ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas

Year 12, Day 324 - 11/19/20 - Movie #3,696

BEFORE: This film is going to wrap up November, with Billy Bob Thornton carrying over from "Dead Man", and you can probably guess what Christmas film I'll be watching when I come back in December.  I had a bit of a dilemma here, because suddenly at the end of the year, with only a few slots left, came a sudden influx of films, including "Mr. North", which is now postponed, and also "A Million Little Pieces", another film with Billy Bob Thornton that looks somewhat interesting.  Then I found a third Christmas movie that could easily get tacked on to the end, after the second Christmas movie.  So something had to give, and it came down to either THIS rock documentary, or "A Million Little Pieces".  

Neither one fit thematically, but this one gets the edge because it's a music doc that didn't link to any of the other music docs on the list (at least not according to the IMDB, there's always uncredited archive footage, usually of the Beatles or the Stones) and I can probably link to "A Million Little Pieces" some other way.  This film HAD to go between two Billy Bob Thornton films in order to be included, so there you go.  PLUS I can't really say that I've covered the music documentary category from "A to Z" unless there's a Z in there somewhere, right?  Oh, and ZZ Top was my favorite band for a number of years, let's say from 1983 to 1996.  More on that later.   

THE PLOT: The story of how three oddball teenage bluesmen became one of the biggest, most beloved bands on the planet. 

AFTER: Well, I was right, there were some notable musicians appearing in archive footage, and that would have been enough to link this film to my earlier chain of rockumentaries, but there was no way to know that without watching the film, was there?  This could have been the link between "Sound City" and "Muscle Shoals", two very different docs about famous sound studios.  But that's neither here nor there - how the heck was I supposed to know that ZZ Top once opened up for Jimi Hendrix or went to play in Hawaii with the Rolling Stones?  Oh, right, I'm a fan, but I never heard those stories from the early days of the band before.  

Maybe I should have known - every single U.S. band that came up in the 1960's or 1970's traces its roots back to Elvis Presley, and every single British band that came up in the 1960's traces its roots back to the Beatles.  (Unless it's a U.S. band inspired by the Beatles, or a British band inspired by Elvis.).  Ah, but ZZ Top really has the roots of its sound in the old blues style, so that means we have to go back to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf - and this explains the connection to the Stones, Hendrix and (more tangentially) Led Zeppelin and Cream, they all covered or ripped off the old blues progressions.  Have you noticed there are very few documentaries made about Led Zeppelin?  That's because they can't really do a deep dive into the creation of their hit songs without pointing out that they blatantly STOLE everything from blues records, just changing the names of the songs and failing to credit the songwriters.  For all the popularity of Zeppelin, there's just no original work there to take pride in.  But I digress.

This documentary instead gets more concerned with the three burning questions on everyone's minds - which are 1) "What's up with the beards?", 2) "Are the beards real?" and 3) Why doesn't the drummer, whose last name is Beard, have a beard?"  Well, all of these questions have an answer, and it's basically the same answer.  The band famously went out on its first tour as a headlining act, on the "Texas Worldwide Tour" that lasted from 1976 to 1977, criss-crossing the whole U.S. from one end to the other.  The tour famously included a Texas-shaped stage with a live buffalo, live steer, live rattlesnakes and a few buzzards that were really looking forward to the drummer dying from exhaustion so they could eat him.  It was some weird mix of rock music and a live touring zoo that has yet to be replicated - and when it was over, the band members needed a break, which started as a 90-day break and then lasted over two years.  When the band got back together, they found that they had all neglected to shave during the break, and decided to roll with it, except that the drummer's beard was nowhere near as long as the beards of the other two, so he promptly shaved it off to not look like a poser.  End of mystery - except keeping the beards going forward added a sense of mystery, with a long beard and some (cheap) sunglasses, the two guitarists became characters of a sort, no longer looking like themselves (and after you've seen their pre-beard faces, you may agree that this was an improvement.)

But it's HOW these three different men spent their two-year break, and the money they earned from that worldwide tour, that is the most edifying.  Guitarist Billy Gibbons went walk-about, hanging out in Europe with punks in 1976, traveling to India and seeking the advice of mystics, and so on,  Bassist Dusty Hill took a job at a Texas airport as a baggage handler named "Joe", taking advantage of the anonymity granted him by growing a beard, plus being a bass player.  And drummer Frank Beard went to Jamaica and spent all that tour money on drugs.  There's something brutally honest about that, like a street beggar who holds up a sign that says, "Who am I kidding, I need a beer!"  The guy liked heroin, what more is there to say?  

Eventually the band came back together, the drummer went to rehab, and they started making new music to follow-up their early hits "Tush" and "La Grange" with a more studio-based sound that suddenly started to sell albums - their 1979 "Deguello" album went platinum thanks to songs like "Cheap Sunglasses" and their cover of the old Sam & Dave hit "I Thank You", and they slowly found themselves moving a bit away from the blues and closer to mainstream rock and roll.  Then of course, when MTV became a thing, they were perfectly positioned after getting out of their old contract and moving to Warner Bros., whose goal was to conquer the world through three-minute music videos.  Who can forget the triple threat of the music videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs", which all featured the band acting as mystical, ghost-like advisers helping the downtrodden normal American slaves transcend their slavish, work-a-day lives through the combination of a hot car and scantily-clad women?  And don't forget those fuzzy guitars that they could somehow spin on their belt buckles.  If ever a band was in the right place at the right time, it was ZZ Top - the first year of MTV was like Elvis shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan show mixed with the Beatles appearing in "A Hard Day's Night", mixed with Miley Cyrus swinging nekkid on a giant wrecking ball.  

I was right there with them, I'd stay up late to watch "Friday Night Videos" (my parents didn't have cable, so no MTV) to see if "Sharp Dressed Man" would beat out Def Leppard's "Photograph" for video of the week, and there was nothing more meaningful in my life at the time.  I HAD to buy the "Eliminator" album, because these guys were just too cool for school, and I'd put on the headphones way too loud and mock-drum along with every track.  Plus I new every second of their videos, and just when to pause them, if you know what I mean.  I bought myself a shiny "ZZ" keychain and dreamed of the day that the band would pull up to my job in a 1933 Ford hot rod filled with three lingerie-wearing women who would whisk me away and rock my world.  But, that never happened.  Wait, music videos weren't reality?  Still, a young teen could dream, right?  

It appears that ZZ Top sold me (and millions of others) a bill of goods that they couldn't deliver on.  But they're hardly the only ones.  If I go out and buy a new suit, new shoes, silk suit, black tie, you're saying that EVERY GIRL will be crazy about me, if I'm a "Sharp Dressed Man"?  I guess I didn't read the disclaimer saying that your actual mileage may vary, and perhaps not EVERY girl will be crazy about you, because come on, you're not in the band, are you?  And where is this elusive woman who not only has legs, but clearly knows how to use them?  (You mean, walking?  Or are we talking about something else here?). Damn, but that's really a stupid song at the end of the day - but somehow, for a while, it was the center of my universe.  

Later on, while in college, since ZZ Top wasn't putting out new records fast enough for me, I searched record stores for their earlier, some would say more interesting, albums in the popular cassette format.  Eventually I got them all, from 1971's cleverly-named "ZZ Top's First Album" to 1981's "El Loco".  I even went to see them in concert just once, at Madison Square Garden in NYC, this must have been in June 1994, the "Antenna" tour, when they were still very cool in my eyes - even though there were no live animals on the stage, at least there were "moving sidewalks" (also the name of Billy Gibbons' first band...).  I didn't know there were so many rednecks in the NYC area, but they sure came out!  I think my first wife "came out" shortly thereafter, and maybe I should partially blame the hot women on stage making out with each other.  

Slowly I found myself drifting away from ZZ Top as a fan, though I still cherished those early albums - look, things happened, I got busy and my life shifted around, and I found other bands to listen to and fill the gap. Hey, we'll always have 1983, right?  And 1985, 1990 and 1994?  Also, it's kind of the band's fault, too, because just before "Antenna", which was an OK album, they left Warner Bros. and signed one of those multi-album, decade-long contracts with RCA for a PILE of money, which they'd get no matter what happened.  At that point, what incentive does a band have to, you know, make good music?  Sure enough, the "Rhythmeen" album in 1996 totally sucked - go ahead, name one song from that album that's even as good as "Velcro Fly".  You can't do it, because there were no good songs, and the first job of a band is to record good songs.  Same thing with "XXX" in 1999 - who can even remember the failed songs "Poke Chop Sandwich", "Crucifixx-a-Flat" and "Dreadmonboogaloo", besides me?  Nobody.  I bought "Mescalero" in 2003 out of respect for their past, but the damage was done, and there was no going back.  

Notably, this documentary comes to a close right after "Eliminator" in 1983, which cemented the band's iconic status, but there's not even any mention of the follow-up album, "Afterburner", which is at least half as good as "Eliminator", I think everybody can agree with that.  "Sleeping Bag" was a hit, and "Rough Boy" was like the greatest ballad ever, but they never wanted to be a ballad-singing band, did they?  It's the law of diminishing returns at that point, because "Recyler" was probably only half as good as "Afterburner", but at least it had "Doubleback", which notably appeared (as the band did) in the movie "Back to the Future III".  

So we have to face reality here - ZZ Top had some good times, they got to travel around the world, open up for Hendrix and the Stones, but they were essentially a blues cover band that somehow found a way to catch lightning in a bottle for a few years, thanks to MTV, Warner Bros., Ford motor company and some hot music-video babes attracting thousands of over-sexed teen boys.  By the same token, The Beatles were a skiffle band who similarly caught lightning in a bottle thanks to Ed Sullivan, Richard Lester, the JFK assassination, George Martin and Paul McCartney attracting thousands of under-sexed teen girls.  The difference is, the Beatles had the good sense to break up and do their own thing, but ZZ Top are somehow still together, playing the same blues songs that they did 50 years ago.  The body is dead, but the brain just hasn't accepted it yet.  The songs from "Eliminator" are like the original "Star Wars: A New Hope", they've worn a groove in my brain so deep that I can listen to them, but I can't HEAR them any more, I'm kind of immune.  I had to walk away from them for years just to get them back.  

They win the title of longest band without any line-up changes by default, only because they've had the same three guys playing together for 50 years, and though the Stones have been around longer, Brian Jones died, Bill Wyman left and Ronnie Wood came on board.  Longer band history, but not the same line-up.  But in my book, ZZ Top hasn't produced anything half-GOOD since 1994, and I think that needs to be taken into account.  And I say this as a FAN, who just wants their more recent music to be, you know, better.  I'm that guy who was driving through Texas two years ago who made my wife pull over just so I could get a photo of the highway sign for La Grange.  

A couple notable things - ZZ Top served up a bit of karma on Jimi Hendrix, who famously played two songs from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in concert, before that album was released, because he knew that a couple of the Beatles were in his audience.  ZZ Top opened for Hendrix and somehow had to play "Foxy Lady" and "Purple Haze" to round out their set, when they noticed Hendrix watching from off-stage.  Surprisingly, he wasn't upset, he just said, "I like you guys, you got a lot of nerve."  

They also relate the story here about how the band first came together, with Dusty Hill in the Dallas-based band The Warlocks with his brother, and Frank Beard playing in another band, then moving over to join the Warlocks.  It's hardly a "Ringo-replaces-Pete-Best" moment, but I guess every line-up has to come from somewhere.  Then Frank Beard met up with Billy Gibbons after two members of Moving Sidewalks got drafted, and then two more people dropped out of the trio that was left behind, one taking a gig composing music for "Mork & Mindy".  Then when Frank says to Billy, "Hey, I know a bassist named Dusty", it's extremely anti-climactic when you compare that to, say, Lennon meeting McCartney at that garden party.  

And I'm out - have a happy and a safe Thanksgiving, and I'll meet you back here in about a month to celebrate Christmas.  Got to get my annual mix CD put together.  

Also starring Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard, Josh Homme (last seen in "Sound City"), Terry Manning, Country Winston Marshall, Steve Miller, Howard Bloom, Ralph Fisher, Tim Newman, Dan Auerbach, with archive footage of Elvis Presley (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Mick Jagger (ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), B.B. King, Muddy Waters (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Howlin' Wolf (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Janis Joplin, James Brown (last seen in "The New Guy"), Roky Erickson, Randy Newman, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Bill Ham, Mark Goodman, Col. Tom Parker. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 beer drinkers and/or hell raisers

Dead Man

Year 12, Day 322 - 11/17/20 - Movie #3,695

BEFORE: So the initial plan was to stop after "Seraphim Falls" and save the rest of this year's films for December, but that meant stopping right between two "revisionist Westerns", or so I'm being told, so I've decided to keep the thematic momentum going, and now I'll watch two films this week, then put the blog on pause for a month.  But we are still very, very close to Christmas movies - I think the Lifetime channel is already running them - just like we're very, very close to a new President, and not one but two effective vaccines.  Better days are ahead, we have to believe that, or else we're in danger of losing what little hope we have left.  

Michael Wincott carries over from "Seraphim Falls" - there was an alternate plan if I'd watched "Mr. North", and it involved Anjelica Huston and Robert Mitchum, but there are so few slots left in 2020 that this plan is off the table now - and several films are now being shoehorned into slots in 2021, much like the release schedules of all of the major studios right now, I'll wager. 

THE PLOT: On the run after murdering a man, accountant William Blake encounters a strange aboriginal American man named Nobody, who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world. 

AFTER: And so it came to pass that in the closing days of the weirdest movie year ever, and in many ways the weirdest year ever overall, that I found a way to squeeze in three films directed by Jim Jarmusch, two of them off-beat horror films and one alternative/revisionist Western.  And that's all OK, everything happens for a reason, every film somehow gets watched at the right time.  This one's been in the back of my mind for YEARS, for example, without actually appearing on any of my lists, largely because it hasn't been seen on cable - not by me, anyway.  If any channel ever ran this, I missed it - or I wasn't yet curious enough about it for its presence to register.  A few months back I noticed it on IMDB.TV, which is a free service screening films (I don't think with ads, like Tubi, but I'm not sure...) and the IMDB web-site is connected to Amazon, so that means it could have appeared on Amazon Prime soon after.   But instead it ended up on HBO Max, which is a NEW streaming service that I automatically get now because I pay for HBO every month.  The streaming wars give, and the streaming wars will eventually take away - right now, they're still in "giving" mode.  So this now becomes the very first film I've watched on HBO Max, beating out "An American Pickle", and all the other films on my HBO Max playlist, which are all also available through the DVR, for now.  

And I know this film came to me, eventually, at just the right time, because it shares some DNA with "Seraphim Falls", beyond the fact that they're both revisionist Westerns.  Both are stories about a man on the run, accused of murder (rightly or wrongly) and pursued by a group of several men who are just as likely to kill each other as they are to kill him.  In both films, the lead character encounters a Native American who seems to have a mystical connection, and who (either literally or symbolically) serves the function of ushering him into the afterlife.  Both films dispose of characters quite liberally, sometimes introducing characters JUST to kill them, it seems (Hey, the Old West was a rough place, for sure...) and both films feature, at one point, someone attempting to remove a bullet with a very large knife.  

(The other option was to put this film in between the other two Jim Jarmusch films, though it wouldn't have fit thematically in the horror chain.  But since Jim Jarmusch tends to use some actors more than once, it shared two actors (Steve Buscemi and Iggy Pop) with "The Dead Don't Die", and another actor, John Hurt, with "Only Lovers Left Alive".  But I didn't realize that at the time, because both of those films linked to each other via Tilda Swinton.  Instead, this film goes HERE, and allows me to connect to Christmas movies.  See what I mean?  Every film gets watched at just the right time.) 

In the end, I don't know what's weirder, that Jarmusch directed a vampire film, a zombie film, or a Western.  They all seem like they're way out of his NYC-indie comfort zone, so good for him, I'm glad he hasn't limited himself to just one genre or one style.  It's good for a director to challenge himself, stretch those muscles, and he didn't just keep making "Down by Law" or "Coffee and Cigarettes" again and again.  That being said, there's so much Jarmusch-y like dialogue in this one, in between all the horse riding and gun shooting, that is.  It starts like one of those "fish out of water" stories, where Depp plays William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, wearing a very unfortunate plaid suit, traveling by train from Cleveland out West (the state is unnamed, but the train crosses the desert, and the film ends in a redwood forest?  Perhaps in the Pacific Northwest?)

By the time he gets there, the job has been filled by someone else - that's the 1800's for you, travel took a long time, and so did communication.  Did William send a confirmation telegram?  It's unclear, but hey, lesson learned.  It took him a month to settle his affairs in Cleveland, buy a suit, pack and then take a probably weeks-long train ride to the frontier town of Machine.  Anyway, he's left stranded and jobless in a new (and very filthy) town, decorated with a lot of skulls and bones.  The death motif is everywhere from the start, plus the film is called "Dead Man", after all.  And thus we see a big difference between this film and the other two Jim Jarmusch films I watched in October - those were about zombies and vampires, creatures who die, but then somehow keep on living.  Today's film is more about a guy who's technically alive, but in many ways he's doomed.  Actions taken at the start of the film seal his fate, in some ways he's already dead, but just doesn't know it yet.  

This gets further punctuated when he meets a young woman outside the saloon (where he's spent his last bit of money on a small bottle of alcohol).  After forming a connection and sleeping with her, her old boyfriend returns to her, and he's not happy to find her in bed with someone else.  Gunfire is exchanged, and somehow two parts of the love triangle end up dead, with William Blake leaving the scene.  But he's now got a bullet lodged close to his heart, so that clock starts ticking.  This is where the Native American mystic enters the scene, and he can't remove the bullet, so instead he starts the long journey of delivering William Blake to the place where the sea meets the sky, and preparing him for the transition to the next world.  

However, the man Blake shot happened to be the son of the owner of metal works, the place that offered Blake a job, but couldn't wait long enough for him to arrive, and filled the position with another accountant.  I'd say this seems a bit contrived, but there are probably only a few dozen people in that frontier town, and so of course everybody's probably connected to each other in some way.  You can't shoot somebody in an Old West town without then having to deal with that guy's brother, or father, or some relative tracking you down for vengeance, right?  So old man Dickinson hires the three meanest, nastiest bounty-hunting killers he can find, and sends them after Blake.  Meanwhile he also puts out a reward the legal way, so every marshal in the county also ends up on Blake's trail.  

Then, things get weird.  Umm, that is, weirder.  Nobody takes peyote and goes off on a vision quest, Blake gets hungry and starts to have visions of his own, but also develops skills that help him defeat all the unsavory types that are tracking him, trying to kill him, or just take the tobacco that they think he might have. (Well, it is a Jarmusch film, in the end, I wonder if everybody seeking tobacco is some kind of callback to characters bumming smokes in "Coffee & Cigarettes"...). A lot of people get killed along the way, some of them accidentally, but this film never really falls into the comedy patterns of, say, a Coen Brothers film, or "A Million Ways to Die in the West".  I'd hate to see something like this go the slapstick route, after all, instead Jarmusch did a good job of maintaining the quite serious tone, while peppering the film with comic characters, like Iggy Pop wearing a frontier dress (cannot un-see).  Was the implication that he served as the pseudo-girlfriend for the two trappers he was traveling with?  

As the film wore on, I do admit that I couldn't take some things seriously - part of that was due to the too-modern attitudes of some of the characters, like a trading post missionary who's obviously racially biased against Native Americans, who themselves seemed keenly aware that the missionary's blankets were dangerous due to smallpox (I doubt that in real-life anyone on the frontier made the connection at the time).  Other elements were a bit distracting, like a trapper named Benmont Tench, and I know that's the name of a musician from Tom Petty's band, the Heartbreakers.  But apart from that, this was a solid piece of filmmaking that may have flown under most people's radar for far too long - I know that was the case for me. 

It's been quite a while since I made any progress on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", bu this film is on that list - and so is "The Cabin in the Woods", which I watched in October.  (Films scroll off this list all the time, to make room for newer ones...). So updating my progress, this takes me up to 430 seen from that list.  I may be able to get to five more in January, if my plan holds out - that's if I watch four films directed by Ingmar Bergman, plus a fifth film, "Muriel's Wedding".  But January feels like a long way off, I've got to get through a whole month of down-time and then the Christmas movies first. 

Also starring Johnny Depp (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Gary Farmer (last seen in "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), Crispin Glover (last seen in "River's Edge"), Robert Mitchum (last seen in "The Grass Is Greener"), John Hurt (last seen in "Only Lovers Left Alive"), Mili Avital (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Gabriel Byrne (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Lance Henriksen (last heard in "Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins"), Eugene Byrd (last seen in "8 Mile"), Iggy Pop (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "Faster"), Jared Harris (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "Frozen II"), Jimmie Ray Weeks, Mark Bringelson, John North, Gibby Haynes, Michelle Thrush, with a cameo from Steve Buscemi (also last seen in "The Dead Don't Die")

RATING: 6 out of 10 totem poles

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