Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Year 15, Day 273 - 9/30/23 - Movie #4,555

BEFORE: Well, a lot's happened over the last few days - my life has become very busy and it's about to get even very busy-er.  I worked the After-School Special event at the theater, which meant screenings of "Nimona", "Call Jane" and "Super Mario Bros." over last weekend, and then Thursday night, a special screening of "The Creator".  And at the other job, my boss premiered his new animated feature, "Slide", at the Woodstock Festival Friday, with another screening set for today, Saturday.  

When October hits - forget it, I'm booked up every day between the two jobs, and then NY Comic Con comes around Oct. 12-15, and now I'm going on vacation Oct. 18-23, and that's 10 days out of 31 where I'll be either super busy or in vacation mode. That leaves 21 days to watch 25 films, it might be impossible unless I give up on eating and sleeping.  Maybe I can pull some doubles, or maybe I can still watch a couple movies while on vacation - or screw it, maybe the October chain is going to spill into November, that's not the end of the world, the romance chain spills into March all of the time, so what if the horror topic extends a couple days into November.  Or I can just post date the reviews, nobody would ever know but me.  I'll figure something out, maybe I'll just start early and try to stay two days ahead of the calendar. Either way, it's going to happen and it's going to be OK. 

Andy Richter carries over from "80 for Brady". Also, here's the format breakdown for September, now that it's over, and I'll post the actor links for October tomorrow.

7 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Women Talking, The Lady in the Van, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Zola, Better Living Through Chemistry, 80 for Brady, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

8 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Empire of Light, Blinded by the Light, Breathe, Rosewater, The Last Days on Mars, Elvis, Assassination Nation, Don't Worry Darling

2 watched on Netflix: Uncharted, A Man Called Otto

1 watched on Amazon Prime: Alan Partridge

1 watched on Disney+: Pinocchio (2022)

2 watched in theaters: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Asteroid City
1 watched on a random site: The Trip to Greece

22 TOTAL

THE PLOT: A cash-strapped documentary maker decides to make his newest film about a mollusk shell he finds living in his AirBnB. 

AFTER: I got very concerned watching this film, when I saw footage of Conan O'Brien and NOT his long-time sidekick, Andy Richter, who is my link between "80 for Brady" and the start of the horror chain tomorrow.  If Andy Richter is NOT in this film, if I got bad intel or his listing on the IMDB is some kind of mistake, well, it's not the end of the world, I would just have to immediately stop watching this film and drop it from the chain, and thankfully the chain would just close up around the gap, Richter would then carry straight over from "80 for Brady" to the first horror film.  This would have also made my life easier, this film would then be one of the two films I need to drop before close of business this year, to make the total number of films watched in 2023 be 300 instead of 302.  But Richter IS in this film, he just provides the voice for an animated character, at least that's what the credits say.  I should have looked more closely at them, then I wouldn't have stressed out during the movie.  It's gonna be OK.  

This film was tough for me to watch, though - but not for the same reason my boss had, which was because he absolutely hated the film.  No, it took me two nights because the first night I watched halfway through, and something about it was so calming that I fell asleep.  Woke up, hit rewind, back to where I left off, fell asleep again, woke up, hit rewind, back to that spot... You know what, forget it, I started this a day early because October's going to be so crammed, I was trying to get a jump on things and clearly I must be behind on my sleep or something if a movie about a tiny snail (or whatever) with a soothing voice can knock me out again and again. 

OK, night 2, at least I could remember exactly where i left off on night 1, because the OnDemand feature of the DVR remembers all.  I might be in trouble if anybody ever hacked my system and took a look at all the crazy messed-up movies I've seen, that's sure to put me on somebody's watchlist somewhere.  ("Hey this guy watched three movies about Charles Manson, and FOUR movies with Hitler, all in a damn row!  That's just what a psychopath would do...")

I don't think I missed out on anything by watching the film in two smaller pieces rather than getting it all in in one go..   

Look, I didn't HATE this, but it's all just a little too cutesy and twee, isn't it?  I know the female comedian who voices the character is really attached to it, but somehow it all just feels like pandering at the highest level, like "Hey, I can do this really soft and gravelly thing with my voice, and isn't that how a tiny snail-like character would sound if he were just so adorkable, beyond words in fact."  In other words, it's a little much - they tried a bit too hard to make a character that you would automatically fall in love with, like a kid's stuffed animal or one of those Keane paintings with the big, sad eyes.  You know on some level your emotions are being messed with, and then when the other mollusk character is introduced, Marcel's grandmother, well, now it just feels like one of those animal rescue PSAs because come on, you just know what's going to happen to the grandmother, right?  

Marcel lives in a house that used to be occupied by a young couple, but now it's being rented out all the time as an AirBnB - hmm, what happened to the couple?  Well, it turns out they fought a lot, which is a very telling plot point when you discover that the comedian who does the voice of Marcel was married to the man who plays the documentary filmmaker, and they're not married any more. So I wonder if a little bit of their personal life was bleeding over into the story here via the fighting couple.  When the (fictional) couple fought, the shells who lived in their house would react by running to the sock drawer and huddling together for emotional support.  Well, it seems that one fight ended so badly that the man packed up his clothes and moved out, accidentally taking all the shells gathered in the sock drawer with him - and that included Marcel's parents and the extended family as well.  

With just his grandmother, Marcel continues exploring the usually-empty house, gathering fruits from the tree outside and drops of water from the sink to sustain them, and also skating on the dusty coffee table as if it's an ice rink.  But he misses his parents (Aww....) and his grandmother is getting weaker by the day and not eating much (Aww...again) and he eventually enlists the help of the filmmaker staying in the house to drive around and try to search for the blue car that the man was driving when he stormed off with Marcel's family in his suitcase.  But the motion of the car makes Marcel sick and he throws up on the dashboard (Aww....no wait, Ewww....).

But Marcel soon realizes that the world is a much bigger place than he originally thought - they can't even properly search the city where they live, and of course there are many other cities, so really, the man could have gone anywhere with Marcel's family in tow, and the chances of finding them again are slim - unless, of course, Dean makes some adorkable short films with Marcel being adorkable, and they go viral on the interwebs and a whole bunch of fans on YouTube join in the search for Marcel's parents.  That could work, only the YouTubers turn out to be more obsessed with tracking down where, exactly, Marcel lives and then taking selfies outside his house to prove they were there.  OK, new plan.  

Enter Lesley Stahl from "60 Minutes", which is a show that even tiny mollusks seem to be aware of, Marcel and his Nan never missed an episode, it turns out - excuse me, I've got something in my eye again - and once the crack investigative CBS reporters are on the case, they're able to track down the woman who used to live in the house, who's been working for some non-profit charity in a third world country, and they convince her to come home and help track down her ex-boyfriend, so perhaps there is a chance that our tiny hero-in-a-halfshell can still find his parents and other family members after all. 

Dean finally moves out of the AirBnB and into his own apartment, while Marcel enjoys performing once again for his family - and again I have to wonder if the fictitious Dean and Marcel reflect the new status of Dean and Jenny - Dean's living on his own and Jenny goes back to performing comedy, everybody's moving up and moving on and chances for a "Marcel" sequel are possibly slim to none.  Maybe it's better that way, everything is temporary and nothing gold can stay, the seasons have to change and so do we.  Maybe I'm reading this wrong, maybe Jenny and Dean split up years ago and then decided to get back together and collaborate on an animated movie, but really, if your ex calls you up and suggests making a movie together, your answer should probably be "No", if I'm being real. 

On that note, we're flipping over the calendar page tomorrow to October and that can only mean one thing - well, it means witches and monsters and ghosts and serial killers and spiders, maybe even a Cocaine Bear, so I guess that's actually a lot of things.  But another horror chain is finally here again, time to make some strides to reduce that portion of the watchlist, because it does tend to keep filling up, doesn't it?  

Also starring Dean Fleischer Camp, Rosa Salazar (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Thomas Mann (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Lesley Stahl (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Joe Gabler, Shari Finkelstein, Samuel Painter, Blake Hittle, Scott Osterman, Jeremy Evans, 

with the voices of Jenny Slate (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Fearless"), Sarah Thyre, Nathan Fielder (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jessi Klein, Peter Bonerz (last seen in 'Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Jamie Leonhart, and archive footage of Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Brian Williams (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Victoria Justice (last seen in "Fun Size"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 potted plants

80 for Brady

Year 15, Day 271 - 9/28/23 - Movie #4,554

BEFORE: Yes, we're still in the "Lead-in to Horror Movies" week, but let's not forget that football season has already started.  Yes, I'm aware this is a Super Bowl-themed movie, and that usually happens in February (it used to be January, whatever happened to that?) but as you may know, I'm always a little busy in February with other concerns.  What do Black History and football have in common?  I celebrate them on MY schedule, sorry.  Plus, I have no idea if I can work this one in during the February chain, even if I could put the romance chain on pause, do I want to do that?  The linking says this film goes here, so it goes here.  (I just recorded "Stanley & Iris" off of PBS, that could be a romance that would link to this film via Jane Fonda, but I'm not going to re-organize things now, plus, come on, that's only half the battle, I need an intro AND an outro.)

Jane Fonda carries over from "Better Living Through Chemistry".  

THE PLOT: A group of friends make it their life-long mission to go to the Super Bowl and meet NFL superstar Tom Brady.  

AFTER: I have to keep reminding myself, this is a CURRENT release - this film came out in 2023, so I'm not late, despite the fact that it's set at the Super Bowl in 2017.  Man, what a stroke of bad luck, I mean, sure, it was the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, with the Patriots coming back from being over two touchdowns down (or the worst loss ever if you're an Atlanta Falcons fan, I guess...).  Movies take a long time to make, so yeah, it makes sense that the movie might be released six years after the fact, but since then Tom Brady retired twice and changed teams once, so could this possibly still be relevant?  Just feels like we're closing the door on the stable after the horse already left, that's all.  

Ah, this is based on a true story - apparently there was a group of four eighty-something women from the Boston area who somehow found their way to the Super Bowl that year.  We see a clip of them at the end of the film, and I'm sure they're wonderful people and great grandmothers and such, and congrats for being active Patriots fans in your golden years, but be prepared that they don't look like Jane Fonda and Sally Field, they just look like regular senior citizens.  Umm, if I'm being honest, Jane Fonda doesn't look much like Jane Fonda either, these days, I don't know if it's too much botox or what, but she looks kind of like a mannequin, sorry.  The other actresses here were less afraid to show their age, and I think that's kind of healthier.  Yes, I realize that regular people don't have a team of make-up artists and costumers and hairdressers to make them look good on camera, and really, it's all about looking good on camera, right?  (But, should it be?)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the four real seniors who went to the Super Bowl didn't encounter such madcap adventures on their way to the Big Game - they probably just won that contest, went to the game, had a great time and then cashed in by selling their story to Hollywood. Good for them!  But then a bunch of comedy screenwriters took a swing at their story and "punched it up", to the point where it's now absolute nonsense.  Hey, what other mischief can we have these ladies engage in, because we've got about 10 minutes of story here, and we need like a 100-minute movie?"  So the film keeps throwing obstacle after obstacle in their way to try to create some drama, and then every time the women get painted into a corner, there also has to be a way out, some even more hackneyed solution that will get them into the stadium, or up into the skybox, and then into the control room so one of them can give a pep talk directly to Tom Brady. Come ON!

Betty gets caught up in a hot wings eating contest, Trish makes an impromptu appearance to promote her Gronkowski erotic fiction book and falls for an ex-NFL player, Maura gets involved in a high-stakes poker game, and they all take CBD gummies by accident and go on a drug trip.  Ha ha, what wacky adventures for our stoned grannies!  But there's SO much confusion at every possible stage, and these comic situations are wildly inconsistent - first we learn that Betty gets involved in the hot wings contest just because she's hungry, then we learn that she's actually GREAT at eating hot wings, then we learn that this is because she can't taste anything any more, and THEN we learn that she WAS affected by the spicy wings, but she was only pretending to not be affected.  Well, which is it, because those are four completely DIFFERENT explanations for why this stupid thing happened, and really, we barely need one of them.  Pick one and stick to it, that's all I ask.  

Same thing with the poker game - Maura gets into it when she's high, so it really doesn't have to make sense, but first she doesn't know what she's doing, then she does, she's a great poker player but then she isn't, or maybe her dead husband was a terrible player but thought incorrectly that he was good at gambling, and then she doesn't know what she's doing again, but she wins, then finds out she's playing for charity so she doesn't really win.  God, it's just three minutes of the movie, but it still manages to be all over the damn place.  And it's like this across the board, with every single plot point being contradicted by something else that comes later. 

We won the tickets, we didn't win the tickets, I bought the tickets - so we've got the tickets, we lost the tickets, we found the tickets - the tickets are fake but we can still get in.  Why is everything so damn complicated and wishy-washy?  Right off the bat, we need something quirky about how these four women watch a football game, so there's some complicated ritual they have to go through at kick-off where Trish needs to be in the dining room, Betty needs to be on a ladder, Maura needs to be drinking tea and Lou needs to spill a bowl of tortilla chips - absolutely NOBODY watches a game this way, and they do this because of some Patriots game years ago when this happened and the Pats won?  This doesn't make any sense because Tom Brady won a LOT of games after that one, and even these fans know that what they do in their living room has NO effect on the outcome of a football game, but they do it anyway?  Wouldn't they get tired of buying chips every week that are just going to be spilled on the floor and not eaten?  It's clear that screenwriters just don't understand how people watch a football game (or play poker, or buy Super Bowl tickets, or eat hot wings) - they just make the things happen that need to happen to fill up the movie. No no, don't bother doing any research about how things work...

Yes, security during a football game, especially a Super Bowl, is tight.  So if you don't have an authenticated ticket, you are NOT getting into that stadium.  Full stop.  But there are at least three techniques used here by our intrepid quartet to get past security and then to prevent being thrown out of the stadium.  These will probably NOT work for regular people, or for anyone in the real world.  SPOILER ALERT - the man Maura met during the poker game turns out to be the choreographer for the halftime show, who apparently is able to get anyone into the Super Bowl if he just SAYS they're part of his crew.  Uh-uh, even if they were back-up dancers or consultants or just seat-fillers, they would STILL need to show a pass or some kind of I.D., just proving they know a few dance moves wouldn't cut it, sorry.  Yes, I know this is a comedy but even a comedy with a lot of gags needs to be anchored somewhere close to reality.  

Look, I really tried to turn off the logical part of my brain and I just tried to have some fun with the part that was left.  And if you don't care about Nitpick Points like I do, maybe you can just relax and have a good time here.  Similar to the Super Bowl, I guess - there are people who are SO into football and all the plays and the rules and the odds that they can't just switch all that off and enjoy a day at the stadium.  That's like me, but for movies.  I can't just ignore the fact that the plot points don't make sense, any more than a hardcore football fan could ignore a bad call by a referee on a fumble. (Hey, I know sports words!). The game has to work according to a set of rules, and so does a movie plot, otherwise we have chaos.  And this film is 90 minutes of chaos, sorry, so here we go: 

NITPICK POINT: The contestants in the Hot Wings eating contest are seen putting hot sauce on each wing. Wha? How could the contest possibly allow this, what's to prevent each person from pretending to put a lot on, then missing the wing with the sauce thus applying only a little bit?  The heat should have been added during the preparation, anyway - the standard application of hot sauce to a wing comes shortly after frying the wings, when they get tossed in sauce, and thus the contest could control exactly how hot each wing is on the Scoville scale, to maintain the fairness of the competition.  So let's say this happened, but then there's no reason for the contestants to add MORE hot sauce from a bottle just before eating, this would only make eating the wing more difficult, and introduce a random element.  Nope, no way.  Look, I don't eat spicy food myself, I stick to BBQ wings only - but I'm sure there are strict rules for how eating challenges work. 

NITPICK POINT #2: Across the board, security is incredibly lax at the Super Bowl. Think about that, how many millions are spent by the NFL and the TV Network to make sure that nothing interferes with this TV program?  And nobody takes their job more seriously than security guards, especially in this post-9/11 world. And then not only do these women somehow find four empty seats together (also impossible, I'll bet) but they're able to sit in them for some time, nobody checks their tickets which they don't have or tries to show them to their correct seats, and the people who are supposed to sit in those seats don't ever show up?  Are they all in the bathroom together or something, or did they all oversleep on the day of the biggest game?  Some family emergency prevented four people from using the tickets they paid thousands of dollars for?  Give me a break.  They're busted when the security guard from before sees them on the Jumbotron, but then they know somebody else who can get them into a Skybox, so they just keep failing upwards.  

NITPICK POINT #3: Sure, there's this thing called The NFL Experience, or the FanZone or whatever, and I'm sure it's like a Comic-Con for football, lots of booths and exhibits and fun activities taking place at the stadium the day before the game.  Fine, whatever, maybe there's a hot wings contest, who cares. But is there a book-based booth called "The Read Zone"?  I'm betting not, and even if there WERE, would it feature a self-published book based on Gronkowski erotic fiction?  Again, probably no.  If there were a "Read Zone" you have to figure it would be there to promote child literacy or something, and R-rated romance novels would be a no-no.  But it's just one more example of how this film can't keep its own story straight. Things happen this way because the writer needed them to happen this way to keep things moving in every direction at once and fill up 100 minutes. 

Here's a real shock, Tom Brady was a producer on this movie via his production company, 199 Productions - so yeah, as you might imagine there's an impetus to portray him in a positive light.  Also, it must be good to be the G.O.A.T. because that means you can finance a film about yourself (starring YOU as yourself) and your biggest game performance and you can hire some of the most acclaimed actresses (12 Oscar nominations, 5 Oscar wins and 1 EGOT winner) to play your fans, then also some of the best comedians (Patton Oswalt, Ron Funches) will line up to play the smaller roles, and you'll get more famous, just when you thought you couldn't get any more famous-er.  

I grew up in Patriots territory (two towns over from Foxborough), but I'd already moved to NYC by the time Tom Brady hit the scene - I watched my parents become Pats fans later on, due to his great success of course, so I've got no issue with older people becoming football fans later in life, despite not ever following the game much Pre-Brady.  But then I also remember my parents not knowing what to do after he retired the first time, and popped up again in Tampa Bay.  It's a stumper, do you keep watching the Patriots without him or do you start rooting for the Bucs?  Ah, the perils of being a sports fan.  I doubt, however, that anyone would start wearing jerseys that were half New England and half Tampa Bay, that doesn't make any sense - unless the two teams are playing each other, and then, who DO you root for?  

I also worked in the warehouse of an appliance store during the first real Patriots Super-Bowl run, which was back in 1986.  That was a wild time, as with each playoff win more people came in the store to buy VCRs and big-screen TVs.  And the big slogan was "Squish the Fish" when the Pats played the Dolphins for the AFC Championship, and that was replaced by "Bury the Bears" for the Super Bowl. (EDIT: Actually it was "Berry the Bears" but I don't remember why... The head coach was named Raymond Berry or something?) Yeah, the Pats did NOT bury the Bears, which made me wonder how many people in the Boston area then tried to return those big-screen TVs when the Bears won the Super Bowl. It was a different time...the Patriots entered a long dormant hibernation period then, until Brady hit the scene. The Red Sox sort of did the same thing after they lost the World Series in 1986...  

Quick update, I submitted my NP about the hot wings to the IMDB under the "goofs" section for this film, and I got it posted!  This might be a first for me!  After almost 15 years of being very nitpicky about movies, I finally noticed something significant (OK, kind of) that nobody else cared about!  Victory is mine!

Also starring Lily Tomlin (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Rita Moreno (last seen in "West Side Story" (2021)), Sally Field (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Tom Brady (last seen in "Ted 2"), Billy Porter (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Harry Hamlin (last seen in "The Meddler"), Guy Fieri (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Alex Moffat (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Rob Corddry (last seen in "The Layover"), Glynn Turman (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Ron Funches (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Bob Balaban (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Jimmy O. Yang (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Matt Lauria (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Sara Gilbert (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Sally Kirkland (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Andy Richter (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Gus Kenworthy, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Marshawn Lynch, Patton Oswalt (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Retta (last seen in "Father Figures"), Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski (last seen in "Boss Level"), Bonnie Hellman (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Amber Chardae Robinson (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Vishal Patel, Charlie Morgan Patton, Rebecca Field (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Lucius Baybak (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Nick Lane, Daniella Covino, Marc Rebillet, Matt Porter, Stephanie Nash, Arnold Schrager, Noah Staggs (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), Amy Tolsky, with archive footage of Bill Belichick, Terry Bradshaw (last seen in "Father Figures").

RATING: 6 out of 10 sequined jerseys

Better Living Through Chemistry

Year 15, Day 269 - 9/26/23 - Movie #4,553

BEFORE: All right, we've got the end of another month coming up - I got a little delayed this past weekend, but I just have to watch three movies in five days, that's not a problem, then I can get some real horror films cleared off of the list.  25 horror films in 31 days will be a tougher challenge, once I factor in three days at NY Comic-Con, two part-time jobs and one vacation, but I'm going to try my best, what else can I do?

Olivia Wilde carries over from "Don't Worry Darling". 

THE PLOT: A straight-laced pharmacist's uneventful life spirals out of control when he starts an affair with a trophy-wife customer who takes him on a joyride involving sex, drugs and possibly murder. 

AFTER: We're living in a weird time, with both actors and writers out on strike, though it looks now like the writers are close to making a new deal with Big Hollywood which should get them some more streaming royalties and also ensure (maybe) that future screenplays won't be written by Artificial Intelligence or be based solely on the tweets of strippers. Valid concerns, for sure.  And I support unions, though I've never been in one, and I'm on the side of the striking unions, mostly - certainly the executives at Netflix and Sony could get by on HALF of what they're currently earning and still be considered rich people, unless they're all expecting to hold their positions for only one year, so they're all trying to make as much in that one year as humanly possible, because, well, you just never know.  

But then I look at the casting process for a movie, such as this one, and it makes me think - Paul Rudd was originally going to play the lead role here, then he was replaced by Jeremy Renner, who was then replaced by Sam Rockwell.  Jennifer Garner was originally cast to play his girlfriend, but she left the project when she became pregnant, and Olivia Wilde was cast as her replacement. Do you understand, actors? You. Are. All. Replaceable.  I love Sam Rockwell, he did a great job here, he usually does, but he was the third choice, at least in order, if not in preference.  The early bird gets the worm, but the third actor gets the role.  Look at the big picture, though - actors are practically interchangeable, and there's only so much work to go around.  Plus it's a crapshoot, out of all the films that get made, not all of them get completed and released, which may be a good thing, who knows, but it's neither here nor there.  So if the actors get a new deal, congratulations, because that means TV and movies can get made again, and again, I'm 99% on the side of the unionized workers, but they should also be happy JUST to work and have jobs, because not everybody does, and also everyone can be replaced.  And I wonder how much longer the strike would have gone on before Hollywood just started hiring new actors who aren't in the union.

But this film came out in 2014, I'm just getting to it now because it was THAT under the radar - I wasn't even aware of this film until just a few months ago when it started running on cable.  That's the way it goes - you can go hard on movies for 15 years and not even come CLOSE to watching them all.  I just scrolled through the cable listings for this week and found like 25 movies I'd either forgotten about or never heard of that are running now, and honestly, I don't have the DVR space for them.  Movies like "Pain & Gain", "Rocket Science", "Me and Earl & the Dying Girl", "Greta", "The Show", "City Island" and then classics like "Breakdown", "Eve's Bayou" and "The Last Tycoon" - dear God, when will it ever end?  

It's another film that nobody saw - the budget was $5 million and the worldwide gross was just $120,000.  What the hell happened?  Sure, it's no "Gone With the Wind", but it didn't seem THAT bad.  Did it not play at any film festivals?  It feels kind of Sundance-y edgy, but maybe somebody missed an entry deadline?  Was there no marketing budget spent on getting people into theaters?  Or did some executive not think it was sell-able so the studio didn't even try?  Sam Rockwell alone should have been enough to sell this thing, sure this was three years before he won his Oscar, but he should have been enough of a name after films like "Galaxy Quest" and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind". "Matchstick Men"? "Iron Man 2"?  Anyone? 

I don't know, I don't know the magic formula for what makes a film successful in the end - if I did, I'd probably be much further along in my own career, instead of being stuck in the world of indie animation.  Maybe it's about tone, because this film kind of has a weird tone, with a pharmacist who also feels like he's stuck and not in charge of his own career and personal life.  The solution for Doug Varney seems to be to have an affair and start taking drugs recreationally - which seems maybe like dubious advice at best?  Because the screenplay then kind of has to bend itself over both backwards and sideways to make those GOOD moves.  Well, OK, "good" is subjective and so is "better", and so it's tough to tell if his life becomes "better" as opposed to, well, just "different". He gets himself on a DIFFERENT life-path, which some people do when they get tired of the path that they're on. No judgements here. 

And it seems like maybe the first thing they teach you in pharmacist school should be to "never get high on your own supply", but that's what he ends up doing. His wife is so focused on teaching spin classes and winning the town's annual bicycle race that she has no time for him, their sex life is non-existent - but really, no matter how busy she is, if she cared about the relationship, she'd make the time, right?  Or are all marriages just destined to drone on without sex after the thrill is gone?  Couldn't they have tried counseling or something?  She's not interested in being a parent to their troubled teen son, either, pushing that responsibility back on Doug, urging him to "be a man" and talk to his son.  Which he eventually does, but his solution to fixing his mopey son is to go out with him, dressed as ninjas, and commit random acts of vandalism.  Again, surely there must have been a better - sorry, different - solution? 

Doug starts taking drugs so he can have better recreational sex with his new lover, and then also turns to some combination of steroids and oxy to compete against his wife in the town's annual cycling race.  Sure, that puts him back on her radar, and they even return to having sex (he's had more practice now, so sure, have an affair to improve your marriage?) but the damage has already been done, after years of indifference Doug ends up divorced in the end.  It's another mixed message and an open question - is it better to be married and not completely happy or to be divorced and in control of your life?  Is it better for a teen to be raised by two happy parents separately than two miserable ones together? (And WHY are those the only two choices?) Another character mentions that he's been married three times, and still has no idea what he's doing - so, just across the board, it seems like everyone is incapable of learning anything, except through making mistakes?  

So, yeah, it's a weird one to be sure - and the messages are confusing.  Maybe don't build your own personal life plan around what happens in this movie - or any movie, really.  Just as some romances present a too-rosy picture about what happens when you fall in love, this one should be taken just as not-seriously, if it suggests you can improve your life by having an affair, taking a lot of drugs and committing vandalism with your son.  Yet somehow that's what happens here...just keep in mind it's only a story and not really real, I hope. 

Also starring Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Michelle Monaghan (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "Sheryl"), Norbert Leo Butz (last seen in "Flag Day"), Ben Schwartz (last seen in "Outside In"), Ken Howard (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Air"), Jenn Harris, Harrison Holzer (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Peter Jacobson (last seen in "Domino"), Sonnie Brown (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Ron Heneghan, Ken Arnold (last seen in "Men in Black 3"), Tracy McMullan, Bethany Hoffman, Wil Love (last seen in "State of Play"), Michael Shawn Montgomery, Regen Wilson, Richard Pelzman (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Doug Roberts (ditto), Lauren White, Griffin Hogan, Pete Rockwell, Michael J. Begley, Adalia Braydon, Greg Crowe (last seen in "Eighth Grade"), Donald Imm, Darla Robinson, Broocks Willich.

RATING: 5 out of 10 ninja throwing stars

Don't Worry Darling

Year 15, Day 268 - 9/25/23 - Movie #4,552

BEFORE: Yep, here's another one - I worked at a screening of this film, back when it was first released, which would have been sometime last September, just about a year ago. Or maybe it was a guild screening, which would have been closer to the end of the year, around award qualification time.  Who remembers?  Well, let's check the calendar - it was a screening for the Visual Effects Society on September 30, 2022 - so it took me just about a year to get around to watching this.  Sounds about right.  

But then, where does this belong?  I took pains to not WATCH the film, or read too much about it, and it all seemed very enigmatic - and then after those guild screenings, I never heard anything else about the film after that.  No Oscar nominations, no Golden Globes, that's not a good sign.  Worse, nobody was even talking about what a great movie it was, so umm, maybe it's not great?  I don't know, I have to watch it.  IMDB lists it as a "drama / mystery / thriller", OK so there's that, an indication that it maybe doesn't belong in a February chain.  Is it some kind of pseudo-horror film?  If so, then maybe this is the best place for it, in the run-up week to the real horror chain.  Damned if I know, I haven't watched it yet.  So let's clear it off the DVR and hope for the best....

Ari'el Stachel carries over from "Zola". 

THE PLOT: While her husband leaves home every day to work in a top secret facility, a young 1950's housewife begins to question her life when she notices strange behavior from the other wives in the neighborhood.

AFTER: Yeah, this is a real head-scratcher of a movie, it's enigmatic to the point of being really annoying about it.  Oh, wait, SPOILER ALERT before I go any further, because I don't want to give it away, but at the same time, I've been putting off learning this film's secret for a whole year and I'll probably be buzzing about it, and eager to talk about it with somebody, ANYBODY.  Like I was with "Empire of Light", but the only problem there was, I'm apparently the only person who took the time to watch that movie. I'm surrounded by filmmakers and theater workers, but nobody else in my orbit has seen this film.  Has anybody in either circle seen "Don't Worry Darling"?  It feels a lot like "Sorry to Bother You", which was another annoying enigmatic film with a big twist to it, and then when you learn the twist, you might toggle between, "Wait, what?  THAT'S the twist?"  and then you look for somebody to discuss it with, only nobody else gives a shit.  Then six months later it feels like everybody else has forgotten that movie even exists, because they either saw it and forgot about it, or they didn't see it and also forgot about it.  

So, screw it, even if nobody else is still talking about this movie, I'M TALKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE because I waited a whole year to do that.  The first hour puts forward the interaction of couples in this idyllic 1950's community, where the men go to work on some secret project, and the women stay home, clean the house, cook dinner for their husbands to enjoy after work, and listen to radio broadcasts with positive messages from the founder of their town, which is called "Victory".  Now with a name like that, the men could be working on some government project, or nuclear power, or who knows, maybe the whole community is some giant cult in the middle of the desert and the men are in their lodge wearing red robes and sacrificing chickens to Ba'al or something.  There are so many directions this thing could go, and the movie defiantly refuses to pick one, at least for the first 90 minutes. 

Alice notices some things that don't add up, however, like how the women can go shopping and buy whatever clothes they want on the company account, and never pay for them.  And her husband refuses to tell her anything about where he goes during the day and what gets done there.  One day while on the trolley that takes the women from their homes to the store she sees a plane crash in the desert, only the trolley driver doesn't see it, or pretends to not see it, but she gets off the trolley and decides to check this out, only this takes her near headquarters, which is the one place the women aren't allowed to go.  What could possibly go wrong, though? 

The other wives in the community seem very complacent about their lives and their situations, except for one who claims to have bad dreams, and Alice sees her being disciplined at one point, and later she swears she sees this woman cut her own throat and jump off of a building.  Later Alice is told that woman is fine, not dead, but just in the hospital being treated, and she should think nothing of it.  OK, fine, but again, WTF?  

But the most disturbing thing to modern viewers, or at least it should be the most disturbing thing, is that the men work and the women cook and clean and the gender roles are very clearly defined, so there are no women in the workplace and no stay-at-home dads, and sure, this was all very normal for the 1950's, but through a modern lens, this seems kind of nightmarish, no? That American society had no trouble telling men that it was OK to work and succeed and make money, only women, we hope you enjoy cooking and cleaning, because that's all you're entitled to do!  And the scariest thing might be that everybody back then was OK with this?

But then Alice starts having disturbing dreams.  She feels like the walls are closing in (literally, although probably this was just a metaphor for the way she was feeling. Or was it?).  She passed out after visiting headquarters, then woke up back at home, with no explanation for how she got there.  Oh, well, it probably doesn't matter.  But then who are these dancing women in her dreams, and why is she now the only woman in town who's not content to just toe the party line, cook and clean every day and go shopping and drink cocktails by the pool, because surely there must be more to life than all that, right? RIGHT?

Then there are daily loud noises and earthquake-like rumblings, and if that's somehow connected to the work the men are doing, well, they're not supposed to talk about it, so there's no point in asking about it, right?  But again, you get the feeling that this is all building up to something, but WHAT?  Then the reveal comes, and once that happens, well, there's no going back, really, both Alice and the audience have to deal with the new reality once the cat's out of the bag.  Again I'm reminded of films like "Sorry to Bother You" and "The Menu" when you just feel deep down that something weird's going to happen, then you're kind of relieved when it does, just so you can say, "Yep, THERE it is."

But really, come on, it's THAT?  I feel like I had the rug pulled out from under me, to a certain degree.  Certainly it felt like the screenwriters were setting us up for something different, like maybe the Manhattan Project or a cult or a "Stepford Wives"-type situation, but no, it's not any of those things.  But so many unanswered questions, like what was that loud noise and the earthquake-like rumble?  Now it seems like the screenwriters either forgot where they were originally headed, or they changed their minds halfway through, because the clues would never lead you to this illogical conclusion, and I don't like being tricked. 

And the film made $87 million, so somebody besides me saw it, only why is nobody still buzzing about it, is it because they don't understand it?  Well, if so, that's kind of what the film deserves for being so enigmatic for so long, the reveal is almost like an afterthought when it comes.  Plus it could never possibly live up to the first hour of set-up that tried to signal us all that something was coming, only we didn't expect THAT.  Maybe other movie fans also don't like being tricked, or that feeling of the rug being pulled out from under them? 

I just remember there was so much backstage drama about this film, with director Olivia Wilde leaving her husband, Jason Sudeikis, at some point so she could date Harry Styles, whom was cast in her film to replace Shia LaBeouf, who couldn't seem to work with anybody else and was very publicly fired.  Then there were reports of Olivia Wilde fighting with the lead actress, Florence Pugh, over the direction of the film and I think Pugh almost got fired too.  Who knows?  I wasn't there, I'm just repeating what I read about.  Then during the festival premiere in Venice, there was footage of one actor accidentally spitting on another one, and there was so much debate over this it was worse than the arguments about whether that infamous dress was white and gold or blue and black.  Who cares?  Sometimes spit accidentally comes out of one person's mouth and lands in another person's mouth, get over it.  Even if it happened, why make a thing out of it, haven't you all got anything better to do?  

All that manufactured drama, and everyone was talking about the magic loogie and nobody was talking about what happened in the film.  Really, they still aren't, so what does THAT tell you?

Also starring Florence Pugh (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Harry Styles (last seen in "Eternals"), Chris Pine (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Olivia Wilde (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), KiKi Layne (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Gemma Chan (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Nick Kroll (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Sydney Chandler, Kate Berlant (last seen in "After Class"), Asif Ali (last seen in "Dean"), Douglas Smith (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "Yes, God, Yes"), Steve Berg (last seen in "Tag"), Daisy Sudeikis, Dita Von Teese, Marcello Reyes, Daniel Nishio, Venice Wong. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 mystery men in red jumpsuits

Zola

Year 15, Day 266 - 9/23/23 - Movie #4,551

BEFORE: Colman Domingo carries over from "Assassination Nation", and I'm going to try to keep this short tonight, because I'm working all weekend at the theater. It's a special annual event that celebrates films made by the alumni of the college that runs the theater - but that means two screenings on Saturday and a third for me on Sunday, so I'll be worn out by the end of the weekend, probably.  Oh, well, it's a rainy weekend so inside of a movie is not really a bad place to be, it beats going to a picnic or a baseball game that's likely to be rained out, or a football game that takes place in all kinds of weather, I've never really understood that one.  Hey, if that's your idea of fun, to go to a football stadium and get soaked, you're welcome to it - but I'll be dry at the movie theater, unless the roof leaks. 

THE PLOT: A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild trip to Florida. 

AFTER: Well, so far this is the most popular movie ever that was based on the tweets of a stripper - sorry, exotic dancer.  Or I guess technically the movie is based on a Rolling Stone magazine article ABOUT the tweets, that's an important difference when it comes to assigning screenwriting credit, I guess.  Actually, this movie is probably what the Writer's Guild is afraid of, a movie that's so about nothing and everything at the same time that it probably didn't even NEED a writer.  Let me take this opportunity to remind Hollywood that during this difficult time when the writers and actors are on strike, my Twitter stream is completely available, for sale cheap, as I hear hardly anybody's on Twitter - sorry, X - anymore.  If my limericks about the daily headlines and photos of my BBQ meals and weird beers consumed can be turned into a movie, I'm all for it.  

Seriously, though, so far I've had zero luck monetizing my social media - or even my boss's feeds, and he's got WAY more followers than I do.  What's the opposite of an influencer?  Would it be an outfluencer?  Maybe that's more my style, creating content that almost nobody is interested in.  Let's face it, my life just isn't that exciting, who would even care about my thoughts and my troubles, aside from the tens of people who check in with my near-daily movie reviews?  Well, at least I'll never get a swelled head about how many followers I have.

"Zola" is part of a relatively new movie genre, called "Tampa-Core", and other films in the same vein include "Spring Breakers" and - well, OK, that's about it, it's a new genre - and feature lots of gun violence, nudity, guns and I'm guessing also banned books, anti-vaxxers and alligators eating babies.  Just imagine everything you hate about Florida compressed into one movie, and you'll start to get the idea.  Years ago, Florida was just a bunch of retired people playing golf and college kids going to the beach for spring break, now it's still that, but with so much more crazy added to the mix.  We were planning to visit Florida in 2020, to maybe hit Disney World during it's 50th anniversary, check in on the Star Wars park there too, but then COVID hit and we just cashed in our plane tickets for credit, which I think we used a year later to visit my brother-in-law in Chicago.  Considering all the bad news out of Florida in the last two years, I think we totally made the right call.  They're harboring a fugitive ex-President down there, after all.  Better to stay away until they sort all that mess out, maybe the whole state will somehow come loose and float away from the other 49, I keep hoping anyway.  

And the story does come from a dancer, and come on, like, why would she lie?  According to her, Zola met Stefani, another dancer in Detroit who invited her to come on a road trip down to Florida, where they could dance at a club and make a lot of money, only when they got there, Zola found out that the club was a bust, and driver was really Stefani's pimp and they were trying to rope her into prostitution, doing threesomes in a hotel room for clients who would pay $150 each.  However, this really wasn't Zola's thing, so instead of taking part, she raised Stefani's rate to $500 per client, and together they raised $8,000 in one night. The problem with success, however, is that people then want you to repeat that, so Stefani's pimp set them up at another hotel, where everything then went horribly wrong.  

There's really no structure to the film, no redemptive arc, nobody learns anything or gains any valuable experience, Stefani's pimp gets rich, Stefani's boyfriend gets upset, and Zola's just kind of along for the ride in the passenger seat of the crazy bus.  Then the movie doesn't really end, it just sort of stops at a random point.  Well, that's what you get when you base a story on a stripper's tweets and you don't hire real writers, I guess.  

What's a bit weird to me is that Riley Keough is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley - that's not weird in and of itself, because I guess somebody has to be - but Elvis was just here two nights ago, in archive footage seen at the end of "Elvis", and now here's his granddaughter, appearing in a movie where her character has sex with a lot of men, there's even an implied gang-bang scene, and OK, whatever, but I can't help but wondering what Elvis would think about his granddaughter's career, if he were still alive (and some people still believe he is, either genuinely or metaphorically).  I don't know, I'd like to think that the heir to Elvis' estate (and since the death of Lisa Marie, the owner of Graceland, I think) wouldn't HAVE to do sex scenes in movies, she could afford to wait for classier roles, but I guess maybe she didn't want to?  I've seen her in "Lovesong" and "American Honey", so it seems she's always in films that are sexually explicit, or where she's not wearing much, so is that a personal choice, or has she been affected by being born into fame and having Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage as stepfathers?  Just wondering - but I'll admit I know nothing about how actors choose their roles or make other lifestyle choices. 

Elvis Presley became the biggest movie star in the world at one point, and never got naked in a movie or appeared in an explicit sex scene, that's all I'm saying.  I know, I know, it was in a different time, and things now aren't the way they were then.  

NITPICK POINT: Wouldn't a very upscale hotel, even in Florida, notice that so many "gentleman callers" were headed to the same room on the same night?  Wouldn't that be a violation of any hotel's terms of service?  $8,000 made in increments of $500 means 16 johns in one night, and that didn't raise any suspicion among the hotel staff?  On top of that, how did the bed sheets stay so clean?  The maids only service the room once a day, so how did they handle this?  Also, ewwwww.  But I bet if I think about it I can find a lot more things like this, little inconsistencies about the logistics of this whole story.  So I'm not buying it. 

NITPICK POINT #2: It's 1,178 miles from Detroit to Tampa - that's a 16 hour drive, without stopping.  So I guess it's possible, but with ONE driver, no breaks, and he's not even tired after that drive?  Nobody in their right mind would try to make that trip in one day for a weekend trip.

Also starring Taylour Paige (last seen in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"), Riley Keough (last seen in "Earthquake Bird"), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Ari'el Stachel, Jason Mitchell (last seen in "Mudbound"), TS Madison, Nelcie Souffrant, Nasir Rahim, Sophie Hall, Jarquale Stewart, Tommy Foxhill, Ben Bladon (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Slappy's Revenge"), Tony DeMil (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Ernest Emmanuel Peeples, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 basketball dribbles

Assassination Nation

Year 15, Day 264 - 9/21/23 - Movie #4,550

BEFORE: Kelvin Harrison Jr. carries over from "Elvis", and of course now I'm wishing I'd lined things up a little differently, because I'm at another half-century mark, and I think it might have been a little nicer if the big "Elvis" film had fallen here.  But I would have needed to watch "Men, Women & Children" a couple months ago to make that happen, so I need to learn to live with the results of the decisions I've made.  Look, there are just 50 films left in the year and my chain is set to reach Christmas and the end of another year, so that's all good.  I need to remind myself that I saved that movie for a reason - it links several movies that I want to watch in February, and watching that also would have meant that I'd need to still cut THREE movies from my 2023 chain now, instead of two, it's hard enough for me to cut two.  

But this means that Movie Year 15 is now 5/6 over, just 50 films to go, and after another 5 I can start in on the horror movies.  Last year I watched 4 of the 5 "Purge" movies as the lead-in to Shocktober, and this one kind of feels like it's from somewhere in that same vein.  

THE PLOT: After a malicious data back exposes the secrets of the perpetually American town of Salem, chaos decends and four girls must fight to survive, while coping with the hack themselves. 

AFTER: Well, I really called this one wrong, because I was expecting another high-school-cheerleaders-with-assassin-skills movie, like "Barely Lethal" or "Domino" or "The Rhythm Section", and it's just not that.  Well, it kind of maybe gets there at the end, because there's a lot of killing near the end, but no real explanation for how these four high-school girls got so good at using guns.  Well, they're Americans so I guess there's your answer...but is it?

This film kind of marketed itself as "Heathers" meets "The Purge", which implies a certain mix of black comedy and also political commentary, and I'm just not sure if overall the movie really got where it wanted to go - I mean, that's a tough bar to jump over, no?  It just feels like the math isn't there, if the storyline wanted to get from "everybody's texts and browser history gets made public" followed by "everybody puts on masks and tries to kill each other".  Just maybe there should have been a few more steps in-between, that's all, because one doesn't logically lead right into the other.  I can see maybe how some people might commit suicide once their secrets are exposed, or to seek physical revenge on the hacker, but as one character states in this film, whoever looked at a photo of a nearly-nude woman and thought, "I need to go find that person and kill her..."?  Unless that woman broke up your marriage with that photo, I'm not really seeing the direct motivation.  Blame the hacker, not the hacked. 

Somebody also clearly wanted to address a ton of hot-button social issues, not just the proliferation of guns in the U.S., but also social media and its devastating effects on teens, sexting and its devastating effects on relationships, homophobia, transphobia, pornography, hacking and privacy issues, nudity as an art form or exploitation, lynch mobs, and then of course all the normal social situations that American teens might be confronted with in their daily school lives and also their free time.  It's a lot, and without a clear focus to it all, I'm led to believe that maybe they should have narrowed things down a bit in the name of making some kind of coherent point.  Just saying.  Unless the goal was just to show a lot of ultra-violence and touch briefly on a few social issues, in which case, mission accomplished. 

Anyway, it's a bit derivative because "South Park" did an episode in 2016 called "Fort Collins", in which an entire town in Colorado got hacked, and everyone's browser history got exposed. And since "South Park" is known for spoofing other things, if you should find out that your main plotline was already featured in an episode, maybe you should scrap the whole thing and try again, because man, it's been done.  But to be fair, this was released in 2018, which is when the #MeToo movement was really hitting its stride, remember that?  Still, I have to figure this movie didn't really pitch itself as being ABOUT that, because it ended up as one of the biggest box office bombs of that year, grossing only $2.5 million against a budget of $7 million.

I think the title was part of the problem - it's a clever title, sure, but not appropriate because the action is confined to one town called Salem (state unspecified) and it's not even CLOSE to being nation-wide, so maybe that title should have been saved for another movie, something more in line with "The Purge" or something about a secret organization of assassins, not just high-school kids and parents with guns. 

The IMDB does not list where exactly this was filmed - but I swear I recognize the high school from that covered walkway between buildings.  Wasn't that also seen in "Licorice Pizza"?  If I'm right then it's the Portola High School in Tarzana, CA.  But also there may be a fake high school somewhere that gets used JUST for interior shots, I mean, that would make sense, right, because so many films are set in high schools?  Somewhere a high school shut down and was about to be demolished and then somebody in the film industry said, "No, no, WAIT, don't destroy it, we'll buy it and shoot a bunch of movies there, we'll just have to decorate it a bit differently for each movie - or not, because who really notices?"  (EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong, the high school walkway seen in "Licorice Pizza" had a sloped roof, and this film shows a walkway with a flat roof.  My bad. "Assassination Nation" was apparently filmed in New Orleans.)

Well, the best thing that I can say is that now this film is off my list, cleared off my DVR and I'll never have to watch it again or even think about it again, not until the end of the year wrap-up at least.  And I'm sure as a society we're going to work out all our lingering issues regarding social media and transphobia, and future high-schoolers should have no hang-ups whatsoever. JK.

Also starring Odessa Young (last seen in "The Professor"), Abra, Suki Waterhouse (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Hari Nef, Colman Domingo (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Danny Ramirez (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Joel McHale (last seen in "Blended"), Bella Thorne (ditto), Maude Apatow (last seen in "The Bubble"), Cody Christian (last seen in "Surrogates"), Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "Villains"), Cullen Moss (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Anika Noni Rose (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Jeff Pope (last seen in "Supercon"), Noah Galvin (last seen in "Booksmart"), Stacie Davis (last seen in "Daddy's Home"), Lukas Gage (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Susan Misner (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Kathryn Erbe (last heard in "The Vanishing City"), Joe Chrest (Last seen in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), JD Evermore (ditto), Lance E. Nichols (ditto), Caden Swain, Andrene Ward-Hammond (last seen in "Project Power"), Lucy Faust (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Elizabeth Newcomer (ditto), Destiny Reed, Lorelei Gilbert, Jennifer Morrison (last seen in "Warrior"), Leticia Jimenez, Daniel Williams-Lopez, Silas Cooper (last seen in "Columbiana"), Anthony Marble (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Geraldine Singer (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), T.C. Carter, with a cameo from Wolfgang Novogratz (!!!) (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser").  

RATING: 4 out of 10 naked baby photos

Elvis

Year 15, Day 262 - 9/19/23 - Movie #4,549

BEFORE: On-again, off-again. Worked another screening of "A Haunting in Venice" last night, now I've got another day off, so I'm stuck at home again today, and will be on Thursday, too.  But the weekend's going to be busy, I'm working both days.  I don't control the shifts, if I did I'd give myself a much more regular schedule. Nothing to do at home but watch movies and research some upcoming film festival deadlines...I started that "Ahsoka" show on Disney Plus, watched three episodes on Sunday night, but it's a tough slog because nothing really seems to be HAPPENING, which I usually demand from a show.  I had this same problem with "Andor", not much happened in the first few episodes and I had to walk away from it and pick it up again later. This damn strike has gone on too long, and it's left me with a bunch of terrible shitty shows to watch. Time to start doing some chores around the house that I've been putting off, I guess.

Tom Hanks carries over again from "A Man Called Otto". 

THE PLOT: The life of American music icon Elvis Presley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950's while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. 

AFTER: Well, I have to say this movie could have been a real mess, given that the director is sort of known for creating spectacle over substance, and also doing questionable things like putting modern songs in period pieces ("Moulin Rouge") and also allowing his actors who are not generally known for their singing abilities sing modern songs in period pieces.  And the last feature he directed was "The Great Gatsby", which came out nearly ten years ago and made him the bane of English teachers everywhere who were just trying to get their students to read a damn book from cover to cover and not just watch a Leonardo DiCaprio film and call that homework. Is there spectacle here?  Of course, but there's also a story, and although I was just a kid when Elvis died, I've got some knowledge of the man and more importantly, the mansion.

You can learn a lot about a person by visiting their house, and in 2017, on our first of three BBQ Crawls across the South, we spent 3 days in Memphis (between Little Rock and Nashville) and really, there's only one important thing to do in Memphis - eat barbecue, of course.  But we also figured that Graceland would be an important stop - you don't drive from Dallas to Nashville and NOT visit Graceland, after all.  We saw the house, the cars (SO many cars!), the gold records, the shooting range, the gold records, the jumpsuits (SO many jumpsuits!) and we had lunch at Gladys' Diner before we toured Elvis' planes.  Because you don't go all the way to Memphis and NOT visit Elvis' planes, we figured.  And Col. Tom Parker's plane was there, too, because the story goes that he would arrive first in a city when Elvis was on tour, and make sure that everything was set up the way it needed to be, then Elvis would arrive on his private plane the next day.  

So we stood on Elvis's plane, the Lisa Marie (with a conference table and blue suede furniture) and we visited Elvis' racquetball court (complete with pinball machines and a piano), we toured Vernon's office and the yellow TV room (where Elvis reportedly once shot a TV dead) and we stood where we could peer into the infamous "jungle room". The only place they didn't let us go was on the second floor, which of course is where Elvis died.  And of course we visited Elvis' grave by the pool, which is just as much a tribute to excess as, well, everything on the grounds.  You can learn a lot about someone by visiting their home, and my wife ended up saying, "THIS is what happens when you give a 25-year-old like a billion dollars."  She's not wrong - Elvis bought every car and motorcycle he ever saw, including the ones that he drove in his movies, which is weird because they probably would have given him those cars, if he'd only just asked for them, but no, he bought them.  (He even had the 1966 Mongrel T that he drove in the 1966 movie "Easy Come, Easy Go", which was designed by Batmobile creator George Barris, and was repurposed as the "Jokermobile" on the 1960's "Batman" TV show.  It's nuts, look it up.)

Later that night, we had dinner in a wild game-themed restaurant that was located on top of a giant pyramid that contained a very large Bass Pro Shop (complete with a bowling alley, giant fishtanks and live ducks and alligators in a giant fake swamp) and we could step out on to a balcony after dinner and watch the sun set over the Mississippi River.  Yeah, that happened. Then two days later, when leaving town, we visited the Sun Records Studio, which amazingly is still there - well, it was declared a landmark at some point.  This is where Elvis' recording career began and also where he participated in the "Million Dollar Quartet" sessions that also featured Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.  We didn't have time for the full tour, because we had to drive to Nashville, but I just wanted to stand in the lobby and take some pictures, and I was happy to see that Roy Orbison memorabilia was also highlighted in the decor.  (Hey, when is somebody going to make a biopic about Roy?)

What was my point - oh, right, Graceland!  This film absolutely NAILED the look of Graceland.  When I worked at a screening of this film last year, I peeked in to monitor the screening (you know, to make sure the picture and sound were running OK) and I caught some of the characters standing in the living room at Graceland, and I IMMEDIATELY knew where that was, because I've been there.  Now I believe that this movie did not film at the actual Graceland in Memphis, so that means that somebody had to re-create those rooms somewhere else, perhaps on a set, and they did so, EXACTLY.  And probably the way those rooms looked back in the 1950's, not the way they look now, however, somebody did an amazing job.  This movie should have won an Oscar for interior design, only I don't think that's a category.  OK, art direction, then.  Or Production Design, I think they call it now.  But no, this film was nominated for 8 Oscars and didn't win any - 

Sometimes I can also learn things about a movie just because of my OCD method of demanding that all my movies be linked together by actor.  This occasionally causes juxtapositions that give me greater insight - though these come in flashes and most times don't even come at all.  One example is realizing that three romance movies in a row were all based on "Cyrano de Bergerac", but there are many similar examples.  Just this past week there were three Tom Hanks movies in a row where his character was recovering from the loss of a family member, a dead daughter in "Asteroid City" and a dead wife and child in "Pinocchio" and "A Man Called Otto".  But here the Tom Hanks connection yields another hidden truth - if Geppetto was played by Tom Hanks, and so was Col. Tom Parker, then by transitive properties, Tom Parker is symbolic of Geppetto, and Elvis is the puppet!  The little wooden boy who wants to be a real millionaire!  OK, so the analogy doesn't work exactly, because Col. Parker was like a father figure to Elvis, but he was also the Stromboli character who put him to work in the puppet show, and maybe he was also the Blue Fairy that brought him to life.  But work with me here, Elvis at one point made reference to "the salt mine" that was performing at a Vegas casino, and from there it's a short leap to being turned into an enslaved donkey because of his love of "root beer".  

So who was Colonel Tom Parker?  Well, he wasn't a Colonel, for starters.  He was a Dutch immigrant (real name: Andreas Cornelis van Kuljk) who pretended to be a good old Southern boy, because that was part of the con.  He was a former circus carny (really, everything connected to the circus is a scam, just look up P.T. Barnum) who then became a concert promoter, and really cashed in when he could find a good-looking white boy who could sing black music, thus creating a whole new untapped market of teen girls who were becoming sexually aware and needed somebody to focus on.  Now, how much of Elvis's success was being in the right place at the right time, and how much of it was based on the marketing genius of this Svengali circus refugee, who told him at the start of each performance how hard to rotate his hips?  We may never know.  And he sure did well by Elvis by getting him cast in Hollywood movies, as each one brought him a bit closer to completing his collection of classic cars, and each one brought him a bit closer to sleeping with every actress in Hollywood.  But fame costs, doesn't it?  And Elvis paid the price, because unlike Pinocchio there were always strings attached - and then when Elvis finally cut those strings, that's when Col. Parker added up all his expenses over the years, and submitted like a $9 million bill for his services to Vernon, Elvis' father and business manager, who clearly wasn't, umm, taking care of business properly. 

When we visited Graceland, we noticed some things - like there were portraits of Elvis and Priscilla during happier times, and of course there's no mention of them splitting up, so visitors can continue to live in an imagined world where they lived happily ever after.  Also, there were portraits of Elvis during his skinnier days, and as you might expect, no photos or portraits of him in the later years, when he would ride into downtown Memphis on his Rupp Centaur three-wheeled motorcycle as he was too big for a conventional motorcycle.  Elvis went from being larger than life to literally being larger than life (in terms of volume).  So there's something of a whitewashing effect when telling Elvis' story, because not everybody wants to get into the addiction angle.  So it's a credit to this film that they dive (not too deep, of course) into the drugs and Elvis' affairs - but they totally missed the food addiction and they kind of skip forward to Elvis' death.  

Look, I get it, the movie's two and a half hours long at that point, and something's got to be trimmed somewhere. But they glossed right over the Lebowski years - there no depicttion of "Fat Elvis".  Maybe if they had featured Elvis looming large in his later years, Austin Butler could have won an Oscar - because that was the year that Brendan Fraser won for "The Whale", just saying.  We all have our own personal "fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches", and that's OK - well, mostly OK, as long as you're not doing damage to your health or your mental health. And maybe we all have our own personal "Dr. Nick", which is a metaphor for whoever or whatever gets you through the night, or gets you your drugs or your fried food or your hook-ups. 

So we're left with Elvis' friendship with black musicians and appreciation for black music, which is kind of a nice way of saying he stole his whole act from them.  B.B. King apparently taught him how to go on tour, and Little Richard apparently taught him how to sing an x-rated song but in a way so that nobody would really notice.  If you look up the original lyrics for "Tutti Frutti", you may learn about some things that you didn't really want to know (HINT: the song is not about an ice cream flavor) and really, the world's second most explicit rock song is probably "Jailhouse Rock", if you want to get into it.  

Then there are the touchstones of Elvis' career, from the Louisiana Hayride performance to leaving Sun Records for RCA, appearing on the Steve Allen show with Milton Berle and an actual hound dog, serving in the miiltary in Germany for 2 years, appearing in movies and marrying Priscilla, and then filming the Christmas TV special in 1968 on the night when RFK was shot.  Then Parker single-handedly invented the concept of the Las Vegas Residency, signing Elvis up for a 5-year contract, supposedly to keep him from doing international tours, since Parker didn't have a passport and couldn't leave the U.S.  Priscilla divorces Elvis because of his drug addiction, Elvis fires Col. Parker, Col. Parker submits his invoice for two decades of expenses, and Elvis dies not from a heart attack or a drug overdose but because of "his love for his fans" - these are Col. Parker's words, not mine, so they're rather questionable. 

So what really killed Elvis Presley, was it drugs, high cholesterol or fame itself?  I believe it was some combination of the first two, but if you want to make an argument for fame being the true "silent killer", I'm willing to listen.  I've watched many documentaries about rock bands and other music artists who found themselves on a big hamster wheel that they couldn't (or wouldn't) get off. They make a hit record, great, but then the record company wants another one, pronto, and so they go right back into the studio, then after a few albums they go out on tour, but that means they need costumes, equipment, roadies, and a staff to handle things, and then comes the live album and another tour, and then even if they take a break, the staff needs to get paid and the company needs to stay in business, because who can live on just royalties?  And if you didn't write your own songs, you're even worse off - so it's time to pump out another album or go out on the road again, to feed the machine.  Of course they could just STOP at any time, unless they signed one of those killer five-album contracts, in which case they can't. And even if they could, that would mean they might not be famous any more, and people would forget about them - and according to this movie, that was Elvis' greatest fear.  

To date, Presley remains the greatest-selling solo artist in recording history, although there are some asterisks involved - Elvis got his Grammys not for his rock and roll, but for his Gospel recordings.  And 99% of his gold records were for songs that were from the Lieber and Stoller songbook, or written by other musicians like Carl Perkins - so essentially he was a cover artist, probably the most successful cover artist in history.  Hey, the Beatles started out as a skiffle cover band, but eventually they wrote their own songs, while Elvis had to resort to covering "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Long Tall Sally" for the Hawaiian comeback special.  

NITPICK POINT: I realize that some editing has to take place somewhere, or else a film about Elvis' life would be just as long as, well, Elvis' life.  But there are some GLARING omissions here - there's mention of the first live satellite broadcast ever, but where's a re-creation of the Aloha special, live from Hawaii?  Where is the Ed Sullivan show, for that matter?  And where the HELL are the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches?  What about Elvis going to visit Richard Nixon?  Well, I guess two movies about that have already been made. 

Also starring Austin Butler (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson (last seen in "Kangaroo Jack"), Richard Roxburgh (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (last seen in "Cyrano"), David Wenham (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Luke Bracey (last seen in "The November Man"), Dacre Montgomery, Leon Ford (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Gary Clark Jr. (last seen in "Miles Ahead"), Yola, Natasha Bassett (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Xavier Samuel (last seen in "Blonde"), Adam Dunn, Alton Mason, Shonka Dukureh, David Gannon, Charles Grounds (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Josh McConville (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Kate Mulvany (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Gareth Davies (last seen in "Peter Rabbit"), Chaydon Jay, Christian Kisando, John Mukristayo, Miles Burton, Gad Banza, Nicholas Bell (last seen in "The Great Raid"), Anthony Phelan (last seen in "Unbroken"), Sandro Colarelli, Cle Morgan, Charles Allen, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Liz Blackett, Mike Bingaman, Christian McCarty, Tony Nixon, Andrea Moor, Mark Leonard Winter, Hugh Parker, Thomas Larkin, Hilton Hyppolite Denis, Christopher Sommers, Terepai Richmond, Alex Knight, Elizabeth Cullen, Angie Milliken, Jack McGirr, Miranda Frangou, Ruby Gonzales-Judd, Greg Powell, Patrick Shearer, Sarah Ogden, Ian Gardiner, Melina Vidler, Alex Radu, Ant Aggs, Josie Cross, Christina Fern (last seen in "San Andreas"), Doll Hunt, Jenna Kenney, Katrina West.

with archive footage of Walter Cronkite (last heard in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in TIme"), Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Respect"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Elvis Presley, and the voice of Jimmy Carter (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali")

RATING: 7 out of 10 Christmas songs that never got recorded for the Comeback Special.