts, who are not any kind of heroes or villains, they're just white people who go to a country club. But their DAUGHTER recognizes Gru and she has aspirations to be a super-villain herself, so she blackmails Gru into stealing his old high-school's mascot, which is a live honey badger. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong there?)

I guess the plan is for her to steal the mascot, and then use that as proof that she should attend school there?  That doesn't really make sense, because stealing the mascot will piss off the headmaster, and then she'll be LESS inclined to let Penny Prescott in, not more. They manage to steal the vicious creature somehow, but who brings a BABY to a heist?  That's ill-advised and dangerous, and the baby's almost as stupid as the Minions.  They get the honey badger and escape in a flying car, but the headmaster has a tracker in the animal's collar, and she alerts Maxime (her favorite ex-student) about where Gru's living with his family.  OK, then, that was really a waste of everybody's time putting them in the safe house, wasn't it?  This storyline just wants to turn itself around and keeps contradicting itself at every possible opportunity. Guys, we could have gotten somewhere a lot faster if you'd just stopped adding more, more, more to it. 

There's a big battle with the flying roach ship and also the headmaster in her super-enhanced wheelchair, and there's a construction site that gets destroyed before the Mega Minions get called out of retirement and they show up with all manner of creatures in tow to run over the bad guy.  All because "more is better", but it just isn't so. Finally Gru visits his old rival in prison and they reconcile with karaoke, sort of, and pretty much every character from the whole series of films is there at the prison, so you know, that feels like a pretty good note to end the franchise on, everything's wrapped up. No more kids, no more weird pets, no more outrageous villains, just realize there's a law about diminishing returns and really, we're very, very far now from where this whole thing started. 

But I know they won't end it, because this film alone made almost a billion dollars, and so they're only going to make more, aren't they?  It's just never going to end.

Also starring the voices of Steve Carell (last heard in "IF"), Joey King (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Sofia Vergara (last heard in "Strays"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Chloe Fineman (last seen in "Babylon"), Miranda Cosgrove (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Steve Coogan (last seen in "The Trip to Greece"), Pierre Coffin (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Dana Gaier (last heard in "Despicable Me 3"), Madison Polan, Tara Strong (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Chris Renaud (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), John DiMaggio (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Laraine Newman (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Brad Ableson, Romesh Ranganathan (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget").

RATING: 5 out of 10 security laser beams

Will & Harper

Year 17, Day 13 - 1/13/25 - Movie #4,913

BEFORE: I know what you're probably wondering, why have I programmed a documentary for January?  Don't docs usually have their own block, after Father's Day, or sometimes in the summer?  Why now?  Well, I am working on linking up that Doc Block right now, and that's part of the reason for breaking this one off from the herd and watching it today.  I don't have the same line-up planned as last year, when I watched films about John Belushi, Chris Farley and the Muppets that were chock FULL of SNL stars from different eras.  As of this writing, unless some uncredited extra people pop up in this film, it's only linking to one other Doc, that one about the Yacht Rock. Not a terrible problem, because I could end the Doc chain with it, or another documentary could pop up between now and June that would link off from this one and then another doc or back to the main chain, it's cool. Maybe. But if I move this one AWAY from the doc chain, a couple things can happen - I can link to another animated film from last year tomorrow AND I can see how the "Yacht Rock" doc links back to form that other circle, and I can now include the documentary about the South Park guys buying that Mexican restaurant, which my wife's been bugging me to watch.  I didn't see HOW I was going to work it in, not until now. 

I'm also moving it up because this is a CURRENT release - this film could be a contender for the Best Documentary Oscar, now I'm not saying its chances are great, but it was released in 2024, so it's eligible, and it's probably the only doc released last year that I would want to watch, and root for, that fits that bill.  Usually there are five docs nominated and I have no interest in any of them, or I watch them SO far down the road that they're no longer relevant or something like that.  So let's carpe the diem here. 

Paula Pell carries over from "Inside Out 2". 

THE PLOT: Will Ferrell and his close friend of thirty years decide to go on a cross-country road trip to explore a new chapter in their relationship. 

AFTER: In so many ways, this is the film we need right now, with so much prejudice out there against trans people, and sure, it comes from fear and ignorance and an unwillingess to understand others, I get it, the world's a scary place even without people transitioning, but can we all just maybe grow up and try acceptance for a change?  Look, I don't really have a dog in this fight, except I know two people who changed their gender, and I supported at least one of them (more on that later, maybe) and absolutely NOBODY is transitioning because they want to prey on your kids in bathrooms or get special privileges of any kind, they're doing it because they feel out of place, something in them has felt off or broken for a very long time, and they just want that feeling to stop.  If your foot was broken, you would go to the doctor and say, "Please, fix my foot."  But if you felt broken in your soul, what would you do?  How far would you be willing to go to feel right again?  

If you want to stop reading my blog because I support trans rights to, honestly, the minor degree that I do, well, fine, I'm glad we had some time together, but there's the door, try not to slam it on your way out.  Since I'm not directly affected by another person transitioning, how does it possibly hurt me?  Get out there, buy some new clothes, live as the other gender for a while, feel free to report back, or don't, and seek your truth. I'll still be here, doing what I do, and just hoping that some day soon you feel as comfortable in your own skin as I am. What more possibly is there to say?  We live in a country that is based on freedom, although that was somewhat narrowly defined at first, people on both sides of the political aisle have been working very hard to expand those freedoms.  Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to eat a cheeseburger at 3 am if we want to, god damn it, because our forefathers died for that, they just didn't know it at the time. 

And so eventually we got to the freedom to love whomever we want, it took a while, sure, there were some bumps in the road, but finally the Marriage Equality Act took place, and hey, funny story, it came about because the Far Right tried to pass laws that were anti-gay and those laws were declared un-constitutional.  So, umm, what do you think's going to happen, geniuses, when you push for anti-trans laws like "You can only use the bathroom intended for the sex you were born at" or "You can only play sports as the gender that we think you look the most like."  Those are all going to be similarly struck down as un-constitutional, and that's ultimately going to back-fire, and create a country where everyone can be free again. Maybe.

But those of us who know someone who transitions gender-wise might have a lot of questions, so that's really what this film is about. Someone who just happens to be a big famous movie-star re-connecting with that old friend, to check in, see what's up, and oh, what's your life like now that you identify as a woman?  Is that even the right term?  Transvestite, transexual, or is that none of my business?  Probably the latter, right?  And what did YOU do during the pandemic to pass the time? Did you learn to play guitar, or bake a lot of sourdough bread?  Andrew Steele spent time dressing as a woman and coming out and all that entails, from hormone treatments to changing her name to Harper Steele.  And then at the tail end of that whole process is (apparently) writing letters or e-mails to your friends and letting them know what your new name and situation is, because if you just bumped into them on the street, that might be even more awkward than this letter-writing process is. 

Harper is up for the new challenge, of figuring out who she wants to be as a person now, can she still drive across the country like she used to, living on bad coffee and sleeping in sketchy motels.  Can she still go to a sports game like she used to?  Even if her heart wasn't in it before, and she was just going to see sports to try to be "one of the guys"?  Does she even still drink basic beer, or should she consider switching over to wine?  Probably over-thinking it there, I know plenty of women who drink beer - just try better beers than Natty Light, that's all.

Harper figures there's room for two on this road-trip, and spending a couple weeks in a car with her old friend Will Ferrell will give them a chance to discover if they can still BE friends, answering any questions either one might have, and darn it, just get out on the road and try to have some fun.  Being out in public with Ferrell proves to be something of a double-edged sword, however, because people are going to notice him, he's wild, loud, and very funny, so he may attract a lot of attention and perhaps his companion can fly under the radar.  Well, yes and no.  At the NBA game and that steak restaurant in Texas, people take photos and make nasty comments on social media, so apparently, we still have a long way to go.  Again, people, this is the land of the free, freedom is not just for the people you like or the values that you've been brainwashed into following, and just like Rosa Parks had the right to sit where she wanted on the bus, a movie star has the right to take a trans friend out to dinner without you being a complete buzzkill about it. 

Their agenda is simple, after they have lunch with some past and present SNL stars near Rock Center, they drive from NYC to L.A. and try to hit some key points in-between - Washington DC, a Pacers game in Indianapolis, some kind of weird truck race down in Oklahoma, that restaurant in Texas where you try and eat the giant steak, and some kind of ballooning trip with Will Forte at an undisclosed location (New Mexico? I know there's a big balloon festival there...) and then after the Grand Canyon and a few days in Las Vegas, they meet Molly Shannon for pedicures in L.A. before reaching the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.  Honestly, I'm quite jealous, because I'd love to drive completely across the country sometimes, but my wife and I have taken long car-based vacations called BBQ Crawls, the longest was probably from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio to Houston to New Orleans.  I know the drill, you want to program the activities but not totally lock yourself in, some of the most fun things we did without planning them, like finding that giant artist's warehouse with the giant U.S. President heads, just off the highway outside Houston.

But damn it, this is what you do when a friend is going through something big, and making changes to their life.  You listen to their problems, try to be supportive, try to understand what they're going through (even if it seems weird to you) and just be there for them, encourage them and listen and ask questions if you have to.  It's called being a good human, and maybe give it a try, you might like it.  If this friend of yours asks for support and you don't give it, well, you risk them finding their inner peace and then always regarding you as the thing that was standing in their way - the screen door in their submarine, if you will.  It may not even be easy, and I speak from some personal experience here.  I remember when my first wife came out, and I called my parents to tell them I was going to stay with them for a week while she moved out, and before we ended the call, they asked me if I needed any help, and then they asked if SHE needed any help. Well, they were just trying to be the better people, I suppose, I was too wrapped up in the separation to support her new identity, but I guess that's to be expected. Time went by, we moved past the stigma of divorce, I got a new wife, SHE got a new wife, and I guess that's that. 

Bottom line, it's about freedom - if you want to live in a U.S.A. where nobody tells YOU what religion to practice, what you can or can't wear, who you can or can't marry, then you simply HAVE to extend those freedoms to other people, or else you're a hypocrite.  Freedom is a two-way street, it covers the other people whose belief system might be different from yours, and you can't put limits on what those people want to do just because you don't understand it or you don't like it. We are in this age of gender-fluidity now, and you just can't unring that bell.  Some people may live in-between, or switch on a daily basis, or switch all at once, it's for everybody to figure out at their own pace, if they're so inclined. But you know what you don't hear a lot about?  Gender transition regret. If it wasn't some kind of answer for the people who aren't comfortable being who they are, then there would be a lot more regret among the people who undergo gender-changing operations, and I just looked it up, the regret rate is under one percent.  That means more people regret the tattoos they get than regret their gender re-assignment surgery.  Doesn't this suggest that they're somehow on the right path?  

Who knows, maybe this will get an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary (I'm not actively campaigning for it, Academy, I swear...) and more people will see it and maybe a few attitudes can change.  Back here at the home office, I'm nominating this one in a few categories for my year-end breakdown, like "Best LGBTQ+ Film" and "Best Road Trip Film".  Hey, it's got great odds in either category. 

Also starring Will Ferrell (last heard in "Strays"), Harper Steele, Fred Armisen (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Tina Fey (last seen in "A Haunting in Venice"), Will Forte (last heard in Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Eric Holcomb, Colin Jost (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Tim Meadows (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Seth Meyers (last seen in "Bros"), Lorne Michaels (last heard in "Belushi"), Tracy Morgan (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar")

with archive footage of Dana Carvey (also last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Rachel Dratch (last seen in "I Love My Dad"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Darrell Hammond (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Adrian Martinez (ditto), Chris Kattan (last heard in "Leo"), Diego Luna (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Rachel McAdams (last seen in "Disobedience"), Amy Poehler (also carrying over from "Inside Out 2"), Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "IF"), Maya Rudolph (ditto)

RATING: 7 out of 10 cans of Pringles (who knew there were so MANY flavors?)

Inside Out 2

Year 17, Day 12 - 1/12/25 - Movie #4,912

BEFORE: Paul Walter Hauser carries over from "Queenpins" and this is the first of three animated films I've got scheduled for the month. Really, they're all carryovers from last year, as I wasn't able to get to them, the reasons really aren't important. Too much Jason Stathem, too many documentaries, who can really say?  I'm not going to start second-guessing the linking now, I've come too far and given too much of my time over to that process.  The chain knows what's best, I can nudge it a little this way or that, I can make choices, follow THIS actor or THAT one, but when I've got a specific destination in mind, like Mother's Day or Christmas, really, that takes precedence.  Besides, last year was another perfect year, that made six in a row, so even if an animated film or three falls between the cracks, that's OK, I'll just try to get to it next year, and it all works out. 

So now that I know the romance chain is solid, and I'm programmed to St. Patrick's Day, I've got some time to think about the Doc Block. Cutting to it after Father's Day worked out pretty well last year, so that's the plan again, unless I see a need to get to it sooner. Sometimes the IMDB listings don't show me the way to go, so then I have to cheat - I call up each doc that's streaming and scan through it really quickly, because those cast lists aren't always very complete, and I may need as many options as possible to link all the docs I want to link. Like I didn't see a way to link to "Casa Bonita Mi Amor", the doc my wife recommended to me, about the "South Park" creators renovating a Mexican restaurant in Denver - jeez, it sounds right up my alley, but how to get there?  When in doubt, scan through the film and see if there's a link - took me about 10 minutes, but I saw there was some archive footage used in the film of a particular 1950's music legend, and that makes things easy-peasy, so that's on the docket now. 

What I have right now are basically two circles, one list of five docs that forms a ring, and another list of thirteen docs that forms a second ring - one ring is really about movie stars, and the longer one is mostly about musicians.  But there's SO much overlap, because so many docs use footage of the same famous people, talk show hosts and newscasters and Presidents.  I just need to choose one of the dozens of shared links to put the two circles together, and make sure that gives me a good entry point and exit point to the whole mini-chain.  It's as simple as that, so simple that I don't even need to worry about it now, I can just keep adding cast lists to one ring or the other and figure out later how to assemble the Block.  It's going to be fine, and if it's not, I'll fix it then. So this is me not stressing about it AT ALL, since there's nothing I can do about it until Father's Day.  Maybe if I want to think about which is the most American doc I have, I can try to land that one on July 4 - would that be the one about Richard Nixon and Johnny Cash, or the one about Bruce Springsteen, who sang "Born in the U.S.A."?  Maybe that one. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Inside Out" (Movie #2,324)

THE PLOT: A sequel that features Riley entering puberty and experiencing brand new, more complex emotions as a result. As Riley tries to adapt to her teenage years, her old emotions try to adapt to the possibility of being replaced.  

AFTER: Man, this is SO smart!  Showing what's going on inside a teenage girl's head, only using avatar-like characters to represent the different emotions as we understand them, because of course it's just neurons firing in there and cells that store memories somehow, but nobody REALLY understands how it works or would get it if you showed what it REALLY looks like, so just animate it in a way that we can all understand!  Why hasn't anybody done this before?  Oh, right, they did. This is the sequel film so they have to up the stakes and introduce new characters, but they timed this with her turning 13 and having a "puberty alarm" go off. Not a real thing, but it might as well be, because something happens when a girl turns 13, and I'm not talking about the physical changes, that was kind of covered in "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." and also kind of metaphorically in "Turning Red". Umm, all girls gain the ability to turn into giant red pandas when they get their periods, right? 

Look, I don't know, I don't have kids (that I know of...), and if I don't have them by now, it's probably not going to happen.  The last time I dealt with any girls turning 13 I was probably 13 myself, and well, I didn't have the mental software to talk with them yet.  It turns out girls are just people, and over time I've spoken with some of them and learned how to get by in a conversation with them. It only took a few decades of practice and a couple marriages, but it turns out they're just people, and they have wants and needs and processes of their own for getting through life, and so, well, some kind of understanding comes into play, and ideally it goes both ways, in a perfect world that is rarely, if ever, perfect.  Sometimes the hardest thing to imagine is outside yourself, coming to understand that whatever's going on in your head might be going on in someone else's head, too, only it's a bit different for them because they come from a different place and they've had different experiences and memories and outlooks.  Even your parents have emotions and fears and concerns, unless of course they're totally detached from life or have given up, which happens to some of the olds. 

They gave Riley a Nostalgia emotion in this one, only somehow it got released way too early, it looks and sounds like a senior citizen lady, and the other characters keep telling her to go away and come back in maybe 40 years or so.  But you can have nostalgia when you're 13, you can miss those days when you totally rocked first grade because you were reading at like a fourth-grade level and doing crossword puzzles and killing it on the Missile Command video game. Just me? Maybe life doesn't get better than that, when you're not expected to DO anything all summer except for maybe a few chores around the house and you can spend nights hanging out with the neighborhood kids riding bikes and playing flashlight tag at night.  

But, sooner or later we all have to move up (and eventually move out) and start taking on more responsibilities, whether that's math homework or figuring out how to apply for jobs or colleges, or being responsible for our own work-out routines at hockey camp. Let's stick with that last one for now, because it's where "Inside Out 2" goes, with hockey camp as a great metaphor for life, you play as part of a team and sometimes it's about excelling as an individual, and sometimes it's about passing the little round pucky thing to someone who's in a better position to score. And sometimes your teammates are your friends and sometimes your friends are on the other team, and you have to work with the people wearing the same uniform as you. This is a great metaphor for a job, if you consider your workmates are the ones wearing the same uniform. You all win if the company does well, and then you can say, "Hey, I was on this winning team, if I come play for YOUR team, maybe that can be a winning team, too."

But that's all the framework in the outside world, as Riley spends that weekend at hockey camp. (What her parents do for the weekend while she's away, well, that probably can't be shown in a movie for kids. Let's just say some other emotions take over.). What's important is what happens INSIDE Riley's head as four new key emoticharacters are introduced - Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui.  Yeah, that tracks, it's clear someone worked with psychologists here to understand the new emotional challenges that come along when you hit those teen years. With the help of the other three newbies, Anxiety takes over, and all the characters we know from the first film - Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness - are literally sealed up in a jar and placed in a memory vault. Riley becomes a different person when the old emotions are gone and new emotions are in control, her previous symbolic Sense of Self is jettisoned to the back of her mind, and the other emotions have to free themselves and go on a quest to get it back.

To be fair, Joy is partially responsible for the situation, she's been finding all the recent memories of Riley's mistakes and sending them away, which has kept Riley happy, but Joy forgot that we have to remember our mistakes, too, or we won't learn from them.  We can't just walk around all day thinking good thoughts, because then we're fooling ourselves that everything is 100% OK, which it rarely is.  We all have Fear and Anger and Anxiety, sometimes for good reasons, we just can't let them take over and run the show, but they're all handy for keeping us safe sometimes, or thinking about all the possible things that could happen to us, or, I don't know, maybe the consequences of our actions?  As you might expect, some kind of balance needs to be achieved here, all nine (so far) emotions need to work together to create Riley's new sense of self, and yes, her mistakes need to be acknowledged and remembered, to keep her from making those mistakes all over again.  Duh, she needs to move past them and go out in the world and make NEW mistakes, that's just how life works. This is obvious for adults, but maybe some kids need to learn all this, so I approve.   

The five old emotions have to travel down a river to the back of her mind, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the Stream of Consciousness.  Nice touch - and then when Riley got in a tricky conversation with her old friends and her new friends, she was forced to only PRETEND to like that boy band, and that created an earthquake in her brain, and as a result, a big canyon called a Sar-chasm. Damn, that's good. Later in the film when she's desperately seeking solutions to her problems, there's also a devastating Brain-Storm, which is fine, but it's just not on the same pun-worthy level as a Sar-Chasm.  The Fab Five Emotions end up creating an avalanche of Bad Memories that they can ride back to the control center, and those Bad Memories end up in the Belief System, which is where Joy had been trying to keep them away from, but it turns out OK, because everyone needs to remember their mistakes and down moments, too, they're part of life, and you can't let either your Joy or your Anxiety take control.  

I worked for four years on another animated feature that detailed what goes on inside a young woman's body, not a 13-year old but someone from like 16 to 30.  That film was more literal and more science-based, and there were sections that detail what effect events have in the real world on hormones and neurons in your body, and then what effect those physical changes have on relationships. A more literal interpretation of the same idea, perhaps - I think I have a way to link to this film in early March, as I wrap up the romance chain, so I won't say more about it now, we'll talk about it then. But in some ways it's "Inside Out 2" but for adults. 

It's been 9 years since the first film, during which Riley only aged two years.  Whatever, but I wouldn't mind if there were more films in this franchise, if we check in with Riley when she turns 15 or 16, it could be a whole new ballgame.  The original pitch for this franchise involved 27 different emotions, and they've only shown nine so far, so perhaps in the next film it's going to get even more crowded in Riley's brain - I'm not saying they should add Lust or Horniness or anything, because then it really wouldn't be a movie for kids, but surely there must be more directions to go in the future. But again, I'm not really an expert on teenage girls, I've aged out of that demographic long ago.  But maybe the emotion team could unite to fight Angst or Wokeness or something, or maybe they could finally give Nostalgia something to do?  Or how about a quest for Empathy or Self-Awareness?

Or, if "Inside Out 3" goes the way I think it's gonna go, when Riley turns 16 she's going to be WAY more into dating girls than dating guys.  I don't know if Disney/Pixar is even able and/or willing to there, but come on, she's really into sports, all her friends are girls, boys are stupid and icky, I get it - plus it's very in fashion now to be gay and proud, why not just put the "OUT" into "Inside Out"?  And if you think things are complicated NOW up in Riley's brain control center, just wait... And if they take nine years to make another sequel, who knows, that could be even more in vogue than it is now, there could be more gay kids in high school than straights, at that point.  Sorry, I meant gender non-preferential, non-cis polyamorous non-binary kids.  Sorry about that. 

Also starring the voices of Amy Poehler (last heard in "Free Birds"), Maya Hawke (last seen in "Maestro"), Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira (last seen in "All I Wish"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Lewis Black (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Phyllis Smith (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Ayo Edebiri (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Lilimar (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), June Squibb (ditto), Grace Lu (last seen in "Dear Evan Hansen"), Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adele Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane (last seen in "A Walk on the Moon"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Ron Funches (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), James Austin Johnson (last heard in "She Said"), Yong Yea, Steve Purcell (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Dave Goelz (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Frank Oz (ditto), Kirk Thatcher (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Paula Pell (last seen in "Wine Country"), Pete Docter (last heard in "Inside Out"), Paula Poundstone (ditto), John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Mr. Warmth - The Don Rickles Project"), Sarayu Blue (last seen in "Blockers"), Flea (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "IF"), Kendall Coyne Schofield.

RATING: 7 out of 10 cubicles at Fort Pillowton