Thor: Love and Thunder

Year 14, Day 232 - 8/20/22 - Movie #4,228 - VIEWED ON 8/2/22.    

BEFORE: Yes, I snuck out to the movies once again, during the first week of August, while I was still watching and reviewing documentaries - so yeah, I watched this between "We Feed People" and "Julia", what can I say, I was desperate for some fiction, like a superhero movie, after watching about 35 documentaries.  Doc fatigue had definitely set in - by contrast, when I watched "Jurassic World Dominion" at the theater where I work, I was only 2 docs into the chain. Right now I can't wait for the chain to end. 

Chris Pratt carries over from "The Tomorrow War".

THE PLOT: Thor enlists the help of Valkyrie, Korg and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster to fight Gorr the God Butcher, who intends to make the gods extinct. 

AFTER: There's an upside to having a path to the end of Movie Year 14, it means I don't have to worry about scheduling until December, just stick to the plan, watch another 72 movies over the next four months - easy peasy, the math is in my favor - and just wait for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to roll around, I've got holiday-themed movies for all of those.  The downside, however is that I haven't really taken a hard look at what's being released this fall, because there's no way I can schedule them in.  I have to work at a screening of "Beast" this week, and even though I've got other movies with Idris Elba coming up, I can't watch the film.  What else is coming out this fall?  "Bullet Train", "Black Adam", the long-awaited "Avatar" sequel, and then there's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever".  I'm going to have to take a pass on all of that, the last one probably hurts the most. But that's my trade-off, for the security of knowing I'm going to have my fourth totally linked Movie Year in a row.  

So I figure that "Thor: Love and Thunder" is the last movie I'll watch live in a theater for the next few months, unless something changes.  How ironic that I'm going back to work in a movie theater next week, for what I hope is a very busy August & September (many of the orientation events for the college's fall semester take place at the theater) and well, some of those events don't even involve movies, they're just the closest thing to an auditorium that the school has.  Maybe they will run some orientation-related videos, but that's not my concern, I'm mostly there to open the doors, make sure the events run smoothly, and then lock up after. Good gig, right? Sure, put me on a 12-hour shift, because I get paid by the hour.  Anyway, working there and not watching movies kind of feels like I'm following that old advice, "Don't get high on your own supply..."

Anyway, back to the fourth (!!) "Thor" movie, his first movie post "Endgame", in Marvel's Phase 4 or Phase 5 or whatever it is.  By now Marvel's fighting franchise fatigue, looking for ways to move each hero's story forward without repeating themselves, but really, I think they could have just made another "Ragnarok", because to do anything else after that feels like a bit of a letdown.  So many important things happened in "Ragnarok" because they really went for it, they had Thor battling Hulk, revealing Hela as Thor's sister, then the destruction of Asgard by Surtur, so much went down!  The giant Fenris wolf, the death of Odin, and then knowing that the battle with Thanos was just around the corner, that was a big freaking deal all around!  So to have Thor & friends battle just ONE villain here, well there's really no comparison, is there?  "Ragnarok" for the win, it's going to be regarded as the high point in the series. 

That being said, I'm familiar enough with the comic books that I know the storylines that Taika Waititi is "borrowing" from here, it's the same formula as "Ragnarok" in that they're stitching together several comic-book plots and hoping that the result becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Gorr the God-Butcher was a notable villain from a particular run of the "Thor: God of Thunder" series in 2013.  In the comics, not only did Gorr try to kill every god he encountered with his Necrosword, but he also once whispered a secret to Thor that caused such a lack of confidence that Thor was unable to wield his hammer Mjolnir for months.  The secret, which was eventually revealed, was that the universe would have been better off without gods - and I can't say that I disagree.  The movies follow the basics of Gorr's story, namely that his whole family dies after he prays for his god's help, and he then learns that his god COULD have helped him, but chose not to - then once he gets the god-killing sword, Gorr sets out to kill all gods around the universe, and of course Thor gets in his way. 

Another storyline mixed in from the comics is Jane Foster getting powers similar to Thor's - Jane was Thor's human girlfriend WAY back in the Marvel comics of the 1960's, back when it was believed that Thor was inhabiting the body of a human doctor, Donald Blake (later revealed as an unreal construct of Odin, designed to teach his son Thor humility).  You can kind of see how a new writer takes over a Marvel character every few years and then tries to put a new spin on the stories that have come before. Donald Blake's a human who found a hammer - no, he's not, he's just a part of Thor's personality - no, wait, he's an artificial being and a walking lesson plan - and the latest was that Donald Blake turned evil and tried to imprison Thor in his non-real limbo (the place where characters go when the writers aren't using them, I guess.).

Anyway, the comic books didn't do anything with Jane Foster for a few decades, then suddenly decided it would be great if more teen girls were reading comic books, so they made female versions of all the popular male characters, there was a female clone of Wolverine, a black teen female who built her own Ironheart suit, and then the "Young Avengers" with a teen female Hawkeye and an alt-future teen version of Spider-Man's daughter for a while. Around this same time they brought back Jane Foster but gave her cancer, and then threw in Thor-like powers at the same time, for balance I guess. You might think that the powers of Thor would heal her cancer, but over time they had the opposite effect, she needed to give up being Thor in order for the chemotherapy to work.  Thor was dead or MIA or something for a while, if I recall, and Jane was the star of the Thor comics for a couple of years, but then the writer changed again and they killed her off very dramatically - but of course she came back as Valkyrie, because why not, and I think she and Thor are both serving on the Avengers right now.  Must be awkward.  

If you weave those two plotlines together with the after-math of "Avengers: Endgame", you end up with "Love and Thunder".  Thor got back in shape after his time as "Fat Thor" after killing Thanos and temporarily retiring, and has been hanging out with the Guardians of the Galaxy, as the portmanteau-inspired "Asgardians of the Galaxy". (There was also a comic book with this title, a few years back...). But the alliance isn't really working well, because Thor's acting like a real hotdog, showing up at the last minute to defeat the evil power and take all the credit, all the while calling every battle a "team effort" when it clearly isn't.  This leads to a break-up which is tough on Thor, but one the other Guardians have been dreaming about - Thor heads out on his own and finds Sif, from the previous "Thor" movies, who had tracked down Gorr, who's headed for New Asgard to kill whatever gods he finds there. 

Also headed for New Asgard is Jane Foster, who heard the call of Mjolnir and believes that it might help heal her cancer, and due to an enchantment that Thor had (conveniently) placed on his hammer years before, the broken hammer's pieces come back together and give Jane the same powers as Thor, plus a similar costume.  Thor teams up with, umm, Lady Thor, plus Korg and Valkyrie to fight Gorr, who escapes after kidnapping some Asgardian children. (The kids are what, exactly? Not gods, are they demi-gods or aliens or just kids?  This is very unclear.)

Thor's team travels to Omnipotence City (which is, where, exactly?) which is some kind of home for all the gods, and this is where there's a weird little quirk about the Marvel Universe revealed - the comics have told stories about all kinds of gods over the years, like the Greek gods are a thing in the Marvel Comics, but so are the Egyptian gods (Moon Knight) and Native American gods and Asian gods and Hawaiian gods, in addition to the Asgardian ones, and then in the MCU there are a whole host of gods from other planets, I guess?  Why so many different gods, Marvel?  But no Yahweh or Allah, hmmm?  And every set of gods claims they created the Earth and mankind, so they can't all be right, can they?  What's the deal here, did the gods create man or did man's belief create the gods, hmmm again?

Anyway, the big cheese god, bigger than Odin even, seems to be Zeus here, and he doesn't consider Gorr much of a threat, and then wants to keep Thor's team captive so they won't reveal the location of the city where the other gods all live.  Really, this is how it all works, and you're sticking with that?  It's just odd - weirder even than the "love triangle" between Thor, his ex-hammer and his newer axe, Stormbreaker.  Though I guess it's more of a quadrangle since Jane Foster's also involved in the mix. Must be awkward.  The Asgardian god then has to defeat the Greek god and take what he needs to go fight Gorr in the Shadow Realm. 

Then the whole thing gets even more contrived, because Gorr sort of gets off the god-killing path (aww, and he was doing so well!) and instead focuses on using his Necrosword to open a gate to the realm of Eternity, the personification of the universe, and it seems anybody who gets that close to Eternity gets granted one wish, and Gorr's going to use that wish to kill all the gods?  It's also very unclear who set up all these rules about how the universe works, and then also how the word spread about how to accomplish all of this.  So, Eternity's just some giant equivalent of a genie?  That seems like a big waste of a character who is somehow everything and everyone all at once, omnipotent and omnipresent. 

I have to commend the MCU here, because when they kill off a character, that character stays dead, at least so far.  (I'm not counting all the heroes and people Thanos snapped out of existence, who all came back.). It's the other heroes who have died and stayed dead (again, so far) that impresses me.  Like they kill the heroes off in the comic books all the time, but then bring them right back.  Black Widow died a couple years ago, her neck was broken, but another writer found a way to bring her back a month (our time) later.  Captain America died several times, I've seen each member of the Fantastic Four die twice since I started reading the book, and Iron Man's died at least three times I can remember.  Odin died recently in the Thor comics, but I'm just not buying it, especially since his spirit's taken up residence inside Thor's hammer. Must be awkward. 

I won't say here how everything ends, but nothing really ends with these characters, does it?  Things just keep changing and the story keeps moving forward, as long as the movies keep bringing in cash.  I just don't know if I agree with where the characters are when this story ends, it just doesn't really fit with the Thor that I know for him to end up this way.  Maybe this film will grow on me over time, but I'm just not sure yet.  Definitely better than "Thor: The Dark World" but that's not really saying much.  And the nods to the LGBTQ audience feel a bit tacked-on, honestly making one minor character gay and a slightly more major character bi doesn't really accomplish much, until there's a gay headliner in the MCU I think it's just so much lip-service.  Get a relationship going between female Hawkeye and White Widow, or Hercules and Drax, and then maybe you've got something. 

Also starring Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Natalie Portman (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Christian Bale (last seen in "Spielberg"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Passing"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "The Man With the Iron Fists"), Jaimie Alexander (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Dune" (2021)), Karen Gillan (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Pom Klementieff (last seen in "Ingrid Goes West"), Sean Gunn (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Carly Rees, Stephen Curry, Bobby Holland Hanton, Daley Pearson, Kieron L. Dyer, Simon Russell Beale (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Manny Spero, Jonny Brugh, Chanique Greyling, Elsa Pataky, Zia Kelly, Chloé Gouneau, Ava Caryofyllis, Brett Goldstein, Akosia Sabet, India Hemsworth

with the voices of Taika Waititi (last seen in "Free Guy"), Vin Diesel (last seen in "Bloodshot"), Bradley Cooper (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain")

and cameos from Matt Damon (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Sam Neill (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Luke Hemsworth (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "Thunder Force"), Ben Falcone (ditto), Kat Dennings (last seen in "Shorts"), Stellan Skarsgard (also last seen in "Dune" (2021)), Idris Elba (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 flashbacks of Thor's hook-ups

The Tomorrow War

Year 14, Day 231 - 8/19/22 - Movie #4,227

BEFORE: From one perspective, it might have made sense to follow up "The Harder They Fall" with "Concrete Cowboy", another film with Idris Elba where people ride horses - and we will get there, only that's about 14 films from now.  Instead from Westerns I've moved on to sci-fi, from cloning dinosaurs to tonight's film about time-travel and fighting aliens.  Yeah, it's a sci-fi weekend and documentaries are totally in the rear-view, it feels good.  Time travel movies are always welcome here at the Movie Year, but I'm sure I'll find a few nits to pick.  

Chris Pratt carries over from "Jurassic World Dominion". 

THE PLOT: A family man is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront the past. 

AFTER: Standard SPOILER ALERT for this film, which is just over a year old, but is only screening on AmazonPrime and never got a theatrical release.  So if you haven't seen it yet, please turn back now. 

OK, so there are a few reasons why I know that time travel will never exist in the real world - the first is that nobody has come into our past from the future to fix things, at least that we know of.  If time travel gets invented in, say, 2052, wouldn't you think somebody would have come back in time and delivered us the COVID vaccine early and prevented all those deaths? Or negated the Holocaust or any other tragedies from over the years?  (I know, maybe they tried to and made things even worse, or they changed time, realized their mistake and put it back?  Nah, the simplest answer is that the people in the future are just as stuck in time as we are.)

Another reason I know time travel won't ever exist is that movies keep getting it wrong, or at least wrong-ish, for something that doesn't exist.  There were movies made in the 1910's about men landing on the moon, and there you go, it's got to be a dream before it can be real, but if the movies keep showing time travel working like this, or failing to work at all, the time-space engineers are either going to blow us all up, or realize how hopeless the endeavor is because that's the way it plays out in the screenplays, usually.  The people going back to kill Hitler accidentally kill the wrong baby, or the people going back to save JFK realize that THEY have become Lee Harvey Oswald, and that's not the way things work, now, is it? 

As we all know from reading science-fiction, the worst thing you can do when time-traveling in fiction is creating a paradox, like accidentally sleeping with your own grandmother and thus becoming your own grandfather.  That's not so bad, it's a closed time-loop, and gametes are going to do what they do, it's just a bit icky. Even worse is killing your grandfather and thus erasing yourself, because then you don't get born, so you can't come back and kill your grandfather, even though that's what you did. This is just a closed double-loop, I don't think the whole universe is really going to reboot as a result, but still, it's probably best avoided.  

The time-travelers seen in "The Tomorrow War" are all relatively young, and they come back to 2021 to recruit soldiers, who are mostly on the older side.  The theory is that you can't, or shouldn't, jump within your own life-span, to eliminate the possibility of bumping into yourself, or worse, accidentally killing yourself.  So they take older soldiers back with them to 2051, to a time when they're most likely dead - if not dead from old age, then dead from being eaten by hungry aliens.  Wait a minute, there are hungry aliens?  

This plot point doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and the more you think about it, honestly, the worse it gets, across the board.  "We're from the future, and we need you to come with us, thirty years into the future, and help us fight off an alien invasion.  Don't worry, you won't bump into yourself because you're not alive in the future, you'll die in 2030, if you manage to survive a week fighting our war for us."  Umm, wait a second, what was that about me dying in 8 years?  And instead of living another 8 years, you want me to come fight a war and die tomorrow?  Sure, why not, I guess I'm all in. NO, screw that, if I've got 8 more years to live, then bugger off and leave me alone, I'm going to live the most fantastic 8 years I possibly can!  

The issue here becomes, is the future set in stone, or can it be changed?  And the answer, of course, is YES.  In order to make this 30-year time jump, the scientists describe time as being a river, and the time machines are like two rafts on the river, 30 years apart.  They're both moving forward at the same rate, and they just found a way to jump from one raft to another. Umm, sure, got it, that sounds scientific enough, let's go.  NO, wait, seriously, time is a river, and we can't change the direction or the speed?  That's not time travel, that's some kind of wormhole or something, but we're ALREADY traveling through time, all of us, with no control of the direction or the speed, that's just called LIFE.  Why not travel back in time and put soldiers in suspended animation so they're ready to fight in 2052?  Wouldn't that be easier than putting everybody through the excessive strain of time travel, having their bodies' molecules be torn apart and re-assembled (hopefully) on the other side?  

And for that matter, these travelers can't just come back to 2022 from 2052 and expect not to change things - by their very presence, they've altered the timeline.  Just by saying "we're from the future, time travel exists, and aliens are invading Earth in 2052", they've changed history. Then they TAKE some of the humans from 2022 and rocket them into the future, with VERY little training, and some of them die?  How does THAT not damage the timestream?  Those people were supposed to live longer, maybe have more kids, or accomplish things or invent things that could be very useful against the aliens, and now they'll never have a chance to do that, because you took them to the future and made them fight aliens until they were dead. 

Look, I get it, it's 2052 and there are only about 500,000 humans left, but so what?  How is that your grandfather's problem, that they should have to come and fight YOUR war for you, against the aliens.  Suck it up, buttercup, if you didn't want to be an alien's lunch you should have done something about it before things got out of hand.  Do they not have nuclear weapons in the future, or something even better?  Can't you pull a "War of the Worlds" and just give the aliens a virus or something?  Nah, let's reach back into the past to get some more humans who don't understand the technology of 2052, that'll fix things!  That's some bullshit. For a minute I thought maybe they were sending humans from 2022 to 2052 just to feed the aliens, so they could skate themselves.  Or maybe they thought by feeding a bunch of fatty Americans from 2022 to the aliens they could give the invaders heart disease, clog their arteries until they just collapsed. 

No, I'm supposed to take this seriously, that the best defense the humans of 2052 had was to invent time-travel, then reach back into the past for help.  Look, if they really wanted to take down the aliens, why not just get a message sent back to 2022 about when and where the alien invasion was going to take place, and then we'd have like 27 years to prepare, we could invent better weapons, build a shield around the planet, stop eating so many fatty foods, something like that.  Wouldn't that make more sense?  Ah, but the movie has an answer for that, it turns out that nobody from the future really knows when the aliens landed, by the time anybody knew about the takeover, it had been going on for some time, and there was nothing to do but get eaten, THEN invent time-travel, THEN recruit soldiers from the past.  Umm, sure. 

To make matters worse, they still haven't gotten all the bugs out of this time-travel thing - Dan Forester's platoon appears in the year 2052 about a mile over the city of Miami, and the majority of them fall to their deaths - welcome to the future, bitches, sorry you lost that extra 8 years you could have had if you'd just stayed in the past.  (This is another point I've always made about the impossibility of time-travel movies, they treat the Earth as if it's a fixed point in space, but it's not, the earth is always traveling around the sun, which is traveling around the galaxy, which is traveling around the universe. If you make a time-jump you're also making a space-jump, because the Earth is never in the same location, and if you're off by a few seconds, you're off by 100 kilometers or more, and you're floating in the void of space. But I can't tell if this is the point the movie is trying to make here or not.)

A few of the soldiers from the past manage to land in rooftop pools on top of skyscrapers, so the squad is still intact, it's just a lot smaller.  Aww, I guess a bunch of aliens are going to go hungry that night, too bad.  After some stalking around town, the would-be soldiers finally encounter the aliens, who don't look anything like the demogorgons in "Stranger Things". Just kidding, of course they do, only nastier. 

But back to my point about there being better ways to battle these aliens than just throwing a bunch of non-soldier soldiers from 30 years in the past at them.  For one thing, Dan learns an awful lot about them during his week in the future, thanks to a military science officer who, what a shocker, is somebody that he knew very well in 2022, and now she's all growed up.  In both the future and the present, Dan seems to have an uncanny ability to get to know EXACTLY the right people with the exact right knowledge and skills to give him the information he needs at any given moment.  And what a coincidence, one of those people is his estranged father, who's got military skills, pilot skills, hunting skills, all the skills one might need to hunt and kill a creature, while tugging on the audience's heartstrings with the prospect of a reunion with his estranged son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.  (I'm not crying, just got something in my eye...)

The mission in the future is a complete failure, the aliens are just that hungry and vicious.  And the time-travel device gets destroyed, but still somehow manages to return all the soldiers who didn't die to 2022, that also seems a bit too convenient.  But the gate is closed, one of the "rafts" on the river sank, so no more time-travel.  But there's still some hope, if Dan can use that skill of talking to exactly the right people and assembling exactly the right team, including his father, two members of the 2022 time-traveling squad and I think one of the soldiers from 2052, plus one of his high-school science students, and somehow solve the puzzle of the aliens, namely when and where they appear on the planet, and how they maybe can be stopped.  It's a plan that's beyond ridiculous, but also somehow just crazy enough to work.  

But then we're back to questioning the nature of time, because if Dan uses the knowledge and resources he got in the future and takes out the aliens in the present, then he's changed the timeline, hasn't he?  And now we've got ourselves a big paradox, because if he defeats the aliens in the present, then the aliens don't invade in the future - and if they don't invade in the future, then the soldiers from the future don't need to invent time travel and come back to 2022 for soldiers, and if they don't do THAT, then Dan doesn't get recruited, doesn't go to the future, and then he doesn't learn how to defeat the aliens in the present, so he doesn't, and we're back where we started. That's another double-loop with parallel timelines that's going to keep going around and never resolving itself OR there's a simpler answer, which is that time-travel is impossible, will never be invented, and this is all just speculative fiction that I'm over-thinking. 

I thought of another NITPICK POINT about halfway through, which was that these aliens seemed to brutal and vicious to have somehow invented space travel, like these creatures just seemed to exist to eat and destroy, how the hell did they pilot a spaceship across the cosmos?  But the film eventually answers this question, you just have to wait a really long time to learn the answer. 

Good news, they restore the timeline where all of humanity instead dies from climate change, overpopulation and the Earth running out of resources.  Wait, how is that good news?

Also starring Yvonne Strahovski (last seen in "The Predator"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Betty Gilpin (last seen in "The Hunt"), Sam Richardson (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Jasmine Matthews, Edwin Hodge (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Ryan Kiera Armstrong (last seen in "Black Widow"), Keith Powers (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Mike Mitchell (last seen in "Other People"), Jared Shaw, Alexis Louder (last seen in "Harriet"), Rose Bianco (last seen in "Greenland"), Seychelle Gabriel, Alan Trong, Chibuikem Uche, David Maldonado (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Kasandra Bandfield, Michelle Rivera, Kiley Casciano Davis, Matthew Cornwell (last seen in "Are You Here"), Patrick Y. Malone, Clark Sarullo, Ashlyn Moore, Patrick Fleming, Terrence J. Smith, Felisha Terrell, Gissette Valentin, Eric Graise, Zachary James Rukavina, Angel Giuffria, Seth Schenall, Piper Collins (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Joshua Israel. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 hourly sedatives

Jurassic World: Dominion

Year 14, Day 229 - 8/17/22 - Movie #4,226 - VIEWED on 6/25/22    

BEFORE: They showed this film in late June at the theater where I work, it was a special screening hosted by the Visual Effects Society.  They also screened "Elvis" and "Lightyear" the same week, and I worked those screenings so I couldn't watch the films - but I went in on my day off to catch "Jurassic World", because I knew that I would need to make the connection between "The Harder They Fall" and another big-budget summer blockbuster that also has Chris Pratt in it, but in more of a supporting role.  Hmm, that one also has Idris Elba in it, but going straight there from "The Harder They Fall" just would not have worked, trust me on this point. 

DeWanda Wise carries over from "The Harder They Fall".  I was going to do a whole Idris Elba thing here, but that path didn't seem to connect to the start of my horror chain in the right number of steps - from those films, I'd get there too quickly, so I flipped part of the chain around and padded it a bit, so now I think things are going to work out, with a couple trips to the movie theater I've got a clear path now to Christmas, even though it's only late August. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (Movie #2,986)

THE PLOT: Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, dinosaurs now live - and hunt - alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures.

AFTER: Please please PLEASE let this be the last "Jurassic Park/World" film, because enough already.  The third film of the second trilogy, or however they're pitching or justifying this, it's all gotten quite ridiculous - never mind that, it was ridiculous when "The Lost World" came out, which was the second movie in the franchise, and they couldn't even title that one properly, that's how little the studio cared about it.  Then they really began beating a dead horse with "Jurassic Park III".  "Jurassic World" shot some new life into the franchise, but they did that by going back to the basics, and re-opening the park with live dinosaurs again - gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with live, hungry dinosaurs and a park full of tasty humans? Are you kidding me?

But the best thing I can say about "Dominion" is that they DO NOT open up the park again for tourists - finally, after making the same mistake four or five times in a row, somebody with a brain said, "Hey, maybe this doesn't need to be a Disneyland-type attraction where the dinosaurs are the entertainment and the humans are also the snacks."  The previous film, "Fallen Kingdom" was really about rescuing the dinosaurs from a volcanic eruption on their island - what, can't they just swim to another island?  But then there was also stuff in there about selling the dinosaurs on the black market, and some stuff about human cloning that really felt like a weird tangent.  But it ended with dinosaurs roaming all over the world, getting into whatever biospheres they felt most comfortable in, and trying to fit in with the other species already in the world - gee, it's not like we have a limited amount of resources on this planet, or anything like that.  A few dozen apatosauruses could probably eat up the Amazon rainforest in a couple of months, and then where will we be?

Isn't it bad enough that we humans have to always be on the lookout for bears in the forests and snakes in the grass, and sharks in the oceans?  Now you throw dinosaurs into the mix, and you know what, let's just not leave the house for a while, OK?  Everything out there just wants to kill us, so we live inside now, I'm cool with that.  But instead we're shown former dinosaur trainer Owen Grady trying to wrangle stray dinosaurs by using horses, as if the dinos are cattle.  Wait a second, maybe that's the answer, if we have too many dinosaurs running around the planet, we should treat them like cattle, and EAT THEM.  What better way to show that we're the superior species, that we humans belong here and they don't - they had their chance, after all, and they messed it up.  So why wasn't this a viable solution, just hunt all the dinos down and eat them, and we've solved world hunger at the same time!  There, I fixed it, we're five minutes in to the film and I've solved two problems with one solution, and everybody's having bronto burgers tonight.  Film over. 

But sadly, that's not what happened.  Instead the movie follows up on that human cloning thing, because sure, that's why we all came to the movie theater today.  Owen and Claire live in a remote cabin near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they're sort of co-parenting Maisie Lockwood, who's the clone of the granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood, who was an important rich scientific philanthropist from one of the previous movies, or something. Blue, one of the velociraptors that Owen trained in "Jurassic World" lives in the woods nearby, and she somehow gave birth to a baby raptor asexually, or she got the in vitro fertilization or something - I get it, Blue's not into men, that's OK.  Lesbian dinosaur single parents are very hip right now. 

Meanwhile, something's wrong with the world's ecosystems, beyond the fact that there are now DINOSAURS living in them. Giant locusts are wiping out crops all over the place, but they only eat the crops belonging to farmers who did NOT buy their seeds from Biosyn Genetics.  I'm sure it's just a coincidence, right?  Because that's the same company that has just established a dinosaur preserve in the Dolomite Mountains, it couldn't possibly be that the company is into some really shady stuff, right? RIGHT?  The paleobotanist from the first film, Dr. Ellie Sattler, takes one of the locusts to her old partner from that same film, Dr. Alan Grant.  Why, it's almost as if the plot is designed to draw every character that's ever been seen in this franchise back into the plot, creating some kind of "all-star" installment for the final (we hope) film. 

Meanwhile, operatives from the SAME corporation kidnap both Maisie, the cloned girl, and Beta, the asexually-produced baby raptor.  And everybody heads for the Biosyn laboratory for different reasons, either to research the locusts or find the girl or find the baby dino, and when they get there, who's working for Biosyn?  Why, it's Dr. Ian Malcolm, and the reunion of the former stars of this franchise is inevitably completed.  Somehow this became a reunion of the stars of both the original "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World" at the same time - calling this chain of events contrived would be a massive understatement.  

Don't let me forget that Dr. Henry Wu is working for Biosyn, too - he was in the first film, too, and then appeared in all three of the films in the second trilogy.  If he's working for Biosyn then I'm sure everything is just FINE, investigation over, we can all go home. JK. Really, you're not going to want to mess around with dinosaur or even plant genetics unless this guy is on the scene - but the twist here is that this guy does have a conscience after all, it's just his boss who wants to control the world's food supply by forcing farmers to like and subscribe.  The Biosyn CEO, Lewis Dodgon, wants to do for farming what Jeff Bezos did for Amazon, sending all the little farms to the same fate as so many independent bookstores - it's diabolical, really.

But you really came here for the dinosaurs, didn't you?  Not some B-plot about farming and locusts and controlling the world through wheat and corn.  Again, just let the people eat dinosaurs, and food shortages aren't going to be much of a problem.  One giant dinosaur could probably feed a whole city block for like a week. Just saying, some of the BBQ joints I go to in NYC sell something they call the "dino ribs", but they're really just beef ribs that are much bigger than the usual pork ones.  There's even a restaurant in Brooklyn called "Dinosaur Barbecue", but what a disappointment, there's no actual dinosaur on the menu, just beef, pork and chicken.  Hey, didn't they find a wooly mammoth frozen in the Arctic ice a few years ago?  Whatever happened with that?  How soon can we defrost and clone that thing so I can eat mammoth ribs?

I'm getting off track again - but this movie does that too, quite often.  Once the whole Team of Former Jurassic Park All-Stars has been assembled, they have to work together to escape once the (say it with me, now...) dinosaurs get loose and take over the complex.  Honestly, here's the part of the film that I found very hard to follow, because a lot of shit goes down in a very tight time-frame, there are of course narrow escapes because the team is constantly surrounded by very hungry dinos running loose, and meanwhile they have to accomplish a series of objectives beyond "RUN!" - they have to find Maisie and Beta, they have to restore power after an outage, they have to secure some method of escape, because some of them arrived in a plane that, umm, crash-landed. Whoopsie.  

To make matters worse, there's no real technical support available for re-starting a hidden dinosaur enclave.  Well, did you try unplugging your hidden dinosaur enclave, waiting ten seconds and then plugging it back in?  Right, that usually does the trick with these hidden dinosaur enclaves.  OK, now just get to the exit point without getting eaten, and you should be all set.  Now let's all work together and do what we do best, eat the other species and then we'll never have to worry about this again, OK?  The long-term advice for this franchise is the same that should have been given to the people who wanted to re-open Jurassic Park for the fourth time: "You know what, just shut it down."

Also starring Chris Pratt (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Bryce Dallas Howard (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Sam Neill (last seen in "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"), Mamoudou Athie (last seen in "The Circle"), Isabella Sermon (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Daniella Pineda (ditto), Campbell Scott (last seen in "Music and Lyrics"), BD Wong (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Omar Sy (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Justice Smith (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Scott Haze (last seen in "Zeroville"), Dichen Lachman (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Kristoffer Polaha (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Varada Sethu, Dimitri Thivaois (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Caleb Hearon, Freya Parker, Alexander Owen, Ahir Shah, Elva Trill, Teresa Cendon-Garcia, Manuela Mora, Bastian Antonio Fuentes, Jasmine Chiu, Ben Ashenden (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Enzo Squillino Jr. (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Glynis Davies, Mo Brings Plenty, Emilie Jumeaux, Aisling Sharkey, Joel Elferink, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 stolen embryos in a fake can of shaving cream

The Harder They Fall

Year 14, Day 228 - 8/16/22 - Movie #4,225

BEFORE: I'm back on fiction films, finally, with a clear path toward Christmas. I had several possible lead-outs from that Conan O'Brien documentary, but this one pleased me the most - I had a whole Idris Elba chain planned here, maybe four or five films, but the bulk of that has now been moved to September, because I needed them as a lead-in to the films that are going to be my lead-in to October. Makes sense? That's just how this crazy linking thing works, I can make a plan but then I realize I need to revise the plan, and I don't stop revising until I know there's a path to Christmas.  Even then, I don't stop revising.  But it feels great to be watching fiction again, those documentaries have a high body count and that can get depressing, they're a little too real.  Now let me watch a Western where there's probably still a high body count, but at least I know all the death isn't really real. 

Deon Cole carries over from "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop". 

THE PLOT: When an outlaw discovers his enemy is being released from prison, he reunites his gang to seek revenge. 

AFTER: Well, it's good to be back into story-land, even if the story isn't the biggest selling point of this film.  This is mostly standard Western-type fare, which means a lot of gunfights, bank robbery, train robbery, and general mayhem.  What makes this film different is the minority representation, obviously - I haven't seen a decent all-black or mostly-black western since "Posse", and I think maybe I'm overdue for a re-watch of "Posse".  

A film like this, one that messes a bit with the role of black culture in the 1800's, is always going to perhaps better represent the time in which it was made, rather than the time in which the story takes place. Like, there was no hip-hop music in the late 1800's, but if this film wants to have a soundtrack that represents 2021, I suppose that's all well and good.  Jay-Z and Jadakiss and Ceelo Green and Kid Cudi are on the soundtrack, so that should be a tip-off that this ain't your daddy's type of Western.  Or maybe your daddy's very down with hip-hop, I don't know.  The cast is about 90% African-American, and the few token white people exist only to get shot, so there's that.  But it's an equal-opportunity shoot-em-up, because nearly everyone gets shot over time, and I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing.  Is this really the message that we want to be sending out to the black youths of America, that it's cool to rob banks and blow up wagons and have quick-draw competitions in the middle of the street?  Sure, the film language of Westerns says that all those things are cool, and almost a required part of daily life, but you know, sometimes I like to think that we've progressed as humans and gotten beyond all of that.  Maybe the second step in changing the culture, after passing sensible gun control legislation, is to stop making films that make gun violence look cool.  Hey, it worked for smoking, didn't it?  The movies made an effort to not depict smoking as cool, and hardly anybody smokes any more, now they vape instead which I'll admit doesn't seem like much of an improvement. It's a stretch to think that Hollywood might take a stand and stop the depiction of gun violence, but I don't know, maybe films could focus more on the consequences, other than being dead?

Two steps forward, one step back, I guess.  Kudos for messing with history and making a film with African-American characters in positions of power, but for every black mayor or sheriff in this film there are ten black gang members, so that's not an overall improvement.  But I will say that there is at least some emphasis placed on the cyclical nature of violence, because it's violence in the past that sets characters on the path for revenge, and thus creates more violence in the future.  Is that the take-away?  I'm not sure, it seems like more emphasis is placed on creating chaos and getting ahead via illegal means.  And often the characters seem to be working at cross purposes with themselves - Rufus Buck is an outlaw gang leader who's being moved by train from one prison to another, when he's freed by his former gang members, who present a full pardon that Rufus has received.  OK, but if they have the pardon, why do they have to kill the agents that are transporting him?  And if they're going to kill the agents on the train to free him, then why do they need the pardon?  Big NITPICK POINT here, the whole scene doesn't make much sense.  Is the pardon valid or not?  I can't tell, it's really unclear. 

The plot synopsis on Wikipedia seems to suggest that the pardon is valid, and the U.S. Army soldiers on the prison car are corrupt, so I guess that makes it OK to kill them, but even with that, the storyline doesn't really work.  If Rufus Buck was pardoned then there would be a reason, a purpose, something he'd have to do to justify his release, but then he and his gang hit the town of Redwood and hold it hostage, he beats up the town's mayor and demands money from the residents, either as protection money or a fee for him to leave, this is also fairly unclear.  Rufus' main complaint about the mayor was that he was using his position to profit at the expense of the town, but then doesn't he proceed to do the very same thing?  Am I missing something here?  

Rufus also wants the money from a bank heist that his gang (Crimson Hoods) pulled off, which apparently was stolen by a rival gang, the Nat Love gang.  Nat was a young boy when Rufus came to his house, killed his parents and carved a cross on his forehead, so yeah, there's some bad blood there.  Love's gang stole this money from the Crimson Hoods while Nat Love himself was tracking down and killing Cortez, who was also there working for Rufus the day his parents were killed.  Soon after this (and a visit to "Stagecoach" Mary Fields, his on-again, off-again girlfriend and owner of several saloons) Love is captured by Bass Reeves, a U.S. Marshal who needs his help to take Rufus Buck down.  Of course, Nat Love is down for this, it fits in neatly with his ongoing plan to get revenge on Buck.  

Mary enters Redwood first, under the guise of looking for another saloon to add to her franchise, but Rufus Buck and his associates see through her ploy and hold her hostage. This brings Nat Love into the town to try to get her back, but he's also captured and beaten.  Rufus sends out the Nat Love gang to get his stolen money back, plus interest, and this requires them to rob yet ANOTHER bank in a nearby white town.  Umm, sure, reparations and all that, but again, we're kind of sending out the wrong message here.  It's great to depict a female black entrepreneur in the saloon business, even if it's not historically accurate, but overall it feels like more people here are getting ahead via illegal means, so again, it's two steps forward and one step back. 

I'm probably overthinking everything, that's just what I do, but stories have morals and messages, and filmmakers need to think about the messages they're putting out there, especially if they're trying to update an old format like Western movies.  Are we really putting out the message in the world that African-Americans in the 1800's could only get ahead via illegal methods, and then what is the effect of that message in the world?  This film screened last fall in the theater where I work part-time, and now I'm really wishing that I'd listened to the Q&A with the cast, because that would have maybe given me some insight here on what this film was really trying to achieve.  

Notably there's one gang member, Cuffee, who is played by a female actress, but the character dresses and acts like a man.  This of course is very forward-thinking according to modern sensibilities, and again, this represents more of how we think about gender now rather than how people thought of gender back then.  But it's also a bit unclear whether, within the story, this was a woman dressing like a man, or a man who was somewhat feminine, or a truly gender-neutral person, or what.  They didn't have to over-explain it, I get that, but it would have been nice to know exactly what this character was meant to represent, without that, they're kind of a big question mark.  Were there transgender people back then?  I don't think so, but is this meant to depict someone who wanted to be the other gender, at a time when it wasn't medically possible to change?  And it would also be helpful to know whether the other characters around Cuffee are aware of her situation, or are ignorant of it or don't understand it.  Nope, let's just show everybody just not talking about it. 

It's more of a shock to find out that Nat Love, Mary Fields, Rufus Buck, Bass Reeves and Cherokee Bill are actual historical figures from the Old West, even if the film doesn't depict real events from their lives, this is still somewhat notable to realize that they did, in fact, exist in some form. (Bass Reeves was the first black Marshal in America, and part of his story was also referenced in the HBO series "Watchmen".)

All in all, despite a few NP's, it's a very cool film that I'm probably guilty of over-analyzing - it feels like the kind of film Quentin Tarantino wishes he could make. (Tarantino made "The Hateful Eight" and the working title for this film was "The Notorious Nine", so I don't think I'm that far off here.)

Also starring Jonathan Majors (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), Idris Elba (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Zazie Beetz (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Regina King (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Delroy Lindo (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), RJ Cyler (last seen in "White Boy Rick"), Danielle Deadwyler (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Edi Gathegi (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Damon Wayans Jr. (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), DeWanda Wise (last seen in "Fatherhood"), Julio Cesar Cedillo (last seen in "Sicario"), Manny Rubio (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Mickey Dolan (ditto), Chase Dillon, Woody McClain, G. Mac Brown, Jacobi Howard, Tait Fletcher (last seen in "Running with the Devil"), Dylan Kenin (last seen in "Gamer"), Kevin Phillips (last seen in "Red Tails"), Mark Rhino Smith (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Terrence Clowe, Michael Beach (last seen in "Broken City"), Sadiqua Bynum, Aahkilah Cornelius

RATING: 6 out of 10 gold teeth

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

Year 14, Day 226 - 8/14/22 - Movie #4,224

BEFORE: This documentary came out in 2011, so it may seem like I'm a bit behind the times, but I'm including it here for a reason - I'm trying to end on a positive note, and I'm thinking this film will demonstrate the sort of resiliency and hopefulness that I've seen in the last few films. So many of the films in my Summer Rock & Doc Block this year have been about dead celebrities, even half of the four chefs profiled in that part of the chain were among the departed. Dead comedians, dead musicians, dead painters, dead oceanographers - there hasn't been much hope on display here, even when you factor in the fact that everybody's story ends the same way, more or less. So I'm going to close with a film about a comedian losing his job and then bouncing back, which seems about as positive a story as I can hope for.

Stephen Colbert carries over from "Running with Beto". 

THE PLOT: A documentary on Conan O'Brien's comedy tour of the U.S. and Canada after leaving his post at "The Tonight Show" and severing his relationship with NBC. 

AFTER: This may be before your time, but back in 2008 or so, Jay Leno was the successful host of "The Tonight Show" and his contract was almost up for renewal, BUT rather than just stay on the same show that aired at 11:30 pm on NBC, he had his sights set on something bigger, a new nightly talk show on every night at 10 pm.  In 2009, Conan O'Brien, who had been hosting "Late Night", ever since David Letterman left NBC to move to CBS, was nominated to move up in the ranks, from his 12:30 am show to the 11:30 "Tonight Show".  But this proved to be a terrible idea, because "The Jay Leno Show" failed to get great ratings at 10 pm, and ratings weren't up either for Conan on "The Tonight Show", so rather than lose one of their popular TV hosts, NBC executives moved Jay Leno's show to the 11:35 slot, and Conan was offered to keep his job on "The Tonight Show" with the show moving to 12:05 am, essentially becoming "The Tomorrow Show". 

By January of 2010, Conan had taken the other option, to leave the network with a $33 million payout, with another $12 million in severance for his staff, and Jay Leno moved back to "The Tonight Show" at 11:35, which he hosted for another 4 years. Conan was forbidden to work in late night television for six months, but when that term was up, he started another nightly talk show on TBS, and that show ran for 10 years, until June 2021. To fill the downtime before he could host another show, Conan went on a live tour, produced by his longtime staffers, around the U.S. and Canada, doing comedy bits and music performances.  This is somewhat relevant now because Conan's between shows AGAIN right now, there's some kind of weekly show in development at HBO Max, but it's a bit unclear whether that will follow a similar talk-show and variety format, or if it will be something different. (This May his podcast was sold to Sirius for $150 million, so even if the new show tanks, I think Conan will be OK.)

But I guess there's some inspiration to be drawn from this, if your show gets cancelled, you can start another one, if you lose your job, you don't give up, you find a new job or a new line of work.  This is just what successful people do - Lucille Ball and Betty White always found a new show to appear on, Mel Brooks didn't quit after "Life Stinks" stank, he started turning his films into Broadway musicals.  Bob Einstein found a new job on "Curb Your Enthusiasm", Bob Ross and Julia Child kept painting and cooking as long as they could still stand up, George Carlin made HBO specials (even though they kept getting angrier) and The Sparks Brothers didn't let the lack of a hit single keep them from releasing album after album. Dick Gregory, Brian Wilson, Elaine Stritch, Rick James, Kenny G and Beto O'Rourke they all kept going, even through the personal and professional losses, because life's a marathon that keeps going as long as you can keep running. 

Conan's tour seems a bit like Beto's, maybe he didn't hit every county in Texas, but he was on the "Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television" tour for two months, from April to June of 2010, starting in Eugene, Oregon, passing through Los Angeles, Bonnaroo, Boston and New York, then ending in Atlanta.  Look, I'm not going to say that everything he performed on stage was comedy gold, a lot of it just wasn't, but I would have rather seen more of the concert footage and less of Conan's backstage antics, when he often complained about the dressing room conditions, or the fact that band members or back-up singers would bring their families to meet him, without warning.  I know that most of his complaining and ridiculing his assistant is done in the name of comedy, but even knowing that, it's quite unbecoming.  

I would have suggested maybe 50% concert film and 50% backstage material, but this doc is weighted heavily in favor of the behind-the-scenes stuff, and it's too much.  Perhaps someone was thinking that the live performances could be released as their own film, but now that's very unlikely to happen, so it's really a missed opportunity to showcase all that here.  If that's where Conan really shines, where he's really funny, in front of an audience, why couldn't we just see more of that?  

Anyway, I'm kind of split on Conan O'Brien because I did watch his TBS show for the last five years, and he made it through the pandemic, eventually broadcasting from L.A.'s Largo Theater with no audience present for a while, and then shortly after the return of the live shows with an audience, he announced that the TBS show was ending.  Look, he had a great run, between all of his shows on NBC and TBS he lasted 28 years, and that's something.  Some late night hosts only last three years or five years, like Craig Kilborn or Craig Ferguson on "The Late Late Show". James Corden's been hosting that show since 2015, but now he's announced he's going to retire in 2023.  I guess the only thing consistent in late night programming is change, and maybe there's another lesson to be learned there. Hosting a late-night talk show seems like a pretty sweet deal, and I can't imagine why anyone would quit that gig unless they're incredibly tired of it or have already made enough money at it.   

Anyway, we don't stop here at the Movie Year, either - my staff of one is going to take tomorrow off, but it's in the interests of spreading out my August films so I don't run out of material in September.  But I'm very anxious to get back to fiction films after 46 (!!) documentaries and bridging movies in this last chain.  The next 31 films need to last about 46 days, and should get me to where I need to be on October 1.  Then after a jam-packed month of horror films, I'll need to spread out the remaining slots between November and December.  It's hard to believe, but Christmas is just 75 movies away!  And the Summer Rock & Doc Block is now officially over.

Also starring Conan O'Brien (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Andy Richter (last seen in "Fyre"), Jack Black (last seen in "The Love Letter"), Jim Carrey (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Margaret Cho, Deon Cole (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Andrés du Bouchet, Kyle Gass (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Rachel Hollingsworth, Ellie Kemper (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Steve Kroft, Jack McBrayer (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Fredericka Meek, Nick Offerman (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Liza Powel O'Brien, Craig Robinson (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg, Jeff Ross, Kristen Schaal (last seen in "My Spy"), Brian Stack (last seen in "Rough Night"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Mike Sweeney, Eddie Vedder, Jimmy Vivino (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band"), Reggie Watts (last heard in "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea"), Jennifer Westfeldt, Jack White (last seen in "Shine a Light").

RATING: 5 out of 10 costume changes

Running with Beto

Year 14, Day 225 - 8/13/22 - Movie #4,223

BEFORE: Here we go, film #45 out of 46 films in the Summer Rock & Doc Block. This is right where I planned to be, if not exactly WHEN I planned to be there.  It's been a long road, but the docs have seen me through a tough time, an unplanned period of inactivity that's been wearing on me mentally.  Films can be a great distraction when you've got some excess time on your hands, but I think what's going to help me more is going back to my very weird work schedule and at least feeling like I'm accomplishing something, while also earning a bit more money.  BUT I still have 12 days before the school starts up its orientation programs for the fall semester, and my shifts start up again.  I don't know how other people work from home, I know it's really trendy right now and everything, but come on, the pandemic is OVER, the CDC just changed their guidelines and I'm going a bit nuts with so much down time. I did make a list of things to do at home, and I've crossed off about half of them, but I'm not motivated to do more, so I end up just playing games on my phone, and that's not productive.  As Meat Loaf sang, "If you're only killing time, it will kill you right back."

Beto O'Rourke carries over from "Mayor Pete", he appeared in archive footage as one of the other Democrats running for President in 2020.  That was unexpected, because he wasn't listed in the cast on IMDB (I fixed that, though) - I had another linking plan, of course, but it turns out SIX other people, politicians and talk-show hosts, carry over, so I shouldn't have worried. 

THE PLOT: A behind-the-scenes documentary following Beto O'Rourke's breakaway campaign to unseat Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate.  

AFTER: Yeah, it's midterm elections time again, or it will be soon enough - perhaps if I watch a few political documentaries I can mentally prepare myself, like acclimating myself to the temperature of the pool. I'm planning to be busy in October, between the New York Comic Con and then a vacation later in the month, so perhaps I can be distracted from most of the news.  

But speaking of vacations, this film is set during Beto O'Rourke's U.S. Senate race against Ted Cruz in 2018, and my wife and I happened to be on vacation in Texas during the last week of October in that year, so we were right in the middle of it. (This was BBQ Crawl #2, from Dallas to San Antonio to Houston to New Orleans - yeah, that was a lot of mileage.). I do remember seeing a bunch of Beto signs, but mostly in the cities, and then once we got out on the highway we could sort of tell that we were back out in Trump country - so there was no disputing that Texas is a battleground state, there are two different ideologies going on down there, and the state is just as divided as our nation is, if not more so.  

Think back on all the terrible news stories from the last six years, and who's at the center of most of them?  OK, Trump, but in most of the bad news coming out of Texas, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott are usually at the epicenters. Remember that winter power outage and Ted Cruz took off for Cancun, but came back when he realized how bad the optics were?  Then there was all that immigration backlash in the state when families were being separated and kids were held in cages in camps. Then Texas was the first state to make abortion illegal again, the second they had the opportunity to do so, and then the state's record on gun control is just abysmal, and Cruz and Abbott are really at their worst right after a school shooting when they start talking about arming teachers and locking entry doors, as if anything could possibly work better than passing more rules requiring background checks and banning assault rifles. If you really wanted to reduce the number of kids being killed, you'd try anything and everything, not this random finger-pointing and circular non-sensical blame game. 

Anyway, as we saw yesterday with "Mayor Pete", a documentary crew is likely to form around anyone running for office, and those filmmakers are taking a chance that this candidate is going to pull off an unlikely win, in which case, their time and effort won't be wasted.  But no director wants to make a film about a shoo-in candidate, or even one who's ahead in the polls, because where's the drama in that?  You know they pick their subjects because they're looking for that underdog, come-from-behind, "Rocky"-like story where even if the candidate doesn't win, at least they go the distance.  

Beto went the distance, in the sense that he visited every single county in Texas at least once, and that's a big freakin' state.  Texas has 254 counties, and over 28 million citizens - there's no way to meet all of those people, but he tried to meet as many face-to-face as he could. Look, we drove to four big Texas cities and that took us almost a week, I can't even imagine how long it took Beto to visit 254 counties, and he did that without taking any money from Political Action Committees during that campaign.  For the record, it took him 15 months, during which he held hundreds of town hall meeting, and drove tens of thousands of miles. Just like a band on tour, I'd love to see the logistics of working out that route. Most Texas politicians go campaigning in Houston, Dallas and then swing through Austin and San Antonio - how many cups of coffee did Beto drink on the road, how many stops at Buckee's for BBQ sandwiches?  I just found an article that states that Beto did about 80% of the driving, had about 5 cups of coffee a day, and lived on trail mix, beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes. 

I wish I could say it was worth it, that Beto was part of the "blue wave" of 2018 that was a response to Trump's victory in 2016, but the sad truth is that Ted Cruz got re-elected, but bear in mind that Cruz had one of the best-financed campaigns in the country, and no Democrat had won statewide office in Texas since 1994, so the odds were against Beto from the start. Beto used no professional pollsters or consultants, but did make use of social media, and an army of volunteers canvassing the neighborhoods to encourage more immigrants to register to vote. Then he got lucky when some of his statements about police brutality and NFL players taking a knee during the anthem went viral. And he raised $80 million for his campaign, mostly from small $20 donations at those town halls. Clearly this man could win over a crowd with his statements of hope and encouragement - BUT, still the election went to Cruz, 50.9% to 48.3%.  

Damn, that was close - and Beto set a record for most votes ever cast for a Democrat in Texas history.  Beto did say he would be unlikely to run for President in 2020, since he had young children, but then he did.  That didn't really work out either, and now he's the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, going up against Greg Abbott this fall.  He seems like a very smart guy, and I hope he continues to fail upwards, so to speak, and maybe he'll win another election someday, with his pro-gun control, pro-education, pro-environment and pro-cannabis platforms.  He's got the right ideas, just the bad luck to have those ideas in the wrong state, it seems. But he didn't come out of nowhere, Beto was a U.S. congressman for Texas for two terms, he probably could have held on to that seat longer, but clearly he feels he was destined for greater things, I celebrate the fact that he gave up the position he had because he wanted to do more.

Also starring Cynthia Cano, Jody Casey, Ted Cruz (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Chris Evans (not that one), Shannon Gay, Rhonda Hart, "Little" Joe Hernandez, Zack Malitz, Esther Martinez, Marcel McClinton, Amy O'Rourke, Estela Torres Powell, Michael Powell, Amanda Salas, David Wysong, 

with archive footage of Greg Abbott, Steve Bannon (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Wolf Blitzer (also carrying over from "Mayor Pete"), Mika Brzezinski (ditto), Stephen Colbert (ditto), Ellen DeGeneres (ditto), Rachel Maddow (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), George W. Bush (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Chris Cuomo (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Lester Holt (last seen in "Irresistible"), John Lewis (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Bill Moyers, David Muir (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Rick Perry (ditto), Willie Nelson (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Pat O'Rourke, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 early-morning jogs

Mayor Pete

Year 14, Day 224 - 8/12/22 - Movie #4,222

BEFORE: We're getting very close to the end, I should be able to wrap up the Summer Rock & Doc Block this weekend, just TWO films left after today's. It's been a wild ride, and we've learned a lot about everything from the Rat Pack to the stars of PBS, soul singers and drummers and chefs and scuba divers. But just like the recent heat wave, it's got to end at some point, and the way the linking worked out, I'm closing things out with two politicians and a comedian. There's a joke in there somewhere...like in post-Trump America, I'm not even sure I know what the difference is between them any more - like one lies and tells stories in front of a crowd, and the other is a comedian.  

Al Sharpton carries over from "Summer of Soul". 

THE PLOT: An inside look at Pete Buttigieg's campaign to run for President of the United States. 

AFTER: This is the LAST film in my chain this year that screened at DocFest, which took place in October, partially at the theater where I work part-time.  I remember a lot of people coming out of the screening of "Mayor Pete" saying good things about the film - and I didn't know there were so many Buttigieg fans in NYC, even a full year after he lost in the 2020 election.  Look, that wasn't that long ago, 2 years, so why does it feel like a lifetime ago?  So many things happened between then and now, the January 6 insurrection, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the second impeachment of Trump, the cyberninjas, the COVID vaccines, monkeypox, the death of Meat Loaf - look, it's been a lot to handle, OK?  I don't blame anybody who wants to just turn the news off and find better things to do with their time, like maybe curl up in a ball and rock back and forth while moaning.  If it makes you feel better, go ahead, I won't judge. 

But I feel like I never really got to KNOW all of the candidates that ran in 2020, and there were a TON of them.  Sure, we remember Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but who remembers Seth Moulton? Jay Inslee? Tulsi Gabbard? Deval Patrick? Michael Bennet? Tom Steyer? Wayne Messam?  And wait, Michael Bloomberg ran as a DEMOCRAT?  That's some bullshit right there - he was a Republican when he was the mayor of NYC for two terms, then he somehow got around the law regarding term limits by running again as an independent, which now sounds nuts - he didn't become a different person just by leaving the Republican party, he was the SAME GUY and somehow got a third term when the limit was TWO.  Mighty convenient that he was able to change the law about term limits in time for it to apply to HIMSELF.  If you think Trump had a problem leaving the Presidency, think how much worse that could have been, President Bloomberg would have just changed the law to allow himself to be President again. 

Pete Buttigieg is kind of right on that cusp of familiarity for me, I remember him running, he won two primaries and was a first place contender in the polls for about a week?  Eventually Biden entered the race and started to pick up some momentum, and then everybody sort of came to the conclusion that he had the best chance to beat Trump - everybody except Bernie Sanders, that is.  But Sanders had 26% of the Democratic support, while Buttigieg had 2.5%, so that was that.  BUT, Spoiler Alert, after the election, Biden offered Pete Buttigieg a position in his cabinet, as Secretary of Transportation, so that's a pretty good bump up from Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Isn't that the way life works sometimes, we try to get one job, but we don't get it, so we end up working a different job?  And then after a while, it feels like maybe that's the way things were meant to be?  

Buttigieg was well-spoken, and ticked off a number of boxes as the first openly gay person to seek the U.S. Presidency, and for a while there, it looked like he had a shot at becoming our second gay President. (There, I said it, you're not fooling anyone, James K. Polk...). It probably helped that Buttigieg was a veteran, was well-spoken and was in a committed relationship, and could pass as straight if he chose to, which he didn't. Some Midwesterners probably think all gay men are drag queens, which sure, some are, but not all of them.  So we're still kind of waiting for the first flamboyantly gay person to run for President, which might take a bit longer. But it says a lot about the citizens of South Bend that they kept electing Buttigieg, they were able to overcome any homophobia and judge someone on their deeds and intents, not by who they sleep next to. 

Buttigieg is also the first openly gay Cabinet Secretary, the youngest member of the Biden cabinet, and the youngest person to ever serve as Secretary of Transportation.  That's a win all around. What we may never know, however, is whether the experience he had as the mayor of South Bend, and any successes he had there, would have transferred over to the national level, had he been elected President.  Would it make sense to run America like a small town?  I'm not so sure, just because something works on the local level, it doesn't mean that's going to work when you blow it up on a grand scale.  Something tells me the problems in the United States are just too complex for that, especially when you've got 100 different senators all vying for their states to get a bigger piece of the federal pie, and thus legislative gridlock seems inevitable.  Two parties, sure, but the majority margins are so razor-thin, just look at how long Joe Manchin was able to slow down the bill about climate change.  If the Democrats had just ONE more senator, it wouldn't even be an issue, bills and laws would pass much quicker, and they wouldn't need to make so many concessions to West Virginia.  

The film follows Buttigieg from his decision to run for President through several of the primaries and debates, right up until he withdrew from the race.  He proved several times to be quick on his feet and able to answer complex questions quickly - the only one shown here that seemed to stump him was one regarding whether he'd prefer to run against Donald Trump or Mike Pence, and he sort of dodged it by saying, "Are those my only two choices?"  Obviously Buttigieg comes from the same state as Pence, and he was mayor of South Bend when Pence was Governor of Indiana, and Pence is notoriously uber-religious and anti-gay, so I don't think there's much respect there, especially since we're SUPPOSED to have a separation of church and state in this country, but all this "love the sinner, hate the sin" stuff keeps creeping in to our laws. And now we're going through the same B.S. with abortion, with conservatives allowing their religion to influence their politics, which is anti-Constitutional right down to the core. 

The film does not mention that Buttigieg acted as a stand-in for Pence when vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris was preparing to debate Pence, but Mayor Pete knew so much about Pence, I'm sure his insight was extremely helpful. 

Anyway, I think this is a very enlightening documentary - long after those other 2020 Democratic candidates have been forgotten, people are still talking about Mayor Pete.  Maybe the cabinet position is just a stepping stone, who knows?  He and Chasten make an adorable couple, I wish them the best - who can say what the 2024 election will bring?  A lot can happen in two years, but we're approaching the midterm elections and nobody even knows what's going to happen THIS November, let alone November 2024.  The other possibility here, though, is that I waited too long to watch this one, and perhaps it's no longer relevant.  Time will tell, I guess. 

Ah, if only I had started my documentary chain at this end, and flipped it all around, then I could have programmed this film in June, which is Pride Month.  Mea culpa - but the chain works the way it wants to work. 

Also starring Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg, Mike Schmuhl, Lis Smith, 

with archive footage of David Axelrod, Joe Biden (last seen in "We Feed People"), Donald Trump (ditto), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Clear History"), Michael Bloomberg (last seen in "Koch"), Cory Booker (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Beto O'Rourke (ditto), Mika Brzezkinski (last seen in "Irresistible"), Erin Burnett, Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain"), Trevor Noah (ditto), Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Bill Maher (ditto), Kamala Harris, Van Jones (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Rachel Maddow (ditto), Bernie Sanders (ditto), Katty Kay, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Matthews (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Jake Tapper (ditto), Lawrence O'Donnell (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Chris Wallace (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Elizabeth Warren (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Andrew Yang,

RATING: 5 out of 10 ice cream date nights