BEFORE: The end of the month is coming up quickly, just two films to go, then we can start exploring American history and American pop culture through the Documentary Block. So far I have not had to re-organize the list of scheduled films, but I feel I'm jinxing it just talking about it. I will do everything in my power right now to stick with the plan, I have every reason to believe that the chain is solid and will not fall apart on me, but, you know, I've said that before and had to scramble halfway through to fix a bad link. Hopefully there's enough crossover and enough redundancies in the cast lists so if that does happen, I can patch it very quickly and just keep moving on.
You know what, I've decided to really go for it, if I can just beef up the chain a little bit, I think I can do FIFTY docs, here in this special anniversary year of our country. Yes, I know the country is turning 250, but I simply can't watch that many. I'm going to go for 50 - fifty states, fifty stars on the flag, President Grant is on the $50 bill, what could be more patriotic? I'll probably stay up really late tonight trying to find five more docs that are both interesting and streaming somewhere, and it would be helpful if they were about American stuff, too, but I'm flexible on that, because what is America if not a melting pot? And if I can't make it to 50, if I can get to 49 I can count "The Saint of Second Chances", which I watched back in January.
Pedro Pascal carries over from "Eddington" and I think you know where I'm heading next after this. I've been taking the long way instead of shortcuts, and so still one very LONG film to watch before I say farewell to the narrative form for the next month and a half.
THE PLOT: Four interconnected stories set in 1987 Oakland, CA about the love of music, movies, people, places and memories beyond our knowable universe.
AFTER: I would say that this film might also qualify as a "fever dream" story, like the last two films, only it's a bit too short and it makes just a little too much sense, if you know what I mean. Plus it's based on real specific events, like somebody must have LIVED this, and it's unlikely that anyone would have dreamed this. But then again who knows? Ah, one of the film's directors grew up in Berkeley and hung out in Oakland, so that tracks - but he would have been only 11 years old in 1987, a bit too young to go to punk concerts or fight against neo-Nazi gangs, but I bet I can tell you what basketball team he rooted for and what kind of music he listened to.
You know, the film doesn't HAVE to ring true, 100% - it can be somebody's unreliable memory about what that town was like in that year, or it can be a fantasy about what it might have been like if you believe in aliens, the untapped power of meditation, and have your own theories about how rap battles got invented. Again, who's to say? As long as it leads to an entertaining film we can take a little walk on the weird side. And we all know from "Pulp Fiction" that separate stories can come together and the same people can pop up again in different situations - what year does "Pulp Fiction" take place, does anybody even care? Some year when boxing matches were a big deal, heroin was the drug of choice and people were nostalgic for the 1950's, dude, that could be ANY TIME, and Tarantino had been writing and refining the story since the 1980's so overall it has this timeless throwback feel that's baked right in. This film is kind of like that, a bit non-linear and ultimately folding back on itself, only transferred to Oakland in a very specific year.
As for me watching this film RIGHT NOW, at this time of year, at this point in the chain, it's darn near perfect. Part of the film is set during the NBA Playoffs in 1987, which is a real thing that happened, a battle between the Golden State Warriors and the L.A. Lakers in the conference semifinals. Sleepy Floyd was a real NBA player for the Warriors, he'd transferred in from the New Jersey Nets or something, but he does not play himself in this film, he plays a different character (same goes for Too $hort). I can't really confirm whether there was a real-life attempt during this playoff game to rob a bunch of basketball player's homes, because thieves knew that all of the player's families would be at the game, but it's possible.
The other reason the timing is perfect has everything to do with tomorrow's film, which is set of course in that galaxy far, far away. Today's film has not one but TWO actors known for being in the "Star Wars" franchise, however their characters never met or shared screen-time together. But we can wonder from THIS film what things might have been like if Din Djarin, aka the Mandalorian, ever faced off against Orson Krennic. I mean, Krennic was top-tier in the Empire but maybe he was no good in a fight, different skill-sets and all that. So unfortunately the world may never know, but we can see here that they're both playing similar roles in "Freaky Tales", Ben Mendelsohn played a crooked cop who's the head of a very evil organization, while Pedro Pascal is playing a hired gun, an enforcer type who tracks down people who owe money, essentially a bounty hunter, right? And the ending kind of leads perfectly into the themes of the Mandalorian series, but I don't want to give anything away.
It's probably a very tough thing, weaving together four separate stories, Tarantino-style, and coming out with something coherent at the end. Like we never really find out HOW all this freaky stuff is happening, like how does the bus take off and fly through the clouds? How did Sleepy Floyd take out an entire band of gangsters, martial-arts style, without ever leaving his house? Umm, astral, projection, sure, but HOW is that possible? For that matter, you might ask how the bad guy just kind of explodes at the end, "Scanners" style. I don't know man, just roll with it maybe, go to the workshop and learn about unlocking the powers of your own mind, I guess.
Look, it was a different time, back in 1987 - but one thing everybody knew for sure in their hearts was that Nazis are bad, mmKay? Whether you're an NBA star or a punk music fan or a wanna-be female rapper, you come together and you fight back against the Nazis, otherwise they'll take over the whole country, we've seen this happen before. Why the alt-right NeoNazis were allowed to march in the U.S. back in 2021 without people coming together to disband them, or better yet, evict them from the country, I have no idea. If you're looking for people to kick out of the country and send to South America, I say start with the Nazi skinheads.
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (co-directors of "Captain Marvel" and "It's Kind of a Funny Story")
Also starring Jay Ellis (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Normani, Dominique Thorne (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Ji-young Yoo (last seen in "Moxie"), Angus Cloud (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Jack Champion (last seen in "Retribution"), Keir Gilchrist (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Marteen, Tom Hanks (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Too $hort, Sleepy Floyd, Marshawn Lynch (last seen in "Bottoms"), Zack Roberts, LeQuan Antonio Bennett, Michelle Farrah Huang, Dan Marotte, James Coker, Mike Infante, Chachi Delgado, Yong Kim, Amy Bui (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Jordan Gomes, Ryan Tasker, Trestin George (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), DeMario Symba Driver, Tyra Monique, Robert Parsons, Tim Armstrong, Natalia Dominguez, Sedrick Cabrera, Ryan Pratton, Jay Liu, Sam Skolnik, Armand Munoz, D'Angelo Mixon, Max Carpenter, James Asher, Skipper Elekwachi, Michael X. Sommers (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Cheryl Vienna, Samuel Ademola, Alie Davis, Alexis Zollicoffer, Peter Lee Thomas, Andrew Roach, Chris Mullin, Stephanie Heiner, Glenn Davy, Josh Schell, Brandon C. Davis, Tracy Todd
RATING: 5 out of 10 underdog movies recommended by Hank at the video store
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