Year 15 Wrap-up / Year 16 Preview

12/30/23

Things have been crazy here, behind the scenes at the Movie Year - but also kind of quiet.  We had just a quiet Christmas at home, made lasagna again, which we started doing during the pandemic - but this year's was particularly tasty for some reason.  We did a little Christmas shopping together, but AFTER the 25, we went out to an outlet mall on Dec. 28, which I highly recommend doing if you don't have family members expecting gifts on the day itself.  We still have to buy some gifts for my sister's family in North Carolina, but other than that, the holiday was relatively stress free.  Unlike work, which has been nothing BUT stress.  Oh, the theater is closed for the semester break as usual, it's the other job that's got my stomach all in knots.  

But I've determined that everything has to end at some point, so if that job goes away in the New Year because my boss can't seem to learn how to balance a checkbook, or understand that a successful business has to take in more money than it pays out, then I can just walk away after 30 years on the job.  I have that power, and I've done it before when employers have run out of money and stopped paying me, it's just that this job represents a major chunk of my life and I've found that it's much easier to keep doing the things I'm doing rather than burn that part of my life down and start over, doing something else.  My movie blog is somewhat similar, after 15 years it's almost easier to just keep doing it than to somehow find a way to STOP.  What does it mean to stop, anyway?  That just leaves you with a big hole in your life where that thing used to be, and then you're going to want to fill that space and time with something else, and god, that sounds exhausting, just deciding what's going to fill that void.  Nope, it's easier to just put my head down and keep going, because that's what I know how to do.  

Speaking of time, I suddenly find myself running out of it, the New Year is just two days away, how the heck did THAT happen?  I have to go to a wake tonight for my wife's cousin, and tomorrow we're planning to fill some sandbags and place them against the basement door in the backyard to keep water from coming into our basement, since we don't get snow any more in December, just heavy rains that cause flash floods.  So that leaves me with just a few HOURS to write the wrap-up post for 2023.  Well, I'd better get started. 

First, the format stats for 2023: 

109 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD)

68 Movies watched on cable (not saved)

54 watched on Netflix

0 watched on Academy web-site (this is fine, I shouldn't be watching movies there anyway)
4 watched on iTunes
20 watched on Amazon Prime
7 watched on Hulu

6 watched on YouTube
8 watched on Disney+
5 watched on Tubi:

1 watched on Pluto TV

7 watched on HBO MAX
4 watched in theaters

0 watched on Apple + TV (because suck it)
0 watched on Peacock (seems about right)

1 watched on Roku TV

1 watched on commercial DVD
5 watched on random sites
300 TOTAL

Cable is actually UP from last year, which is surprising - I really thought streaming platforms would be taking over by now, but I made an effort to focus on clearing my DVRs and watching the films I burned to DVD.  Well, it makes sense because if I have the movie handy on a disc or a DVR, then I'm just not going to seek it out on Hulu or Tubi or Roku, right?  Netflix is up a bit, too, because it's the main platform where I save films to a list, so I know where they ARE, unless they've left that platform and gone somewhere else. 

iTunes and Hulu and YouTube are down, which makes sense because I'm trying to avoid paying per movie on iTunes, and if a movie's on Hulu, it's probably somewhere else, too, like maybe Amazon Prime, which means I can watch it on the big TV instead of my computer, and sit in the more comfortable recliner.  When Hulu stopped being available on our PlayStation that just made me less likely to watch something that way, so I only do that if I have to.  

And why rent a movie from iTunes or YouTube when I've found a pirate site that for some reason hasn't been shut down - I don't LIKE watching movies illegally, but if a movie is not available streaming anywhere else, and I need to keep the chain going with a particular movie that scrolled off Netflix, or is a really cool documentary that's been on my list forever, I will do it. And it sure seems like watching purchased DVDs has gone the way of the dinosaur, right?  The one commercial DVD I watched was "Narrowsburg", and that came to me because I donated to a Kickstarter campaign years ago.  So I haven't bought a DVD in like three years, not even at deep discounts. 

It's clear I'm still relying on cable, and if that makes me out of touch with the times, so be it.  And over 1/6 of my movies were on the Netflix, just like last year. I've still got a big list of films on my DVR and ones burned to DVD, so let me try to get to as many of those in 2024 as possible, only then can I consider going all streaming.  

OK, let's get to the awards. I'll list the films in each category, and then go by my own rating to determine the winner(s), if possible.  But unfortunately, like last year, there's like a 8-way tie for "BEST PICTURE", as all of these films scored solid 8's:

"Asteroid City"

"Bullet Train"

"Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

"Glass Onion"

"The Menu"

"Shazam! Fury of the Gods"

"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

"Top Gun: Maverick"

Well, who could possibly choose a winner from these great films?  You see the problem with my rating system, right?  I should just be happy that there were 8 films that entertained me to this degree.  Shut up and take the win.  Gun to my head, maybe "Asteroid City", because I do love the Wes Anderson movies.  But these were all good flicks. 

This is going to make the rest of the categories tough, expect a lot of ties - first category is BEST SUPERHERO OR COMIC BOOK MOVIE.  It's a large field, though, the contenders are: 

And the WINNERS are "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", which both scored 8s.  One DC film, one Marvel film, that seems fair. 

RUNNERS-UP: "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", "Bulletproof Monk", "DC League of Super-Pets", "The Flash", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", "Radioactive" (yes, it's based on a graphic novel), "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned", "Black Adam" 

ALSO-RANS: "Secret Headquarters", "Swamp Thing", "Creepshow" and "Creepshow 2" (based on the old EC horror comics), "Beyond the Edge"

Next up is BEST TIME TRAVEL MOVIE.  Not a lot of contenders this year - 

WINNER: "Ant-Man and the Wasp: "Quantumania" (I have to count the bit at the end that teased "Loki" season 2)

RUNNERS-UP:  "The Flash", 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "Love Wedding Repeat", "Needle in a Timestack", "Mr. Nobody", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again", "In the Shadow of the Moon"

Then there's BEST SCI-FI MOVIE (NON-SUPERHERO, NON-TIME TRAVEL) - so, basically dystopian futures, space travel and deadly aliens - we've got:

WINNER: "Asteroid City"

RUNNERS-UP: "Everything Everywhere All at Once", "65", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Dark Skies", "Extinction", "Nope", "Strange World", "The Giver", "The Last Days on Mars", "Species II" ALSO-RANS: "Species", "Equilibrium", "Moonfall"

BEST FANTASY FILM: 

WINNERS: "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"

RUNNERS-UP: "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", "Hercules" (2014), "The Green Knight", "Beautiful Creatures"

BEST CLONE/DOPPELGANGER/LOOK-ALIKE (or not) film (these are films where an actor played multiple roles, and for some reason I had a lot of them this time around:

WINNERS: "Glass Onion" (one actress played twins), "Asteroid City" (everyone is an actor in the play and a character in the play),  "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" (multiples of every character), 

RUNNERS-UP: 

"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" (Rudd/Lilly), 

"Everything Everywhere All at Once" (M. Yeoh, others), 

"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" (N. Cage), 

"Breathe" (Tom Hollander played twins) 

"DC League of Super-Pets" (Dwayne Johnson voiced 2 characters), 

"The Lady in the Van" (the writer imagines himself as two people) 

"The Flash" (E. Miller), 

"Mr. Nobody" (J. Leto), 

ALSO-RANS: 

"Dead Ringers" (Jeremy Irons played twins) 

"The Green Knight" (Alicia Vikander), 

"Godsend" (Cameron Bright played Adam and his clone) 

"The Devil's Double" (D. Cooper)

"Jack and Jill" (Adam Sandler played fraternal twins, one female) 

BEST MONSTER MOVIE (including dinosaurs and dragons and CGI beasts): 

WINNER: "Shazam: Fury of the Gods"

RUNNERS-UP: "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio", "65", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "The Bubble", "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", "Strange World", "Jeepers Creepers", "Eight Legged Freaks"

ALSO-RANS: "Cocaine Bear", "Jeepers Creepers 2", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"

BEST HORROR MOVIE (WITCH, GHOST OR DEMON): 

WINNER: "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

RUNNERS-UP: "Antlers", "Beautiful Creatures", "Blithe Spirit", "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"

"Devil", "The Fog", "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"

BEST HORROR or HORROR-ISH MOVIE NOT WATCHED IN OCTOBER: 

WINNER: "The Menu"

RUNNERS-UP: "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio", "The Pale Blue Eye"

ALSO RANS: "Escape Room", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions", "Extinction", "The Last Days on Mars", "Nope", "Slice", "Villains", "Wendell & Wild"

BEST ANIMATED FILM: 
WINNER: "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

RUNNERS-UP: "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "DC League of Super-Pets", "Strange World", "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", "Wendell & Wild"

ALSO-RANS: "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again", "Turning Red", "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Pinocchio" (2022)

Best live-action/stop-motion animated mockumentary comedy-drama about talking mollusks:
"Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", obviously (no other contenders in this category)

BEST MOVIE WITH PINOCCHIO IN IT: 

WINNERS: "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"

RUNNER-UP: "Pinocchio" (2022)

BEST REMAKE or REBOOT:
WINNER: "Rebecca" (2020)

RUNNER-UP: "Pinocchio" (2022)

BEST PREQUEL or SEQUEL:

WINNERS: "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", "Top Gun: Maverick", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

RUNNERS-UP: "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", "Clerks III", "Creed III", "Enola Holmes 2", "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "Murder Mystery 2", "No Time to Die", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"

ALSO-RANS: "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2", "The Christmas Chronicles 2", "Creepshow 2", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions", "Jeepers Creepers 2", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again", "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Species 2", "The Trip to Greece"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT SPIES, ASSASSINS, TERRORISTS OR UNDERCOVER AGENTS: 

WINNER: "Bullet Train"

RUNNERS-UP: "American Assassin", "No Time to Die", "The Gray Man", "The Man From Toronto", "Barely Lethal", "The Card Counter", "The Contractor", "The Informer", "The Mother", "The 355", "Wind River", "Without Remorse"

ALSO-RANS: "Assassination Nation", "Come and Find Me", "Eraser"', "Gun Shy", "Kate", "The Protégé", "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", "Undercover Grandpa"', "The November Man", "Street Kings", "The Rhythm Section"

Special mention: Films where hot actresses play professional assassins or secret agents, because that's totally like a thing that screenwriters believe happens in real life, only it probably isn't: "Domino", "The 355", "The Rhythm Section", "Bullet Train", "Kate", "Come and Find Me", "Barely Lethal", "The Protégé", "The Mother"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT SERIAL KILLERS, VIGILANTES, BOUNTY HUNTERS OR HIT-MEN:

WINNERS: "Nobody", "The Pale Blue Eye"

RUNNERS-UP:  "In the Shadow of the Moon", "Blood Father", "The Marksman", "The Mean Season"

ALSO-RANS: "Acts of Vengeance", "A Shock to the System", "Domino", "2 Days in the Valley", "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT BANK ROBBERS, THIEVES, SMUGGLERS, KIDNAPPERS, or MOBSTERS:

WINNERS: "City by the Sea", "Dom Hemingway", "The Family", "King of Thieves", "The Misfits", "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper", "Night Falls on Manhattan", "Son of a Gun"

RUNNERS-UP: "Flag Day", "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore", "The Long Good Friday", "No Sudden Move"

ALSO-RANS: "Bulletproof", "Welcome to Collinwood", "Arsenal", "The Bling Ring"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT CON ARTISTS, CARNIES or SEX WORKERS: 

WINNERS: "Narrowsburg", "Nightmare Alley"

RUNNERS-UP: "Being Flynn", "Zola"

BEST MURDER MYSTERY: 

WINNER: "Enola Holmes 2"

RUNNERS-UP: "Confess, Fletch", "Enola Holmes", "Murder Mystery 2", "See How They Run", "A Simple Favor", "Stillwater", "Vengeance"

ALSO-RANS: "Earthquake Bird", "Side Effects", "Where the Crawdads Sing", "Amsterdam", "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie", "The Weight of Water"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT NAZIS and/or WORLD WAR II:

WINNER: "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"

RUNNERS-UP: "Overlord", "The Book Thief", "Conspiracy"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT OTHER WARS IN OTHER COUNTRIES: 

WINNERS: "Belfast", "The Northman"

RUNNERS-UP: "Kingdom of Heaven", "The Last Duel", "No Escape", "The Promise", "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", "Rosewater"

ALSO-RAN: "The Four Feathers"

BEST WESTERN: 

WINNERS: "The Homesman", "Old Henry", "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"

RUNNER-UP: "News of the World"

BEST SPORTS MOVIE (fictional)

WINNER: "Hustle" (basketball)

RUNNERS-UP: "The Card Counter" (poker championship), "80 for Brady" (football), "Senior Year" (cheerleading), "Bruised" (MMA fighting), "The Do-Deca-Pentathlon", "Just Getting Started" (golf et. al.), "Paddleton", "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" (fishing), "School Ties" (football), "Swimfan" (swimming), 

ALSO-RANS: "Air" (basketball, sort of), "Space Jam: A New Legacy" (basketball, sort of)

BEST DOCUMENTARY ABOUT SPORTS STARS: 

WINNERS: "Citizen Ashe", "Say Hey, Willie Mays", "When We Were Kings"

RUNNERS-UP: "McEnroe", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" 

ALSO RANS: "Hoop Dreams", "Venus and Serena"

BEST DOCUMENTARY ABOUT MUSICIANS OR SINGERS:

WINNERS: "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away", "Nothing Compares"

RUNNERS-UP: "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Sheryl", "What Happened, Miss Simone?"

ALSO-RANS: "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?" 

BEST BIO-PIC ABOUT MUSICIANS OR SINGERS OR MARILYN MONROE: 

WINNER: "Elvis"

RUNNERS-UP: "Blonde", "Respect", "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"

ALSO-RAN: "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"

BEST DOCUMENTARY ABOUT ACTORS or AUTHORS or FILM MAKERS:

WINNER: "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time" 

RUNNERS-UP: "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Val"

ALSO-RAN: "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"

BEST DOCUMENTARY ABOUT POLITICIANS OR REPORTERS: 

WINNER: "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"

RUNNER-UP: "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

ALSO-RAN: "Where's My Roy Cohn?" 

BEST MOVIE ABOUT MIDDLE SCHOOL, HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE: 

WINNERS: "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

RUNNERS-UP: "The Half of It", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "Antlers", "Barely Lethal", "Dope", "The Last Summer" (between h.s. & college), "Licorice Pizza", "Senior Year", "Yes, God, Yes"

ALSO-RANS: "Beautiful Creatures", "Blinded by the Light", "Moxie", "School Ties", "Swimfan", "Assassination Nation", "Dear Evan Hansen", "Secret Headquarters", "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", "Thoroughbreds", "Turning Red", "Eighth Grade"

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WEDDINGS & WHAT COMES AFTER: 

WINNER: "Love Wedding Repeat" 

RUNNERS-UP: "The Namesake", "Rebecca", "The People We Hate at the Wedding"

ALSO-RANS: "Easy Virtue", "Green Card", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Another Kind of Wedding", "Monster-in-Law", "That's My Boy"

BEST ROMANCE (SENIORS EDITION):

WINNER: "Empire of Light"

RUNNERS-UP: "Just Getting Started", "Love After Love"

BEST ROMANCE (LGBTQ EDITION):

WINNER: "The Half of It"

RUNNERS-UP: "Colette", "The Daytrippers", "Life Partners"

ALSO-RANS: "Bruised", "The Object of My Affection", "Your Sister's Sister"

BEST ROMANCE (CLASSIC LIT EDITION, all films based on "Cyrano de Bergerac"): 

WINNERS: "Cyrano", "The Half of It"

RUNNER-UP: "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"

BEST ROMANCE (ENSEMBLE EDITION): 

WINNER: "Endings, Beginnings"

RUNNERS-UP: "Ibiza: Love Drunk", "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"

ALSO-RANS: "Dinner With Friends", "The Night We Never Met", "Person to Person", "When in Rome", "The Year of Spectacular Men" 4

BEST ROMANCE (IT'S COMPLICATED EDITION): 

WINNER: "Triangle of Sadness"

RUNNERS-UP: "Hello I Must Be Going", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "Juliet, Naked", "Maggie's Plan", "Better Living Through Chemistry", "Gloria Bell", "Last Night", "My Best Friend's Girl", "Outside In", "Welcome to the Rileys"

ALSO-RANS: "Annette", "Nobody Walks", "Something Borrowed", "Spenser", "Things We Lost in the Fire"

BEST (?) FILM WHERE A CHARACTER COMMITS OR CONSIDERS SUICIDE: 

WINNERS: "Just Before I Go", "A Man Called Otto"

RUNNERS-UP: "Paddleton", "The Pallbearer"

ALSO-RAN: "Dear Evan Hansen"

BEST FILM ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS OR YOUNG(ISH) PEOPLE WITH TERMINAL CONDITIONS: 

WINNERS: "Breathe", "The Fault in Our Stars", "Radioactive", "Sweet November"

RUNNERS-UP: "The Land of Steady Habits", "Paddleton"

ALSO-RANS: "Frankie & Alice", "Touched with Fire", "Wit"

Special mention - FILMS SET IN AN AIRBnB (3-way tie):

"Alone Together", "Barbarian", "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"

Special Mention: Movies based on weird things to be based on: 

"Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood" (Richard Linklater's imagined childhood)

"Conspiracy" (the transcripts of a Nazi meeting)

"Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (tabletop role-playing game)

"Uncharted" (interactive video-game)

"The Trip to Greece" (a trip to Greece)

"Blinded by the Light" (Bruce Springsteen songs)

"Zola" (a stripper's tweets)

"80 for Brady" (a trip to the 2017 Super Bowl)

"Cocaine Bear" (based on a bear who allegedly ate a bunch of cocaine)

"Worth" (based on the court cases to determine 9/11 victim payouts)

Special Mention: Movies that it took me YEARS to finally link to, or at least it feels that way:

"Leave No Trace"

"Kingdom of Heaven"

"Prelude to a Kiss"

"The Object of My Affection"

"Green Card"

"The Pallbearer"

"The Weight of Water"

"Fearless"

"Hoop Dreams"

"Where's My Roy Cohn?"

"The Queen of Versailles"

"Secrets & Lies"

"School Ties"

"That's My Boy"

"Bulletproof Monk"

"The Do-Deca-Pentathlon"

"Beyond the Edge"

"Rosewater"

"Swamp Thing"

"Creepshow"

"Dead Ringers"

"Devil"

"2 Days in the Valley"

"The Four Feathers"

BEST MOTHER"S DAY MOVIE:

WINNER: "Secrets & Lies" 

RUNNER-UP: "Moxie"

ALSO-RAN: "Lovely & Amazing"

BEST FATHER'S DAY MOVIE:

WINNER: "The Tender Bar" 

RUNNER-UP: "Blended" 

ALSO-RAN: "That's My Boy"

BEST THANKSGIVING MOVIE: 

WINNER: "Pieces of April"

RUNNER-UP: "The Myth of Fingerprints"

ALSO-RAN: "Jack and Jill"

BEST CHRISTMAS OR HANUKKAH MOVIE: 

WINNER: "The Christmas Chronicles"

RUNNERS-UP: "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two", "Just Getting Started"

ALSO-RANS: "Father Christmas Is Back", "Jack and Jill"

Movies with "Nobody" in the title:

"Nobody Walks", "Mr. Nobody", "Nobody"

Movies with "Bullet" in the title:

"Bulletproof", "Bullet Train", "Bulletproof Monk"

Movies with "Last" in the title:

"Last Night", "The Last Summer", "The Last Duel", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "The Last Days on Mars"

Movies with "Night" in the title:

"Last Night", "The Night We Never Met", "Nightmare Alley", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again", "Night Falls on Manhattan"

Movies with "Secret" in the title:

"Secrets & Lies", "Secret Headquarters", "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Best/weirdest cameos, Superhero Edition:

Nicolas Cage, "The Flash"

Jemaine Clement, "DC League of Super-Pets"

Seth Green, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"

Bill Murray, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"

Trevor Noah, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"

Henry Winkler "Black Adam"

Best/weirdest cameos, Non-superhero Edition:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, "Glass Onion"

Drew Carey, "Jack and Jill"

Guy Fieri, "80 for Brady"

Jeff Goldblum, "Asteroid City"

John McEnroe, "Jack and Jill"

Patton Oswalt, "80 for Brady"

Tom Selleck, "Coma"

Vanilla Ice, "That's My Boy"

Now here's the list of the actors and non-actors who appeared the most times this Movie Year. I include all people who appeared as themselves in documentaries, even if that was in archive footage (not filmed or interviewed specifically for that film).  And I include VOICE appearances too, because of animated films, so that means archive sound counts too, only I don't count singers who only appeared vocally in their licensed songs.  

What type of person does well on this list?  Well, in addition to popular actors, usually it's talk-show hosts because so many docs use footage of their subjects being interviewed by Johnny Carson, Dave Letterman, Kimmel, Fallon, even Dick Cavett or Ed Sullivan if they go back that far.  U.S. Presidents also tend to do very well, because using footage of them immediately sets the stage in a documentary or fiction film - plus, you know, they did all that notable Commander in Chief stuff.  

Surprisingly, this year the Beatles failed to chart.  Serena Williams makes the cut, Venus Williams does not. Andy Richter makes the list, Conan O'Brien does not. Lea Thompson makes the list, Michael J. Fox does not.  Tom Hanks is in, Rita Wilson is out.  Sean Connery makes the list, Roger Moore does not.  Tom Cruise makes the list, Nicole Kidman does not

Tony Curtis yes, Jack Lemmon no - Phil Donahue yes, Oprah Winfrey no - Bryant Gumbel yes, Katie Couric no.  That's just how things went down this year. 

12 appearances: 

Richard Nixon - "Licorice Pizza", "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Attica", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood", "The Special Relationship"

10 appearances:

Robert De Niro - "Narrowsburg", "The Family", "City by the Sea", "Being Flynn", "Amsterdam", "Val", "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Sheryl", "Godsend", "De Palma"

9 appearances:

Bill Clinton - "Flag Day", "Venus and Serena", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Sheryl", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Respect", "The Special Relationship"

8 appearances: 

Walter Cronkite - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "What Happened, Miss Simone?", "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper", "Attica", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood", "Elvis"

Martin Luther King - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Venus and Serena", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "What Happened, Miss Simone?", "Respect", "Elvis"

Adam Sandler - "Hustle", "Bulletproof", "Sheryl", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?", "Blended", "That's My Boy", "Murder Mystery 2", "Jack and Jill"

6 appearances:

Ben Affleck - "The Last Duel", "Clerks III", "School Ties", "Air", "The Tender Bar", "The Flash"

Antonio Banderas - "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "Acts of Vengeance", "Beyond the Edge", "Uncharted", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "De Palma"

George W. Bush - "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "The Queen of Versailles", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Respect", "The Special Relationship"

Tom Hanks - "News of the World", "Asteroid City", "Pinocchio" (2022), "A Man Called Otto", "Elvis", "De Palma"

Julianne Moore - "Being Flynn", "Gloria Bell", "Maggie's Plan", "Dear Evan Hansen", "The Ladies Man", "The Myth of Fingerprints"

Barack Obama - "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe", "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away", "Air", "Respect"

Sean Penn - "Flag Day", "Licorice Pizza", "The Weight of Water", "Val", "Sheryl", "De Palma"

Ronald Reagan - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Air", "Blinded by the Light", "The Special Relationship"

5 appearances: 

Muhammad Ali - "When We Were Kings", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe", "McEnroe"

Arthur Ashe - "Venus and Serena", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe",  "McEnroe", "Air"

Halle Berry - "Things We Lost in the Fire", "Frankie & Alice", "Bruised", "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge", "Moonfall"

Bill Boggs - "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "Species II", "Night Falls on Manhattan"

Pierce Brosnan - "The November Man", "The Misfits", "No Escape", "The Long Good Friday", "Black Adam"

Nicolas Cage - "Val", "The Flash", "Arsenal", "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent", "De Palma"

George Clooney - "Welcome to Collinwood", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "The Flash"

Willem Dafoe - "The Fault in Our Stars", "Nightmare Alley", "The Card Counter", "The Northman", "Asteroid City"

Matt Damon - "No Sudden Move", "The Last Duel", "Stillwater", "School Ties", "Air"

Dale Dickey - "Being Flynn", "Leave No Trace", "Blood Father", "Domino", "Flag Day"

Jane Fonda - "Monster-in-Law", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "Air", "Better Living Through Chemistry", "80 for Brady"

Katie Holmes - "Alone Together", "Touched With Fire", "The Giver", "Pieces of April", "Jack and Jill"

Kate Hudson - "Glass Onion", "My Best Friend's Girl", "Something Borrowed", "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", "The Four Feathers"

Samuel L. Jackson - "A Shock to the System", "Barely Lethal", "Reasonable Doubt", "The Protégé", "Unicorn Store"

Lyndon Johnson - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "Elvis", "The Special Relationship"

David Letterman - "Val", "Sheryl", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Nothing Compares", "That's My Boy"

Thomas Mann - "Blood Father", "The Land of Steady Habits", "Barely Lethal", "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", "Beautiful Creatures"

Wolfgang Novogratz - "The Half of It", "Yes, God, Yes", "The Last Summer", "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", "Assassination Nation"

Chris Parnell - "Val", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again", "Senior Year", "Slice", "The Ladies Man"

Kurt Russell - "Val", "De Palma", "The Mean Season", "The Christmas Chronicles", "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"

Dinah Shore - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"

Frank Sinatra - "Domino", 'Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "Elvis"

Anya Taylor-Joy - "The Menu", "The Northman", "Thoroughbreds", "Radioactive", "Amsterdam"

Margaret Thatcher - "McEnroe", "Nothing Compares", "Blinded by the Light", "The Lady in the Van", "The Special Relationship"

Alicia Vikander - "Beckett", "Earthquake Bird", "Blue Bayou", "The Green Knight", "Son of a Gun"

Malcolm X - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Venus and Serena", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "What Happened, Miss Simone?", "Attica"

4 appearances: 

Ana de Armas - "No Time to Die", "The Informer", "The Gray Man", "Blonde"

Dan Aykroyd - "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Air", "Respect", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Christian Bale - "Amsterdam", "The Promise", "Equilibrium", "The Pale Blue Eye"

Adrienne Barbeau - "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Swamp Thing", "The Fog" (1980), "Creepshow"

George H.W. Bush - "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Nothing Compares", "The Devil's Double", "The Special Relationship"

James Caan - "Bulletproof", "Undercover Grandpa", "Eraser", "That's My Boy"

Michael Caine - "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "King of Thieves", "A Shock to the System", "De Palma"

Dick Cavett - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"

Don Cheadle - "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "No Sudden Move", "White Noise", "De Palma"

Dick Cheney - "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "The Queen of Versailles", "The Devil's Double", "The Special Relationship"

Joe Chrest - "Welcome to the Rileys", "Where the Crawdads Sing", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "Assassination Nation"

Hillary Clinton - "Sheryl", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Respect", "Rosewater"

Bradley Cooper - "Licorice Pizza", "Nightmare Alley", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"

Howard Cosell - "When We Were Kings", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe", "McEnroe"

Hope Davis -  "Asteroid City", "The Myth of Fingerprints", "The Daytrippers", "The Special Relationship"

Sammy Davis Jr.  - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "What Happened, Miss Simone?"

Garret Dillahunt - "Blonde", "Where the Crawdads Sing", "Come and Find Me", "Just Before I Go"

Nik Dodani - "Strange World", "Escape Room", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions", "Dear Evan Hansen"

Michael Douglas - "Something Borrowed", "Earthquake Bird", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Coma"

Adam Driver - "White Noise", "Annette", "The Last Duel", "65"

Edie Falco - "The Land of Steady Habits", "Outside In", "The Mother", "Avatar: The Way of Water"

Claire Foy - "Breathe", "Women Talking", "The Lady in the Van", "Rosewater"

Robert Harvey - "Blended", "That's My Boy", "Arsenal", "Jack and Jill"

Ethan Hawke - "Glass Onion", "Maggie's Plan", "Juliet, Naked", "The Northman"

Glenne Headly - "Just Getting Started", "2 Days in the Valley", "The Namesake", "Eulogy"

Adolf Hitler - "Amsterdam", "The Book Thief", "Citizen Ashe", "White Noise"

Boyd Holbrook - "Vengeance", "Beckett", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "In the Shadow of the Moon"

Jeremy Irons - "Kingdom of Heaven", "The Flash", "Dead Ringers", "Beautiful Creatures"

Gillian Jacobs - "The Contractor", "Ibiza: Love Drunk", "Life Partners", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"

Dwayne Johnson - "The Queen of Versailles", "Black Adam", "Hercules (2014)", "DC League of Super-Pets"

Toby Jones - "The Wonder", "The Pale Blue Eye", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", "Empire of Light"

Tommy Lee Jones - "The Family", "Val", "Just Getting Started", "The Homesman"

Michael B. Jordan - "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", "Without Remorse", "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Creed III"

Michael Keaton - "American Assassin", "The Protégé", "Worth", "The Flash"

John F. Kennedy - "Nothing Compares", "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood", "The United States vs. Billie Holiday", "The Special Relationship"

Robert F. Kennedy - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe", "Elvis"

Jude Law - "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", "Dom Hemingway", "The Rhythm Section", "Side Effects"

Spike Lee - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Venus and Serena", "Hoop Dreams", "When We Were Kings"

Jay Leno - "Val", "Sheryl", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"

Ray Liotta - "No Sudden Move", "Sheryl", "Better Living Through Chemistry", "Cocaine Bear"

Justin Long - "Clerks III", "Barbarian", "Jeepers Creepers", "Jeepers Creepers 2"

Natasha Lyonne - "Glass Onion", "DC League of Super-Pets", "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie", "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"

Norman Mailer - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "When We Were Kings", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"

John McEnroe - "Venus and Serena", "Citizen Ashe", "McEnroe", "Jack and Jill"

Nasser Memarzia - "Kingdom of Heaven", "The Rhythm Section", "The Devil's Double", "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"

Bill Murray - "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Air", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Liam Neeson - "The Ice Road", "The Marksman", "Gun Shy", "Kingdom of Heaven"

Tim Blake Nelson - "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio", "Old Henry", "Nightmare Alley", "The Homesman"

Shaquille O'Neal - "Hustle", "When in Rome", "Blended", "Jack and Jill"

Dan Patrick - "Hustle", "Blended", "That's My Boy", "Jack and Jill"

Will Patton - "A Shock to the System", "Fled", "Minari", "The November Man"

Nancy Reagan - "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Air", "Cocaine Bear", "The Special Relationship"

Jackie Robinson - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe"

Sunny Sandler - "Hustle", "Blended", "That's My Boy", "Jack and Jill"

Carlos Santana - "McEnroe", "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"

Liev Schreiber - "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", "The Last Days on Mars", "Asteroid City", "The Daytrippers" 

Karan Soni - "Unicorn Store", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", "The People We Hate at the Wedding", "Strange World"

Kristin Scott Thomas - "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen", "Rebecca" (2020), "Easy Virtue", "De Palma"

Donald Trump - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "The Queen of Versailles", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Stanley Tucci - "Prelude to a Kiss", "Worth", "Conspiracy", "The Daytrippers" 

Mike Wallace - "Citizen Ashe", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Forest Whitaker - "Respect", "Dope", "Street Kings", "Species"

Olivia Wilde - "DC League of Super-Pets", "Don't Worry Darling", "Better Living Through Chemistry", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Owen Wilson - "Sheryl", "No Escape", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Secret Headquarters"

Bokeem Woodbine - "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", "In the Shadow of the Moon", "Overlord", "Devil"

3 appearances:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - "Glass Onion", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe"

Shohreh Aghdashloo - "The Promise", "Rosewater", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Adeel Akhtar - "Murder Mystery 2", "Enola Holmes", "Enola Holmes 2"

Rob Archer - "Undercover Grandpa", "The Man from Toronto", "Bulletproof Monk"

Bob Balaban - "For Love or Money",  "Asteroid City", "80 for Brady"

Patricia Belcher - "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Jeepers Creepers", "Species"

Kristen Bell - "When in Rome", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?", "The People We Hate at the Wedding"

Elizabeth Berrington - "Spencer", "Secrets & Lies", "Alan Partridge"

Mike Birbiglia - "Your Sister's Sister", "The Fault in Our Stars", "A Man Called Otto"

Jesse Bradford - "The Year of Spectacular Men", "Swimfan", "Eulogy"

Richard Brake - "The Rhythm Section", "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned", "Barbarian"

Jeff Bridges - "The Last Summer", "Fearless", "The Giver" 

Adrien Brody - "Blonde", "See How They Run", "Asteroid City"

Tom Brokaw - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Worth"

Vic Browder - "The Marksman", "Blood Father", "Just Getting Started"

Genevieve Bujold - "Coma", "Dead Ringers", "De Palma"

Barbara Bush - "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Nothing Comapres", "The Special Relationship"

Bill Camp - "News of the World", "The Land of Steady Habits", "White Noise"

Darby Camp - "Clifford the Big Red Dog", "The Christmas Chronicles", "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"

Lizzy Caplan - "My Best Friend's Girl", "Extinction", "The People We Hate at the Wedding"

John Carlos - "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"

Johnny Carson - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"

Jimmy Carter - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Elvis", "The Special Relationship"

Max Casella - "Narrowsburg", "The Rhythm Section", "The Tender Bar"

Henry Cavill - "Enola Holmes", "Enola Holmes 2", "Black Adam"

Cher - "Val", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Nothing Compares"

Dominic Chianese - "The Family", "The Night We Never Met", "Night Falls on Manhattan"

Patricia Clarkson - "Welcome to Collinwood", "De Palma", "Pieces of April"

Chloe Coleman - "Avatar: The Way of Water", "65", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"

Toni Collette - "Dinner With Friends", "The Pallbearer", "Nightmare Alley"

Common - "The Informer", "Venus and Serena", "Street Kings"

Sean Connery - "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "De Palma"

Jimmy Connors - "Venus and Serena", "Citizen Ashe", "McEnroe"

Dominic Cooper - "Reasonable Doubt", "The Devil's Double", "The Lady in the Van"

Allen Covert - "Bulletproof", "Blended", "Jack and Jill"

James Cromwell - "Eraser", "The Promise", "Species II"

Tom Cruise - "Val", "Top Gun: Maverick", "De Palma"

Tony Curtis - "Blonde", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "De Palma"

Jackson Damon - "Thoroughbreds", "Air", "The Tender Bar"

Gabriel Daniels - "The Ice Road", "Flag Day", "Nobody"

Keith David - "Unplugging", "DC League of Super-Pets", "Nope"

Viola Davis - "Air", "Black Adam", "Beautiful Creatures"

Benicio Del Toro - "No Sudden Move", "Things We Lost in the Fire", "Fearless"

Harris Dickinson - "See How They Run", "Triangle of Sadness", "Where the Crawdads Sing"

Monica Dolan - "Cyrano", "Empire of Light", "Alan Partridge"

Colman Domingo - "Without Remorse", "Assassination Nation", "Zola"

Phil Donahue - "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Jeffrey Donovan - "Villains", "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2", "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"

Ann Dowd - "Green Card", "Side Effects", "Rebecca" (2020)

Bob Dylan - "Val", "Sheryl", "Nothing Compares"

Jay Ellis - "Top Gun: Maverick", "Escape Room", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"

JD Evermore - "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "Assassination Nation", "Beautiful Creatures"

Mel Fair - "The Menu", "Without Remorse", "Amsterdam"

Jimmy Fallon - "Val", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?" "Eighth Grade"

Colin Firth - "Easy Virtue", "Conspiracy", "Empire of Light"

Dan Fogler - "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", "DC League of Super-Pets", "Barely Lethal"

Ben Foster - "Leave No Trace", "The Contractor", "Hustle"

Andy Garcia - "De Palma", "Night Falls on Manhattan", "The Mean Season"

Hugh Grant - "Glass Onion", "The Bubble", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"

Merv Griffin - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "What Happened, Miss Simone?", "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"

Bryant Gumbel - "Citizen Ashe", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"

Kathryn Hahn - "Glass Onion", "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

Arsenio Hall - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "That's My Boy"

Josh Hamilton - "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Eighth Grade", "Dark Skies"

Jon Hamm - "Confess, Fletch", "No Sudden Move", "Top Gun: Maverick"

Truman Hanks - "News of the World", "Asteroid City", "A Man Called Otto"

Marcia Gay Harden - "Confess, Fletch", "Moxie", "The Daytrippers"

Woody Harrelson - "The Man from Toronto", "Kate", "Triangle of Sadness"

Ed Harris - "Top Gun: Maverick", "Creepshow", "Coma"

Kelvin Harrison Jr. - "Cyrano", "Elvis", "Assassination Nation"

Scott Haze - "Old Henry", "Minari", "Antlers"

Fred Hechinger - "The Pale Blue Eye", "Eighth Grade", "News of the World"

Bryan Tyree Henry - "Person to Person", "Bullet Train", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

Paris Hilton - "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!", "The Bling Ring", "The Queen of Versailles"

Ciaran Hinds - "Belfast", "The Wonder", "The Weight of Water"

Kieran Hodgson - "See How They Run", "The Flash", "Alan Partridge"

Jennifer Holland - "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Black Adam", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"

James Hong - "Everything Everywhere All at Once", "Turning Red", "Wendell & Wild"

Djimon Hounsou - "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Black Adam", "The Four Feathers"

Adam Hurtig - "The Ice Road", "Flag Day", "Nobody"

Saddam Hussein - "Equilibrium", "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "The Devil's Double"

Oscar Isaac - "The Card Counter", "The Promise", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"

Scarlett Johansson -  "Asteroid City", "De Palma", "Eight Legged Freaks"

Keegan-Michael Key - "Wendell & Wild", "The Bubble", "Pinocchio" (2022)

Tim Key - "See How They Run", "Love Wedding Repeat", "Alan Partridge"

Billie Jean King - "Venus and Serena", "Citizen Ashe", "McEnroe"

Larry King - "Val", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Keira Knightley - "Domino", "Last Night", "Colette"

John Krasinski - "Something Borrowed", "Nobody Walks", "DC League of Super-Pets"

Jennifer Lafleur - "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "The Do-Deca-Pentathlon", "Nope"

Zachary Levi - "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood", "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"

John Lithgow - "The Bubble", "De Palma", "The Homesman"

Lucy Liu - "Domino", "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Strange World"

Christopher Lloyd - "The Tender Bar", "Nobody", "Wit"

Jonathan Loughran - "Bulletproof", "Blended", "Jack and Jill"

Jessica Lowe - "Blended", "The Christmas Chronicles", "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"

Andie MacDowell - "Love After Love", "Green Card", "Dinner With Friends"

Kyle MacLachlan - "Confess, Fletch", "Val", "Nothing Compares"

Matt Malloy - "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", "Outside In", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"

Nelson Mandela - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Citizen Ashe", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Leslie Mann - "The Bling Ring", "Blithe Spirit", "The Bubble"

Rooney Mara - "Nightmare Alley", "Side Effects", "Women Talking"

Marc Maron - "Respect", "DC League of Super-Pets", "Worth"

Matthew Marsh - "The Contractor", "The Informer", "The Special Relationship"

Kris Marshall - "Easy Virtue", "The Four Feathers", "Father Christmas Is Back"

Eleanor Matsuura - "Juliet, Naked", "Alan Partridge", "The Lady in the Van"

Holt McCallany - "The Ice Road", "Nightmare Alley", "Creepshow 2"

Audra McDonald - "The Object of My Affection", "Wit", "Respect"

Ewan McGregor - "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio", "Son of a Gun", "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

Kate McKinnon - "Life Partners", "DC League of Super-Pets", "The Bubble"

Logan Miller - "The Bling Ring", "Escape Room", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"

Debra Monk - "For Love or Money", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Fearless"

Abdoulaye N'Gom - "Green Card", "Blended", "That's My Boy"

Lance E. Nichols - "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "Assassination Nation", "Beautiful Creatures"

Edward Norton - "Kingdom of Heaven", "Glass Onion", "Asteroid City"

Michelle Obama - "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away", "Respect"

Al Pacino - "Val", "De Palma", "Jack and Jill"

Michael Peña - "Moonfall", "Secret Headquarters", "Extinction"

Joe Pesci - "Sheryl", "Nothing Compares", "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"

Michelle Pfeiffer - "The Family", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "De Palma"

Chris Pine - "The Contractor", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", "Don't Worry Darling"

Elvis Presley - "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "White Noise", "Elvis"

Florence Pugh - "The Wonder", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "Don't Worry Darling"

Dennis Quaid - "Dinner with Friends", "Strange World", "The Special Relationship"

Keanu Reeves - "Sweet November", "Street Kings", "DC League of Super-Pets"

Keith Richards - "McEnroe", "Sheryl", "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"

Andy Richter - "80 for Brady", "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"

Cliff Robertson - "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", "De Palma"

Sam Rockwell - "See How They Run", "Welcome to Collinwood", "Better Living Through Chemistry"

Charlie Rose - "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer", "Nothing Compares"

Evan Ross - "Just Before I Go", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"

Paul Rudd - "The Object of My Affection", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Bill Russell - "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe"

Keri Russell - "Cocaine Bear", "Antlers", "Dark Skies"

Morley Safer - "Citizen Ashe", "Where's My Roy Cohn?", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"

Bashir Salahuddin - "A Simple Favor", "Cyrano", "Top Gun: Maverick"

Zoe Saldana - "Amsterdam", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"

Jackie Sandler - "The Last Summer", "Blended", "That's My Boy"

Sadie Sandler - "Blended", "That's My Boy", "Jack and Jill"

Ben Schwartz - "DC League of Super-Pets", "Outside In", "Better Living Through Chemistry"

Arnold Schwarzenegger - "Eraser", "The Queen of Versailles", "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"

Michael Shannon - "Amsterdam", "Bullet Train", "The Flash"

Michael Sheen - "Kingdom of Heaven", "The Special Relationship", "The Four Feathers"

J.K. Simmons - "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", "Dark Skies", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Bill Skarsgard - "Villains", "Assassination Nation", "Barbarian"

Victor Slezak - "The Land of Steady Habits", "Worth", "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

Tommie Smith - "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Citizen Ashe", "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"

Timothy Spall - "Spencer", "Secrets & Lies", "The Pale Blue Eye"

Sylvester Stallone - "The Queen of Versailles", "Air", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"

Hailee Steinfeld - "Barely Lethal", "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse", "The Homesman"

Jon Stewart - "Sheryl", "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time", "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"

Barbara Sukowa - "Gloria Bell", "White Noise", "Air"

Taylor Swift - "Amsterdam", "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?", "The Giver" 

Channing Tatum - "Bullet Train", "Side Effects", "Dog"

Dendrie Taylor - "Paddleton", "Antlers", "Species"

David Thewlis - "Kingdom of Heaven", "Val", "Enola Holmes 2"

Olivia Thirlby - "Being Flynn", "Nobody Walks", "Just Before I Go"

Lea Thompson - "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", "Unplugging", "The Year of Spectacular Men"

Jodie Turner-Smith - "Without Remorse", "White Noise", "Murder Mystery 2"

John Turturro - "Gloria Bell", "Fearless", "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio"

Michael Vartan - "The Pallbearer", "Monster-in-Law", "The Myth of Fingerprints"

Marlon Wayans - "Venus and Serena", "Air", "Respect"

Sigourney Weaver - "The Fault in Our Stars", "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

Isiah Whitlock Jr. - "Person to Person", "Cocaine Bear", "Pieces of April"

Peter Wight - "Secrets & Lies", "Cyrano", "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

Serena Williams - "Glass Onion", "Venus and Serena", "Citizen Ashe"

Ray Wise - "Jeepers Creepers 2", "One Missed Call", "Swamp Thing"

Christine Woods - "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore", "Paddleton", "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"

Angus Wright - "Kingdom of Heaven", "See How They Run", "Pinocchio" (2022)

Jeffrey Wright - "No Time to Die", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "Asteroid City"

Steven Yeun - "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Minari", "Nope"

So there you go, it was the year of De Niro, the year of Adam Sandler, of Tom Hanks and Sean Penn and Julianne Moore, yet somehow it was also the year of Dale Dickey.  And in the ultimate Batman showdown, here are the results:

Ben Affleck (6), George Clooney (5), Christian Bale (4), Michael Keaton (4), Val KIlmer (2), Adam West (2), Robert Pattinson (0). Yeah, that seems about right. 

Right - New Year's is tomorrow, so I've got to get going. But I can't possibly pick my movie for January 1 without knowing where I need to be on February 1, and that means putting together my romance chain FIRST.  I spent a few hours doing that earlier this week, and as a bonus I already figured out where I need to cut it short and start the transition to St. Patrick's Day, and two prominent recent movies set in Ireland.  So that's sorted, but I still need to work backwards from February 1 to January 1 and thus determine the starting point for Movie Year 16.  Ideally it should be a film that links to ONLY ONE other film on my list, because that's the only time I can watch such a movie without breaking the chain. (Or as the last film for the year, but that's usually a Christmas film...)

If i hurry, I can still finish this all before the ball drops on New Year's Eve, and then immediately the work begins on Movie Year 16. I really should try to keep January to under 31 films, because any time I skip a day, that's one more movie I could maybe watch in November and December, and not have all the down time at the end of the year.  Or maybe I should just trust the process, because I sure needed the time in November to work extra shifts, that came in handy, and is allowing me to not go broke during the winter break.  Anyway, I still have to do one more thing, pick a famous person who died for my annual dedication, but I think I know who it has to be. See you back here after January 1, I hope.

The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two

Year 15, Day 358 - 12/24/23 - Movie #4,600

BEFORE: Well, about 8 or 10 actors carry over from "The Christmas Chronicles", some in-person and some through voice performances, so this is the obvious way to finish the chain for the year - and I'm only THREE years late in getting to watch this sequel, as opposed to FIVE years late watching the first film.  But let's just focus on Darby Camp and Kurt Russell carrying over, the others will be listed below. 

This is the last movie for 2023, so here are December's totals, and it was another "perfect" chain for the FIFTH year in a row. 

1 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Clifford the Big Red Dog

2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Special Relationship, The Four Feathers

3 watched on Netflix: Father Christmas Is Back, The Christmas Chronicles, The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two

1 watched on HBO MAX: The Daytrippers

7 TOTAL

I'm not tired of this format just yet, because it seems to be working, and watching movies in random order now feels like complete chaos and madness to me.  It's almost like if I can just keep this ONE facet of my life in order then maybe I'm doing OK?  But that's probably not healthy because then I allow myself to let some other things slip.  Anyway it's been a good and crazy Movie Year, I've now got a week to write a wrap-up, double check my totals and try to cue up something for January 2024.  It's going to be tight, but hey, if I suddenly find myself with a lot of free time in January, that means more time available for organizing the list.  And job-hunting, that's really more important. 

In terms of Christmas movies, I went through my list and found everything that I'd tagged as holiday-themed, and I've put them all next to each other on the list. There are actually more than I thought, 27 or so, that I'm tracking - which greatly increases the chance of getting to another 2 or 3 of them next year.  I'm aiming for "Christmas in Paradise", which got left off this year, but there are other options, I just need to look for actors who are in more than one and then some other movies to link them together.  I can see Julie Hagerty is in two movies on the list, if I can go through some more cast lists I may find some other connections, like I did this year. 

THE PLOT: Kate Pierce, now a cynical teen, is unexpectedly reunited with Santa Claus when a mysterious troublemaker threatens to cancel Christmas - forever. 

AFTER: It's Christmas Eve as I type this, but it will probably be Christmas morning when I post.  One day ends, another begins.  One Movie Year ends, another one will begin in a week.  Or will it?  I don't know any more, my job's got me so thrown off base that I don't know whether I want things to continue, or if I want them to end so I can start something new.  Life's like that sometimes, and Christmas is like that this year, sort of.  It's the first time that I can remember just planning to stay at home, and not go driving or flying somewhere to meet up with family. It doesn't exactly feel WRONG, but also, it's not what I've become accustomed to.  I didn't make my Christmas song mix this year, I didn't mail out Christmas cards, and we're not driving up to Massachusetts and stopping at a casino in Connecticut, which became our normal pattern at some point. But my parents don't live up in Massachusetts any more, they're down in North Carolina, and I visited them in October, and that really wasn't that long ago, it just feels like it was.  And it feels like I'm letting them down by not going to visit for the holiday break.  

Well, so I'm stuck at home, we're going to cook lasagna tomorrow, which is the new habit/pattern that got created during the pandemic.  So it's the new same, but it maybe doesn't feel as festive as it could feel.  Oh, we'll watch "A Christmas Story" and I may pop in "Bad Santa 2" again this week, we'll see.  But I think I watched that last year, and I try to also watch the Albert Finney version of "Scrooge" because it's my favorite.  I just don't have much time tonight, but really, tonight would be the best time to do that, and "A Christmas Story" will air on repeat all day tomorrow, so I can catch it any time. I just may have outgrown most of the traditional trappings, that's all.  It's not really a holiday for people in their mid-50's, but on Thursday we may drive out to Long Island and visit an outlet mall, where my wife and I may buy gifts for each other on the fly, and then drive over to a Chinese food buffet.

It's a similar problem encountered by Katie Pierce in tonight's movie, it's Christmas time again, maybe two years after the last film, and she finds herself in the Caribbean on a vacation planned by her mother's boyfriend.  And sure, it's Christmas but it maybe doesn't feel like it, because she's not at home in Massachusetts, there's no snow, and it's like 80 degrees. (Thanks to climate change, maybe someday all Christmases will be like that...). She's a True Believer, after all, and what she believes in is Santa Claus coming to her, in desperate need of help.  Well, be careful what you wish for...  Actually Kate plans to run away back to Massachusetts, if she can just get a ride to the airport and act like an old enough teen to not be questioned about why she's traveling alone.

But on the way to the airport, her shuttle cart driver throws her (and her mom's boyfriend's son, who was hiding on the same cart) through a wormhole to the North Pole, where they both start to freeze because they're dressed for tropical weather - thankfully Santa Claus sees everything and spots them while he's out hunting a YuleCat, which preys on reindeer.  Santa gets Kate and Jack inside the Borealis dome, and Mrs. Claus gets to thawing them out with holiday elixirs and potions.  Kate naturally assumes that Santa teleported them to the North Pole because he needs her help again, but that's not the case at all, it's the work of Belsnickel, a former elf who rejected all that Santa Claus stands for and was turned human as a result.  He now lives at the South Pole, a clear sign that he is the Anti-Santa.  

Belsnickel has used the opportunity of Santa rescuing Kate to get inside the dome at the North Pole himself, who knows what damage he'll cause as he gets his revenge on St. Nick and all that he stands for.  Santa wants to immediately return Kate to Cancun, but since their parents have conveniently gone off on a side trip to see Mayan ruins (tickets provided by Belsnickel) the kids get to sleep over one night at Santa's castle, see the Elven village, and such.  This is the third film IN A ROW where the parental figure has been taken out of the equation, on either a business trip or an overnight shift at the hospital or a trip to the ruins, which in all cases frees up the main character (Darby Camp in all three films) to have an adventure with either Santa Claus or a big red dog.  It's clear that screenwriters don't know what to do with parents, or they know that all the fun happens when they're somewhere else, thus the circumstances need to be created to keep the parents away from the main story.  It's really appalling how neglectful all of these parents seem to be.  After all, what could POSSIBLY go wrong while these helicopter mothers aren't watching their own children?  

It's also clear that they rushed this sequel into production, since it came out just two years later, and there were obvious notes for what aspects of the first film needed to be emphasized.  More of Mrs. Claus, for one thing.  Also, Santa needed a nemesis, and you can't really use the devil, so the writers created this renegade elf, who uses an herb to drive all the other elves crazy, and they become tiny demonic monster-like elves, which also creates another side-quest, where Jack has to go on a journey to find the only flower near the North Pole that can counteract the crazy-elf herb.  Meanwhile Kate and Santa go off to challenge Belsnickel, who puts a device on Santa's sleigh that sends them back in time, to Boston's Logan Airport in 1990, a notorious place that was devoid of Christmas Spirit.  Don't worry, Santa can solve anything with a song, if only he hadn't left his back-up band in jail back in 2018.  Insert Darlene Love as a stressed out airline employee who can sing the big musical number with Santa and make everything OK. 

Also meanwhile, Kate meets a teen boy at the airport who makes her feel better about Christmas and spending time with her family (old and new) and it's kind of her "Back to the Future" moment, if you get my drift.  So again you have to wonder if Santa was really stranded back in the past by accident, or if he took Kate there for a reason and a life lesson.  OK, so it's "Back to the Future" mixed with "It's a Wonderful Life" and a bit of "A Christmas Carol", those all involved time traveling to learn about the past in order to change the future, it's the same idea here, just done in a different way.  

I know the attempt here was to build on the success of the first "Christmas Chronicles" film and then just expand the universe and the mythology a bit, but there's almost TOO much going on here, too many new elements added to Santa's story, and the first film really just polished up the story that we all knew, modernized it a little, but this whole thing with the evil elf and the Star of Bethlehem and YuleCats and snow cannons and secret domes, well I think it takes everything just a bit too far, that's all.  Some of the magic from the first film is still hanging around, but this one is also all over the place, there's no focus or coherent through-line, it's just a big bunch of random stuff happening.  

It's also almost TWO HOURS of chase scenes and holiday nonsense - the tour of Santa's Village is notoriously much longer than it needs to be, for example.  The first film was a tight 103 minutes, but this one drags on and on.  I haven't got time for a movie this long, because I've got to watch "A Christmas Story" at least twice, and "Bad Santa 2" at least once!  Ah, screw it, maybe we'll just watch the "Guardians of the Galaxy" Christmas special again and be done with it, maybe a few episodes of "Holiday Wars", but then that's it. I've got work to do to get ready for my end-of-Movie-Year wrap-up post, too!  So Year 15 is over, but I'll be back here in about a week with that post, and hopefully some news about Year 16 starting up. 

Also starring Goldie Hawn, Judah Lewis, Kimberly Williams-Paisley (all three also carrying over from "The Christmas Chronicles"), Julian Dennison (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Jahzir Bruno (last seen in "The Witches"), Darlene Love (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Tyrese Gibson (last seen in "Morbius"), Sunny Suljic (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Patrick Gallagher (last seen in "Street Kings"), Tricia Munford (last seen in "A Single Man"), Christy St. John, Danny Dworkis, Seth Whittaker (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Mario Renato de la Peña Viderique, Anakaren Robles Ruis, 

and the voices of Malcolm McDowell (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Andrew Morgado (also carrying over from "The Christmas Chronicles"), Jessica Lowe (ditto), Michael Yurchak (ditto), Kari Wahlgren (ditto), 

RATING: 5 out of 10 extra verses of "O Christmas Tree".

The Christmas Chronicles

Year 15, Day 357 - 12/23/23 - Movie #4,599

BEFORE: Perhaps you spent your pre-Christmas weekend hanging up lights, or decorating your tree, or even baking some pies or cookies.  We spent part of today picking up 2 large (60 lbs) bags of sand from Home Depot, and then finding out that the store does NOT sell empty sandbags to fill, or even filled ones.  Because we had a big storm last week that caused a small amount of water in our basement, we decided to finally do something about that, in addition to the garbage bag that we've taped up to seal the door to the backyard.  Before each storm this fall we took time to clear the stairwell of leaves, but if enough rain falls and flooding starts, then more leaves get dragged down to the backyard drain and it inevitably clogs up, then the water fills the stairwell and eventually comes into the basement, either a little or a lot.  So we bought the sand today and ordered sandbags online, when they arrive next week we'll have to spend a day filling sandbags and blocking the door on the backyard side, and hopefully that will keep the water from coming inside, once and for all.  We're tired of staying up until 5 am during an overnight rainstorm, and I'm just upset that it took us years to come up with sandbags to solve the problem. We can't get it done by Christmas, but perhaps before the next big storm, and since it doesn't seem to snow in NYC any more, that could be in December or January. 

I've said it many times, that I don't take suggestions for what films I watch and review.  Well, that's not exactly true, because I pay attention to reviews and how other people feel about certain movies, even if that's sometimes an unconscious process.  In the case of "The Christmas Chronicles", my BFF Andy recommended this film to me, probably sometime in 2019 or so, and, OK, sure, I'll put it on my list, maybe I'll get to it someday, and maybe I won't.  Time went by and I watched "The Grinch" in 2019, "Bad Santa 2" and "Klaus" in 2020, "The Man Who Invented Christmas" in 2021 and "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" and "Last Christmas" last year.  Finally, I got down to just a few holiday-themed movies on my list, and I had the slots and the linking opportunity to work this one in.  

Darby Camp carries over from "Clifford the Big Red Dog", and that was always how I planned to get HERE, so, well, at least my plan worked out.  So I'm going to try very hard to forget that there might have been a better way to get here, through an additional Christmas movie, and now that movie is stranded out in the cold, and maybe I can work toward including it next year, and maybe that will work, and maybe it won't.  But hey, it took me four years to include THIS film, so all things are possible over time, except for the things that aren't. 

THE PLOT: The story of a sister and brother, Kate and Teddy Pierce, whose Christmas Eve plan to catch Santa Claus on camera turns into an unexpected journey that most kids could only dream about. 

AFTER: Well, this turned out to be rather a fun, action-packed movie about what I think is one of the most ridiculous topics possible, the Santa Claus legend.  God, these stories have been done to DEATH, haven't they?  All those stop-motion holiday specials about how Kris Kringle got his red suit and his flying reindeer, how he flies all around the world on Christmas Eve and delivers presents to billions of children in every time zone, despite logic and physics all telling us that this is an impossible feat for anyone, except perhaps a magical Saint who is also king of the Elves and lives at the (quite uninhabitable) North Pole, making electronic toys in a woodshop somehow.  There's absolutely nothing in that story that makes a lick of sense, but if you point that out to anyone under 12, then suddenly YOU'RE THE BAD GUY who HATES CHRISTMAS, when really, all you were trying to do was to get your nieces or nephews to think for themselves, question everything and maybe use a bit of logic to determine what's real and what isn't. 

(I posit that maybe older people would be less likely to fall for the lies and half-truths of certain politicians if they were trained at a younger age to question the stories they were told, and maybe taught to use that gray matter between their ears to figure out when they're being fed a giant pile of B.S.  But I digress.)

So if you're going to go and make a modern version of the Santa Claus story, you might as well lean into it, I suppose, because there's no sense in half-assing it, or by maybe saying Santa's magic has really been advanced technology all this time, like he had a super-sonic sleigh before there was the Concorde, and he used computers to track holiday requests before most of us had laptops at our disposal.  Nope, the only way to go here is to depict old-school Christmas magic, and that means that Santa can basically teleport, can turn into "coal dust" to slide down tiny chimneys, and that his toy sack is essentially a "bag of holding" that has infinite space, and also uses some kind of portal to connect to the North Pole, so he doesn't have to keep stopping back at home base to pick up more presents - instead his bag is constantly full because it's drawing from the gift-verse, which is multi-dimensional and restocked by the elves.  

The elves have their own language here, and they're small, more like the house-elves from the "Harry Potter" movies than the elves we saw in "Lord of the Rings", or the elves seen in every Christmas special ever, like that one that wanted to be a dentist. (Hermey! I had to look it up...)

I'd say that maybe the elves here look a bit more like gnomes or tiny dwarves, but what do I know?  It's a design thing I think. They also remind me of those mechanical dolls from "Barbarella" with the sharp teeth. Don't mess with the elves, that's all I'm saying. When Santa gets in a jam and crashes his sleigh and loses his reindeer, he knows that he's going to need the help of the elves to get Christmas back on track.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, the film focuses first on two kids whose father passed away a year or two ago, and their Christmas is now very different. Their mother has to work all night at the hospital just to make ends meet (leaving the kids unattended at home, which I'm pretty sure is unsafe and illegal, just saying). Kate's going through old camcorder tapes of Christmases gone by (where her mother conveniently announces the YEAR in every bit of Christmas footage, which I think nobody does IRL, just saying) and when she pauses the footage, she sees a hand in a red jacket putting a present under the Christmas tree.  It just has to be Santa, right?  So Kate convinces her older brother, Teddy, to take a night off from stealing cars (umm, yeah) and wait up with her to get more camcorder footage of Santa Claus.  (Another NITPICK POINT, simply nobody in 2018 still used a camcorder for anything. Again, just saying.)

Since it is Christmas Eve, and this is a movie, sure enough, Santa Claus does come to their house, and Santa doesn't notice that these kids aren't in bed, sleeping.  But wait, I thought he knows when you are sleeping, and he knows when you're awake, so WTF?  After just missing him with the camera, the kids run outside to see him leaping from rooftop to rooftop, but also, they see his sleigh and reindeer hovering over the street, so naturally they find a way to climb up and jump in.  After all, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Well, it turns out a lot, because when Santa realizes that there are two kids aboard his sleigh, he loses his concentration, his hat, his sack of toys and his reindeer, I think in that exact order.  The sleigh crash-lands in a bad part of Chicago, and the race is on to get the sleigh fixed, the reindeer and the toys back.

During the process of saving Christmas, we learn that that Santa's got some skills, for starters he knows every street in the world, and he also knows every KID or former kid in the world, he remembers them even after they became adults, and he remembers what they wanted for Christmas every year.  The script has to bend over backwards a little bit to make these skills very important, but there's a certain backwards logic to that, especially if these are the skills that he NEEDS to have to not only save Christmas, but also teach these kids a little life lesson about believing in Christmas again, after the tough year they've had.  And I suppose once you've ridden on a flying reindeer or watched the names on Santa's list being magically crossed off, then yeah, I suppose you'd have to be a believer again, right?  

Things do not go well in Chicago, though - attempts to get help from the diners in a pub prove futile when nobody quite understands this is the REAL Santa, and it's easier for everyone to assume he's a homeless man who somehow knows their names and what they wanted for Christmas when they were kids.  Santa's knowledge of who's been naughty and who's been nice means that he also knows the bartender served time for grand theft auto, and so Santa and the kids get chased out of the bar, however they also jack the stolen car to go look for the reindeer. But this means that the police are now looking for THEM, and when the police track them down, they bring Santa to jail while Kate and Teddy ride off on the flying reindeer to find the toy sack and somehow contact the elves for more help.

This leads to the best scene in the film, BY FAR, which is Santa Claus in jail, magically producing instruments for every other prisoner (who just happen to be members of Steven Van Zandt's side band, the Disciples of Soul) and performing the song "Santa Claus Is Back in Town".  Remember that this Christmas song was made famous by Elvis Presley, and Kurt Russell once played Elvis in a movie, so the whole time I was thinking, "Oh, I get it, he's Elvish Presley!"  Kurt Russell filled the Santa role very well, playing a grandiose character that also reminded me of his role as the planet/god Ego in "Guardians of the Galaxy vol. II" which was released the year before this one. 

Yeah, I've still got issues with the depiction of Christmas "magic" because it's just going to feed that desire in young kids to believe in impossible stories, and I'm not sure that does society any favors as a whole.  Like, come on, kids, you know that those Christmas presents you want come from a STORE, right?  Like, if presents come from Santa's workshop then why all the commercials on TV telling your parents to go to Wal-Mart or Marshall's or Macy's, right?  Put. It. Together. Please. Because I don't want to have to be the bad guy here.  There was footage a week or two ago of some U.S. senators or representatives debating the values of whole milk over almond milk and oat milk, which apparently was an attempt to reverse some Obama-era edict against whole milk.  And this older Representative from North Carolina, Virginia Foxx, championed the benefits of whole milk, which were that the proteins in whole milk give Santa Claus the energy he needs to deliver all the Christmas presents and jump from rooftop to rooftop.  I can't believe this speech is now officially part of the Congressional record, but this 80-something year old woman was completely serious, that it's whole milk that gives Santa Claus his magical powers.  Man, is that dumb, because everybody knows that it's really all the sugar in those cookies he eats at every house that gives him his energy.  Really, it's not that complicated, sugar makes kids hyper, so logically it would do the same for Santa, plus also give him diabetes.  But good news for Santa, we have Ozempic now, so he can control his A1C levels and maybe also lose some weight, just watch out for those side effects, Santa, which could include nausea, diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, blurred vision, fatigue, kidney damage, headaches, flatulence, difficulty swallowing, and irritability.  

I've never seen any of the "Santa Clause" movies, and really, I have no intention (as of this writing) of adding them to my list.  Maybe someday that will change, but right now, they're banned from consideration along with the "Transformers" and "Fast & Furious" franchises. I mean, anything is possible but some films are just SO FAR down on the list that I'll be 100 years old before I could even get to them, so essentially never. 

Also starring Kurt Russell (last seen in "The Mean Season"), Judah Lewis (last seen in "Demolition"), Kimberly Williams-Paisley (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Martin Roach (last seen in "The Man from Toronto"), Lamorne Morris (last seen in "How It Ends"), Oliver Hudson (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Tony Nappo (last seen in "In the Shadow of the Moon"), Vella Lovell (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Lauren Collins (last seen in "Charlie Bartlett"), Steven Van Zandt (last seen in "The Irishman"), Jesse Gervasi, David Kohlsmith (last seen in "Shazam!"), Kaitlyn Airdrie, Jack Bona, Jameson Kraemer, Sofia Park, Seth Mohan, Kayla Lakhani, Glen McDonald (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Danielle Bourgon (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Chai Valladares, Ish Morris, Jeremy Raymond, Chris LeBlanc (last seen in "Trumbo"), Marc Ribler, Jeff Teravainen (last seen in "Hollywoodland"), Elizabeth Phoenix Caro, Stan Harrison, Clark Gayton, Ravi Best, Ron Tooley, Eddie Manion, Anthony Almonte, Jack Daley, Andy Burton, Lowell Levinger, Richard Mercurio, Maureen Van Zandt, 

and the voices of Debra Wilson, Kari Wahlgren, Andrew Morgado, Debi DerryBerry, Michael Yurchak (last seen in "Are You Here"), Jessica Lowe (last seen in "Blended"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 cellmates with hidden musical talents

Clifford the Big Red Dog

Year 15, Day 353 - 12/19/23 - Movie #4,598

BEFORE: Well, here goes, just two films left after tonight, so I'll definitely make Christmas on time, then comes a couple weeks of inactivity during which I'll have to re-total up all the appearances from the year and write some kind of wrap-up post.  I've got about a month of down-time at one job, and the other one could close up shop at any time, so umm, Happy Holidays?  This is the kind of thing that not only stresses me out, but sends me right to the job-hunting sites to look for some kind of way out.  Hail Mary plays only, though, for some reason, I guess I'm just not good at job hunting.

Regrets, surely because although this film was advertised with "This Christmas..." on the poster, I think the film itself has nothing to do with Christmas.  So getting to the end through "Christmas in Paradise" would have been a better fit, I just didn't have enough slots to do that.  Bummer.  But really, this "Clifford" film was put on the list last December, and I couldn't get to it even though it linked to "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms", so that means today's film got postponed from one December to the next, and if I can do that, I can postpone "Christmas in Paradise" the same way.  That film becomes the goal for next December, so let's see if I can get there in 12 months - I guess this is just how things work here at the Movie Year. 

John Cleese carries over from "Father Christmas Is Back". 

THE PLOT: A young girl's love for a tiny puppy named Clifford makes the dog grow to an enormous size. 

AFTER: Sure, I know this film is based on a beloved classic children's book, but I don't know, it kind of made for a weird film.  The story is all over the place, it feels like they didn't want it to devolve into a chase scene where everybody just drives all over town, but yet that's exactly where it ended up going.  What's the story structure here?  It's just girl gets puppy, puppy gets big, problems ensue, girl loses giant puppy and then girl gets giant puppy back.  But that's just too simple somehow, so they had to keep throwing more and more obstacles in the way of that storyline just so we'd feel more relieved at the end when everything works out OK.

So the obstacles that exist for very little reason include the irresponsible uncle, the evil CEO of the corporation trying to solve world hunger, the building super who doesn't allow pets, the magical illegal pet dealer who keeps setting up shop in different places around town, the bumbling veterinarian, the neighbor who's a wanna-be magician, the other neighbor who has an artificial hand, the other OTHER neighbor who's an older Russian woman that obsessively drinks condensed milk, and the other other OTHER neighbors who are ethnically diverse and in mixed marriages and are all along for the ride but given very little to do.  

Look, I know it's a KIDS movie and therefore it doesn't have to make much sense, but it's just so damn clunky, and if you're an adult then it kind of offensively doesn't make any sense at all.  I need answers for why things happen - like how did the puppy grow so damn big overnight?  Supposedly it's because Emily loved him SO much, but come on, how is that a thing?  The false narrative from the chemical company, that the dog is their property and escaped from an experimental lab almost makes more sense.  If the dog was being given radiation treatments or got bitten by a radioactive, umm, bigger dog, that seems more plausible to explain his rapid growth - only NITPICK POINT, how does creating a giant dog in a lab solve the world hunger problem?  Are they suggesting that hungry people should start eating giant puppies?  Wouldn't it make more sense to create a giant chicken or a giant turkey before you move on to making giant dogs?  So the evil company CEO's rationalization that the dog belongs to him isn't believable, but then again, it doesn't have to be, because he's lying, as all CEO's do. 

Then there's so much family drama in this young girl's life - her mother is English and has the kind of job where she has to go to Chicago on business trips, so her John Krasinski-light screw-up of an uncle who lives in a delivery van has to take care of her for a few days, but hey, at least he gets to live in a real apartment while he does that and sleep in a real bed.  And all he has to do is take care of Emily, which he's apparently terrible at doing, and has no real personal connection with her, also no authority over her behavior.  She's also being bullied at school by the "mean girls" who call her out for being white trash or "discount store" or something.  Sure, this is the kind of life led by a little girl that could really be enhanced by a puppy from a magical exotic pet dealer that suddenly becomes 10 feet tall.  

The rest of the film is then filled with futile efforts to HIDE this giant animal, which, let's face it, just isn't going to happen, and then dealing with the after-effects once they all realize that there's just no way to get around town unseen with a giant puppy, not in these days of social media when everyone posts photos and videos of what they see on a constant basis.  Then the whole thing devolves into one big chase scene, and also it's determined that putting Clifford on a container ship to China is somehow the answer to all of their problems, forcing a tearful goodbye that gets reversed five minutes later, so what was the damn point?  But everything gets solved when Emily finally finds her voice to explain to the police and the crowd of followers that it's OK to be different.  Umm, sure, that was the answer all along, why not just explain the problem again to the curious mob, and they'll understand it this time, and then you get your apartment back and your deadbeat uncle gets a job and the bullying stops, only that's not the way the world works. 

Well, I suppose things could have been worse - I could have watched "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile".  I don't have kids, I don't enjoy most movies made for kids, so why the hell do I keep watching movies made for kids?  I really should stop doing that. 

NITPICK POINT #2: The mother's trip home makes no sense, she calls from her taxi and says she's "headed to JFK" when she really means she's coming HOME from JFK, as she's in all of the scenes in NYC after that.  Didn't anyone notice that her dialogue on the phone call is wrong?  Also, do we really want to teach kids that they don't have to explain to their parents where they are or what they're currently doing, and that the best plan is to always hang up on your mother when she calls to check on you?  

NITPICK POINT #3 & 4: The whole movie takes place over just a few days, during which the main characters get evicted, and in real life, any eviction process takes months, not days. (Don't ask me how I know this...). But in those same few days, Clifford the Giant Puppy never eats, and you would think that a giant dog would have a very big appetite.  We never see him poop, either, maybe because he never eats anything?  We do see him urinate, though, and that's a giant mess, then they address the fact that there's going to be another problem with poop later, but thankfully we never see it happen.  But at some point it's inevitable, right? 

Also starring Jack Whitehall (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Darby Camp, Tony Hale (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Sienna Guillory (last seen in "Love Actually"), David Alan Grier (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Russell Wong (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Izaac Wang (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Kenan Thompson (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Tovah Feldshuh (last seen in "A Walk on the Moon"), Paul Rodriguez (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Russell Peters (last seen in "Supercon"), Keith Ewell (last seen in "Trust Me"), Bear Allen-Blaine, Horatio Sanz (last seen in "Zeroville"), Rosie Perez (last seen in "Fearless"), Alex Moffat (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Jessica Keenan Wynn (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (last seen in "The Professor"), Ty Jones, Mia Ronn, Madison Smith, Madison Morris, Yasha Jackson, Mateo Gomez (last seen in "In the Heights"), Khari McDowell, Raymond Neil Hernandez (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Neil Hellegers, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barney Fitzpatrick, Jackson Frazer (last seen in "Maggie's Plan").

RATING: 4 out of 10 very loud and aggressive sheep (a very common NYC fixture, of course)

Father Christmas Is Back

Year 15, Day 351 - 12/17/23 - Movie #4,597

BEFORE: Well, it's time for Christmas movies, but I think I might have screwed this chain up a bit.  I've got three yuletide-themed movies on the docket, but if I'd paid a bit more attention to the cast lists, I could have had FOUR.  I had my eyes on the end-game, but there was actually a better path to get there, and I missed it.  Maybe there's a life lesson there, something about endings because every year ends, every life ends and there's only so much we can control about it, except for what we do on the way there.  

Anyway, there's another film called "Christmas in Paradise", and it's got about 5 or 6 of the same actors in it as today's film does, including Kelsey Grammer and Elizabeth Hurley.  But I didn't see a way to get from THERE to my planned last film, so I tabled it.  But there WAS a way, through a different Kelsey Grammer film, which only recently came on to my list.  Mea culpa.  But now I don't have enough slots left, and I can't go over my self-imposed limit of 300 films in a year.  I can't go back and un-do a review either, that's against the rules too.  So I have to proceed as planned and not go back on my word, my only excuse is that I've been so distracted by the stress of my job(s) and the threat of losing one that I haven't had the time or motivation to double-check my chains.  So my apologies to Mr. Grammer and Ms. Hurley and anyone else who won't make the annual wrap-up this time around. 

But who knows, maybe this is the chain's way of telling me that "Christmas in Paradise" is a terrible film.  Maybe it's telling me I need to save it for next year, that it could play a vital role in connecting two films in December 2024.  There's just no way to know.  But also maybe four Christmas films could have made me feel more festive than three, and I really could have used that.  I didn't make a Christmas mix playlist this year, for the first time in like 30 years, I just wasn't feeling up to it. 

Kris Marshall carries over from "The Four Feathers".  

THE PLOT: Four sisters re-unite for the Christmas holiday in a Yorkshire mansion, and misunderstandings uncover the long-buried secret that tore their family apart many years ago. 

AFTER: I'm listening to my last two Christmas mixes - from 2021 and 2022 - trying to get inspired. It's not working well, I don't feel inspired to listen to more holiday music and try to get a new mix together.  Clearly it's time for a break - maybe I just pass on the holidays this year, for the most part.  We'll make lasagna and maybe go shopping at the outlet stores, but I can't see shopping BEFORE the holiday, it's just too stressful. During the pandemic we went and did shopping AFTER Christmas, like a few days later, and that was fine, the stores were close to empty.  Of course, during COVID we had such a great excuse to just stay home and be shut-ins, close out the dangerous world, but we did that because it felt comforting to do so - cue up another episode of "Christmas Cookie Showdown" on the Food Network, please. 

Of course, we WANT to celebrate, but that just adds to the stress, to put a party or a big family meal together, then there's the traveling, and that's a whole other nightmare because everybody else is traveling somewhere at the same time. Nah, I think we played it right at Thanksgiving this year, we didn't fly or drive anywhere, except to a restaurant about 45 minutes away on Long Island, where we had an excellent buffet meal.  So I can justify picking a nice restaurant to have dinner a few days after Christmas, maybe getting together with a couple select friends in the week between the two holidays, since my nights will all be available for the first time in months. And if my wife and I exchange one or two good presents with each other, and mail-order some gifts for my sister's family and my parents, that should probably do it.

So tonight's film kind of proves my point, because it's one of those films where a family tries to gather and celebrate Christmas, but just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong, much like this year's Thanksgiving films "Pieces of April" and "The Myth of Fingerprints", to the point where you may wonder WHY the family continues to get together every year, when it's so stressful and some of them hate each other so damn much.  I have no constructive answers there, except that this family's last name is "Christmas", so perhaps they feel obligated - just look at "Hubie Halloween", it's the same concept I suppose, that dude's going to REALLY be into his namesake holiday.  NITPICK POINT, though, is there anyone in the U.K. that really has the last name "Christmas"?  Hmm, apparently there are a few - a Canadian saxophonist named Art Christmas, an English footballer named Cecil Christmas, and a cyclist and runner named Dani Christmas - plus those famous people had family members, no doubt.  So it's possible.

So the title "Father Christmas Is Back" has a double meaning here, because in the U.K. they call Santa Claus "Father Christmas", so it could stand for the story of Santa coming around each year, or it also means here that the family patriarch, James Christmas, has come back to his family after being absent for nearly three decades.  Of course, three of his four daughters have no idea he's coming, and really, that's a party foul that the fourth daughter set up.  Caroline, the host of the party, probably deserved a little notice!  More surprises come about when sister Joanna, brings her new boyfriend, Felix, instead of the expected one, Hamish.  Vicky, the one who backpacked across America and found their father in Florida, also takes up with the local bartender while she's visiting, and good old reliable sister Paulina just goes back to work on her thesis about the Beatles and comes out to her family, but apparently she does this every year. 

(NITPICK POINT: Who works on their master's thesis while visiting the family at Christmas?  Does her sister's house contain some kind of Beatles archive, or is that just where she stores her research?  Also, who uses a manual typewriter instead of a laptop in 2021, for God's sake? Also also, wouldn't you think that everything that COULD be written about the Beatles would have been already written, at this point?)

So the family patriarch arrives unannounced, to the shock of his wife and 75% of his daughters, and so the holidays become a time for forced reconciliation and awkward celebrations.  Boy, we've got a lot of loose ends here, this film seems to delight in starting up plot threads and then taking its sweet time in getting back to them.  Vicky steals Joanna's boyfriend's Rolls Royce and half of her wardrobe (though we never really find out WHY these two sisters hate each other, do we?) and we don't learn where she took these items for a very long time.  Also, it's clear from the beginning of the film that Peter took the WRONG bag of presents to the senior center - because if he didn't, then why even introduce the possibility? - and this joke doesn't pay off until the final few minutes of the film.  Well, since the film covers four days leading up to December 25, I suppose this makes some kind of sense.

Speaking of long set-ups and delayed punchlines, we see near the beginning that James's ex-wife is carrying on an affair with his brother, John Christmas.  Though I suppose it's not really an "affair" if she's no longer married to James, and they're doing very little to keep their trysts secret.  Yes, old British people get horny, too, or is it "randy" over there?  More power to them, but why not let the rest of the family know about it?  I guess then it wouldn't be fun any more, right? 

The family eventually does work out many of their problems, so they can all go to the pub together and sing a holiday song, and eventually they also learn why Dad left in the first place - and perhaps this sort of thing was inevitable, who's to say?  Anyway, the important thing to know about the Brits here is that just like some Americans, they stress out over hosting the PERFECT Christmas party, they have quaint church Christmas fairs with swap meets, pie-tasting contests and raffles, just like us!  And they bicker and disagree with each other while they sit in their large English mansions and eat giant holiday meals, and they tolerate the visiting Americans who don't eat meat or gluten or refined sugar or large amounts of caffeine.  God, Americans are so annoying, right?  First they demand their independence and then they hit you with their dietary restrictions.

Last year at Christmas-time I watched "The Hundred-Foot Journey" and "Last Christmas", both were sort of about the immigrant experience in the U.K., one had Indian immigrants running a restaurant and the other had a Serbo-Croatian family at its center.  Those were both rather charming little drama/romances, both being sort of multi-culti as a bonus.  But tonight's film seems like a mess by comparison, sorry to say, since it rapidly turns into a bedroom farce surrounded by holiday disasters. Maybe that's Christmas to some people in the U.K., I don't know, but it's not really my experience with Christmases.  

NITPICK POINT #2: Elizabeth Hurley looks great for her age, sure, but that means the actor playing her father is only 10 years older than her in real life, and the actress playing her mother is only 4 years older.  Something doesn't quite add up there.

Also starring Elizabeth Hurley (last seen in "The Weight of Water"), John Cleese (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "Like Father"), Nathalie Cox (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Talulah Riley (last seen in "Bloodshot"), Caroline Quentin, April Bowlby (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Ray Fearon (last seen in "The Protégé"), Naomi Frederick (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Katy Brand (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Amelie Prescott, Oliver Smith, Janie Booth (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Bryan Samson, Ania Marson (last seen in "See How They Run"), Jamie Roche, Lauren Dickenson, James Kay, NIcholas Cooper, Lucas Livesey, Laura Bowes, Nikita Lund, Mick Liversidge. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 toilet-paper roll ornaments