Deep Blue Sea

Year 17, Day 102 - 4/12/25 - Movie #4,994

BEFORE: It's the end of the Samuel L. Jackson chain - for now - as he carries over again from "No Good Deed". He'll be back in one more film next week, but not used as a link, and then I don't know when we'll see him again.  The temptation is there to save this film for October, because it's a horror film (sort of?) about sharks, but since I'm using one of tonight's actors as a link to get closer to Easter, I'm in favor of burning it off here rather than saving it.  I think a couple of Octobers have come and gone since I put this on a DVD, and also I'm not sure exactly how I would use it in October, I have films that will link to it on either side, but then I've got nowhere else to go from there.  So yeah, I know I'm stranding a couple horror films by watching this, but this October I'll just go with the most workable plan I have, it's fine. Probably fine.

THE PLOT: Searching for a cure for Alzheimer's disease, a group of scientists on an isolated research facility become the prey, as a trio of intelligent sharks fight back. 

AFTER: Damn, this could be one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen - the whole premise is flawed. Sure, I appreciate working to find a cure for dementia, God knows we need one, and my mother and my ex-boss could sure benefit from one.  But why test it on sharks?  Wouldn't it be easier to work with mice, or squirrels, or even monkeys?  I couldn't tell exactly what the very complicated process they were doing to the sharks was (a lot of made-up scientific mumbo-jumbo is given as an explanation), but in order to test the sharks properly, first they needed to increase the shark's brain capacity, their brains were initially too small to work with. So without telling anyone else, the main researcher here created smart sharks. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there?

The researchers start to figure it out when one shark manages to escape from the escape-proof pen. He fooled the security devices by putting on a wig and glasses, I guess, then riding off on a jet-ski to attack two young couples out for a sail at night.  He looked at their catamaran and mistook it for a charcuterie board, which explains why he busted right through the bottom of the craft, just looking for a little late-night schnicky-snack....

Look, I've expressed my disdain for shark-based movies here several times, most recently last year when I knocked off "The Meg" and "Meg 2: The Trench".  I will repeat, though, if you could just leave the damn sharks alone, you don't give them a reason to eat you.  I stay out of the ocean completely as part of our unspoken agreement, you know, just to be on the safe side.  There's no GOOD way to die, but I have to figure being dragged underwater and simultaneously drowning and being chewed up by several rows of teeth is particularly nasty.  

So the sharks represent death, which comes for us all - what other symbolism could they possibly have?  But you don't have to make things easier for them by penning them up in floating pens that will hold them (but just barely) and then taking them in turn and drilling into their brains to check the levels of chemicals or something.  You're just pissing them off, and you WILL be sorry.  Sure enough, the first time we see a shark getting experimented on, it costs one scientist his arm, and then once the sharks get a taste, and there's blood in the water, they're just never going to stop. This is true for all sharks, you can't tell me any different, however since these are smart sharks they seem to have developed a sense of either irony or comic timing, because for the rest of the film they choose their moments very carefully.  It's always right after one character talks about how there's no danger, or expresses his disdain for the situation - well, just remember it can always be worse. If you don't like the fact that you're stuck in an underwater research facility with no chance of escape, PLEASE stop whining about it - would you rather be outside the facility, where the sharks are?  I thought not. 

The sharks even come back for the rest of that scientist whose arm they got - as he's being airlifted out by helicopter, in the middle of a terrible storm, something goes wrong with the winch and he ends up being lowered right into one of the shark pens.  Great job, medevac guys, you're doing quality work - the sharks grab his gurney, figure out how to detach him from the lifeline, and drag his body down to the main observation window of the facility, just to ram him up against the glass and show everybody their co-worker one last time before they eat him.  Yeah, they're that petty, it turns out, but it's also a warning, as if to say, "We got this guy, and now we're coming for the rest of you!"  They're smart sharks, but they're also real a-holes. 

And then that helicopter that dropped the guy on the stretcher right into the shark pit manages to crash into the control tower, killing the tower operator, the three men on the copter, and I assume putting more body parts into the ocean to feed the sharks.  Well, they were probably underfed to begin with, it wouldn't surprise me to learn how badly mismanaged this whole facility was if they were set up to do the dumbest thing possible, which is making sharks smart. 

The five researchers left make plans to escape in a submersible, while the facility's cook hides in his own oven while a shark roams around the three feet of water on his level.  Then the escape plan keeps changing as the team learns about the various damaged parts of the facility.  Man, I hated to say it, but by this point I was nearly rooting for the sharks just because of how dumb all the humans were. It's kind of like how in "Meg" the shark had the biggest personality and the most acting ability in the entire cast, and in both cases the sharks weren't even real.  

The team splits up, and while some try to drain a stairway that will lead to the surface, the main researcher goes to her cabin to get her research notes (I think, it's a bit unclear...). Well, damn, you don't want to leave behind any of those important experiments that make sharks smarter... But she also gets attacked by a shark and manages to electrocute it, losing her notes in the process. Well, it's for the best.  Then there's a big climactic battle against the sharks when the survivors get to the surface, but I can't say that all makes any more sense than the rest of the movie does.  

We should make all the scientists playing around with woolly mice and bringing back extinct dire wolves to watch this film, though. Look, if you don't want to play along at home, nobody's forcing you to - feel free to skip any movie you don't think you'll like, especially this one. My only bright spot tonight is really just getting one movie closer to Easter - and that reminds me, I really should start working out a path to Mother's Day tomorrow. 

Directed by Renny Harlin (director of "The Misfits")

Also starring Thomas Jane (last seen in "1922"), Saffron Burrows (last heard in "Peter Pan" (2003)), Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Stellan Skarsgard (also carrying over from "No Good Deed"), LL Cool J (last seen in "Being Elmo"), Aida Turturro (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Cristos (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Daniel Rey (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Valente Rodriguez (last seen in "Father Stu"), Brent Roam, Tajsha Thomas, with the voice of Frank Welker (last heard in "The Back-Up Plan") and cameos from Ronny Cox (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Renny Harlin (last seen in "The Misfits")

RATING: 3 out of 10 perfect omelettes

No Good Deed (2002)

Year 17, Day 101 - 4/11/25 - Movie #4,993

BEFORE: This film was stored on the constantly-crashing DVR that I replaced in January - at the time there was NO way to dub the film to DVD, because for some reason that didn't work with movies from HBO and Cinemax. So I lost access to the movie when I got the new DVR, but thankfully it's available on YouTube for free, and also on Roku.  So it's now on the list of movies I've seen but don't have a physical back-up copy of, and if it ever runs on cable again I can get a copy of it then. 

Samuel L. Jackson carries over again from "The Piano Lesson".  I'm guessing that he holds the record for appearances overall in the last almost-5000 films, but I can't really be sure, because it would take too long to calculate that.  But a quick search tells me he's been in at least 81 of those movies, soon to be 83.

THE PLOT: While doing a favor for a friend and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery. 

AFTER: This was supposed to be a good, short, twisty little heist movie - but maybe it's a little TOO twisty, because it's only 97 minutes long, but the last 30 minutes feels like it's about two hours long when you're going through it. Things are supposed to be wrapping UP by that point, but during the post-heist getaway section things keep getting more complicated and more problematic, and it's just like, "When the hell is this thing going to be resolved?"  Maybe it's just me, maybe time will fly by for you during the last section, I don't know. 

The whole film kind of suffers from a "wrong place, wrong time" vibe, because things weren't supposed to go down like this at all, the cop, Jack Friar, played by Samuel L. Jackson, was supposed to be at a classical music fantasy camp in the Berkshires, playing the cello with Yo-Yo Ma or something, and anyway he doesn't normally even look for missing people, he usually just tracks down stolen cars. BUT his neighbor needed a favor, her daughter ran away to be with her skeevy boyfriend on Turk St. (maybe? the mother didn't seem so sure of the street) and Jack broke his personal rule about helping people just this one time, and look where it got him.  While he was napping in the car on Turk St. it began to rain, and also he dozed off because he's diabetic and his blood sugar was low, and when he woke up and saw an old lady fall on the steps with her oranges and grapefruits going everywhere, naturally he went to help her.  She invited him in to meet her cranky old husband and have a cup of tea, and then he made the mistake of mentioning he was a cop and looking for someone, and the next thing you know, he's getting knocked out and tied up because he's unknowingly entered the hide-out of a group of bank robbers, two of which are that elderly couple. 

There are five people in the gang, the mastermind, the psycho muscle, the older couple, and the femme fatale, who's in charge of seducing the bank employee, meanwhile she's in some kind of a relationship with the mastermind AND the muscle, and jeez, for all we know she's banging the old couple, too, why not?  There are no rules with this lot.  I guess her job is to not wear a lot of clothes and make everyone fall for her, I don't personally find this actress all that attractive, but yeah, I guess I see it. She was like the Anya Taylor-Joy of the late 1990's, willing to take any role and be naked or close to it, but just not my cup of tea. (What can I say, I liked "nice" girls, like if Kim Basinger was going to be naked in a movie, sure, I'll watch that, but then if Shelley Long or Teri Garr was going to be in her underwear, oh, man, that was so much more appealing...)

Where were we - oh, right, the cop's tied up in the hideout while the bank robbers move up their timeline and go do the bank robbery thing, because they think the cops are on to them.  This involves the mastermind meeting with their man on the inside while the muscle goes down in the basement and knocks out the bank's power. This causes all transactions to cease, however the mastermind is pretending to be a wealthy client who NEEDS that $10 million transfer to take place before it's 6 pm in Europe or something. This means the bank manager needs to give him a floppy disk with the transfer codes, and he can take that with him and make the transfer via computer. I don't know, this all sounds a bit weird, is it possible to rob a bank this way?  I'm going to have to check the "goofs" section on IMDB to be sure. 

I think I prefer the bank heist movies where the robbers blow up the safe, or drill into the safe, or hold people at gunpoint. Just walking away with a floppy disk feels like a real letdown by comparison. It's supposed to be an action movie, not an "inaction" movie.  Show, don't tell. Meanwhile the femme is supposed to be watching the cop who's tied up, and she somehow ends up with him untied and they play a duet, her on the piano and him on the cello.  Then they both play the cello together in a sexy sort of way, and he wants to kiss her neck, and then she somehow owes him for not breaking or neck. This might be enticing if it weren't so blatantly stupid. Look, either have sex or don't, it doesn't matter to me, just please don't waste my time.

How damaged is this woman that she's carrying on a relationship with two members of the gang, the patsy at the bank and she STILL wants to get something going with the cop, her prisoner?  Erin, who hurt you?  Or are we dealing with a screenwriter who just doesn't know what to do with a female character, except make her have sex with every male character in the movie?  You know, women do other things sometimes, they can be doctors or lawyers or do just about anything, they're not only here to seduce all the men around them.

The mastermind and the muscle deal with the bank guy (who won't give up his password, big mistake) and then FINALLY circle back to deal with the cop.  Friar pulls a fast one by pointing out that they shouldn't kill him, they should use him as a driver who can get them to the border faster, because he's got a siren in his car.  This at least gives him some time to come up with a plan on how to get the better of the gang leader, and also give the girl a chance to make her own decision about who she wants to be with, the cop or the gang leader?  You know, I've found it best to not force people to make this kind of choice, because you're likely to not like their decisions.

At the end, I was left wondering whatever happened to that girl who ran away?  Would it kill you to give us an update on her, you know, she was the reason for Jack to be out and about in the first place, without that he never would have encountered these bank robbers.

Directed by Bob Rafelson (director of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981) and "Five Easy Pieces")

Also starring Milla Jovovich (last seen in "Paradise Hills"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Doug Hutchison (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Joss Ackland (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Grace Zabriskie (last heard in "Cryptozoo"), Jonathan Higgins (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Shannon Lawson (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies"), Robert Welch, Francis X. McCarthy (last seen in 'On the Basis of Sex"), Noel Burton (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Roberto Blizzard, Terence Bowman, Robert Brewster (last seen in "Moonfall"), Peter Blascke, Jennifer Seguin (last seen in "The Sum of All Fears"), Larry Day (last seen in "The Bone Collector"), Tony Calabretta (last seen in "Heist"), Joris Jarsky (last seen in "The Little Things"), with a cameo from Emily VanCamp (last seen in "The Ring Two").

 

RATING: 4 out of 10 drive-through teller windows (on the way to the Canadian border)

The Piano Lesson

Year 17, Day 100 - 4/10/25 - Movie #4,992

BEFORE: Obviously, Samuel L. Jackson carries over again from "Hard Eight" - I've just moved forward from one of his earliest films to one of his latest - a 27-year jump. I had so many SLJ movies to work with here that i was able to put them in whatever order I wanted - and that made it a little easier to find another Birthday SHOUT-out, so we're sending one out today to actress Olivia Washington, born on April 10, 1991. One of Denzel's "nepo babies", also twin sister to this film's director and a fellow alumnae of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (though years after I went there).

This movie played a few times at the theater where I work, during guild screening season in November/December.  It ended up getting zero Oscar nominations, but I'm not sure how it did in the PGA, WGA or SAG awards. 

THE PLOT: Follows the lives of the Charles family as they deal with themes of family legacy and more, in deciding what to do with an heirloom, the family piano. 

AFTER: I found this film to be very confusing, the story is all over the place - it fires off in every direction inconsistently.  I'm not sure if this is a problem with the original play or just the movie.  The play won a Pulitzer, but was it this disjointed, or is that a recent problem resulting from adapting it to film form? Did something get lost in the translation here?  

I just went and read the plot description on Wikipedia - for the PLAY.  Somehow that description finally brought things together for me, and so I suspect that the play somehow makes more sense than the movie does.  How is that possible?  The movie's script just made the characters talk in circles, often they would say the same things over and over again, which made everything seem kind of pointless and nonsensical.  LIke, come on, she's NOT going to let you sell the family piano and let you buy land with the money, haven't we made that point clear already?  Several times? 

There were also a lot of family characters, past & present, that got introduced, without telling us what made any of them special or different.  So while I acknowledge that this is a family that is proud of their heritage, to the audience it's just a list of names with no real meaning...and how am I supposed to distinguish one Berniece from the other, as there seem to be several of them in the same family?  Plus there's a Willie Boy in the present and a Boy Willie in the past, that's not confusing to anyone else?  What the heck was August Wilson thinking? 

We hardly even get to hear anyone play the piano in question - Willie Boy plays a little boogie-woogie for 30 seconds and then there's a notable bit at the end when Berniece starts teaching Maretha, FINALLY.  I was beginning to think that the title was a misnomer, or perhaps referred to a lesson ABOUT pianos, like maybe don't steal a piano because you'll end up putting a curse on it, or something like that. 

What I could understand was that Willie Boy and Lymon drove up from Mississippi with a truckload of watermelons, hoping to sell them in Pittsburgh, where some family members live.  It seems to be a good business plan, except for the fact that the brakes on the truck sometimes don't work, and if the truck crashes, well those watermelons aren't likely to survive a crash. For that matter, how many days does it take to drive from Mississippi to Pittsburgh?  And it's just an open truck, with no referigeration - how long does it take watermelons to go bad? I have no idea.  They do manage to sell all of the watermelons to hungry Pittsburgh people, once they explain how to put salt on them - is that even a thing?  And OK, they make some money selling the melons at 2 for a dollar - but then Lymon goes and spends most of his take on a silk suit and some shoes that don't fit so he can go to clubs and attract a woman.  You know what would be a better business model?  Figuring out what they can spend that money on in Pittsburgh that they could sell to people back in Mississippi, then they wouldn't have to drive back with an empty truck, assuming the truck is in good enough shape to drive back at all. 

The news from Mississippi is that James Sutter fell down a well - the Sutter family used to own slaves, including the ancestors of this whole Charles family.  So sister Berniece naturally assumes that Willie Boy pushed James Sutter down the well, but they keep saying that people down there get pushed down wells by the ghost of the Yellow Dogs, whatever that is.  Or do people just say that to cover up the fact that alive black people push white people down wells?  So much of this is unclear, and I don't think we ever get an answer.  

We do learn, eventually, that the piano in the Charles residence was stolen from the Sutter family years ago, but it was carved by one of their ancestors and depicts key moments from their family history.  A member of the Sutter family broke up a slave family to raise enough money to pay for the piano, which he bought for his wife as an anniversary present.  Even though the carvings were made by a slave, which means that the law dictated that the carvings belong to the slave-owner, the Charles family felt that they had a right to the piano, so they stole it during a July 4 fireworks show. Boy Willie's father, who stole the piano, was tracked down and killed while trying to escape by train, by burning the whole boxcar he was trapped in. 

So for this reason, Berniece won't sell the piano and give Willie Boy the money from its sale, and in fact she still holds a grudge because Willie Boy and Lymon were involved in stealing some wood that they were delivering, and this crime somehow led to the death of Berniece's husband, Crawley.  It's another part of the family's back story that also doesn't get explained to the viewer very well, unfortunately.  

And in the midst of all this, Berniece starts seeing a strange figure in their house, and claims it's the ghost of the recently departed James Sutter.  Her daughter Maretha sees the ghost, too, and so they try to perform and exorcism with the help of Avery, a local preacher who also has offered to marry Berniece, but she won't consider it until he has his own church, for some reason.  As the ghost manifests itself and starts attacking Willie Boy, Berniece tries to call upon her ancestors for help, which involves playing the same note repeatedly on the piano and calling out their names.  Sure, why not, I guess that's worth a try?

I really don't understand the narrative, it just seems to contain a bunch of random events and complicated back-stories, but the end result is that the piano is part of the family history, and they need to keep it handy because it can keep ghosts from attacking the house?  So Willie Boy does NOT get the extra money he was hoping for in order to buy the Sutter's farm land back home in Mississippi.  Oh, if only he could have brought back something from Pittsburgh in the truck to sell... Steel? Ketchup?

Directed by Malcolm Washington

Also starring John David Washington (last seen in "The Creator"), Danielle Deadwyler (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Ray Fisher (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Corey Hawkins (last seen in "In the Heights"), Michael Potts (last seen in "Rustin"), Skylar Aleece Smith, Stephan James (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Erykah Badu (last seen in "House of D"), Malik J. Ali, Charity Jordan (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Isaiah Gunn, Matrell Smith, Jerrika Hinton, Gail Bean, Eilan Joseph, Pauletta Washington (last seen in "Beloved"), Olivia Washington (last seen in "The Little Things")), Kylee D. Allen, Deetta West, Jay Peterson, David Atkinson (last seen in "All I Wish"), Tony Fox, Melanie Jeffcoat (4/9), Owen Harn (last seen in "Night School"), Charles Green (last seen in "Freaky"), Lovell Gates, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 fireworks in the flashback at the start of the film (it's all downhill from there, somehow...)

Hard Eight

Year 17, Day 99 - 4/9/25 - Movie #4,991

BEFORE: The linking has taken me all the way back to 1996, and the first feature directed by Paul Thomas Anderson - the guy who directed "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", not the other Paul Anderson who made all those "Resident Evil" films.  PT, as I'm sure his friends don't call him, came by the theater where I work when we were screening "Licorice Pizza" on 35mm a couple of Oscar seasons ago. He did a Q&A with Cooper Hoffman and that girl from the Haim band that starred in that film, and I got to stand near him and cue him when to go on stage. Good times - February of 2022, if my Flickr photos are correct. 

Samuel L. Jackson carries over again from "Rules of Engagement". For my linking purposes this is going to count as a SLJ film, even if he doesn't have top billing, I need enough films to fill the gap between here and Easter. 

THE PLOT: Professional gambler Sydney teaches John the tricks of the trade. John does well until he falls for cocktail waitress Clementine. 

AFTER: Yes, I was right, Samuel L. Jackson only has a small role in this film, but of course he does a lot with a little bit of screen time. His character is very integral to the last 1/3 of the film.  Mostly this is a vehicle for Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly, who I think were both in those other ensemble P.T.A. films I mentioned above. Also Melora Walters and Philip Seymour Hoffman were in those movies and tonight's film, hell, everyone was in "Magnolia", go ahead, try to name one actor who wasn't in "Magnolia". Can't do it, can you?

I think you can see glimmers of greatness here in Mr. Anderson's first feature, and like "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" it seems to focus on people who are failing, or doomed or circling the great cosmic drain somehow, even if they aren't aware of it. Hell, watching this makes we want to drop everything and go watch "Magnolia" again right now, all three hours of it.  That film should be like "Pulp Fiction", if I see that it's currently airing, I should turn to it ASAP and watch it until the end, not matter how early in the film I learned that it was ON.  Seeing everything in that film fit together so finely, so completely, so outrageously, it's worth a re-watch whenever I have the time, which unfortunately isn't very often.  

But man, if you can get Samuel L. Jackson to play a shady character who does security work for casinos, then you GET Samuel L. Jackson. Across the board, 100%, the casting is impeccable here, if Philip Baker Hall is available, when then you give him THIS role.  If you can get John C. Reilly, well, come on, you know what you have to do, and if you can get Gwyneth Paltrow to play a cocktail waitress/hooker, duh. All of these people went on to bigger, greater, higher profile roles, they were all on the upswing in 1996, as was Paul Thomas Anderson. He MADE John C. Reilly a star!  

This was based on a short film he made three years before, called "Cigarettes & Coffee", which showed how five people were connected through a $20 bill that changed hands.  Obviously he expanded the story greatly to turn it into a feature, but it still riffs off the theme that everyone is connected somehow, or knows something about other people's pasts, or they could be more connected in the future, and we mere humans can't really see all of the connections because we're stuck living in the present and also, not everyone shares all the details of their pasts when they meet people. There's an important connection or two that doesn't get mentioned at the start, but prove to be quite important by the end of the film.  

Sydney, an older gambler, meets an apparently homeless man outside a diner in Nevada, and offers to buy him a coffee and give him a cigarette. (We know this film is a little old because people are smoking in diners and later casinos, and after this such things went the way of the dinosaur...). Sydney assumes/guesses/knows that John has lost money gambling in Vegas, because it's the city where you arrive by plane and leave by bus, or hitchhiking.  John was trying to win $6K to pay for his mother's funeral, and Sydney offers him a better system than trying to hit it big at blackjack without counting cards, which I guess is darn near impossible. Now my first assumption was that Sydney was going to teach John how to count cards, but no, nothing here is really that simple.  Sydney offers John $50 to go back to Vegas with him and learn a better system. 

Honestly I didn't really understand what Sydney taught him, it involved John playing the slots a little bit and then cashing out, then getting his "rate card" stamped, then buying more chips/tokens and gambling a little bit more, then cashing out again, so according to this "rate card" he'd won or lost over $200, but in reality only lost about $20, and still got the casino to offer him a hotel room and comped him, because they thought he was some kind of high roller.  I can't imagine this would fool the casino systems today, because now everyone uses these high-tech loyalty rewards cards that electronically track how much you've bet over time.  But I didn't start gambling in casinos until well after 1996, so I really don't know how this all worked back then. 

John does win some money on the slots, though, and Sydney works with him to get that funeral paid for, though we don't learn exactly how.  Do they keep pulling this "rate card" scam, or does John eventually learn how to count cards at blackjack?  Not sure. Anyway John meets that shady security guy named Jimmy and they become friends, John also is attracted to Clementine, a waitress who Sydney learns also works as a prostitute once her shift at the casino is over.  Sydney plays the part of a matchmaker here, once it's clear that he's not interested in Clementine himself.  

Eventually things take a weird turn and Sydney finds John holding a man hostage in a hotel room because he had sex with Clementine and refused to pay for her services.  This is a rather dicey situation, John proves himself rather inept at being a kidnapper, and someone trying to collect ransom from the hostage's wife. Sydney is able to defuse everything and kind of resembles the fixer character that Harvey Keitel played in "Pulp Fiction", but maybe that's just because he's a guy who's seen it all, remains calm under pressure, and knows what has to be done. When he learns John and Clementine got married, he sends them on a long drive honeymoon to Niagara Falls while he sets up the release of the hostage and removes the evidence from the hotel room.  

There's more that happens after the couple leaves town, but no spoilers here. Damn, but this could have been an early Tarantino movie if it had a little more cursing and a lot more shots of women's bare feet.  As a first film from anyone, it shows a lot of promise over what's to come, even if it doesn't answer every question or deliver a ton of plot twists - instead there are probably just enough to think about. I've never understood the game of craps, and honestly maybe it's better that way, I just play the slot machines, the ones with real wheels if I can still find them.  

The tagline on the poster reads "If you stay in the game long enough, you'll see everything, win everything, and lose everything." It sounds like one of those Yogi-isms that doesn't seem to make any sense at all, except that it totally does if you've lived that. I'm just thinking about how this phrase relates to my animation career as of late - and I definitely stayed in that game too long. 

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (director of "Licorice Pizza")

Also starring Philip Baker Hall (also carrying over from "Rules of Engagement"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Year of the Dog"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), F. William Parker (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"), Nathanael Cooper, Wynn White, Robert Ridgely (last seen in "Melvin and Howard"), Kathleen Campbell, Michael J. Rowe, Peter D'Allesandro, Steve Blane, Melora Walters (last seen in "Eraser"), Xaleese, Jean Langer, Andy Breen, Renee Breen, Jane W. Brimmer, Mark Finizza, Richard Gross (last seen in "Swiss Army Man"), Cliff Keeley, Carrie McVey, Ernie Anderson, Wendy Weidman, Jason Cross. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 Keno cards

Rules of Engagement

Year 17, Day 98 - 4/8/25 - Movie #4,990

BEFORE: Well, this film seems quite timely because of the recent attacks on Yemen - you maybe read something in the newspapers about how officials from the Trump administration accidentally included a reporter in their group chat about the war plans - which, not really even knowing much about it, can't even possibly be the stupidest thing that the current administration has done.  Because the tariffs are stupider, since there's a recession or even a depression that's imminent, so you'd best take all your money out of the bank, hide it under the bed and start stocking up on canned goods.  Jesus, I can't take another run on toilet paper - but it's going to make the pandemic look like a walk in the park.  Well, I just quit my primary job, so I'm going to try and get used to not going to work, let's all find out what happens when we reach 80% or 90% unemployment, OK? Should be fun.

Where were we - oh, right, Yemen. Take a minute and figure out where Yemen is on the map, if you don't already know, and read about the recent news that the tariffs were designed to distract you from, then we can continue with today's film.  I don't know why the scandal seems to be about "Trump cabinet members group chatted about bombing Yemen" when the scandal really should be "We bombed Yemen?"

Samuel L. Jackson carries over again from "Coach Carter". Yeah, that's a guy who's made a lot of movies.  I'm down for seven in a row, but also "Basic" was watched earlier and then there will be another one a few days later, for a total of nine.  

THE PLOT: An attorney defends an officer on trial for ordering his troops to fire on civilians after they stormed a U.S. embassy in a Middle Eastern country. 

AFTER: There's an introductory sequence set during the Vietnam War, as an American Marine platoon encounters Viet Cong soldiers, and most of the soldiers die, Lieutenant Hodges and a few others are cut off from the main group, while Lieutenant Childers starts executing enemy officers in order to get them to call off the attack. It's a crazy plan, but it just might work - and we kind of learn what we need to know about Childers, he'll bend the rules of war to get the result that he wants, and save the lives of American soldiers. Lt. Hodges survives and then we jump forward 28 years to 1996, when Hodges is having his retirement party and Childers turns up to honor him. 

Childers is now the commanding officer of his own unit, which is deployed to Yemen to evacuate the U.S. ambassador when a routine anti-American demonstration turns ugly, and the crowd starts throwing rocks and shooting guns at the embassy.  Under heavy fire, Childers gets the ambassador and his family to safety, but three Marines are killed by snipers, and while retrieving the U.S. flag, Childers orders his men to open fire on the crowd, and 83 Yemeni soldiers and civilians are killed. Since the incident affects diplomatic relations in the Middle East, the U.S. National Security Advisor calls for a court-martial of Childers, and the rest of the film focuses on his trial.  Childers asks his old friend and platoon-mate Hodges to serve as his defense attorney, while Hodges rejects a plea deal that would spare Childers from the death penalty, because he believes that his friend is innocent.  

Hodges travels to Yemen and interviews the locals, who all claim that the Marines fired on an unarmed crowd.  But Hodges also notices there were security cameras, however he can't find any video-taped evidence to support Childers' claim that there were soldiers firing guns in the crowd on the ground, in addition to the snipers on the nearby rooftops. We the audience get to see that there is a video-tape in the possession of the NSA, however the tape is not turned over to the prosecuting attorney, Major Biggs.  Biggs is convinced that Childers is guilty of firing on unarmed civilians without warning, so that could mean that he's unaware of the VHS tape. 

When the trial begins, the U.S. Ambassador paints a different picture of Childers behavior than the one we saw during the rescue scene, he claims that Childers barged in and was forceful during the evacuation, indicating his state of mind was that of anger and vengeance.  A Yemeni doctor testifies that the audio tapes Hodges found containing threats of violence were merely propaganda, and that the protest that day was a peaceful one.  And Captain Lee, who relayed Childers' order to fire on the crowd admits on the stand that he did not have a good view of the crowd, and that only Childers did. 

Somehow Hodges finds a manifest that proves that security camera tapes were delivered to the NSA office, however the head of the NSA then says that the tapes were misplaced or disappeared, but hey, that's a step forward, at least he acknowledged they exist and were delivered. Biggs brings evidence that shows that Childers' order to fire was phrased as "waste the mother____ers", and really, that's not a good look. This trial looks like it's going to be too close to call - the prosecution even finds one of the officers that Childers threatened to execute way back in Vietnam, who of course was an eyewitness to Childers breaking the rules of engagement back then, namely executing prisoners. Will Childers be found guilty of murder, or just a lesser charge like conduct unbecoming an officer?  No spoilers here, you'll have to watch it to find out. 

This film was released in 2000, back then I suppose a lot of filmmakers were trying to duplicate the success of "A Few Good Men", but honestly, there's only so much you can do to make a bunch of trial scenes interesting. Having Samuel L. Jackson's character lose it while testifying is one solution, but Guy Pearce distracting me with a terrible Boston-ish accent is not a good idea. 

Directed by William Friedkin (director of "The Hunted" and "The Exorcist")

Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Guy Pearce (last seen in "Memory"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Species"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Anne Archer (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), Blair Underwood (last seen in "The Art of Getting By"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Coma"), Dale Dye (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Amidou (last seen in "Spy Game"), Mark Feuerstein (last seen in "Life Partners"), Richard McGonagle (last heard in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"), Baoan Coleman, Nicky Katt (last seen in "One True Thing"), Ryan Hurst (last seen in "A Million Little Pieces"), Gordon Clapp (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Hayden Tank (last seen in "Space Cowboys"), Jimmy Abounouom, William Gibson, Tuan Tran, John Speredakos (last seen in "School Ties"), Scott Alan Smith (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), David Lewis Hays, Peter Tran, Bonnie Johnson, Jason C. West, Mohamed Attifi (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Zouheir Mohamed, Chris Ufland (last seen in "The Aviator"), Thom Barry (last seen in "Fire with Fire"), Kevin Cooney (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Helen Manning, David Graf (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Conrad Bachmann, with the voice of G. Gordon Liddy (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Good Conduct medals

Coach Carter

Year 17, Day 97 - 4/7/25 - Movie #4,989

BEFORE: With movies about sports, I'm usually lucky if I can watch the movie during the appropriate season - like baseball movies should be watched during the summer, football movies during the fall or maybe close to the Super Bowl, and I got really lucky with this one, placing it during the Final Four weekend was unintentional or perhaps intentional on a subconscious level.  Really, it's only right here because it links, and sure, why not skip a viewing day so it lines up with the NCAA Mens basketball championship, which is TONIGHT. Just lucky, right?  Over and over and over. I don't even follow the sport, though it's fun to pretend that I do and claim on Twitter that I was all in on some team that didn't make it out of the first round and complain that my bracket is now shot. Honestly, the only bracket sport we follow in our house is "Tournament of Champions" on Food Network, which echoes the NCAA tournament by putting 32 chefs against each other in paired battles, then 16, 8, 4 and so on down to a champion. And they air this in March/April but I'm sure that's just a coincidence. 

And sure, I know this film is about high-school basketball, not college ball, but still, it's the best I could do without doing any actual planning. I know that Houston beat Duke, and Duke was favored to win it all, but they still have to play the games and all that. Who else is in tonight's game?  Florida?  Well that's a garbage state so I would be rooting for Houston if I were a betting man, but I'm not. I've been to Houston TX and had some good times there. 

Samuel L. Jackson carries over from "The Garfield Movie".  I'm going to be focused on him for the next few days, then he may pop up one more time, and I think after that he could be tied with Liam Neeson for the most appearances this year. 

THE PLOT: Controversy surrounds high school basketball coach Ken Carter after he benches his entire team for breaking their academic contract with him. 

AFTER: Despite watching "Hoop Dreams" just a couple years ago, basketball might be the one of the top four U.S. sports that I know the least about. I probably understand more about curling than basketball, that's just shuffleboard on ice, after all.  This isn't really the best film to watch if you want to learn about techniques and plays and stuff like that, even that film "Champions" from last year got more into alley-oops and passing games and man-on-man defense, because in that film, Woody Harrelson's character was trying to teach these things to some developmentally-challenged - I mean, special needs - teens. So maybe I picked up a little there because the instructions were kind of simplified.  

This film focuses more on push-ups and "suicides", because so much of the film involves the coach levying penalties on his inner-city teen players, because they show up late or they talk back or they just have an attitude problem, and we all know (?) that laps and push-ups are the answer to every discipline problem. And they serve a dual purpose, they not only demonstrate that the coach has dominance over the players, but they're also making the team members stronger.  So the more they talk back, the more they get punished, the more exercise they have to do, and ultimately then they become better athletes, or at least better runners, and half of the game of basketball is running, right?  If I played basketball I'd just wait by one basket and say, "No, no, you guys run down the other end and try to get the ball, I'm just going to wait here so you can pass it to me." You know, trying to conserve my energy, I can only run in short bursts after all. 

This is really just "Welcome Back, Kotter" but for basketball, with a former player returning to his old high school so he can coach the team and maybe also relive some of his glory days.  Ken Carter also runs a sporting goods store, so he really has to take time off from his business or hire someone else to run that while he coaches the team, in exchange for $1500 for four months work, which sounds like low pay, unless this is set back in the 1970s or something. Wait, it takes place in 1997?  Then that pay is really low, that's just above being a volunteer at a high school - the secretaries at the school probably get paid better than the basketball coach, that seems a bit out of whack. 

To instill discipline, Coach Carter makes all his players sign a contract, in which they promise to attend all their classes AND sit in the front row, maintain a certain GPA and a code of conduct, and dress in a tie and jacket on the way to away games.  The school didn't make him do this, he just figured it was best for the team, and anyone who didn't sign it was clearly not a team player, so they were kicked out.  Notoriously when Coach Carter found out some of his players were not going to every class and were not maintaining the right GPA, he locked up the gym and forfeited a game, sending all the players to the library, because he felt that their academic record was just as important as their participation in a sport, if not more.  And he was right, doing well in a sport might get a player into a college, but then they'll still have to take courses at that college, you can't major in basketball.  And what if they don't get into a college, they're going to need other skills and other knowledge then if their basketball career is over. 

Coach Carter's son, Damian, attends a private school, but he opts out of their program and instead chooses to transfer to the public school where his father is coaching, against his own father's advice. Yeah, there might have been some issues there, though perhaps this was the only way he felt Damian felt he could spend more time with his father, or the only way to get his attention. You might think he would be looking for special treatment, but he was actually choosing the harder road, as the coach's son he would probably have to play twice as hard just to prove that he wasn't getting preferential treatment.  While I was in school, my mother was an elementary school music teacher two towns over, and I thank God she didn't teach in our home town, I would have died from embarrassment, and probably would have been LESS likely to participate in chorus or orchestra, not more. 

Naturally, there are problems among the various players, ranging beyond poor attendance and bad grades.  One player's girlfriend is pregnant, but he wants to go to college and continue to play basketball and feels that being a parent might interfere with that.  Another one is suspended and his mother needs to plead for his reinstatement, and another teen who gets cut starts hanging out in a gang, but when his cousin is killed he tries to go back to the team, even though it means doing an impossible number of push-ups.  

There's a great turn-around when, after a few wins, the Richmond team is invited to participate in the BayHill basketball tournament, and things go really well for them.  However, the team chooses to celebrate by going to a house party and indulging in alcohol and sex, as one might expect teens to do. The coach can't believe how quickly the teens got so proud of themselves that they turned to debauchery overnight. Well, technically the contract he made them sign said nothing about sex or alcohol, it was mainly focused on their academic performances.  I guess you can't legislate everything. 

Will this ragtag team made up of formerly undisciplined truants get it together in time to qualify for the state championships?  Well, it's a sports movie so yeah, probably - they don't make true-life sports movies about losing teams, after all.  There are definitely some common formulas used here, it's not too hard to figure out which direction the story's going to be heading in.  Still, we like feel-good stories about underdogs winning, right? 

Directed by Thomas Carter

Also starring Rob Brown (last seen in "Don Jon"), Robert Ri'chard (last seen in "The Comebacks"), Rick Gonzalez (last seen in "The Guilt Trip"), Nana Gbewonyo (last seen in "Gran Torino"), Antwon Tanner, Channing Tatum (last seen in "Dear John"), Ashanti (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Texas Battle (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Denise Dowse (last seen in "Fatale"), Debbi Morgan (last seen in "She's All That"), Mel Winkler (last seen in "A Life Less Ordinary"), Vincent Laresca (last seen in "Devil"), Sidney Faison, Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Allegiant"), Sonya Eddy (last seen in "Year of the Dog"), Gwen McGee (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Ausanta, Adam Clark (last seen in "Domino"), Paul Rae (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Adrienne Houghton, Dana Davis (last heard in "Nerdland"), Ray Baker (last seen in "Places in the Heart"), Lacey Beeman (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Marc McClure (last seen in "Justice League"), Kara Houston, Carl Gilliard (last seen in "Red Eye"), Taryn Myers, Carolina Garcia, Jenny Gago (last seen in "Under Fire"), Ben Weber (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Sylva Kelegian, Derrelle Owens, Terrell Byrd, Floyd Levine (last seen in "Ready to Rumble"), Gregg McMullin, Andy Umberger (last seen in "Dark Skies"), Leonard L. Thomas (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Darin Rossi (last seen in "Superman Returns"), Deon Lewis, Roger Lim, Clara Soyoung with a cameo from Bob Costas (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here").

RATING: 6 out of 10 rooms at the Safari Inn

The Garfield Movie

Year 17, Day 95 - 4/5/25 - Movie #4,988

BEFORE: So I've fallen into a routine of enjoying a couple of beers from the beer fridge on Friday nights, usually to take the edge off of a busy stressful week. BUT I've also been working on weekends at the theater here and there, so on some weekends I've had to alter my drinking plans, as oversleeping and not showing up would probably be very bad for keeping that job. This weekend my wife wanted to drive out to Long Island to buy cigarettes and then have lunch and do a bit of shopping, so I moved my beer night from Friday to Saturday, which was fine because I didn't work on Friday and I wasn't on the schedule until Sunday afternoon. So on Saturday, with nothing at stake, I enjoyed a couple strong beers from the Brooklyn Brewery, one was a can of their Black Ops stout, which I purchased during an event there in January, and that beer is 12.4% ABV.  So I knew there was a good chance that beer would knock me out, and possibly interfere with my ability to watch "The Garfield Movie". Or, you know, maybe it would make the film watchable, there was really no way to know except to try it and see what happens...

Ving Rhames carries over from "The Wild Robot". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" (Movie #1,003)

THE PLOT: After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.

AFTER: OK, so I did fall asleep about 30 minutes in to this film, I put only partial blame on the strong beer, an Imperial stout.  I must have been asleep for about 15 minutes, but then I woke up and felt fine, I did have to rewind the film on Netflix and try to determine the last plot point that I remembered, but then I was awake for the rest of the film, and even a few hours after that. (Man, if you thought my sleeping schedule was bad before, just wait, with only the one part-time job and an irregular schedule, it's probably about to get a lot worse.)

I speak tonight as (probably) the only adult male with no kids who has watched BOTH of the previous Garfield films - go ahead, try to find another person who will admit that, I dare you.  Really, I had no problem with Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield, it just FIT somehow, because the character is noted for his sarcastic, detached, above-it-all yet constantly annoyed by everything attitude, and I think Mr. Murray's voice just worked fine for that.  Chris Pratt, I'm really not sold on - he made some kind of push to do a few animated films, I think some actors just want to do voice-work because they perceive it as an easy payday, or maybe they just want to impress their kids, I don't know. But I also wonder if professional voice actors who have spent the majority of their careers in that arena resent the intrusion by top-name Hollywood types who were probably cast just to get an A-list name attached to help sell the film. Look, I've done voice work in movies (that I produced) and almost nobody knows who I am, and honestly, I think I prefer it that way.  Sure I could be putting a reel together and trying to get more jobs doing voice-acting, but man, it sure seems like a lot of work. Maybe it's time to just close that door, I had some success at it and that's fine. Recently I was asked to do commentary on two new Blu-Ray releases for animated features I produced back in 1998 and 2001, still waiting for the recognition for that, however. 

(Meanwhile, I'm getting job notices from Indeed about hotel management jobs and also catering manager jobs, so I get the feeling that Indeed's matrix just doesn't understand my career goals at all...)

Here's the real problem when making a "Garfield" movie - Garfield's personality was designed to appeal to adults, he's fat and lazy and enjoys Italian food and hates Mondays.  He's condescening and rude and hates going to the doctor, these all feel like very adult things. How do you translate that into something that interests kids?  They took the tactic here of depicting him as a small kitten in flashbacks, so yeah, I guess kids might identify more with a kitten than an adult cat, plus he's a kitten who feels like his father abandoned him. OK, that's a bit sad, but maybe a bunch of kids out there can relate, they might either have absent fathers or be afraid of being separated from their parents, or they have foster parents, step-parents and maybe they see themselves in Garfield's situation just a bit.  

But also Garfield is very active in this film, he leaves the house and he goes on a heist, he does a lot of action-oriented stunts and flies drones, he solves problems and takes action, in ways similar to Tom Cruise's character in "Mission: Impossible".  This all kind of goes against his traditional image of being fat, lazy and uninterested in most things - but it does make for a more action-packed movie, I'll concede that point.  Still, it's not the Garfield that many of us grew up with, this is like a whole new character in many ways, and it leads to a story that is so far-fetched and unlikely that it starts out at unbelievable and just continues to get more ridiculous as it wears on.  Honestly I'm more willing to believe in a future robot that gets stranded on an island and learns to communicate with animals than I am to believe in a Garfield who goes on a mission to steal milk from a dairy farm and then battle a gang of stray dogs and cats on a fast-moving train.  

First, though, Garfield manages to connect with that stray cat father of his, and I don't think that the comic strip has depicted a father for Garfield in all the 87 years that the strip has been published on a daily basis.  OK, but the strip has probably explored every other possible thing for Garfield to do or say, so I'm guessing the cartoonist ran out of ideas about 20 years ago, or longer.  That's really the best thing I can say about this film, somebody really thought outside the (litter) box and said, we need to get this cat out of the house and up on his feet, and turn him into an action hero, as unlikely as that sounds.  Vic seems to be the leader of this weird gang of stray cats and dogs at first, but then the real leader is revealed, a female cat named Jinx, who wants Vic and his son to steal milk from that dairy farm, in return for the years she spent in the animal shelter after she got caught during a previous heist. 

So Garfield, Vic, and for some reason the mute dog, Odie, jump on a train and head out to the dairy, and the next morning Jon, Garfield's owner, notices that his two pets are gone, so he checks the whole house (but not outside?) and then calls Find-a-Pet and proceeds to spend the next three days on hold. Is this believable? Like, if I lost my cat I wouldn't call some service, I would run outside and start checking the neighborhood. Just saying.  But the writer didn't seem interested in doing anything with this character at all, so sure, by all means, let's have him on the phone for almost the rest of the film. 

The heist crew gets more than they bargained for when they learn how difficult it's going to be to break in to the super-high-tech dairy, but outside they meet Otto, the dairy's bull mascot, who has been separated from his wife, a cow named Ethel.  Their plans dovetail rather neatly, as Otto knows the dairy farm inside out, so the plans are made to break in, rescue Ethel and also leave with a truck full of milk to deliver to Jinx.  This is where the film starts to resemble a "Mission: Impossible" mission, and Ving Rhames as the voice of the planner sending instructions by acorn radio to the agents inside really drives that point home.  

NITPICK POINT: Meanwhile the screenwriters prove that they have ZERO idea how a dairy works, because it's all cartoon-like high-tech conveyor belts and moving platforms. Really, a dairy might make cheese and butter, but it would not make fondue in giant crocks, that makes no sense.  Fondue is something that a restaurant makes or a person might make at home with cheese.  Also I'm pretty sure that a dairy wouldn't slice its cheese with an array of cleavers held by robotic hands, that's all very "Looney Tunes" and just seems very weird.  The whole interior of the dairy looks like some kind of nuclear reactor or a missile command center, not believable at all.  Giant six-foot blocks of cheese on hooks, moving from room to room.  Believe me, I've seen how cheese is made, and guaranteed it doesn't involve this much action. Curdling and fermenting are very non-cinematic processes, though, still you can't just make a dairy work however you need it to work. Stupid animators and their lack of knowledge about mechanical devices...

The whole film just feels like it's firing in all directions, hoping to get lucky and score a hit, or at least come close.  Probably a whole team of screenwriters with no idea about how anything works in the real world just made a bunch of stuff up, with the goal of making kids want to work in a cool high-tech dairy one day?  I guess the world really needs dairy farmers or something?  

Still, I guess you can't argue with success, this film cost $60 million to make and took in $257 million worldwide, so that probably means that more Garfield films are on the way.  It would be great if they made a little more sense, but apparently kids aren't that picky about such things. Stupid plot points may bother adult people more easily.  

Directed by Mark Dindal (director of "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Chicken Little")

Also starring the voices of Chris Pratt (last seen in "Jennifer's Body"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Basic"), Hannah Waddingham (last seen in "The Hustle"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "The Menu"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "The Bronze"), Harvey Guillen (last heard in "Wish"), Brett Goldstein (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Bowen Yang (last seen in "Bros"), Snoop Dogg (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Janelle James, Angus Cloud, Jeff Foxworthy (last heard in "The Fox and the Hound 2"), Eugenia Caruso (last seen in "The Witches"), Luke Cinque-White, Dev Joshi, Chana Keefer, Mark Keefer, Edward Montgomery, Mark Dindal (last heard in "The Emperor's New Groove"), Cameron Bernard Jones, Darren Foreman, Timothy Quinlan, Matt Rippy (last seen in "American Assassin"), Alicia Grace Turrell, Eric Loren (last seen in "Memphis Belle"), Melli Bond, Lynsey Murrell, Hannah Felix. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 squares of lasagna in a to-go box