I'm sure I've ranted before how much I hate when some "reviewer" views a story through the lens of some arbitrary rule he just made up. Like, "All Stories Save to End Happily Ever After." Or, "Characters Can Never Be Mean." Or, "The Character Has to Still Like the Same Sex They Did Before Gender Swapping." It doesn't matter what else happens in the story, the only important thing is that one rule they made up. Like this:
I've seen stuff like this a couple other times. I'm not sure which books it was to know if it was the same person or not. Anyway, it's this silly rule that the main character has to remain the same inside or it's "personality death" or "a murder." Which seems ridiculous.
The whole point in a lot of stories is for a character to change. Think of the classic A Christmas Carol. The whole point of it was for Scrooge to change from a stingy old miser to a caring and giving person. Was that "personality death" or "a murder?" If it was, it was OK because he was bad, right?
In this case, the whole point was that the main character changes outside and inside. Captain Amanda Harker--basically a retread of Lottie Donovan in the Scarlet Knight books--is a tough, butch, workaholic cop. Then she gets a bunch of a drug called "Lezz" spilled on her. In small doses, Lezz can make a woman like other women for a few hours. In such a large dose, it starts to change Harker so that she gets incrementally less tough and butch to the point she has to leave the police force.
At the same time she's getting dull and self-centered like a lot of pretty girls. I don't think the story works if she stays all tough and butch in a body that clearly isn't those things. That would really be tormenting her more than this way where at least she can enjoy it.
Even in the Chances Are books, Steve didn't stay the same once he turned into Stacey. He got softer and quieter and sweeter. It's a byproduct not just of being in a different body but everyone treating him differently. And also he can't solve problems the way Steve did by punching people or intimidating them physically. Stacey isn't old enough to drink so she isn't drunk a lot of the time like Steve was and she doesn't smoke. She also hangs around a lot with Steve's daughter and other girls who are not cops whereas Steve would hang out with his partner Jake and other cops. That would be another influence.
One thing I like to cynically think is that people who "review" with these "rules" aren't writers who have to actually write stories. It always sounds a lot easier if you've never done it. I mean, I just don't know how I wouldn't change the personality at least some. If a 6-4, 250-lb 50-year-old guy suddenly turns into a 5-6, 110-lb 18-year-old girl, the world is going to be a lot different. And the same if it happened the opposite way. I don't think it's "death" or a "murder" so much as a journey physically and spiritually. It's like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, creating something new from something old. Or less romantic and destructive, a caterpillar emerging from the cocoon as a butterfly. You can't really gauge the personality of a butterfly or Phoenix, but I bet they'd be different from a caterpillar or whatever.
Today marks 5 years since Disney widely released the "live action" Lion King in theaters. I did not see it in the theater and was not even really much of a fan at the time. I had seen the original and had a couple of the Elton John songs on a Greatest Hits album.
Then came the pandemic and with the social distancing and stuff it was easy to feel alone. I had a great idea to try to help me sleep better at night: get a teddy bear! I still had a lot of stuffed toys but those were mostly from the 80s and 90s so they'd be dusty or maybe not in the best shape. I thought it was better to get new ones. So I went to Build-A-Bear and of course I didn't want to spend a lot so I went to the Clearance section.
I found a couple of bears right away: a black "Midnight Moon" bear and just a basic light brown bear. There was a special if you spent so much you'd get a discount so I looked around and then I saw they had Pumbaa from the live action movie. I thought maybe I could give Pumbaa to my mom for Christmas or something since I think she likes pigs.
A week or so later I got the bears and Pumbaa. I put the bears back in my room to try out. I found the problem was of course I'd end up letting the bear go and knocking it off the bed. So that experiment didn't work great. Meanwhile Pumbaa sat on a table in the living room. And gradually I was drawn to his mane of hair and how cute it was. I began messing with it and stuff.
Top Row: Malkia (in crown), Pumbaa Sr., Lady Puffer Bottom Row: Binti (in ribbon), Pumbaa Jr. (in crown), Puffer Pig
We didn't have in-person Christmas in 2020 and I didn't think to bring Pumbaa up north to drop off for my mom, so I just kept him. And just kept him on the couch to watch TV with me and stuff. I even started to make him talk, though I can't do a Pumbaa voice real well so it's kind of a higher voice that's easier for me. (Which he explains by saying they dubbed his voice with Seth Rogen for the movie. You know, like how they dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger early on.)
Character Notes: Since Pumbaa is by himself, I made him realize that Timon was always gaslighting him and so he's become more confident. Maybe too confident. He knows he's a big deal, especially among piggies. But he's also very sensitive. He does a really cute little dance called the "Pumbaa Shuffle." It worked really well during The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett end credits. And during the final big musical number of Scrooged where they sing, "Put A Little Love In Your Heart." Only Pumbaa sings, "Put Hakuna Matada In Your Heart." A little aside we do sometimes is have him talk about how sometimes on the set of The Lion King he would be a total diva. Jon Favreau would tell him to do another take and Pumbaa would scream, "I'm not doing another take! I'll be in my trailer!" He didn't really of course. The Chip & Dale movie on Disney+ helped to explain the difference between 1994 and 2019 Pumbaa in that like one of the chipmunks he got the "CGI surgery" to be three-dimensional. Of course Pumbaa has a brief cameo in that too.
I had HBO Max in 2021 so we watched a lot of the animated DC shows. Pumbaa's favorite superhero is Kilowog (aka Piggy Guy) in Green Lantern Animated because he looks like a pig and he eats grubs and stuff like Pumbaa. Since at the time they didn't really have a larger figure of Kilowog I got a small one from the 2011 movie for Pumbaa. He also does a good Batman impression, only he says, "I'm Pumbaa." Which kinda gives away his "secret" identity.
Of course we watched a ton of Rifftrax movies too. Pumbaa's favorite is Radical Jack because Billy Ray Cyrus's mullet is kind of like Pumbaa's hair. And Pumbaa likes to imagine that Jack is beating up people who eat pork.
Anyway, I had Disney+ by then so we watched the movie a few times. I don't know how many times it was until I noticed a little Easter egg near the end of the movie. When Simba's new child is going to presented, all the animals gather around Pride Rock. At one point it cuts to Pumbaa and then if you look closely you can see a baby warthog appear next to him. You know it's a baby warthog because it looks like young Pumbaa from the flashback during "Hakuna Matada" earlier. And I'm like, "Wait, Pumbaa has a son!?" Sure, it could be a sow too but I just thought of it as a son.
Pumbaa Jr.
Baby Pumbaa
Since Pumbaa was on the couch he of course began whining that he wanted a son on the couch. The problem is only one company in Japan made a stuffed baby warthog. So I had to find a different little boar. In July 2021 I came home from a trip to Waterford and found the package from Amazon. It was Pumbaa Jr.!
I tried to look up a name in Swahili but didn't really find any I liked. And then I thought what better way to help validate the Pumbaa name than to have a son with the same name? So he's been Pumbaa Jr. since.
Character Notes: I wasn't sure what to do with Pumbaa Jr. at first. His yellow eyes were kinda freaky; I thought maybe he should be a villain. After a few days, though, I decided Pumbaa Jr. came to his daddy so he could learn to be a boar--and a king. Pumbaa Jr. is destined to be the king of all piggies someday. But he's not conceited about that. He's very sweet and smart for his age. He has a very regal and mature bearing that makes other animals like and trust him.
For a while it was just Pumbaa and Pumbaa Jr. on the couch and it was mostly fine, though Pumbaa Jr. was a little bummed on Christmas when his mommy didn't appear. Otherwise it was fun watching TV and stuff with them, plus a Grogu and Baby Scrat I got from Amazon Vine. At some point I got a regular Scrat that was on sale for like $8 on Amazon to go with Baby Scrat.
Last March I also got a little ordinary stuffed pig from Vine as well. I wasn't sure what to name him but then in an episode of The Mandalorian they called someone a "puffer pig" and the pig was vacuum packed so when you took him out of the bag he puffed up. So I called him Puffer Pig and he became Pumbaa Sr's adopted son and Pumbaa Jr's little brother. Now we had a trio!
Character Notes: Puffer is a regular pig and doesn't really talk. He just oinks. He and Pumbaa Jr like to roughhouse but Pumbaa Jr has to be careful not to use his tusks because that would be an unfair advantage.
For Christmas I decided to kick things up a notch. I decided to find Pumbaa Jr's mommy. I got one that is a pretty accurate warthog but when I got it, I realized it was the same size as Pumbaa Jr so that would be a little awkward. I had bookmarked another BAB Pumbaa on Mercari and someone made me a good offer so I ordered it. From Vine I also got a slightly bigger regular pig.
So on Christmas I opened the presents with the pigs and the population doubled! From Vine I got some hair bows and put a pink one on the BAB Pumbaa and a red one on the other stuffed warthog. That way I'd know which is which. Using Google Translate I found out "Malkia" is Swahili for "Queen" and so that became Pumbaa Jr's mommy and Pumbaa Sr's sow friend. (Pigs don't get married like humans.) And "Binti" means daughter, so that became the other warthog, who is Pumbaa Jr's sow friend. And the regular pig is Lady Puffer or Puffer Pig's mommy. So all the boars got a sow.
Character Notes: I decided Malkia as the queen is very sassy and in charge. She doesn't take any guff from either Pumbaa or anyone else--including me. Her voice is basically the same as Pumbaa's because I suck. I mean, I'm not Seth MacFarlane or anything. Since I can't really do a lot of voices, Binti is a wild sow who doesn't really talk in English, but can speak in oinks or grunts or whatever. Pumbaa Jr. is very protective of his new friend.
All of the pigs are not happy whenever I eat anything that uses pig meat: pork, sausage, ham, spam, bacon, etc. etc. Someday they vow that the pigs will rise up and destroy the pork eaters. So, watch out for when that day comes...
Part 2: The Legend
Now here's how the story would actually play out if it were in the movie continuity.
After the battle with Scar, Pumbaa sees Simba with Nala and decides to find some other warthogs so he can get a sow. Timon wants to go but this is something Pumbaa has to do on his own. Rafiki gives him some direction on which way to go. Pumbaa sets out on a dangerous journey, escaping hyenas, crocodiles, or whatever other predators.
A few days later, Pumbaa sees a beautiful young sow and a couple of boars being attacked by hyenas. Pumbaa leaps into the fray and drives the hyenas away. The sow introduces herself as Malkia the queen of a group of warthogs. She invites Pumbaa to come back with them and stay as long as he wants. Finally Pumbaa has found his own kind! And he's a hero! At least to most of the warthogs, though there's one boar who doesn't like him because he was supposed to be with Malkia--and then he'd arrange for Malkia to have an "accident" to take over. Sort of like Scar.
Pumbaa and Malkia get to know each other over a few days as they explore the area and dig up bugs and stuff. Eventually some "furious jumping" would be implied. But eventually Pumbaa decides to go back to Pride Rock to tell his friends about what he found. He says goodbye to Malkia and promises to see her again someday.
Eventually Pumbaa makes his way back to Pride Rock and finds Timon has killed himself tells his friends of his adventures and finds that Nala is pregnant. He's happy for Simba and there's probably a party and stuff.
Meanwhile, Malkia finds out she's pregnant and about 5 months after Pumbaa left, she gives birth to Pumbaa Jr--the Warthog King! He is destined to someday take over the whole group. But after the evil boar nearly kills Pumbaa Jr., Malkia decides to send him to his father to learn to be a boar and to learn to be a king from Simba.
One night, Pumbaa is asleep when Rafiki tells him that he has a son who is in great danger. Pumbaa leaves at once to save his son before he can be killed by a crocodile in a watering hole. Pumbaa Jr. says that he is Pumbaa Sr's son and his mommy sent him to Pride Rock. So Pumbaa takes him there and they arrive as Simba and Nala's lion cub is presented.
Over the next months or year or so, Pumbaa Jr. gets older and grows tusks and stuff. His daddy teaches him how to hunt bugs and all that stuff. Then one day while they're looking for bugs and such they find a young regular pig called Puffer and take him back. While it's extra responsibility for Pumbaa Sr, his son is very happy to have another boar to play with.
In time, Pumbaa decides his sons are old enough to return to Malkia's queendom. He talks to Simba who wishes him well and thanks Rafiki for helping him save Pumbaa Jr. Then they set out and get near Malkia's territory only to be chased off by some nasty boars working for the evil one.
They run into a young sow named Binti who tells them that after Pumbaa Jr. left the evil boar and his buddies captured Malkia and took over. Binti helps the Pumbaas and Puffer get in and they free Malkia and Puffer's mommy. Then Malkia and Pumbaa Jr. rally the other warthogs to defeat the nasty ones with Pumbaa Sr. and the Puffers helping.
Once the nasty boars are driven off, Malkia is re-crowned the queen and Pumbaa Jr. is made the king. Malkia offers Binti a place in the group and she agrees. Pumbaa Jr. is smitten with her and while they go off to play, Malkia and Pumbaa Sr. get reacquainted.
The whole family is thus brought together and lives Happily Ever After.
And there you go, that's how a pandemic, loneliness, and madness shape a real story that inspires a fake story.
Part 3: Pumbaa & Peppa
When Pumbaa Sr. was the only pig, sometimes I entertained him with clips of Peppa Pig on the Roku Channel. When I finally got Paramount+ I could put on whole episodes. Each episode is like 4 5-minute segments and they remix a lot of them in each season so I think I saw the "Pedro is Late" segment about 200 times for some reason.
Anyway, I thought of how to do a Pumbaa and Peppa crossover. One day Peppa and her family are outside on a picnic or camping or something. Then they're spooked by a noise in the bushes. Out of the bush appears a wild animal! It's brown with scary tusks, a snout, and a straight tail. Daddy Pig is going to scare the wild animal away until it talks and says his name is Pumbaa. He lives in Pride Rock but he got lost.
Pumbaa explains he's a warthog, which is a type of pig. When they apologize for trying to scare him off, he says, "Hakuna Matada." They don't know what that is, so he teaches them the song. And then Peppa invites him to jump in some muddy puddles with them. With four hooves, Pumbaa can really make the mud fly! Everyone has fun and then Pumbaa leaves, inviting Peppa to stop by Pride Rock with her family. And they promise they will.
There you go, that can probably just be a 5-minute segment. Or maybe it'd have to be 2 if you use the whole song, which is like 4 minutes by itself.
Fun Facts: for Christmas I also got Pumbaa Sr a stuffed Mummy Pig. Malkia does not approve of that or Peppa in general because they're too much like humans. Pumbaa Jr. doesn't really like the show because it's for babies. I got a few other Peppa toys from Vine like a train with Peppa and Miss Rabbit and little wooden figures of Peppa's whole family. There also used to be videos on the Roku Channel where someone was playing with a lot of the different Peppa toys like a house and RV and all that stuff that was kinda expensive so I never got any of it; I mean even my madness has limits.
I spent most of June rewatching DS9 on Pluto TV so not really a lot of "new" stuff that I watched.
Money Monster: I didn't watch this when it came out in 2016 and forgot about it until another blog mentioned it in February. But then it was only on Starz. In June, though, it was on Hulu so I could finally watch it. And I was not disappointed.
George Clooney is Lee, a Jim Cramer-type who hosts the titular financial show. Julia Roberts is his harried producer who has to almost constantly rein Lee in and keep the show on track. One day a delivery guy named Kyle (Jack O'Connell) shows up on set with a gun and bomb vest. Kyle lost $60,000 thanks to Lee's urging to buy a certain tech stock. More than that, people lost $800M on that stock in the span of a day. Kyle plans to hold Lee hostage live on the air until he gets answers.
The police led by Giancarlo Esposito set up outside and there's kind of the cliche thing where he doesn't want to go in guns blazing but of course some hothead in SWAT does. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to find the CEO of this tech company to get answers while Lee tries to stay alive.
I really enjoyed this movie. It never got boring. I think they mixed things up with the hostage situation enough that even without a John McClane running around killing people, it didn't get dull or maudlin. There's actually a funny (and sad) scene where Lee urges everyone to buy the tech stock to pump it back up, sort of like Gamestop. Buuut...it loses money instead. Whomp, whomp. And then Kyle's pregnant girlfriend shows up and is not very helpful. Meanwhile there's also the mystery of the tech company and how it lost so much money. So there's enough going to keep things from getting stale. And of course there's a great cast; Clooney and Roberts have worked together enough times that they have natural chemistry. Esposito could have used more to do but it was probably nice not being a villain. O'Connell is great as the blue-collar guy who just wants back what's his and to fight the unjust system.
The ending isn't really Happy Ever After. It's realistic--and disappointing--to think in the end nothing will really change and the tech company will probably get away with most of its crimes. You need more than one hostage-taker to get any real progress. (4/5) (Fun Fact: The movie was directed by Jodie Foster, who probably could have played the Julia Roberts part if she had wanted to.)
The Sisters Brothers: This 2018 Western seemed like it should have been funnier from the title and that it stars John C Reilly as Eli, one of the titular brothers. The other, Charlie, is played by Joaquin Phoenix. They work for a man known as "The Commodore" in Oregon City in 1851. He sends them to find an amateur scientist named Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed) who is being watched by private detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal).
There's a lot of mayhem ensuing then as Charlie's drinking, a spider, a bear, and other problems slow the brothers down. By the time they find Warm and Morris, those two have thrown in together and are on the verge of some Brokeback Mountaining. When Eli and Charlie throw in with them it seems they'll be rich--until things go horribly wrong.
The last act gets kind of gross and depressing and then the problem is just sorta solved on its own. There's a cameo at the end by the great Carol Kane as Mrs. Sisters. Overall it's a unique twist on modern Westerns. These aren't rugged, square-jawed tough guys but kind of dumbasses who pretty much just have one skill in killing people. It's not a fun movie but it's entertaining enough with a talented cast. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts: The movie features a really weird credit: "With the Participation Of Rutger Hauer." Hauer played the Commodore though he didn't have any lines and only appears in a window and in a coffin. Most of this Western that was supposed to be in Oregon and California was actually filmed in France, Belgium, Spain, and Romania.)
Sympathy for the Devil: I saw this on Hulu and didn't bother adding it to my list; I just watched it right away. I mean, "Nic Cage taking Joel Kinnaman hostage in a car." And only 90 minutes? I'm down for that. And it gives you what you expect: Nic Cage being a crazy bad guy while terrorizing Kinnaman's seemingly normal family guy who looks like a prequel version of Walter White.
Kinnaman is just pulling into the hospital where his wife is having a baby when Nic Cage--looking like a lounge singer version of Satan in a sparkly red jacket, maroon hair, and goatee--hops into the backseat to hold him at gunpoint. He tells Kinnaman to drive him to Boulder City--wherever that is. Mayhem ensues! But soon it starts to become clear that Kinnaman is not who he appears to be, which makes things more challenging for Cage. It's also clear that this was not a random carjacking, but what is Cage's agenda?
Like I said, this has exactly what you want from a straight-to-streaming movie like this: Nic Cage being crazy, some violence, a couple of twists to keep things interesting, and a fairly short run time. It's not cinema, just a quick, fun ride. (3.5/5)
Desperation Road: This straight-to-streaming movie from last year is described as a "Southern noir" because I suppose it's not a very pleasant movie and is supposed to take place in Mississippi--though it was filmed in Louisville, Kentucky. There are a couple of stories that end up overlapping.
First there's a woman with a young girl who are walking to the woman's hometown in Mississippi. Low on cash, the woman decides to whore herself to a trucker. Though she doesn't actually do this, a cop shows up to bust her. Instead he takes her to a remote location and rapes her. But as he's going to call his buddies to let them have a turn, the woman gets the cop's gun and shoots him. She takes the gun and runs away. She and the girl leave the motel and look for somewhere safe.
Later, Russell (Garrett Hedlund) is released from prison. When he gets back to the town the woman is in, he's greeted by a scummy guy named Larry, whose brother he accidentally killed. Russell gets beaten up before Larry is run off. Russell goes to the farm owned by his father (Mel Gibson) who gives him a house and a rifle. But it isn't long before Larry finds the house and breaks the windows.
Eventually the woman runs into Russell and takes him hostage with the cop's gun, forcing him to drive her and the kid away. He agrees to help her and the kid find somewhere safe, but that proves to be difficult between Larry and Russell's black friend who's a deputy.
Everything comes to a head with Russell, Larry, and the woman. Overall it's not a bad movie and not poorly made like some of these straight-to-streaming movies. At about 2 hours it's a little slow in parts. Despite describing it as "noir" there is a fairly happy ending though it requires some moral sacrifices. As you might expect, Mel Gibson doesn't really do a lot, though he does contribute something to the end. I kinda think a few years ago his part would have gone to Bruce Willis. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Hedlund sings the titular theme song during the end credits.)
Wander: A former cop turned PI/conspiracy theorist podcaster (Aaron Eckhart) is contacted by a woman whose daughter mysteriously died in the town of Wander in the Southwest. He goes to investigate only for his past to start coming back to haunt him. And we're supposed to question how much is real and how much isn't. It was pretty good with a few twists and turns. At about 90 minutes it's not very long either. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Eckhart's podcast partner is played by Tommy Lee Jones; they played both versions of Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Batman movies.)
Last Man Standing: Not the Tim Allen sitcom from a few years ago but the 1996 movie starring Bruce Willis. Basically it's like if John Woo made a Western only using 1920s gangsters. Willis is a hired gun leaving the country and ends up in Jericho, Texas, near the border with Mexico. This is during Prohibition and bootlegging is a big business--big enough that an Irish Mafia gang and Italian Mafia gang have both established themselves in the town.
Willis decides to shake down both groups to turn a tidy profit. He kills a bunch of guys on both sides while hooking up with a couple of women and nearly being killed a few times. He makes friends with a bartender (the robot fixing guy in Blade Runner) and kinda falls in love with the Native American-Mexican woman the leader of the Irish guys is ga-ga for. And he makes an enemy of Christopher Walken, a hired gun for the Irish who is jealous that Willis is so quickly accepted into the fold.
Most of it isn't terrible. It could have been better. The female characters are barely used as anything except honey pots and damsels in distress. The action scenes are ridiculously exaggerated with guys flying back or hopping back many feet when they get shot and the guns magically only need reloaded when it's a convenient time despite being fired a couple dozen times. (3/5) (Fun Facts: Bruce Dern plays the corrupt sheriff who makes a living by letting both sides bribe him to not do a lot. "Tiny Ron" plays one of the Irish henchmen and was also the bodyguard of Grand Nagus Zek in DS9.)
Lions for Lambs: This 2007 movie by Robert Redford is kind of a smaller-scale Babel or Magnolia in that it involves three stories that are all connected. Redford is a professor at "a California college" who meets with a student (Andrew Garfield) to encourage him to stop slacking. He mentions two former students (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) who dropped out against his advice to join the Army in 2003. Pena and Luke are now in Special Forces and sent to take a mountain in Afghanistan, but their chopper is shot down and they wind up separated from their platoon. Both are badly wounded and Taliban troops are moving in. The soldiers were dispatched thanks to a new strategy conceived in part by a senator (Tom Cruise) who is revealing this strategy to win the war to a veteran reporter (Meryl Streep) who is disillusioned at being used as a mouthpiece for the administration, military, and a potential presidential candidate. Most of the characters (except Redford and Cruise really) have hard decisions to make.
The movie isn't bad but obviously in 2024 it feels pretty dated. It also sometimes feels melodramatic and it's about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. Yet a lot of it remains true. Obviously none of our genius strategies for Afghanistan ever really panned out. The media is even more a tool of right-wing politicians and rich assholes than back then. Meanwhile the poor get used as cannon fodder. I think a lot of us have felt Andrew Garfield's cynicism at how the system works--or doesn't work. In the end I don't think the movie has many answers to offer.
While it probably would have been better to watch it back in 2007-2008, it's still a bit relevant as I mentioned. And there is a lot of talent involved. Most people say Tom Cruise just plays himself, but in this case he doesn't have to do a lot more than act kind of smug and glib. Streep doesn't get a lot to do beyond being horrified by Cruise. Luke and Pena bring the blue collar heroism that really is the heart of the movie. Perhaps the most moving part is the end credits where it shows various common scenes in silhouettes and people start to disappear to indicate the people lost in two disastrous wars. (3/5) (Sad Fact: Redford explains the title by explaining to Garfield that in World War I, German soldiers admired the British soldiers (the lions) but mocked their pathetic, cowardly leaders (the lambs). It's hard not to think of us in a similar situation where we have so many brave men and women but they're being led by politicians who really don't know anything about war.)
What Just Happened: I don't remember hearing about this back in 2008 though it seems like it should have been on my radar. It's directed by Barry Levinson and stars Robert de Niro, Robin Wright, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, and Kristen Stewart plus Sean Penn and Bruce Willis as fictionalized versions of themselves. That's a lot of talent for a movie I hadn't heard of until I saw it on Hulu weeks ago.
My way to describe it is it's like Altman's The Player only not interesting. De Niro is a movie producer and has some issues. A movie with Penn has a bad test screening, mostly because it brutally kills a dog and then Penn. So convincing the director (Michael Wincott cosplaying Keith Richards) to change the ending is his first problem. There's another movie starring Willis except Willis refuses to shave a beard he's grown, so that's another problem. There's also his ex-wife Kelly (Wright) whom he still kind of loves but he finds out a writer he knows (Tucci) has been sleeping with her. And his first daughter who's 17 (Stewart) was in love with an agent who killed himself. The Willis issue gets solved but the other stuff doesn't really go well. But it ends before we can learn if de Niro can find a way to turn things around. So what was the point? Not much.
Overall for all the star power, it really doesn't amount to a lot. I guess it was better off forgotten. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: I was mostly interested in this because I wrote The Leading Men in 2002 about a TV producer and much later I wrote Casting Changeabout a movie producer in the 60s who has to become his lead actress.)
The Rewrite: This movie is from 2015, involves the movie business, features a pretty well-known cast, and I had not known about it before I saw it on Hulu. Unlike the previous movie, I actually enjoyed this one.
Hugh Grant is Keith Mitchell, a screenwriter who had a big hit in 1999 but hasn't had much since then. With the power in his apartment turned off, he decides to take a writer-in-residence job at Binghamton College in central New York state. Soon Keith meets his boss (JK Simmons), his co-worker/neighbor (Chris Elliott), and runs afoul of the head of the department ethics (Allison Janney), and also runs into Marisa Tomei who is a single mother of two kids who also works 2-3 jobs as well as taking classes.
Keith doesn't want to actually teach so when JK Simmons says he has to pick ten of the 30-page script samples submitted, he pretty much picks the most attractive girls and a couple of nerdy guys who won't spoil his game. And then his first class he tells them to finish their scripts and come back in a month. Which does not go over well with his bosses, so he has to actually start teaching.
Maybe you could guess where this goes from there. Keith starts to like teaching his students while also seeming to make progress with Marisa Tomei. Though he faces some trouble from one of the other students, whom he slept with his first night in town and a few times after that. She gets jealous and goes to Allison Janney to get him fired. Really all that was missing was a moment where the students get on their desks to say, "O Captain, My Captain!"
Still, I enjoyed the movie while I watched it. It's so light and good-natured (which just a little bit of an edge in the sexual content) that it's highly watchable. Only after it's done might you start thinking how cliche and formulaic it all was. Or how cynical and a little sexist it is that in a class that's 90% women, it's one of the nerdy guys who writes a big hit that stars a "kick-ass woman." (3/5) (Fun Fact: Chris Elliott's character goes out with a State Farm agent; really they should have made it Farmer's Insurance since JK Simmons represented them.)
Misconduct: This is the kind of thriller where it seems like the director took all the script pages, threw them into the air, and then pieced them back together. It starts in sort of the middle with Anthony Hopkins as a pharmaceutical CEO who finds out his much-younger girlfriend (Malin Akerman) has been kidnapped and a supposed meeting to give the kidnappers the ransom goes wrong. Then it jumps back to a driven lawyer (Josh Duhamel) who is contacted by his old girlfriend Akerman while his wife (Alice Eve) is estranged the last year or so after a miscarriage. Then we move forward to where Duhamel meets with the head of a big law firm (Al Pacino with a Foghorn Leghorn accent) to use information stolen by Akerman to sue Hopkins for killing patients.
And then there's an assassin (Byung Hun Lee or Storm Shadow from the first 2 GI Joe movies) who kills or beats up some people. And Duhamel finds Akerman dead and is seemingly framed for her death and...lots of stuff happens but the movie really, really overestimates how invested I would be in actually figuring it all out. I mean, I don't really want a bunch of jigsaw pieces to try to assemble into some kind of picture. Maybe if Duhamel, the center of the movie, wasn't kind of an asshole who cheats in his cases and seems to cheat on his hot wife I would have cared about figuring things out more. Simplify, movie! It's too bad because there's a decent cast that could have done a much better movie. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: Also in the overly talented cast is Glen Powell of Top Gun 2 and Hit Man as Duhamel's friend.)
Code Name Banshee: Hulu had been recommending this to me for a while now. I finally got to that point of just saying "fuck it" and watching it. It's a straight-to-streaming thriller that probably could have been better if it had built up the titular character a little more. Banshee (Jaime King) is some kind of assassin/spy for hire. Years ago a CIA(?) guy named Greene seemingly killed her father and his best friend/her mentor Caleb (Antonia Banderas) framing them as selling secrets to the Russians. Banshee has since been trying to track down Greene and anyone else responsible.
She finally gets a lead on Caleb, who owns a bar in Connecticut. He also has a house and daughter. But just as Banshee starts to get reconnected with him, Greene's people track her down and then there's a big, long shootout/fight at the house. It's really the kind of thing that just sort of drags after a little while but I suppose they didn't want to spend a lot on locations. King does an OK job as a cut-rate Black Widow but like I said, they don't give her a lot to work with. Banderas lends some gravitas and professionalism to the production as the only big name attached. Basically it's OK but if I had not said "fuck it" and watched it then I wouldn't have missed much. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts: For some reason I kept thinking it was Ruby Rose playing Banshee; I guess I wasn't paying attention during the credits. In the end credits it says not only did Antonio Banderas have a driver but also an RV driver.)
Wanted Man: Dolph Lundgren writes, produces, directs, and stars in this pretty obvious movie. Dolph is a cop named Joe in southern California who was caught on tape beating an illegal immigrant suspect and calling him a "filthy Mexican" or something like that. When two women who survived a DEA bust gone wrong are found in Mexico, Dolph is assigned to pick them up and bring them back as sort of a reverse Joe Don Baker in MST3K/Rifftrax favorite Final Justice where he had to take a bad guy to Italy.
Anyway, he goes to Mexico and soon some bad cops ambush him and Dolph has to go on the run with one of the women. And wouldn't you know he starts to bond with her and her family? And he has to sneak into the country with some illegals? I'm not a Trumper screaming about "wokeness" but this was really too obvious. Though I can understand where Dolph, an immigrant himself, would feel sympathetic on this issue. It just could have used a better movie behind it. (2/5) (Fun Fact: One plot hole to me is earlier Dolph uses his cell phone and that allows the bad guys to find them. Later the woman's family has him use his phone and then they have a nice, leisurely dinner. And guess what happens? Bad guys show up. It seemed pretty obvious.)
The Best Man: A bunch of mercenaries are hired to rescue a woman, which they do, but at the cost of losing a few guys, including one named Axel. A year later, Cal (Luke Wilson) is going to marry the girl they rescued. He chooses his cousin (Brendan Fehr) to be his best man. And there's also Dolph Lundgren, who shambles around, drinks, and plays piano.
The wedding is to be held at the Mountain of the Gods resort in New Mexico. The bride's father rents the whole thing so it will only be wedding people and staff. But then Axel shows up with a bunch of goons to take over the place. Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph have to fight back. It was pretty blah and not that interesting. It's the kind of thing where you wonder if the notable names just did it for a free weekend at a fancy resort. They definitely could have used someone better for the father of the bride; even a lot of older country music guys could have done better than this guy. I'm just saying. (2/5)
Section 8: I had watched 2 Dolph Lundgren movies already on Hulu, so when I saw this, I thought, "Why not go for 3?" And the answer is: because it sucks. This is that lame kind of straight-to-video action movie that advertises Dolph, Mickey Rourke, Durmott Mulroney, and Scott Adkins, the more attractive and less popular Jason Statham. But guess what? Each of those guys is in maybe 10% of the movie. Most of the work is done by nobodies. Bait and switch!
So the real star (some guy) is named Jake and he was in Afghanistan with Dolph. He comes home and marries a girl and has a son and lives in way too expensive a house while working in some crappy garage in a crappy neighborhood. The garage is run by Mickey Rourke, who's getting shaken down by some gangbangers. Jake beats them up so in retaliation, they kill his wife and kid--a 2-for-1 fridging special! Jake kills them and goes to jail. Five months later, someone from "Section 8" recruits Jake to join them, which he does. But when he objects to some things they do and runs off, they send hitman Scott Adkins after him. And boring "mayhem" ensues.
I started losing interest in this pretty quick. Besides the opening flashback, Dolph doesn't show up until close to the end. Rourke pops up in a couple of scenes, as does Adkins. Mulroney chews some scenery as the evil head of Section 8, so like I said, most of the real work is done by nobodies who really can't carry a movie, but if we put Some Guy and Some Woman on the cover, who would buy/rent/stream it? It's kind of a Catch-22. (1/5) (Fun Fact: In M*A*S*H, Section 8 was a certification that a soldier was crazy and could be sent home; Klinger wore dresses in the early seasons hoping to get a Section 8. How this relates, I don't know.)
Body Melt: This was a pretty oddball Australian horror-comedy from 1993. Basically there's an evil vitamin company calla VillaVille or something. Their drugs are supposed to do...stuff, but mostly they seem to make people explode--not so much melt. In the Outback is a Hills Have Eyes-type group of freaks who have something to do with stuff.
It was pretty weird and sometimes gross, though maybe not as much as I thought. The problem is other than two cops whose names I don't really know, the rest of the characters are basically a parade of easily-replaced victims. There was really no one to focus on. And the soundtrack often sounded like crappy exercise video music. Anyway, I doubt many of my Phantom Readers would want to watch it. (2/5) (Fun Fact: Unfortunately the movie wasn't captioned, which would have maybe helped with some of the Australian dialogue.)
The Veil: This anthology series only had one episode come out the year before The Twilight Zone. The remaining 10 never aired until they were packaged into three movies. It's sort of the same thing as TZ, with a host (Boris Karloff) introducing a story with a paranormal twist. The differences are that Karloff participates in most of the episodes and the twists are very mild, sometimes to the point of being unnoticeable. Like in the first episode where a guy has a dream about his brother being murdered and comes home. That's it, that's the twist. Others are better like one where Karloff owns an airplane delivery service and brings his son home to fly for him. The son starts seeing a ghostly face telling him to go somewhere and discovers some secrets from his father's past. There are some other episodes that are pretty good but nothing that ever rises to the level of the best TZ episodes. (3/5)
Thriller: This is not related to the Michael Jackson album/song/music video of the early 80s. It's sort of a remake of The Veil; this 1960-1961 series features longer episodes, many of them more crime stories or I guess Hitchcock-type stories than Twilight Zone stories. Though the one I watched called "The Return of Andrew Bentley" from the middle of the second season was more of a TZ story and the teleplay was written by Richard Matheson, who wrote some TZ episodes. Boris Karloff appears at the beginning to do the introduction and to introduce the characters; I don't think it was one of the 5 episodes he stars in. The episode is that old trope about a guy and his wife inheriting his rich uncle's house so long as they stay in it and monitor the uncle's crypt. Eventually some low-key mayhem ensues. Like with TZ, expanding these to 50 minutes usually leads to a lot of tedium--and organ music. (2/5) (Fun Facts: Google said the rest of the series was on Freevee (nope) and Xumo (nope...though it's hard to tell since their app kinda sucks for that) but JustWatch.com says it's on Roku Channel so maybe I'll find it there and watch some more. According to the Wikipedia page Bill Shatner is in two of the episodes and there are some other actors who went on to do better stuff as well. And also a lot of TZ writers and actors and such are involved in this show; in this episode the guy who played a Nazi death camp Kommandant in one episode and a criminal who freezes himself for 100 years only to die of heat stroke was one of the characters.)
The Master: Not the movie about the Scientology guy starring Joaquin Phoenix. This 1984 NBC series is partially familiar to MST3K fans as the first four episodes were put together into two "movies" dubbed "Master Ninja 1 & 2." But really there were 13 episodes in the show's only season. When I heard this was on Tubi, I decided to watch the whole series. It's not bad if you liked similar fare from the time like Knight Rider, The A-Team, The Fall Guy, or Airwolf. Or maybe if you liked Kung Fu in the 70s.
The plot involves the titular "Master" who is named John Peter McCallister. He's the only white guy to ever become a ninja master. He learns he has a daughter back in the States and so leaves his order to find her--but the order doesn't want to risk him divulging their secrets so they send another ninja (Sho Kosugi) to kill him. In America, McCallister runs into a young hothead living in a van named Max Keller (Tim Van Patten--son of Dick). They team up with Max becoming the master's new student. They go around helping people and occasionally trying to find the daughter. Sometimes the evil ninja will show up. Sometimes he doesn't. It jumps around from small towns to big cities like "Las Vegas" or "New York City" that were probably not those actual cities. Unfortunately when the show ended, the daughter had not been found and the evil ninja was still out there. (And obviously they're not going to do a revival after 40 years and Lee Van Cleef being dead 35 of those years, so I guess we'll never get any answers.)
Like I said, if you liked other 80s action-adventure shows then you'd probably not think this is too bad. I didn't hate it, but there are a couple of obvious problems. Lee Van Cleef is good when the Master is just doing normal stuff, but he's too old and out-of-shape for anyone to believe he's in the ninja suit jumping around and kicking guys. And the show makes very little effort to disguise the stunt double, who looks Asian from the glimpses shown. Sometimes when the Master is in regular clothes it's obvious they have the stunt double in a bald cap. It's not convincing at all. They probably should have cast someone a little younger than 59--and a well-traveled 59 at that--who actually died 5 years later. And maybe find someone who could enunciate better than Tim Van Patten. I kind of wonder if the focus on a ninja was a little ahead of its time; I think it was still a few years before GI Joe became all about ninjas for instance. These days we'd call having a white ninja cultural appropriation but it was the 80s, where you could still have someone in blackface (Trading Places, etc.) or brownface (Short Circuit) or use racist accents (A Christmas Story). (3/5) (Fun Facts: The first 4 episodes feature some pretty decent guest stars like a young Demi Moore, Claude Akins, Clu Gulager, young Crystal Bernard, and Aussie James Bond George Lazenby--along with the Aston-Martin spy car. After that, there aren't as many, though a couple like Robert Pine--Chris's father who when you watch it now you can see the resemblance--and Marc Alaimo, aka Gul Dukat on DS9.)
How was your Fourth? Lots of noisy fireworks to scare the dogs? And over/under-cooked hamburgers and hot dogs from the grill?
Anyway, it's funny how because I do A to Z entries far in advance for months (if not a year) I'll have this stockpile of entries in my post list. Eventually I'll start writing some entries to go after the Challenge too. But then the Challenge comes and goes and that stockpile dwindles, so unless I've done the next year's A to Z, I start to have to scramble for more entries.
This year I haven't really done that as much. I sort of got up to mid-June and the batteries just started running down. I managed to do some fairly short entries but it's been more of a struggle. At this point as the title says, I'm just going to low power mode. I'll still have entries sometimes but not 3 days a week. For...however long.
I might worry people would find it harder to know when there's an entry but I've had basically the same schedule for 9 years and no one gives a shit. There just doesn't seem to be much point wasting my time anymore for 10-15 views and 0 comments. So, yeah, I'm pointing the finger at YOU. I'm throwing YOU under the bus. "I'm busy..." or whatever your excuse is. Yeah, yeah. TS. Cry me a river. If you're mad, what are you gonna do: not read the entries and not comment? That ain't much of a threat at this point.
I've tried to be entertaining and informative and stuff, but people just don't care. Case in point, I had the brainstorm to let people pick next year's A to Z entries with a helpful form on Google. Buuuuut of course only 3 people (besides me) did it. That leaves too many ties and such, so fuck that idea.
Anyway, I'm tired and grumpy so maybe I'm lashing out. The point is, there will be fewer entries. Though still one on Monday. And at least one other one. After that, whatever.
I read Hendrix's "Horrorstor" a while back, which was a high concept yarn of a haunted IKEA-type store. I didn't really like it in the end as the description and the early part of the book made it seem like it would be a fun Scooby-Doo type haunted house story and then it got way into blood and gore and stuff like Lovecraft or Clive Barker or something.
Final Girl Support Group is also a high concept story that seems begging for a movie or streaming series, but I think it maintains a bit more storytelling consistency. The book is of course about a group of "final girls," aka women who survived a unkillable serial killer when they were teenagers. But now years later, someone seems to be trying to kill them. Is it one of their old killers? Someone in the group? Perhaps someone else entirely?
Calling this a "horror" book seems a little misleading as it's mostly an action/thriller kind of story as Lynette--one of the "final girls"--tries to evade cops and very Earthly killers who in the end are a lot easier to take down than any slasher movie killer.
It's the kind of thing where there are twists within twists and in the end I haven't tried to unravel the twists enough to decide if they all really make sense or not. Most of the twists are just to throw red herrings at the audience so you won't guess who's responsible before it's finally revealed.
There are a lot of allusions to horror movies like Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream but it never really gets too on the nose or overbearing. There's a lot of meta stuff like letters and book excerpts you can read though I just used the Text to Speech in my car so I never read any of that. My loss, I suppose.
The story is narrated by Lynette, who thankfully is not the stereotypical "spunky" heroine publishers love. She's a severely traumatized woman who has to almost literally be dragged out of her shell. Yet her stubbornness to keep going in the face of losing almost everything keeps her from seeming too wimpy.
Overall it's fairly light reading and while there's violence and blood it's not an overbearing amount.
A couple weeks ago I talked about a debate on Bluesky about whether Star Wars is a "kid's movie" and why I didn't really like that language. To me it was dismissive and derisive. Well anyway, a few days after my post goes up, some people decided to change tactics slightly.
Instead of calling it a "kid's movie," they started calling it "schlock" or "sci-fi schlock." I really can't understand this obsessive need to run down one of the highest-grossing franchises in film history. Was this their idea of an olive branch? "Well, ok, maybe it's not just for kids but you have to agree it's schlock, right?"
Um, no. Look, I wouldn't say it's great cinema like The Godfather or Citizen Kane but "schlock" is stuff you'd see on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Schlock is Plan 9 From Outer Space. You can complain about a lot of things not being extremely great with the first movie but it was shot on a shoestring budget. Still the effects were mostly cutting-edge for the time, the film quality and editing were pretty much professional looking, plus there was the awesome John Williams score. So, yeah, not "schlock" by any stretch.
If haters want to see real "schlock" of that era, I'd recommend Starship Invasions which came out pretty much at the same time. Starring Christopher Lee and produced by the guy who made the Little Rascals, it features pie plate ships on strings, bad guys like Christopher Lee wearing body stockings with weird snake things screen painted on them, telephone cord splitters used as weapons, clunky robots made of junk, and a cheesy smooth jazz soundtrack. Watch that and then the first Star Wars and tell me which one is "sci-fi schlock." Mic drop!
I'm sure the haters will come up with more dismissive, derisive ways to describe Star Wars. The important thing to remember is Star Wars is not great cinema so it shouldn't be taken too seriously. It's family-friendly escapist fun and there's nothing wrong with that. The haters and people who take it too seriously should all just get a life.
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