Seraphim Falls

Year 12, Day 319 - 11/14/20 - Movie #3,694

BEFORE: I forgot to mention last time that when I got back from upstate, I started binge-watching the FX show "What We Do in the Shadows" on Hulu, to follow up the movie I watched on Halloween.  There are just two seasons, 10 episodes each, so on the nights where I don't have a movie to watch I can get through five episodes, so in just a few days, I'm almost done.  It's mostly the same gags as the movie, at least in Season 1, though they have a little more time to explore them, and it's different vampire characters, but they're essentially the same.  There was one episode in Season 1 where the main actors from the movie appeared, plus Tilda Swinton (who played a vampire in "Only Lovers Left Alive") plus there are a bunch of other cameos in that ep and throughout the series.  I'm enjoying it, and if there's a season 3 I can program my DVR to record that, now that I'm caught up.  

But where do I go from here?  There are only 6 more movies to watch in 2020, and 4 of them are earmarked for December.  So I'll have a lot of free time on my hands - I thought I'd have another part-time job by now, but I'm not getting any callbacks for seasonal help.  Do I move on to making my Christmas mix-tape (first-world problems, I know...) or catch up on organizing comic books (I'm constantly behind here) or re-play a favorite video-game?  There's one last Marvel show on Netflix to watch, and it's "Iron Fist", before the Marvel shows on Disney Plus start - or I could pick another series like "Portlandia" or "Lost" to possibly finish before the pandemic ends.  To be determined. 

Nate Mooney carries over from "One for the Money", because the only other films on my list with Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan are romance-based, and the only other films with Anjelica Huston is a horror film, plus "Mr. North", which is a film that got added at the last minute - and that was going to be tomorrow's film, but then I found a way to add one more Christmas movie at the end, so something's got to go.  Thankfully I can re-schedule "Mr. North" and today's film also happens to connect to the next film in line.  These are the things I have to keep an eye on, it's sort of a "multiple out" that helps me make adjustments to the count at the last minute.  Harry Dean Stanton is in "Mr. North", and I've got several films with him in them, so I can probably work it in next year.  And a rare birthday shout-out to Kevin J. O'Connor, who turns 57 tomorrow on November 15.  Sorry, I'm off by one day but I'm not delaying my review. 

THE PLOT: After the end of the Civil War, a colonel hunts down a man with whom he has a grudge. 

AFTER: When I think about modern Westerns, as distinguished from the Westerns of the 1950's, what I've noticed is that where it was once so easy to tell the heroes from the villains, the morals in the newer ones are a lot blurrier.  Maybe films reflect the times they were made in, in addition to the times where the story is set.  I think maybe the trend started in the 1960's and 70's where the emphasis was on violence, like the Sam Peckinpah films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and so on.  "Silverado" and "Unforgiven" clouded the moral universe a little further, and now with films like "Hostiles", "Jane Got a Gun" and "The Ballad of Lefty Brown", in many ways we can no longer tell who the right-thinking people are, especially because they no longer wear those white hats to identify themselves.  

(Wikipedia says this trend is called "Revisionist Westerns", which sounds a little pejorative.  The name suggests that filmmakers are imposing the morals and viewpoints of our modern times on to the setting of the 1860's and 1870's.  This implies that it isn't any more "correct" than the films of the 1950's that did the same - and all we're really accomplishing is placating the current audience with films that appeal more to their sensibilities.  So maybe we need to find a better name for this sub-genre?  Then again, I think every genre is always going to be "revising" itself, at least on some level, otherwise studios are just going to keep making the same films, over and over.  Aren't romance films, sci-fi films, and horror movies forced to keep coming up with new ideas, which by their very nature are revising the genre?  TBD.  Clearly more research on this point is required.)

"Seraphim Falls" starts in the middle of the story, and all we know is that a group of men is tracking another man through the Nevada mountains.  Is the group a posse of lawmen hunting a fugitive criminal, or does the group have evil intent?  It's unclear by design.  Even knowing in advance that there's a grudge dating back to the Civil War isn't much help - which man was Union and which was Confederate?  Does that even matter?  I hate to phrase it like this, but couldn't there have been good and bad people on both sides?  It might be too simplistic to assume that whoever fought for the North was the right-thinking one, and whichever one represents the South is misguided - that's the same kind of thinking that tore our country apart in the 1860's and still lingers today, though in a different form.  We've just gone through another very divided time in the U.S., and it's not over yet - I shouldn't assume in this movie or in life that the people who live near me and share my ideology are "correct" and the people in the states further away who voted a different way are "wrong".  If this keeps up, we're potentially headed for a sequel to the Civil War.  

(I still have hope for America to come together, but it's going to take time, and effort, and part of the problem is that darned American spirit.  We're a country of rebels, our ancestors threw off the shackles of British Imperialism, they dumped the tea in Boston harbor and drank beer instead, got very unruly and after that, it was one rebellion after another.  The attitude that led to the Civil War sort of came from the same place, there have been Americans raging against the machine since day one, if you think about it.  The 1960's protests, people protesting over not enough civil rights, others rioting AGAINST civil rights, it seems like Americans took their cues from that James Dean movie.  What are we rebelling against?  Well, what have you got?  And now today the Trumpers are marching to protest the election results.  Fundamentally, one some level, it's just who we are.  When we're not happy, we make signs and march.

Unfortunately, we're never all on the same page.  Even when Biden takes office, his efforts to mandate mask-wearing, distribute the vaccine methodically and create conditions to stop the spread are no doubt going to be met with disdain and protest from the people who will refuse to give up any individual freedoms for the greater good.  Again, this reaction is part of the American spirit, but it's misguided and deadly in this case.  I think what we need to do is label the COVID virus as the enemy, declare war on the invisible threat, and then try to unite the people.  We don't all have to like the same things, but if we can HATE the same thing, we've got a shot.  Look what America accomplished when we were united against Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia, or Islamic terrorists.  In World War II Americans ran scrap drives, paper drives, we built freedom gardens and ran blackout drills - it sounds exhausting, but it all united the country toward a common goal.  During the Cold War we worked to put men on the moon, a task that seemed impossible, but there was no way we were going to let the Soviets get there first!  And then after 9/11 we gave up individual freedoms through the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act, in order to have greater homeland security.  Reminding Americans of these accomplishments could be the key to ending the pandemic.  OK, rant over.)

Following the man in the forest, Gideon, sort of puts us on his side - he's injured, on the run, in desperate need of food and a horse, but he's resourceful enough to set traps and take out his pursuers, one by one.  When the action shifts back to the posse that's pursuing Gideon, led by Carver, we get more of a ruthless vibe, since they don't seem to have much compassion, and they intimidate anyone they encounter who's given aid to Gideon.  Still, until we get the whole back-story, we're still not 100% sure who we should be rooting for.  Liam Neeson usually plays the lone vigilante hero fighting a group of villains, like in "Taken" or "The Commuter", or a dozen other films, so it's unusual to see him on the other side of the equation.  (This film was released the year before "Taken", so it might predate the casting trend.). Pierce Brosnan's also noted for playing the resourceful hero, as in Remington Steele or James Bond, so is he playing to type here, or is something more surprising afoot?  Again, we have to wait for the flashback to fill in the details of the backstory - this is the proper use of flashbacks, in my opinion, especially when the movie starts in the middle and learning the prior details later then sheds light on what we've already learned.  

No spoilers here, ideally, but once we learn the true nature of what has gone before, we're set up for the conclusion, when both men have to cross the Nevada desert, one for the purposes of escape, and the other to continue his relentless quest.  Whether either action is still justified at this point is up to the viewer, as each man has had ample opportunity to end things, but neither can quite bring himself to force a resolution.  It's at this point that the film divulges into metaphor, and gets a bit mysterious.  Just before entering the desert, each man encounters a Native American by a watering hole.  Though not named in the film, the credits say he is named Charon, and that's the name of the ferryman in Greek mythology who would carry the souls of the dead across the river Styx to the underworld.  It's possible this character is fulfilling a similar role here, and that the desert isn't really a desert at all, or this is all symbolism for their final encounter.  

Once in the desert, both men also encounter Madame Louise, a con artist and snake-oil medicine salesman in a covered wagon.  They never hear her approach, so the question becomes - is she really there?  Does she represent the devil, since she makes deals with both men?  (I don't think I'm wrong here, the IMDB says her wagon reads "Louise C. Fair" which sounds a bit like Lucifer).  Is she some kind of mirage, or should we take her presence literally?  This seems largely open to interpretation.  Either way, it's a bit odd to introduce a character in the last few minutes of the film, she seems to be part of a desert deus ex machina no matter who or what she is.  And maybe you'll find the ending unsatisfying, but I'm hard-pressed to think of another one that wouldn't be.  

But I think the main take-away here is that some people were still fighting the Civil War for years after the actual conflict, even if they escaped out west, as far as they could go.  In the same way, our currently divided country could be fighting these black-or-white, liberal-or-conservative battles for decades, nothing's really been "resolved" just because one party's in power and the other one isn't.  If we don't start looking for common ground and stop treating every issue like it's all-or-nothing, right or wrong, we're all going to be lost wandering in the desert for a long time.  

Also starring Liam Neeson (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Michael Wincott (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Xander Berkeley (last seen in "Faster"), Ed Lauter (last seen in "The Artist"), Tom Noonan (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Kevin J. O'Connor (last seen in "Captive State"), John Robinson (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Anjelica Huston (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Angie Harmon (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Robert Baker (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), Wes Studi (last seen in "Hostiles"), Boots Southerland (ditto), Jimmi Simpson (last seen in "White House Down"), James Jordan (last seen in "Destroyer"), Shannon Zeller, Adon Cravens.

RATING: 6 out of 10 angry railroad workers

One for the Money

Year 12, Day 317 - 11/12/20 - Movie #3,693

BEFORE: I'm back from a couple of days in Sullivan County, NY.  We just needed to get away from NYC for a couple days, away from the election and away from the pandemic - too much news can make you crazy these days.  Of course there's no real way to get away from either situation, we still heard all the news about Biden's transition and Trump not accepting it, and the news about the potential vaccine, so even though we still had to wear masks while gambling in the casino and visiting antique shops and old-timey general stores, we still managed to have a good time and a nice little break.  We found ourselves in Bethel and decided to track down the site of the original Woodstock Festival, where there's a monument overlooking the festival field, which I think they JUST finally finished cleaning up like last year.  That's how much trash remained after the 3-day festival in 1969.  JK.  Then we took in all that Monticello, Liberty, Neversink and Callicoon had to offer us - which wasn't much because most everything up there had started shutting down for the season, or in some cases never opened up at all, like the Bethel Flea Market.  It didn't help that we were selecting activities from a pre-pandemic 2020 local guidebook, which never got corrected after COVID hit, but we learned that it was a good idea to call each establishment first before driving across the county to visit it.  

But after just two days upstate in those sleepy little towns and villages, it's a bit tough to get back into my regular fast-paced city routine.  And even if I were to find a simple little town and think for a minute, "Hey, it might be nice to move up here, get away from it all..." after a week of being away from it all, I'd no doubt feel the urge to rush right back to it all.  Or I'd be stuck there and end up bored out of my mind.  

This was supposed to be the "Black Widow" slot, with Scarlett Johansson carrying over from "The Perfect Score", but we all know that's impossible now.  I preserved my original idea for a chain (or, umm, close to it) for as long as I could, but now I just have to get to the end of the year.  (Programming note: I could have chosen "Not Another Teen Movie" tonight, it also would get me to tomorrow's film, so all roads lead to Rome at this point, but I chose this one over that one because that one has a larger cast, and it should be easier to link to next year, if it stays on Netflix that long.). And after one or two more films, just like those seasonal upstate motels, I'm shutting down for a month, and I'll re-open for business a few days before Christmas.  So instead of Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo Nam carries over from "The Perfect Score".  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bounty Hunter" (Movie #3,460)

THE PLOT: Unemployed and newly-divorced Stephanie Plum lands a job at her cousin's bail-bond business, where her first assignment puts her on the trail of a wanted local cop from her romantic past.  

AFTER: We've all heard from time to time about failed TV pilots, where a proposed series shoots its first episode, then they do some test screenings with focus groups, maybe with a little luck that episodes makes it to the air, but then it doesn't pull in the ratings that the network was expecting, and the whole series gets shelved.  Well, this is a (perhaps rare) example of a failed film franchise pilot - there are probably others, but nothing's leaping to mind right now.  A little internet research, however, leads me to some other ones, like "Green Lantern", "Avatar: The Last Airbender", "John Carter", 2013's "The Lone Ranger", "Eragon", "The Golden Compass", and of course a film I watched in early October, "The Dark Tower".  All of these films would have loved to have sequels, but they were all one-and-done - though the "His Dark Materials" franchise, which includes "The Golden Compass", recently got resurrected as an HBO series.  

Those examples, though, all come from the land of comic books and dark fantasy, so perhaps "One for the Money" is unique in being a drama (dramedy?) franchise that could have/should have been a multi-part film franchise, but just couldn't lock down an audience.  The 1998 movie "Out of Sight" is perhaps another one, based on the books of Elmore Leonard, and I think instead of making more movies, the female lead character appeared in a "Karen Sisco" TV series instead.  Franchises die all the time, due to changing audience needs or perhaps lack of upkeep, like the "Chronicles of Narnia" series that only produced 3 out of a possible 7 books by C.S. Lewis before fizzling out.  "One for the Money" was the first movie to feature Stephanie Plum, who came from a series of novels written by Janet Evanovich, and there are 27 books in that series to date.  But now it's eight years later, with no sign of future books like "Two for the Dough" or "Three to Get Ready" hitting the big screen, and maybe that's for the best.  

Is this a terrible film?  Not really, it's more average than anything else, but I think that's part of the problem.  A terrible film's more likely to hold my interest, because I'm going to at least pay attention to how bad it is, how many things don't make sense or don't work from a narrative standpoint, and then I'll have something to complain about.  But an average film's just going to put me to sleep, because it's neither here nor there, it's not going to thrill me or piss me off, I'm just likely to tune it out, and that's what happened here.  I only made it to the one-hour mark of this 90-minute film before falling asleep and waking up during the closing credits.  Of course, I could just go back to 0:55 and try to pick up where I left off, which I did, but of course by then the damage has been done, I couldn't really get back in the groove or remember who THAT character is or where he fits in to the plot.  

No worries, I can read the whole plot summary on Wikipedia and piece things together again - so let's start with the ridiculous premise, which has a newly-divorced woman taking a job tracking down criminals who don't appear in court on time, not really a "bounty hunter" per se, just someone who finds people and drags them in to court.  But deciding to suddenly enter this field with no prior experience seems very foolhardy and possibly even counter-productive, there's not even a consideration made to how she's going to actually DO this job, or deal with rowdy people who don't want to be brought to the police, how she's going to defend herself if things get rough, does she need any training with firearms, etc. etc.  Nope, let's just gloss over all that and get her out on the road so she can start kicking ass and taking names, even though she's got zero experience in this field.  Look, I'm job-hunting right now myself, and it's rough out there in NYC right now - I've applied for retail jobs, something I said I'd never do again, but these are desperate times.  Still, I wouldn't go work tomorrow as a bartender or a food preparer, because I know those require special training, which I don't have.  (Ideally I could have gone back to work in movie theaters, where I do have experience, only they haven't re-opened in NYC yet.)

Then we've got to deal with the fact that Stephanie not only GETS this job that she's not qualified for (her cousin conveniently runs the bail-bond business, and she also conveniently has personal blackmail material to use against him) but the big fugitive in the area is a former cop wanted for murder, and he just happens to be a guy she used to date in high school.  She says she's not still looking for vindication following their break-up, but I think we can all figure out that's not true.  The murder case against him has a lot of missing pieces, it seems - a lot of the main characters involved are either dead or missing, so it seems we're never going to come close to figuring out what happened.  Anyway, it's not the job of the skip tracer to solve the case, that's police work, and Stephanie's not a cop - but the screenwriter can't seem to tell the difference between a bounty hunter and a police officer.   Also, being personally involved in the case can't really be much of a help either in this line of work, it's probably highly unprofessional to track down your ex-boyfriend and bring him in, another little thing that gets glossed over here.  

There's a missing prostitute, a dead heroin dealer, the prostitute's boxer boyfriend, and the boxer's manager all circling the case, so (again) even though it's NOT in her job description, Stephanie sets out to figure out what really happened, instead of just finding her ex and bringing him in.  Perhaps this is part of the reason for this film's lack of success, there's no clear narrative in the constantly-shifting goals of the main character.  Other cases that she works, like the nudist fugitive that she has to bring in, seem very tangential to the main narrative, and are essentially just time-fillers that go nowhere.  And if her ex, Morelli, is truly innocent, then why is he hiding out and not showing up for work?  Why can't he clear his name on his own, if he's such a good cop then why does he need Stephanie's help?  Eventually it all comes together, but I'm still not sure that it all lines up properly.  

Overall there's that feeling that most of the actors were just phoning it in here, especially Heigl.  She got nominated for a 2012 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for this, but lost (?) that unwanted award to Kristen Stewart for the double whammy of "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2".  Yeah, that seems about right.  It also feels like this was made during the time when Hollywood was striving to release films with strong female lead characters, though they hadn't quite figured out the formula yet, since there was still the requirement for at least two near-nude scenes.  Sure, there's a way to incorporate both nude scenes and female empowerment, but that combination is not on display here, not when the female lead is surprised in the shower, and ends up handcuffed in place while naked, and forced to call a man on the phone to help her.  Sorry, try again - plus, which screenwriter's weird fetish was that? 

Nobody really comes out on top here, not bounty hunters, not women, not cops, and certainly not New Jersey.  Why not just listen to Grandma and date that nice (but admittedly boring) fellow, Bernie Kuntz?  At one point the film uses a hamster on a wheel as a metaphor about running in place without getting anywhere, and the same concept can really be applied to the entire film.    

Also starring Katherine Heigl (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Jason O'Mara (last seen in "Wakefield"), Daniel Sunjata (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "Top Five"), Debbie Reynolds (last seen in "Bright Lights"), Debra Monk (last seen in "Demolition"), Nate Mooney (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Adam Paul, Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Ana Reeder (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Patrick Fischler (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Ryan Michelle Bathe, Annie Parisse (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Danny Mastrogiorgio (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Gavin-Keith Umeh, Louis Mustillo (last seen in "Bobby"), Joshua Elijah Reese, Olga Merediz (also last seen in "Top Five"), Harry O'Toole, John Joseph Williams, Angela Pietropinto (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Jack Erdie, Alexis Treadwell, Michael Laurence (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Jarrod DiGiorgi, David Flick (last seen in "The Next Three Days")

RATING: 5 out of 10 picked locks 

The Perfect Score

Year 12, Day 313 - 11/8/20 - Movie #3,692

BEFORE: Scarlett Johansson carries over again from "Under the Skin" to her last film of the year.  As I've pointed out before, this is the path that would have allowed me to watch "Black Widow" in theaters, only I'm here and the film isn't, it's been very publicly delayed until next year.  That film would have been my link to 2019's "Hellboy" reboot, which is now also delayed for me until 2021.  And I was therefore forced to find another path to Christmas movies and the end of 2020's 300 films, which I have now done.  Eight slots left this year, and I know how I want to fill them, and the chain will be unbroken, until I start fresh again next January.  (But even though I can't connect from here to "Black Widow", I would still like to clear today's film off my books, and I'll worry about next year's connections later.)

After this posts, we'll be driving to upstate New York (OK, mid-upstate) for a couple days, our first real road-trip since the pandemic started.  Just a couple days at a casino, maybe some nice restaurants or brew-pubs, whatever we can find.  We can have fun anywhere, even during these troubled times.  We still have to be careful, because this pandemic's not over, but upstate NY seems relatively safe compared with other parts of the country.  We haven't turned the corner yet, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I think now we're set up to do the work to maybe approach that corner, so we can turn it one day.  

Before leaving, I took a little time yesterday to do some of those tasks around the house to get ready for winter, like replacing the screen in the door with the glass pane, and sweeping up the leaves in the lower driveway, because if I don't do that once in a while, they can clog the drain and then heavy rain or melting snow might build up and leak into the basement.  Even there, I found a political metaphor, because I was thinking about drains, and how someone who promised to "drain the swamp" did nothing even close to that, and instead hired a bunch of corrupt people for government positions who all then turned on him, as they should.  And the person vowing to drain the swamp was in fact the biggest clog in the whole drain, and now that the drain is unclogged, maybe things can start flowing again, as they should.  We'll see.  

THE PLOT: Six high school seniors decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores.  

AFTER: I'm going to try my best to not connect this film to the election, because that was never the plan, plus I had "Jojo Rabbit" already this week, and that was enough, connecting Trump to Hitler.  Plus there's no confirmed voter fraud, nobody tried to rig this election, as far as we know, except of course for the guy who was complaining the loudest about voter fraud and which votes were bogus because they were counted after the deadline (even though they arrived before).  Nice try, a-hole, but we've had four years to figure you out and now all the smart people know when you're lying.  My concern, of course, is that not everyone in the country falls into that "smart" group, which explains why the worst President ever still got like 47% of the votes cast.  Think about the term "average intelligence", and then realize half of the voters in this country are dumber than that.  That's just math.  

It's time to move on, I need to get to a place where not every movie reminds me of Trump and what a terrible collective choice got made four years ago.  Here's to brighter days ahead, but at the same time this is when the real work has to begin, not just uniting the country (or trying to) but really taking on the virus for the first time, using science and trying to get everybody on board with that.  Over 40% of the country may not play along, because they've been lied to for so long, and those lies were easier, more seductive, and ultimately representing a dark path lined with bigotry and racism and laziness, and it's going to be hard to get some people off of that road.  Still, we have to try, with a leader that has some interest in, you know, leading, doing the work, we may have a chance.  A slim one, but doing something seems better than doing nothing but playing golf and eating KFC.  

Here comes the segue - tonight's film is also about taking the easier path, passing the SAT exam by getting an advanced look at the answers.  Of course this is wrong, I think the film makes that clear at both the beginning and the end, cheating is wrong.  But then the film comes close to maybe almost justifying the actions of breaking into the test center and getting the master answer key, because traditionally the SAT might be statistically biased against some minorities, possibly women, and also dumb people, if you think about it.  (If you think about it, nearly every test is biased against dumb people, and there are a lot of them.).  But even if this fact is true, that the test is biased, does that justify cheating?  No, it does not - because there are things that students can do to improve their scores, like taking a prep course, or studying, or taking the test several times.  It's possible to get better at math and verbal skills, it just takes time and practice and a will to succeed.  

Am I biased on this point?  Probably - I never had too much trouble in high school, unless you count P.E. of course.  I knew I wasn't the smartest person in my grade (this was perhaps only true in elementary school) and I wasn't going to be the valedictorian, but I survived a full complement of Advanced Placement courses, and standardized tests were a breeze for me.  Even if I didn't know the answer outright, I was a pretty good guesser - if you can eliminate one or more of the multiple choice answers, your odds improve substantially.  I might have been the best test-taker my high school ever had, if I can boast for just a minute.  When the PSAT results came in during junior year, another "A" student and I got called to the office, and I just knew it would be for a good reason.  I think I got 710/740 on the PSAT, and I ended up getting a small college scholarship from that (not enough for NYU tuition, but hey, every little bit helps).  I took the SAT itself only once, got 670/750 and figured that would be good enough for film school.  

This is where "The Perfect Score" almost makes a good point about the test, because the lead character wants to study architecture at Cornell, and perhaps neither his math or verbal scores from the SAT should be held against him when applying for an architecture program.  But then again, I can see how math might be important to building planning, making blueprints and such.  But as we know, and the film ignores, the SAT score is only one of several things that college admission officers will consider, there's also overall GPA, extracurricular activities, community service, teacher recommendations, and the all-important essay questions.  All college plans should also include multiple applications, safety schools, and back-ups for the back-ups.  Just saying.  Anyone who says, "I need to go to THAT school and study THAT program" could be setting themselves up for a fall - plus, many people also change careers and end up working in a different field than the one they studied for.  

The SAT is merely a marker on the road, it's not a destination.  So before breaking in to the testing facility to ace the exam, perhaps these six conspirators should have weighed the benefit against the potential drawbacks a little more carefully.  What would happen if they got caught, wouldn't that be a greater negative mark on their permanent record, worse than "failed the exam on the first try"?  Again, I propose that a smarter, more sensible plan would have been for these six students to form a study group, because as we learn late in the picture, they actually have a math genius and a verbal expert already among them, so why didn't somebody suggest this as a viable plan?  Huge NITPICK POINT.  Some of the reasons for banding together and stealing the answers are also quite stupid - the "A" level student couldn't complete the SAT test because there was a math question about a woman and a man getting on separate trains, and she got so caught up in their "story" that she couldn't do the math problem.  Are you kidding me?  This sounds more like she has ADHD than anything else, and a little Ritalin could clear that right up.  

Meanwhile, the motivations of some of the other characters are just as suspect - the star basketball player is the secret math genius, but apparently he's concerned about the verbal section, and what his mother will do to him if he doesn't get a good enough score to get into St. John's University.  OK, but getting caught cheating would also get him into trouble, so is it really worth the risk?  Another character's father works for Educational Testing Services, so perhaps she's just got daddy issues.  And the stoner character seems to just be along for the ride, because it's "something to do".  This all feels like lazy, lazy screenwriting if you ask me.  Plus it's so very convenient that their high school just happens to be in the same town as the company that creates and monitors the exam nationwide.  Also very lazy, what are the odds of this, how many cities and towns are there in the U.S.?   

It's a little odd here to see the future Captain America actor and the future Black Widow actress working together to do something wrong.  But then again, it's a team heist movie at its core, and is a team superhero movie really that different in the end?  What doesn't really ring true is that in the end, nearly every character here finds a different reason to NOT cheat on the test.  WHAT?  After all that pseudo-justification for doing the wrong thing, everybody suddenly has a change of heart and decides to do the right thing?  I find that hard to believe - and again, couldn't they have just buckled down and studied in the first place, which would have saved everybody, especially me, a great deal of time and aggravation?  If only these kids had spent their time learning how to prepare for the test, instead of figuring out how to break into the testing center, they would have all been much better off.

I know, I know, that wouldn't have made for a very interesting movie, but I think in the end it's the best moral lesson to walk away from the film with.  Everyone needs to buckle down, put in the time and do the work in order to achieve success.  There are (or at least should be) no shortcuts in life. 

NITPICK POINT #2: Darius Miles is a real NBA player, so I can understand why he's not a great actor, and his delivered lines are a bit difficult to understand, or believe.  OK, so then why can I say the same thing about Scarlett Johansson and Erika Christensen?

NITPICK POINT #3: Once the team is in the ETS office, and they realize they can't print out the answer sheet, why was the solution to spend hours taking the entire test together, which still would have resulted in them collectively being unsure about the answers?  Wouldn't it have been easier to call up the answer sheet on the computer screen and then write THAT down?  I would say, "Why not just take photos of the test questions on the screen?", but this film was released JUST a bit before smartphones with cameras were a thing.  Still, taking the test would take hours, a time period that could have allowed for a security sweep to find them, while just jotting down the letters of the answer would probably take 30 minutes, tops.  Just saying. 

Also starring Chris Evans (last seen in "Knives Out"), Erika Christensen (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), Bryan Greenberg (last seen in "Bride Wars"), Darius Miles, Leonardo Nam (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Fulvio Cecere (last seen in "No Reservations"), Vanessa Angel (last seen in "King of New York"), Lorena Gale (last seen in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"), Tyra Ferrell (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Bill Mackenzie, Dan Zukovic, Iris Quinn (last seen in "The Twilight Saga; Eclipse"), Lynda Boyd (last seen in "The Age of Adaline"), Serge Houde (ditto), Michael Ryan, Robert Clarke (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Kyle Labine, Alf Humphreys, Mike Jarvis, Steve Makaj (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Jay Brazeau (last seen in "Horns"), Rebecca Reichert. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 password guesses

Under the Skin

Year 12, Day 311 - 11/6/20 - Movie #3,691

BEFORE: As you're no doubt aware, it's now three days after the U.S. Election Day, and there's still no clear winner in the Presidential race.  Biden's a whole lot closer based on electoral votes - it's complicated, but nobody really votes for the President directly, instead Americans vote for local electors, who then have to go to college to cast votes for who the people of their state want.  There's no 100% rule that the electors have to vote for the person they say they're going to vote for, but they almost always do.  It's an antiquated system meant to even out the rights of the big states with the rights of the little states, to do that they made every one of the states essentially winner-take-all, thus in a close race virtually guaranteeing that almost half of the people's votes are useless.  OK, maybe not half, but anyone who's liberal in a conservative state or conservative in a liberal need not bother voting at all, so really, that saves a lot of people a bunch of time, if you think about it.  (And they wonder why so many Americans don't vote.  Duh!)

I'm sort of half-kidding, but when you realize that the Electoral College is based on the honor system, and then that there simply is no more honor anywhere else in American politics, it might be time to scrap it. I don't really favor a nation-wide popular vote, because I suppose even that way up to 49% of voters would still feel like their vote was wasted - I mean, they tell us that every vote counts, and nobody's vote is wasted because they made their voice heard, but really, if you voted for the losing candidate, wouldn't you have rather just slept in that day?  Not wasted two hours in line?  For a few years there I felt that if I was voting liberal in a liberal state like New York then my vote didn't really count, because the liberal candidate was going to win my state, so wouldn't I rather just sleep in that day?  But this election was WAY too important, I wasn't going to take any chances, so we went and voted early in person, on the first day that the polls were open in our state.  

As I said, Biden's closer to victory, some news outlets say he needs just 6 more electoral votes (Nevada would do it) while other news outlets say he needs 17 more (Nevada and Arizona would do that).  Meanwhile, as they keep inching closer to counting all the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, if he gets that state's 20 electoral votes, then he wins.  Boom, it's over.  Barring the results of any recounts in close states, or lawsuits filed by Trump that could change any results, it seems like Biden's got a few ways to win this thing, and Trump only has two - win every state that hasn't finished counting yet, or flip a couple with lawsuits.  So far all the state judges have laughed in his lawyers' faces (I bet maybe a couple of them have lost family members to the COVID-19 virus, right?) so the lawsuit thing doesn't seem like a valid plan.  Sure, he packed the Supreme Court with three justices that owe him their jobs, but his lawsuits would have to progress up past the state level to get to the federal level, where he could expect a quid pro quo, and that's probably not going to happen.

Look, I'm old enough to remember the voting debacle in Florida in 2000, with the butterfly ballots and the hanging chads and the fact that every time they counted ballots in some counties, they got a different number.  Plus the governor of the state was Jeb Bush (the Republican candidate's BROTHER), and he appointed the woman in charge of counting ballots, so probably the fix was in.  Finally the Supreme Court had to stop all the recounting and they declared George W. Bush the winner, and if we'd had President Gore back then, maybe we'd be in a different place regarding climate change, who can say?  

Having six states right now that haven't finished counting is a bit unnerving, a bit like having SIX FLORIDAS, so it has the potential to be six times worse than the nightmare of 2000.  Let's hope it doesn't come down to that, or take that long - in mid-December 2000, we still didn't know who the next President was going to be!  This time it looks like Biden, unless something goes horribly wrong right now, and I've just jinxed it, haven't I?  Maybe in another day or two we can get some clarity, but even then, Trump's just not going to go down easy, he's going to claim victory, that there was rampant election fraud, or Ukrainian hacking, or wonder why so many of the mail-in ballots that got counted late (but most of those were mailed early) were for Biden.  Gee, I don't know, maybe because more Democrats chose to mail in or drop off their absentee ballots because of the pandemic, or the expected voter intimidation at the polls, or just because they couldn't wait until Election Day to vote out the President they despised?  Meanwhile, Republicans listened to their glorious leader who told them that absentee ballots were for losers, and that it was totally safe to go to the polls because the pandemic was over (it wasn't)?  

Just imagine, if Trump had taken the pandemic just a BIT more seriously, didn't infect more people by holding rallies, and the death toll had been reduced from over 200,000 to something more like 30,000?  There might have been over 100,000 more Trump supporters alive to cast votes on Election Day, and if they had lived in key states, that might have made a difference for him.  But, sadly, we'll never know, now, will we?  That karma, she's a bitch. 

Scarlett Johansson carries over from "Jojo Rabbit". 

THE PLOT: A mysterious young woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland.  However, events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery. 

AFTER: Well, this film puts me in a rather awkward position.  As one might be able to draw from the title of this film, the main goal of this production seemed to be to showcase Scarlett Johansson in the buff.  You know, starkers, nekkid, in the all-together.  Which is fine, if that's your thing, I feel like on some level this is something I should support, or at least would have supported in the past.  But a lot has changed in Hollywood these past few years, and my understanding was that, at least on some level, we were all supposed to be better than that by now, to have higher aspirations.  

Now I can't help but view this as exploitative somehow, even assuming (and I do) that Ms. Johansson was well aware of the nature of the project when she signed on, that nudity was involved.  And maybe she was fine with that, proud of her body's condition and form or interested in preserving it forever on celluloid (OK, digital now) before things started going south, or whatever.  Maybe she was between relationships at the time, and this served as a de facto type of dating incentive, and hey, now she's married (third time, I think) to Colin Jost, and things seem to be going well, so who's to say the plan didn't work?  

But the question remains, is there enough story here to justify the repeated on-screen nudity?  Here's the story - a (possibly alien?) woman seduces men while driving around in her van, she takes them home, or goes home with them, things start getting hot and heavy, nudity is involved, and then the man ends up in some kind of psychic hellscape instead, where he's covered in black liquid goo and (presumably) ultimately devoured.  Repeat, as necessary, until the end of the film.  Not much else is really explained - what, exactly is she?  Alien, or demon, or psychic vampire, or some combination thereof?  

There are other characters - one or more men on motorcycles who seem to act as her "handlers" of sorts, disposing of remains as necessary, or perhaps just generally keeping track of her activities, but since the dialogue is minimal throughout the film, it's often hard to determine what, exactly, is taking place.  That was my experience, anyway.  Not that a film has to telegraph everything, because it generally doesn't, but damn it, you've got to give me something I can hang my hat on, at least once in a while.  

And to be fair, something different does happen near the end - one possible interpretation is that "The Female" gradually grows tired of this cycle of violence, or perhaps starts to develop an emotional response after so many interactions with lonely men/victims.  One man is disabled, and it seems that she had some kind of change of heart, as he is later seen escaping, naked, from her physical or psychic prison.  But it seems that the mysterious motorcyclist is on hand to make sure that he doesn't get very far, because that would potentially ruin whatever situation it is that they're running.  (Are they harvesting men for food? Energy? Some kind of alien zoo?  It's all very unclear.)  

The Female seems to drive off on her own at some point, abandoning her van and heading off into the woods.  Perhaps it's karma that she then becomes a potential victim for an aggressive sexual predator in the woods - and this gives her a fresh perspective perhaps on her recent activities, but it also ends up sealing her fate.  Well, at least something happens after an hour and a half of nearly nothing happening. Technically this constitutes a narrative arc, but only just barely. 

I praised Ms. Johansson's acting ability a couple days ago after watching "Jojo Rabbit", but this film from 2013 represents more of the before-times, namely before the "Avengers" movies, when she would get hired to play the cold, emotionless female roles as seen in "Lost in Translation", "Ghost World" and "Girl With a Pearl Earring" - the dissassociated characters like "girl in painting" or "awkward teen".  Which makes you wonder if they cast "Under the Skin" by saying, "Hmm, who can we get that can interact with lonely men and display absolutely no emotion whatsoever... call Scarlett Johansson!"

Also starring Jeremy McWilliams, Adam Pearson, Lynsey Taylor Mackay, Krystof Hadek, Paul Brannigan, Michael Moreland, Dave Acton

RATING: 3 out of 10 male naughty bits

Jojo Rabbit

Year 12, Day 309 - 11/4/20 - Movie #3,690

BEFORE: Well, it's pretty clear that I haven't changed my 2020 schedule THAT much, not yet anyway.  This is exactly where I planned to be, back when we thought that NYC movie theaters might still open up in 2020, and when "Black Widow" still had an opening date in early November.  Like so many things this year, that didn't happen.  Admittedly, cancelling (or re-scheduling) is par for the course this year.  We had only one set of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, and my wife wouldn't even let me answer the door.  She has a valid point, I don't know where those kids have been, and kids are very efficient at spreading germs.  So I guess that half-bag of candy left from 2019 won't be given out until next year.  Sorry, kids. 

Next up, will Thanksgiving be cancelled as well?  I'm no longer surprised by the coincidences I encounter, and this film appearing so close to Election Day is just another one of them.  What am I supposed to make from a film about Hitler turning up NOW?  There's got to be something about fighting fascism that I can work with here.  Let me watch the film (admittedly, I'm watching BEFORE election results come in, and reviewing AFTER, so the fix is in today) and I'll have more to say, for sure. 

Taika Waititi carries over from "Hunt for the Wilderpeople". 

THE PLOT: A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

AFTER: It's 10 pm on Election Night as I'm writing this, and at the moment Joe Biden is ahead in the projected electoral college count, which means I'll probably be up late tonight trying to figure out how the Democrats are going to manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  On the other hand, Biden's ahead, he's been ahead so far and maybe he'll stay that way - my wife just went to sleep convinced that Biden's going to lose, somehow, and it would be great if she woke up to an unexpected result, which would karmically balance the one in 2016 when she went to sleep fairly confident that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.  History is sometimes decided in the wee hours of the morning - but we've also been told that some races are so close to call that we may not have a definitive result for several DAYS, a week even.  For all the talk of a "blue wave" and a possible landslide, this thing now looks like it's going to come down to a nail-biter, even if we factor in California's 55 electoral votes that will almost certainly go Biden's way.  

For all the talk about the change that the USA needs, for all the rightfully placed anger over this President's lack of coronavirus preparations and response, for all the disenfranchised women and minority voters who set out to strike a blow for all the other women and minorities, for all the hundreds of politicial scandals in the last four years which had Trump at their core, the race is still, at the moment, too close to call.  How the heck does this happen?  Most of the polls, and nearly all of the rhetoric since the debates, indicated to me that we were on a positive, righteous, non-lazy path.  We all know what the right things to do are - look after each other, take care of the disenfranchised, make sure we all move forward together, protecting not just our own rights but the rights of others, take care of the only environment we have, and just generally be excellent to each other.  But yet somehow there exists a large portion of this country that either doesn't know what to do in these regards, or would just rather not do them.  It's the lazy man's more seductive path, and it comes with a heavy, heavy price, or at least it should. 

But look who we have as an example, the man who's personified our political process for the last four years.  Nothing bad has happened to him, as yet, for anything bad that he's done.  He's skated on his taxes, he's skated on every lawsuit ever brought against him, done very little actual work over the last four years, again always skating, mostly golfing and watching TV, and what are the consequences that have befallen him?  Nothing bad, instead he gets to eat a bunch of fast food every day and meet with sports champions and rap stars.  I had such hopes that the bill for his laziness and incompetence would finally come due, and he'd be ousted from the White House at the very least, and either impeached or convicted of something at best.  So far, that hasn't happened. I can't take another four years of this, and I don't think our country can either. 

Let me try to bring this back to "Jojo Rabbit", after pointing out that Trump, in many ways, is like the American Hitler.  Remember, also, that Hitler was freely elected, and he wasn't a dictator at first, either.  But once in power, some people tend to do everything they can to remain in power, and therefore use the powers of their office to remove or discredit all of their political opponents, and also denigrate and make life difficult for any minority groups they don't like.  Sound familiar?  Trump's gone after Mexicans, Chinese, and Muslims, denigrated women, people with disabilities, mocked every Democrat who's ever disagreed with him and then even members of his own staff who've done the same.  He claims, for some reason, to have the best interests of black Americans and LGBTQ Americans at heart, but I think we all know that's just another smokescreen, right?  Outside of those rap stars, when has he ever done anything for black Americans? Just go back and see what he said about the Central Park Five (who were later exonerated, BTW). 

Hitler, on the other hand, made the trains run on time.  There was a feeling among Germans that this was the guy who could get things done.  Just don't ask where all the Jewish people have gone, or the disabled, or the gays, or the gypsies.  Again, sound familiar?  Trump's the guy whose reputation says he'll be better for the economy (just ignore all his bankrupt businesses over the years) and for mostly personal, selfish reasons, to many people that's more important than listening to scientists about how to deal with a deadly virus.  And just don't ask why there aren't many senior citizens around any more, or why the big cities aren't as crowded as they used to be, or have as many working restaurants.  Hitler had concentration camps for Jewish people, Trump had essentially the same thing for Mexican immigrant children.  

And everything's been so divisive, there are families split right down the middle on the important issues of the day.  Yes, finally I'm bringing it back to "Jojo Rabbit", where a young boy is part of the Hitler youth movement, but meanwhile his mother is only pretending to support the government in power, she's actively working to make a difference in the world by hiding a Jewish teen girl in her house's walls.  The reason seems to be that she had a teen daughter who died, and she couldn't save her, but she can try to save this Jewish girl instead.  When Jojo hears noises coming from his sister's old room, he investigates and locates the hidden girl instead, which makes him very conflicted.  He's been trained to report all Jewish people to his superiors in the Hitler youth army, but he also knows that his mother could be in a lot of trouble for hiding her in the first place.  

His only confidante is an imaginary Hitler, whom he consults for advice.  Taika Waititi (also the director of the film) plays Hitler, and this is intended as a comic character here, in the same vein as what was seen in both versions of "The Producers".  Since Jojo admires Hitler greatly but has never met the man, this allows for his imaginary version to be an extreme one, something akin to a cartoon.  And this mostly works, seeing Hitler through the eyes of a young boy, unless you happen to look at this from a German point of view.  Of course when you get a bunch of British, American and New Zealand actors on board to play Germans, it's never going to be an accurate portrayal of German society, instead it's all going to be played for laughs here, as was done in "The Death of Stalin" a few years ago.  

A couple of points here, I had to disagree with the choice to open the film with the Beatles' German recording of "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which they recorded as "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand".  I can see WHY they did this, because the song was played over footage of Hitler rallies (again, sound familiar?) and thus there was a connection drawn between the popularity of Hitler and the popularity of the Beatles (crowds of screaming fans in both cases).  However, there's two full decades that separate the images and the music, so that song would not have been even CLOSE to existing at the time of World War II, and therefore the opening is incredibly historically inaccurate.  (The film also closes with a version of David Bowie's "Heroes", also sung in German, which is even more anachronistic.  I know, I know, once you let modern songs into a movie like "Moulin Rouge", on one level all bets are off, but I'm still a purist, and I don't approve of this.)  You can't turn 1944 into 1964 just through juxtaposition.

Still, the main message of the film is a tolerant one, and the Nazis are shown on the wrong side of history, which is all good news.  And there are actors here who are almost always great in the films they appear in, like Sam Rockwell, one of my favorite actors, and Scarlett Johansson, who's come a very long way, acting-wise, from her teen roles, a fact I learned earlier this year.  

Speaking of "earlier this year", if you recall back in April I watched a whole bunch of Nazi and Hitler-based films in a row: "The Reader", "Look Who's Back", "Downfall" and "The Boys from Brazil".  (Three of the films had Bruno Ganz in them, but it's still fairly amazing that they all linked together and this sequence didn't break my chain.). I always had the intention of including "Jojo Rabbit" in the mix, and I could have watched it back then on an Academy screener, but this one just didn't link with the others, so I had to postpone it and hope that I could include it later on in the year.  So I'm happy that I finally got to it, here in the closing days of 2020, which also happens to be the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. (Still very proud of the fact that I watched "Downfall" on the exact 75th anniversary of Hitler's death.). 

Someday, maybe we'll all look back on the Trump years the same way that people once looked back on World War II - namely that it was a difficult time, people were dying all around, and we all had to do our best to survive as best we can, some of us in quiet opposition to the government.  (Others, not so quiet.). But I certainly wouldn't want to look back on such a difficult time in history, knowing that I'd sold out my fellow countrymen for the sake of quick-fixing the economy, putting my own financial interests ahead of the lives and livelihoods of others.  That would be just as bad as living in Nazi Germany and turning a blind eye to the evil and corruption of Hitler, wouldn't it?  Sure, you might argue that "it can't happen here", but to some degree at least, hasn't it already?

Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "The King"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Rebel Wilson (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Alfie Allen (last seen in "The Predator"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "The Girl in the Spider's Web"), Archie Yates, Joe Weintraub, Brian Caspe (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Gabriel Andrews (ditto), Billy Rayner (ditto), Luke Brandon Field, Sam Haygarth, Gilby Griffin Davis, Hardy Griffin Davis with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 propaganda fliers

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Year 12, Day 307 - 11/2/20 - Movie #3,689

BEFORE: As long as I'm in New Zealand, I figure I'd better take advantage and squeeze this one in.  This film only JUST made it to Netflix a couple of weeks ago, and common wisdom says it should be there for two years, so I should probably watch other movies that are likely to leave the service first.  BUT, this one's a double-link, with both Taika Waititi AND Rhys Darby carrying over from "What We Do in the Shadows".  (Actually I think it's a triple, see below.). And who knows when I'll be watching another film with Rhys Darby, or Sam Neill, for that matter?  So I'd better work this one in now.

It's funny, I forgot that my 2020 Movie Year started with a New Zealand-based film, "Whale Rider", and now I've circled back there unintentionally.  I guess in some ways the first film of the year can really set the tone for what's to come, that's why I'm so obsessive about selecting my starting point each year.  

But today's movie is what made me tear up the path I had to the end of the year and re-think it, once I knew for sure that "Black Widow" and "Hellboy" couldn't be part of the mix this year.  Instead of planning a Christmas movie that I wasn't really into, re-thinking the final 12 films for the year allowed me to work in three other Christmas films that I think I'll like better, plus a documentary on my (former) favorite band.  It's really only four out of the twelve films that I changed, but I think it makes a world of difference if I'm happier about the line-up.  As long as I'm in charge of the linking (and the linking's not in charge of me) why not pick the films that I think I'll enjoy better?  Sometimes it's just that simple.  

Oh, and I found a path from January 15 to February 1 - actually, I found TWO paths, which makes things easier, but also harder in a way.  I know for sure now that my 2021 linking will be solid until mid-March (and really, that's the first few steps of a potential yearlong chain already sorted) BUT now I have to decide between the two paths, which both get me to the same place in the end. Again, it may be a matter of just figuring out which one's likely to make me happier. 

And my links for November are: Taika Waititi (again), Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo Nam and Nate Mooney. 

THE PLOT: A national manhunt is ordered for a rebellious kid and his foster uncle who go missing in the wild New Zealand bush. 

AFTER: Well, it seems that New Zealand culture is very different from ours - I'm slowly starting to understand their sense of humor, thanks to comedy ambassadors like Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi - I never watched "The Flight of the Conchords" but Clement turned up in the "Men in Black" series and Marvel's "Legion" show on FX, and I got to know Waititi through his voice-work as Korg in (and his direction of) "Thor: Ragnarok", which was easily the funniest Marvel superhero movie to date (with "Guardians of the Galaxy" a close second).  Now he's also providing the voice for the bounty hunter droid IG-11 in "The Mandalorian", season 2 started on Disney Plus just a couple days ago.  

But maybe we're not all that different from New Zealanders, don't we have a bunch of people in the U.S. who love to hunt and pride themselves on being able to survive out in the wild, while avoiding all possible influence from the government?  Doomsday preppers, or radical militiamen, whatever you want to call them, I have a feeling that come this Tuesday, they'll all be either headed into the woods to go native for four years, or else they'll be strapping on their ammo belts and headed in to the big city to defend our country from Mexicans or liberals or just any minorities they can find.  Either way, it should make for an interesting week.  Just like "The Munsters", the Civil War is a franchise that I don't think needs another installment.  I'd love to see a peaceful election and a fair turnover, but I'm braced for Civil War II: Red vs. Blue.

But I may be able to get a couple more films watched before the country burns to the ground.  This one and "Jojo Rabbit", at least.  Today's film is about abandoned boy sent to live with foster parents, which echoes back to "The House with a Clock in its Walls" from last week.  Almost 13-year old Ricky Baker is in trouble for everything from burning things to loitering and graffiti, so a child welfare officer sends him off to a farm to be raised by Bella Faulkner and her husband, Hec.  Hec's a lot older, so he and Ricky don't exactly see eye to eye, it's really Bella's generosity and spirit holding the "trifecta" together.  They each teach Ricky how to hunt, and it's quite amazing for Ricky to see Bella take down a wild boar. 

But when Bella dies suddenly, child welfare wants to take Ricky back to juvie and his "foster uncle" Hec says he's going to go live in the bush for a while, Ricky beats him to the punch and heads out to the wild first, with his canine companion, Tupac, and a backpack full of peanut butter sandwiches.  He quickly loses his way in the jungle, but Hec manages to find him and they bond as an odd pair to survive outside of conventional society.  After a few months there's a nationwide search and a reward for their return, which seems like a lot of trouble for child services to go through just to find ONE teen.  In America they used to just put missing kids' photos on milk cartons, but it's unclear if any missing persons were ever found by the efforts of habitual milk drinkers. 

There seem to be a bunch of randomly placed hunting cabins across New Zealand, and none of them seem to be locked.  Hec and Ricky raid them for food when their hunting skills fail, but confusion comes about when Ricky says something to a group of hunters that accidentally sounds like his foster uncle has been molesting him.  Ah, there's that wacky New Zealand sense of humor again.  The two spend months out in the wilderness, and then a week with a recluse named Psycho Sam before the authorities manage to track them down.  

It's a simple enough story, but it's got some genuine heart - this was a festival favorite back during the 2016-2017 season.  The message is that everybody needs other people, and at some point in life, your family consists of the people who you've chosen to spend time with, rather than the people you share DNA with.  Also, it's probably a good idea to bring a warm coat. 

Also starring Sam Neill (last seen in "The Commuter"), Julian Dennison (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House (last seen in "Whale Rider"), Oscar Kightley (last heard in "Moana"), Stan Walker, Mike Minogue (also carrying over from "What We Do in the Shadows"), Cohen Holloway (ditto), Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne, Troy Kingi, Hamish Parkinson, Stu Giles.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 improvised haikus

What We Do in the Shadows

Year 12, Day 305 - 10/31/20 - Movie #3,688

BEFORE: OK, here it is, the last movie of October.  24 films (12 originals and 12 sequels) and while it might have been a short month, it's still some solid linking work.  Rhys Darby carries over from "Jumanji: The Next Level".  Also just 12 films left to come in 2020, and I've got the great benefit of having THREE slightly different paths to the end, all of them will result in another "perfect year" (in this year that's been anything but perfect) so I can choose my favorite, that's a great feeling.  

Here are my viewing platform stats for October, and I'll total everything up in December, most likely cable still comes out on top.  

OCTOBER -

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Cabin in the Woods, The Dark Tower, Zombieland: Double Tap, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Addams Family (2019), Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, The House with a Clock in its Walls, What We Do in the Shadows
6 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Doctor Sleep, Replicas, The Dead Don't Die, It: Chapter Two, Jumanji: The Next Level
2 watched on Netflix: Horns, Swiss Army Man
1 watched on iTunes: The Woman in Black
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Suspiria
5 watched on Hulu: Twilight, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
1 watched on Disney+: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
24 TOTAL

I also took my first stab at making a rough plan for January, and an attempt to clarify February a bit, because locking down February's start will tell me where January needs to end.  I've got a solid plan for the first two weeks of January, but right around January 15 comes a problem known as "too many choices" - there are about 13 different places I could be on January 16-18.  I build these little "decision trees" with a lot of arrows showing all the different directions I could go in, and at that point it just grows ridiculously large.  Which is good in a way, because it shows through probability how vast my choices are, but then how do I narrow them down?  I tried going backwards from February 1, also, but that decision tree got too large too, and so far I haven't found the film chain that unites both sets of choices, at best there's a four or five day gap in between.  More scrap paper is required at this point...

THE PLOT: Vlago, Deacon and Vladislav are vampires who are finding that modern life has them struggling with the mundane - like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs and overcoming roommate conflicts. 

AFTER: As you can imagine, with just 12 film slots left this year, I have to make my choices carefully.  Sure, I've got a couple more films with Jemaine Clement in them, but that's not going to get me to some Christmas movies.  So, I'm going the other way tomorrow, which gets me to "Jojo Rabbit" this week, and I've really been looking forward to that one.  Everything else is essentially being re-scheduled for 2021 or beyond, and it's also been the year of the Constant Re-schedule, hasn't it?  Between COVID-19 and the cold weather, most of Halloween is cancelled - no parade, no parties, no sexy costumes, no kids trick-or-treating.  I didn't even buy candy because there's half a bag of last year's candy left on my shelf, just in case a few hardy souls come by tonight begging.  But if our doorbell doesn't ring tonight at all, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. OK, so I bought one package of Reese's pumpkins, but those are all for me.  

"Hellboy" is put off until next year, as are eight films about mummies, 10 films about time travel, "Salem's Lot", "The Babadook", "Devil", "Pet Sematary", last year's "The Invisible Man", "The Witch", "The Witches" (1990 and 2020 versions), "Gretel & Hansel", all remaining films about serial killers, and quite a few others.  There just wasn't time this October to get to everything.  Other notable re-schedules include "New Mutants", "The Lion King" (2019), "Dumbo", "The Trip to Greece", "The King of Staten Island", "The Call of the Wild", 4 films with Shia Labeouf, "Warrior" and three other films with Tom Hardy, 3 films with Johnny Depp, "Bohemian Rhapsody" and countless others.  (If I keep listing, I'll be here all day...)  I'm running out of time, across the board.  Then there's "Bill and Ted Face the Music", "Tenet", "Wonder Woman 1984", "Black Widow", "No Time to Die" and everything else Hollywood has chosen to not release until movie theaters re-open in the two biggest markets, NYC and L.A. Even though great progress was made this year on some long-standing fronts, I still feel like I'm never going to be able to schedule it all.  Maybe I need to wait a bit to see when the vaccine gets released, when Hollywood gets back on track, then firm up my January plans.  

In the meantime, I'm going to work with what I have available to me.  This 2014 film out of New Zealand was bound to happen, I suppose, with someone taking the mockumentary format made popular by "This is Spinal Tap" and "The Office" and applying it to vampires.  I guess it also hearkens back to "The Real World", which basically started the reality TV genre, and asks, "What happens when four vampires live together in a house, stop being polite and start getting real?"  Which of course doesn't make any sense, because why would said vampires allow a documentary crew to follow them around, while they're trying to avoid detection?  Why wouldn't they just pretend to go along with the project, and then drink the blood of the camera crew and field producers?  Ah, right, the lure of reality TV and becoming famous, and all those sweet, sweet endorsement deals.  Vampire influencers cashing in on Instagram would probably follow.  

For the purposes of this film, it turns out that New Zealand has a very lively monster nightlife scene - there are clubs, of course, and in addition to the vampires there's a roving group of werewolves that our subjects encounter a few times.  (There's that "Twilight" rivalry again, between the vamps and the wolves...)  And the big social event of the year is the Unholy Masquerade, which happens not on Halloween but on June 6 at 6 pm (think about it).  Vampires, zombies and witches all come together for a big masked ball, and absolutely no humans are allowed, it's a chance for all the undead to relax and unwind and interact, putting their differences aside.  In New Zealand it seems things are very well organized, each group has its own society with boards and elected leaders, and rules and such.  It seems like a very civilized way of doing things, of course it only works until some idiots bring a human to the party as their "plus one".  

Much like "The Dead Don't Die" and "Only Lovers Left Alive", this film is interesting because someone sat down for a bit and really thought about the classic horror film stereotypes, and what they might mean in the modern world.  Being a vampire surely has its down-side, right?  If a vampire should happen to make human friends, then he's either got to watch them grow old and die, or turn them into a vampire at some point, or just plain drain the blood of a friend.  Tough choices, all.  A vampire also needs a human "familiar", like Renfield from the "Dracula" novel, to get certain household tasks done during the day, get his coffin shipped from place to place, and clean up the blood from the bathroom floor.  How complicated is that relationship, like does hypnosis only get them so far, at some point it seems they need to promise to make their familiars immortal, just to keep them interested in doing the job.  It's like a promised promotion that never seems to come.  

Speaking of things that never happen, there's a chore wheel in the vampire flat that most people choose to ignore - Deacon hasn't washed the dishes in at least five years.  And whose job is it to get the blood stains out of the couch?  There's something of a generation gap here, because Deacon's only 183 years old, so he's clearly the "young rebel" of the group.  Viago is 379 years old, he's a former German count who ended up in New Zealand in the 1910's searching for the former love of his life (who's now in a senior home), and Vladislav is 862, he's been around since the early Transylvanian days, it seems, haunted by memories of his old nemesis "The Beast".  Petyr, meanwhile, is over 8,000 years old, and he's more of the "Nosferatu" type of vampire, doesn't say much but just lives down in the basement behind a stone slab and does whatever he wants.  They bring him a chicken every few days and that keeps him from getting out and killing the locals.  

There are probably good reasons why most vampires live alone - put a few of them together and they're bound to argue about who to eat, when to eat, who to turn into a vampire when they need a new roomate, and who to banish from the house for not following the rules.  There are just a few special-effects heavy battles here, but mostly this feels like a low-rent indie production, either by design or just by the nature of making an indie film and trying to do a lot with very little resources.  Thankfully, they succeeded in getting a lot done, and even though (as "Spinal Tap" pointed out) there's a very fine line between clever and stupid, I'm going to give this one the benefit of the doubt.  

I know there's an FX series that spun off from this film, and even though I'm only halfway through "Luke Cage" on Netflix, I might have to check that series out on Hulu, before the third season starts.  It's only 20 20-minute episodes, I could probably knock that out in under a week, before I start watching "Iron Fist".  If that series is half as funny as this film, I'll probably enjoy it. 

Happy Halloween, everyone!  We've got a rare full moon tonight (2nd of the month, so it's a "blue moon" too) so that means both the werewolves AND the vampires will be out tonight, unless it's too cold, or unless they're afraid of the plague.  Stay safe, buy your own candy, and wear a mask - you know what, wear two masks just to be on the safe side.

Also starring Taika Waititi (last heard in "Avengers: Endgame"), Jemaine Clement (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Jonathan Brugh, Ben Fransham, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stu Rutherford, Jackie Van Beek, Ethel Robinson, Elena Stejko, Jason Hoyte, Karen O'Leary, Mike Minogue.

RATING: 7 out of 10 hard-to-find virgins