Migration

As what he described as an additional Christmas gift, YaYa's boyfriend paid for both sets of parents to join them at a showing of the new movie Migration this morning.

Migration is the story of a duck family led by an anxious, fear filled father who reluctantly allows his family to leave their home pond and migrate south for the winter. Naturally many problems pop up on their adventure, since that's just another word for trouble in the first place, including a maniacal chef out for their heads.  The movie has a great quip about chefs too; they're apex predators, but they choose to feed their kill to lazier predators.

It's a cute movie, fun but with a genuine character arc, and gorgeous color throughout.  

It's worth a watch. Go see it!

Rebel Moon: Part One

Very late on Boxing Day, as midnight neared, I went over to Yaya's apartment to watch a movie with her and her boyfriend. We chose Rebel  Moon.

A Zach Snyder science fiction film, it's the story of a farming community at the mercy of a diabolical empire. The farmers believe that if they recruit enough mercenaries they can thwart the empire and gain their independence.  How even an unlikely victory would stop the empire from coming back and Alderran-ing them is never explained to my satisfaction. 

There's nothing original in the movie, as it's pretty clearly The Magnificent Seven meets Star Wars, but so what? Sometimes originality is overrated. It was fun, visually impressive, and had some decent action scenes. My main beef, honestly, was that Snyder once again dragged a movie out so long you start glancing at your watch.

I grade this one a solid B.

It's worth a watch on Netflix. 

Five Nights at Freddy's

 

I watched this recently on Peacock with Junie - Smiley and YaYa had already seen it in theaters - and to my surprise, I liked it. 

I don't know squat about the video game franchise it is based on, so if it violates some tenet of that game and you find my approval of the film blasphemous, well . . .ok.  

I guess that isn't quite true. I did watch the gawd awful Nic Cage 2021 knockoff Willy's Wonderland, which at least gave me the gist of the game's plot: a down and out security guard takes a job at an abandoned pizza parlor, where the murderous animatronic animal band comes to life. 

I assure you, this film is MUCH MUCH better than the copycat.

It is also only a PG-13, so it gives the audience its scares without resorting to abject gore, so kudos for that. 

My only beef is a SPOILER: realistically, at the end of the film our hero goes to prison for life. He's a violent repeat offender (who is somehow offered security jobs?) and his evil Aunt lies murdered on his living room floor, PLUS he shows up at the hospital with an unconscious and possibly dying cop that was stabbed in the stomach. 

Sure, bub, the robot duck did it. You have the right to remain silent . . . 

END SPOILER

I grade this one a solid A-

Sisu

Sisu sucks. 

It's the story of an Finnish ex-commando turned gold prospector who runs afoul of a group of Nazi SS seeking his gold.  If you saw saw the trailers for this foreign film, you'd think it was a high end  John Wick in a historical setting. 

You'd be wrong. 

Let's forget the fact the filmmakers want you to see Finland as an innocent victim of Nazi oppression, when in fact they were allies of Germany before turning on them when the going got rough.  

Let's forget that the main character is a third rate Wick with zero charisma. 

Let's forget that the movie has zero plot.

And let's certainly forget the laws of physics, for in this film a human body is an effective shield against high caliber machine gun fire.

This isn't an escapist romp, it's a horrible waste of your time.

Skip it. I wish I had. 

The Face of the Era

“see yourself on the big screen” II

Some loves never die

The Nun II

Yesterday YaYa and I went to a 9:50pm showing of The Nun II at South Shore. She selected seats in the back row, which is deeply unsettling to my sensibilities. Back row in church, as close as possible to the front for a game, mid-range for movies. That's the accustomed way to chose your seating in a civilized society, but whatever, just more evidence Gen Z is gonna ruin it all in the end.

'Twas a Tuesday, so at least the hot dogs were $2.50 and the soda 20% off. 

The Nun II takes up four years after the events of the first movie. As a string of Catholic clergy are killed/forced into suicide across Europe, the Church suspects the demon Valak has returned and orders Sister Irene (the future Lorraine Warren) to once again investigate.  She tracks it to a boarding school in France, where her old friend Maurice has taken a job as a handyman, and confronts the evil once again. 

I saw The Nun  with Lisa but forgot most of the plot until I reviewed its Wikipedia page before the movie yesterday. I think you can easily follow along without that knowledge, as little of it relies on the past installment besides Taissa Farmiga's portrayal of Sister Irene. They even dispose of a main character from number one off screen, giving him only a curt "He died of cholera" as an obituary -an odd and flippant dismissal of an ally and friend. 

As for scares, I can remember only one moment that made me jump, not that the rest of the film was completely absent of tension and fear. But much like the plot, I simply found the scares too predictable to not see coming. 

I  want to give  praise to the movie - the 8th installment of the Conjuring franchise  - for consistently portraying Catholicism and practitioners in a positive and respectful light. That said, I wouldn't write a new catechism based on what you learn on screen, as a lot of it seems like Catholicism visa-vis good-meaning Protestant writers. An upside down cross is NOT a sign of the devil (it's St. Peter's cross), only an ordained Priest can consecrate the bread and wine, and as I whispered to YaYa when the scene was playing, the Novus Ordo (modern Mass, post Vatican II) was most certainly not what you'd see in a quaint 1956 French parish. 

All in all, I grade this a B, and a C+ if you're going into it just for the frights. 

 

A Nightmare in Las Cruces

 

On February 10^th, 1990 gunmen entered and robbed a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  They took around $5000, ordered everyone to get on the ground – and then opened fire. Four were killed, another died of her injuries within a decade, and two others were wounded.  

The age of three of the dead? Thirteen, six, and two, with the toddler shot point blank in the forehead.

 

The case was never solved.

 

 A Nightmare in Las Cruces is a full-length documentary, filmed for the 20^th anniversary of the massacre, that Lisa and I rented from Amazon Wednesday night.

 

It was not a pleasant film to watch.

 

That was to be expected. The film had extensive access to the family of the victims, and their pain, even two decades past the event, was raw and dangerously close to the surface. Add that to a detailed look at a gruesome and senseless crime and no, you aren't going to feel very good about humanity when the closing credits roll. 

But the filmmaker did the viewer, and himself, no favors either. 

For one, the audio  in the film was horrendous. Sinister music plays incessantly at times, even while family members are sharing their thoughts. Other parts of the film have the audio cut in and out and some scenes have an odd buzzing in the background. 

Visually, actual footage of the slaughter, up to to and including video that lingers on the corpse of the six year old, plays far too often. Including the unblurred footage is questionable but impactful, but that impact lessens when it is played over and over. 

In terms of telling the story, small but vital details are omitted. You're left wondering why two middle school girls are in a bowling alley office on a Saturday morning, and why an employee would bring his two and six year old with him to work.  The answer? (thank you Google) is that the bowling alley had a daycare for the bowler's children, which the middle school girls were going to supervise. With no babysitter that day, the two and six year old were going to spend the day in the daycare while their Dad worked. 

The documentary also (in my opinion) wastes time trying to imply that this was a deliberate assassination, as a vendetta against the business owner. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it reeks of desperation, of  a frustrated public being unable to rectify the sad fact that humans sometimes kill, and kill children, for no reason we can fathom. 

The documentary had the best of intentions and occasionally, it is moving and powerful. But overall, I would rate this as a C. 

Fall

Two thrill seekers, one recovering from the recent death of her husband, climb an abandoned TV tower o record the feat for social media; fate (and rust) intervene, stranding the pair 2000 feet above the desert floor. 

I'd heard criticism of the film that ranged from dismissive to downright negative, but I thought it was a strong and engaging movie.  Are the events likely? I don't know, but was it likely a great white shark would stalk a small town and tear apart the boat sent to hunt it? What does *likely* matter in a movie theater? Suspend your disbelief, and this flick will carry you along with it on a fear soaked  misadventure with a few twists along the way. 

I give it a personal B+

Rent/stream it. 

The Closing of the Downer

There's been some pretty lousy local news tonight. The 108 year old Downer Theatre, Milwaukee's oldest extant movie theater, has shut its doors.

For most of my adult lifetime the Downer has primarily shown artistic films with limited mainstream appeal. 

There's already some talk that the Milwaukee Film Festival will purchase the building, but as far as I know that's internet rumor and I don't know if there's anything to it. They already own and operate the nearby Oriental Theater, and I doubt they care to run a competitor located that close.

As to the Downer: I can't say I went there often but I do have a very specific memory of watching  Val Kilmer in the John Holmes bio Wonderland with Lisa in 2003, and slipping out into the lobby to take a call from Ray bragging to me that the Yankees had lost the World Series.

Goodbye Downer. You had a heck of a run.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Recently I have a mental block that prevents me from devoting any attention to TV, books, movies - its's a complete 180 of my first five decades honestly. It took me three (maybe four?) viewings to get through this movie. Not because of the movie itself, just the mental block. 

That, may I just say, sucks. 

Now I know nothing of Dungeons and Dragons the game, having never played it, so don't ask me if Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is true to the source material or even the spirt of the game itself. 

What I do know: this movie was FUN. 

It is lighthearted from opening to close, but not so over the top that it loses track of the plot (simple though it be) or devolves into a parody. When there is a need for emotion or character development the tone tightens effectively, and their are some ingenious action sequences in the third act. 

I liked it. 

I really, really did. 

Go rent or stream it today!

Gooodbye to Southgate and Showtime

Yesterday was the last day of operation for three Marcus theaters, two of them in the Milwaukee area. To my knowledge, it has more to do with Covid-era changes than any fallout from the current Hollywood strike. 

Southgate, pictured above, was where Lisa and I first saw Titanic on its opening night in 1997, and many other films over the years. In the last decade or so it had become a little wild for my taste, and so we had moved on to Southshore, but we still occasionally saw a film there. 

Showtime, another casualty, was a bit of a drive but once it was absorbed by Marcus and became a budget priced showhouse, it became my go-to with the kids every Monday night in the pre-Covid years. 

Unfortunately, after Covid Marcus made it a first-run, full price theater again. That was a curious call, since it lacked the Dreamlounger seating of other showhouses and was forevermore the odd man out. Even so, I saw John Wick 4 there with LuLu earlier this year. 

I enjoy the experience of watching a film on the big screen, in the presence of a full room of people. I cringe when I hear of theaters closing, and I hope this is the last of the losses for the near future. 

RIP

The Flash

Last night I watched this summer's "The Flash" with LuLu. After grossing only $268 million worldwide, it is widely considered one of the biggest box office bombs in history. It may cost Warner up to $200 million in losses, and effectively end many of the future projects hinted at in the movie, affecting the course of many a career. 

It has also , from what I've personally seen online, been universally derided by fans and dismissed as a lousy film.

Well. Humans being humans, they quickly fall into lockstep.  I doubt most of those people ever even saw the film, because you know what?

It ain't half bad.  I liked it.

I'll admit it started poorly, with a ham fisted comedic opening. Haha, the fastest man alive is always late for work. What a witty idea! And the CGI in the hospital scene was downright embarrassing.  15 minutes in I thought the critics were right and I was in for another Black Adam.

Then it turned right around. In the end I think this ranks up there with the first Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Snyder Cut Justice League.

Keaton's Batman was the supposed to be the fan favorite draw of the film, but I didn't think it contributed anything all that great to the film, and I actually think the character was one upped by Sasha Calle's Supergirl. That's a shame, because I think you could have done a lot with him. Instead, we got bitter old Luke Skywalker, alone in retirement. Yawn.

On the other hand Ezra Miller, he of the constant legal and moral trouble, is probably to blame for the public reaction at the box office. But he's a helluva Flash, and the most annoying part of the characterization (the bumbling social idiot routine) finally ended once he had to play mentor to his younger/ alternate self. He does a grand job of carrying the film. By the end I think he put DC into a heck of a jam, because I can't picture another actor playing the role as well. 

Anyway, you've probably read or seen all the spoilers as the whole world seemed to abandon all customary F's when it came to this movie lol, but I'm going to honor custom and end the review here, before I give too much away.

Long story short, it's an enjoyable film.  I grade it a B.

A Letter From YaYa

Marcus Cinema -

My new year’s resolution was to see more in theaters. thus far i have seen 41 films in cinema, a majority being viewed at Marcus establishments. i am a weekly visitor, and though i will continue to frequent, i plead for Marcus to consider rolling out the Movieflex program to Wisconsin. 

it is a bit disappointing to see what looks like a fantastic program be limited to so few areas. Marcus dominates theaters around here in quantity alone. getting to the singular local AMC is a hassle, but their movie flex- adjacent program has tempted me to make the effort numerous times.

I appreciate what Marcus has to offer with value Tuesdays but those days are busy, with limited seats for showtimes that often fall at inconvenient times for myself personally. 

Please consider those of us who regularly love visiting your establishments when further rolling out this program (or allow Milwaukee to be a test city!)

Also, please consider adding Greg [Marcus]  blankets to the official merch line (I contacted customer service previously about this and no, I'm not joking)!  

we need Movieflex!!

- Yaya

Barbie

I didn't like the movie and yeah, I'm scared to admit it and incur the wrath of every woman I know. 

I thought the first half hour was pretty good, as I was wowed by the wonderful set design and visuals. 

And then, strictly as a movie, I thought it was pretty standard fare, which is okay. There are worse crimes. But the story itself - toys running away and coming to life, the disillusioned adult once more made aware of the magic of childhood - well, it's been done. Obviously. 

I thought the social message was ghastly too. Oh, on the surface it was about empowerment, but, like, it wasn't? You have a ruling class, residing in big mansions and living the good life, who choose to segregate and disenfranchise a people based on their physical characteristics. Even in the end,  when gosh golly we get our happy ending, the Barbie's consciously and callously deny the Ken's equal representation under the law and in the courts. That's . . . awfully 1970's South Africa, no? 

I guess what bothered me the most was that there wasn't a whole lot of joy in the film. Barbie has been a tremendously positive role model for my girls, and taught them that there was a whole world out there waiting to be conquered. In the movie, Barbie just doesn't embody or believe in that premise. That failure to support the very girls that have supported the franchise for half a century - I find that unforgiveable. 

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

 

This movie doesn’t work, and there’s a bunch of reasons for that.  A complete lack of any real character development along the way, the idea that a thousands-year old goddess is cool being coupled with a high school boy (eww) , a formulaic superhero plot, and so on. but let’s focus on two things:

 

One, and I’ll try not to spoil things here, but if Hollywood learned anything from the Star Wars sequels, I had hoped it was that death means your dead; if you can die and just come back it robs a character's actions of any weight and significance.

 

AND

 

It was fun watching Zachary Levi play a 14-year-old Billy Batson in the first film, and I bought into his childhood wonder. But this isn’t a comic book. Time passes in the real-world, and because of that Levi is now playing a near 18-year-old on the brink of adulthood, not to mention an adult who has spent four years as a superhero. Putting the same immaturity and naivety in Billy’s words and actions paints Billy as an idiot this time around.

 

I loved the first Shazam, and I’m sad that this flub will probably end the series. But if this was the direction it was going, that’s probably a good thing.     

Unexpected (but great) to Hear!

Well hot dog! Sound of Freedom was the #1 movie in America on the 4th of July! The marketing tactic worked! 

source: BoxOfficeMojo by IMDB Pro

No Hard Feelings

On Sunday, after a day spent thrift shopping, delivering books to Little Libraries,

 getting ice cream at Tastee-Twist, napping, and having dinner at Classic Slice, Lisa and I went to see No Hard Feelings at the Ridge Cinema. YaYa and her boyfriend joined us both for dinner and the flick.

No Hard Feelings is a comedy about an Uber driver, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who loses her car just as she is facing foreclosure for back property taxes. To get back on the road, and save her home, she answers a personal ad from a rich couple who want her to “date” their son, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, in exchange for a free car. That’s “date” in quotes, as in take his virginity. Unfortunately for her the socially awkward 18-year-old is no easy catch, and time is running out.

I liked the film, and there were parts where I laughed my butt off. But when you release multiple trailers (just a cursory Google search showed me 5 minutes of “official” material) you’re showing your audience 10% of your final 90 minute  product, and presumably some of the best of it. There were parts of the film that would have been hysterical, had I not seen it six or seven times before.

That’s not the film’s fault, but it definitely impacts your viewing.

A negative that was the fault of the filmmakers, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, because it’s so counterintuitive: the characters were too 3-dimensional.

This was a raunchy , laugh out loud, don’t-worry-about-the plot-holes kind of flick and what did they do? They developed rich, emotional backstories and complex motivations for the two lead characters. That’s super swell as an assignment in a screenwriting class, but was it needed here, with this material?  I think this a case where keeping the characters firmly in their lane would have better served the comedy.

Don’t mind me though, I’m a grouch. I still rate this a solid B. Go see it.

Renfield

In the original novel by Bram Stoker, Renfield was an institutionalized madman who happened to be Dracula's Familiar - the assistant who helps the vampire find his prey.  The version of Renfield in this film treats him a little kinder, with the only nod to psychiatry being his habitual attendance at support group meetings. 

The plot of the movie is simple: Renfield is filled with misgivings about the life he's chosen, given that he's got the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, and after intervening to save a female cop on the outs with the mob, he seeks to break with his Master. Alas, dear Dracula doesn't do breakups very well, and launches a plan to not only punish his errant Familiar, but achieve world domination too.

I had no intention of seeing this movie, as I thought the trailer seems ridiculous, but once I saw it was streaming for free on Peacock I gave it a go. The verdict?

I humbly retract my former stance. It is a fun, entertaining popcorn flick worthy of watching. There's little worth remembering here, as it is For Entertainment Purposes Only, but it does that well. And Nicholas Cage plays a wickedly good (bad?) version of the world's most popular vampire. 

It's worth a watch if you have Peacock. If you need to pay to stream it . . eh. There's probably better ways to spend your money. 

 

Jim Brown

 

Jim Brown, the only NFL rusher to average more than 100 yards per game for his career, and arguably the greatest player in NFL history, has died at 87.

 His playing career preceded my birth, and my memory of him is completely unrelated to his athletic life: I know him as Ruffo, the mercenary friend of Rod Taylor in the graphic 1968 action movie Dark of the Sun.  

 RIP

How To Blow Up a Pipeline (FILM)

I hope you've heard about this movie before reading this post, because I'd hate to be responsible for spreading awareness of its existence. 

There's been a lot of buzz about the movie, from praise at the Milwaukee Film Festival to warnings from construction companies to increase their vigilance in the wake of the screenings. 

I wanted to see it for myself, to know if it was just another fabricated controversy, like Ozzie Osbourne leading your children to Satanism, or if there was actual meat on the bone. 

Sadly, the movie lives up to the warnings. 

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a film about a group of like-minded young people, who, at least on the surface, are united in their despair about global warming and ecological damage, to the point where they attempt to blow up a gas pipeline in Texas.  

I say "on the surface" because the rationale driving many of the characters is pretty threadbare. One character blames her illness on a refinery, and there's an angry Texan furious that his land was taken via eminent domain by an oil company. But the others just seem to gravitate to the project. One woman joins, despite opposing the plan, merely to appease her lover. 

At no point does the script appear to even care to explain their motivation in anything but the most cliche and superficial terms because the audience is presumed to accept their participation as a necessary and natural action. Unbelievably, in the context of the movie, we sort of do.  

The film as a whole is a propaganda piece uninterested in nuance or alternate views; when an  objection is made on screen, it is quickly and wholly dismissed as weak, cowardly, and insufficient to the matter at hand.  Terrorism, the group routinely states, is the only means of achieving the goal (though the overall goal remains strangely ambiguous - to inspire copycats, sure, but to what end?). The group proudly attaches the label of "terrorist" to themselves. After all,  so they muse, MLK and Jesus were terrorists, their violence was probably just forgotten after their success, right? 

All well and good if you agree on the problem, I guess. But there's nothing  on screen, no Grand Evil, that's *unique* to the climate crisis. I'd argue the same script could, with mild revisions, be used to present a film advocating the bombing of abortion clinics, livestock farms - or office towers in southern Manhattan. 

Now this isn't a documentary on bomb production. I'm sure you could find more information about that in 15 minutes online than you could gleam from the movie. No one is going to learn how to attack a pipeline from this, nor will it inspire a normal person to enlist in such an effort. 

Where the danger lies is this: as a movie, as a thriller, as a piece of entertainment, the film WORKS. It is well done and entertaining and most of the time you gloss over the dangerous rants because you're invested in the outcome. You walk away just a bit blase about the whole "terror" aspect. I'm not sure that's a good thing. 

SPOILER: I do think the final ten minutes of the movie, in which it devolves into a poor imitation of The Usual Suspects or Oceans 11 in an attempt to show just how much smarter the plotters are than law enforcement, nixes a lot of the goodwill the group has built with the audience. Fairy tale endings, devoid of any consequence for your actions, just don't ring true, and it drags the viewer abruptly out of the story. END SPOILER

I am a fierce defender of free speech, be it good or bad,  and not for one second do I think this shouldn't have been made or that it should be banned. 

But I do wonder at the wisdom of making it, and of the value of using art to encourage violence.